by Remi Michaud
“Nothing. My friends and I often play down here so I was coming down to enjoy the sunset.”
As the other two rose to their feet, mirroring their leader's glare, and his stagger, Jurel began to think that maybe these boys wanted to be left alone. Too late for that, he thought apprehensively.
“Well, yer friens don't seem t'be ere, now do they?” he asked with a smirk and his friends chuckled.
“Do your fathers know you're here?” Jurel asked and he could have gladly kicked himself for it.
“Do yer fadder's know yer ere?” one of the others mimicked in a sarcastic falsetto and this time the chuckle was louder, and less friendly.
“Look boy,” the leader said. “I don't care if you an yer friens use ta play ere. Dis is our pon now an I don' wanna see yer ugly face roun ere no more. Got it?”
As if to punctuate his meaning, he raised a fist and shook it at Jurel. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Jurel took a step back, raising his own hands in a gesture he hoped would be seen as mollifying.
“The pond is plenty big for all of us,” he tried and again he berated himself. Entirely too whiny, he thought.
“Ain' none too bright, is yer? I jus said this ere's our pon. Scram you lil turd.”
He did not need to be told again. He fled, racing up the steep slope until he reached the summit and he did not stop running until he reached his own circle of friends.
He did not care that he interrupted Valik's tale of some woman who did him all sorts of favors in some city far away. It was not true anyway; Valik had never left the farm as far as Jurel was aware. He barely registered Valik's hands clenching into fists, or the angry glare on his pinched rat face.
“Well well. Look who had the balls to show his face around me,” he sneered. “Unless you want a good beating, get lost. We don't want a lying coward with us.”
Although Wag hesitated, uncertain whether he should side with Valik or with Jurel, the others ignored the older boy's comments.
“What's the rush, Jurry?” Trig asked. “We thought you were heading down to the pond.”
When he finally stopped gasping enough to speak, he gestured back over his shoulder.
“There's some other boys down there. I'm pretty sure they're drunk. They told me to get lost-”
“Seems there's a lot of that going around,” Valik cut in darkly.
Surprisingly, it was Erin that came to his defense—along with her ever present echo.
“Leave him be Valik,” she chided. “What's wrong Jurel?”
As might be expected, by the time he finished telling them what the drunken boys said, hiccuping and gasping his way through, there was a general uproar. Muttered comments turned to angry proclamations that they would reconquer their territory.
They stood in a tight circle like a fist, as Valik told them what they would do. He turned a glower on Jurel but it was not a glower aimed at him. For the first time in memory, Valik seemed to have forgotten his animosity toward him, instead focusing his anger on their mutual enemy.
“How many are there?”
“Three,” Jurel said with burgeoning fear at the direction the conversation was taking.
“Three of them, four of us,” Darren asserted with a wolfish grin.
“And they're drunk,” added Trig.
“Hey what about me? There's five of us!”
Wag was jumping up and down, excited as a puppy and he seemed genuinely afraid that the others would not include him in the upcoming war.
“Four and a half, at best,” Valik smirked. “What exactly is a pipsqueak like you going to do, eh? Bite their ankles? Eh?”
He laughed at his own joke, well satisfied when he saw the resentment and disappointment on the little boy's face.
The mood was certainly a dark one and it seemed that the entire sky dimmed for it, though Jurel was not sure if this was so or if his imagination played tricks on him. There was no doubt what the others were planning and icy fingers crept up his spine. This could not happen. It was just a pond, after all. Surely when the other group was sober they would not be so belligerent, right? But the course was set and he was not sure he could bring himself to do his part. And if he did not, he would be an outcast.
There was an unspoken law among boys. They backed each other up without fail in any situation. If one was caught in a prank, the others joined in the blame. If one was in danger, the others rallied to defend him. If one got into a fight, the others would stand at his shoulder. He was not sure he could if it came to blows. None of them knew what he knew. Fighting was not the way. Fighting only led to pain and loss. He was already trembling with dread and they had not even begun to walk back down to the pond.
“Please let's not fight,” he begged.
Contemptuously, Valik rolled his eyes but Darren placed a comforting hand on Jurel's shoulder.
“Don't fear Jurel,” he said in what was surely meant to be a comforting tone though his eyes were fierce. “We'll talk with them. Once they see we're serious, they'll surely leave.”
“Just talk?”
“Of course,” Trig said. “None of us really wants to fight after all.”
He should have been comforted. Their words should have made him feel better. But as the boys turned and marched like a troop of infantry toward the pond, he felt only a hollow place, dark and shadowed like the mouth of a cold, damp cave, open up in him.
With nothing else to do, he swallowed the lump in his throat, and he followed.
* * *
The boys were sitting right where Jurel had left them, still passing around their jug. They were singing a tune—though perhaps singing was too charitable a word; bawling may have been more appropriate. By their laughter, it might also have been bawdy if the words had been intelligible, and Jurel's friends halted only a few paces away, just about the same spot that Jurel had stood a few minutes before, without being noticed.
Valik stepped forward and tapped one of the intruders on the shoulder. With a yelp, the boy spun to goggle owlishly at him. The song dwindled to nothing and the other two turned to look up at their opponents. In unison, the three rose to stand unsteadily facing them.
It all seemed like a bad dream to Jurel. Like the dream he sometimes had where he stood in a grassy field and all seemed well at first. The sun shone, the breeze cooled him and everything should have been right. Except somehow it was not, somehow there was the feeling of impending doom, as if the wind itself whispered to him to run, to hide. But he could not, even when somewhere in the distance a rumble began and roared toward him at unimaginable speed. Even when he found that the source of the roar was the ground falling away, disappearing into the depths of nothing and it was getting closer. He always tried to run then, always tried to do as the wind so urgently whispered, but his feet were planted to the spot and they would not obey his command. Clouds roiled in and covered the sun, faster than was possible and in steel gray gloom, he watched as the ground collapsed, as the line between standing firm and falling forever raced toward him...
“So I hear we're not welcome at our pond anymore,” Valik said and Jurel could not help but be impressed by the amiability of his tone like they were old friends catching up. “Might I ask who you would be to take our pond away from us?”
“None o yer bizness.”
The leader was of a height with Valik and they stood eye to eye. Valik's mild demeanor fell away as they stared at each other: two wolves challenging each other for dominance.
“I tol yer stupid frien there you weren welcome ere no more.”
“Well, you see, we have a little problem with that,” Valik said, smooth as silk and hard as steel. “Why don't you pack up your little wagons and walk out of here while you still can.”
“You threatnin sumpin, boy?”
“I'm not threatening. I'm promising.”
Each boy took a step toward the other, each boy raised a fist and they seemed like two knights preparing to duel over an insult.
Frantically, for he tho
ught he could feel the ground start to fall away, Jurel tugged at Darren's sleeve as he watched the unfolding horror with wild eyes.
“I thought you said we were just going to talk.”
“We did. They don't want to listen.”
A new voice began screaming, NO! NO! NO! Jurel almost turned to search for the new voice before he realized it was his own and it was in his head. He blinked. Somehow there was water in his eyes and it stung like...like sweat. But it was not hot enough for sweat, was it? If his breakfast had not been so far away, he was certain he would have lost it then.
“Well in that case,” the drunken boy began but the voice was hollow and seemed to come from the other side of the pond.
Instead of finishing his thought, the boy swung a wild fist at Valik and although Valik reacted quickly, it was not quite quickly enough. The fist caught him solidly in the shoulder and he cried out. Simultaneously, Trig and Darren responded, lunging forward. Like him or not but laws, even unspoken ones, had to be obeyed.
Jurel could not make his feet respond.
Come on! My friends are in trouble.
NO! NO! NO!
Please.
NO!
His mouth worked wordlessly and he watched helplessly with blurred vision as the battle was well and truly joined. Arms swung like clubs, bodies writhed. Voices yelled angrily when fists were hurled, and howled in pain when they landed.
Still Jurel stood rooted to the spot, motionless except for the trembling that shook him like a sapling in a gale.
NO!NO!NO!NO!
The drunken boys attacked furiously, seemed unaware of the blows they took so fortified were they by whatever they had been drinking. He watched and he saw. Darren went down under a flurry of fists falling like an axed tree, Trig's head snapped back and he stumbled as blood sprayed from his nose glittering in the sun like rubies from a broken necklace. He saw all of this and still his feet would not obey him.
There was a growing pain behind his eyes, like an iron band stretched too tight and in his ears, he heard an unearthly ringing like a hundred crystal bells struck over and over. In that ringing, he heard sorrow and loss. But there was more: he heard fire, rage, and longing.
“Jurel! Jurel, come on!”
Valik's voice reached him from far away, so far away that it could have been from the other end of the world, beyond a chasm of falling ground, and even the sight of him seemed obscured as if he looked down a metal tube and through dirty glass. He blinked, tried to clear his eyes but instead of clearing, he...
Blinding light flashed, seared his eyes, like a bolt of lightning that struck too close.
His father stared at him. Not Daved. No, his father. Gram. He was wide-eyed with fear as he gazed at Jurel. The acrid stench of burning clawed at him, made him gag.
Another bolt, a second flash! and Valik punched someone in the gut. He was holding his own but there was an angry gash along his jaw. It reflected the angry glare in his eyes. Trig pulled someone off Darren and spun him, punched him in the cheek. He knew the voices still yelled, he saw their mouths working with it. But it all seemed lost in the insistent pealing of the bells in his ears.
But that was not quite right. He did hear screaming. It was not the screaming of children fighting. No, it was the screaming of men dying, forlorn, bereft of hope, full of loss, emptying of blood. There was another voice too. A keening voice, thin and reedy. A tormented voice that he dimly realized was his own.
Flash!
He cowered under the wooden table in the tavern. Even at his young age, he knew he was only moments from dying. A glance toward a darkened corner revealed his mother staring at him but she did not see him. Her mouth hung open as though surprised by something and a silken thread of blood dripped from her lip to the floor.
He averted his gaze, back to his father who was being held by filthy men clad in leather. A third, standing in front of his father, facing him with his viciously serrated sword. The filthy man thrust forward...
Flash!
The ringing in his ears was deafening, maddening, so powerful that he clamped his hands to his head but that did nothing. It continued to rise in pitch and volume. It was so loud that it even affected his sight; he could no longer make out the battle that waged in front of him. He did not see Valik spin, eyes wide, as a tooth glittered, spun lazily in the air. Instead, he stood in a world of black, shot through with ragged colors, blood red and pus green, that pulsed like a demon's heart.
Flash!
His father sagged into the arms of the laughing soldiers and let out a rattling exhalation. A red rose bloomed around the hilt of the sword that protruded from his father's usually spotless white apron. Even as they laughed, they released him, dumping him to the ground like garbage. Jurel bit his lip, squeezed his eyes shut. He had promised, after all, to be a good boy. To be quiet no matter what.
Flash!
The two worlds collided like titans at war, melding past and present, fusing them so he could no longer tell the difference. He was running through grasses that were verdant and pungent with the new spring, made bright by the afternoon sun, or perhaps he ran down a cobbled street in the darkness of night, through billowing walls of smoke and past body-shaped lumps on the ground.
He hurdled the rough wooden fence that snaked its way around Galbin's farm, a fence that could also have been a burning cart, its driver leaning back and staring at the sky, with two shafts sticking out of his chest.
He saw the main barn where the livestock was kept, solid and tidy, the way Galbin liked things. He saw the general store that Gram frequented for supplies, its windows broken, its door missing so it looked like a hungry demon watched him pass.
There were farmers herding chickens back to the coop securing them before the end of the day, there were soldiers hacking and slashing.
He careened past Galbin's house, certain he heard Daved call out, certain that at any second the dirty men with nasty swords would catch him and cut him, club him, kill him.
Near the well or maybe it was the horse trough outside the tavern, he stumbled, lost his footing. Distant pain flared in his hands and knees as he rolled and slid to a stop. The ringing bells were torturing him, demanding that he...that he...what? That he what? What was he supposed to do?
He screamed. The world rolled and hiccuped around him like a ship on stormy seas. He stared at the sun of that beautiful spring day and he stared at the smoke shrouded moon of that terrible autumn night. He stared and he screamed an animal scream. If his senses had not deserted him, he would have seen the terror in Daved's face.
Pain wracked him, roared through him like molten lava, engulfing him and searing everything away, distilling him until all that remained was terror and sorrow.
He saw a familiar figure then, appearing out of the darkness like the silhouette of an angel. A figure that was both soldier and farmer. The figure knelt beside him and gathered him up gently in strong arms. Was that someone calling to him? He could have sworn that someone called his name. But how could he hear it? His hands were covering his ears. Could they not hear the bells that sounded like a hundred deranged blacksmiths going wild with their hammers?
He saw the sun wavering like it was under water. Or maybe he was the one looking up from his drowning death. He saw silhouettes, like specters, surround him, close in, stifling. He saw his father, terror-stricken, anxious. He saw...he saw...
He saw blackness.
Chapter 9
The still air was arid under the punishing sun. It was so dry that puffs of dust kicked up by his horse hung in the air like smoke, and coated his hair so that it seemed light blond instead of its usual ashy gray. A fine layer of the stuff covered the robe over his thin figure—some might have called him emaciated, though they would be quickly disillusioned if they saw the wiry muscle underneath. It tickled his nose, made him sneeze. It could have been worse he supposed. If the sun were not so scorching, his sweat would not dissipate so quickly, leeched from his skin by air that seemed as
thirsty as he was. Instead of a fine layer of dust, he could have been covered in salty, stinking mud. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough.
The grasses along the side of the road were yellow, parched and brittle as baled hay. The trees were wilted so they looked sad, run down by the heat, and the ground ahead was shimmering like an ocean ahead of him instead of more dust.
He cursed himself for an old fool, though he did it silently; even if he'd had the spit for it, he did not have the energy to speak, or even to grumble. His thighs and back ached and his shoulders were slumped in imitation of the trees. What in blazes was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the worst drought he could remember? His horse was not in much better shape. The poor old girl was so spent, her nose nearly dragged along the ground and her steps were slow and deliberate as if each one was a labor.
Even as he felt sorry for himself, so too was there a sense of excitement. It was like an over-taut lute string hummed deep in his bones. Dulled by the oppressive heat certainly, but there nonetheless. Something drew him this way. Something fathomless. Something intangible. He knew the feeling. It was what he had dedicated his life to. This feeling of pulling, a vague indescribable longing, had taken him before and each time he had approached with the same sense of excitement.
Of course, he had been wrong those previous times. It had never panned out; he never found the one he sought. But somehow, this time was different. There was an underlying certainty that he had not felt before, like an achy joint that announced the imminent arrival of a storm.
So he rode his weary horse, somewhere in the middle of the vast kingdom of plains and forests that was Threimes, and he set his crystal blue eyes, clouded from the heat, to the dusty, shimmering road ahead, and taking a sip from his nearly empty water skin, he smiled.
Chapter 10
The farm wallowed in the blistering heat of drought, seeming to hunker down on itself like an injured animal in the dust. The fields that so often rang with the gleeful peals of the children's laughter were silent. No one played in the rough yellow grasses; it was too harsh on their skins, and the sun was too unforgiving to stay out long unprotected, and protection came at a cost: more layers, more heat. Even the pond had receded noticeably. Where before the water was ringed with a thin track of mud and emerald grasses, now there were several feet of baked, cracked dirt, covered in sere, skeletal weeds and furry gray scum so the pond seemed ringed by a feverish infection.