As the Question walked ahead of him, the knight found himself wondering if other questions roamed this horrid place. Worse questions, perhaps. The Question’s wings twitched absently through the violet mist. Its lumbering steps hit the ground with more force than the knight expected from a winged creature.
A soft cry drifted up from the mist, a sadness with it. A few steps more and the knight found the source. A crushed flower, its light faded, lay pressed into the black grass within a large footprint. He kneeled, reaching for it. To do what? He couldn’t say. Within him rose the urge to do something. To at least try.
“Why have you stopped?” the Question asked, obscured by the distance and darkness between them.
“I—,” the knight began to answer, only just realizing how futile his actions would be. “It’s nothing.”
He rose and closed the gap between himself and the Question, but stopped short. From the cool mist drifted a warm light. As it grew, its bob and sway were unmistakable.
The Question looked toward it as well, then back to the knight.
“A wicker man,” it said.
The knight tilted his head slightly, a puzzled expression on his face. The Question rushed at him like a sudden draft, then coiled around him, whispering in his ear.
“Never let the wicker men catch you in their gaze.”
The words were a warning, but came with a frigid glee.
The lantern drew nearer. Once a bodiless specter in the dark, the form holding it aloft took shape. He was a man made entirely of black woven straw, draped in a red robe. He moved with jerking, forced steps. The top of his head was wild, like a well-worn broom.
“Hush,” the Question said, sending a cold shiver seeping through the knight.
The knight and the Question stood stark still. The knight stopped breathing entirely. The wicker man crept closer but, as far as the knight could tell, had not seen them. The lantern squeaked as it swayed in the curse’s straw grip. A pressure built behind the knight’s eyes, and his heart raced. His body was desperate for air. He did not give it. He remained still and silent. A coldness washed over him, starting at his fingers and toes, working its way toward his slowing heart. A heart which stopped with one last, frail beat.
As the wicker man drew nearer, the Question launched itself skyward with unexpected haste. The sound of its wings deafening in the stillness of the moment. The wicker man froze mid-stride, then jerked his head in the knight’s direction. The skitter of his straw like hollow fingers through fallen leaves.
The knight let air into his lungs. It flooded his body with a prickling warmth. His heart woke with a start as he took a step back and drew his sword with measured care. The wicker man lifted his lantern.
From behind the blackened straw, a warm glow swelled. The light from the lantern grew to match it as the wicker man stepped toward the knight. Then, as though struck by a flaming arrow, the wicker man burst into flames. A fiery scream seared the knight’s ears. Glowing embers burst into the air, swirling up in a plume of smoke.
Around the knight, the mist evaporated. Beneath him, his shadow stretched out and away, reaching back to the road he’d wandered so far from. How the knight wished he could follow.
Among the crackling roar of flame, a voice spoke.
“Hide not from me,” the wicker man said. “Reveal yourself.”
The knight replied, “I hide from no challenge, be it man or curse!”
“LIES!” the wicker man wailed, his raging fire bursting with anger and lashing upward toward the clouds.
The heat drew sweat from the knight.
His shadow expanded.
The knight pointed his sword at the curse burning before him.
“Leave me be,” he shouted over the roaring flame. “I wish only to pass!”
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The wicker man only burned.
When the knight attempted to take a step toward the wicker man, his feet felt heavy as stone. His toes dragged across the brittle grass.
The wicker man burned brighter.
As the knight’s shadow grew, he could feel it pulling on him—weighing him down. He tried to take another step only to have his shadow pull his foot back down, locking him in place.
“Release me!” the knight demanded.
The wicker man burned.
The knight slid back, his feet losing their grip on the dead ground. With no warning, he fell through completely. He thrust his sword into the earth as his body was pulled back. When the knight turned, he saw the true terror of his shadow.
It had engulfed the cursed land and pulled him down into its boundless nothing. His shield tore from his free hand and vanished into the abyss.
“Question!” the knight cried. “You’ve sworn your aid in my quest!”
An instant later, the Question descended, landing with an unsettling elegance behind the wicker man.
“I’ve not sworn to save you,” the Question replied. “What lies in your shadow is of your own design.”
“There is nothing!” the knight shouted over the roaring fire. The joints in his shoulders snapped, and the muscles running through his arms trembled. His grip loosened.
“Will nothing kill you?” the Question asked.
“No!” The knight closed his eyes and focused on his grip and his breath. He willed his joints to mend as the cold grasp of nothing wrenched at him with mounting turbulence. As though Hell had found him and the damned clamored for him to join them. If only he could die, perhaps he would relent.
“This troubles you more than death?” the Question asked. “This oblivion?”
“Yes!” the knight replied through pained cries.
“Curious,” the Question replied, adding with pleasure in its voice, “I will see you to your end.”
The knight heard, among the righteous drum of flame and the cold whisper of nothing, the beat of heavy wings. Icy fingers wrapped around his chest.
The Question carried him into the air, slowly. The knight’s greedy shadow seemed to pull at him angrily. Two malignant beings fighting for the same flesh. The harder the Question pulled, the brighter the wicker man burned.
Fingernails dug between his ribs, puncturing his lungs. The knight heard them crack, one by one, as the ever-determined Question pulled him free.
Slowly, the knight saw distance grow between himself and his shadow. When his sword slid free of the ground, the force of his shadow nearly ripped him from the Question’s grip. Fingers slid deeper into his body, and his legs went numb.
Relief found the knight in one fleeting moment as he felt the pull of his shadow lessen. Then, the Question released him, hurling him at the burning wicker man. Quickly, the knight swung his blade.
The sound of broken kindling and shattered glass came next, followed by a dwindling light.
The knight rolled along the meadow, his lifeless legs snapping as he tumbled. When he stopped, he lay beneath the resettling mist beside a luminous lily. Did one bloom from his beloved?
Sensation returned to the knight’s legs before they could heal. He focused on the scent of the flower as he breathed through the pain of healing. The sweet scent of life and the dreaded stench of death swirled—two sides of a coin upon whose edge the knight lay. He hoped only that his greatest love and dearest friend had met their end swift and unknowingly. Had they met it at all?
The former, unlikely.
The latter, a near certainty.
The popping of bone and of dying fire accompanied him. He felt a presence. The knight opened his eyes to find the looming Question watching as he mended. With a piercing gaze and a cocked head, it spoke.
“It hurts.”
“Yes,” the knight groaned as his bones set and his flesh stitched itself together.
“Yet you fear nothing more?”
“Yes.”
“Curious,” the Question said, adding as it offered its hand, “Your story must end. I will see to it.”
“Why save me at all?” the knight asked as he took its hand. It hoisted him into the air before setting him down on his feet, like a child might a doll. “Was that not brutal enough?”
“That was no end,” the Question replied. “That was nothing, eternal. Your greatest fear carried heavy in your shadow. It follows. Always.”
“Question, should you keep your word, once my quest is done, I will return and help you look.”
“Bind this accord,” the Question said, pointing to the knight’s sword.
The knight glanced at his blade, then his empty hand. Without a word, he ran the sword’s edge along his palm. He offered it to the Question.
“Drink, quickly,” he said, “before it heals.”
The Question seized him by the arm and leaned in. An arm’s length away, yet the knight could still not see its face—only its unblinking eyes glowing within the shroud.
His hand vanished into it, and the glowing eyes closed. A cold, wet tongue he could not see but could feel wrapped around his hand, slowly slipping free.
The Question released him.
“We are bound.”
The knight nodded once; so did the Question.
“Follow.”
He did. But as he stepped after it, the mist drew back, and the final ember of the wicker man drifted upward—alone, fragile, burning itself out in the dark.
He watched it fade and wondered, not for the first time, how many more things would die before he found the ones he sought.
He did not look back again, fearing he might see his shadow waiting.
