The Temple of Heart and Bone

by Evren, S. K.

  “I think I understand.” “I should hold the stone like this,” she said, duplicating his hold with her right hand.

  He nodded his agreement.

  “I should try to keep it flat when I throw it.”

  He nodded again.

  “And I sort of make it spin when I let it go, right?”

  He nodded his agreement again. He held up one hand to ask her to watch him. He leaned back with his stone and threw it, spinning forward, into the water. It skipped twice and sank.

  “Okay,” she said excitedly, “let me try.” Drothspar bowed and indicated with his arm that the pier was hers.

  Chance took her stone in her right hand as he had shown her. She leaned back and threw it at the lake as hard as she could. The stone slipped immediately below the surface. Her shoulders dropped in disappointment, but she looked eagerly at the pile of stones and her teacher.

  Drothspar imitated her throw, exaggerating her force. When he finished, he shook his head. He imitated her throw again, slowing the force of his arm going forward.

  “Not so hard?” she asked.

  He nodded his agreement.

  “Okay,” she said, taking up another stone. She licked her lips with concentration and stared out at the water.

  The lesson continued for quite some time. Drothspar made little puppet-plays of stones bouncing off the wooden pier to demonstrate how the stone should hit the water. Chance, for her part, never gave up. She was intrigued by the lesson and thrilled beyond measure when she first succeeded. She bounded up and down on the pier, hooting and clapping. Drothspar wished only that he could smile. He leaned down to the collection of their stones and arranged them as two for eyes, and the rest in the arc of a smile.

  Chapter 13 – Slate and Clothes

  Chance continued to skip stones until the day’s light faded. The weather cleared during the afternoon, though some few clouds still lingered in the sky. Drothspar watched his student at her practice, and even skipped a stone himself once in a while. Between stones, he thought about his need for information, and his need for help. He would have to try to convince a stranger to risk traveling with a walking corpse. Not only that, he’d have to convince her to head in the direction from which she, herself, was running.

  As darkness settled, the strange pair retired to the cottage. Although he felt nervous about approaching the girl, his lack of features gave nothing away. Chance was flushed with effort and excitement. The chill in the air enhanced the rosy bloom of her cheeks, and, at least for the moment, she seemed to have forgotten all anxiety concerning her companion.

  She lit her lantern as she entered while Drothspar worked on the fire. She borrowed a burning twig from his efforts to light candles she’d found scattered in the cottage. She had made a comfortable place for herself before the fire, and once light was cheerfully bouncing about the room, she settled down to get warm. Drothspar sat on the edge of the fireplace, watching the girl take her seat.

  “Thank you,” she said simply. “That was so much fun!” Her voice was filled with wonder. She kept her eyes averted from his face. It wasn’t much of a face, he thought, none at all, as a matter of fact.

  “You’re very welcome,” he wrote with a stick on the floor. Chance leapt excitedly from her place as she read his words.

  “I almost forgot,” she said, looking about the cottage. “I found this last night while I was waiting to go to sleep. To be honest with you, I was exhausted, but after you left, I was really nervous. I could hardly keep my eyes open, but every time they shut, they snapped back open and my heart started hammering in my chest. So I decided to look around. I found those candles there, and this!”

  She presented him with a flat, square stone. It was a little bigger than a book and one of its edges was broken jaggedly across. Drothspar recognized it immediately as one of the roof tiles. He took the gray slate shingle from the girl, feeling slightly puzzled.

  “It’s for writing,” she said quickly. “So you don’t have to write on the floor anymore. You can even use a damp cloth to wipe away the old writing quickly. I checked.” She handed him a damp cloth. “Go ahead and try it yourself.”

  “Thank you,” he wrote tentatively on the shingle.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied with a smile. She watched as he wiped away the “thank you” from the slate.

  “This is wonderful,” he wrote again, “thank you very much!”

  “You’re welcome very much,” she said whimsically and beamed a smile at him. Her eyes dashed away quickly as she went on. “Like I said, I really couldn’t sleep anyway. I hope you don’t mind that I was sifting through your cottage.”

  “Not at all,” he replied. Quickly, he wiped that away to write again. “Had you really never skipped stones before today?” He was pleased by how much he could write on the makeshift tablet.

  “Not even one,” she answered. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

  “My father taught me.”

  “I never got out into the countryside very much,” she explained. “There are fountains and ponds on our estate, but no one ever throws stones in them. I think all the stones on the estate are handpicked—and placed. Probably interviewed, too, before they’re allowed in. The groundskeeper would drop dead if someone picked up a stone to throw anywhere, for any reason.”

  “Doesn’t sound like very much fun,” Drothspar observed.

  “It wasn’t,” Chance agreed. “I don’t think it was meant to be, though. I think it was only meant to impress my father’s associates. He’s not the kind of person who has friends. Or fun, for that matter.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Drothspar asked.

  “Tonight you mean, I hadn’t thought much about it yet.”

  “No, not just tonight. Do you intend to stay here?”

  “I was kind of hoping to,” she said, a hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. “Does that bother you?”

  “No,” he wrote, “I was actually just wondering if I could ask you for your help.”

  “Help with what?” she asked cautiously.

  “I need information,” he began. “Years have slipped by me. I don’t know what’s happened to my wife, my world, or even my life.” He paused to clear his slate. “Petreus may have some of, maybe even all of, those answers. You know Petreus. You’ve even been to see him lately.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” she said considering what he meant. Her eyes widened and she stared straight at him. “You can’t be serious! I just ran from there, maybe two steps ahead of my family!”

  “I know that it’s a lot to ask,” he wrote.

  “No, you don’t,” she said in an excited voice. “I’m not going back there. They are not going to catch me. If you don’t want me to stay here, I can keep running, but I’m not going to head back there to debase myself for my family or that slavering idiot they want me to marry!” Her face flushed once more with her words, but no sign of cheerfulness remained.

  “You can stay here,” he wrote, “if that’s what you want. Please don’t be upset. I wouldn’t force you to do anything, even to leave.”

  “Thank you,” she said curtly.

  “It’s just that you are,” he paused, considering how to phrase his thoughts, “somewhat accustomed to me. Can you imagine what would happen to me if I went to see Petreus on my own?” She looked at his slate considering what he wrote. Her eyes and her face, however, remained hard.

  “I do understand. I suppose I am somewhat accustomed to you,” she said hesitantly. “I would help you, but I cannot go back there. They would snap me up in less than a day, I’m sure of it. I’m not going to give up my life and my freedom just so my father can make another conquest.” She paced about the room, muttering darkly to herself.

  Drothspar understood her feelings but was disappointed none the less. He knew he would not stand a chance going to town without a living person’s help. Having this girl stumble into his hands had been a gift from God, he was certain. There were no ot
her settlements anywhere near the cottage now that the Ferns were gone. He might run into some loggers in the woods, but they would either attack him or run away. He watched the pacing girl until she stopped and looked at him.

  “Do you have to go now?” she asked. “I mean, do you think you could wait a couple weeks for things to cool down for me?” Drothspar thought about it as her eyes moved away.

  “I’ve waited years,” he wrote. “I don’t suppose a few more weeks will kill me. Too late,” he added a moment later.

  Chance read his message with a cocked eye. Reading the last two words she fought to suppress a smile. The tension in her posture drained from her shoulders and back.

  “Thank you,” she said earnestly, appreciating his patience as much as his refusal to try to force the issue.

  “Thank you,” he wrote in reply. “Today or in three months, you’ve given me back some hope.” She looked away from his words and hung her head low. Drothspar became concerned he’d written something that had offended her. He quickly wrote a message to ask if that were true.

  “No, no,” she said, “I’m just tired, that’s all. I got a little overly excited there. I just need to get some sleep.”

  “What are we going to do with me?” he asked.

  “Um,” she started, biting at her lip, “I hadn’t thought about that yet, either.” She looked around the open cottage and her own place by the fire. “I hate to ask you this, but could you sleep outside?” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

  “I haven’t slept yet,” he noted, “but I’ll stay outside.”

  “Thank you,” she said, obviously relieved.

  “You’re welcome,” he wrote. “Try to get some rest tonight.”

  “I will.”

  Drothspar checked the fire and added a few more logs to make sure it would burn through the night. He walked to the door and let himself out.

  “Goodnight,” he heard her call after him.

  He closed the door behind himself and stared at the surrounding night. He decided to move off the porch so she wouldn’t be disturbed by the sound of his feet against the wood. The moon had risen white into the black sky. A cool wind tugged at his robe like the hands of a small child. He walked down to the pier and stretched himself out on it. He looked up at the moon and thought about their talk.

  She had agreed to help him. Not as immediately as he might have hoped, but she had agreed none the less. If he had to wait, he thought to himself, he had to wait. He needed her. It may take time for her to feel comfortable returning to the city, but time would pass. It was not as if he had a sense of urgency.

  Chance was really all that he had. She was his only companion, his only contact in years. The time may not have existed for him, but it had existed for the rest of the world. She had needs herself, though, and those were as important to her as his own had been to him. Foremost was her need for independence. That was no bad goal. If Li had married the man her parents had wanted her to marry, he, himself, would never have understood the true depths of love.

  Where would she have been now, if she hadn’t married him? Where was she now that she had? He continued to wonder if she had died the same night that he had. Had that been her blood on the cottage floor? His mind flashed back to the Ferns, to the bodies in the cellar and the barn. The bodies had been there, and with them the shadows he suspected were their spirits.

  There were no shadows on the floor of the cottage! Even if that had been her blood, he thought, maybe she didn’t die. That was a lot of blood, reason told him somberly. Whoever had lost it had probably not survived. Still, he argued with himself, there was no shadow lingering near the blood, nor anywhere else in the cottage. There had to be hope, he told himself. There always had to be hope.

  Drothspar continued to wonder about hope and freedom as the night progressed. He thought about the choices he had made that had led him to this point in his existence. “Life,” he thought to himself, was not the right word anymore. Looking up into the stars, he wondered where his existence would take him now that his life was over. What would happen once all of his questions were answered?

  Life had always had the same conclusion. No matter what twists and turns a person took, the path of their life would eventually end in death. His own life had done just that. Now, however, he stood on the other side of that ending. What would happen to him once this path came to its conclusion? His mind staggered at the idea, shrinking back from a frightening unknown. He pulled his thoughts away from the shadows and settled them back to the path at hand. Wherever it might lead, for the moment, he had a path. For the moment, he had goals. Far better to concern himself with what he could see, he thought, than to worry over an unknown he had never even approached in speculation or theory.

  Pale blue light began to stain the low, eastern horizon. Drothspar sensed the increasing chill of the departure of night. Animals, silent in the forest since he had awakened, began to sound off hesitantly. Questions and alarms cried out in songs and whispers, all of them searching for hope and answers. Although he could not understand their meanings, Drothspar was certain something was different about the animals. He wondered what it could be as he waited for the rising sun.

  Drothspar and Chance spent the day talking and wandering the woods near the cottage. Drothspar wrote of his concerns about the animals, but Chance could only shrug her shoulders in response. “I don’t know,” she would say, “I’ve never spent much time in the woods.” Drothspar nodded and continue to wonder.

  At midday, Chance took a few bites from her loaf. She looked at the meager remains and asked Drothspar what they had done for food in the forest.

  “We had a little garden,” he replied, showing her his response. “We would visit the Ferns’ farm for other things. Occasionally, I’d set traps in the forest, but I was never very good at it. To tell the truth, I would often just let the animals go, so long as we weren’t really in need.”

  Chance showed him what remained of her bread. She had offered it to him politely each time she ate, but finally, he asked her not to bother. He looked at the dwindling loaf. “You’re going to need more,” he wrote.

  “And soon,” she added. “Are there any villages or other farms nearby?”

  “Æostemark,” he wrote, “a little more than a day to the east. That’s all that I know about. Anything that may have come or gone in the last seven years is a mystery to me.” She nodded her understanding.

  “Maybe we should try a walk to Æostemark tomorrow,” she suggested. Drothspar thought about it. It would be his first opportunity to try and move about in civilization. They’d have to be careful, he thought, but it could be good practice.

  “Maybe we should,” he wrote in reply.

  That night, Drothspar and Chance began to work out ways for him to move around in public. The robe would cover much of his body, but it clung to his thin bones too obviously. Chance gathered tattered curtains and other scraps of cloth from around the cottage to pad his robes. The lining of his hood was doubled and stitched to the outside of the hood itself. Nervously, Chance cut loose the stitching of the lining while the hood was pulled up over his head. She worked cautiously, as if she could break him with a single wrong move. In truth, part of her behavior stemmed from the fear of just such a thing. She had only seen his uncovered skeletal form briefly when they had first met, but he seemed to her very awkward and fragile.

  Once the lining had been released, it extended the edge of the hood another few inches. The extra length, combined with the bare state of his head, covered his face deeply. It would force anyone but a child to lean down and stare up to see within the hood. Chance told him how well the cowling worked and he nodded his appreciation, the movements barely visible in the covering cloth.

  Their next project was to work on his hands and feet. Drothspar demonstrated how he could withdraw his hands into his sleeves. It was something he’d always enjoyed playing at as a novice. His feet, however, posed another problem. The robe he wore was long,
but as he took steps, the tops of his feet became visible. They searched the cottage for a pair of old boots or shoes, but came up empty-handed. They decided that looters had probably recovered anything that might have been left after his death. Drothspar paused for a moment, wondering what else of his life had been stolen away by thieves and scavengers.

  “We could use some of the rags you’ve stuffed in your robe,” Chance suggested. “You could bind them about your feet the way the churchyard beggars do.” Drothspar had seen what she referred to many times. Hoping for some measure of mercy after the spiritual lessons of the service, beggars lined up and silently lifted their palms for coins. The vast majority wore similar clothing, the battered remains of their former lives. Drothspar and his brethren would distribute better clothing to the beggars when they could, but by the next service, their clothing would be the same rags.

  Instead of shoes, many beggars wore rags wrapped multiple times around their feet. The visual effect was more devastating than even the most patched tunic. In practice, he heard, the ragged wraps were warm and functional, so long as they didn’t get wet. They were also easier to replace. Drothspar pulled some rags from his robe where Chance indicated it was possible. He had a small supply to work with, but his bare-boned feet were easy to cover. He wrapped them around and lengthwise to cover his toes. When they were done, Drothspar stood to allow Chance to examine him.

  “It’s not perfect,” she said warily, “but in the dark or at distance, we should be able to get you by. We can also look for things along the way, or pick up some things in Æostemark. If we’re not really concerned about fashion, we can probably purchase what we need without spending too much. I should have enough coin with me to get all that we need.”

  Drothspar felt awkward padded down in his costume. His hood fell far down over his eyes, but somehow did not impede his vision, just as his hands had not impaired it when he had covered his eyes before. His wrapped feet felt different on the ground, giving his body a new balance to assimilate. The softness of the padding, however, cushioned the bone-jarring impact of his steps on the stone floor. Looking up from his feet, he noticed Chance shaking her head.