Between Day And Night

[L. Marcus]

I found myself standing by the joining of three roads, beneath a huge, gnarled, leafless oak. To the west of me the sun was on the horizon, a livid red, a hue I had never perceived before or since. To the east of me, night reigned. Stars shone, cold specks of light, like crushed ice; the Aurora snaked over the sky, wispering and kackling to itself in the voices of the dead.

 

On the third path, the road between - the twilight path - I noticed an old man walking towards me, bent as a wind-twisted birch, using a cane to steady his steps. Standing there, looking at him, I suddenly realised he was here to see me.

 

'Ho there, youngster,' the old bent man said as he came up to me. 'A fine evening for it, wouldn't you say?'

 

I replied that I had never seen such a display before, that it all seemed a bit otherworldly. The old man laughed, a short, sharp bark. 'Otherworldly? Son, there is no other world than this. This world, between night and day, where the roads meet. Where the moon is always waxing or waning, never new or full. Borderland. This is my world.' He pointed at the moon, hanging nearly in Zenith, with his cane, which was longer than I recalled. I looked closer at him, and saw that beneat his broad-brimmed hat, his grizzled, grey-bearded face held only one eye, but whether it was the right or the left I could not tell.

 

Bewildered, I asked him his name. He stared at me with his one eye, gripped his staff with both hands, and said, 'My name you will know in due time, when you've earned it.' He looked up at the noose-behung tree and smiled a strange smile. 'But your name, lad . . . Now that I'll take from you.'

 

I saw that what had first looked like a cane, and then a staff, now had a tip of hardest steel, a good foot of glinting metal. 'You're mine now, boy!' the one-eyed old man shouted as he plunged his spear into my heart. 'You're mine - Blood and bone, heart and soul . . . And this is just the beginning.'