Getting up from the floor felt like a chore.
My muscles felt knotted in a thousand places, and I stretched out before realising that I was in the nude. I jumped to my feet, and immediately understood why everything felt so different. I looked around in surprise, seeking to understand when I saw a familiar figure. The presence made me rush to cover my exposed self with both my hands and in shame as the sound of huffing came from Erimlin the Tree's branches, amused.
"Look who is awake," his voice mumbled. "Not the boy I carried back then, too…"
"I don't understand," I replied, confused.
"Well, you are the last to wake up. Everybody else has been asleep for the past seven years, and I have done all I could to keep you safe."
"Seven," I began, losing the words I would have wanted to say. "I have been asleep for seven years?"
"We all, except Erimlin," a different voice said, and I turned to find Darwin the Boy with his childish face walking towards me. "It is a good thing that you have woken up so quickly after us.
I took the time to look at my body, and then understood why I felt the way I felt. Sleeping for a night was sometimes refreshing, but sleeping for seven years was something I had never imagined could happen to me.
Now, I had grown to be seven years older, and seeing my twenty-four year old self felt as though I had taken possession of a different body. Not far from where I stood, the stream flowed, the one with the refreshing water I had drunk the first time I came here, and I walked to it to see what I looked like, after a seven year sleep. Surely not the same, no…
I slowly bent over and peered, and the face that stared back at me was nothing I had known. The facial features were strong—strong jaws and just as strong cheekbones, and there was the hint of a beard. More than anything, I thought I looked good-looking, even if I was a shadow of the boy I had been at seventeen, with only a little resemblance between them.
Thinking of that boy brought all the memories back with it, and I suddenly remembered the Book of a Thousand Curses, my first time here, my family and Sedlin, and the Other Five. All these events now felt distant, like how the morning felt after waking up from a dream.
What had happened while we slept, I wondered.
I looked in the water again, not to see my reflection, but because I was drawn to it, and I bent over and drank before washing my face. The water filled me and gave me strength, and with a deep breath, I got to my feet.
"I want something to cover myself," I said, turning to Erimlin and Darwin, who had since been joined by the rest. For some reason, I was suddenly unashamed of my bare body, nor afraid of any of them there.
"You would not mind dressing like one of us, do you?" Darwin asked.
I shrugged, and laughed when they watched me with uncertain glances.
"No. I do not mind."
"We only have one of Sedlin's garments to give you."
"I should like to wear it in his honour, in fact, for his sacrifice for my family."
Again, they exchanged glances that made me wonder what they were so unsure about, and watched as they went deeper into the cave. Not long after, they came, all four of them holding a black robe between them, coming closer. I nodded to myself, thinking that it was perfect.
I stood, and they put the robe around me, closing it around me. It was almost perfect, I thought, with how I stood in the centre and they put the robe around me, with one to the North, another to the South, and East and West.
"You have made me take Sedlin's place," I said when they drew apart. "And him I shall be, a fifth to you."
Their eyes watched me, the emotions in them going from perplexity to sadness, while they shook their heads, all of them now speaking in unison.
"No. You are not Sedlin. He was made to die. You are the One."
"Still," I insisted. "I will hold him dear to me, as though he was a part of me."
They nodded, and I smiled, watching them. It did strike me that they were nursing some personal grievances, something that broke them from the inside, and I was moved to ask what made them so sad.
"We cast the seven year sleep upon ourselves, to hide, and for your sake, so you would be comforted by your grief. Alas, this has proven to be a mistake, for since we woke up yesterday, we have felt even weaker. It can only mean that the Other Five have filled the world with their evil. It must be by luck, indeed, that they did not find us while we slept."
"Erimlin," I asked, turning towards the tree. "You should know."
"We do know," they continued. "They have wreaked the world apart, across all ages and eons of time, filling it with their evil. There is only darkness."
"I want to see," I declared.
"Why?" Erimlin the Tree asked.
"It cannot be that bad."
"It is. Everywhere, there is only Pain, Suffering, Ruin, Tears and Death to be seen. You only need to step outside the cave to see it, to know that nothing is as you know it was seven years before." They said, in their manner of speaking in chorus. "We are also now weaker. We do not know if we can protect you from them, to keep you safe."
I looked at them, at them all, and saw that besides the sadness, there was fear as well. Yet, I felt myself being pushed to see what this was.
"I will be back," I told them, before going towards the mouth of the cave, and I felt why before I even saw it.