He Too Is Alexander

Chapter 4

His body worked hard to take in some air, fever racked every inch of him, and if the man had been conscience, he would have been in extreme pain. His damaged lungs were filling ever so dangerously with fluids. He was at the crossroads of life or death, but he had no conscience idea of the battle raging within his body.

Instead he found himself walking through a peaceful forest. Lush greenery and tall beautiful trees provided a canopy for him to walk under. He had no idea where he was or how he got here. In fact, he had not a clue as to who he even was. A peaceful feeling filled him and he stopped to pick a little violet flower and put it to his nose to smell. The flower had very little fragrance but he nose picked up another smell drifting through the trees.

The aroma smelled delicious and his stomach growled as if in agreement. He started following his nose and saw in the distance an old man sitting in front of a small fire. The old man looked up and waved at him motioning for him to come join him by the fire.

Feeling a soothing calmness, he approached the old man and sat across from him. The man looked up at him and smiled broadly and then bent to stir the wonderful smelling contents of the pot sitting over the flames. It gave him a chance to study the old man in front of him.

He guessed him to be in his fifties or more, short and heavy in stature, a bushy dark beard and even bushier eyebrows. His eyes were bright and had the most beautiful violet hue to them, at least what the man the younger man sitting across from him could see. For an unremarkable looking man, he did have two very incredible features. The bushy eyebrows were so massive and animated it was hard to get past them. They seemed to have a life of their own as they moved above his eyes.

"I seem to have lost my way." Said the man to the bushy eyebrows.

"You seemed to, you don't sound too sure?" answered the older man with a friendly smile sneaking out through his heavy beard.

The man grinned back and dropped his head as he softly shook his head from side to side. He looked back up to find the eyebrows looking at him very intently. It lasted for only a moment but he never felt any fear, only contentment.

"I have no memories of anything before entering this glen." the man said, "But for some reason, it doesn't seem to bother me."

The older man nodded his head and began pouring some hot broth into two bowls.

"Since you are in no hurry to no place special, sit with me awhile and have some soup with me, we can talk and get to know each other, discuss the world and laugh a little along the way."

The man smiled broadly as he took the steaming bowl from his new friend and brought it to his nose to smell. "Chicken soup, one of my favorites!" he added after taking a big whiff.

"How do you know it is one of your favorites if you don't remember anything?" Eyebrows asked with a little twinkle in the corner of his eyes just visible under the hairy patch. The man stop eating his soup and thought for a moment before answering, his own forehead and eyebrows doing a little dance of their own.

"I have no idea." he finally said laughing at his own words.

They ate for a while in silence, slurping the soup occasionally to break the quiet. It gave them both time to study the one in front of them. They were the opposites in body structure, one short and squatty and the other tall and lean. Long hair hung halfway down the back of the lean younger one, while the abundance of hair everywhere else on his face was nowhere to be seen on the head of the older. The dark hair on the top of his head was thin and many parts of his scalp shown through in several places. Long lean legs stretched out in front of the younger man as he moved to get more comfortable and leaned back against the log he had been sitting on.

"Do you live around here?" he said his companion.

"Close," the old man answered. "Close enough to be at hand and far enough to stay out of trouble." he added winking at the other.

"This place is beautiful, so peaceful." he said looking around.

"It's just a place, I think we bring our own peace to wherever we may be, don't you think?" the old man asked.

"Aye." replied the man thoughtfully.

"It's quiet here, by the gods, I miss the quiet." said the man as an afterthought.

The older man smiled broadly and asked him how noisy it had been that he couldn't remember. The younger man laughed out loud and shook his head.

"It's strange," he said, "I do have some recollections but if I try to remember important things, like my name, where I am from and what happened to me, I draw a blank."

"Does it bother you that you can't?" he was asked.

"Not in the least right now, maybe later it will." he answered contently.

Eyebrows held out another cup of soup and the man handed his bowl over to be refilled. Before handing it back, the older man put a chunk of fresh made bread on top of it. The young man thanked him politely and took the food from him. He dipped the bread in the liquid and brought it up to his mouth. But just as he was getting ready to take a big bite he stopped and looked at the bread. He couldn't recall there being any bread around the campfire before, he surely would have remembered this wonderful aroma. He looked up over the rim of his bowl at the old man but he was busy eating himself. The man decided it really didn't matter where this bread came from, it smelled too good to question.

Time passed and the two sat and visited. They laughed a lot, exchanged ideas and even got into a couple of very friendly heated discussions. Time had no meaning here, so the man had no idea how long he had been in the older man's delightful company.

The older man was talking when the young man heard the voice in the distance. It was only in a whisper and barely audible. He turned his head in the direction he heard it coming from and brushed his hair behind his ears in order to hear better. The old man kept talking but watched the young man's face as he listened.

"Did you heard that?" the man asked when the voice was silent.

"I didn't hear anything, what do you think you heard?" he asked innocently.

"A voice, someone calling a name, it sounded so desperate." the young man answered, clearly upset by what he heard.

The voice started again and the man got up off the ground and took a couple of steps in the direction of the voice. His attention was completely on the voice as he strained to hear its words.

"Hephaestion, someone is calling for Hephaestion. He wants him to come back to him and not to leave him alone. He wants him to fight hard to get back."

He turned back to the fire and gazed at the older man asking if he heard it this time, he had to, he said, because the voice was getting louder.

The older man shook his head from side to side and said he hadn't. It seemed to upset the man that he was the only one to hear the voice but he also knew that he had to go help whoever was in trouble. But he didn't know where to go or how to get there. He sat back down and looked from the ground in front of him to the direction of the voice.

"I need to go, I need to help him, I just don't know how." he said.

"Sure you do," said the old man.

The man looked across the fire into the violet eyes. "You have always known how to get there, just follow your heart. It will lead you home again."

The man heard the voice again, getting more and more desperate with its pleas, and looked back at the old man again and smiled at him, his whole face lighting up as he did. The old man struggled to get up from his log and the younger one held out a helping hand to make it easier. They continued to clasp hands, as they looked each other in the eyes for a second before they embraced warmly.

"Thank you for helping me. It was a pleasure to meet you." said the young man.

"Oh don't worry, we will meet again, I'm sure." the old man replied.

The young man started walking towards the voice that was opening weeping now in desperation. The old man watched him go with a smile on his face.

"Hold on Alexander, he is on his way." he said softly.

Another man came from behind a nearby tree and sat down in the spot where the young man had just vacated. He watched the last of the young man as he started jogging towards the all-to-clear wailing filling the glen.

"I thought you were going to keep him?" he asked the man across from him.

"No, I never was going to keep him. Alexander and the others have had their lifetime to get to know him, I just wanted to spend some time with him myself, just the two of us. He really is an amazing man. He has a softness about him that makes him completely loveable but there is a strength to him that is made of iron, all ruled with a heart of gold."

"Besides Alexander still needs him, he is going to need that strength and more importantly, that heart." he added.

He other man nodded his agreement and watched the old man as he sat there. The old man had a very content smile on his face.

"I saw you erase what happened to him from his memory that brought him here, why did you do that?" he asked the old man.

"I did that for him. I didn't want him to go through the rest of his life carrying that burden. He has enough on his plate already, he doesn't need anymore. It would have been too much for him. My son is a handful to take care of, plus all of his other duties. Alexander would have hounded him relentlessly to know who was responsible and Hephaestion would never have told him. He would have taken that to his grave to protect Alexander from his own rage had he ever found out who was responsible."

"So they will get away with the assault?" he asked.

"By Hades no, definitely not. I already have plans for all of them. The ones who helped will all lose the parts of their bodies that held onto Hephaestion in upcoming battles. Hands and arms will be lost, or legs if they used them against him. A couple will go blind and others will hear his peas in their ears the rest of their lives. They will be punished for hurting what belongs to my son."

"And the leader?" his companion asked.

"He belongs to Alexander. It may not be right away, but Alexander will find out of was behind it and he will be punished, the price being his life."

The other nodded in agreement and they both rose from around the fire. Everything disappeared as they rose and the ground was now covered with a patch of blue flowers. The old man disappeared also, replaced by a tall man with white robes.

"Where to now?"

"Somewhere fun and exciting," answered Zeus. "Actually, I'm feeling very frisky. He truly is an amazing man, isn't he?"

As they turned to walk away, the voice in the forest was getting quieter and quieter.