Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  Chapter Three

  “Where are we going?” Eiland asked.

  “You’ll see when we get there,” Charon replied.

  “When will we get there?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  Charon turned and put his hands on his hips, regarding Eiland with an exasperated expression. Eiland quickly ducked his head but Charon only asked, “Do you always have this many questions?”

  He sounded a little out of breath. They’d been walking at a slow, steady rate for two days; Eiland had almost enjoyed waking to the morning sky over his head and the calls of birds in the trees, until he’d remembered where he was and why.

  They’d headed west out of Summerton with the sun at their backs. Eiland had glanced back again and again until the stone wall marking the outer barrier of the village disappeared completely through the trees. He’d wandered far into the forest on his errands for his mother, and farther still for his own pleasure, but until now he’d never left Summerton behind completely.

  Fortunately, Charon had been walking in front of him the whole way out of Summerton. He hadn’t seen Eiland wipe away his tears.

  Charon seemed to be waiting for a response so Eiland shrugged awkwardly and said, “I’ll be quiet.”

  “I didn’t—” Charon started but then cut himself off. After a moment he turned and resumed trudging through the forest.

  They had entered the deep woods by now. No discernible trail guided them and sometimes Charon led them on a circuitous route around a fallen log or other obstacles. Eiland couldn’t keep track of how many times they’d switched directions, and he wondered if they were actually lost. Yet Charon never stopped walking or acted confused. He moved with a purpose, if slowly.

  Eiland managed to stay quiet…but only for a little while. “Should we start looking for ingredients for the salve? Especially gyman root, that’s always hardest to find.”

  “Not yet,” Charon said over his shoulder. “I want to get further away, first.”

  “From Summerton? Why?” Eiland asked then bit his tongue. “Sorry.”

  Charon didn’t respond. Eiland put his head down and focused on walking.

  His mind swirled. Images and memories of Summerton preoccupied him: the freshly tilled fields in springtime, waiting to be filled with seed; the green-gold willow tree outside the temple that he used to play in when the priests’ sermons got too terribly boring; his mother’s tearful face as she’d hugged him good-bye.

  Eiland struggled to accept that a place that had been his whole world up until now was already miles behind him. For all that he’d called it dull, the possibility that he would never see Summerton again left him aching.

  That paled in comparison, however, to the shock and confusion he still felt about his father’s parting gift.

  The knife lay at the very bottom of Eiland’s pack. He’d tucked it away hurriedly and his father had left him in his room to go comfort Mama. They hadn’t spoken about it further. Eiland doubted that he would have known what to say if they had.

  He couldn’t believe that his father would even own such a weapon, much less direct Eiland to use it on another human being. As a healer, Papa had taken an oath before the gods never to knowingly harm another person by action or word.

  Either he’d broken his vow by giving Eiland the knife, or the oath was never intended to include the Cursed.

  Ahead of him, Charon trudged through the bushes. His back was turned. Eiland tried to imagine taking out the knife and stepping forward to—he blanched, refusing to follow that pathway any further even in his own mind. Crickets, he hadn’t been able to eat meat for days after he’d seen one of the cows being butchered; sometimes the memory of it put him right off his meals all over again. He couldn’t imagine how his father expected him to kill a person, even a Cursed one.

  Eiland was so busy brooding over these dark thoughts that he didn’t even notice when the ground tilted upward until suddenly it leveled out again. When Charon stopped without warning, Eiland bumped into his back. They both startled a bit at the contact, and Eiland took several steps away, his hands tucked against the backs of his hips.

  Then he looked past Charon and blinked in surprise. “Oh.”

  They stood on top of a ridge. The ground in front of Charon sloped sharply downward. Below them stretched a great valley—the Great Valley, Eiland realized. He’d only ever heard about it from travelers and from the merchants who bore Summerton’s harvest to the King’s trading posts.

  Even his wildest imaginings could not compare to the vastness before him. The valley’s sides curved upward, crisscrossed by falling streams like cracks on the inside of an empty bowl. Far below, the creeks joined larger tributaries of water lined with groves of trees. Between the creeks and rivers stretched a patchwork of farmland. From this height, the different farms seemed to fit together like neat little squares. If Eiland squinted, he could even make out townships and settlements with thin trails of smoke rising from their chimneys.

  On the far side of the valley, huge mountains rose into the sky. Eiland had glimpsed them before, standing in the very tops of the fir trees around Summerton, but he had never beheld their entirety. His eyes ran from their forest-covered foothills to their jagged, snow-capped peaks, and he suddenly felt very, very small.

  “Eiland?” Charon tapped his shoulder.

  “What? Yes, sorry, what?”

  Charon’s mouth twitched as if there were a smile stuck between his teeth, trying to get out. “You look like a fish. Have you never seen a valley before?”

  Eiland flushed and looked back across the view. “Not like this.”

  They continued over the side of the ridge, following a narrow goat path that zigzagged all the way down to the valley floor. It was a long, slow descent, made even more treacherous by loose rocks. At several points Eiland sat down and scooted on his backside for a ways, his palms sweating as they gripped for purchase among the low-lying scrub that grew on the slope.

  Ahead of him Charon seemed more sure-footed but still inclined to stop for breath at regular intervals, his head bowed and his chest working.

  By the time they reached the bottom the sun had started to sink behind those distant mountains. Their shadows stretched across the entire valley. Eiland imagined standing at a peak and casting his own shape for hundreds of miles.

  Finally the ground began to even out. At some point Eiland had passed Charon—who was still picking his way down the slope—and he let his shaking leg muscles loosen, springing down the rest of the way.

  A creek wound along the bottom of the ridge, collecting the runoff from higher ground. Eiland stopped at its banks, slinging off his pack before dropping to the ground. Rocks dug into his back but he was so happy to be back on a flat surface that he didn’t mind.

  It took some time for Charon to catch up to him, by which point Eiland had regained his breath and was mostly just enjoying the sensation of lying down.

  “Can we stay here tonight?” he asked when he heard Charon sat down nearby, huffing and puffing. The creek gurgled pleasantly and the stones under him had been warmed by the sun. “I’m tired, I don’t want to walk anymore. And the creek is very nice, and it will be dark soon. Can we stop here?”

  Charon didn’t answer and after a moment Eiland opened his eyes, turning his head to look up at him. He jerked in surprise. Charon sat cross-legged on the ground, his eyes closed and his face pale. Blood poured out of his nose, trickling down over his lips and dripping on his shirt.

  “What happened? Did you fall?” Charon shook his head and Eiland sat up as dread spiked through him. “Are you having an Agony?”

  Charon’s eyes peeled open. He regarded Eiland as one would examine a dog in the act of urinating on a favored rug. “No. This is not an Agony, Eiland. When it is an Agony, you’ll know. I’m just tired, is all.”

  “But you’re bleeding.”

  Charon swiped a hand over his face and looked at the blood on his fingers
with a deeply unsurprised expression. “It happens sometimes.” He let his hand fall in his lap and closed his eyes again, breathing heavily.

  Eiland bit his lip as the blood continued to drip. He had noticed that their journey weighed on Charon, but now he seemed utterly drained of energy and color, and he made no move to staunch the flow.

  Rolling up to his knees, Eiland peeled off his own sweat-damp shirt and shuffled closer. “Here, hold still.”

  Despite the warning, Charon startled badly when Eiland touched his cheek. His eyes flew open, flickered over Eiland’s naked torso, then fixed on Eiland’s face.

  Belatedly Eiland remembered who Charon was and where they were and why. The memory of his mother weeping rose to the foreground of his mind, as did the whispers of what happened to people who were taken by the Cursed.

  After a moment of hesitation, though, he carefully wiped at the blood on Charon’s lips and chin. “Tip your head back.”

  Charon slowly obeyed. Eiland slipped one hand around to cup the back of his head and pinched Charon’s nostrils shut with the cloth.

  In Charon’s lap, his hands curled into fists. “Am I hurting you?” Eiland asked.

  “Dno.” Charon’s eyes were closed. The light had reached that hour when everything seemed especially vivid and sharp. Charon’s lashes rested against his cheeks, so long and dark that Eiland almost thought he could count them.

  Eiland bit at the inside of his lip and focused on tending to the nosebleed.

  They sat like that for a long time, long enough that Charon’s breath grew even and Eiland’s legs started cramping. Every time he shifted positions, Charon’s eyelids flickered a little, peeking.

  When Eiland finally took the cloth away the blood flow had stopped. “It doesn’t look broken.”

  “I told you, I didn’t fall. It just happens sometimes.”

  Eiland sat back on his heels, frowning. “Maybe…maybe you should eat more potatoes? I don’t know, but that’s what Papa said once to the miller’s daughter. Of course it turned out that she had just been picking her nose too hard—the miller’s wife brought her back when the cuts got infected and Papa had to put maggots up her nose. Maggots! In her nose! It was disgusting. Anyway, I don’t think you’ve been picking your nose, because she was kind of daft, you see, and I don’t think you’re daft. So you might try eating potatoes.”

  Charon’s head was tilted slightly to one side. He waited for a moment after Eiland had finished speaking, as if to be certain he was done, and then asked softly, “Do you have any potatoes?”

  Something about the way he spoke, so quiet and small in the gathering darkness, made Eiland suddenly, sharply aware of how alone they were in the empty hollow between the ridge and the valley. Distantly he heard evening birds calling to one another, but other than that the world had gone silent, as if listening.

  Eiland dropped his voice too. “No. But I could look for some tomorrow.”

  Charon made no reply. He only sat with his hands still resting loosely in his lap, regarding Eiland in a silence that grew deeper along with the darkness.

  Eiland fidgeted under his gaze before pushing to his feet. “I’ll find some wood for a fire.”

  He washed his shirt in the stream then began searching the banks for dry branches. That proved to be a much easier task than doing something with the fuel he found. Mama had given him his own tinder and flint a year ago, but Eiland had never had cause to use it until now, and he struggled until Charon took the tools from him. Within minutes, he had a small fire going.

  “Oh, good,” Eiland exclaimed and settled beside the flames, upending the small amount of food he still had in his satchel. It was just a couple of slightly squashed peaches, a few handfuls of nuts, and some dried meat.

  He thought it a poor supper, but halfway through this meal he noticed that Charon had taken out only a small loaf of bread and was tearing off chunks in his familiar, fastidious way.

  “Is that all you have to eat? What happened to all the food the elders gave you?”

  Charon paused then resumed chewing. “I didn’t take any of their food.”

  “Why not?”

  “They might have poisoned it.”

  Eiland had just tossed a handful of nuts into his mouth, and he nearly choked. “What? Are you mad?”

  The tight moue returned to Charon’s face. There were still smears of blood around his mouth and he looked very strange indeed. “The last village that gave me food put something in it. I almost died.”

  Finding his voice, Eiland exclaimed, “We wouldn’t—we’d never do such a thing!” But even as he spoke he remembered the young men in the village who had been all too eager to kill Charon before they’d even seen him. And his father’s knife, resting snug in the bottom of his own knapsack.

  “Well, that’s very sweet of you.” Charon climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on his dirty trousers. “The next time a village wants to give me food, I’ll let you taste test it first.”

  He went down to the water, leaving Eiland to stare at his paltry meal. Suddenly the winding journey that Charon had taken away from Summerton made more sense: anyone trying to follow them would have a hard path to trace.

  When he heard Charon’s slow tread returning, Eiland spoke without looking up. “You ate the food I gave you in the orchard. Why’d you do that, if you’re so worried?”

  A long silence followed his question. Eiland raised his head in time to catch Charon staring at him before he dropped his gaze to their small fire. The front of his shirt was damp, the bloodstains only partially removed. It clung to his chest and Eiland tried, he did, but some sick compulsion made it impossible for him not to look. Especially when he realized that even in the dim, flickering firelight he could see the dark of Charon’s nipples and the twin curves of his collarbones.

  “You seemed…different,” Charon finally answered in a low voice. “You seemed kind. And you ate with me.”

  Sharing meals with the Cursed was not strictly forbidden by the Writings, but to eat with someone meant that they were a part of your family or your community. That they belonged to you somehow, and you to them. In the orchard it hadn’t occurred to Eiland not to eat with Charon, even when he’d thought that Charon was nothing more than a beggar boy.

  Now he had no excuse, yet Eiland still found himself asking, “Do you want something to eat? I—I have a peach.”

  Charon’s feet shuffled closer but he did not sit. “No.”

  Eiland carefully rolled up the remaining peach and what was left of the meat, tucking it away in his pack, then sat picking at his fingernails. He shouldn’t have mentioned the orchard. He didn’t know why he had…except for a moment, when Eiland had touched his face, Charon had seemed like the boy with the apple again.

  “Eiland.” Charon dropped to his knees, close. The world beyond the circle of their little fire seemed like a great black void. “Why did you…why did you do that, in the orchard?”

  Eiland swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. I just—felt like it, I suppose.”

  “Do you often go around kissing boys just because you feel like it?”

  “Um. Yes? I mean, not often, but if I think the boy won’t tell or if it’s someone who doesn’t matter—I mean, someone who doesn’t live in Summerton,” he stammered. “Then, yes. As often as I can.”

  “Even Cursed boys?” Charon’s voice was just a whisper, so small and fragile as to slip out into the dark and be lost forever.

  The fire crackled. There was no other sound. Eiland swallowed again. His heart beat so fast. He tried to think of what he should do, if his father and mother and the priests would expect him to run away into the night or let Charon…

  “I didn’t know you were Cursed,” he said, because he had no idea what else to say but the truth.

  Charon flinched. He drew back, his shoulders rising. “And now that you do know?”

  Eiland didn’t take his eyes of his la
p, where his hands twisted together like two worms. “I don’t know.”

  “I want,” Charon said. “I want you to…I mean. Do you still—here, hold my hand.”

  He thrust his hand out to Eiland, who took it more out of reflex than anything else. Charon’s fingers were long and calloused, except for the missing knuckles of his last two fingers; the skin of those was smooth with scars. Charon had removed the bits of makeshift bandages, and rows of scabs covered his knuckles.

  They sat side by side. A log broke, sending sparks up into the night. When Eiland chanced a sideways glance, Charon was staring into the fire with a blank expression. The light flickered over his profile; his face held lines that did not belong to a boy.

  He made no move to touch Eiland anywhere else except the loose, unmoving clasp of their hands, stretched between them. Thinking back to the orchard, Eiland remembered how unsure Charon had been, how uncertain. He wondered if Charon was waiting for Eiland to take the lead.

  He wondered if he wanted to.

  For two days he had been dreading this moment but now that it had arrived Eiland didn’t know what he felt inside. There was fear, yes, but his heart beat fast for other reasons, too.

  Eventually Charon shifted a little. “You can let go now.” He didn’t look at Eiland.

  Eiland obeyed, quickly putting Charon’s hand on the ground. It rested there a moment and then Charon drew it back into himself. Reaching for his pack, he shook out his blanket and spread it on the ground. His shoulders moved under his wet shirt. Eiland watched him make his bed for the night, unable to move. Did…should he make his own bed? Would Charon expect him to…share?

  Eiland shook, the skin on his forearms tight with nerves, but Charon only lay down and pulled his blanket up over his shoulder. Eiland looked at his own hands, at their dying fire, at the ground, at the outline of Charon’s profile, barely illuminated in the flickering light.

  “Was that all you…?” He couldn’t finish. He didn’t even know what he meant.

  “Yes,” Charon answered. “Thank you. You can go to sleep now.”

  Sleep seemed impossible, but Eiland fumbled out his bedroll. It smelled of mildew: it had not seen use in years, not since before Marcus and Imra had left home.