Servants and Followers

by Courtney Bowen

  Now he’d forgotten how to stand and move properly. His body rotted from the inside out, what rotten luck. He couldn’t budge far from his chair, stuck here.

  The tiger was familiar to him now, and Doomba desired to stand and stalk his opponent. Yet he couldn’t do much more than sit, wait, and watch for the tiger. He still had his power, though, able to sustain him and his network of shadows.

  His senses stretched across Salarria, but he couldn’t single out an individual for very long. Some areas seemed to be blocked entirely. He gathered as much intelligence as he could from Servants and Followers able to slip in and out of these blocked-off areas, but sometimes they weren’t heard from again.

  He was disturbed by these disappearances and if he was missing something, like the tiger. But these areas were so far away it couldn’t affect him with so many Followers and Servants to shield him. Perhaps there was nothing to worry about, when losses should be expected with the risk they took.

  Eventually the tiger would arise, and he’d be ready to face this foe. His Servants and Followers were loyal as they could be when he sometimes used them to sustain himself. He promised them immortality, a chance at gaining power. He also promised he would spare their miserable lives from his wrath once he controlled everything.

  He gave them very little of what he promised, though. They’d such short life-spans, and he could sleep away years. He also didn’t trust them, especially the humans who had a habit of grabbing too much power and trying to break out of his control.

  He trusted very few with knowledge of the tiger, what the creature could do, as he doubted they would stay with him then. He gave them enough to track the tiger down, with dim scents and estimations of where he was.

  He promised them great reward for the tiger’s capture and ordered they should bring any suspected tiger to Coe Doomba for inspection and interrogation. However, none of these people were the real tiger. Despite these limitations, at least he could sense the real tiger approaching, and he would be ready.

  As the Ghoulman wandered off, it passed by a Trolla talking to its friends. “I don’t understand. I left the pickaxe right by my feet. Next I know, it’s gone. Impossible to figure out.”

  “Probably one of the animals stole it.” A friend remarked. “Did you check?”

  “I did, but none of them confessed. Who could’ve done such a thing without me noticing?”

  Chapter 5

  In Between

  The boy, he’s lost and he’s alone, he

  Doesn’t know where to go. To whom

  Does he turn to in his hour of need? What

  Spell or god can protect him in his hour of darkness?

  ~ Proverb of Manhood, Urso

  Habala slipped into her sons’ bedroom and picked out Basha’s copy of Legends of Arria, from which she read:

  The Ocean Myth

  From the fissures of Day and Night’s union, an egg had been dropped, containing three sons and a daughter. Popo, Loqwa, Menthar and Mila fell into the ocean and sank, drowning with Day and Night unaware of what had happened.

  The newborn gods reacted differently. Popo thundered with anger and fear, because it was in his power to do so, and he felt helpless, unable to help the others or himself. But it made no noise below water and was useless otherwise.

  Menthar burned with lightning and hatred. Lightning and fire were his powers, and he belonged in the sky, blazing alongside his twin the sun. He hated being quenched and robbed of the air he needed. He hated dying and the water.

  He wanted to live and burn, raging against this injustice. Of course, he couldn’t do anything about dying. Though he burned, there was too much water, and he kept getting snuffed out every time he tried so that only smoke rose.

  While Menthar and Popo struggled and fumed helplessly, their other two siblings were different. Loqwa sank faster because he was actually diving down, not looking up at the sun.

  He felt abandoned by his mother and father, whoever they were, and wanted to drown and die because there was too much effort in struggling. There was too much going against him trying to reach for something higher like life and the sky. There was calmness and serenity in the depths, if he surrendered.

  He was tired of his other siblings’ bombast and their games to survive when they were only prolonging the inevitable. He wanted to embrace the nothingness that existed rather than wait. Besides, Loqwa was half certain that there was something, down deep below the surface. He felt it, beyond life and death, and had to explore.

  Mila struggled towards light and the surface. She saw it, perhaps better than her brothers did. For while the others looked down (Loqwa), at each other (Popo), or at themselves (Menthar), she was reaching and branching out towards the sun.

  She felt the warmth of the sun, even through the water. She wanted life, comfort from her mother the sun, and meet her father the sky. She wanted to breathe again, be free of water, because she remembered, deep inside, that there was more than water; there was sky.

  Her hope sustained her, and she grew.

  Their struggles disturbed and churned the ocean, which recognized them as outsiders, children of Day and Night. While they struggled, rain and stars fell from the sky, and the sun and moon shone above. The ocean realized they were meant to live in the sky.

  They couldn’t die down here. The ocean had to get rid of them before the sky got angry. So the ocean floor rose up and took them to the sky when water couldn’t hold them.

  Loqwa didn’t want to surface. He continued diving, this time digging as he created valleys, trenches, and canyons in the ocean floor. But he also opened holes to other worlds.

  He looked through and saw the other side, that death wasn’t the end of life, but the beginning of something more. He was interested in finding out more about the other side, even as they came closer to life.

  Popo, meanwhile, started urging the ocean floor to rise higher and faster. He wondered why they were saved, what purpose they might have to live.

  Yet as he created mountains and hills, their peaks rising above and beyond his sight, he realized he’d a higher purpose in life, not death. By attempting to escape death, he’d used his powers, greater than himself.

  So Popo called himself a god because of those powers, the very first one. He thought he deserved to live and use these powers for the world he might help to create.

  Though Menthar was saved, he was still angry, and burned hotter and faster as they got closer to the surface and air. He boiled the water, sparking new life into small creatures that lived there, and they became creatures of land and sky.

  Menthar also burned minerals that got embedded in the rock and land forming, becoming gems and precious metals. Yet Menthar didn’t realize this, and could only think of the injuries done to him, nourishing hatred, envy, and such evil as his liquid fire, lava, flowed.

  The creatures that developed because of his rage were affected by the warmth of his immortal fire. For the rest of their lives, they felt such passion and fury as they fed upon each other to stay alive and spread.

  Mila realized they were being saved and knew the sky must’ve intervened. She thanked the sky, then went to the task of setting things up. She grew the underwater plants into trees and forest, thinking the trees would be necessary to make air for the sky and for them to breathe.

  The ocean floor broke the surface, becoming land. The four gods inhaled deeply and then stepped out, looking around at each other and the land. It was fully formed, with mountains, hills, forests, rivers, and lakes where the ocean hadn’t completely drained away, valleys, and more.

  The four gods realized only part of the ocean floor had risen up with them. The land was surrounded by ocean. And though there might be more land beyond, still it wasn’t very large.

  And the sky was still above. They reached, hoping to be taken back up into the sun and clouds, but Night and Day were still negligent of their four children.

  Popo, Mila, Menthar and Loqwa realized they couldn’t exp
ect to be rescued any more than they already had. So the four gods turned to face one another. While underwater, they’d been so concerned about themselves they hadn’t noticed the others much.

  Popo appraised his siblings, assuming he’d be their leader, and he needed to know who he would be dealing with. They were a ragtag bunch, especially Menthar and Loqwa, who seemed sullen. But at least Mila was pretty and pleasant enough to be a good companion. Popo assumed he’d be paired with her when the other two weren’t so pleasant.

  Menthar scowled, especially at Popo and Loqwa, who seemed pompous and serious. But he softened at the sight of Mila, warm and forgiving—easy to bend and break, perhaps, if he wanted to get close.

  Loqwa saw some strange, angry, hateful looks exchanged between Popo and Menthar before their eyes locked on Mila, almost hungrily. He didn’t comment, but only watched, as he felt like he shouldn’t intervene.

  For one thing, his brothers seemed to ignore him out of natural instinct, like they wanted to avoid him. Perhaps they didn’t acknowledge him out of fear of the inevitable, death. Yet he was no worse, and might even be better, than they were.

  Yet he didn’t intervene because he wanted to be paid attention to like Mila was. But that would only happen when he was needed. Then he might be acknowledged as being just as important as any of his siblings.

  Meanwhile, Mila couldn’t guess she was the cause of tension, but she knew something was amiss, and she might be the target. Her brothers had been affected and she was afraid that whatever might happen next, she would be affected as well. She turned, and saw Loqwa staring at her with a sad look in his eyes. She edged away from him, then realized she was moving closer to Popo and Menthar.

  Habala stopped reading, vaguely uncomfortable as the tension between the gods Menthar, Popo, and Mila reminded her of…but she didn’t want to think about that part of her life with Geda and Smidge. She’d been so young and naive, and it’d been so long ago that she was an entirely different person now, she hoped.

  She liked to think she’d changed, and excused her actions then as those of an amused, whimsical girl with perceptions narrowed from living in the forest. But she couldn’t shutter off that part of her when she needed to remember and not make that same mistake again.

  She closed the book, shelved it, and left, shutting the the boys’ bedroom door behind. She nearly collided with Brigga, clutching a hamper basket of bed linen close.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Brigga eyed the floor, “I should’ve watched where I’m going.”

  “Instead of where I’m going,” Habala said, then stopped. “No, I’m sorry. How’s Nisa?”

  “Recovering slowly, it was bad. She eats very little, but at least she manages to keep it down.”

  “Good, glad.”

  “However, I think she mightn’t come back for a while. When Nisa’s well, she plans to visit her cousin, a few miles away, who just had a baby.”

  “A baby? Her cousin? Is this true?”

  “What’s wrong? Of course it’s true.”

  “Nothing, just wondering. What’s the name of your daughter’s cousin, your niece I imagine?”

  “Hestia,” Brigga left to take the linen upstairs to the guest rooms.

  “Hestia, right.” Habala shook her head and went outside. Brigga couldn’t keep up this lie and eventually Habala would have to talk to her about Nisa.

  * * * *

  Old Man was out on patrol, maintaining the magical shield surrounding Coe Baba and ensuring nothing was amiss, when he’d stopped to watch Brigga take down dry bed linen from the clothesline. She’d gone to work at the inn, just like Nisa said.

  Old Man watched Brigga’s fluid movements as she untied the twists on the line, folded up the linen, and placed them back in the hamper basket. Though she wasn’t as young as she once was, she was just as beautiful, perhaps even more so, than she’d been as a young adult, not long after childhood.

  Brigga was an exceptional woman, able to stand up to any challenge, undeterred just like him. She’d always been that way, it had attracted them to each other, and he’d thought that she might be able to handle…he shook his head, and sighed. He never should’ve assumed that she would be able to handle a long-term relationship with him, especially when it was so strange.

  The age differences were phenomenal, lifetimes’ and generations’ worth, and he felt that whenever he was with Brigga, remembering all of the people he’d loved so long ago, nothing more than dust now. One day, Brigga would be the same, and he’d be left alone if he was still around. He didn’t want to live through that pain again.

  She couldn’t fully comprehend it and he didn’t want to share that pain, so he thought it would be best for her to live without him in her life. He still thought of her as one of the children he’d told stories to, and wanted to protect her from the dangers of the outside world.

  Acknowledging their relationship would also have been catastrophic as Old Man would never have been trusted to tell stories to children, knowing that one of them had grown up to be his lover, and Brigga would’ve lived with the title of Old Man’s lover, the bearer of his child, for the rest of her life. People would’ve glanced askance at her, alienating her from normal life.

  Old Man didn’t want to expose her to that and, in the end, it was better for her to be just a single mother with a fatherless daughter. Nisa was a complication they hadn’t intended, but Old Man was secretly glad of it, for he loved their daughter and she would at least be a reminder of their union, who might outlast even him if he’d his way.

  Once or twice, Old Man thought Brigga might’ve noticed him, perched up on the roof of The Smiling Stallion inn, but she continued folding up laundry and carried it inside without once looking up at him. He stayed, though, still thinking about her, and saw what happened when Habala walked out.

  * * * *

  Smidge was mucking out the stables, great. She’d been avoiding Smidge for the past few days, ever since the fire. He might think her vulnerable, and she didn’t want to get ambushed.

  “Habala, how’re you today?” Smidge asked, turning towards her.

  “Fine, Smidge,” Habala turned away.

  “Wait.” He reached out towards her, not minding that his gloved hands had some horse dung on them. “I apologize for not talking to you sooner.” She scoffed as he continued, “I should’ve known that you and I would be busy these past couple of days. You might’ve avoided me,” He sidestepped her when she tried to get around him. “But I should’ve made the effort to reach out to you sooner. Give my regard to you. I want you to always know that you’ve got me around to comfort you, if you need it.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” She almost wished she could summon up the fire to burn him, but he was still her brother-in-law, Geda’s brother. “You’ve been of great help to us, and I’m grateful for that, but don’t let this go on any further. Leave me alone.”

  “Don’t you wish we could return to our glory days,” He clasped her shoulders before she could protest, “When we were young and in love, free from any cares and woes?”

  “Smidge, no. I’m tired of hearing you talk this way to me.” He tried to wrap his arms around her like a squid, but she recoiled and pushed away from him. “I don’t want to go back because I don’t love you anymore, and maybe I never did. I never loved you like I love Geda, because that’s true love. We had passion and fire, but that’s it. Geda will always be the one for me. You were just the first.”

  “That hurts.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel otherwise, but I’m perfectly clear: no. I don’t love you, I never have, I never will, so just get away and leave me alone. Or I’ll tell your brother, and you don’t want Geda getting angry at you for touching me without my consent! I want nothing more to do with you.”

  “Habala, Basha and Oaka are gone, and Geda isn’t going to last very long, the way he’s going these days. You’ll lose him if you’re not careful, and then what�
�ll you do? I’ll be willing and able to provide for you once I inherit the inn. Then we can reconsider.”

  “No, Smidge, not even then, if Geda were dead.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I can’t abide the thought of marrying you even if you were the last man. I would go on my own way if I were left alone, but I won’t give up hope on my family just yet. I’ll fight for them, care for them, and believe in them until we’re all reunited, either here or in the afterlife. I bid you good day.” She turned away before he could retaliate, safe for now.

  * * * *

  Old Man frowned and shook his head as he shrunk deeper into the shadows of the roofline to avoid being spotted by Habala. Smidge always seemed to be up to no good, getting in the way and interfering, and it worried him. He’d dismissed Smidge a long time ago as someone he’d no need worry about.

  He’d thought Smidge had been innocent of any crimes his acquaintances had perpetrated, a brash young man who’d strayed out of the fold until his older brother Geda and Habala had led him back. But now he reconsidered his decision as Smidge was starting to show up again in the most unusual, unlikeliest of places, which reminded Old Man of the past events Smidge had been involved in.

  Perhaps he shared more responsibility than Old Man had credited him for. Smidge always had feelings for Habala, and he was jealous of Geda for inheriting the inn and marrying the girl he’d loved or admired. So perhaps Old Man shouldn’t have expected Smidge to follow their example when Smidge coveted their position for himself.

  Old Man had made a mistake, but he wouldn’t make it again. He would keep his eyes on Smidge, and ensure he didn’t step out of line.

  As Old Man clambered over the roof and jumped over to the next building, Brigga opened a guest bedroom shutter a little wider. She watched him go, then glanced down to the stable yard.