She was lucky. She reached the foot of the mountain-hill before one of them could wander across her path and swivel its monstrous, empty eye sockets toward her. Above her, a path curled up the sides of the mountain, threading through angry rocks with jagged teeth, too tall for her to scale. Callen knew that the road ahead was the longest and the most dangerous part of her journey thus far, so first she sat down to eat. She had been walking across this plain for three days, and she was hungry. More importantly, her senses had started to warp and waver in the strange pull of this land. She was losing her memories and her sense of self, and if she wasn’t careful, she would forget everything.
Callen’s bag, slung across one shoulder, was a tiny thing—only a little bigger than a baby’s skull—and contained nothing except a map and two soft rice cakes. To our eyes they would look like ordinary rice cakes, soft and pink and dusted with tender flour, but these were celestial rice cakes, given to Callen by her aunt, who was handmaid to the Queen Mother of Heaven. This was the same aunt who had told Callen where to find the one who could grant her what she wanted, and had set her upon her path. Eating one of those rice cakes would fill one’s stomach and sate one’s thirst for three days.
Callen had two cakes left, and she ate one, saving the other for the journey back. As she chewed, she felt her mind anchor itself back to her body. She remembered why she was here, and what she had come here to do.
When she had finished eating, Callen started on the path upward. The ground underneath her was slippery, and every step strained her weary body. In no time, her feet were bleeding again, and her fingers were cut to ribbons from clutching rock edges for purchase. But she kept climbing.
Halfway up the mountainside, her path was blocked by an eldritch bird. She couldn’t avoid it—the path was too narrow for her to go around, and the creature stood with its body between craggy rockface and craggy rockface, looking at her. Callen was terrified, but she saw no choice about the matter, because she was not turning back. Gathering all the strength she had left in her, she stepped up to the bird-creature.
“Excuse me, O great one,” she said, as politely as she could. “I need to get to the top of this mountain. May I walk past you?” Her body was shaking and her voice trembled, but she had been taught manners by her aunt, who worked in the Celestial Court, and she knew that deference and respect could be wielded as a shield against ruin and death.
The creature turned its head toward her. Light guttered in its eye sockets as though fires burned deep in its skull. Callen stood still and breathed very slowly while it studied her. The creature smelled like parched soil before the rain, and its plumage shifted between foam-white and bone-red and the pitch-black of the void between the stars.
The bird-creature spoke; its voice sounded like marbles rolling in a silver can. “I am so hungry,” it said. “My brethren and I have not had anything to eat for a hundred years. Will you give me something to fill my belly?”
Callen had nothing to offer except the last rice cake, which she was saving for the journey back. Yet she feared what would happen if she refused. “If I give you something to eat, will you let me pass unharmed?”
“Yes,” it said. “I give you our word.”
She hesitated. Without the rice cake for the way back, she would slowly lose her grip on who she was until she became no better than the bird-creatures, wandering this barren land without purpose. But maybe she could travel faster than the firmament could sap her. She reached into her bag and offered up the last rice cake. “Here,” she said. “Take this. One bite will feed you for days. Perhaps it will ease some of your hunger.”
“Thank you, little one,” the creature said. It bent its massive, feathered head, and took the offering in its beak. As promised, it stood and left the path, leaping onto the jagged rocks and vanishing in an indeterminate direction. Only then did Callen release the breath that she had been holding, and continue farther up the path.
Her reprieve was, however, all too brief. She had gone not more than two hundred meters when she found her way blocked by another one of the creatures. Its plumage was darker this time, the color of a dead heart, and it looked at her as she slowly and reluctantly approached.
“Excuse me, O great one,” she said. “I need to get to the top of this mountain. May I walk past you?” But her heart was heavy, because she had given the last of the rice cakes to its compatriot down the path.
The creature tilted its head. “Will you give me something to fill my belly?”
“I have nothing left to give you,” she said. “I gave the last of my food to another of your kind. All I have left in my bag is this map.”
“Then give me your map,” it said. “My brethren and I have been trapped upon this plain for a hundred years. Lend it to us so that we may seek our freedom.”
Callen hesitated. She was afraid of navigating these plains without the security of her map. With that map, she always knew where she was. The barren land could not fool her or turn her mind around. She was deathly afraid of becoming trapped here. Trapped, just like these bird-creatures were.
Pity overcame her then, and rode over her common sense. A hundred years was a long time to be bound to this lifeless, joyless landscape. How could she begrudge this creature its freedom? After all, on the way back she could follow the path she had taken here.
She reached into her bag and drew out the map, a glowing red ruby that, when it pulsed in her hand, fed her the names of directions. “Here,” she said, “take this. Maybe it can tell you a way out of this place.”
The creature took the ruby in its beak and swallowed it. The glow of the ruby traveled down its gullet and lodged in its chest like a second heart. When it looked at Callen, its hollow sockets now glowed with the same sacred crimson. “Thank you, my chirpling,” it said, and then it too was gone.
And so Callen continued upward, drawing closer and closer to the destination she so longed for. The air around the mountain-hill’s summit seemed thinner and sadder, but it also felt cleaner and clearer in the lungs. Callen did not know if her light-headedness was from lack of oxygen or from giddiness that her journey was nearly at an end. Perhaps it was both.
But of course stories can’t progress so cheaply and simply—we know that, don’t we, my little ones? Of course there was one more obstacle in Callen’s path. As she neared sight of the peak, her path was blocked by a creature so enormous it dwarfed the previous two combined. Its plumage was the white of bleached bone, the color so uniform it hurt to look at.
Its great, hollow eyes fixed on the tiny human in front of it. “Excuse me, O great one,” Callen said slowly.
The bird-creature spoke: “You want me to leave this path so that you may proceed, don’t you?” Its voice rumbled like distant thunder. “What can you offer me in return?”
Callen lowered her head. “I have nothing to offer, great one. I have given everything I carried to your brethren down the path. All I have left is my name, and a story I wish to tell.”
“Give me one of those, then,” said the creature.
“The story is the reason I am here,” Callen said. “If I forget, I will have nothing to offer the witch at the top of the mountain.”
“Then give me your name,” the bird said.