Punches were thrown as they grappled and fought. A few managed to claw and scrape their way onto the embankment, but they’d already drunk too much, their bodies continuing to age backwards until they were all squalling infants. The effect didn’t stop there. No, the babies grew smaller still, until they were the size of a grapefruit, then an orange. Until they disappeared completely. Like they’d never been created, never born. Never existed.

“No,” Loy said, when the rest of the men were gone. He sounded lost, like a man speaking in the dark and not expecting a response. He was looking at his own hands, so small and weak they wouldn’t even be able to heft the shovel they’d been wielding for the last few years.

Faryon’s own hands looked similar. “I—I thought we were going to change the world. I thought we were doing something important.”

The boy that had once been Loy, said, “I wish I’d never met you.”

The words cut deep, but Faryon didn’t refute them. Quite the opposite. “I wish you didn’t either. I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Keep your meaningless apologies.” He’d grown even younger as they’d spoken. Perhaps six. Now four. He began to whimper. Then babble. Then, finally, cry.

“There, there,” Faryon said, taking the babe into his own, small arms. Comforting him until his own mind began to muddle, his own body too small to support another’s. Golden light swirled about him, illuminating the colors of the forest above him. At first, it was mesmerizing, but then it turned dark around the edges, the branches turning to claws, the leaves to knives.

Baby Faryon’s wail split the wood, but there was no one, save Jost, to hear it.

Jost watched Faryon vanish, and then stood. He flexed the fingers of a hand that wasn’t supposed to be attached to his arm anymore. He walked a short distance away, to where they’d left their tools. He grabbed a shovel and got to work, scooping piles of dirt and tossing them into the golden glow.

He toiled like this for many days, working late into the night. When he grew tired, he slept. When he grew hungry, he ate from the rations of men who no longer existed. Eventually, he finished, patting the final shovelful of dirt until it was flat.

The golden glow was gone, hidden beneath the earth once more.

After all, the River of Life was nothing more than a myth, a legend. A bedtime story meant to hasten tired children toward sleep.

And that’s the way he needed it to stay.

He slung the shovel over one shoulder, turned away, and returned to Hern. He never spoke of what had transpired in Lostwood again.

PART II

Perfidy     Bryony     Ludo

Soraya     Tomas