The Hero

Beneath him rolled thunder. Drums beating incessantly. Only he could break the rhythm. The rolling hills were an invitation to him, a challenge to his pursuers. The farther he went, the safer he'd be. His mind paved an endless path. He could not see them, he did not know who they were, what they wanted with him, but knew they sought to catch him, and knew they would not.

He woke with his head on his desk. Four legs to two. Grass to hardwood. Thunder to the throbbing of a poor heart. He gaped his mouth. From its corner spilled fresh drool, reviving a dried river on his chin. What time was it? Early? Late? An hour that could be both? His office was windowless, his sleep schedule horrific. The lantern was wheezing its last breath. The clock, two hours slow, read eight. He closed his eyes to retrieve the thunder, recreate the drums, the wind, the speed. A futile effort. The dream faded to a spotty image, the experience reduced to thoughts.

There was a knock on the door. Link's eyelids scrunched tighter together. "Link?" a voice asked.

"What?"

"Um, well, I was wondering if-" the voice dwindled until it became muffled through the wood.

Link groaned, stood up, and opened the door. "What'd you say?"

His shadow fell over Sam, his worker, who stood horrified. "Good morning, sir. Um, I was wondering if I should feed the horses now or wait until later?"

"Why would you wait until later?"

"Well, I thought maybe their schedule would be messed up or something and-"

"No, feed them now."

"Okay. And we're low on supplies so I was wondering if you wanted me to go downtown and-"

"No, I'll do that."

"Okay, sorry if I-"

"It's fine."

Link closed the door and stood before sitting down, taking a moment to glance at his broken expression in the wall mirror. This is how our journey begins, of course. With the hero. The one whose shoulders break down from excessive weight and whose mind grows past recognition. But, to be fair, all their minds grew past recognition.

His mind didn't just grow; it corroded, rotted and dried, then blossomed through the cracks. At age eight, his life took a turn and things didn't seem relevan t. At age eighteen, this journey was forced upon him and things changed.

Link leaned back in his chair and gazed at the paintings hanging above his desk. They watched over him in rows of two, three paintings in each. They, dull and lifeless, were there before he was. They were never his decision. He couldn't imagine why the artist painted them, what his motivation was to recreate a woman by a stand and merchant sitting on the street, both scenes draped in shadow and mediocrity. He liked one: a depiction of a hunting trip. It was because of the horses, two brown, one black, and one white with a clever face. He looked at this horse for a while, this clever-looking one with its mouth open and front legs in the air, head back, eyes staring out into nothing. He, however, believed this horse was staring at him and it was not just the way it was painted. Its gaze turned disquieting. He broke eye-contact and looked down, finding a new interest in the wood of his desk. Grain patterns, mineral streaks, some warping around dark knots like lines of ants around a stone, some rippling outwards like a snapshot of a lively pond. Disturbed magnetic fields, hardened lava, stratus clouds. Cosmos. It was too early and he had too little to do.

Link was at war with himself. He didn't engage his workers unless needed, but when alone, he found himself sickened by silence. He didn't know why he felt rushed to hear his own thoughts when he had none worth listening to, why he was eager for the day to end when the next would be identical, why he worked so hard when there was nothing to be proud of, no one to notice.

He didn't care for his desk or the piles of papers that he didn't need, or did need, the pile of papers he could possibly need. He didn't care for the arrangement of furniture that he never bothered to change. He'd think it was temporary, then, when he'd remember it wasn't, frivolous. The way his chair squeaked when he stood up, the way his drawer hit his knee when he opened it, the sound of a fist knocking against his door. Something about the wood made it shrill. The fibers, maybe.

But in the end, these things, like all things, were fine.