by Donald Brown
It is the only way, she thought as she went outside. He is not going to come right by himself. You have to do something, Dorothy. You have to take control of the situation.
Strolling down the misty street to the tavern, a mere six hundred yards from their house, Dorothy rubbed her tummy, where her unborn daughter was kicking around lively. She was expecting the child to arrive within the next three weeks and she somehow knew it was going to be a strong and healthy baby. “Don’t worry,” she now murmured, “your daddy will come around. I will make sure of it.”
The Roasting Boar, Zion’s only pub, was quite empty when she entered through the tall doors a few minutes later. It was already past eleven o’clock at night.
Tom and Doctor Ron was sitting at a table by the window, having a conversation with the inn-keeper, an old man with a white beard and a pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. Solomon, the bartender, was calling out requests to one of the local performers who was playing the piano in a dimly-lit area beside the untidy bar counter. George was sitting on a barstool, swaying around and biting his fingernails. The place was stuffy and smelled like stale beer and tobacco smoke.
She walked up to George but before she could say anything, Solomon asked from behind the bar counter: “Anything to drink, ma’am?”
“I’ll just have a carafe of water, thanks,” Dorothy replied, her eyes fixed on her husband. His hair was a tangled mess, his shirt was untucked and his shoulders were stooped. On the counter in front of him stood four empty glasses, while a fifth, half full, was lodged between his elbows, where they were resting on the battered oak wood surface.
“When are you coming home?” she demanded in a low voice.
“What?!” George exclaimed, the sour stench of consumed alcohol on his breath.
“You heard what I said.” She replied coldly.
George turned away from her and took a big swig of his drink.
“Listen to me, George,” she said, planting her feet wide apart and shoving her hands onto her hips. “You have to come home and abandon this act. This isn’t you.”
“Of course this is me.”
“No it’s not,” Dorothy continued adamantly. “The George I knew would never be drinking like this, would never neglect his family like this…”
“I don’t’ care,” George seethed, suddenly fixing his eyes upon her. “I am not interested in looking after you. You are not worth it.”
These words hit Dorothy with a blow.
“What do you mean?” she murmured, taken back, tears forming in her eyes. “I am your wife… we have a daughter on the way… if we just talked about this…”
The piano player had stopped playing his tunes and the handful of patrons were now listening uncomfortably to the confrontation, although pretending not to.
“Didn’t you hear me?” George spat. “You don’t understand me anymore and you don’t know what that war had done to us. You are only obsessed with that doomed baby and with your own interests. Don’t you realize that I can’t help you? Don’t you realize that I don’t want to talk about what I have seen? But, seeing as you are interested, let me tell you!” he added, banging his fist on the table, causing the glasses too clink against each other.
“I have seen babies being murdered before my eyes, women being raped and mutilated before me and you are talking about your problems?! Don’t you realize that I can’t get these pictures out of my head?! DON’T YOU REALIZE THAT ALL I HAVE IS PROBLEMS!” he bellowed and with one foul swoop, hurled all of the empty glasses against the wall.
Dorothy took one step backwards, horrified, tears now streaming down her cheeks at the anger displayed on George’s face.
The inn-keeper placed the pipe down on the table. “Steady, George. We don’t want any trouble in here, now do we?”
“Leave him be! The white man is only acting like it’s expected of him,” a man called from the corner.
Dorothy turned around and saw a black soldier seated there. She vaguely recalled that his name was Nick.
George’s chair fell to the ground with a bang as he was suddenly on his feet.
“You shut your mouth, nigger!” George snarled, pointing at Nick.
“George!” Dorothy exclaimed, grabbing hold of his arm.
But, George had lost his patience and did something nobody expected.
He pulled his arm back in a wide arch and slapped his wife so hard across her face that she lost her balance and fell backwards, onto two tables, blood streaming from her nose. George then stormed past an alarmed audience, leaving a shocked Dorothy heaving with tears.
12
Once he was right next to the building at the Enclave of the Selfless, Storm found an open window in one of the walls and peeked inside.
He witnessed the Selfless in action, kneeling and holding each other’s hands. They were moving together in a harmonious rhythm and were humming something that sounded to Storm like “We are one, we are one.” The room had a certain mystery to it, with mirrors covering the entire ceiling and lengths of satin cloth decorating the walls. The floor was made out of pure polished granite and hundreds of candles surrounded the group of humming men.
Storm stood there, fascinated, while watching the Selfless muttering under their breaths for quite some time. Their eyes were closed and they apparently seemed oblivious to the cold around them. All of them appeared to be in a total trance.
Then, something freezing fell on Storm’s shoulder and, to his shock, he realized it was a hand.
Turning his head, he saw that the hand belonged to one of the Selfless, who was glaring at him with a vacant expression in his eyes. “We should not be here,” the Selfless stated matter-of-factly. Though the words carried no noticeable threat or emotion, Storm still felt utterly terrified at that moment. The Selfless in Sanctuary seemed to carry an aura of coldness that infiltrated one’s soul.
Unconsciously trying to tear his eyes away from the sight in front of him, Storm glanced through the window again and then he felt his heart skipping a beat. The Selfless had stopped their ritual and they were now all staring at him, still in the same unified kneeling position as before. Their eyes were all the same color in the cold and Storm slowly turned back to the Selfless behind him, his flesh crawling under his skin.
The Selfless was still studying him without showing any emotion, something that made him appear even more frightening. Storm tried to find words to explain himself. “We… we were… uhm,” he gulped, backing away a bit, managing to release the hand’s grip from his shoulder.
“We should not be here,” the Selfless stated more forcefully, now advancing on Storm.
Storm found himself with his back against the wall, literally. He tried to run, but his legs were cold and numb, almost like they weren’t there at all. Then a different hand came sliding through the window from behind and started to touch him, almost caressing him, like a human would do to an adorable dog.
“We are sorry,” Storm heard himself whimpering. And then, suddenly, the coldness disappeared and he found the feeling in his legs again.
He bolted.
In fact, Storm ran so fast that he glided over the snow, almost causing a small avalanche as he half-ran, half-rolled down the slope.
When he felt that he was far enough from the Enclave of the Selfless, he looked around, his heart still racing, almost expecting that a Selfless would be standing behind him or next to him again. But, fortunately, they were nowhere to be seen. Storm breathed a sigh of relief and at the same time felt annoyed with himself. He sure knew how to get himself into trouble.
Not wanting to stick around the Enclave, he broke into a jog and his anxiety slowly began to vanish as the Mountain grew bigger and bigger in front of him. He dodged a group of Sanctuarians hugging each other; a common practice in Sanctuary to express oneness and a desire for community.
Officially.
In reality it was done to combat the cold, by using the heat of each other’s bodies to stay warm. This was confi
rmed when Storm noticed how their faces were edged in an uncomfortable silence, clearly not holding each other for social cohesion, but simply to keep themselves alive.
Finally, he saw the faint outline of the group of boys from his school, up ahead of him in the gusting wind.
As he drew closer, he noticed that they were staring at a person standing in front of them. It could only be the Old Man, Storm figured. The Old Man seemed mesmerized by the tunnel’s entrance, which Storm now realized appeared almost manmade. It was perfectly round in shape but that was about all he could see of the tunnel, as the immediate inside was filled with darkness.
Not wanting to be spotted by the other boys, Storm hid behind a rock and watched the scene unfold from there. He could see that, as always, the Old Man’s gray-white, ghost-like hair was pointing in all directions, almost as if conducting energy. His clothes appeared to be torn in a number of places, revealing red marks where he had cut himself. The other boys were chattering excitedly – where they were standing a mere fifteen yards from the Old Man – and Storm caught some of the words when he cupped his ears with his gloved hands.
“He won’t do it. Just look at him.”
Storm noticed the use of the singular pronoun, which was regarded to be one of the foulest insults in Sanctuary. It denounced someone as not being a Sanctuarian and therefore not part of the community.
“We think he will.”
“He won’t. He is too scared,” Jamie said, brimming with confidence.
“Yes, he is too scared,” another boy chipped in.
“Probably won’t do it. Nah.”
“Shush!” Jamie exclaimed. “Look, he is moving!”
The boys turned quiet as the Old Man slowly nudged his right leg forward. He stood there for a moment, poised as if waiting for some sort of a signal.
Just as Storm thought he was going to change his mind, the Old Man tilted his head backwards and shouted, “FREEDOM!” And with that, he took off into the tunnel and was instantly swallowed by the darkness.
The boys and Storm stared at the tunnel entrance in awe for a moment. Then Jamie began to laugh and the rest of the boys joined in. Judging by the expressions on some of their faces, it was not clear that they really knew what they were laughing about.
“Well, that was amazing,” Jamie said, running a hand through his hair.
“Yes, it was.”
“Definitely.”
“We said he was going to run!” Jamie shouted, punching one of the boys on the shoulder, a little too hard. This made the boy lose his balance and he fell down in the snow. He rubbed his shoulder in pain, but a wide grin remained plastered on his face. “We did indeed!” he said, and then began to laugh again.
“We were wrong,” Jamie said. He suddenly turned around and his eyes immediately narrowed in on the formation of rocks, thirty yards away.
Storm, discovering it too late, had in his excitement stood up from behind the rocks and had revealed himself.
Jamie’s reaction quickly switched from surprise to pure amusement. “Look boys,” he called out, “it’s the useless one!”
Storm felt paralyzed. They hurried over to him and had him surrounded in a flash.
“How fast do we think is he going to be sentenced to death?” Jamie asked the rest of the boys.
“Probably five minutes.”
“Should be less than a minute.”
“They won’t even think about it.”
Jamie stepped all the way up to Storm’s chest. Storm’s eyes were fixed on him and he felt like an animal trapped between hunters. Jamie reached out with his hand and Storm immediately flinched, but Jamie merely smirked and began twiddling with his hair. “He looks just like an Outsider with his dark skin,” Jamie now said, looking at Storm in disgust. “With the chief of the Outsiders living inside him, I can’t believe we haven’t killed this… this thing already.”
Jamie stood back, then moved his hand to his side and withdrew a short, glistening sword. The boys gasped in amazement, although they had seen it many times before, as had Storm. The sword’s name was Vengeance and it was a family heirloom. A sword was somewhat of a rare commodity in Sanctuary, because there weren’t many blacksmiths who knew how to make them properly.
Pointing the sword’s incredibly sharp blade at Storm’s torso, Jamie smirked. “We can’t kill him, but we can still hurt him for all that he is doing to Sanctuary. So what is it going to be, boys? What can we do to this intrusive Outsider? How can we help him prepare for his death?”
The boys eagerly began to shout out suggestions.
“Let’s burn him!”
“We can break one of his useless legs!”
“Poke out one of those annoying eyes!”
Storm didn’t hang around to find out what the eventual outcome was going to be. He knew he could either stay there and definitely be tortured or take his chances and try to escape.
Eyeing a gap in their defenses, he darted sideways as fast as he could, slicing through a little opening two of the boys had left, and started running back towards the heart of Sanctuary. He heard their mixed reactions of surprise and anger, while a satisfied smile was forming on his lips. Storm had understood from a young age that his actions often caught the rest of the Sanctuarians off guard, as they were not used to his way of thinking. A typical Sanctuarian would have stood there and accepted his punishment, but not Storm. No, sir.
While still running, he turned to look over his shoulder and saw that they were close on his heels, Jamie leading the pack, his face set in grim determination. When he turned his eyes back to the front, Storm’s vision was filled with a pair of feet protruding from the snow. At first, he jumped in shock but then he realized that it was one of the corpses of a group of Sanctuarians that had most likely died from the cold or from hunger.
He resumed his sprint in a panic. Judged by the heavy breathing and loud mutterings behind him, the other boys were obviously closing in on him.
There was a farm to his left and Storm ran right through an open gate, past a group of farmers who were singing a song together. Their faces were showing smiles – which Storm doubted were genuine – whilst they ploughed their fields in futility, knowing that their crops will never yield anything. The goats that still survived and grazed, their white coats filthy from poor care and a lack of nutrition, perhaps revealed the true nature of the farm’s state of affairs. One of these goats stared glumly at Storm as he sped past and another one was teetering on his legs, clearly on its way out, ready to follow his brethren into a shallow grave.
Storm eventually reached the fence on the other side of the farm and, without hesitating, jumped over it. But his leg caught the cross bar of the fence in the process, sending a sharp pain into his right kneecap. He hobbled away, hearing the jeers of the boys behind him, who sensed that they were now really closing in on their prey. Clutching his leg, Storm limped away desperately. He passed a stone pillar on which signal-red words THE COLD IS AN ILLUSION were emblazoned. Ironically, a few men were huddled below the sign, using the stone as protection from the icy wind.
The sound of picks falling on rocks told Storm that he was approaching the iron mine. Because of his injured leg he was doomed to be caught by his peers, unless he ran into the forbidden mines. Maybe he could hide in there. After stumbling past a group of desolate buildings, he finally saw the mine appear before him. There was a group of about two dozen miners working, driving their heavy picks repeatedly into the rock in conformity. Storm ran past them, into a dark cave that had already been excavated, and hid behind a collection of wooden crates to the left of the entrance. The miners seemed to have barely noticed him or just simply assumed that he was authorized to be there. He waited behind the crates, heaving, whilst clutching his aching leg.
A few seconds later, Jamie and the other boys arrived at the mine, pausing to scan the surroundings, some of them hunched over. Storm waited while holding his breath.
“Where did he…?” one of the boys managed to
ask, while clasping his stomach.
“He headed back towards the houses!” Jamie exclaimed, pointing in the opposite direction to where Storm was hiding.
The boys all nodded at the same time and, as a unit, they hurried after Jamie, running in the direction he had indicated, leaving an exhausted Storm at ease. He sucked in a sharp breath of freezing air and then just sat there, experiencing a wave of what Mr. Walrus would describe as “good” feelings. As his exhaustion faded, it was replaced by a particular ache deep inside his belly. A pain of always being hunted, of always being the outcast. This emotional upsurge was compounded even more by the pain in his leg. When he thought it safe, he limped out of the mine slowly and warily, keeping an eye out for the other boys, until he reached higher ground. After scanning the area to make sure nobody knew he was there, he sat down on a tree trunk that had fallen over.
While watching the Mountain in the distance, Storm wished he had lived in another world; a better world. A world where he could actually be happy, and not the “happy” he saw in Sanctuary. He wondered then and there why he shouldn’t just kill himself, but his stubborn nature resisted the idea yet again. He knew if there was even the slimmest chance of true happiness he would pursue it. His mind swam back to a moment where he had experienced real pain for the first time, when he had been younger, and when Sanctuary had been a much warmer and better place.
***
The stung of a bee had sent him to his mother, crying. “Mama, Mama, a bee, a bee!”
“Oh, Storm,” she had soothed and just the touch of her on his feet had made him calm. She had placed some ointment on it, which burnt at first, causing Storm to cry out, but soon the pain had dwindled, leaving behind a calmer Storm, with a tear-stained face.
“Why do they hurt me, Mama?” he had then asked her, when she had finished the treatment.
She had smiled and placed the ointment aside.
“There will always be bees that want to sting you Storm.”
Storm didn’t seem satisfied with this answer, so she continued.
“One night I will read to you from the Honey Bear’s Happiness and you will understand more.”