"The Dewyberry Shenanigan" - Sneak Peak for Bravesoul Project

IDs: On left, the ruins of a stone staircase in the forest. Photo courtesy of The Boston Globe. In the middle, a close up image of clustered berries, blue and white ombre like frosted blue raspberries. On the right, the ruins of a stone wall in the forest. Photo courtesy of Thomas T on Flickr.

Armed with leather gloves and a wicker basket lid, Koa stromped up to the dewyberry patch with a smile. This was the biggest patch he had ever seen! The round, light blue clusters were in the beginning of their season and dripped from reddish leaves. This wild patch had been undisturbed for far too long. He plucked some dewyberries from the nearest bush, mindful not to pierce his gloves with the nail-sized thorns. He popped a few in his mouth as he hunted for more. The bluer ones were the most ripe and rich; nobody liked the tangy acidity of the younger, white ones.

Strange, he thought. Don’t they normally have smaller thorns? And these taste so bland!

The ruins and warped trees towered around him, watching as he worked. What once had been a trade town or rest stop between larger settlements almost two hundred years ago was now a deserted rambling of stone structures coated with berry bushes. Like lush carpets and tapestries, they curled up walls – up walls? Dewyberry bushes couldn’t do that!

The air was still and shaded as the boy worked. Too quiet.

Koa scanned for ripe berries in the sea of white, green, and red. His pack weighed down his shoulders, but he felt better having his treasures with him. The search led him to a hollow wall. He squatted to pick when the outline of a gryphon appeared in the shadows. Koa gasped and held its gaze. Then it charged. He fell backward, a yell escaping him. His pack shielded him from most of the thorns but kept him in the gryphon’s sights as it lunged straight toward him.

He threw his hands up instinctively, but the gryphon leaped right over him and inspected the dropped basket lid containing his berries. In the light, the creature was obviously not a normal gryphon at all. It was transparent, shimmering in and out of sight like the ripples at the bottom of a pool of clear water.

Rifling through his mental library, Koa deduced that it was a ghost, a thing between death and life made of the rest-souls of deceased people who were not given proper death rites. Ghosts were rare and could only be perceived by the livings’ senses if many souls had amalgamated together to form one creature; in this case, a gryphon with sharp ears and a frown profound enough to be seen even half-invisibly.

The ghost pecked up the berries. They fizzed away where its mouth would have been if it had a real animal body. Why would it need to eat? Amazed, Koa stood up slowly, not wishing to scare it away.

But the ghost snapped its head up and fixed its eyeless frown on Koa. He froze. Ghosts were not known to attack the living; they were tragic, unnatural beings, but not malicious. An uninvited burp surged up in Koa, and it reminded him that he had in fact just ingested some berries too. The ghost cocked its head gradually, an eerie imitation of its animal counterpart. For whatever reason, it liked ripe dewyberries too, and Koa had just stolen from its territory. The juice was still on his lips, and he smelled of it. The berries were in his belly already. And the ghost wanted more.

“Oh no.”

Koa didn’t know what happened when a ghost attacked, and he didn’t want to find out.

He sprinted along the old wall, hoping to curve around it and escape its territory before it caught him. But the thorny bushes slowed him down to frantic hopping. Koa pumped his knees high and fast, his pack jostling on his back. The edge of the wall was just within reach. The ghost followed him with unearthly fluidity. The bushes swayed around its glassy talons before it leaped and alighted on the wall, blocking Koa’s exit. It snapped at him, but he ducked and lunged under it through a hole in the wall, straight into a patch of thorny, unripe berries.

The ghost’s face followed him upside down. Koa accidentally caught a few of the berries in his mouth, and more splattered across his skin. His tastebuds exploded with sourness, spasming his face. Through his gagging, he saw the outline of the ghost watching, but not charging. From where he sat, he was a sitting crighit in a barrel, and yet the ghost had stopped.

Taking a risk, Koa grabbed the pale berries and chucked them at the ghost. It recoiled!

So it hates unripe berries, too, huh?

Cackling with triumph in his shelter, Koa stood and addressed the ghost. “Ha! Can’t get me in here! Nyeh Nyeh!” The ghost maintained its frown. “What? Can’t stand sour berries? Big baby!”

It opened its beak impossibly wide and shrieked. A sound like a hundred mountain northwinds trapped Koa in the small chamber against a wall of noise. He clamped his ears closed, but the scream was so loud, so high, and so low, his eardrums vibrated as violently as his whole body. If he could hear his own thoughts, he would have heard his prayers for it to stop. Seconds and seconds went by, but the scream kept going. It didn’t need to stop for breath, and it wouldn’t.

Before his hearing gave out, Koa spotted a small hole in the corner of the chamber. He gobbled another mouthful of the unripe berries and sprinted for it. At least the pain of the noise dulled the pain of thorns as he wriggled through on knees and elbows.

The hole spat him out on a stone staircase that led to a watchtower. Koa picked himself up, ears ringing. He caught his breath and tried to yawn the ringing away.

The ghost burst into his periphery and shrieked at him. The shock jolted him back. His heels caught on the edge of the wall-less stairs. A ghost on one side. A fall to the thorny ground on the other. Arms pinwheeling, he stabilized enough to grab onto a bush on the edge of the old wall and pulled himself up the stairwell. He swiped another handful of unripe berries and pumped his legs up to the watchtower. Although his adrenaline and spirits gave him energy, his burning lungs would eventually give out. Thankfully, the ghost could not phase through the ruins. But Koa’s thankfulness ended as abruptly as the floor.

His ears, woolen from shrieks and pumping blood, muffled the creaking as he ran through the watchtower. The rotted floorboards splinted under him. He threw his body forward, catching the other side of the hole that opened up. But his grip failed. Koa’s sternum hit a crossbeam on the way down, punching the air from his body. Paralyzed in the dirt below, he saw the ghost’s face filtering the light far above. Then, it disappeared.

Gradually, air wheezed its way back into Koa’s lungs. His shaggy hair pasted against his sweaty forehead.  When he could take a full breath again, he discovered that a part of the watchtower wall had fallen in, blocking the doorway. He stood on wobbly knees to attempt to scale the rubble out, but then he saw what surrounded him in the dark, and gasped. His hazel eyes shot wide.

Bones of people! As well as rusted knives, gryphon bridles, and saddles. Two differing symbols adorned the equipment that once belonged to some highway robber gangs. A gang war must have happened here years ago, and everyone perished. With no one to process their remains, their breath-souls warped the dewyberry bushes to over-abundance and disfigured the trees, leaving their rest-souls to form the ghost who hunted him.

Koa uprooted a dagger from the dirt, filthier than a carrot and half as dull.

The ghost gryphon shrieked his ears off before he could make a plan, appearing in the hole in the wall. Too big to fit, it clawed and scraped away at the stones. Koa flung the dagger at it, but it phased right through.

There is no way to defeat a ghost with brute force; it needed to be put to rest. But how? Usually, people’s bodies were sealed in metal coffins with special flowers until they decomposed into dirt and were returned to the earth. That released their breath-souls. Special songs, prayers, and testimonies from surviving loved ones ushered their rest-souls into the afterlife. But what could be done now that their souls poisoned the plants around him and created a ghost? Koa hadn’t known these people, so what could he do?

With the ghost tearing away at the wall, Koa knew his own end was near. The tower would collapse on top of him if the ghost didn’t get to him first. He wished his remains would be found by his mum so she could do the proper rites so he wouldn’t join the souls trapped in the ghost. He remembered the flowers in the window boxes of his home; they had all held symbols and meanings personal to their family. Koa had never thought of it much before now, but he had always assumed that those very flowers would be used to return him to the earth one day.

Koa reached into his pack and pulled out his booklet of pressed flowers. He went to double check how many it contained, but the ghost had broken its head though. No amount of sour berries could protect him now.

The ghost wailed like a dissonant choir. It drove down its face to the boy, and he thrust the booklet between them.

A few heartbeats passed. Koa peeked open an eye.

The ghost stared at the booklet in his hands, like a moth at a lantern. Its pointy ear tufts drooped and its eyes softened to perfect circles. Tentatively, Koa climbed up the rubble, using the booklet as a shield between himself and the ghost, and the ghost allowed him.

Soon, he stood right before it on the edge of the wall. It clung to the tower, craning its face down at him. It was difficult to sense but, if it had an emotion before, it was detached rage; now, it was something like awe.

“These are flowers from my house,” he told it, opening its pages. “I took them from my mum’s windows and around outside. I made it a long time ago, and I miss it. But if it can help you, you can take it.”

Glacially, the ghost lowered its head and opened its beak. Koa gave his booklet one last look and sighed. He placed it with his fingertips into its mouth. Like a real gryphon, it lifted its head and let the booklet slide down its throat. The booklet dissolved and shimmered out of existence.

It regarded Koa again, and he worried it wouldn’t be enough. But then, it walked a circle around the berry patch and curled up, folding its wings and resting its head on its front feet. The wind released its breath through the ruins and, with a sigh of many voices, the ghost faded away.

Heart now slow, Koa held his palms down and made a simple funeral prayer.

Afternoon sunlight broke through the canopy. Byrds returned, singing.