The Temple of Heart and Bone

by Evren, S. K.

  He was dead.

  He sat still for quite some time, the dagger lying across his legs. He tried not to think. He just wanted to be for a moment, just to be. He felt his phantom breathing return, unbidden. He didn’t try to stop it, didn’t want to think about it. He felt his hands on the dagger, his left on the handle, his right on the blade. He started rocking gently, either trying to scare away thoughts or encourage them—he just wasn’t sure anymore. He felt himself close his eyes; he didn’t want to check with his fingers to feel if he had or not.

  He rocked gently until he scented the cool morning air. He once again heard the return of the birdsong. He felt as if he had opened his eyes, and he saw the sky brightening before him. Objects were still somewhat hazy, but he could see quite a bit more clearly this morning. The light of day began to illuminate the scene around him.

  He looked around at the buildings of the Ferns’ farm. The shapes were odd and their colors dark. For the most part, they seemed to have been severely burned and charred. The fence he had followed and leaned against showed signs that the fire had touched it, as well. It was a testament to its construction, he realized, that it had remained standing at all. He noticed a shutter that seemed to have been untouched by flame. It moved gently in the breeze and he recognized the familiar rusted creak. Most of the building structures seemed to have fallen in upon themselves, unable to support their own weight. He understood now why their shadows had been hard to see against the brighter sky.

  He looked down at the dagger. It was the color of rust from the handle to just short of the tip. The flat of the blade was lightly pitted and stained by something dark and black, his own blood. The point was remarkably shiny. He looked past the decaying dagger, seeing, for the first time, the thin legs on which it rested. They were bones, only bones. No flesh draped off of them, rotting or otherwise. No skin or hide covered them. He looked at his hands, bringing one close to his face. It, like his leg, was only bone. Slowly, afraid of the answer as much as he was afraid of the question, he touched his finger to his eye, or, at least, where it should have been. His finger encountered no resistance as he moved it around the vacant socket. He fought back a cold, defeating despair.

  Curiously, he thought, eager to hold on to anything other than that chill fear, he could still see. He pushed another finger into his other eye cavity, and still he could see. He could even see the fingers pushing into his eye sockets. He removed his fingers and set his hand back upon the dagger. He heard the sound of his bones striking the metal. He ran his fingers again across the blade. He felt the jagged rust and pitted depressions. He brought the blade to his face. He was certain he could scent the rusted metal. He had no flesh that he could feel or see, but he could still sense all that was around him.

  He had to be dead, he thought. How could anyone be living without their flesh and blood and internal parts? He was no doctor, but he’d seen dead people missing quite a bit less than he was himself.

  A miracle, he hoped. A curse, he responded bitterly. One or the other, he thought to himself—or both. Setting the dagger to his side, he pressed his hands together to pray. He wondered if the Maker of all things would hear the prayers of whatever sort of abomination he had become. He hoped so, he truly hoped so. He prayed fervently, asking for strength, asking for guidance, and begging that his sanity remain intact—praying that it still was. He sought comfort in the repetition of prayers he had learned in his childhood, prayers he could recite in his sleep. He repeated them over and over, relaxing himself and his mind.

  Part of his mind, freed by the relaxation of the prayers, suggested to him that he had not woken from any sleep in the forest. Acknowledging the thought, he continued to pray. The same part of his mind reminded him that he had come to the farm searching for honey, that honey had been one of his first conscious thoughts. He nodded to the memory and continued to pray. His mind pointed out to him that he’d gone for the honey to retrieve it for Li.

  His prayers stopped instantly. Li! He felt for the dagger next to him and grasped it tightly. He took one last look around the farm to get his bearings and began to walk back toward the forest. He pushed aside all thoughts of despair and fear for himself. He focused on Li. He had to get back to her. He followed the fence around to the fallow field.

  His crawling had disturbed the tall grass which had grown in the field. He was thankful that, at that point, he had not yet been able to walk. His trail away from the fence and back into the forest was easy to follow. He was amazed at how much space he had covered crawling with his hands and feet. He looked closely at the ground and noticed a sharp following trail. The tip of the dagger must have been dragging in the ground along with him, polishing off the rust.

  He followed his own trail to the very edge of the wood. Here, too, his trail was apparent, as the fallen leaves were pushed aside to uncover the forest floor. Vagrant winds had shuffled the leaves around somewhat, but not enough to cover his progress entirely. It did slow him down, however, and he was grateful for the sharp point of the dagger. It had cut an even deeper groove into the forest floor, making the trail that much more certain.

  He looked up into the tree tops, trying to get some measure of the sun’s progress. He knew it wasn’t far from the farm itself to the forest. He was not sure, however, how far in the forest he’d been when he had “awakened.” He had a sudden sense of repetition. He had some memory of looking out at the farm from the forest. He struggled with the thought, looking out through the trees. He could barely make out the blackened structures of the farm in the distance. He thought he struck close to the memory, but his mind shied away, as if afraid to look too far out of the forest.

  He went back to searching for his trail on the forest floor, concerned that he was blocking a memory of the farm. Had he been responsible for its burning? A quick apprehension gripped his entire frame before he brought it up short. There were plenty of real problems that he could find to think about at the moment without the need to go borrowing to the neighbors.

  Borrowing to the neighbors. He had gone to borrow something from the neighbors.

  Or had he?

  Honey, he thought, he’d gone to get honey.

  He hadn’t gone to borrow honey—he’d gone to buy it. Mrs. Fern kept a hive at the farm, and her honey was wonderfully sweet, made from the wild flowers of the forest. Li loved Mrs. Fern’s honey. Li, he had to find Li! He looked back down to the trail. It led him to a fallen tree where not only the leaves were disturbed, but the very ground itself.

  Drothspar looked down at the freshly broken and exposed dirt. It was clearly the size of a man, and rotten bits of clothing littered the soil. He stepped into the spot next to the tree and a shadow seemed to pass over his vision.

  The forest grew dark and deadly. He heard the muffled thud of hoofbeats. He turned back to look at the way he had come. It might have been some trick of the sun, but it looked as if the remains of the Ferns’ farm, still hazy in his clouded vision, had caught fire. Drothspar swiveled his head around as if expecting something. He dropped heavily to his knees, the rusted dagger he held stabbing deep into the ground.

  Murder.

  With a great wave of despair, he felt the dagger bury itself deep within his breast. He couldn’t fight back, he had no weapons. He could take away this man’s weapon, though. He remembered clinging to the dagger, almost pulling the rider off balance. He’d pulled the dagger deeper into himself to gain a better grip. He remembered a fleeting look of amazement on his killer’s face, wiping away the macabre grin of satisfaction. Then he had crumpled to the ground, still cradling the instrument of his death.

  Drothspar leaned against the fallen tree feeling weakened. He remembered it now, the feel of the metal blade sliding into his body. He remembered the cold, unnatural presence in his breast, and the way his heart had thrilled against its hard surface. He remembered gasping his last breaths, feeling as if they were ineffectual, as if he were trying to grasp air in open hands. He remembered pulling the weap
on deeper into himself, holding on to it for dear life. His life, however, he had known was already over. Why had he done that? He had been weak, dying. He felt weak and tired just remembering it. Why had he clung to the dagger?

  For dear life—Li! Her name was a shout in his mind. His strength returned to him at the very thought of her. He had accepted his own death in the hopes of delaying the horsemen. He had thought to deprive them of at least one useful weapon. It was the only thing he could do.

  As he remembered, he got back on his feet. The horsemen had come from the direction of the farm. They had been the marauders who had torched the simple farmstead. Some of them had turned to attack him while others had ridden on toward the east. Something had worried his killer. Drothspar’s last memories were of the riders bolting off—off in the direction of the cottage.

  He was already moving, even while the memories still played in his mind. He still carried the dagger that had killed him. The more he thought about the riders heading toward the cottage, the more firmly he gripped the rusted blade. He had to get back to the cottage, had to know what had happened. He had no idea how much time had passed since the night he was murdered. The ground where he had fallen, however, was disturbed. He had not been buried. The disruption of the forest floor had been too shallow.

  The fallen leaves of the forest crunched under his feet. He began to move faster and faster. He felt a strength pushing him on, a strength he had not known in the time since his awakening. He had to get to the cottage. The trees of the forest blurred past him. His vision, which had still been hazy when he left the farm, grew clearer as he traveled. He heard the birds of the forest sing out warnings as he crashed through leaves and old, snapping branches. He found the path he had walked as a living man. He was close. The path had grown over, been littered with years of detritus from the surrounding forest. The sense of the familiar, however, urged him forward. There, in the distance, he could see the clearing which had served as their little garden.

  Emerging from the trees, Drothspar stepped into the remains of their garden in the afternoon light. The rich soil had been fertile; grass and weeds covered the ground thickly. He walked toward the cottage itself, more intact, he thought, than the farm he had left earlier. As he moved around the structure, he noticed that the wood of the front porch had been charred in some places, but it appeared that the fire had not taken a deep root. The majority of the structure remained intact.

  The windows had been broken; the door hung awkwardly from its hinges. Drothspar entered, pushing his dagger before him as if to ward off any images he might find that were too horrible to assimilate. The room was dark, though light poured in through the windows. Leaves—old, new, and all dead—had blown through the windows and settled on the once clean cottage floor. He searched through the rooms, assailed by memories of living and of his life there. He beat them back with his mind, searching for some sign of what might have happened.

  Almost everything was gone. He couldn’t tell if it had been looters who had sacked the house, or if someone had simply packed in a hurry, with no intention to return. A few rusted pots were strewn about the kitchen. The remains of curtains hung near the shattered windows. Some of the curtains were partially burned. Torches, he thought. Someone had thrown torches through at least some of the windows. Aside from the burns on the curtains, the wooden beams of the ceiling and walls appeared to be entirely intact. Someone had been here. Someone had stopped the torches before they had time to work on the interior of the house. Li, it had to have been Li!

  Returning to the door, he examined it more closely. It had been broken in from the outside. He ran his hand along its cracked surface, trying to understand what cried out to him and just as afraid that he would. He stood in the doorway and looked into the cottage. He walked inside and dropped roughly to his knees. He started pushing leaves and dirt around the stone floor. There, in the center of the room, he uncovered a dark, black stain sunk deep into the porous stone. He set one hand down in the middle of the stain and bowed his head. He pushed away the leaves and the dirt to see how wide the stain had been. It was at least three feet across. He had seen such stains before. It was too big, too much. Someone had died there. He shook his head slowly, grief welling up inside him. He looked down at his empty frame, wondering where he felt it. It was too much, he thought to himself. This was all just too damn much.

  Li had died there, he was certain of it. While he had been away, dead or dying in the forest, she had stayed here, defending her home and herself. She had been the one to gather the torches thrown through the windows. She had been the one to die here, in the center of the room. She had not cowered in a corner. She had not hidden from her attackers. She had stood here—defiantly most likely—and faced them. She had died here, her life spilled out around her to sink into the cold stone floor.

  He hadn’t been here for her. He knew that. He felt weak again, tired. It had been so damn futile. They had died apart because they had had an argument. It wasn’t even a serious argument, but a minor spat over honey. Honey!

  If he had been here, he could not have saved her, he had no illusions about that. The men who had done this, he was certain, were the same men who had ridden him down in the forest. He could not have hoped to have held off so many men. If he had been there, though, he could at least have died with her. He could have held her hand and told her he loved her before their last long night together. Instead, he had left without a word, walking out into the night worried about honey and pride. Now, he couldn’t even cry, and he wanted to so very, very much.

  He knelt there on the floor, touching the blood of his beloved. He prayed, silently, to his Maker, begging God to care for the love that had been his life. He apologized for all of his arrogance, for all of his faults, for not being with Li when she had needed him most. He begged the Maker to hear him, even though he was no longer sure what he was, miracle or curse. He looked with clearing vision at the uncovered bones that made up his hands. Is this all that I am, he asked.

  He stayed kneeling on the floor for quite some time. He prayed every prayer he could remember, from his childhood to his novitiate. He took the most comfort in those simple prayers of youth, repeating them often, searching them for strength and faith. He had been told, as a priest, that there would be times of great trial in life. He had been told that his faith would be shaken, would be questioned, might even be broken.

  “Why,” he had asked, “why must that happen?”

  “To test us, child,” Gathner had told him. Gathner, the chapter archpriest of Drothspar’s order, was a serious man. He stood just over six feet tall and had long white hair and a long white beard. He was in his late fifties and had piercing blue eyes. Gathner had creases in his face that added weight to his wisdom. He looked to have been roughly chiseled from a block of mottled granite. Though he was a thin man, his voice carried with it a power and authority that belied his slight frame.

  “A man who lives a life of plenty and knows only joy will, if he is wise, be thankful to God,” Gathner continued. “But how will he know who he, himself, is? It is not in joy and plenty that we are tested, because it is not hard to live and be good in such times. It is in times when we are in need that we find our true generosity. It is in times when we are suffering that we are made whole. It is in times when we are lost that we find our true selves. It is in times when we think that no more harm or evil can befall us and, still, it does; these are the times when we find our true strength and our true faith. It is not the tragedy that defines us, child, it is our response. We, alone, define ourselves in all things.”

  Drothspar clung to the words of his mentor, and begged God to let him cry. Oh, he wailed silently to himself, this is all just too much. He pressed his forehead to the stained floor over and over, rocking back and forth unable to think through the loss and pain. He willed for the blood of his fallen love to rise up through his cold, hard hands and wind itself around his arm and body. He rocked and rocked, letting everything flow out
of his mind except the motion of his movement.

  The cottage had grown dark with the fall of night, though Drothspar had taken no notice. He felt lost, unattached, out of control. His thoughts churned like a storm-tossed ship, unable to find solid anchorage. No thought lasted in his mind; images rose like waves and crashed into non-existence. He was certain that the ship of his mind would shatter on some rocky outcropping of horror that would emerge from the black storm of insanity.

  Was that it, then? Was insanity his only remaining course? He howled in his mind. It had to be, what else could there be? He was bones, that’s all. Not a scrap of flesh dangled from his frame. Not one organ remained in his structure to provide life, or being, or purpose. Nothing remained to him. His love was gone. His mind was following. What was he doing here? Why, why was he still alive? But, he chided himself bitterly, he wasn’t alive. What, then, he asked himself, what in the twelve depths of hell was he?

  What was he? What was he? What was he? Like the rocking of his body, that thought echoed over and over in his mind. No answers came, and the question only came faster and faster. His mind raced to shout it at him over and over.

  “What am I?!” it shouted.

  “What are you?!” it yelled.

  “What is this?!” it screamed.

  Over and over, like rotating mantras the questions assailed his mind. His rocking became feverish, and his hands reached up to his skull. He pressed on either side of his head, hoping that his hands could contain the wild, churning thoughts that appeared to be boiling therein. Weaving and rocking he moved faster and faster. His head twisted on his neck. His black, empty eyes searched the cottage, the world for an answer that couldn’t be found. He shuddered erratically, unable to control the thoughts in his mind or the movements of his body. Finally, with a violent lurch, he plunged his head into the stone floor, as if to knock himself unconscious.