Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 21

Firefly Fish: Ch 14

“Tell me of your home.” I studied paper white skin at the edge of my cheek. Green flecks of plankton and salt drifted in swirls of ocean waters across Saeesar’s chest. The sun beat down on us as we floated over calm waves. His fins billowed out around him, soft and translucent like threadbare muslin. Absently, I ran a finger along the edge of a frill, mesmerized with the gentle tickle across my senses.

“It – that is, um. Home.” He contemplated the clouds filtering out harsh rays.

“You aren’t from these waters.” A headache pulled between my eyes and my skin burned.

“Why do you say that?” Saeesar pulled against a wave, sending us farther east across the Gulf Coast.

“Burmese isn’t a town around here, I think.” I shifted, my pinky going numb with my fascination on his fins.

Saeesar adjusted my arm to relieve the pain from the pellet in my shoulder. “No, it’s not.”

“You’re fluffy. That seems strange for someone keeping space in the Gulf. The fish we’d catch, they’re smooth. All sharp edges. Taigre was sharp edges. Sleek.”

“Strangely observant. Humans have a knack of watching, though they also have a propensity for destroying that which is watched. He stalled in thought to study a seagull. “I did not mean to offend.”

“I sensed nothing of offence in your words. Curiosity and pain. You wish to distance yourself from the burn in your shoulder. That is what you are murmuring beneath your landleg words.”

“Landleg? Humans?” The drifting waves and heat seeped into my stomach. Faint and tired, I wanted to slip into cooler water.

“Humans. What you call people. What would you call a group of fish?” Saeesar pushed away from my question of home. I wanted to come back to it. Maybe it, like my brother, was a tender topic.

“Captain called them a school. Shoal, I think some of the other crew called the small silverfish that came up along the beach edge when the water was calm.” I eased my hands into the water in hopes of finding coolness for my blistering skin.

“It will hurt your shoulder to go in again,” Saeesar cautioned.

“Reading my mind is unsettling. My back hurts.” I admitted to what was bothering me. My shoulder burned in a different way to my skin. It had turned from snaps of fire and lightning to an all-encompassing throb. Sunburns were sunburns. I wanted to peel myself from the angry heat and sink into a dark cold.

“I can take you under for a couple of minutes, but it will sting that wound?” Saeesar offered.

I nodded, too tired to reply. Maybe I did reply. I still didn’t understand how the iase in my head worked.

“Do you want a charm? Are you strong enough without?” He draped one of his side fins across my back. The relief from the sun battled with the tacky sensation that made the sunburn angry.

“No. I’ll try on my own. Not that I feel strong enough to breathe, but I want to save a larger charm if something like that white snake shows up again.” I wanted to shift so that I could keep my shoulder out of the water, but submerge the rest of myself into the shadows he cast with his fins.

“How much can you put up with? I could try to drag us into one of the high currents and get us to Nuada sooner.

“Can you tell if I’ll pass out? Will this voice thing you hear from me tell you?” I would rather get to our destination sooner if only to hopefully have a doc dig the buckshot out of my shoulder.

“Yes. I’ll know.”

“Then I’ll put up with whatever gets me there.”

“Why do you want to know about my home?” Saeesar traced charm lines over my face and across my back.

My vision blurred around the edges as a charm settled into my shoulder. Inhibitions gone and almost asleep, I didn’t right care what fell out of my mouth. “Are all of your kinfolk as pretty as you? I don’t like the idea of it. You’d think I didn’t want your dowry. Not like the dowry is all that important. The pearls would be enough to keep me fed until my death. It isn’t that I don’t want them.” A burst of tiny bubbles caught up in the hairs on my arms. Saeesar had laughed at me.

“You apologize?” Saeesar layered another series of small charms across me.

“I like pretty people and pretty things. I’d probably say things not knowing. I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings by accident.”

“We’re going under.” His fingers found my neck above the pellet holes and the small of my back as he twisted into a dive.

Pulling in a breath was less terrifying when there was enough pain elsewhere to distract. The water rushing across my wound twisted nausea at the back of my throat. A charm burst, scattering bubbles around us. The sick knot unravelled in my core, along with the headache beating between my eyes.

“My home wasn’t here. I came from halfway across the world, like I said. Burma. You didn’t know it. Lands across this vast expanse where the trees drip with humidity and wind is a song of frogs and rain. Where you can lay in the water at midnight and listen to the laughter of a festival amongst the shadows. From what I remember, there were others far more elegant than me. Father, he was solid black from the top of his head to the end of his fins. Darker than shadows under new moons. His kindness was bottomless like the trench. Courage larger than Leviathan. 

“Mother, the other women, they were not as decorative, though they too held their own displays. She was distinct, more so than others. Grey, almost whiter than gull wings. Enough so she was pink with it. I recall her eyes. They were reflective red like that of the deep sea creatures who hide from the regular sight.

“Gentle as still water with the stubborness a whirlpool. She was everything to me for the short time I had with her. I was her only offspring to survive.

“We battle amongst ourselves from the time we are young. Protected by our fathers, who in turn wage wars for us until we are of an age to make our way, and then they battle against us. Our loop of destiny is crossed from the good in us and the instinct we have to protect our grounds and our mates.

“This was home as you asked it. Family.” He broke into a current. The push sent us hurtling past vast swaths of barren plains far below us. That left me reflecting on Taigre and the probability of what his parents looked like.

“What of Karis, you ask? The children of Llyr? Where do they come into play? It is not that I see them in poor light. They have shown me hospitality, in a way. We are not similar enough. I am no more than a contestant for Karis. Entertainment for his pod.” In contemplation, his fingers rubbed against the back of my neck. I didn’t like that word.

More bubbles skimmed across me. 

“Protect? An interesting word you use. What is it that made you think that?”

What did he mean by contestant? Entertainment? A coliseum came to mind. A worn history book of generals, trojan horses, and emperors playing fiddles.

“Gladiator. Humans have something similar? Interesting.” Saeesar’s tone turned to quiet interest. 

I didn’t want that type of confirmation. The tips of my fingers cramped. I loosened my death grip on his side.

“You meant no harm. You would worry about what I do within the clan? Why?” The channel merged into a larger flow crowded with fish. A shadow passed by on our right.

“Baya Saeesar? A long way from your clan,” a female voice greeted. An orange body and tails with black. Grouper? Her face was long, if not rectangular so in nature.

“Only so far as to help a sea-king’s child to the council.” Saeesar had an interesting habit of distancing me from approaching creatures. I settled listlessly into the crook between his body and a side fin. There were too many inputs to process. The last thing I remember was choking on salt water.

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Firefly Fish: Ch 13

“I heard Siren Voice so far out, I had to come investigate, Bet-tah,” Leviathan chuckled to itself. “And here I find you hiding a Kraken child. Who’s do you have? Cuttle? Lineolata, Mestus? Typica’s, mayhaps?”

     Saeesar swallowed, his chest rising beneath my fingers as I concentrated on trying to pull water in and out. “Sh, sh, just breath, Marin. That’s all you’re doing,” he whispered, arms tightening around me.

Quiet. I needed to silence myself. Make all of it go away. A Kraken child was a Kraken child, nothing more without Siren Voice other than a child of a sea king. I still was unsure of what powers one could hold with that type of position.

     What had I done to make myself silent by Saeesar’s definition? I had been embarrassed. I couldn’t pull that emotion out right now. Not with my shoulder screaming at me and trying to remember to get water into my mantel. My ribs hurt with the effort. Saeesar’s fins settled around me carefully. The frilled edging tickled along my arms and the back of my neck.

     Even in the midst of this intrusion, he continued to help me regulate. It was either Leviathan or the men on shore with the shotguns. I knew what that last option felt like. I would rather deal with drowning at the moment. The saltwater was less painful after a few breaths than the freshwater. At least the sensation of it coating the bizarre organ inside my chest. The pressure density was something else to contend with entirely.

     “My mate, Leviathan. He is mine, regardless of parentage.” Saeesar tightened closer around me, his fins blanketing me protectively.

     “It is unmarked. I would have smelled that as much as it is Kraken.” The creature’s voice slid across me, an uneasy, manipulative slither. The timbre vibrated through my skin into my bones. It made me nauseous.

     “You interrupted our courtship is all,” Saeesar bluffed, trying to pull me to his side, putting himself between me and the creature. My right hand was going numb. Rings flashed in my eyes. I gasped, fighting with the next breath of water.

     “Then I can still Claim.” Leviathan’s head came closer to us. I caught the red irises between the frills of Saeesar’s tail.

Saeesar shivered beneath me. “You would push Claim on another’s mate. For what right?”

“That the kings of the sea shall secure Siren’s Voice. None have been born to the Antumnos in well over five centuries at this point. Siren’s Voice shall be mine. I will become the leader of the Council! We shall no longer suffer under humans’ thumb.” The creature lunged. My chest contracted at the movement, my heart stuttering. All of my spots radiated, blinding both Saeesar and me in our enclosed space.

Leviathan recoiled in surprise, hissing in fear, “Puca Kraken.”

“You would risk Puca’s anger, claiming one of his sons against his will?” Saeesar laughed at the situation, pushing a hand to my chest to help me expel the water still stuck in the bottom of my chest cavity without Leviathan seeing.

“Puca has not had children in centuries. He is not Puca’s child!” The creature weaved to look closer at me.

Saeesar leaned into my forehead. “If he gets too close to you, bite him. Bite him like you are going to die.” I nodded, fighting with the driving fear permeating my limbs. “You have seen his lights and know him to be Kraken child and yet persist in saying he is not Puca’s? You would tempt a Blue Hole’s depth?”

“What is wrong with him, that he cannot answer for himself who his father is?” Leviathan pressed closer, invading our space. “It is of no matter. It has Siren’s Voice. Puca’s child or any other, I will rule the Council.”

Saeesar loosened his hold on me as I sucked in a deep gulp of water. The white nose bumped into us, sending us somersaulting far away from the bottom of the shoreline. Its head kept up with us, its neck disappearing well into the darkness even my lights couldn’t reach. The creature’s nose was the length of Saeesar’s body easily. I twisted in the blanket of fins and latched onto the massive creature, biting down like Saeesar said. My gut seized on the flavour: that of something akin to honeysuckle and sea spray. Were the creature not beneath the water and looking me in the eye, I would have believed myself to have taken a large bite of saltwater taffy. 

Leviathan shrieked, thrashing to have me dislodge. “You would destroy me upon a simple inquest on the validity of Mate Claim? You shall be tamed!” The creature shook viciously. “Release me. It hurts!”

Large hands grasped around my chest to pull me from the creature. “Woah. Easy, Marin. Let go!” Saeesar demanded. “You’re not going to be able to eat him and breathe at the same time yet!”

I didn’t want to let go. The creature had scared me. I wanted my shoulder to stop hurting. At this exact moment in time, I felt justified in the method, and it tasted like the sweets counter back home. The seagull eggs and clams had not done much for me, and I was famished.

“No. No. I understand that Puca’s children like the taste of other Kraken and the sea gods, but you’re going to stop being able to breathe if you don’t let go. Eyes are too big for your stomach, Marin. You need the rest of your siblings to take down Leviathan. Argue all you want. Not dinner! Let go. You only needed to warn him off. No, you can’t have more right now. If he comes near you again, you can then, but that’s more than enough for a meal. Let go,” Saeesar commanded. I chomped down once more for good measure before releasing my grip to curl back into my Bet-tah’s arms. He was not wrong either. Swallowing was difficult against the water compressing my organs.

The massive snake-headed creature withdrew, honeysuckle blood gushing into the dark. “Puca’s child!” It screeched, angry and scared. “A Siren’s Voice from a Kraken child of Puca. The Antumnos Council will hear of this!”

“Are you to tell them, Leviathan? By what means will you tell them? That you tried to Claim another’s mate in the midst of courtship? That you antagonized Puca’s child into biting you? You will have no sympathy, Leviathan. Neither you, nor the scar on your nose if and when it heals,” Saeesar hissed.

     I had a million and one questions running through my head. The most pressing, though, was the fading rings from Saeesar’s charm. Leviathan retracted, leaving behind a wash of cold water that buoyed us to the surface. Saeesar turned over on his back to hold me out of the water while I cleared my gills for sweet air.

     I could not see the land for the water, the sun having dipped below the horizon to leave us in a blanket of stars. “Do I-” I almost hacked up my lung, “do I want to know why that snake tasted like candy?”

     “About that,” Saeesar started nervously.

     “Actually. Hold off. Is there a way to get my arm to stop hurting?” I switched topics when cold air hit my wounds.

     “Here, turn, let’s see what we’re working – oh great Llyr!” Saeesar hissed at whatever he found. By the way my skin felt, I could only guess the glancing blow from the buckshot had probably left a pretty ragged-looking wound. “Every sea god will be coming for you with that!”

     “Is that what I just met, a sea god?” I coughed the last of the water out.

     “Leviathan. Ghastly creature. I’m going to need to get you to a better healer than myself. I know tricks and charms, but I can’t handle something this complex.” Saeesar explained.

     “When Taigre and you left to the nesting grounds, it took you a long time to get there and back,” I let on, my anxiety of having to go back in the water to breathe rising.

     “I do not need the nesting grounds. There are reefs closer. I can find you someone there,” he reassured.

     “Are you able to set another charm for me to breathe again?” I asked.

     “No. That took everything I had for charms for at least the next day. For the moment, rest. You might get a bit wet, but I can swim us towards our destination. I’m sorry about that. Your mantle is going to be tender for days at this rate.” He encouraged me to lay against his chest.

     “You are much larger than Taigre,” I mumbled, curling so that I could keep my right shoulder above water.

     “Wait until you meet Karis,” he whispered back to me with a chuckle as I drifted into blackout.

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Firefly Fish: Ch 12

“The problem remains, though, even in accepting your dowry, that I don’t speak Antumnos, and I can’t use my gills. What is there for us if I have an aversion to the water?” I motioned to the horizon behind Saeesar.  

He pulled up a shoulder and twisted his head at the question. “I am not without understanding or as crass as to demand anything of my partner which they do not wish to give freely. You have time, Marin Cimet, to find if the water or the land will be home.”

“My name is Marin,” I tacked into the conversation.

“You are not Marin Goranich? That was the name I was given?” Saeesar cocked his head in the opposing direction.

“Some humans have multiple names. Marin is my first, Goranich is my last. I just go by Marin.” I ducked my head to rub at the back of my neck.

“If it will not offend you?” Saeesar ventured.

“Do you-” I cleared my throat, “do you go by Saeesar, or do you also have multiple names like humans?” Saeesar stalled at the question, his fins telling his mood of nervous and relaxed. I scrunched in on myself at the action. “Is that something I’m not supposed to ask?”

“It is not that, necessarily. It is that…” he trailed off, still at a loss for words. I waited, letting him determine what he was willing to talk about. “I am spotless.” His tone warbled, the type of note I would expect before Anna or Viktor would start crying because of bullies at school.

“Are spots common amongst the children of Llyr?” I asked.

“The clans of the large Llyr have them and many of the small Llyr folk. The nesting grounds to which I see, and Keris, the territory’s overseer, are of one of the large Llyr clans,” he explained in a roundabout way.

“You are not from Taigre’s clan?” I summarized. “You are from somewhere else than the gulf, then?”

Saeesar’s fins eased at the questions. 

“I am half-human Saeesar, and you and Taigre are all that I have seen. I have seen prejudice within the human world. I will not deny that. Is that what is happening to you?”

“Prejudice. It is an interesting articulation for Disgust and Hate,” Saeesar deflected.

“Those are the Antumnos words for it, I take it?” I flicked a pebble into the surf.

“My mother fled with me from the nesting grounds in the three-channelled river of Ayutthaya when the Burmese burned the human settlement to the ground. So much of the destruction polluted the nesting grounds, decimating entire stocks of our people.” He slid off his perch to return back to the water. In a way, he reminded me of my father pacing the floor in front of the fireplace the night he told us the farm would be foreclosed on. “It is not that we died out. It is that my father died in helping save some of the humans that were forced into our waters by other humans.”

“You were forced out because your father tried to protect who he could?” I demanded, rising in frustration.

“My mother fled with me from the other Bet-tah when I was not yet old enough to protect myself. Baya or Overseer is passed down within the Bet-tah from father to son. With my father dead, and me too young, the seat turned over to the rule of the Council until I came of age. She died of stress shortly after reaching the Gathering Grounds, where the Antumnos Council meets. She had hoped that one of the Council would place me with a clan. Keris knew nothing of what happened in Ayutthaya. The Council placed me with him to distance me.”

I frowned at the procession of events. “Then, if you are mature, why have you not returned to oversee your nesting ground?”

“With no mate, I would still be seen as unable to lead. Traditions.” He sank back into the water, eyelids cast low at the admission. “It is not that I asked you to be my mate so as to take back my grounds.”

“It’s a bonus, though?” I guessed. “How does this tie into your names and spots, though? I’m still lost on the importance?”

“I have lived more years with the deep Llyr than my own clan. They pride themselves on their spots, on their colours to find a mate. I remember very little of my own clan. Mother did not have spots, though. She was a slim grey white, almost pink. I do not believe my people can vary their colours like Keris’s people,” he tried to explain.

“And kids can be right dicks when they get it in their mind that someone else is different,” I assumed of his life. I had suffered my own share of issues; it was easy to relate.

“Yes, calves can be. So can their parents.” Tension eased from his shoulders and his fins relaxed.

“I am sorry that you’ve had to deal with that. Spots or not, I like your fins.” I smiled. He ducked at that, going below where all his fins had fluffed out, making him into a black and white cloud. Stalled beneath the waves, he covered his face with his hands as he curled his tail around him, using the largest of his fins to cover himself. “Are you coming back? Did I say something wrong?” I called. No response. “Saeesar?” I tried again.

A snap of sticks from behind startled me. “Hey, boys, look what the storm dragged in!” A man called into the oleander thicket. I tripped back from the voice, trying to see between the rotting dock boards. Through them, A pair of blue eyes stared down at me from the edge of the forest. A shotgun cocked behind him.

My gut tightened at the sound. No time to figure out Antumnos. I needed Saeesar to leave, to get away from the calm water where he would be seen. If he thought his people were cruel, there was no time for him to discover the depravity of humans. Picturing every instance of danger I could, which, with a gun so close by, wasn’t difficult, I tried my internal screaming. I could only imagine that was what he had been referring to when he had told me I was screaming when I wasn’t last night. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the one man who was descending down the rock to the beach edge where I was hiding under the dock.

     Oh.

     Shit.

     My spots were glowing in the fading light.

“I thought you said he was some homeless guy you saw in your woods today! He’s glowing like a radium dial!” A different, high-pitched voice called back to the man approaching my lair.

     “He’s been talking and humming to himself all day in a weird language. Thought he hit his head,” the man called back.

     “I-I can explain!” I scuttled for the water’s edge, getting myself away from getting caught in the brush around the dock.

     “Oh, there’s no need to explain, lightning bug,” the man reassured. His voice scalded, sending shivers down my skin.

     “I’ll just be leaving. Thought the dock was abandoned and figured I’d be safe out of the wind a couple days. Didn’t mean to encroach.” I slipped on a rock as I backed up, finally finding the guy with the gun up in the woods, and three more men.

     “Don’t leave; we were just getting to know each other. You know there’s talk of Hag and Wally looking for some additions to their show?” The man jumped the rocks, knowing which were solid and which would shift.

     “I know how it felt having trespassers on dad’s farm. Meant no harm. I’ll be gettin’.” I swallowed, hoping for escape.

     “Randal!” One of the men up in the treeline yelled at the one pursuing me.

     “I hear ya! We’re gonna be rich, boys.” The man launched himself across the rocks and up over the dock while I tripped, turning to make a run for it in the settling dusk.

     “Get him!” Another of the men followed suit. Clattering footfall echoed behind me as I pulled myself over boulders and skittered along the sharp flakes of sandstone and sand. Prickle shrub jabbed into my skin, tearing at my hands and arms. The shotgun was a pump action. Each click raised the hair on my head. Three clicks. I dove for the deeper water where I knew the boulders were thinnest from when Saeesar had brought me ashore. A flash of searing pain and fire blew through my shoulder blade and upper arm.

Shot.

I’d been shot.

     Limb useless, burning through with numb fire, I pushed myself into the darkening water, hoping they would lose sight of me. My spots were bright, though, and easy target. Another loud blast. Fingers grabbed onto my good hand beneath the water and tugged me lower, out of range of the buckshot. Saeesar’s face came into view, concern creasing the edge of his eyes as he pulled me into the cold until we were sitting at least twenty feet from the surface. I clutched at him as he engulfed me in his wrap of fins, keeping my spots hidden to only us.

     “I hate to say this after your experience from yesterday, Marin, but you’re going to need to breathe,” he told me. I knew it. I knew it, but I really didn’t want to. The burn from the water yesterday was worse than the buckshot today. He put his hands to my chest, quickly tracing my spots to form glowing circles and lines. “A couple more seconds, Marin. Hold on a couple more seconds.” He said that, but my temples were throbbing, my wound was turning our hiding nest murky, and rings were forming in my eyes.

     “Now! All of it. Push all the air out entirely. Don’t hold out on me.” He twisted his tail against my back and pushed against my chest in an effort to help me. I held onto his sides, fear taking hold as I did what I was told. That next breath in was hell. Worse than before. My ears rang with it, and my stomach twisted. I willed myself to not kick for the surface like I so badly wanted to. “You’re doing good. You got it in. Now out. Your mantel doesn’t just go in your mouth and out through your gills. Like humans breathe air, you have to get it out.” He twisted, helping me as I started going light-headed. This time, though it burned, I found I was able to more easily draw the water in and out.

     “Yes. Good. I curled a charm into your mantel to strengthen it. It won’t last more than a couple of minutes. We need to get you away from this shoreline, and I can’t cast any more charms. You’re bleeding, Marin!” He noticed in horror, clamping his hands down on my shoulder.

     “And it smells of Kraken child,” a low voice echoed through the waters, a massive head emerging from the darkness. Long, and wide, it looked like an albino rattlesnake with massive red eyes.

     “Leviathan!” Saeesar hissed.

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 6

“He is a wab! Half-souled, ba-less at that, My Lord!” Adom protested upon entering the temple’s main hall. We had arrived for the evening services, Wash at my side in his new vestments, a massive white robe covering most of the new outfit. “I can agree to leave your…predilections…to yourself.” The High Lectern flicked a disgusted glance towards Ptolemy who stood guard at the back door to the hall, “but this is going too far! He is here for Last Purifications. He should have already been sent on, My Lord. What is he wearing?” He seethed after taking in the appearance of the hall. Seth and Nebra had been busy pulling ties to have court officials filter in, each issued a copy of the statement I had sent to Adom of the exchange of titles.

         “You have done more for me than I can ever reward you for, Regent High Lectern,” I commended from my throne. Wash fought to control his trembling at my side, pearled teeth pulling at stained lips. Nebra had kohled his eyes, bringing a depth to the Alexandrite I had not expected.

         “Fifteen years in your service, My Lord, and eighteen with your guardian before,” he reminded me.

         “I cannot begin to tell you how overjoyed I am that you found the perfect representative for me. It is due time. You have been well past retirement and I should not have pushed your position for so long. That was unfair of me.” I studied Wash’s frame, letting my blatant adoration show.

         “Of all the people within the Temples in all of Hawria, why this wab? He’s ba-less. He’ll never be capable of taking on the position of more than a minor servant! Not to mention his transgressions against the state.” His vehement hatred elicited some low protests in the hall from councilors.

         “It is due to the nature of his transgression that he showed his willingness to follow the laws of the Temple so closely. To see no other harmed as to suffer loss of life or privilege,” I quoted. “And it is because of his ba-less nature that he will become My Heirophant.”

         Wash swallowed, his grasp tightening on a was-scepter we had sourced from the ceremonial paraphernalia stock room.  More murmuring at this announcement, louder, curious. As I had instructed before we had made it into the room, Wash descended the steps to the lowest tier, kneeling before me.

         “You would have a ba-less High Lectern? You mean for the Temple to fall?” Adom hissed, establishing the faction of support. 

I rose at that stance, immediately sending all in the hall to kneel before me. I stepped down to the tier in front of Wash. “Rise, wab,” I demanded of Wash. He did as asked, though the rings on his staff clinked with a slight tremble. “You will be My Hierophant. You will become the High Lectern of Hawria, to represent the will of your lord at all times and in all circumstances. Take this as your service to the crown and scepter.” I leaned down, taking his chin in my palm and gently kissed his forehead, dead center of the blaze of white as I pulled the belt of his robe, the white material dropping away. A sunburst blinded the room momentarily. Fearful clamouring erupted as the councilors fell back. Golden drops rained down to send ripples across the tiles and disintegrate into fizzing motes. Wash knelt in front of me, his wings shining with the mirage.

A hush issued in the chamber. Eyes went round at the sight. Many of the wab and priests who had been siding with Adom fell into mantras, as did a surprising number of the councillors. 

“You found me a ba-less being who had enough room for the god-king’s heka. You have never let go of Ramses. There was no room for me.” I crouched, offering my hand to Wash to encourage him to stand. He took it, his fingers cold on mine. I turned him to the council, a hand on his shoulder.

“Who will deny the will of the god-king of Hawria?” Wash enunciated before the court, tapping the point of the staff against the tile, a series of white lines rippling from the point like raindrops on a mirror smooth pond. Adom went to protest. A set of figures rose from the undulating floor, Thoth and Isis to bow before me. Twice as tall as me and fully colored, they could have been solid. Goosebumps ran up my arms at the image. I could only imagine what it was for everyone else in the room who did not know what Wash was doing as he commanded his fire. The power he pulled from me was addictive in its intensity.

“Hail, the High Lectern of the Pharaoh of Hawria, keeper of the heka of the god-king,” Adom acquiesced, face pale in front of the gods.

“You will be retained as esteemed instructor for my Heirophant, Adom. He has been provided less than necessary an education to see to the mundane tasks, rituals, and magic of the Temple. As the holder of part of my soul, he shall be my representative and as such I claim him as consort, to be by my side in the facilitation of duties within the Temple,” I made the decree. It had been with the others that I had put forth bids and causes for taking on a consort with the nobility. Ptolemy, Nebra, and Seth had been from the civilian and military sectors, and as such were within the nobility’s control. Wash however, as a child of the Temple, would be released from the Temple.

“Consort, My Lord? Surely not such a low place for your spirit. A Royal Husband-” Adom gasped, appalled at what he had just said.

“Would it be that the Temple would see to me sharing cups?” I pinned the question on Adom, making sure all the councillors in the room were listening.

“If he is truly the holder of your heka, My Lord, cups would make him equal to you, and your soul, distributed as you see fit, shall always be equal.” Adom fell into my trap.

“Show him then what it is to conduct a sharing of cups between a Pharaoh and The Great Royal Husband. In three days time, a sharing of cups will be conducted for the god-king of Hawria between himself and the keeper of his heka. Send word to the farthest temples. Representatives shall be present to take back the news.” I returned to my throne, sat, and hoped my adrenaline rush would come down. Clamouring erupted once more from the court officials. Several retainers were sent running from the hall. 

Wash took up a spot to my left, hand finding a bare spot on my shoulder as he brought forth more gods to stand on either side of my throne, though smaller this time. He may not have expected this outcome. I had hoped by having him show his powers as he did that he would be accepted quickly and with no fuss. I had not explained that I hoped for Adom to propose cups. This would mean a rift between the Nobility and the Temple, and I was not responsible for the suggestion. He was the one who said it was essential. This would free me from the chain the Nobility had placed on me in that I would need to seek an exchanging of cups with some eligible daughter of the Nobles. I had presented the concept of consort. That would not be contested. Enough people within the court had seen that interchange.

“Yes, My Lord.” Adom bowed at the command. Watching his face work over from irritation to horror, I knew when he realized the position he had put himself in. A flick of the eye. I followed the question to a wab retainer who fled the hall after the others. Someone was being informed within the nobility. A subtle hand sign from me and Ptolemy slunk from the chamber to trail. I would find out later in the evening as to who the someone was in the heirarchies to be watching.

Wash’s hand tightened on my shoulder, his skin going warm. I glanced up at the set in his jaw as his eyes went glassy. “I am tired now, Adom. Let us begin with the evening ceremonies. See to my Heirophant’s tutelage. He shall be overseeing my handling and should know what is to be expected.” I ended this upheaval.

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 5

Upon returning to my halls, Seth split off for research within his own rooms. I sat in my study and grappled with how I would word the documentation to Adom. The oiled wood of the massive desk smelled of incense and perfumes the cleaning staff insisted on using. The tiled floors were freshly washed, and my shelves were dusted. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. Fifteen years trapped with little privacy. Some would call me privileged. I had at my beck and call all that I could ever want except for my own space that no one could or would enter. The selection of my wardrobe was seen to by the temple. I was a god-king after all. My retinue of government officials specifically chosen to help explain how a new law was to be implemented was provided by whichever noble had the most influence, so that I would not be forced to ponder on trivialities. I was a god-king after all. The cleanliness and decor of my rooms I did not see to. Even when I moved things to my satisfaction, they were categorically returned to a more resplendent position. I should not dally on the daily. I was a god-king after all.

         A figure head, the best I had now was the little moments of choice I had claimed as part of the commands of the empire. I kept the consorts I chose. The Temple and the Nobility had no say. As part of the commands, I was requested to provide a choice for High Lectern to represent me as this captive god-king. I pulled out the compilation of briefs from my shelves and flipped through to find the corresponding codes. With exacting precision in my language, I formulated a document that neither the nobles nor the temple would easily dismiss.

         Calling a retainer, I sent the documentation to Adom towards the middle of the afternoon. That composed and a stack of papers assessed and signed off, I was leaning back in my chair with a cold cloth over my eyes when Nebra returned with Wash.

         “I can’t possibly wear that! It’s – it’s not my station,” Wash protested on his way through the doors.

         “Give Henu five minutes and it will be your station.” Nebra snipped back.

         “Take it Ptol had something else to do?” I called from my study.

         “He got into a rather drawn out conversation with some of the older regiment captains – you know how it goes with him. Anyway, I was walking by and figured Wash would like to be free of musty military chatter.” Nebra popped into my room. I pulled the cloth from my eyes to study my consort and my hierophant.

         “You found us an outfit?” I sat up, noting the bag in her hands.

         “It’s too much, My Lord!” Wash protested.

         “A pittance from my own salary.” Nebra sniffed, pulling out heaps of cloth. I raised an eyebrow. A pittance. The amount of silk, leather, and gold embroidery made me wonder how much she emptied from her accounts.

         Wash stared at the mass in terror. “Something wrong, wab?” I asked. He shifted, his mouth opening, then closing again. A storm built across the pinch between his brows. “Can’t refuse the pharaoh?” I guessed with an easy smile.

         “If it’s what you want, My Lord.” He bit his tongue.

         “Undeniably, I’d love to see you undress at the moment and see you in whatever Nebra’s found, but at the end of the day, Wash, it really is up to you.” I spread my hands to the desk before clasping them behind my head and leaning back in my chair to watch the wab squirm.

         “May I ask the door be closed?” Wash muttered at Nebra, his face going red from collar to his hairline. That left him between me and the door. Nebra eased it shut with a click, concern creasing the corner of her eyes.

         “I am serious, Wash. You asked me not to be a complete pig. If this isn’t something you want to do, don’t. I was being both honest and teasing. If this makes you uncomfortable-” I reiterated, coming down from my lean back to fold my hand on the desk.

         “Whatever,” he hissed, tugging at the belting of his white and blue wab robe. “It’s gonna be what it is.” His words, cold and frustrated, slipped down my arms. His overclothes pooled around him, leaving him in a thin, white underrobe and fundoshi. Beneath his knee-length underrobe, draping down to the floor were a pair of mint green moth-type wings. I rose, my chair scraping. He cringed at my surprise, gritting his teeth as he refused to meet my eyes. Nebra gasped.

         “Am I allowed to ask?” I stayed where I was as he pushed off his underrobe, irritation radiating from him in a hot wash. I sucked in a breath as white cotton pooled on the floor, and his eyes met mine. The room burst into a dizzying, kaleidoscope pinwheel. He looked around in horror at the display. Pursing his lips, his lower eyelids rimmed red.

“Easy, easy, I’m going to come around the desk. Is that okay, Wash?” I eyed the fizzling starbursts twirling around my walls. “Let’s get you dressed. If this is causing you this much anxiety, don’t push yourself. I didn’t mean to make you feel like you had to do this,” I tried for soothing. He inched back on his heel, arms covering his chest.

         “Nebra?” I asked, afraid to take my eyes off Wash.

         She turned and let herself out the door to call in for more honey. I’d need to keep a stocked supply.

         Left alone in the study with the nervous wab, I caught the sound of his mirages. A slight hiss, that of the wind against dunes. Heat had a sound beyond the crackle in a fire.

         “You want me to wear that?” He refused to look at the clothes on the desk.

         “No,” I answered him flatly, putting myself between him and the desk.

         “Then what do you want from me? You wanted me undressed. I’m bare to the minimum. Do you or don’t you want me dressed? What do you want from me?” The starbursts rose up as twisting rings of light and deep shadows, barracuda, pike, sawbill, sturgeon flicked in and out of the shelves. The hair on my neck raised at the specters.

         “You don’t do teasing much, do you?” I hedged, glaring down one particularly nasty-looking fish with monstrous fangs.

         “I was the end of the jokes, always. No. I don’t get it much. I can understand sarcasm. You’re the pharaoh of Hawria. I can’t afford to think you’re joking if you’re being serious. I was sent to you for Last Purifications. I’ve spent the last week in penance and dealing with realizing I’m going to die, and here you are making fun of me. I don’t get what’s going on.” He bit.

         I dragged in a breath and stooped, picking up the dropped overrobe. Wash backed up a step at my actions. “My Lord?” his voice cracked at my movement. I took the collar, opened the robe wide, pulled it around his shoulders and settled his fingers on the edges. “The brocade? It’s a bad texture for you, isn’t it?” I asked. He paled at the question, his glance going to the pile of fabric on the desk behind me.

         “And the leather stinks?” I pressed. His fingers tightened down on the collar of the robe as he pulled it tighter.

         “The embroidery itches. Makes you feel like scratching your skin off just at the look of it? Your underrobes were longer than most. Protects your skin from the wab robes. But you’re angry, so you aren’t noticing, not until I mention it?” I guessed, watching the tension go out of his fingers, and he dropped the material in irritation.

         “How the hell do you know me, My Lord? Surely, you are Horus, as they say.” He gripped down on his arms as the depths of the Nile came into focus around us, the ice and rock at the bottom strewn across my floors.

         “I don’t like the textures either. They look great, but actually dealing with it on your own personnage, no. Have you heard of the Children of Osirus?” I turned to shift through the materials Nebra had left me, pulling from it gold and white silk.

         “No, My Lord.” His anger disappeared, as did the kaleidoscope.  All that was left of his mirage was a series of lily pads floating around us.

         “I put you in a position you were not comfortable with. I tried what I thought you’d expect of me, not expecting to find a Child of Osirus in you. Forgive me.” I held the garment out for him to test. He flicked a glance at the material and then to me, uncertain.

         “You are the Pharaoh, My Lord, there is nothing to forgive. It is I who should be seeking your forgiveness.” His hand hovered over the fabric in my hands.

         “Talk to me, in earnest. Give me-”

         Nebra let herself in and handed Wash a vial of honey, glancing between me and the man. I nodded, thankful for her help as she let herself back out. Wash popped the cork on the vial, shoulders slumping, and sighed, downing the contents.

         “Give me an hour of you and me being equal. Not of you as wab and me as pharaoh. You as a person, me as a person, and let’s see what can be sorted. If taking the position of my Heirophant, a new High Lectern, is not something you can stomach, it’s okay to say so. I failed you in making that clear. I didn’t. I took possession of you, and for that, I also apologize, with sincerity.” I held the fabric to my heart and bowed slightly to him.

         “Equals?” he asked.

         “Talk to me as equals. As you would a confidant of similar position. No hedge. No mask. Honesty.” I held out the garment to him once more. “Touch it and be honest at how you react to it.”

Poking it, he didn’t flinch. I softened my hold with the action. He pursed his lips and took the fabric, making to tug it on before realizing that it was a series of garments in my hands. He looked up at me, baffled. “I – can I – would you…” he clamped shut, fingers digging into the fabric.

“I can leave, if that would be easier?” I offered, trying to calculate what reaction I was seeing from him.

“No, I – I don’t know what this is. How do you put it on?” he asked.

“I have no idea. What did she give you?” I asked, taking one of the pieces from him and spread it out on a chair. We laid out each piece and stared at them in bewilderment before I realized one of the pieces was upside down and inside out. “Under robe, secondary robe, hakama, haori,” I named off the ancient style of clothing. “Are the belts and such uncomfortable on your wings?” I broached the topic.

“They’re delicate. I tend to lose scales from them, and they’re hard to hide. Belts aren’t comfortable. After a week in solitary, I was able to finally get the pattern to come back in nice and full.” He turned to show me the golden eyes and lines of red tracing the edge of the wings.

“Do they work?” I wanted to touch.

He lifted the side of them with his fingers. “No. Not really. If I flex a couple muscles in my back, I can shift them out a bit, which can catch a breeze in warm weather and help cool me off. But they’re really impractical things.”

“I take it the Temple doesn’t know?” I turned to the rest of the materials I had access to and rifled through.

“My parents didn’t know about the wings. They had given me to the Temple way before that. They peeled from my back, small, not more than a hand width, one summer after I got a very bad sunburn. Nobody saw. Nobody knew. I hid them beneath my robes. Not like anyone ever shared a bath with me. I wasn’t much to them after all? I already had problems. The marking on my face. The fire…” He dropped the wings to stare out the lattice window. I found a combination of a shoulder guard and collar for him of white silk and gold tassel. Following suit, a white garment similar in style to a corset or a cummerbun.

“You can guarantee to your grave, that no one other than Nebra and me have ever seen them?” I pressed, swallowing as an idea hit me.

“No one. I would swear on the scales in the underworld,” he vowed.

“I have an idea, but it’s only if you would take position of High Lectern. Otherwise, it might benefit you to have you smuggled into Easimal. If that’s what you want, again, it’s okay to say it.” I offered.

He regarded the garments I had dug from the pile and raised an eyebrow at them. “It would help the people of Hawria if I did this, right?” he checked.

“That’s my goal. I can’t make guarantees, but it’s what I’m aiming for.”

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The Feather on My Scale: Ch 4

Ptolemy took Wash for the day to introduce him to the halls and keep him out of the way of the guards and staff while Nebra disappeared into the corridors of the palace.  This left Seth and me to walk the grounds to quietly plot our next movement. The teahouse and the massive pond in the midst of my family houses sat, calmly waiting on us to decide to take up residence for the afternoon.

“You would have him use his fire in the temple?” Seth eased into my grasp, settling into a pool of his black robes while I propped myself against the gilded wall for us to watch the edge of the pond and the hunting park beyond it.

“What do you think of him?” I hedged his question.

“I thought him a mouse at first.” He traced cool fingers up my cheek, his dark eyes amused.

“Got a bit of a bite, doesn’t he?” I rolled into his hand to nuzzle at his palm.

“Sure doesn’t appreciate your forward approach. He’s not Ptolemy,” he chuckled.

“None of you are like Ptolemy.” I caught the edge of his thumb in my teeth as the tips of his fingers skimmed my jaw.

“Ptol’s good for you. Wash might be that nice counterpoint. Will have to see, huh?” He leaned closer, kissing my cheek. I let up on his finger to capture his mouth. He pushed for me to move from the wall. I slid down to the side, his hands splayed against my chest.

“What do you think of him? Of his dynamic in our house?” I twisted so he would find a more comfortable perch. He settled into the cradle of my hips. Heat snapped up my sides at his soft pressure.

“I’m not sure yet. Hard to assess in just two hours of talking to him. I don’t get bad feelings off his personality. If anything, he lacks a bit of faith in himself is all. He has no problem asserting boundaries. That’s at least good to see. Though physically attaining those boundaries concerns me.” He nipped at my chest, his eyes playing like that of a cat who had found his mouse.

“I did sort of tread all over his boundaries rather blatantly. I would probably have had the same reaction if somebody did that to me.” I found the crease of his thighs, slipping along ample curves to settle him a bit more fully, if only to ask for some other things to be resolved than just our conversation on the wab.

“Patience, pharaoh.” He wiggled to hear me groan.

“Are we doing something here in the teahouse or are you just teasing?” I flicked a glance to the open doors. He wasn’t usually partial to the possibility of being seen.

“Teasing. It’ll make things more interesting this evening.” He shrugged, the collar of his robes coming loose to give me a view I could die in.

“You’re being mean.” I fixated with a new curve, one that would yield to my touch in mesmerizing ways.

“And you had to bring the wab in.” The lace of his binding was a pure white and tickled against my chest.

“You don’t like him?” I ran the pad of my thumb along the line of lace to admire the texture.

“Not what I said.” His black manicured nails traced circles across my sternum.

“You found someone you want to play with?” I guessed. He slid against me and dammit, if I moved he’d be exposed to the whole courtyard.

“I have my doubts he’d be in favour of my methods.” His eyelashes drifted, gaze sliding away from me. Pink dappled his cheeks.

“Why doubts? It’s not that we’ve exactly given him much of a chance to show us his, how were we referring to it?” I thought back to our conversation from the morning.

“Needs and desires?” Seth sat back to run swirling patterns down my ribs. Heaven had to be real. Black silk robes and white lace made for a great combination. I cleared my throat, nodding. “Nebra makes him nervous. If she makes him nervous, I can only imagine his reaction to me handling him.” He pushed at his black waterfall of hair. Drawing my gaze up from everything I dearly wanted to touch, I caught that wistful look he got in his eye when he wanted to try something and was too scared to say.

“Nebra is a foot and a half taller than him. She’s the same height as me. Most men can be a touch intimidated with someone who can probably headlock them into the afterlife.” I inched my way up from his thighs to petite waist. His eyebrow raised at my motion. “What?” I tried to hide the smile trying to escape from the left corner of my lips.

“I know where you’re going.” His eyes were back to amused cat. He leaned into me once again and I found warm weight in my palms. Yes. Yes, a god exists. There’s this texture thing between that smoothness and silk dripping down my arms and that slight scratch of lace. Amused cat. He was practically purring. “One touch, pharaoh.”

“You’re daydreaming, aren’t you, Sparrow?” I slipped my hands around his binding, under his robes, to his back and tugged him down to look me in the eyes.

“He’s cute.” He didn’t flinch from my staring. A deep tourmaline, boarding on onyx shade returned my gaze, clear and honest.

“Agreed.” I left off my love affair with gemstones to nibble up the column of his throat.

“And I want to fuck him.” He flopped forward, spreading himself across me in dejection.

“Fuck him or be fucked by him?” I went hunting for the hooks of his binding.

“Close to what I’m about to do to you if you get my binding off,” he threatened. I found the eye closure and slipped the first hook. He rose up to give me that you-can’t-be-serious look he likes to throw around. “What? Nebra and Ptolemy had their moment and we’re both in agreement Wash is cute. Now I’m horny. Where’s your equipment when we both need it.”?I got the next hook undone.

“In my room. Reason I said wait until this evening.” He rested his chin in his palm and waited for me to figure it out.

Stopping, I waited for our conversation to replay. I caught the drift, kissed his forehead, and fought to get the hooks closed again. “I swear, your sleeves are deep enough you carry around books, how do you not bring along everything else?” I returned the last hook back to its rightful place.

“You’ve seen me drop my books out of my sleeves.” He leaned back once more, this time pulling his robes back across paradise.

“Alright, yes, I see how that could be awkward.” I crossed my hands behind my head to rest against.

“Ptolemy took an instant liking to him. Probably reminds him of a lost puppy. Nebra has gone completely big sister on him.” Seth slid off of me, his robes gracing me with somewhere to hide while I tried desperately to pull myself back together. That was not going to be achieved any time soon with the soft tops of his thighs giving me a glimpse of more white lace.

“Will there be jealousy, do you think? What if he’s a one-person type of person and doesn’t want to share? For all we know, he may have zero interest in any of us.” I offered up that thought.

“And what then, Henu? If he had no interest?” He rose, putting his wardrobe back in order.

“He has the freedom to keep to himself. I won’t take that from him. As I won’t take it from any of you.” I rolled to lean on my hand, regarding his delicate gracefulness.

“Then if there is jealousy, we work it through and see what the next best choice is for all of us.” He shrugged. Pulling a red lacquer comb from his sleeves, he settled on a low cushion to work his floor-length locks back into obedience. “These moments, off on our own, are nice sometimes. A little less coordination. But watching the dogpile that is you, Nebra, and Ptol is also fun. I have to wonder how long it would take, if he’s disposed to that kind of thing, before he gets in the midst of it all.” He watched the koi fish form patterns in the pond below the teahouse, but his gaze was half focused. He was off in his own world.

“For now, it will behoove us to just have him as my Heirophant. I’ve needed someone to take over the regency for too many years. Adom has needed to be replaced since his prejudices started leaking out. I just didn’t know any of the staff well enough to take over the spot, and it felt weird.” I leaned against the wall once more.

“You’ve seen him for three hours and you trust him more than the same staff you’ve seen for the last fifteen years?” His words held the lilt of skeptic amusement, but no ill intent.

“You should have seen him in there, Seth. He’s this gentle wave. He gathers, and there’s nothing ostentatious about his methods. Genuine concern and quiet. At first, I thought him timid, but then I found fire in his eyes. There’s a rod of silver in his spine.” I admired the flurry of clouds passing by the dome panels, sending sparks of scattering fuschia and lavender across the sky.

“You think he might be the one that can unite the classes?” His voice sank to a whisper, a note of concern warning me to keep the conversation constructed carefully.

“My people are dying keeping this sinking ship afloat.” The rain of sparks sent slithering ripples of orange bands across the panels.

“The mariners?” Seth studied my interest. I nodded mutely. The mariners. A scattering of outsiders, they were the detested of the villages.

Ramses had picked me up from the street, buying me from my dying mother when I was no more than a year. He brought me into the palace and put his faith in my abilities. Mariners were in my blood, though. The palace had no memory of where I had come from. Ramses, upon his deathbed, had left it with me, though, that I had come from the mariners, and that my mother had died. He knew nothing of my father. I was left to wonder what, if any family relations I had.

“You think he could traverse the hierarchies?” He turned to the low red table next to him, poured water into a pair of glasses, and handed me one.

I contemplated the cut glass, shards of orange and purple sparkling against it from the dome panel reflection. “Screw the attracted bit for the moment, Seth. I think he can. I really do. His fire is gentle. This is something that I can’t control. I’m bound to my role and so much of it is hinged on the role of religion that I just can’t wrap my head around. I have to work in these roles that make no sense. I still don’t understand what Ramses’s purpose was of me. But if I need a priest, I need one that can do what the other priests can’t. I need one that can work magic. So many of the Mubharaktan have been thrown out, that not very many in the temples, the common people, have seen them up close. They wouldn’t know what he’s doing. It would be real to them. It was real to us.” I sipped at the water.

“Then we will let the sticks fall and count our fortunes on the stars,” Seth reassured.

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Fyskar: Ch 11

Seonaid and Fearchar watched time slip by. Plants grew, and the seasons changed from dry to wet. Callum and Albin grew out of their baby fat.

“It was into their third or fourth year that I was taken in by the doctor of the village when he learned I had talent for healing. Ajuji had come down with a seasonal cough, but he feared the doctor and refused to see him. I provided him a dose of one of my simple tinctures to still the aggravation. Kgomotso, whose uncle was close to the doctor, told his family. Soon enough, everyone knew that I had cured Ajuji’s cough. I trained in their way and contributed my own learnings in earnest. The man taught me the various plants and insects, animals, river creatures of the forest and how to harvest and store them.

“He taught me how to render dyes to be used for clothing and ceremonies. I remember the first time trying bat. That was a horrifying experience, more so than the snakes.” He quivered at the memory, the crunchy leather scratching across their senses.

“He was a great man. I don’t think anyone in the village knew how old he was. Everyone referred to him respectfully as Baba or elder. He was the one who blessed me with the name Impundulu, making me a formal member of the village the night I saved Lindelwa from being taken by a crocodile. The beast was later eaten.” He flexed his hand, remembering touching the creature. Its hide had been thick and scaled, wet from the river, yet warm from its daytime sunning. The deep bellow in its throat as he had passed the fear he felt into the animal had resonated through his bones. “It’s amazing how much fear a human can contain within themselves.” He looked up at them, trying to fight that moment of panic all over again.

“Baba died in the middle of the wet season when Callum and Albin had started to speak full sentences. The village mourned in such a wretched way I never thought we would come out of it. I was entrusted with his funeral pyre, and Amina and Tau provided the ceremony for accepting me as the village’s doctor in place of Baba. I was not nearly so prepared to provide alone. He knew so much and left too soon,” Eoin confessed.

He stood in the darkness, embers sparking up through the canopy of the trees to burn out near the stars. His lower half was wrapped in a fine white, grey, maroon, and green patterned cloth, a belt of fur holding it at the waist. His feet had been painted with red mud up to his ankles. A thin string of black and red beads hung from his right shoulder to his left hip. His tattoos glowed in the dusk. A silver bracelet stacked with white shell bangles flashed at his wrist. A net cape-like necklace, worked finely with small white and dyed red shells and fur, draped from his neck to his shoulders. Smudged red markings ran in parallel from his hairline, down the middle of his eyelids to his chin. In one hand, he held what appeared to be a heavily decorated gourd. In the other, a long walking stick with a bulbous end to it, feathers tied at the base of the protrusion.

“Wha’s Impundulu?” Fearchar asked, a tingle of fear rippling up his skin as Eoin battled with his emotions once more. Eoin allowed the ceremonial outfit to melt away to his regular clothing.

“It’s based on a legend from Amina, Tau, and Baba’s old tribe. A massive bird that lives in the clouds of storms. He is the size of a human, a grand white and black beast. When he lands, he brings down lightning upon the land. It is thought to be a bad omen and drinks blood, which I could have done without knowing. Baba said that I must be the lightning bird’s human form. The villagers thought that I must be a protective spirit. Maybe bad omen should have been considered more. Not like it did much good.” He twisted a metal stick that flashed silver in his fingers.

“Your hairstick?” Seonaid motioned to the instrument. He handed it to her, ginger with it in his thoughts. She gently took it from him to look it over. It was graciously carved with tiny animals that led up to the stick’s head, a fan shape with a bird carved in it. The animal’s wings opened wide, little lines zig-zagging away from it.

“It wasn’t always a hairstick. It had been a bracelet. Later I had the metal straightened to use as a hairstick.” He looked down at his bare wrists.

“The bracers?” Fearchar guessed.

“They came later.” Eoin nodded.

“Is this where Albin and Callum are now?” Seonaid returned the stick and turned to wander down the centre lane of the village as the sun rose to dispel the night. Eoin stopped short, watching the children play in his dreams. Seonaid flinched at a squeezing unease in her chest. “Eoin?” she turned back to him. He flicked a glance past her to rising smoke and dust at the edge of the tree line. She turned to see what he was staring at.

“The villagers called this place Egret Nest. Massive, beautiful birds they are, egrets, that is. They congregate in great colonies in trees with other birds of the rivers. In this way, they protect each other.” His focus turned to the village again, a sad happiness masking his emotions. Fearchar stood next to him, watching as the scene in the village shifted.

The villagers were an industrious, generous bunch. Huts extended from what was a small site deep into the forest. Amina and Tau brought many newcomers home with them. Friendships were made. The seasons flowed through the trees. Albin and Callum aged with their playmates. They grew taller and leaner. Their brilliant white hair was allowed to grow long.

Eoin provided care to sick villagers. He helped to ease both birth and death for the people. He was in the process of selecting a young man to begin apprenticing. Fearchar couldn’t quite ease the sick knot of fear from his gut, though, and Seonaid continued to watch the smoke and dust on the outside of the village, never quite leaving.

“I travelled with Amina and Tau to the regional market on many occasions through the years we spent there. I was able to collect necessary ingredients that our forest could not provide us with. There were these rumours, though, at the markets. Family and friends of friends would go missing. I was not regarded kindly by some of these people, and eventually, I stopped travelling to the market due to the animosity.” He walked back to his little cabin and garden.

“The boys had to be in their fifth year, I want to say. A few months after the crocodile. A few more months after Baba died and left me as his replacement. Callum and Albin were born at the dawning of spring here on the Isle, but I slowly lost track of time in the forest of the Egret Nest.” He lifted a stick from the side of his cabin and dug at the weeds in his little garden.

Albin and Callum ran up, excitedly speaking over each other with various low notes and clicks. Fearchar and Seonaid, perplexed, glanced at each other. “Their first language was that of the village. They never learned to form our language. It was how I communicated with them.”

He eased the boys’ speech and had them talk more slowly. Eoin looked up at the growing smoke and dust cloud. The now setting sun thrust bloody fingers through the clouds, turning the world a burnt red. Shouting and screaming erupted around them. Black smoke from the farthest end of the settlement billowed up and cast murky orange shadows on the trunks of the trees. A spark lit. The forest roared. Men, women, and children rushed up the path past Fearchar and Seonaid as Eoin took the boys and ran with the crowd.

Fearchar and Seonaid hurried after him. Loops of cord settled about their necks, stalling their progress. Snapping metal and cries and screams were barely audible above the growing bellow of the flames.

“Eoin!” Fearchar shouted as he watched the man fall, protecting his children. Men that weren’t members of the village crowded around those trapped in the nets. Eoin was pulled away from his boys. He fought and clawed at the men, seeking out bare skin where he could but crumpled with a solid kick to the stomach. Manacles and a collar were snapped on him. The boys were soon cuffed and linked to him.

Eoin looked up at Seonaid and Fearchar, a bruise forming at the corner of his eye. His lip was split and bloody. “Egret Nest burned to embers. Thirteen of the villagers died that night, including three playmates of my boys and my apprentice. The men were slave traders, and our village, with so little protection, was easy pickings. They destroyed everything that was home for my people. I could do nothing for them.” He fell back with Fearchar and Seonaid, dropping from the memory through the ground into his black void. The manacles evaporated with the memory.

The doctor released Seonaid and Fearchar back to their house. Eoin rubbed at his face and his temples. He drew in a steadying breath and turned to the couple. They blinked back at him, startled at the revelation.

The fire had died down. By the angle of the grey light, it was well past the midday meal. Eoin’s stomach growled in the quiet of the room. Fearchar got up from the rug, grabbed his cloak, and left to retrieve another stack of peat flats. Seonaid prepared the griddle for the midday meal quietly. Eoin moved out of the way and leaned back against the bed frames, lost in his thoughts.

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Fyskar: Ch 10

“Dad! Dad, dad, dad, dad, da-“

Yes. Hi. Hello. I hear you. What? Eoin motioned his made-up signs for the two boys to stop clamouring for his attention. He blew out a puff of air, sweaty strands lifting in the humidity. His field lay partially fallow, the summer rains having flattened the leftover grain stalks from the harvest. The note in his sons’ voices, though, edged on panic, drawing him from his questions of if he’d ever get the field set for growing a batch of root vegetables.

Callum grabbed Eoin’s hand before he set his hoeing stick down. The boy’s internal communication was faster than depending on his father to understand the village’s language. “Water. Help!”

Broken images of a tree, a rock, a waterfall skipped through Eoin’s mind. Small bugs, footprints, and frogs popped in through the unstrung information. Brightly patterned clothing flapped and whacked against the edge of the river. A crocodile sunning on an opposite bank held much of the young boy’s focus for the memories he shared.

A shot of cold dread dripped from Eoin’s fingers. Albin, always the more anxious of the two, grabbed his brother’s hand and tugged for him to hurry.

Eoin dropped the stick, using a simple whistle words he had learned to make through his handicap. “Where?”

Albin let go of his brother and took his father’s other hand. This was not the time to be wasting on village words. “Pools. Buhle and Cebisa. Clothes. Played with Khethiwe and Lindelwa. Lindelwa’s left.” Images of his two playmates building mud huts with sticks and helping their mothers clean small clothes tumbled from the boy in snaps and disorganized inversions.

“Is anyone else there?” Eoin scooped up Albin and let Callum dash ahead.

“Aunt Amina find help.” Albin clung to his father. Not more than a few years from toddling, the boy replayed images of women’s skirts and Lindelwa’s name being screamed, almost blinding Eoin to the world.

“We’ll find Lindelwa, Albin. We will make everything right. We’ll have the whole village out looking for her.” Eoin tripped over a tree root when another image from his son caught him off balance – a crocodile lunging up from the murky river. Albin clung tighter, shoving a thumb into his mouth. Eoin leaned his head against Albin’s, the little boy tucking into his father’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll find Lindelwa.”

“Help?” Albin’s forest-green eyes threatened tears.

“We’ll find her.” Eoin shielded his fears from the boy. Too many predators crept through the forest and sat beneath the water surface. He didn’t need to be feeding those thoughts into his son’s mind. The boys showed early signs of their inheritance, communicating through memory and image. Contributing fears and assumptions would not help their tangled concept of the world at the moment.

The pathway dragged at his bare feet. Mud from the first downpour of the season lay fresh that morning. Puddles filled with water flies and frogs created sticky hazards to be avoided. Fleeting clouds of tiny biting bugs swarmed them in the shadows and evaporated in the dappled sun. Eoin chased Callum, almost out of sight, scurrying along the riverbank path.

Panicked chatter rustled in the approaching deep vegetal undergrowth. Callum disappeared around a clump of shrubbery. Eoin skirted a tree to find several handfuls of the village already gathered. Tau motioned for Eoin to join him at the river edge. Buhle, her hair and skirts sopping wet, legs muddy up to the knees, held out her hands for Callum and Albin. They ran to her, exchanging worried greetings.

“Tau?” Eoin struggled with the Chief’s name.

The large man, busy scanning the water’s edge, held a hand out to Eoin. Furrowing his brow, the white-haired man set a hand in the leader’s.

“Cebisa says she’s seen crocodiles in the river recently. Said with the rain today, she had hopes they would have gone farther down river to the banks where better food lies.” Tau used Eoin’s means of communication rather than taking the time to hope the man would understand his village’s words. “We have sent runners to summon help in the village.”

Eoin swallowed, the levity of the situation sinking in. “When was she last seen? Where?”

Tau waved over the small woman, her hands wringing nervously in a damp kente. A short series of words passed between the two, leaving Eoin waiting, a rising prickle climbing up his shoulders.

Cebisa turned from Tau to Eoin, looking to Tau for a reassuring nod before offering a damp-wrinkled hand. Eoin kept his touch light. “Lindelwa?” He pulled a memory from his mind of the little girl, not more than a handful of years older than his boys.

Lindelwa’s mother pulled her hand away, startled at the contact. Amina emerged from the crowd and put a reassuring arm around Cebisa, whispering a few words in her ear. The woman buckled, wailing against the tribe leader’s wife.

A splash startled everyone at the edge of the river. A small, shrill cry bounced off the trees, sending monkeys scurrying through the canopy. Birds took to the air to escape the fleeing troops.

Eoin and Tau exchanged a terrified look. Slipping in the mud with several other men at the riverside, they dashed for the noise. Low lying limbs and leaves held back their speed. Around him, the men cried, “Run! Run! Watch out!” The river twisted, dumping them out of the forest and against a shallow bank leading to a broad series of sandbars.

Amid these sticky sandbars sat a pile of driftwood and upturned stumps. A cry echoed from the stack, but no one saw where it came from.

It was the sunning crocodile, almost three times the length of a man from snout to tail tip, that pointed them to Lindelwa. A small, khaki grey lump clung to the hook in a stump, curled up with her feet tucked under her. Big eyes begged for rescue.

An elderly man, known as Baba in the village, caught up with the group. He slammed his staff against a rock, the gourds strapped to the top rattling and rocking. Eoin watched, confused, as the man shouted at the sky and the river, at the earth. Soon though, the rest of the group bowed.

Baba pulled a handful of sticky mud from the bank, shoved his thumb into the ball, and wiped a line of it on each man’s brow who came up to him. Eoin stood back, toes in the water, wondering when they would cross the channel, if they would cross it, and rescue the little girl.

A warm hand on his shoulder startled Eoin. “We will distract it. Three men will go back up the river to the shallow crossing and come around the bank on the other side. We need a volunteer to get out in front of it, turn the beast’s attention. We have the group that will go up against it on this side and another that will come up behind it.” Tau, eyes focused on the creature circling the wood detritus, chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“Do you need me to be the volunteer?” Eoin asked, flashbacks of his family’s death tumbling out uninvited on his tether with Tau. Fear for his children having no father and witnessing his gruesome death sat uppermost in his mind.

“If you do not wish to be the volunteer, we can see if someone else will do it. If so, which position would you take?” Tau’s fingers tightened as the beast opened its maw and settled in to watch the girl.

“Honest, I have children of my own to see to. I would not leave them now. I would rather join the group in back. If it is something you need me to do, though, and no one else can, then don’t let Albin and Callum see this.” Eoin pulled his hair up and knotted it out of the way.

“Let me see what everyone else says.” Tau dropped their connection and returned to the group of men on the bank, light brown mud across brows creating a cohesive partnership. Conversation flittered around the men as they split into groups. The village chief waved for Eoin’s attention. “Go with Sifso and Nkosi.”

Eoin returned the hand motion and joined with two short, stocky men at the water’s edge beneath a massive upturned tree root. All three pulled off their khanga to hang on the branching snarls above their heads. Sifso and Nkosi tightened the twist in their xai to keep the protective garment from coming off. One look at the crocodile forced Eoin to consider the need to obtain a similar undergarment if he survived this incident intact.

The two men’s speech was too fast for Eoin to keep up. He watched their gestures and eye movement to develop an idea of their plan. When Nkosi stopped for a breath to listen to Tau’s next set of directions, Eoin motioned for Sifso to mime out what was happening once more.

Baba’s gourds rattled again, drawing everyone’s attention. Eoin took his cue and followed Nkosi and Sifso back up the bank to a sandbar. They descended through the middle of the channel through little islands and shallow streams breaking up the river. The sun beat down on Eoin’s group while the far bank men scrambled to find a way up the deep side. Another rattle, muffled beneath the breeze, the stream, the scream of birds, sent Eoin’s heart pounding.

The far bank and near bank men had their position. Tau swam out to the front. A pit dropped in Eoin’s gut. He had not expected the chief to act as bait for the sunning beast. Regret twisted in his chest.

Tau called out to the little girl in the debris, reassuring her as he slowly crept into the monstrous creature’s sights. Throat running dry, Eoin swallowed. Nkosi, Sifso, and he paced themselves with the other group’s advance until they surrounded the crocodile. The creature lay as long as four men from snout to tail.

The village chief splashed in front of the creature, turning it from the girl in the driftwood. It whipped around, following the man’s dissonant noises. The other men joined in with cajoling the creature. Eoin, unable to screech and bellow at the creature, desperately tried to keep from getting his feet swiped out from underneath him. The girl descended. Chaos erupted. Too many bodies meshed together in a blend of limbs and voices. Tau shouted.

Hands pushed and pulled Eoin this way and that as men dodged a smashing tail and fought to avoid being impaled on driftwood. He found himself near the creature’s forelimb as it span to snap at prey. Lindelwa floundered in the mud near the baffled man.

Tau had four men pushing against him, escape uppermost in their minds. He shouted at Eoin, pointing to the child. Eoin ducked the press of bodies. Grabbing the girl up under her arms, he dragged her from the sticky mud. Men scattered as the creature thrashed, sending up murk and brown water.

Teeth took over his vision. Cold dread pumped through his fingers. He shoved Lindelwa into someone’s fleeing arms. Hands up, he clamped onto the beast’s lower jaw to divert it from taking his face. The cold drip in his fingertips flooded his senses. His heart squeezed tight. All he wanted was to return safely. The creature grunted before flopping onto its side, a twitch in its limbs.

Eoin stared at the crocodile. Men in the water shouted, at first terror, then confusion. The bank quieted. A bird twirtled in the branches along the bank. Tau trudged his way through deep mud to Eoin’s side. He asked a question. Sitting knee-deep in the waller the creature had made, Eoin looked up at the village leader.

Tau rested a hand on his shoulder. “Did you kill that?” He pointed to the dead creature.

“It scared me?” Eoin’s memory diverted to his aunt and Cathal. This terror. It had to be the same as what had killed Grannd Daleroch’s brother. Horror prickled his palms in sweat. He turned to eye the men watching him. Witches’ fires burned through his mind.

“You really are a godling, then.” Tau let go of Eoin and raised his hands up in the air, shouting proud words. The other men cheered, confusion still spread on some faces. Tau shouted once more, this time the call and response taking.

Men pushed Eoin across the river. Tau returned Lindelwa to her distraught mother. Baba interrupted Eoin’s furtive break from the group of excited men, staff blocking his path.

A wide smile broke through deep crags and crevices in the ancient man’s face. He took up a glob of mud from the bank and held it up to the trees and the sky, sing-crying a blessing over it before swiping a line across Eoin’s brows.

“Godling? I am Sibabalwe.” The man found Eoin’s void.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2023. All Rights Reserved.

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Fyskar: Ch 9

The sun seeped through the seams of the shuttered window and door as Eoin awoke the next morning. He lazily observed the sleeping couple wrapped around each other. Drifting to the realization he had taken them into his dreams and memories, he glanced about the space, free of the peripheral blinders he had worn for months. He released his hold on Fearchar and Seonaid, though he savoured the myriad textures that ran beneath his bare fingers as he did so. Eoin hoped they had not experienced some of his darker memories.

He eased himself from under the warm blankets and stretched in the chill. The leather cloak was warm, but it was heavy, and he had not shed it in ages. He could float away with how light he felt. Glancing around the room, he contemplated a three-foot-long tub propped in a corner. He smiled, anticipating being clean. Sponge baths had gotten him so far in quick furtive moments, but a thorough scrub would be lovely.

Eoin dug through his pack and produced a small bundle of chew sticks of about a hands-width in height. Taking one and a cup of water to which he added rose water and a drop of mint oil, the physician allowed the stick to soften. The doctor procured his pots and jars and cleaning cloths from his pack while he waited on his stick. When it had finished softening, he frayed the end of it and proceeded to clean his teeth with abandon, revelling in the sensation that he could take his time.

Finished with brushing his teeth, Eoin dragged the metal tub over to the fireplace. He had watched Seonaid pull the tub out to the fireplace countless times to bathe and to wash clothing in since he had been a guest in their house. The doctor went and found the massive kettle she kept at the top of her rafters and lugged it to the fireplace.

The bucket was the last thing he’d have to go find. Regardless of his hunting, Eoin could not place it. He glanced back at the sleeping couple. Seonaid was still asleep, but Fearchar regarded him with half-closed lids. 

Bucket? Eoin asked.

Outside, right. Fearchar signalled back quietly around his wife’s form.

Eoin sighed. Well, he was going to have to emerge into the snow anyway, so it was a good enough time. He dragged on his boots and Fearchar’s waxed canvas cloak and gritted his teeth. He dashed out into the tall white powder, his hobnails slipping on the sill stone, sending his heart into his throat. The slam of cold wrapped around his bones and blew the air from his lungs. His eyes stung and watered. Between quickly freezing lashes, he spotted the lip of the metal peeking out at level with the snow. He tugged, breaking it free of the sleet-covered drift, and dragged it into the house. The latch stalled at the door, ice chunks catching in the jam. Eoin closed his eyes, internally cursing at the weather.

Door cleared and closed, he carefully ladled the fluff into the warming kettle. Once the bucket was empty, he retrieved another load, warier of inadvertent ice fall. He poured the hot water into the tub and filled the kettle with the second bucket of snow, and went back for one more load. This one he left near the hearth to heat alongside the kettle.

Digging through his duffel, Eoin extracted several washcloths, a couple of small bottles of liquids, and a carefully wrapped crock. Kneeling, he used the tepid water from the bucket to rinse his hair.

Pulling the cork from one of his bottles, a heady floral scent rippled through the room. Jasmine and rose with spicy notes of citrus and cinnamon, foreign to the Isle, but Eoin enjoyed the fragrance. He relaxed under the smell and poured a small amount of the oily mixture into his hands. He rubbed the mix into his tresses and wrapped it into a bun on the top of his head.

Eoin, turning back to the warmth of the tub, wrinkled his nose in thought. He took in a deep breath, knowing the undershirt that fell to his knees was going to have to come off if he wanted a proper clean. He dearly wished to be clean for once in too many months. It was going to leave him cold, though. He missed his deep baths.

Pouring the second batch of his kettle water into the tub, he stepped into the bath. His bangles clicked together as he found his balance on the slick surface of the tub. It was almost scalding in comparison to the coolness of the room.

Squatting down, he pulled the tails of his shirt up until his legs were covered with water before throwing out his sense of modesty and tugged his undergarment off. The tub was too small to relax in, but it would suffice.

He took his washcloths and his crock. Inside was a thick white paste that he used to rub across his body. This one, too, held exotic scents that wafted through the room, warm and alluring. He breathed in the smell, his heart slowing with the comfort of the familiar.

Eoin washed until he was practically pink. He checked his skin for lesions. Carefully, he rubbed beneath the torc, bracers, and bangles, working the cloth under them until he was able to pull the cloth through. He buffed his skin with another cloth soaked in an oil that left his skin gleaming and soft. The smell was a deep note to the tang and floral of the other soaps. While his skin dried, he took one last cloth to buff and dry the wealth of gold and gems across his body.

“Wha’s in it?” Fearchar eventually interrupted the pale man from his ritual.

Eoin flinched, having forgotten where he was. He glanced at the couple lying under the warm covers and thought. Myrrh, camphor, basil, frankincense, musk, oud, jasmine, rose, beeswax- he rattled off ingredients as he pointed between the bottles and the crock.

Fearchar blinked blankly. “Aye, my fault, Ah got none a’ that.” The handyman lay his head back down.

Eoin shrugged and finished his ablutions. He glanced back at his clothes on the hook and wrinkled his nose. If he was going to be clean, he was going to be clean. He got up from the hearth, went to his duffel, and pulled out clothes.

He set aside a stack of fine linen under shirts and wool knit stockings and dug deeper. From the tube, he produced a pair of white breeches, but not quite made the way Fearchar was used to seeing the mainlanders wear. They rode at the top of the ankle with small iridescent white buttons and embroidered cuffs, leaving his bangles exposed. Then they ballooned out from there. Eoin drew them up around his hips and tightened a drawstring. Around this, he tied a wide, long red cloth belt. He replaced his clean clothes into his duffel and set a pile off to the side he planned to wash.

Pulling back on the waxed cloak and boots, he took the tub and its contents out and dumped it off over the refuse pile at the side of the house. He returned and set another bucket of snow to melt in the kettle, then hung the canvas back on the peg at the door.

This time, when he settled, he set aside a small box of black powder from his apothecary cabinet, a little heating pot, measuring spoon, and cups.

His hair fell to curtain his actions from Fearchar. In frustration, Eoin pulled his wet locks back up and twisted it, shoving a silver stick through it to hold the bundle up. He returned to measuring out his powder before setting these off to the side of the fireplace.

Eoin went to his duffel and produced a folded red rug elegantly decorated with a yellow mandala and blue notes. A water ring from the tub darkened the stone at the hearth where he laid out the textile. He settled himself upon the wool tufts and enjoyed the heat seeping into his naked skin. Flexing his fingers and his wrists, he worked the stretch up through his arms, reached to the ceiling, arched his back and opened up his chest. He closed his eyes and breathed in as he slipped into one pose that flowed into another.

Fearchar watched, mesmerized at the contortions before him. Eoin’s lithe figure flexed and bowed as he continued to breathe through the movements. The redhead wasn’t sure how much time slipped through his fingers. Eventually, the pale man returned to a deeply cross-legged position, his arms extended to his kneecaps.

About five breaths into the settled position, the water in the kettle hit a boil. The doc smiled gently as he opened his eyes and came back to himself. He poured the hot water into his tiny pot and added his black powder, stirred it, and allowed it to steep. The aroma, warm and comforting, permeating the house.

Seonaid woke to the smell, keenly interested in why it was causing her stomach to growl. She sat up, and Fearchar scooted his way from the middle of the bed to the edge with her. Eoin pulled the stick from his hip-length hair and shook it out, sitting next to the fire to help it dry.

“Why does my house smell strange? Braw good, but strange, Eoin.” The handyman’s wife looked pointedly at the pot before noting his odd clothing choice. “You really do have body markings.” She stared. The red bands against his pale skin around his forearms lay clear in the light of the fireplace.

He glanced at her quizzically, handing her a hot cup of a brown liquid the black powder had created. She breathed in the earthy smell. He handed a second cup to Fearchar, who peered at it sceptically. The doctor shrugged.

Eoin blew on the liquid in his cup and tested the temperature. He sighed. It had been months since he had last tasted the magnificence that was qahva. The man relished in the warm, bitter tang and knew that he was about to have a pounding headache from not having drunk it in months but couldn’t care less.

The last man of the Fyskar looked up in surprise, realizing that even though he was, for all essential purposes, home, it was no longer what he remembered. He now had comforts that were not from the Isle, and he missed those comforts terribly. Eoin looked down at his tiny cup, confused by this revelation.

Fearchar tested the liquid and found it more bitter than his ales, yet fascinating. Seonaid joined him in the same judgment. They eventually emerged from the bed and moved the frames to the wall to make space in the room.

Seonaid pulled on her petticoat, stays, and a shawl, forgoing her sleeves and overjacket, while Fearchar wrapped his great kilt around his waist. He popped his head outside to see what damage the storm had wrought and closed the door swiftly before too many heaping flakes made their way into the entryway. “Snowin’ ‘gain. If this keeps up, gettin’ ta’ the village’ll be right out.”

Eoin contentedly sat at the hearth while the other occupants of the house went about their morning routines. Eventually, the man tested the fringes of his hair and decided they were dry enough. He pulled on a long loose white shirt and an equally long loose red vest and made himself at home back onto his rug.

“So, you escaped the Isle and even England on a ship and went where?” Seonaid passed bowls of fish porridge to Eoin and her husband.

The physician ate gratefully, aware that today would be exhausting and he would need the energy. He was hoping the qahva was going to provide him with some fortification for the toll. Eat first, he encouraged.

It would be late into the afternoon before Eoin released the couple again. They wolfed down their meals and set aside the dishes. Fearchar and Seonaid finished the last of their little cups of bitter liquid. Eoin collected and laid the cups aside, planning on washing them near the end of the day when his story was finished.

He motioned them to the rug and moved away from the hearth’s edge. Sitting triangularly to them, Eoin laid his hands out and waited. This time, it would be their decision if they truly wanted to know him rather than pushing his memories at them.

Fearchar and Seonaid grabbed his hands and leapt into his void.

“I ended up in a port town where the Captain told me I could start over. He left me with a pouch of coin that would have gotten me through a full year of high living in London. One of the seamen, Daniel Black – good man, though a bit deep in his bottles, directed me to a man he knew in the port, Mr Emir. He also made sure I got a change of clothes for myself and the boys.

“The dress had sufficed in getting me to the Captain, but the used tunic and pants I had gotten from Black were threadbare at best. Mr Emir navigated us through the market and got the boys and me outfitted for a long trip. I ended up with a massive cloak, having found that I burned badly in the sun there. The boys we made sure had large hats and long clothes to cover their skin, lest they burn like I did that first day there. That was the last I saw of Captain and Daniel. I do hope they are still well.” Eoin smiled up at them, taking Fearchar and Seonaid through the warm memory of Morocco.

The incense that wafted through the streets and the spice of the markets was mesmerizing. The sun stood out brilliantly, casting rough shadows from the white and yellow stone of the building faces. The market blossomed with vibrant coloured shades covering tables of fruit and vegetables of such a variety that Fearchar and Seonaid had never seen before.

They found themselves cast from the market into a sandpit of such a size that they could not form a comprehensive thought of it. “Emir called this place the Sahara. He told me it goes for miles in all directions.” Eoin led them up a massive pile of sand that he told them was a dune. He pointed out camels being packed up for travel. A breath of wind blew the scene apart.

They arrived in a grassland village, the mud walls baked and cracked in the hot sun. The market was as large as the one they had left in Morocco, but the people were no longer a soft mahogany colour with sharp features. Their noses flared, and their eyebrows thickened.

The people of this area wandered the streets in varying shades of autumn grass and deep forest shadow. Fearchar and Seonaid stared in wonder. Growing up in their little villages on the Isle with no frame of reference for the rest of the world, the colours, the smells, the textures were overwhelming in their intensity.

“I found myself at the end of my journey with Mr Emir. He had seen fit to get me through the trade route. I could have returned with him back to Morocco. I had been able to care for an injured man on our way, and he felt my skills were valuable.

“However, it was in the market that I decided I wouldn’t be returning with him, kind though he was. That’s where I met Amina.” He took them to a much-loved memory. She sat in her stall, encased in a patterned white and blue wrap. Food layout on brilliant yellow and turquoise blankets around her. She, though, was not quite like the other people walking around her. The market woman had splotches of pinkish cream skin swirled in among her deep brown. “She said that the tree spirits of her tribe paint her in the night.” He knelt down next to her, motioning to buy a few fruits. The boys were enthralled with her spots. She grinned at the babes, entranced with their curiosity.

The twins were big enough to start crawling and making trouble. Callum and Albin pulled themselves up to her baskets of fruit and peered inside. They poked at the spiny fruit, utterly fixated. She laughed at their antics. The small woman motioned for Eoin to sit next to her while she showed how to get into one of the spiny fruits he paid for.. The lost man sat down next to her in the shade where she motioned for him to remove his hood. He lowered it, pointing out the wound at his throat, hoping that she understood him. She looked at him, concerned, and motioned for him to let her see it. Poking at the raised pink flesh along his neck near his torc, where his sunburn had faded, she found his voice.

“Eoin,” he told her, motioning to himself. 

“Amina,” she replied, gesturing to herself. 

“Callum, Albin.” Eoin pointed out the two boys.

They proceeded like this for the day as customers came through the market and bought her produce. The customers stared uneasily at Eoin and the two boys who had fallen asleep in his lap. He surely looked strange to them; he understood that much.

With the sun halfway set in the sky, she packed up her produce. Not sure what else to do with himself, Eoin helped her gather her remaining vegetables and tubers. As she hefted a massive basket onto her head, she looked at him questioningly, having asked him something he could not understand. He looked about himself and the ground they had occupied, unsure if he had left something undone.

A burly man, such a deep shade he must have stepped out of the night, came up to the woman with a loving smile. She spoke with him, and the man turned to Eoin, speaking slowly to the father. The ghost of a man flinched, shying away. Amina’s man approached him and clasped him about the shoulder with a hand that Eoin was confident could have crushed his skull if the man had thought of it.

Eoin turned from the man to the woman, confused. The man plucked one of the sleeping twins from Eoin’s arms, hefted him to his shoulder, and steered Eoin from the market to follow the woman.

“It would take me several months to understand that Tau and Amina were the head of their tribe. Amina and Tau were made aware I could communicate through touch, but they did not willingly try to seek the void, and I do not like forcing it upon people if possible. They thought me a lost godling or a spirit, even a witch’s consort of some kind and tried to treat me in such a differential way.

“We walked for several days until we left the grassland and entered a formidably vast wet forest. The leaves of these trees are massive. Vines, shrubs, it’s different from the forests of Scotland and England. It’s warm and damp. In it are these brilliantly coloured birds that sing the most beautiful music. Monkeys, frogs, snakes, these monstrous creatures called crocodiles, the forest was a foreign world turned on its head.” He showed them the wildlife of the rainforest. They had never seen such tall trees or felt such humidity. The creatures were as strange as the plant life. Fearchar was the first to realise that Eoin’s void was a reflection of this forest.

“It felt like I had stepped into a fairytale that I had never heard before. I feared that maybe I had already walked into The Forest, but I could not believe I had died to only live on without my voice or to not see my clan on the other side. I was terrified from the moment I had entered that marketplace to the time I entered their village.

“There were many people in this place.” The forest climbed around their shelters to protect from the sun. “The children were the first to approach me, as I was as foreign to the people as they were to me. Several of them had the beautiful spots like Amina; others varied in their shades of brown, blending with the forest around them. It was the ones that looked like me that surprised me the most,” he chuckled, showing them the twins looking at another pair of twins. The only difference was the build of their bodies and the texture of their hair. Fearchar and Seonaid looked up at him, confused. 

“But you are Fyskar. Are they too? You said you are the last of your clan.” Seonaid crouched to study the two pairs of twins playing with rocks on the ground.

Eoin shook his head, his smile slipping. “No, sadly not Fyskar. Some of them had family that looked like them. They had been ostracized from the villages, and Amina and Tau brought them to this village, giving them a safe place to start over. They told me they and the village medicine man came from a long way away, where they boarder a vast sea. They collected those tossed aside by their own people on their way to where they established Egret Nest.

“Those that looked like me, save for eyes the colour of the sky above the Sahara, their eyesight was poor, some completely blind. They do not have the same ability to communicate through touch as I do. I tried with so many of them to see if they could. I’m not sure what afflicts them, but it is apparently not a rare trait to crop up in the area. They suffer the sun worse than the boys and I do. Their burns can turn splotched and raised, sometimes growing too large, leaving them with a sickness that I cannot cure. Amina told me, when I finally started to learn one of their many languages, that her spots happen gradually while those like me are born pale already.”

He showed them his thatched wattle and daub hut and plot of land he had been allowed by the village. The building stood out against the rest of the village. A short hut occupied the forefront, and a minuscule hallway sent itself backwards to a rectangular building with a round protuberance at the end. “They allowed me to build as I wanted out on the edge. Wattle and daub in their way was easier than rock, so it went up quickly enough.”

A small flock of mixed game birds cawed back and forth around the house. Off to one side lay a small vegetable plot. Against the walls grew herbs and flowers. On the opposing side stood a large pen with a flock of brown and white speckled goats consisting of a buck and three does.

“Goats were a different beast to learn to work with. Like every other Fyskar’s flock and herd, my flock of wool sheep had been taken by the Daleroch. I was pleased to return to caring for a few four-legged beasts, even if it were the strange creatures. I could not harvest wool from them to my disappointment, but I had no one to spin and weave, so it was probably for the better.” The buck shoved its head through the fence and bleated appealingly. Eoin grabbed up a handful of dry grass at the edge of the fencing and offered it to the creature while gently rubbing its forehead. An easy smile skimmed his lips at the memory of the goats.

“The boys formed fast friendships with the other young children of the village. Amina tended to take them when she went to visit with the other mothers. Her own daughter had already left to join with another village. She hoped to dote on grandchildren, and Callum and Albin proved to be a good surrogate for her desire.

“I did end up with a pair of older lads, Ajuji and Kgomotso, from Tau’s recommendation, who took a fancy to my odd way of farming and mending and cooking and tolerated my handicap. We formed a makeshift sign language, those two and myself. Soon enough, with their conniving, I had secured myself a suitable enterprise in cultivating soft fruit and creating rather passable cranachan and black bun. They helped me bribe my way into good standing with the more sceptical villagers.”

Fyskar: Ch 8

He had considered more than once her suggestion to find employment at a big house. Then he was reminded of his impediment at every turn. It would never work.

Miles passed underfoot as he left the highlands and the lowlands. It took him four weeks to walk and catch carts from the Hebrides to Bath with his two boys. His grandmother had provided him with enough to see him to the wall, but it became more difficult to afford substantial meals for the babes.

He exchanged his medical talents here and there for milk and mash. Some took pity on him, seeing a mute ward in a poor homespun dress who needed the help.

In the outskirts of Bath, exhausted and famished, Eoin found himself on the outside of a lopsided fence and open gate for a wheelwright’s shop. The tinking thump of mallet against metal and the call of master to apprentice soothed his soul and promised a place to soothe his aching feet.

Eoin eased into the courtyard and found an out-of-the-way stack of crates to spread his skirts. He had to admit, stays were uncomfortable, but the skirts were much warmer than his kilt, if restrictive. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Albin and Callum were waking in the sling. This gave him a moment to pull out a canister of milk a farmer gave him that morning in exchange for a poultice for the poor cow’s lame hoof. He poured the heavy cream off into a pair of small, long earthenware pots with fine spouts and cloth nipples.

The boys, over the past couple of months, had gained weight steadily. They were beginning to eat mashed foods when he could find some to provide them with. He knew they would be better off with a wet nurse, but he could neither afford the cost to place the children with one nor afford the time. His pressing goal was to escape the island and find a new home for himself and the boys. They were old enough to hold the pots for themselves, as long as they had a prop to rest against.

With a quick twist, he had their slings undone and had them set up amongst the crates. Rolling his shoulders, he enjoyed the sense of freedom from their weight for a moment. He got them settled in for their feeding when a sharp twang and a guttural scream caught his attention.

One of the apprentices was on the ground, bent over his hand. The wooden wheel had lost its metal band. The shine of silver snapped out at an odd angle. The wood smouldered, threatening to light.

The master bellowed for other assistants to help him douse the wheel before it was ruined. Meanwhile, the apprentice murmured in a wretched, crumpled heap. Eoin checked that Callum and Albin, quickly pulled from his basket his small bag of medical materials, and rushed to the assistant.

The man looked up at him, tears swamping deep brown eyes. The assistant tried his best to still his agony, facing what he perceived to be a woman. “Who are you? Where’d you come from?”

Eoin motioned for his hand. The assistant allowed him to see it. The young apothecary hated doing it, but he had to touch the man. “It’s all right; it’ll be all right. Let’s get the blood to stop first,” Eoin soothed the man’s tension.

The apprentice stared in awe at Eoin. “You’re a-!”

Eoin pinched at the gash in the man’s hand, stalling the seeping red.

“Damn.” The man crumpled over his inflamed extremity.

Eoin clamped down on the artery at the wrist to still the flow of blood and pushed the apprentice into a better position to continue work on the wound. “Keep it quiet if you want to keep your hand.” Eoin spread a thick, cold balm with a coagulant across the pad of the young man’s hand to staunch the flow. He placed a plaster and wrap around it in quick succession. “This needs to be sewn when it can be cleaned properly and the swelling has gone down.”

“Yes, sir,” the man hissed, breathing through the pain.

“What are you doing to our apprentice!” The master, having sorted the ruined wheel, returned to his man.

“Eh-” the man glanced at Eoin, “H-she was helping me with the cut, sir. I need to get it sewn when it stops feeling like I put my hand in the forge.”

“Damn it, man, I told you that poorman’s steel was going to snap. Too many impurities. Just discard the batch!” the master cursed at a man in the overhang of the building before turning back to Eoin and his assistant. The man in the overhang yelled back something unintelligible. The master waved back a rude reply before turning again to Eoin and the apprentice. “Can’t thank you enough to see to him. What were you doing in here anyway?” The man glanced to the gate. He spotted the babies. “You’re not some runaway harlot, are you?”

Eoin pursed his lips, shaking his head defensively.

“She – she’s mute, sir,” the assistant explained quickly.

The portly man looked down on Eoin pityingly. “I’m sorry, hon. Thank you for helping when you’ve got other littles to look after. May I?” He pointed to the children. Eoin glanced between the man and the twins, uneasy.

The master shambled his bear-like stature over to the children, picking them both up, one in each arm. The children stared up at the big man, fixated with his beard. “Aren’t you two the most adorable things? Yes, you are. You’d get along with my little Rose. Perfect little playmates for her. Yes, sirs. She’s about your age, though Hannah would murder me, yes she would if you stayed on,” he cooed. The children grinned at his baby talk, their first teeth showing.

The assistant dug into Eoin’s rib. “Robin’s a bit soft on kids, got ten of his own at home. Bless Saint Nicholas; they’ve all survived. His wife’s threatened to beat him if she has any more.”

“I heard that, Mr Townsend!” The wheelwright master walked back to Eoin and Mr Townsend.

“You were meant to, Mr Arden.” The assistant pulled his hand into his chest, mewling at the pain. Eoin dug out a packet of white powder and looked around for a water bucket. He found one at the edge of the building. Filling up the ladle, he brought it back, poured the powder into the water, and offered it to the man.

“What’s that?” the master demanded.

Eoin opened his mouth to respond and realised once again that he could not speak. He grimaced, annoyed at his useless situation. It was a simple powder from white willow, meadowsweet, and black elder. It would help bring down the swelling from the wound and keep a fever at bay.

“Give it here, woman.” The assistant motioned, ignoring the master’s question. “I’d take a mallet to the head right now to not feel my hand.” He gulped the liquid down, wincing at the bitter aftertaste. “Willow, sir. Just a simple cottage remedy.”

“All right, William, let’s get you inside. I’ll send Peter out for a proper doc to help patch that up.” The master handed Eoin back the twins. The boys cried, reaching out for the big man, wanting him to pick them up again.

The man chuckled as he took William’s weight. “Yes, I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

The babes turned into Eoin’s shoulders and wailed their protest. Eoin eased them, his hands finding the napes of their necks. “It’ll be okay. He’ll come back; he said that didn’t he?” Rubbing their small backs, he tried to reassure them. The twins eased their wailing to a demanding, hiccupping sniffle.

Robin walked William up a set of rickety steps at the far end of the forge and disappeared into a doorway. The other assistants watched Eoin, unsure what to make of the burned wheel and the woman sitting with a pair of crying babes in their workspace.

Robin returned to them shortly. “Talked to Hannah. She’s seeing to Mr Townsend at the moment. She told me to bring you in. Supper’s about ready.” He offered Eoin his hand. Callum snatched it, wanting up. “Up up?” the man grinned down at the little boy, hefting him up, making the babe squeal jubilantly. Albin followed suit, making demands of the big man. “You’ve got yourself a pair of trouble here, don’t you, miss?” The man smiled.

Eoin waved the man’s hand away, getting up on his own and brushed off his skirts and apron. He went back to the gate, picked up his basket, and stuffed his medicine bag back into it.

William Townsend proved to be the miracle that Eoin needed. His father, John Davis, was a ship’s captain. Having been born a bastard, William treated his father with a difference for his station, but Captain Davis was hard-pressed not to dote on the boy when he saw him again. William told his father about Eoin’s help and let the man in on Eoin’s disguise. Captain Davis offered Eoin and his boys’ safe passage on his ship. Eoin, eager to be away from the Isles, took Davis’s offer without hesitation and shipped out with him the following fortnight.

A month later, having watched the sea tack by at a steady pace, Eoin found himself in a foreign country, in a foreign climate. They had landed in their destination port of Casablanca, Morocco. Captain Davis put him and his children in the care of a guide named Emir, who helped him navigate his way through the Trans-Sahara trade route.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2023. All Rights Reserved.

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