“Mowler suffered for his evil actions,” Heraclix said to himself. “I suffer for my ignorant acts.”
He thought of the hand, looked at it, studying this thing so alien yet so much a part of him. He wondered if the same silver ichor flowed through it that had flowed, and only recently staunched, from the wound in his thigh.
“And I bring and suffer pain for those things over which I have no control. Is there no end to this pain and suffering?”
He looked down the side of the stone pillar on which he stood. Twenty feet below him, the tops of the pines scratched at the open air. Beneath their green tufts, a chlorophyll ocean whose depths he could not fathom coursed in waves. Could a dive into such a place hold salvation for him? He had been born, that he knew. And that which was born must die, was it not so? Perhaps he could end his suffering and the suffering of all those around him who had paid for his ignorance.
Yet he felt, somehow, that this would be a cheat, that, though his life might cease, suffering would continue on in the world. And who knows what suffering awaits the dead, if there is a life after?
For him, there was a life after. This was evidenced by his very existence as what he was. He had been “born,” but he had been born of that which had died, which must have had an earlier birth at a time or times completely veiled to him by the bloody cauldron-womb of his inception as Heraclix. What had these men suffered or caused to be suffered before their deaths and his birth?
He could not in good conscience make a decision to end his existence without knowing all there was to know about these men—their desires, their hopes, their stories. Perhaps it was cowardly guilt, perhaps a clinical curiosity—he knew not which, but something simply drove him to know, a lust for information about those whose constituent pieces, together, made him him.
With great difficulty, owing to his leg, he climbed down the stone pillar and continued over the mountains, the Kőszeg Mountains, he thought he recalled from one of the many maps that he had perused in the time before the fire, toward Bozsok, the home of the once-boy who had delivered the Serb’s hand to the sorcerer.
“. . . sickly and stooped, a runt, but a good, innocent lad . . .” This is how the boy—perhaps a man now, perhaps not, Heraclix could not know—was described in the Serb’s letter. He pictured a lad somewhere in his midteens, his face long, eyes sunken, bony cheeks pronounced from poverty. The boy’s skin was smooth, not yet creased by age or worry, lost hope, and regret. But there was a knowing glimmer in his eyes. Innocence still held sway, but cruel experience camped around the borders, sending assassins in to lie in wait, anticipating the signal to set fire to the foundations of the boy’s emotions, to burn his sense of trust to the ground. Perhaps there was time, Heraclix thought, to save the lad, or at least to steel him for what life would bring him, if it hadn’t already arrived.
The mountains crested not far to the east and gradually lost their elevation as they stretched southeast. Even with Heraclix’s great endurance and speed, he was not out of the mountains by evening. The thickness of the trees sped the fall of night, blanketing him in darkness. Beyond the invisible leaves, clouds rolled in, and rumbling thunder heralded gentle sheets of rain that distorted—but did not completely muffle—the sound of wolves baying in the distance.
After pain-filled and uncomfortable hours of travel, the mountains settled into less-densely forested foothills, the wolves’ howls decreased, and the intensity of the storm increased. Lightning, striking from all directions, led to confusion, hesitation, and bad judgment that had Heraclix heading back up into the mountains before he realized that he was going in the wrong direction. He doubled back again, frustrated at the setback. Heraclix was wet, miserable, and distraught. The agony of his leg had grown. The wound was indeed spreading beneath his stitched up skin. His time was limited.
Half the night had fled by the time he finally found the edges of the village. The rain was a torrent by this point, and the lightning only let up for short periods. The buildings all had their shutters tied with leather thongs to keep the elements outside.
One structure was larger than the others—possibly the centerpiece of town, though it was difficult to judge the relative size of the buildings in the fluctuating perspective caused by the lightning. A large wooden sign swung back and forth over the front door. On it, a carved octopus wrestled with an armored unicorn over an unfamiliar constellation of stars. The engraved words above them read THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE in Gothic script.
The oaken front door was sticky, swollen in its frame from the rain that beat sideways against it. Heraclix tried to open it, but he had to push his shoulder up against it to get enough leverage. The door suddenly opened with a snap and Heraclix fell onto the floor. He gathered himself up, thinking of how his position reminded him of his birth in Mowler’s apartment.
The door slammed behind him, shut and barred by a middle-aged man in an apron whose most striking feature was his bushy, tightly curled black hair and handlebar mustache.
“You’re the last one!” the curly-haired man said. “Next person that tries to come in, I stab him!” he held up a corkscrew. Heraclix looked around the room and understood the man’s consternation immediately. It was a tavern, and everywhere were people, some speaking in low tones, most sleeping on any flat surface they could find, be it floor, table, bar, or crate. This might have been the entire village’s shelter from the storm. And the entire village, save for a trio of passed-out drunks in the corner, looked at Heraclix with wide eyes.
“Furthermore, if I have to mop . . .” the curly-haired man looked up at Heraclix’s bulky frame, his speech incrementally slowing with each word “. . . one . . . more . . . drop . . .” He stopped without finishing his sentence.
“Ah, I’m afraid,” the man said, apologetically, “you’ll have to rest by the door.”
The rest of the crowd was not inclined to take so generous a view of the giant in their midst. Those who did not immediately roll back over into sleep glowered at Heraclix and mumbled among themselves. Heraclix wondered if he had not found himself in the Gypsy quarter of Bozsok, if there was such a thing.
“Look what the storm drove in,” said a muscular bearded man with a long mane of red hair. He wore an apron that branded him as a bartender, butcher, or blacksmith. Heraclix decided he must be the last, given the charcoal smudges on the man’s fingers, temples, and forehead.
“You’ve never been here before,” said a short, skinny devil of a fellow whose piercing eyes were almost as dark as the black doublet and breeches that he wore. He was decidedly ugly, but his clothes were of the finest workmanship and neatly pressed, unlike the rest of the motley villagers in the tavern. Heraclix could even catch the shine of the man’s boots from across the room.
“I am only a humble traveler seeking information,” Heraclix said. He winced at the hoarseness of his own voice.
He fumbled a gold coin from the pouch he had taken from Mowler’s apartment, offering the thaler to the skinny, smart-dressed man.
“I am looking”—he tried, unsuccessfully, to clear his voice—“I am looking for a young man, or at least a person who was once a young man, who delivered some goods to Vienna on behalf of one Vladimir Porchenskivik.”
Several of those who were sleeping stirred at the mention of the name. Heraclix suddenly felt more eyes upon him.
The short, skinny man plucked the thaler from Heraclix’s grasp.
“I will tell you who you seek and where to find him,” the skinny man said in a near-whisper, “if you leave and never bring mention of that name to this village again.”
“I’m sorry?” Heraclix was confused about how he had caused offense.
“The Serbian fiend,” the skinny man whispered. “I shall not repeat his name. Nor should you, if you value keeping your tongue in that undersized head of yours.”
Heraclix nodded his agreement. This was a time for negotiation and compromise, not for the defense of one’s pride, however easy such a defense would be to m
ount, verbally or physically, even with his bad leg.
“Good. The one you seek is Nicklaus the idiot. He lives in the hills, by himself. His little cottage is a few miles up the northern road. You will pass a pair of massive oaks—you cannot mistake them for one is the mirror image of the other. Once you pass them, you will see a faint path to your left. This path will lead you to Nicklaus. But do not venture past his little place. He is a moron—crazy, but harmless. Beyond the vale of his home, however, lies the influence of the one I will not name. It is rumored that the ghosts of . . . well, it is best not to talk of such things. Now go,” the short skinny man said, holding his hand out toward the door to indicate that Heraclix should now take his leave, which he did.
CHAPTER 6
The lightning had become more distant and less frequent, the wind had died, and the rain had settled back into a fine mist that enveloped Heraclix with a layer of water. He slid over slick roots and muddy patches, unable to see as well as he would have liked in the moisture-saturated darkness. Every bump to his leg became more and more painful as the night wore on.
“Ironic, now, that I wish the lightning was flashing more often,” he said.
“What is ‘ironic?’” Pomp asked, appearing right in front of Heraclix’s face as a flash of lightning illuminated the night.
Heraclix jumped back, slipping in the mud.
“Glad to see me?” she asked.
“Yes, but not so suddenly!”
“Don’t you want me here?” she said with a pout.
“Yes, of course,” Heraclix said, picking himself up from the sodden ground. “I thought that I had lost you back in Vienna, in the fires.”
“Pomp went . . . home for a while.”
“You sound sad,” Heraclix said. “What’s wrong?”
“Home is not the same!” she said. “Pomp is not the same!”
“Are you well?”
“I am well now. But . . . different. Pomp has . . . purpose.”
“Good,” Heraclix said, “and I have a direction: up, into the hills.”
“You found the messenger boy?”
“We’re about to find him. Though I don’t think that he’s a boy anymore.”
The rain slowed down as the night wore on, until the only remnants of the storm were the sounds of water trickling from leaves to roots.
Heraclix limped ahead through the muck, up into the foothills he had earlier descended, as dawn turned the air from black to sickly grey. They passed the trees and took the path, exactly as described by the short skinny man with the immaculate clothes. A few miles up the path they found a small cabin with a hole-peppered roof and beams warped under the weight of years. Every crease was filled with abandoned spider webs. Bits of fur caught in the splinters marked the passage of animals that used the structure for a scratching post. The only living things to be seen were earwigs and centipedes, which scuttled out from under the shack, then quickly retreated into an inch-high gap between earth and wood that ran the length of one side.
Heraclix approached, knocked. Pomp, sick of riding on his shoulder, flew over to one of the misshapen windows. The glass sagged with age, distorting anything she might see inside, but she looked around this way and that, trying to discover who or what was inside.
There was no answer. Heraclix knocked again.
“I think you stop that,” Pomp said. “This man is, you say, dead.”
“Dead? How do you know?” Heraclix turned the door handle and started to open the door.
“He does not move. And he stinks.”
They could smell alcohol on the man’s breath from the doorway.
“He’s not dead,” Heraclix said. “He’s soused.”
Nicklaus was everything Heraclix had expected—gaunt, but not broken, not completely—but he was no longer the boy who delivered the hand. That event must have taken place many years ago.
Heraclix knelt down by the man’s bed, carefully removing the drunk’s slack hand from a bottle of vodka. He shook Nicklaus.
“Nicklaus. It is time to awaken. We must talk to you.”
Nicklaus’s eyes opened. He stared directly at Heraclix with not the least bit of surprise in his eyes, like it was no odd thing for a creature such as this golem to be rousting him from a hungover slumber. Perhaps he was still dreaming.
“Who are you?” he asked with more curiosity than concern. He coughed, then gagged, almost vomiting.
“I am the owner,” Heraclix raised his left hand, “of this”.
A look of fascination, mixed with disdain, crinkled Nicklaus’s eyebrows. His expression soon became pained, though Heraclix couldn’t tell if the man was feeling the effects of a hangover or something else.
“That,” he said, betraying his familiarity with and knowledge of the thing in one word, “I haven’t seen for a long, long time.”
“That,” Heraclix mimicked Nicklaus’s inflection, “is exactly why we are here to talk with you.”
“We?” the drunk looked around the room and outside the still-open door.
Pomp appeared, with theatrical timing, on Heraclix’s shoulder. “He and me make we!” she said.
Nicklaus looked down at the vodka bottle, then up again at Pomp, then back again at the bottle. He shook his head and took a deep breath as if accepting this strange new reality, steeling himself to act in it.
Heraclix put a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, as if he had just realized the enormity and hideousness of the giant in his room.
“It has been a long time,” he said. “I have forgotten much.”
Heraclix offered a gold thaler, which Nicklaus refused.
“I do not need a bribe to try to remember. I don’t want to talk!”
Heraclix put the thaler back into his pouch.
“Talking helps us feel better!” Pomp said.
“What’s there to talk about?” Nicklaus looked at the wall. “I have nothing left anyway.”
“Things are left,” Pomp said, “inside you!”
Nicklaus let the words sink in, staring at the floor for a long time. Then he sighed and nodded, as if acquiescing. “Okay. I’ll give it a try. Though it’s difficult. Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“I have a strong interest in learning everything I can about this hand.” Heraclix held it up.
“I don’t know if I can help much,” Nicklaus said.
“Any information you can give will help us,” said Heraclix. “And anything you can get off your chest will help you.”
“Okay. It was a long time ago, back when I lived with my poor old mother, God rest her soul.” He paused, as if trying to remember her face, but the fog of years and alcohol kept her from clearly revealing herself to her son.
“Mother was desti-, destit-,” his face contorted as he tried to and failed to get the word out, “very poor. Father had died after a horse kicked him in the head, not many years after I was born. I had no skills, but I could run long distances, probably from being raised in the mountains where we grew stronger than the people down in the hills and meadows. ‘Lungs of iron,’ Mom used to say. So I delivered letters, legal documents, and small packages for whomever would pay my fee. I became a well-known messenger. Fast, strong, and, most of all, trusted.”
“How did you find customers?” Heraclix asked. “Or, rather, how did they find you?”
“Since we lived out here,” Nicklaus indicated the cottage around them, “we were a sort of bridge between Bozsok and Vienna and Prague and everything that lay between. We got to know strangers, travelers, people who lived on the fringes, before anyone in Bozsok met them. The man who sent that,” he pointed at Heraclix’s hand, “lived, still lives, I think, not far from here.”
“He—that man—had a bad reputation among the villagers, but I was too young to know why, and I never really cared—never gave it any thought all these years. He paid well, that’s all I cared about.”
“How do you know he had a bad reputation?” Heraclix asked.
“Mothers and
grandmothers warned us against going in that direction. Said he was in league with the devil himself. But what did I care? He offered a hefty sum, a bag full of gold thalers, to deliver the hand, with the promise of more when I returned. I would be secure for a very, very long time. I could pay off my mother’s debts and give her a good life. She deserved that. She was so good to me.”
Nicklaus sniffled, stifled a tear, looked again at the vodka bottle.
“It is good to help mother,” Pomp said. “Say more about the man.”
“He was good to his word. A bag full of gold thalers, and I delivered the hand. The man on the other end gave me a return package and a generous tip, as well, though I sensed he did so because he felt obligated to. He didn’t seem naturally generous.”
“Tell us about the other man,” Heraclix pleaded.
“I hardly remember anything. He was old, well dressed. I never learned his name and was ordered specifically not to ask. In any case, I returned home but stopped at the Serbian man’s home first. Upon delivering the package, the Serb was very thankful and handed me two bags of silver thalers in addition to the gold he had already paid. I had never imagined such wealth. I was eager to share the good news with my mother.”
“That is good news!” Pomp said.
Nicklaus continued: “When I came back here, she wasn’t outside working in the garden, as I would have expected her to be at that time of day. I called out and checked the woods outside of our garden, where we kept the firewood, but found nothing. Finally, though it was midafternoon, I entered the cabin.”
He choked up again. This time he couldn’t stop the tears entirely.
“And there she was.” He pointed up. Heraclix and Pomp turned, puzzled, to look where he was pointing: a set of empty rafters. “She was there, hanging by a rope.”
He wept.
“I am so sorry,” Heraclix said, and he was. He felt a deep emptiness in his chest where his heart may or may not have been.
Pomp felt something just beyond mere curiosity, something different, something uncomfortable but strangely necessary. She wanted to do something for the man, but she wasn’t sure what to do.
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