by Jane M. R.
“Did no one come to feed you?”
Seriously? “Dost ye wit any one who hath come by that same Binding? I wit there art nary, because I wrought that one.”
“Whoa ho ho… you what?”
I know she still wants to contend with my reference to my three hundred twenty-four years of incarceration, but this remark apparently makes her forget all about it. “Yea. I wrought the Binding.”
“So…” Her eyes are casting about as if to find something she can believe in. “So did you lock yourself in there, too?”
I know my smile is misplaced. I’m still trying to remember how to smile and how to have a conversation with another human. Talking to myself over the years has paid off. “So now ye mighten wit why I pray thine question upon me confinement to be answered lastmost. And because ye have done meself God’s eternal service of releasing meself, I shall tell ye. Yea. I wrought the Binding. A coppersmith forged the metal to the instructions of meself and I instructed the jeweler to affixicate the three diamonds.”
“Are you sure we are talking about the same Binding? Hold on, hold on.” Brine leaves the room abruptly. I wait patiently for her to return. When she does, she’s holding in her hand the damned Binding that sealed me in the vault.
I hold out my hand. “Handeth that hither.”
She does so. I lay the Binding on its head so the three blood sucking diamonds are pointing at me, and I stomp my boot on them, crushing the gems until red liquid drains out.
“What’s that red stuff coming out of the rubies?”
I look up at her. “These art blood sucking diamonds. Nary rubies. And they wert filled with the blood of meself.”
“Filled with your…”
The disbelief is clear on her face and in her body. I understand completely. If I had seen her climb out of the vault, I would think all this too fantastical, too unbelievable for my mind to even want to consider as truth. The sun outside the small window in the bedroom throws shadows in sharp angles as it mounts the horizon on its way to dusk. Her eyes fix on that.
“I beseech ye to consider the invitation from myself to sleep hither this night.” I think I’m hiding my tone of desperation well. I’m somehow able to refrain from saying, because I’m likely to go mad for real when I fall asleep, because I’m going to wake up in the vault and your touch and your voice called me out of that madness earlier.
“If you don’t mind,” she says, pressing a hand on her chest. I can see in her hesitant way to meet my eye that she is still not sure if she is converted to the idea of sleeping in this castle with someone so unstable and full of weird stories. Again, I don’t blame her. “But I don’t intend to sleep until I am satisfied that all my questions have been answered.” She looks at me with firm resolve, anchoring her belief for everything I’m telling her on that one question I have, as of yet, refused to answer.
“If ye assist meself in a hunt to gather meat, ye shalt have thine answers.”
“The word is will, not, shalt. And it is you’re, not thine.”
I look shrewdly at her. “If ye assist meself in a hunt, ye shalt have thine answers.”
Our silent staring contest only lasts three more seconds before she looks away. But now I feel badly for refusing her language lesson I probably need to learn if I’m going to involve myself in society again. “Yore? As in, many years ago?”
“No. No. As in, you are.”
“… Like, thou art?”
“Yes. Only say it my way.”
“Yew. Are.”
“Yes. So say, ‘you will get your answers.”
I want to buck her lessons. I’m still not willing to accept I was in that vault for so long. “Yew will get yew’re answers.”
“Perfect!” she says, though I know she is lying because her smile forged from sympathy bespeaks that she is just tolerating me out of the goodness of her heart. My own heart aches with how badly I want to show her who I really am. I feel I can’t do that until I get a damned hair cut! She probably thinks I’m some hairy old man with a freakishly boyish voice. I should just shove myself back in the vault and try my rescue again with a male who will be less judgmental. Might even offer me a sharper knife so I can shave.
I am getting hungry again. I forgot how unpleasant that feeling was. “Art ye a hunteress?”
She shakes her head.
“Then we shalt indulge ourselves on fish. Some leapt beyond meself while I wast making a fool of meself in the river. Dost ye fish?”
“The word is do not dost. No. I don’t fish.”
So many words. I hope I can remember them all soon. “Then if ye create a fire with whatever one thing ye useth to light the firstmost torch, I shall gather fish for a feast.”
She’s looking at me – again – like I am crazy. Purely my drive to impress her keeps me going despite how self-conscious her looks and questions make me feel. “Whatever I used to light the torch with? Do you mean a match?”
I don’t know what a match is. Good thing she does. “Yea.”
“The word is ‘yes.’”
“Yea,” I fight. Then buckle down my resolve and repair with, “yesss.”
“I can do that. Where would you like the fire?”
I beckon for her to follow me. We step over my trail of head hair as we leave the priest’s bedroom. The hair has to be at least eight feet long. She doesn’t seem too perturbed by it. A small blessing I can count.
I avert my gaze away from the altar as we leave the gloomy stone chapel. She does not question why I hasten by it so quickly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BRINELLA
We end up in the castle’s kitchen. Zadicayn had long since kicked off his acquired boots and is now walking barefoot, his toes as hairy as his fingers.
A brick oven and open fire place occupy the same wall. A cauldron dangles from an iron rod above old black ash. It is definitely primeval.
“Wood mayest be gathered in the room yonder,” he says. “If nary there, I pray ye shalt forgive meself for sending ye yonder into the trees.” He lifts his shoulders apologetically.
“It’s okay. It’s not like I’ve never been outside before.”
At my comment, his eyes move up and down me as if assessing the truth of it on my dirty clothes and unbrushed hair. His gaze makes me nervous and I squirm, very aware that I am not tied into a dress. I don’t even know this person. Is he dangerous? Had I really released a monster?
The moment passes and he looks away as quickly as he started, leaving me in the kitchen by myself. Even if I had released a monster, I feel badly for him, like I felt badly for Jesaro, who then kidnapped me. Problem with me is, I can’t help but feel badly for people, even if they end up being dangerous to me later.
I find the promised heap of wood inside the small closet directly next to the kitchen door. I bring back an armful and arrange them into the brick oven. An iron grate above the wood will support any food for cooking.
And I realize, that standing in this kitchen in a castle unknown to the outside world, preparing a fire for food in the company of someone who is a mess of confusion and mystery… a sadistic part of me likes this. I’m not even lonely without Durain. I rather enjoy the selfishness of being the only one to know about this place. As for Zadicayn? The truth of him will reveal itself soon.
I have to feed the fire with a second armful of wood by the time Zadicayn, dripping water, comes back with a still wriggling mass inside a dirty shirt he turned into a sack. The holes in the fabric squirm a slimy gray.
“Forgive me. I dost nary wit how to kill them proper in the absence of a dagger. The daggers I own meself art somewhere about, howevermore it hath been so many yore I faileth to remember which bed chamber meself tis master of.”
My stomach flip-flops at the thought of killing a live animal as I accept the shirt-bag. “It’s all right. I’ll take care of it.” With bag in hand, I turn to the table and blow the dust off.
“I wast nary swift enough to catch the fish inside the tunic, so I hath open up t
his pudh festival tent of a robe on meself to furnish a blockade for them. Twas a good thing thou wert absent.” I see him suppress a smile, making me blush even if I do chortle at the image I fail at blocking from my mind. I brush at the remaining dirt on the table with my already dirty sleeve, having giving up long ago on trying to stay clean. A cold bath would be a treat right about now.
“Um…” I begin, wondering if it was my place to ask for anything. “I could use a bucket of water to clean this kitchen a little. And some rags to wipe everything down, if you don’t mind.”
He nods briskly as if pleased to please me and leaves again.
I set the shirt-bag on the table and select a fish. It wriggles out of my hand and smacks the wood. It lays on its side, heaving in air it cannot breathe. I want to let it suffocate so I won’t have to be the one to end its life. But the longer I watch the more I feel bad about its suffering. Holding the blade over its head, I close my eyes and chop down hard.
To my dismay, the head does not sever completely, so I have to saw at it. But now the headless body is twitching, creeping me out immensely. I endure the same service for the other four fish. Now there is a splash of blood across my shirt. Ruined. Aunt Magara has probably already disposed of the rest of Durain’s clothes, too.
I vent out my anger in the quick motions I make to clean the fish. Having chopped off the heads I’m fearless now to gut them. I scrape the fish guts out the window and do a lousy job pulling out the spine and all the individual bones. There is a million of them.
I slap the mangled carcasses on the metal grate where they hiss against the heat. I have all the fish cooking when he comes back, sopping wet again, with a bucket of water and more fish inside. The bucket is made of wood and is leaking.
He sits in a chair nearby and I continue to flip the fish over the fire with Durain’s knife.
“So how did you stay alive if you didn’t eat or drink?” I prod.
He places his hands on both knees and leans back in the chair, which creaks. “Understanding I wast going to be thus confined for an unknown time, I cast a spell upon me body to cease all me needs to eat, drink, and expel bodily waste. There wert some other things I ceased also, but I forgeteth to halt the growth of me hair. Upon, the growth of which hath been growing for three hundred years.”
I clear my throat at his word spell and move on to another question. “But you are hungry and thirsty now?”
“I wrought the spell so t’would falter upon me escape of the vault. Which upon is why hunger and thirst attacked me with vengeance. Me stomach hath been hollow for three hundred years, and it wanteth to expel everything I forceth upon it. But I attest that ye wert honest upon the acidic in the apples becoming harsh to meself. Meself’s… other internal bodies started working accordingly, which upon the reason of me seafaring explorations of the river.” His cheeks blossom and he looks at the floor.
But he had used the word spell twice now. I turn back to the oven to flip the fish again. “I’m sorry… you said you cast a spell on yourself?”
“Yorself?”
“Youself. Thineself.” I know he’s frustrated about how I speak. Hopefully we can work it out before we explode on each other.
“Yea,” comes his measured response from behind me. “I be thus a wizard.”
I jolt and the knife slips out of my fingers. I instinctively grab at it, and demons bit my fingertips as they brush across the molten red grate. My gasp clogs my throat but Zadicayn is already grabbing my arm and hauling me over to the bucket of water. He plunges my arm inside up to my elbow, scaring the fish so they swim in frantic circles.
“Swirl it,” he says. “Ye shalt be a’right. Just keep thine hand in a swirl. Damn! I concede with ache that I yearn for me amulet!”
I’m too distracted to notice his hand on my shoulder at first, and when I do, it feels like a crushing weight that I feel all the way to my toes. Weird.
The cold river water cools my burn significantly after a few minutes.
“The trick,” he says gently, “tis to cool the fire as swift as ye art able. If ye doeth it swift, a scar shan’t mar thee.” He holds that position with one hand on my shoulder and the other on my arm for a good moment. Then as if by force he lets go to fetch my knife out of the fire.
My heart pounds in my throat. Heat rises to my eyes. No… no… no… My mind wouldn’t grab anything else. The place I had been stuffing everything absurd is too full to accept this now, so I’m forced to face it, raw and ugly, force myself to make it make sense. To accept. Is this yet another lie? But who would lie about this? Wizards could control magic, which is preached evil by the – should I tell the church?
My pulse is racing. The sermon on Sunday about avoiding magic and something about God being displeased with people who call themselves wizards and the like fires through me. Does the church know about Zadicayn? Is that why the priest spoke about wizards and magic so randomly out of the blue?
As I watch him dig my knife out of the fire with the fire poker, something inside me says, no. I don’t think he’s a wizard. I haven’t seen him do any magic. He climbed out of the vault and he’s been a broken, hungry, emotional mess ever since. Mentally unstable, I decide. A man-boy who thinks he’s a wizard.
Something nags at the back of my mind to think about how the key pulled me to the castle, through the rock that dissolved into a tunnel… ya. I’ll deal with that later. There is a plausible explanation for that, too.
He sticks the fire poker in the wood and pulls out a burning log along with the knife. The log crashes to the floor and his bare feet leap out of the way with a yelp and I snort in laughter. He looks at me and smiles too, bumping the knife with his heel out of the way to let it cool.
“How dost thy hand fair?”
I have to admit. His use of Old English and equally old accent is kind of alluring.
“My hand is better. Thank you.”
“Then if ye be well, ye mayest withdraw it from the water.”
I do so. He takes the bucket and splashes water on my knife. It hisses violently. He puts the bucket back on the table. “The floor tis still cleaner than afore.”
“Truly.”
“I shall complete the task of roasting our grand feast. Submerge thy hand upon the fire beneath thy skin scalding ye again.”
I watch him flip the fish. He scoots them off the grate onto a dirty pewter plate stacked next to the oven. He splits up the fish and hands me a second plate. “I pray ye shalt joy in thine maw-wallop.”
I take my plate and he takes his seat. Careful to avoid the fish blood, we eat silently with our fingers.
He devours his like he has so far devoured everything else, and so I offer up my other fishes, having been given too much anyway. “You might want to slow down. You will throw it all up again.”
He stalls with his next bite falling off his fingers halfway to his mouth. “Ye art honest. Methinks also the fish tastes pudh. Unless perchance it tis the thoughts of meself only?”
“What does pudh mean?”
“Something akin to being very bad. Horrible, even.”
“You are right. These fish are pudh.”
“Good. Me taste still triumphs.” He pauses for a minute which looks like it takes considerable effort before taking his next bite slowly. Bits of chewed up fish stick to his thick black beard. “I maketh the mistake of spying a looking glass as I sojourn to draw water. Methinks I look akin to me Uncle Daylican.”
I snort, almost spitting fish out of my nose and because that was funny, he laughs too, the sound rich and honest. It’s pulled from deep within his throat so it comes out strong and smoky, a fluctuation in his normal pitch that I haven’t heard before. It’s like his voice is still trying to figure out what pitch it wants to settle at for the rest of his life.
“So, Zadicayn, if you are a wizard, cast a spell for me.”
“If I cast a spell, it shall be to scalp all this hair from off meself.”
“So you can’t cast anything?”
I’m relieved. That makes him not an enemy of the church. I’ve only known him a few hours, but I want to protect him because he is Durain’s secret. Why is he Durain’s secret?
“Nary in absence of me amulet.”
I drum my fingers on the table and watch the flames lick through the grate at the top of the oven. “Where is your amulet?”
I see him shiver from still wet clothes and the rapidly cooling evening. “I must attain dry clothing. I shall join ye unhindered soon again.” He stands, and with an exaggerated bow, leaves. I don’t miss that he intentionally avoided my question. Was he going to answer any question?
I need something to do with my hands. I stand, seeing what can be done to make the kitchen at least sanitary if not clean. The floor is already wet so I grab the straw broom spider-webbed into a corner and swish the water around, pushing the excess in front of the fireplace where the cauldron hangs.
A bedroom close by lends me some shirts I find on the floor. Hoping he won’t mind, I use them to wipe down the table and every other surface.
I have a fire going in the hearth to dry the floor when he comes back. He had swapped out the ugly yellow oversized robe for a dark blue coat and black pants. It all fits him much better, showing a tall, emaciated body beneath with knobby shoulders and knees. He’s got his pants tucked into the tall cuff of his black boots, of which the dry graying leather is cracked at the toes.
He moves to stand so the fire is behind him, hands clasped behind his back. The sun had set to official night and the firelight silhouettes his tall figure, adding an air of importance to his already rigorous posture to one who had, at least at one point, known greatness.
He looks at me, casting his arms down the front of his body. “Thou thinkest better?”
His clothes are most definitely something I’ve seen in paintings in book about the Middle Ages. His boots have rusted buckles along the outsides instead of the laces and buttons down the front that I am used to. A thick leather belt over the top of the blue coat is keeping it closed. He fits right into the archaic theme of the castle. It’s like he’s just wearing a costume. It’s hard to believe those are actually his clothes. “Yes. Much.” I wait. Then clear my throat. “Are you ready to tell me why you were in the vault?”