Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  Clawing into his pack, Eiland’s fingers closed around his father’s knife.

  He couldn’t bring himself to hurt the grandmother so he slashed her grandson’s leg instead, and stabbed someone else’s foot.

  A space opened up around him. Distantly there were several yells and splashes as those unlucky enough to stand on the edge of the ferry got bumped off by the recoiling crowd.

  Eiland scrambled up in time to see one of the farmers standing over Charon and raising a shovel above his head.

  The next thing Eiland knew, he was standing over Charon’s thrashing body, his bloody knife gripped in his hand.

  The farmer lay moaning on the deck of the ferry but the others had Eiland completely surrounded. Already their surprise was wearing off, turning to anger.

  On sheer impulse Eiland shouted wildly, “I’ll Curse you all!”

  They blanched and wavered like grass cut by a scythe. “He’s not—” One of them started to say but cut off when Eiland pointed at him.

  “I am,” Eiland snarled. “I will. Get away from us.”

  It only bought him a few moments: anyone who’d ever seen a Cursed would know that Eiland was bluffing. But he had nothing else, except his blade.

  The wounded farmer stumbled to his feet with help from his wife, who glared at Eiland. Eiland glared right back then bent down to grab one of Charon’s arms.

  Sickness and hunger had left Charon spare on his bones but Eiland still struggled to shift him a bare few inches. The muscles in his back strained and Charon’s limp head bumped on the deck with every heave. Eiland held the knife high, ready and visible.

  The crowd parted for him, and some even pushed the others out of his path, urging him onward. But his bought moments were up too soon and his pursuers closed in, gripping their own weapons and grabbing at Charon’s feet.

  Charon’s wrist slipped out of his grip just as Eiland’s heel went off the side of the ferry and touched water.

  Wild with desperation, he blindly flung the knife at the crowd, reached down with both hands to grab Charon, and heaved them over the side.

  They went in with a splash, limbs tangled. The water closed over their heads. For a horrible moment Eiland lost his grip on Charon, but he clawed his way back through the murk.

  Gripping Charon, Eiland kicked for the surface.

  Shouts echoed over the water as they resurfaced a few feet downstream from the ferry. Several of the passengers had rushed to the edge as if to follow them; the shift in weight threatened to unbalance the overloaded craft. The ferry master’s hoarse voice bellowed commands and the soldiers laid about them with their wooden staffs, driving the crowd back before they capsized.

  The spasms in Charon’s body had increased and Eiland turned his head to one side to keep their skulls from colliding. He kicked desperately, trying to get as far from the ferry as he could while the rest of the passengers were distracted. Several others had fallen in the water as well, but they either clung to the ferry lines or tried to drag themselves back on board the craft. None seemed inclined to pursue.

  The current bore Eiland and Charon slowly but steadily downriver. Eiland swam with it until the ferry was nothing but a tiny dot. The water reeked of human and animal filth. Eiland spat it away from his mouth.

  Charon’s limbs splashed as he convulsed; otherwise he stayed a dead, still weight, and Eiland fought for every breath as he kept their heads above water.

  They went under once, twice, three times. Every time Eiland found himself thinking, Please please please.

  No pretty words from the Writings, no offerings or promises, just a silent plea as he surged back to the surface. He didn’t even know if Charon was still breathing, or if he’d already swallowed too much water.

  He didn’t dare stop to check; every fiber of his being remained focused on keeping them both afloat.

  After what felt like an eternity of struggle, the sound of steady gurgling filled Eiland’s ears: a large creek fed into the river, and the area around it was built up with rocks and branches. Panting, Eiland kicked in that direction until his feet brushed the slimy riverbed.

  Straightening from the water with Charon still locked in his arms, Eiland splashed to the mouth of the creek and tumbled down against the shallow rocks. Cool, clean water flowed over them, washing away the filth and sweat and grime, and Eiland turned his head into the flow, drinking deep for a long time before he forced his cramped muscles to rise for one last effort.

  Charon’s sodden clothes and pack weighed him down and Eiland coughed a desperate sob, winding his fingers across Charon’s chest and heaving him up onto the bank before collapsing backward as his limbs finally gave out.

  He had no idea how long they lay there. A child with a stick could have come along and beat them both to death; Eiland wouldn’t have been able to stop him. He lay still, fading in and out of consciousness.

  Charon’s voice brought him back. “Eiland?”

  Eiland peeled his eyes open. His lashes felt honey-stuck. The sun had moved, and a shade had fallen over them, yet he could still see the sun lighting the leaves overhead with golden beams.

  Beside him on the bank, Charon’s skin looked flushed. The flesh under his jaw had swollen up again, and blood laced his eyes in red lines.

  The sight was so strangely familiar, yet Eiland couldn’t think of why—until he remembered the Solstice, and the meka coursing through his blood, and Charon sitting beside him drenched in invisible water.

  The gods had their ways of warning.

  “Hey,” Eiland said, reaching out to touch Charon’s cheek with one shaking hand.

  “Are you all right?” Charon asked.

  Eiland felt his own face crumple. He wanted to scream, to tear, to run back up river to the ferry and do terrible, bloody things.

  Instead he crawled closer until he could wrap Charon up in his arms, pressing their foreheads together.

  “Yes, I’m all right,” he whispered. “Can you drink some water for me? Please?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eiland half expected the whole countryside to be up in arms searching for them, but Charon quickly allayed those fears.

  “Most of the soldiers this far out from the Capital are just hired mercenaries. Unless you attacked one of them, chances are they won’t do anything.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Eiland scoffed, thinking of how his father had always admonished him to step off the road and bow for the King’s soldiers as they passed.

  Still, after Charon rested for a day they moved away from the river, steering cautiously south of the main road and sticking to wooded areas. With Charon awake it was unlikely that anyone would attack them directly, but someone brave enough might try to creep up on them in the night while they sleep.

  They didn’t talk about what had happened on the ferry—Eiland had sketched out a few details and left Charon to imagine the rest.

  They headed into the wood, stopping at regular intervals so that Charon could rest. He did so somewhat unwillingly, still clinging to that angry determination until Eiland threatened to tie him down with his own rope.

  They slept close, hip to hip. Eiland didn’t ask how Charon felt about that arrangement; he only knew that sometimes he woke with his heart in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow it down again until he saw Charon safe beside him.

  They moved slowly westward. This land was full of plants and animals that Eiland knew; yet it seemed utterly foreign to him now. Charon told him they would reach Summerton in a fortnight but the words bounced off Eiland’s mind.

  It felt like years since they had left his father’s home. It didn’t seem possible that they were so close again.

  They turned north and crossed the main road by night. Makeshift camps filled the forest; Eiland and Charon wove their way through the desultory fires, passing like shades. Eiland warily kept an eye out for any of the travelers who had attacked them on the ferry, but saw none.

  They crossed the road without incident and
slipped into the trees beyond, heading north and only stopping when dawn turned the sky pink. Eiland risked building a small fire and they roasted a few of the smaller squirrels that Charon had caught along the way. They’d lost much of their food supply in the river and the pickings had been slim ever since. Charon was still not well enough to lay proper traps, and Eiland had never mastered the task.

  “I suppose it’ll be nice to have a full meal again,” Charon commented as Eiland turned the spit. “And a bed to sleep in.”

  Somehow he said it without anger or recrimination, just a vague wistfulness. His words still made Eiland’s gut ache.

  At first he didn’t answer, focused on turning the spit slowly and watching the meat sizzle. A couple of weeks ago Charon had had those things himself, but at the price of watching two people share a happiness that did not belong to him.

  Swallowing hard, he said, “Charon, I’m not sure I’m going to stay in Summerton.”

  A long silence fell over them, interrupted only by the snap of their fire and the sound of night creatures. When Eiland finally worked up the courage to look at Charon’s face, he was staring into the fire. Its light flickered across his profile.

  “I mean,” Eiland continued. “I don’t know. I have to go back, I have to see my family, but I don’t know what I’ll do then. So—”

  “That isn’t anything, Eiland,” Charon cut in. His voice sounded as flat and weary as a stone worn down by a river. “That isn’t you saying…you’re asking me to hope for something that even you aren’t sure about, and I can’t. I can’t anymore.”

  Eiland swallowed again, his eyes stinging. After a moment Charon lay down, facing away from him, and Eiland turned back to the fire.

  * * *

  The ridge to Summerton loomed ahead, but they had so little food with them that Charon managed to convince Eiland to head toward civilization instead of zigzagging their way around every sign of human habitation.

  The first village they came upon was well off the trading routes, but not completely isolated. Eiland had managed to gather enough herbs and roots along the way to be of some value to the town healer.

  If he offered Eiland some extra gold because Charon stood in a corner of the apothecary, then that did not concern Eiland in the least. It was a fair trade.

  They bought meat pies and sat in a patch of grass by the village thoroughfare, devouring the food so fast that Eiland burned his tongue. He could almost feel the different parts of his body rousing to suckle desperately at the nourishment.

  The town buzzed with activity. The first moon of the harvest season would rise that night. Villagers bustled through the streets, preparing for the feast. It would be their last chance to celebrate for a long time; this was a farming village, and many months of harvesting lay ahead of them.

  The temple acolytes were practicing their blessing, asking the gods for a good harvest. No one took much notice of Eiland and Charon, so for once they ate a leisurely meal, watching people hurry by.

  Eiland thought of Mara and Sierrach, alone in their hillside manor. He hoped they could harvest enough to last them the winter. They should; their garden had been overflowing when Eiland and Charon had left. But if Sierrach had another Agony then all that bounty might go to waste.

  Still, it seemed unlikely. Sierrach’s Agony had been much less severe than Charon’s ever were and Eiland had a theory that exertion increased the frequency and strength of the Agonies.

  “We should go to the festival,” Charon said out of nowhere, interrupting Eiland’s thoughts. “Tonight, the harvest festival.”

  Eiland blinked at him in astonishment. “Are you mad?”

  Charon set his jaw. “It looks like it’ll be fun.”

  “You have gone mad.” The idea of Charon going out among people, so soon after an Agony, frightened Eiland. Every time he thought of the ferry, his hands shook and his breath stuttered in his throat. He could have killed that farmer with the shovel. He’d certainly tried.

  Part of him wished he had.

  On the day of the Solstice he’d told Charon that he could never do something like that, but apparently he could.

  And then there was the dark suspicion, one that Eiland could barely let himself even consider; that Charon had deliberately placed himself among people during his Agony. Eiland was afraid, deeply and horribly afraid, that Charon—whether he knew it himself or not—had been trying to give up, and that having failed, he would try again.

  Except then Charon said, “I want to do something nice to say goodybye.” He spoke with his eyes averted, shy and sad. “I want to have one good memory with you.”

  After that Eiland couldn’t bring himself to refuse.

  * * *

  The harvest festival took place in the town square, under the very eaves of the temple. Long tables of food had been laid out, lined with low benches. They bordered the large square of packed earth and rushes where the priests performed the Rites of the Spirits, thanking the many trees and crops for their bounty before inviting the common people to dance as well.

  The entire village attended, along with some families from the surrounding communities that were not large enough to have a temple or a festival of their own.

  A few people stared at Charon and Eiland as they moved to join the crowd. They had both washed up in a creek, and Eiland’s draught had cleared most of Charon’s visible symptoms, but people could still see the scars of old Agonies. At least one mother clutched her children close as they passed. In the center of the celebration the town priests were already preoccupied with the Rites, but some of the attendants also cast horrified looks in their direction.

  Eiland hovered close to Charon’s side, glaring at anyone that seemed remotely threatening, but for once Charon barely seemed to notice. He smiled at the little girls in their colorful skirts and pointed out the lanterns that hung from posts around the tables.

  His casualness made Eiland all the more watchful. If Charon could not be bothered to care for himself anymore, Eiland would have to do it for him.

  At least no one stopped them from taking their fill of the food. Charon claimed a small table for them in the corner of the festival and they sat to watch the priests finish their Rites.

  “Do you have a harvest festival in Summerton?” Charon asked.

  Eiland swallowed a mouthful of a redberry tart. “Yes. It’s a bit like this one. Smaller, I guess. The Rites are longer and there’s not this much food.” It still pained him to think of Summerton as being somehow lesser, so he loyally added, “We have much better fruit, though, and even travelers say our baker is the finest in the land.”

  Charon nodded as if in agreement, and Eiland remembered that Charon had tasted their fruit and bread himself, that day in the orchard. Charon must have been thinking of it, too, because his expression turned sad and withdrawn again.

  The Rites ended and music rose, as did the crowd’s excitement. A fiddle stuck up a bright melody and people exclaimed happily, flooding onto the dance floor. Their feet stamped in time to the drum’s beat as they formed three pairs of lines, men leading their ladies or prospective ladies into position.

  “Do they have better dances in Summerton, too?” Charon asked over the music. His mouth quirked.

  “Well, they have better dancers.” Eiland eyed the first few clumsy passes. “Ooh, I think that one just elbowed her partner in the face.”

  “You should go show them how it’s done. Clearly they’ve been waiting for your guidance.”

  Eiland frowned and looked at Charon’s face. He was smiling, but by now Eiland could recognize all the places where Charon had fitted this cheerful mask in place. He saw how underneath, Charon was slowly shrinking under the weight of his own skin.

  “Don’t, Charon,” he said.

  The mask twitched and cracked. Charon looked away from Eiland, watching the dancers weave and turn around each other. The food sat heavy in Eiland’s stomach; he felt as though he were wrestling with an invisible foe and losing.
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  He went to fetch them both some more water. While he was filling his cup, he got asked to dance by a pretty young girl who couldn’t be older than fourteen summers. Either she hadn’t seen him come with Charon or she didn’t know what a Cursed one looked like.

  Eiland saw himself in her eyes, only a season gone by.

  He danced with her, mostly because some of her friends were watching and he didn’t want her to feel bad. After that one of her friends asked and he couldn’t say no without making her feel even worse.

  At home there were always girls who wanted to dance with Eiland, despite him being the youngest son and of no real use to them in marriage. There would be more girls, he realized suddenly, once he got home. The thought turned bitter in his mouth.

  Girls were soft and lovely and sweet, and Eiland could finally admit to himself that he did not find them the slightest bit desirable.

  Charon still sat in the corner where Eiland left him. The villagers avoided even looking at him; amid the celebration he cut a still, solitary figure.

  Eiland looked across the flickering, makeshift dance floor and felt a door open inside of him, letting light shine on everything dusty and tucked away. Mara had been wrong. She’d said there was no difference between them, and maybe there shouldn’t be—but there was.

  There was and for better or worse Eiland had to choose.

  He stood on the far edge of the twirling dancers, but inside he stepped even further back and he looked at the pretty girls and dutiful wives and square-jawed farmers with their bent backs and their long days devoted to the same plot of land. Most of the people around him would never leave this village in their entire lives, let alone sit on a hillside and watch the gods light the night sky with more colors than Eiland had ever known possible.