by Ronan Frost
Chapter Five
The warm light of the camp drew me despite the danger. The entire day had passed, and I had not eaten a single thing and I was weak with hunger. Through the trees I saw only a single man as he tended a pot suspended by a rope from an overhead branch over the small fire. A handcart was an indistinct shadow parked on the edge of the light.
As I took a cautious step closer the dog that had been laying at the man’s side sprang to its feet, barking in my direction. The man stood, alerted to my presence and squinting into the darkness. I was shocked to see his two-headed silhouette against the firelight, each head pivoting independently. It was as if I were in a dream, my legs refusing to move. The barking grew incessant and the man called out a challenge to the night.
“Come here boy, I can see you skulking around back there!”
The man’s second head detached suddenly and leapt to the ground, making a screeching noise: a monkey that had been perched upon his shoulder. The man reached down and lay a hand on the dog’s back. The barking stopped.
“It’s warm here boy, come on.” He turned and sat back down, his back once again to me. He raised a hand and beckoned me. “I won’t hurt you.”
I stepped closer, slowly. At the edge of the firelight I stopped. The man was a rotund merchant, his ruddy face framed by an unruly black head of hair and thick beard. The front of his heavy winter jacket was unbuttoned, open to the heat of the fire, revealing a bead of bronze coins, strung through holes in their centers, glowing in the light. The merchant was wealthy, judging from their number. He had resumed eating from the bowl he held up to his mouth, chopsticks working quickly. The white furred dog once again lay upon the ground, nose to belly, one ear rotating in my direction and twitching lazily, but otherwise now apathetic to my approach. His pet monkey however, who had taken up residence once again on the man’s shoulder, glared at me with baleful little eyes. Then I heard a flutter of feathers from the man’s handcart parked at the edge of the firelight. The cart was stacked high with all manner of haphazard items so at first I couldn’t see what had made the noise, and then the movement came again and from the shadows and I distinguished what looked like a pheasant, perched upon the snow crusted rim of one of the wooden wheels. This man seemed a travelling menagerie.
“What’s your name boy?”
“I… I….”
The man pivoted at the hip, looking in my direction. He sized me up. “You might be dressed like one, but I can tell you’re no farmer.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And if you are a solider, it’s high time to find a new profession.” He gave a bark of laughter at his own wit. I tried a smile.
“You look like you’ve had a bad day. Don’t be shy, come on.” He shuffled a little upon the log, inviting me.
The monkey spun to the far side of the man’s shoulder, its tiny face screwed up in comical agitation as it danced. The man distracted it by passing a piece of food from his bowl, and it took it with both hands and became silent, eating with rapid nibbles.
With his bowl upended in one hand and chopsticks in the other he shoveled the last of the stew into his mouth with the quick precise motions of obvious relish. He smacked his lips in appreciation and indicated to the pot with his chopsticks.
“Ahh, not bad! You hungry, boy?”
I peered at the cook pot. The firelight was underneath so it appeared black inside, but stewed vegetables had never smelt so good. Despite the tightness in my gut I shook my head.
“No, thank you.”
The man barked again with laughter. “You can’t stop looking at it, so I’m going to take that as a yes.” He felt at his side and retrieved a large spoon and without raising himself, reached to the pot and ladled out a generous serving into his bowl, which he then gave to me.
“Go right ahead, take it, and sit down.” He reached down and absently ruffled the dog’s thick fur, either in affection or to clean his hands I wasn’t sure. The dog’s ear twitched and tail gave an answering thump-thump upon the snow but its eyes did not open.
For a time, there was silence, and I ate with single-minded purpose, forgetting all else. Each mouthful was steaming hot, tracing a ray of warmth down into my stomach and it seemed I could not swallow fast enough. It felt as if I could keep eating forever, yet all too quickly I found myself scrapping at the empty bowl.
“So where was the battle?” The man waved his chopsticks, indicating to my face. “Looks like you’ll have a scar to remember that one.”
I reached up and my fingers traced over my swollen cheek and the ridge of bone below my eye. It felt numb. “I had an accident.”
“That must have been quite something,” he said.
I swallowed, my mind conjuring up the dizzying vertigo atop the castle wall, clinging by my fingernails with that void between my feet… Before I was pushed…
The ghost.
I shivered, and it shook me back to reality. “I fell,” I said.
There was a long pause, and finally he sighed. “Well then, best we ask no more questions, eh?” His chopsticks waggled in the air with emphasis. “Here, sit yourself closer lad. No, closer, here where it’s warm. Here, let me get you another bowl of soup.”
The man took the ladle again, causing the monkey on his shoulder to give a shriek of annoyance as it clambered to regain balance. This time I without the frenetic rush of quivering hunger that had so taken me before.
I tried to sort the litany of my injuries into order of severity, but I was unable to decide which pain was worse; my fingers stiff and uselessly immobile, my feet like frozen blocks of ice, my head aching, a tightness across my shoulders and back, a pain in my ribs when I breathed. I tried to remain as still as possible, sitting so close to the campfire that the heat singed my eyebrows and made my eyes water, steam rising from my damp clothing. With his boot the man pushed a fresh cord of kindling into the red coals, coaxing them back into the flickering yellow flame. The only fires I had seen were tamed by stone hearth; I had never sat before a fire in the forest before. It was wild and free, bright sparks lofting joyously upward where they merged with the stars. I found myself simply staring into the flicker of flame moving faster than the eye could see, absorbed in the simplicity and untold complexity as it burned; licks of yellow flame consuming the newly placed piece of kindling slowly merging into the bed of red and white coals. At my back the air was cold, the trees melding into a seamless inky black.
It was when I lowered my gaze from the heavens that I noticed him. The boy, half in the shadows.
He would have been about four or five years old, sitting calmly on the edge of the firelight, swinging his feet as he sat upon a fallen tree, his wet hair plastered flat to his face, running rivulets as if he had only moments ago been pulled from the water. He looked up and met my gaze, and an unearthly knowledge in those eyes sent a jarring shudder clanging through my nerves.
The merchant saw the alarm in my eyes and swung his gaze into the trees. The ghost of the boy was gone - nothing there but darkness and the flickering of firelight upon tree trunks. The man shook his head, and turned back to the fire, a quizzical look twisting his features.
“What’s the matter boy?”
“I thought…” I blinked, my vision smearing for a moment. My heart was still racing.
The man’s lips hardened in concern as he once again studied the spot I had indicated.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Here, I think I have just the thing you need.” He placed both hands upon his knees and stood. The dog curled at his feet gave a brief sleepy whine as cold air drafted over the place he had just vacated. With the monkey still balanced upon his shoulder the man walked to his handcart, the pheasant fluttering its wings as the man rummaged around looking for something. I paid this strange orchestra little attention, my eyes locked to that point in the darkness where the boy had appeared, yet there was no sign of movement. I startled to my senses when the man spoke.
“Here, eat this.”
&nbs
p; He passed me a small package wrapped in waxed paper.
“Millet dumpling,” he explained. “It will give you strength.”
I pinched two stiff-jointed fingers together enough to lift the sticky rice ball to my mouth, where it dissolved with delicious sweetness. Almost immediately I felt warmth flush from my core.
“Thank you.”
“My mother made it.” The man belched and shifted his weight upon the log to stretch one leg straight. “I wouldn’t normally give them away, but you look like you need it.”
Inside of me the sweetness seemed to be taking the aches and pains of that long day. I managed to dismiss the vision of the ghost, telling myself it had been a trick of the light combined with my hunger and light-headedness.
The man shifted and broke the growing silence.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“When?”
“Everything. You look like you’re one step away from death, you’re jumping at shadows… Something has driven you.”
I hesitated a moment, unable to put feelings of deep desolation into coherent words, how everything in my life had fallen apart, a pulled thread unravelling the whole tapestry of my worthless life. In the end, I simply said:
“I made a terrible mistake.”
“Your life has yet to run its course, don’t be too quick to judge which turns are the wrong and which are right.”
“My master thinks me a traitor, and I have brought blame on another, someone totally innocent…”
“Is she waiting for you?”
It seemed as if he had been reading my thoughts. Aki. I flushed, and tried to keep my voice level. “No.”
He grunted, using a finger to pluck between his teeth and, finding something, he held it upon his nail and inspected it in the light before flicking it into the fire.
“I can tell when a man is infatuated. And you, my boy, have it written all over your face.”
I shook my head. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Will you go back?”
“It is already too late.”
“But still, your feet drag. You want to go back.”
I nodded. “I have to try to see her again. She is all I can think about.”
“I’m getting the feeling you won’t be welcome wherever ‘back there’ is.”
“No.”
“Then a word of advice. If as you say it’s already too late, then don’t act rashly. Wait a while, let things settle down. There will be time enough later, when you are stronger, to return.”
I took in these words in silence, and we both sat there watching the fire crackle to itself. Suddenly the man gave a self-deprecating laugh, as if amused to discover the somber mood that our ruminations had led us into. He slapped his knees.
“Ah, it’s getting late and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.” He stood and stretched expansively and the monkey at his shoulder, who had been napping, slipped and woke. The man walked into the darkness, feet crunching in the snow that had become crusty with the gathering chill of night, and I heard him noisily urinate against a tree. He then collected some things from his handcart, and when he returned he threw a half-damp blanket in my lap and his own sleeping roll next to the fire.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
By the time the rustling noises of the big man settling into his bedding grew quiet the dying fire had reduced to glow of red spots upon a bed of black. In the silence it made a soft, comforting tinkling like the discordant working of tiny smiths working metal with a thousand hammers. The stars shone bright and clear overhead, and in the distance river frogs croaked at one another. Soon, the man’s light snoring joined the chorus.
I slept well for the first time in my entire life that night, free from the walls of the castle and the will of my master, even the fear of the ghost that haunted me faded. I dreamt of running through a forest path vibrant with life. Glimpsed through the foliage on the trail before me was a man dressed in strange white robes.
When I awoke, the snow-dappled forest was grey with the light of dawn. I stretched, raising myself to an elbow, and then blinked in confusion.
I was alone in a clearing; there was no sign of the man or the handcart. The ash of the fire, the blanket; everything had vanished as if it had never existed.