The Automaton

They say the metal man carries two things. One of these is a sword. Its blade is not of iron or steel, but of stone. They say it was forged of sky-stone, a gift from the stars themselves. This sword it drags in its wake, leaving a deep furrow through all that lay behind. They say this sword is enchanted, and that the wounds it inflicts can never heal. They say the trail it leaves does not wear away, for it is a gash upon the earth’s very flesh. 

The second thing it carries is a secret. Some say it holds a heart, the heart of a princess it failed to protect. Others say it holds its own heart, an enchanted stone that keeps its joints in motion as it trundles inexorably towards the horizon. Some say it carries nothing at all.

My father called it an automaton. It marched through our village on trembling legs, its shell rusted and scored. Its head was bent low, and I wondered if it had ever seen the stars. The sword was darker than obsidian, darker than night. Its tip carved through cobbles. Its offhand was clutched to its chest, a cage around a shadow. 

Some nights I still dream of the sound of it. 

After the drought came, I left my village. It had been years since the automaton had passed through, but the mar it left in the cobbles was still fresh. I followed it out of town, until it cut through dirt and onwards into the forest. I hunted when I needed food and lit a fire when I was cold, but all the while I followed that line East. 

One evening, when the sun was just kissing the horizon, I came upon a man. He sat at a hearth, slicing strips of meat off a charred animal leg. He regarded my approach.

“Nice night for a fire,” I said.

He grunted. His eyes flicked over my few belongings. My satchel was patched. My shoes were worn. My knife still gleamed, its leather grip taut with inexperience. He dropped his dagger and took a bite out of the leg. An animal skin – deer perhaps – was draped across his shoulders. His leather pants were sewn by hand, as were his shoes. I sat on the other side of the fire. 

“You are welcome here,” he told me, “But I have no more food to offer you.”

“I have no lack of food,” I assured him as I unstrung a rabbit from my belt. 

“What takes you so far from the road?” he asked. 

I gestured to the track in the soil. “I follow the metal man.”

“The Wandering Soldier.” He smiled. “I had believed those stories, once.”

“Not stories. I have seen him.” 

“As you say.”

I did not ask his name, and he did not ask mine. We shared the uncertain silence of a crackling fire. 

I left with dawn’s rising, and the stranger followed his own path northward. 

Eventually, the trees gave way to open plains. Yellow grasses clung to ditches between low hills, and through it the furrow continued, unwavering. Drought had dried this land as it had my own, and my waterskin ran empty. I kept to my path, heedless of the danger ahead. 

I found bare trickles of muddy water throughout the day. They kept my throat slick, but ravaged my belly. I did not stand for all of a day. 

My shoes fell to tatters. First the right, then the left. The cracked earth was as sandpaper to my feet. I stopped when the sun had reached its peak. My only reprieve from its heat was the bleached shirt on my back. By nightfall, blisters crowded my neck. The pain did not dull enough to allow sleep, so I walked through the night. 

A lone plains wolf found me. Its ribs pushed hard against the skin under patched fur. Yellow eyes peered out from shadowed sockets. It regarded me for a moment before turning away. I waited until it left to keep walking.

I came to a river. I drank deep and filled my waterskin. The channel ran straight through the river, but I was too weak to swim. A small copse of trees lent me shade until nightfall. The blisters on my neck were hardened to callouses. I tried to watch the stars, but my neck would not turn upwards. 

The wolf returned. It crept to the water and took a slow drink. It gave me a passing glance before curling up to sleep. 

In the morning, I took to the river. My limbs were weak. The cool water slipped through my fingers. My head fell below the current. A gasp fled my lips. I kicked and grasped until my feet touched silt on the far end. I crawled onto the strand and looked back. 

The wolf was standing at the water’s edge, watching. It looked down, perhaps at its reflection, then hopped into the water. It kicked up arcs of spray as it swam to the embankment. It crawled out of the shallows and shook itself dry. The two of us continued on. 

A castle hung in the distance. At first, I had mistaken it for another hill, broken by a god’s spiteful fist. As the wolf and I approached, I saw the towers and parapets rising above a great wall. We walked past great chunks of carved stone, seemingly spat from the broken wall ahead. A silence hung in the air. It was a silence of absence, without birdsong or insects’ buzzing. We were interlopers, passing through the dispersed echoes of iron footsteps. 

My feet were leathered by scorched earth. Cobbled bricks were unfamiliar beneath them, and I stumbled over a hunk of debris. The wolf caught my weight. I kept one hand on its mottled hide, more skin than fur. It held me steady. 

The scar in the rock led straight to the castle’s heart. We crossed a small footbridge to a shattered gate, its oak panels baked by the sun. I crossed the threshold, but the wolf held back. It turned back and padded across the bridge. I nodded my thanks to its silhouette and turned to the ruined citadel. 

Buildings had long since succumbed to clawing vines. Fragments of wall littered the streets. As I walked further, I noticed other lines carved through the stone. They seemed to radiate from one central point in the throne room.

The ceiling was high, painted with faded mosaics of gods unknown to me. The furrows churned stone where the midnight blade was lifted and reset. They converged upon a long-dead soldier. Paper skin still clung to dried bones. The armor was epitaphed by cracks and scores. Piled around the body were a hundred tiny things. A polished-smooth river-stone, a seashell with the colors of sunset, a shriveled violet. These were slowly forming a barrow of perfect secrets, carried each by each from across the world.

I drew out my knife. The leather grip was frayed, its blade notched. It was imperfect, but it was all I had left. I laid it beside the automaton’s offerings and sat back.

I sit in that silent hall, waiting for my Marching Soldier to return.

I am waiting.