Finn

Content note: spiders, dead spiders, ableism

“A real man would have done something about this,” Finn muttered under his breath. “A real man would not let such a menace terrorize the county.”

His mother had very strong ideas about what a real man would or would not do, and equally strong ideas about why Finn fell short. He did not know if this made him an imaginary man, or a surreal one, or maybe not a man at all.

It was not his fault he was born the way he was. So the villagers told him, whenever his mother yelled. And so his friends told him, when they played together. Or, well, his friends played, and he watched. And so he told himself for the hundredth time that day, as he slowly hobbled up the mountain. It was not his fault that his father left when it turned out that Finn would never be “normal”. Rather, it was his mother’s fault, from what he had heard, and she was the only one who blamed him.

Still, he felt the need to prove his worth, to show that his will and determination were as strong as, well, he did not know what. Resting on an outcropping of rock, he looked around. Nobody else was joining him in his attempt to end the menace. Not that he had told anyone; they would just have tried to talk him out of it. As far as Finn knew, no one had set out to confront the menace yet.

The menace. A sorcerer had built his home halfway up the mountain. Built it with magic, most likely, because one day it appeared suddenly, on the same night a herd of goats had died. Word was, it was necromancy. The word got stronger, as quite often strange happenings up the mountain went hand in hand with deaths or blights in the towns and hamlets around the base. And lately it had become more frequent and more dire.

Everybody agreed  that something had to be done, but no one did anything. Except Finn. Well, currently he was not doing much but making his slow and painful way up the mountain, as well as his twisted leg would allow. But even that was more than others were doing. Finn realized that he was not trying to prove himself as capable as anyone else, but better. Maybe if he was better, he would finally feel like he was good enough.

After taking a mouthful of water from his bottle, Finn heaved himself up from the rock, and further up the mountain. After a short while, he could see an entrance. It was not much, just some kind of porch projecting from the side of the mountain, almost like a natural extension. From the valley, one could mostly see the lights shining out of windows. No hand had made this, Finn was sure.

Cautiously he made his way up the four steps, through the open doorway and into the dim and cool hall beyond. It took a while for his eyes to adjust. Then Finn could make out plain, unadorned walls and a set of stairs. Which way to go?

Choice one: Going down

As Finn pondered his choices, he saw a bit of movement, maybe, on the downward steps. He inched closer. There was indeed something. Scuttling. Spiders. A lot of spiders of varying sizes, maybe two dozen in all. “Just count the legs and divide by eight,” thought Finn.

The spiders arranged themselves to form an arrow, pointing down. Was this a trap? Maybe. Maybe not. There was only one way to find out. Finn followed the arrow, careful not to step on any spiders.

At the bottom, there was a corridor. And again there were spiders, now maybe four dozen. Or was it half a hundred? Finn was not sure. The spidery arrow pointed left. Finn followed the growing number of spiders through twists and turns until he was only a few steps away from a closed door. The spiders formed a wide line before him and covered the ground maybe three feet down in front of the door. Finn paused, unsure what to do, and glad to catch his breath.

It did not last long. In all but a couple of places, the spiders on the ground suddenly died. The place was trapped with magic! Finn turned around, suddenly afraid, but behind him were even more spiders. He turned towards the door.

The living spiders had cleared the floor, leaving only the dead ones, as markers for what areas to avoid. Finn nodded. Before he could move towards the door, the spiders swarmed him. Finn took a deep breath. This was unexpected and not entirely pleasant. Not at all pleasant, he corrected himself, as the creatures began to cover his body. His head. His face. They left room for his eyes, his nostrils and his ears. Every other part of him was covered in spiders, layers of spiders. They did not move, just held on tight. Somehow that made it even weirder.

Finn walked to the door and reached out, the spiders briefly moving away from his palm so he could turn the knob. Taking one last steadying breath, Finn opened the door and entered the room beyond.

The sorcerer looked right at Finn from across the shadowy room, unsurprised, and started weaving his hands, murmuring. Bolts of light flew from these hands, towards Finn, each bolt hitting not him, but a spider instead, which instantly fell off, dead. Finn moved forward.

The bolts came faster, and soon dead spiders littered the ground, but they were quickly replaced by others. “Where do they all come from?” wondered Finn. And “What will I do when I reach the sorcerer?”

The sorcerer kept sending bolt after bolt and the closer Finn came, the more he felt the impact. He felt more than he understood that each bolt was shaped to take a life. His life. And that every dead spider on the ground was a sacrifice, willingly made, to get him to the sorcerer, alive.

Getting closer, Finn could tell that the sorcerer wore tight-fitting clothes under a long, loose vest, and that his face was covered by a gossamer veil under his hood, much as Finn’s was covered in spiders. The bolts had become slower as the sorcerer tired, and each one seemed to leave a line in his face, as though he was aging fast.

When Finn was close enough, he reached for the hood and veil covering the sorcerer’s head. The sorcerer tried to ward Finn off, but did not have the strength anymore. When veil and hood were pulled away, the spiders moved from Finn to the sorcerer, using Finn’s arm as a bridge.

They crawled over the now exposed face, sought every tiny gap between the throat and the shirt that now hung a bit more loosely on the withered frame. Finn, now free of the little creatures, watched as the spiders swarmed over the sorcerer, obscuring him from view. As quickly as they had come, they left again, scuttling away into the tiny cracks and nooks that only they could find.

The sorcerer was gone. Only empty clothes remained.

Finn nodded. Without his brave comrades-in-legs, he would not have made it here. And without him to give them an opening, they could not have defeated the menace. It took all kinds, apparently.

He decided to go down the other side of the mountain, to find a home that would take his kind, too.

Choice two: Going up

Finn’s legs ached from the walk up the mountain. The downward steps seemed easier. “But if the sorcerer is not there, I will have to go up, and up again. Which would be doubly bad.”

So Finn chose the stairs leading up. At least there was a banister. He reached the top, a bit wobblier on his feet than usual. There was an arched doorway, covered with some sort of beaded curtain with small bells added here and there. There was no way that Finn could pass this without being heard.

For a moment Finn hesitated. What else was there, but to proceed? Turning back? With a sigh, Finn pushed the curtain aside, causing a tinkling of beads and a jingling of bells, which sounded oddly soothing.

The man in the window seat looked tired. Still, he smiled at Finn with a warmth that felt like sunshine on Finn’s face.

“You made it.” The man had a voice like honey with a hint of ginger. Just enough to take the edge off the sweetness. “Come, sit. You look exhausted.”

Finn crossed the room and sat down on the cushioned chair by the window that the man had indicated. There was a stool to rest his feet on, at the perfect height to ease the twinge in his twisted leg. Finn sighed. “This is unexpected,” he said, almost more to himself than to the other man.

“Had you expected a sorcerer, wrapped in robes, wearing a skull as a mask?” The stranger smiled. Finn shrugged. “Something like that, yes.”

For a while the two of them just sat in companionable silence, resting, looking out of the window at the passing clouds. “Rabbit,” said Finn, and the stranger smiled. It had been a while since he had last looked for pictures in the clouds. He moved his hands in a strange way and the cloud rabbit wriggled its tail and flopped its ears. Finn laughed.

“So you are a sorcerer after all.” The stranger leaned back into the window seat. “I never said I was not.”

The silence stretched out again, still comfortable, but with a hint of tension. “Are you going to kill me now, as you had planned?” the stranger asked. Finn shrugged. “I am not sure I could if I wanted to, and I am not sure I want to. Depends on whether or not what people say is true: that sickness and death around the mountain are tied up with you.”

The stranger nodded. “They are, but not the way you think.”

Finn settled more comfortably into the chair. “I have time for a long story.”

So the stranger told him how he had long watched over this area, first more out of the corner of his eye and then with more interest. And when a great sickness was taking root that would have taken two of the towns, he wanted to do more. But to do more, he needed a stronghold, and so he made this place on the mountainside.

He was able to quell the sickness so that instead of two towns, it only took one herd of goats. In the same manner, the stranger had, with will and magic, confined a fire that would have burned the whole forest to just two huts at the edge of the woods. He weakened a poison in the water so the people who drank from the poisoned well only got sick for a week, instead of suffering permanent damage, or even death.

Of course, these things were hard to do and required rituals, whose effects, by way of strange lights or smoke, would be seen from the base of the mountain. This was why he never came down – he feared that people would not understand.

“I had hoped that someday you would come up here,” the stranger, not so strange anymore, ended.

“You knew of me?” asked Finn.

“I have watched you for a while now. You are what got me so interested in this area.”

Uncertain, Finn looked back at the other man. “What am I to call you?”

The man in the window seat chuckled. “I hope that you will call me friend. Or more. Until then, just call me Shane.”

Finn stayed in that abode in the side of the mountain. Shane may have teased him that he only stayed because he did not want to face the long climb down. Finn may have replied that Shane only let him stay because nobody else ever came up.

Finn’s pain was soothed by Shane’s warmth. And if he thought that Shane’s smile was like the sun, it was nothing compared to the radiance the first time Finn called him “more”.