by Jane M. R.
BRINELLA
The hairy man releases his death grip on my body and launches to his feet, stumbling to the doorway. I’m not going to lose sight of him. I chase him down the stairs, across the parish, to the stairs going to the upper level of the castle. He’s practically running, though his bare feet are stumbling so badly it looks like he doesn’t know how to run.
He makes a sharp left at the top of the stairs. After navigating a short hallway, he pushes open a door that leads directly outside. Sunlight falls on him and he throws his arms across his face with a shout as if someone slapped him. With one arm across his eyes, he continues down a staircase there which curls around the castle wall to the river at the bottom.
The young voiced man – or hairy boy? – runs straight into the water without any apparent thought. I stop on the bank, watching stunned as he begins drinking mouthfuls of the river. He does this for a good minute. He ducks out of view behind a boulder on the shore and I hear him retch.
I blossom with awkwardness, which balms over some of my disbelief but it isn’t an emotion I like any better. I back away to the stair case and sit. I hope I didn’t just set free a crazy person. Maybe there was a good reason why he was locked up. Why did he start screaming and sobbing and collapse on the floor when I told him what year it was? I’m starting to think he is crazy. And this is Durain’s secret?
Yes. This is Durain’s secret. So because Durain was vested in it to the point it killed him, I will be too. Crazy person or no.
He emerges from behind the boulder again and I see him drink more river water. I almost stop him. It would be a shame to go through all that effort only for Durain’s secret to die from giardia.
He sloshes back onto shore in a sodden mess, his big yellow robe drooping alarmingly open but enough hair covers most of his body that it’s not hard to avoid looking at all that I don’t want to see.
He looks at me, and from what skin I can see through all the hair on his face is blushed pink. His hairy bare feet slap over to the apple trees along the shore. He pulls several off despite their wizened state and chomps into them – core, worms, all of it –with a ferocity I’ve only ever seen in stray dogs. After he consumes about ten apples, he splashes back into the river.
I want to give him privacy for all the weird noises I’m hearing behind the boulder but I don’t want to let him out of my sight. I stand, following the river upstream. I can still hear him splashing around and retching behind me.
Heaps of wood that resemble broken furniture are piled in a semi-circle with one heap in the center. I can’t place the strangeness of it until I see some purposefully placed trees and bushes and even some flowers… this is a garden. Or was.
The bridge looms high above me, great arches bearing its weight, the river slipping between the beams.
I don’t hear any more splashing or retching. I throw a glance over my shoulder. He’s not there. I run back.
He is sitting on the stairs in a shuddering wet heap, holding his belly and making guttural sounds. He looks at me and I half expect his green irises to flash into gold again. But they don’t. I must have imagined it the first time. He looks away again. I thought I saw something similar to shame in his eyes.
“Forgive me.” His voice is so heavy I half expect him to fall to the ground with the weight it has on him. It also sounds crackly and dry. Probably from throwing up so much. “I art most wretched.” He takes a bite from an apple and sniffs. He’s been crying again.
It’s hard to believe this man is human, under the weird circumstances I found him, but this little apology tugs at me. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It hath nary to dost with worry. I art a miserable sight.”
Why is he talking like that? It sounds something like Old English but no one talks like that anymore.
Without warning, he throws his half eaten apple to the ground and proceeds to cry. Again.
I agree with his statement about being a miserable sight. He’s being very dramatic over… I don’t even know. I just bloody watched him crawl out of an altar! What did he say? His clothes had rotted off him some… what does yore mean?
It is obviously all a lie, but his tears look real. The seizure he had in the parish was real. Or was he just faking it? But who am I to judge his emotional state. Maybe he has some mental deficiently. If so, then he believes it is real.
Hesitantly, I sit next to him. Then even slower, I slide an awkward arm across his wet shoulders. “It’s okay. Everything will be alright.”
His body shudders and he silences instantly upon my touch. His sobbing turns into sniffles. He wipes his nose on his wet sleeve.
“I never got your name,” I say to distract him, because I don’t want to see him cry again. I never know how to comfort people when they cry. Especially men. Men aren’t supposed to cry. How old is this person, anyway? His voice sounds really young but all this body hair throws off any calculations I attempt.
“What doth thou asketh?”
This language barrier is annoying. “What is your name? What do people call you? My name is Brine.” I hope saying it enough different ways will trigger the connection he needs to make to understand my question.
He doesn’t respond right away. His shoulders have turned to stone where my arm is touching him. Cold water soaks into my sleeve. He takes a deep breath as if he’s about to scream, but he doesn’t. “Zadicayn.” His voice hikes in his chest a few times as if fighting another sob. “My name is… Zadicayn.”
“Zadicayn?” I try it out. He nods somberly. Why does that name sound familiar?
The gushing of the river fills in the silent space that follows. He picks up another apple from a pile he made at his feet and takes a bite.
I wonder if now is a good time to start questioning, but he seems so hungry. I’ll let him finish his apple. When he starts eating another one, I give up. “Why were you in the altar?” I’m not going to believe any of this is real until I have an answer that makes sense.
His body shudders, heaving in gentle motions up and down. I think he’s crying again until he takes a breath. He’s laughing. All that hair makes him look like a thirty year old crazy hermit. I’m afraid to sit next to him.
Zadicayn shouts so suddenly that I flinch. He stands and slams a hand into the stone foundation of the castle. I dash five steps away from him.
“What tis wrong with meself?” he wails. All the crazy mirth he had before is gone now. He digs hairy fingers into his head and begins pacing back and forth barefoot in the dirt.
I would have liked an answer to that question myself. My sympathy quickly dissipates in front of his sporadic emotions. He is mental.
He stops pacing and looks at me. I flinch. “Consider taking thyself out of me site until the morrow. I canst nary have thee looking upon me such. This tis nary who I be.”
It’s hard to understand every word he is saying. But I think I got the basics of it.
He looks so sad and broken that I immediately take back what I thought about him being mental. “No no, you are fine. I… look, I don’t know anything about you, so it’s wrong for me to judge. I…” I force out a laugh, still trying to understand the incredulousness of it all. “I had no idea you would come out of the altar. I was just following instructions left to me by a friend. I didn’t know why or what for. So, I am dumbfounded with seeing a human come out of something that I unlocked so… so I need some questions answered. When you are ready, of course. But don’t be ashamed of anything. I know nothing about you or why you were locked up.”
Zadicayn’s staring at me, his green eyes so young and honest. Maybe I spoke too fast. He’s probably struggling to understand how I speak, like I am when he does. “I trow.” He drops the word like he had to get it out of him for him to take another step. I don’t know what that word means. “But I canst nary reply to that question upon the moment. But I shall. Moreverso… mayest I beseech thee a question?”
I tense at his refusal to answer my question. Even the secr
et won’t tell me the secret! I think I’m doomed to never have any of my questions answered. But I nod.
He takes another bite of the apple. “How dost thee acquire the Binding?”
“What?”
“The…” He flexes his hand not holding the apple. Apparently the language barrier is frustrating him, too. “The copper piece affixed by diamonds of three. The Binding. How hast thee acquire it?” Now it’s sounding like he’s trying to fit my dialect and speech patterns into his own. I still got the idea, though certain they were rubies, not diamonds. My father’s mine sometimes yields rubies so I have a good idea what they look like.
“I came by the Binding by illegal means.” I don’t think he understood that. I speak slower. “My cousin found one piece – the Binding came in three pieces – I had the other two stolen for me.”
“Thy cousin? Who tis?”
If Durain were still alive I would guard his name like a secret. “Durain Ishnar.”
He hung his head. “I knoweth nary.”
I jam the toe of my boot into the dirt. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.”
“I pray thee peace.”
“Thanks.” It’s a small acknowledgment to my pain, but it actually helps that this crazy stranger would care.
He takes another slow bit of apple and chews, then promptly spits it out. “These apples art pudh. Elsewhere I suppose it mighten be me lack of tasting any one thing for… dost thy cousin bespeak ye such about meself?”
I’m really trying to be patient. It’s not his fault. “Forgive me.” Bloody hell. Now I’m starting to speak like him. “Will you say that again?”
“What tis this word yew?”
“You.” I jam a finger into his shoulder. “You.” I point a finger at myself. “Me. Will you,” I point my finger back on him, “say that again?”
Zadicayn looks around as if trying to find a translator for us. “Didst thy cousin…” He jams a thumb into his chest. “spakest upon me?”
“Did my cousin tell me about you?” I guess. “No. Did he know you?” By now I wouldn’t be surprised with the people Durian might have known.
“So ye…” He pauses. “So ye free meself but nare understood it?”
I’m going to start translating for him so he can start to learn how to speak like me. “Are you asking if I was aware what I was freeing when I rescued you?”
He appears to think a moment. Then nods.
“No. He didn’t tell me. He died and left me a note with little instructions that brought me here. He did it in case anyone else found the note. Apparently you are a big secret around Valemorren.” I smile, trying to egg him on to spilling his secrets. He just takes another bit of apple.
So if he won’t answer as to why he was in the vault, maybe… “How long were you in the vault?”
He shivers visibly and doesn’t stop. Fearing he’s going to have another episode from earlier like he did in the parish, I touch him again. For some reason my touch settles him.
He holds up dirty, hair, and apple-sauce covered fingers. “Three hundred and two four years.”
All the air is punched out of my chest. “Three hundred twenty-four years?”
He nods.
“Wha…” Breathless, I try to ask a question I might understand the answer to. “How…?”
He jumps to his feet and races back to the river. He makes a giant splash and I hear him vomit again. I’m still reeling. He’s lying!
“Why canst I nary feedeth meself? I be so famished!” He slogs back out of the water. I push all this impossibility somewhere where I can meet them halfway. I dig into Durain’s bag and hand him the rest of my hard bread, nearly half a loaf.
“If you haven’t eaten in… a while,” I say, not willing to accept what he just told me, “then your stomach is not ready for acidic foods.”
“Acidic?”
I shuffle my shoulders. “Apples have a sort of fruit acid in them.” I tap my stomach. “Harsh on the stomach sometimes.”
He takes the bread hesitantly, meeting me again with those remarkable green eyes. He looks so funny with all that hair on his face – especially his long eye brow hair – that I clear my throat to quell the giggle that surfaces.
He takes a mouthful of bread and reclaims his seat on the stairs beside me.
“Have you eaten recently?” It’s foolish for assuming he hadn’t. Obviously he had or he wouldn’t be alive.
“Thou art correct in thy assumptions. I hath nary eaten.” Most of what he’s said already has been with a mouth full of food.
“What does ‘nary’ mean?”
He looks at me. The smile he provides is strange and welcoming at the same time, letting me know that he finds my dialect just as foolish as he must know I find his. I smile back. “Nary, naught –”
“Not? You’ve eaten not? Then you want to say, “I have not eaten.”
He looks at me like I’m the challenged one. Maybe I am. “I have naught eaten.”
“Then how are you still alive if you haven’t eaten? Have not eaten?” I better stick to short, one syllable words. I’m certain he’s lying. Three hundred twenty-four years down there? Certainly, it is hard to guess his age but no one lives that long.
Zadicayn smiles big enough that it lifts the corners of his moustache. His unstable mood seems to be smoothing out the more he talks, the more he even looks at me. His knee is deliberately touching my own. “I consent to understandeth thou dost nary believe meself. Howevermore, bespeaking thy desires of which thee wishes to heareth shall be certain to befuddle ye overmany.” He takes a bite of bread, chews, swallows, takes another. “Thee shall just have to trusteth me word.” Crumbs spew as he talks. “Moreso, the Binding wast in thy keep and thou lay claim to see upon meself flee from the vault. What wouldst thou desire to believe?”
“The word is ‘you’ not, ‘thou, thee, thine, ye,’ or any of that.”
“Yew?”
“Close enough.” I decid in that moment to nitpick his speech to avoid the question I can’t face the answer too. I can’t believe I saw him climb out of the vault I unlocked. Except I did.
“Wouldst yew –” He shakes his head. Perhaps it’s too early for him to learn how to speak normal. “Wouldst ye desire to enter the vault and looketh upon the chamber of me confines thyself?”
“Yes.” I stand, folding my arms. “I actually would.”
He stuffs the last bit of bread into his mouth, ambling to the river where he cups water into his hand and drinks.
“You shouldn’t drink river water,” I chastise. “It’ll make you sick.”
His reply is a laugh as if I had just told a really, really funny joke, and he continues drinking.
“The bread remains downward,” he says over his shoulder. “I beseech thee accept me fullsome gratitude.” He joins me again at the stairwell.
“Try this instead: I thank you very much.’”
He shifts nervously. “I. Thank. Yew. very. Much.”
“You’ll get it,” I encourage, then realize I’m not sure why I’m trying to teach him how to speak my dialect anyway. It’s not like he’s going to leave this castle and enter Queen Victorian’s strict society.
He extends his arm up the stair and bows to me. “Shall we?”
I take the lead. He falls in close behind, his hand on my shoulder which bothers me that he is touching me so much. I just don’t have the heart to tell him no. I’ll just kick in his knee caps if he tries anything obscene. Durain taught me that move.
Once inside, I’m not sure which way to go. He’s pulling me to the right. “Over yonder here.”
My torch has burned to warm embers in the holder in the wall where I put it before following Zadicayn into the priest’s room in the parish.
“I shall gather one.” In a flash of yellow robes, he is gone. I wait, looking back upon the altar I had opened. I’m at peace knowing I’m going to find a whole store of food and a tunnel which leads outside.
He’s not gone long and to
uching the fresh torch to the smoldering one, Zadicayn breaths it back to life and hands it to me. The fire lights up his eyes in a highly reflective glare. It’s the only attractive feature on him. He lifts his arm, indicating the altar.
I go to it and look down. It’s so black I can’t see the bottom even with the torch. I drop it, just like adventurers in Durain’s stories do to cast light into deep places. It hits the stone floor twenty feet below with a shatter of sparks. There is a ladder affixed to the inside of the altar and I haul my body over the edge and set my feet on the first rung. I look back to find Zadicayn pacing as far away as he can get from the altar without actually leaving the room.
The lid of the altar sounded heavy enough when it hit the floor that I doubt he could pick it up to seal me inside, as skinny as he is. It doesn’t seem like he’d do something like that, but he is still a stranger.
As I descend I notice circles of metal all down the sides of the pit, appearing to be rods that could slide out and back in. That would explain the gating noise earlier.
I reach the bottom and pick up the torch. I stretch out my arm to flash the light about. I walk forward until I reach a wall, then drag my left hand against it as I walk along.
I make the entire loop of the small chamber, seeing nothing. I leave the wall and walk center of the chamber where the ladder touches the floor. There is nothing. No furniture. No doors. No food. Water, source of heat…
Nothing.
It echoes like a tomb.
CHAPTER NINTEEN
ZADICAYN
I force on a pair of shoes over my hairy feet. The previous owner was larger than me and so the boots become lumbering obstacles. Brine enters the priest’s room. I stop the futile shoe pursuit with a sigh and acknowledge her arrival. “Didst ye findeth any one thing?”
She lowers her eyes and shakes her head.
“That tis well. Because I wast going to upset if ye hath found something I wist nary about these yore of three hundred. Even a stone wouldst hath provided good company.”