The Book of Everything

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. The presence of shornback sheep, a species that normally cannot sustain stable populations within 50 miles of a predatory dragon den, supports this theory. Given both dragon and sheep, it is probable the Beren Valley region has played home to dragons for no more than one to two years at the time of writing this– likely a reflection of changing migratory patterns due to

Horace paused, his stylus hovering over coarse, mottled paper. Due to what, exactly? How to describe it?

human conflict in the northwest provinces.

Horace blotted a resolute period on the page. He dipped his stylus in the inkwell, which was now firmly adhered to the top left corner of the desk – a smattering of faded black stains on the floorboards beneath him lingered from a time pre-adhesion. His other hand, an alarming shade of crimson, rested in a pail of cool water on the right side of the desk. He flexed the hand into a loose fist, wincing, then turned his attention back to the page.

While the adolescent dragons are significantly smaller in stature than the adults, some standing no taller than a man, their exhalations are nonetheless capable of producing a considerable amount of heat. Approaching them is inadvisable.

Just then, the room lurched. Horace instinctively grabbed for the inkwell, though his priority should have been the bucket of water, which sloshed over onto the desk. Horace sighed, picking up the sopping and crumbling paper by the corner, the lines of text now bleeding into one another indecipherably. He wadded the paper into a slimy ball and chucked it onto the floor. Time for a break.

He rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, letting them refocus. The study was, frankly, a mess, characterized primarily by an inconceivable amount of paper. Sheets and sheets and stacks and stacks paper, loose paper, paper bound in leather and tied with thread, blank paper and filled paper, all varying shades of taupe, covered nearly every surface of the room – the bookshelves lining the walls, the moss green reading chair and accompanying table in the corner, the frayed carpet and hardwood. There was even freshly formed paper dangling overhead on clotheslines, drying in the sunlight that was streaming in from the two circular windows on the wall behind him. Cluttered amongst the piles of paper was a random assortment of odds and ends – candle nubs, bundles of herbs, ceramic jars, mechanical instruments. The only truly clear area was the path from his desk to the entrance of the room, a hole in the ground.

Horace stood, stretching. The floor rumbled gently, incessantly, familiarly. Horace made his way with steady feet to the ladder and descended the worn wooden rungs into his foyer. He unlatched the door and pushed it open, squinting into the sudden flare of the setting sun from behind his square spectacles.

The world outside was verdant. Ancient, splendorous trees and tall grasses spilled down across valley, all bathed in a golden glow. And the world was moving. Or rather, he was moving through it. He and his house.

~~

At one time, setting out to write the Book of Everything seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. While he’d be hesitant to use the word, Horace recalled feeling an almost electric sense of fate when the idea first came about, the set of circumstances in his life pointing so obviously towards this goal it was as if it were preordained.

First of all, Horace could read and write. This already put him amongst a portion of the population so small it would be considered a sin to not utilize the skill. Those others who did write were apparently content with doing so only to establish their own stake in history. These works were dry; lists of ancestors’ names, properties acquired, mundane accomplishments. It was shocking to him how few people took it upon themselves to write anything… useful. Why shouldn’t he try to change that?

Second, he could get around, and did. Living in a mobile house was good that way. The home had been in his family for generations. His parents hadn’t been able to answer his questions as a child about who created it, or how, or what made it work, just that it did so unceasingly, forever churning along on its rotating belt of sturdy calidite plates. Horace was unaware how common self-driving houses were on the continent; he guessed not very common, given that he had never seen or heard of another. It seemed that most people were not very keen on travel in general, whether by moving house or horseback or any other means, and while human villages and cities were scattered all throughout the continent, they were largely self-sustaining and closed off. Most viewed the road as a place for thieves and brigands, outcasts and outlaws. This meant that knowledge and progress did not flow freely and was not collected and distributed in any meaningful way. Or hadn’t been, anyway.

Third, Horace was a specialist in many things, primarily as a result of his life of wandering. He was a botanist, biologist, cartographer, astronomer, and all-around incessant learner, among other things. Horace’s lifelong unceasing mobility meant that he saw things, experienced things, learned things every day. He amassed knowledge, and the only thing to do with it was put it to paper.

Fourth, and foremost, there was Alsa. Alsa, the dreamer. Her obsessions and expertise perfectly complemented his own – while Horace was concerned primarily with plants and animals and the natural world, Alsa was fascinated with anthropological pursuits, culture and history, what makes us human and why we do what we do. Horace would be perfectly happy to never interact with another human, besides her, of course, who he found shockingly more than tolerable. This reclusiveness did mean that his all-encompassing research would always be lacking. She had filled that gap, spending weeks at a time exploring cities and interacting with its inhabitants while Horace studied the flora and fauna in the outskirts.

Moreover, she had been the catalyst to the whole ordeal, the spark that ignited the blaze. Horace had been a wanderer. A loner, bereft. She provided them both with a purpose. She had filled his head with dreams of traversing the continent together, unearthing all it had to offer, combining their discoveries into a comprehensive compendium of knowledge, a Book of Everything. And for many years, they did just that. Now, his stacks of research continued to grow, while for the past seven years, her pages remained untouched. Finite. Concluded.

~~

The exterior of Horace’s moving home was almost as much of an incongruous amalgamation as the inside. Wooden clapboards, neatly painted an amber yellow with rust-colored trim, gave way to clay brick, gave way to a mess of vine-covered stone. The entire front of the home was what looked like a section of a gargantuan tree, branching upwards twice the height of the rest of the house, and rooted into the rock and brick portions below as if growing out of it. The composition of the house blended so seamlessly from organic to inorganic material, it was only the fact that the tree did not grow leaves that kept Horace from assuming the house was alive.

The entire structure rested on top of a massive, perpetually rotating belt of plates. A long, metallic rudder dragged along the ground behind, allowing a negligible amount of steering – but for the most part, the house just went where it went, having an apparent knack for avoiding the worst terrain. Nonetheless, it was not immune to roving over the occasional boulder, as had just provided the unfortunate interruption to Horace’s work.

Horace leaned out the door, which was on the right side towards the back of the most house-like portion of the structure. The direct light of the sinking sun warmed his face, and the subtle breeze refreshed his skin after so many hours in the cramped study. He gazed around the front of the house – they were skirting around the rim of the Valley, avoiding the deeply forested basin sloping down below, which would be harder to navigate and more likely to contain nocturnal creatures searching for prey in the approaching night.

A sonorous squawking sounded from above him, and Horace looked up to see a rotund, orange birdlike creature perched in the lowest branch of the house tree.

“Back from hunting already, Chiri? Find anything good?” He called up to the bird.

Chiri chirped in return, hopping excitedly along the branch. Horace had expected to see a furry, bloody rodent in his talons, but they were empty. Instead, he noticed something reflective in the bird’s short but daggerlike beak, glinting in the sunlight.

“What’ve you got there? Is that metal?”

Chiri responded with a screech, tapping the object against the tree trunk. Horace leaned over to the exterior ladder and scaled the side, while Chiri bobbed up and down the branch, fluttering his tail.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming.”

When Horace reached the top, Chiri hopped down to the end of the branch just above Horace’s head and dropped the thing. Horace reached through the air with his non-burnt hand, fumbling, and just managed to grab hold of the object. It was a ring.

Horace stared at the object in his palm for a long time. Chiri continued squawking. Horace finally looked up at him.

“Show me where you found this.”

Moments later Chiri was soaring into the Valley, Horace huffing along behind, trying to keep up. It wasn’t impossible that Chiri would happen across some abandoned or lost manmade object, but here? Humans, in the Beren Valley? They were hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, about as close as Horace ever preferred to go. As far as he knew, there wasn’t even a sparsely traveled road nearby.

They made their way down among the trees, darkness settling under the cover of the branches. It was oppressively humid, and the air reverberated with the hum of thousands of unseen insects. A knot was forming in Horace’s stomach. His eyes darted as he hobbled along, scanning for movement among the shadows. Finally, Chiri pulled up and landed on the branch of a gnarled tree, at the base of which was a thicket.

Horace gasped. Protruding from the tangled growth was a leg. A human leg. Horace froze, trying desperately to quiet his heavy breathing. The leg remained motionless. After a moment, Horace crept forward, careful not to crunch any sticks or dried leaves. When he was within an arm’s length, he reached out and slowly pulled back a branch of the thicket.

The man was propped against the base of the tree, eyes closed, unmoving. His ashen face was streaked in a grimy combination of dirt and blood. He was large, muscular – likely a warrior. His tunic was crusted red surrounding a significant gash on the shoulder. Flies hovered and buzzed around it.

Horace recoiled. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this close to another person. These woods were filled with horrifying and dangerous creatures, but none as startling to Horace as this. People could be just as unpredictable and deadly as the worst of what lived out here, if not more.

Nonetheless, his curiosity prevailed. He squinted in the darkness, trying to perceive if the chest was moving, leaning closer—

With a flurry of motion the man heaved a gasp, sending Horace stumbling. His eyes flung open and he clawed at the ground around him.

“Nn— no! Back! Get back!” The man slurred. “I’ll ki— I’ll kill you!” He reached for the empty scabbard at his waist. “My sword! Where is it?”

“Whoa, easy there!” Horace sputtered, his hands outstretched defensively. He was surprised to hear the quavering in his own voice; he hadn’t spoken to another human in seven years. Not since Alsa—

The man scrambled, pushing himself upright. The motion triggered an awareness of the wound on his shoulder and he winced, slumping back down against the tree trunk.

“You’re hurt. We should… get you patched up.”

“Don’t touch me,” the man groaned. Sweat droplets pooled on his face, his skin turning paler. “I d… don’t need…”

His eyes drooped shut, his head lolling to the side. Chiri let out an impatient shriek above. They couldn’t stay any longer; darkness had fallen in the forest. Horace stood. Did he leave the man? There was certainly no way he’d survive the night out here. But why was that Horace’s responsibility? What was he supposed to do – drag the man out of the forest? Bring him into his home, this stranger? Horace would be robbed, murdered in his sleep; he couldn’t –

A menacing howl resounded from off in the distance. The man lay motionless, his face bunched in an unconscious grimace.

“Dammit.” Horace sighed. Gritting his teeth, he hoisted the man up over his shoulders and began trudging through the trees.