Return to the Featherlands: Chapter 5 (Patreon)

“Dad,” Paul said, almost scolding with his tone. His head pounded, exhaustion and frustration battling for the boy’s mind and both winning. He caught his father as the Elder staggered back. Silvia entered the cabin behind Paul, quickly shutting and locking the door behind her. Paul helped walk his father to a nearby bed. It appeared disheveled and lived-in. By it, a table had many stray sheets of noted paper, small growing herbs, and ornate trinkets of medicinal utility. “You shouldn’t be up.”

“Paul, he saved us,” Silvia said. She came closer to the pair. Paul helped lower the Elder back down into the bed. The man’s movements were slow and challenging for him. “Thank you, sir. We really can’t thank you enough.”

“Maybe not you, your majesty,” the Elder said. His voice was strained. He seemed to choke on every word that struggled to meet his dried lips. “My son here is much less thankful, it seems.”

“Dad,” Paul sighed. He helped get his father situated in bed, but the Elder fought back laying down.

“One must stand for the queen,” he said. Silvia came to the other side of the bed. She took his hand and met the man’s eyes. There seemed to be nothing recognizable about the mage that aided in the Badland battle all those years ago. From the way he spoke to the leathery texture of his skin, he seemed to have aged far more than five years. His face was littered with wrinkles and discolored blotches. His hand trembled in hers. His eyes stared back, pale and distant. An unkempt beard ran down his neck and chest like snowy, overgrown brush. With a single glance at the man in faint, dying candlelight, a tear in Silvia’s eye caught her by surprise.

“It… it’s alright,” Silvia said. She smiled, though nothing about how the aged hero looked was anything to smile about. Silvia sniffled and wiped her eye. “Thank you, sir, for saving us.”

“Just doing my service for the queen,” he said, his voice fading tiredly.

“Dad, please, just try to rest,” Paul said. He had turned toward the table next to the bed, mashing herbs with a pestle and mortar. He poured the contents into a cup of warm water and held it up to his father carefully. “But drink first. You’ll feel better.”

“I feel fine,” the Elder said with a cough. “I have her majesty here to keep me company… at least for a while… while I’m still here.” Silvia glanced up at Paul who looked back and sighed.

“Here,” Paul said. He held the cup up to his father’s lips. The Elder briefly fought back before giving in and taking a sip. He coughed louder and strained to breathe.

“Are you okay?” Silvia asked, still holding onto the man’s hand.

“I’m fine,” the Elder said with a forced smile. He paused as Paul gave him a moment to catch his breath. “I’m sorry we couldn’t keep it nice for your return.” Silvia looked down, stroking the back of his hand. She shook her head.

“Sir, I’m… I’m sorry I wasn’t around,” Silvia said, her eyes starting to ache with tears. She looked up to Paul. He was clearly listening, but refused to look back. “I’m really sorry. I wanted to come back. Had I known what was happening… I might have tried harder. So I really am sorry.

“No apologies, love,” the man said. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” Silvia sighed.

“Thank you, sir,” Silvia said. “I wish your son felt that way.” Paul huffed a little, his expression hurt and sour. The Elder coughed out a short laugh.

“My boy,” he said. “He’s a good lad, but hard headed.” The Elder turned toward Silvia and whispered in a tone that made it sound like he was grinning. “You should have heard how he talked about you after you left. On and on and on, he wouldn’t stop. ‘She’s so wonderful and pretty and special and…’” Paul held the cup back to his father’s lips, as if trying to force them closed.

“Dad, seriously,” Paul said, nervous and red-faced. “Just drink so you can rest.” The Elder chuckled and sipped the drink without coughing. Paul eyes Silvia for a moment before looking away again. Silvia managed to smile a little at Paul’s obvious fluster.

“It’s true, though,” said the Elder sleepily. Paul pulled the cup back again. “You look so much like her. It’s quite remarkable.” Silvia blinked and perked up. The Elder’s eyes began to flutter, his lids growing heavy.

“Who?” Silvia asked, rubbing his hand. She leaned in a little more. “Lilly? My sister? Have you… seen her come through here? Recently?” The man’s man’s eyes faded quickly. He blinked more and more until they shut and stayed shut. His breathing eased. The Elder fell quietly into a peaceful rest, his hand going limp in hers. Paul reached up and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck. “Sir?”

“He’s out,” Paul said. He put the cup away and pulled a thick, warm blanket over his sleeping father. Silvia watched him rest. Even sleeping, his breathing was labored. Paul placed the cup back on the table and stood. He walked to a more open space of the cabin, away from the Elder.

Silvia stayed by the man’s side for a few more moments, holding and petting his hand softly. After a while, she stood. She followed Paul into the living space. The cabin was homely, but minimal. The common area featured only a single couch, a table, and a couple of chairs. A bookcase filled halfway with tattered books guarded the back wall. The floors creaked a little in certain spots. Wind whistled through cracks in the walls. The interior shared the subtle flowery scent of the outside. Gardening tools hung on the walls as both decoration and practical storage. On the table, more scribbled-in pages were scattered about. On them, Silvia could see strange symbols and a language that resembled that of Featherland magic, as a sort of inscription. Between them were more strange supplies and medicinal equipment. Paul stood next to it. He had taken off his cloak and hung it by the front door. Without it, only a torn sleeveless undershirt covered his midsection. Silvia could see his arms more clearly. They were cut and scarred in several places. Paul had clearly grown in more ways than just height.. His arms, shoulders, chest all seemed larger and more dense, hard and finely sculpted. Her eyes shifted slightly as she came closer. Paul stood tending to his wounded hand. He cleaned it with a damp cloth before wrapping it up in a long strip of torn fabric. The silence after leaving his father to rest lasted far too long for Silvia’s comfort.

“Is he okay?” Silvia asked after a moment of working up the courage to do so. Paul’s slender jaw pressed down, grinding the side of his teeth.

“He’s sick,” Paul said. “He’s been sick for a while.”

“I’m really sorry,” Silvia said. “What does he have?” Paul shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. The pair spoke quietly to let the man rest. “I’ve been trying to find out. I’ve tried every remedy I know. He just started wasting away, like he was aging by years over the course of a few weeks.” Paul paused and looked out the window into the near pitch night.

“Do you have any suspicions?” Silvia asked. “I mean, it can’t be nothing.”

“I think it may be the magic that he practiced when he was younger,” Paul said, “like it just started draining him all at once. Magic is known to take sacrifice, but it doesn’t make sense that it would all happen so suddenly. Whatever it is, I haven’t been able to stop it.” A silence hung over the room like a dangling weight. Silvia swallowed, a loss for words stinging her mouth.

“I can’t imagine how hard that must be,” Silvia said.

“He’s always been there for me, you know?” Paul said. He swallowed. His voice shook. “Losing mom was hard, but this is… I can’t explain. I hate seeing him like this. I hate not being able to do anything.” Paul fought back against the obvious choke in his voice. Silvia came closer. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be without him.”

“Is there nothing that can cure him?” Silvia asked. Paul let out a frustrated sigh.

“Nothing I’ve tried has helped,” he said. “Nothing in any of the texts say anything about what this is or how to cure it. Using magic always takes a toll. I think it’s all catching up with him now. It’s not fair, but there’s nothing that can be done.”

“There has to be something,” said Silvia. “In all of the Featherlands, there has to be some way to counter this, whatever’s happening to him… not that I really know anything about it.”

“There isn’t, Silvia,” Paul said through an exhausted groan. “I mean…” He paused. He looked away, his eyes distant and thoughtful. Silvia waited for him to keep speaking before leaning closer.

“What?” she asked. Paul sighed heavily. He shook his head and walked up to the large bookcase in the back of the room. Silvia watched him take a dusty tome off of the highest shelf.

“Probably not even worth mentioning, honestly,” said Paul, looking down at the book. “But it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet.”

“What is it?” Silvia asked.

Paul stared down at the book as he walked to sit next to Silvia. Silvia’s eyes darted between him and the book. It was old and tattered, the cover being made of ripped hide. The thing appeared to be one hard breeze away from falling apart completely. Paul laid it in his lap and carefully opened it. The smell of old paper bloomed from the creaking spine splitting before her. The parchment of the pages was frail and ripping from nearly every angle. With a cautious touch, Paul flipped through a few. Across them, Silvia made out images of various weeds, roots, and flowers featured above detailed descriptions of each. Further in the book were spells, incantations, rituals, and potions with directions on how to conduct each. From what she could see, most of the language, riddled behind mystic cyphers, went right over her head. Several of the withered pages had notes in the margins scribbled with different colored ink. Paul stopped flipping when he reached a page that had no images and that had been handwritten separate from the others. Silvia adjusted her glasses and looked closely, sliding closer to Paul.

“Mom was working on… something,” Paul said. “She was always better with potions and medicine and stuff. She hypothesized that a revival elixir could be possible given the properties of certain ingredients and how they react to one another. I guess she called it the Reliever.”

“Revival, like…?”

“Like bring someone back from the dead,” Paul explained. His eyes drifted wearily down the page. “It was a longshot for her. She never finished it. So there’s no telling if it’s even possible or not. Theoretically, the way she describes it, the potion should be able to bring a recently deceased person back from the dead. I suppose the idea there would be to give it to him after he… you know, and then once he’s back, maybe the effects of the magical toll will stop. That way he’d be able to live out the rest of his life, you know? But even so, it’s just not plausible.”

“Why not?” Silvia asked. “Come on, if you had this idea, don’t you owe it to yourself, to your dad, to your mom, to see it through?”

“Silvia, you don’t get it,” Paul said, his tone becoming a tired growl. “Every single factor in this thing is untested. I have virtually no way of knowing if any of this is even true. None of these ingredients even exist in the Featherlands. The best clues I have had finding them are that they occur more naturally in Badlands territory.”

“Then we can find them,” Silvia said, perking up. “We have to at least try. If we’re going through the Badlands anyway, maybe we can find what the potion needs.” Paul closed the book.

“SIlvia, I told you,” he said, “I’m not going.” He stood and crossed the room to put the book back on the shelf.

“Paul, please,” Saliva said. “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, especially given what we went through, but I’m going. I have to. I have to find my sister. I could really use your help. And along the way, we could look for-”

“And that’s what it is, isn’t it?” Paul snapped. “‘You could use me’. Because that’s what I am to you, apparently. Someone to use. That’s how it was then and that’s how it is now.”

“Don’t act like you know how I feel,” Silvia snapped back. “That’s all it’s been this entire time. You thinking and treating me like I don’t care. You assuming that I don’t care. You have no idea what I’ve been through either. Maybe it wasn’t this bad, but don’t come at me saying that I don’t or didn’t care about you because I did. And I still do.” Paul looked down. He sighed, his shoulder slouching a little. Silvia came closer and lowered her tone. “I’m trying to help. I want to help. I want to fix this, all of this. Because I do care. I care about the Featherlands. I care about your father. And I care about you. Please come with me. Please.” The caw of a bird in a nearby tree cut through the silence that followed.

“Even if I thought that you trying to cross the Badlands and get to the castle with or without me was a good idea, it’s not, I still wouldn’t,” Paul said. Silvia huffed.

“Paul I said I was sorry like a hundred times. What do I have to do to-”

“Oh my god, it’s not about you,” Paul interrupted. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, your majesty, but not everything is about you.” Silvia recoiled and fell quiet. “My dad is dying. I can’t stop it. I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried. I don’t know how much longer he has left, but I know I don’t want to be away from him anymore than I already have. He doesn’t deserve to be alone when he goes.”

“But you could save him.”

“How? The Reliever? We don’t know that. It’s all hypothetical, a theory that went nowhere. What I do know is that he has less than maybe a few days, if that, and I’ve already spent too much time away from him trying to stop what can’t be stopped. I… I just can’t. So, I need to be here with him for when he passes.” Flying Featherland insects danced and buzzed right outside the window. Paula and Silvia heard them all in the lingering silence. Silvia nodded after a while.

“You’re right,” she said. “You should be here for him. But I still need to go and find my sister.” Silvia grabbed her backpack and started for the front door.

“Silvia, you have no idea what you’d be walking into,” Paul argued.

“I don’t care,” Silvia said. “That didn’t stop Lilly from coming to save me and it won’t stop me from saving her.”

“What are you doing?” Paul asked dryly, watching Silvia reach for the door handle.

“If you’re not coming with me, that’s fine, but you’re not going to stop me from going on my own,” Silvia said sternly.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Paul said. “You really want to leave now?” Silvia paused. She glanced out of the window and recalled the creatures that had nearly caught her and Paul in the blackened woods beyond the cabin. She thought for a moment. Huffing, she turned back toward Paul with a stoic and defeated expression.

“I guess… it would be better for me to leave when it’s not dark out,” Silvia said, putting down her backpack again. She swallowed. “Could I maybe stay here for the night?”

“That was the plan,” Paul said.

“Thank you,” Silvia said. “I guess I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning then.”

“I mean… you can stay as long as you’d like,” Paul said, scratching the side of his neck. “Come on. You can have my bed for the night. I’ll sleep on the floor.”