Skull of Oghren

by Tuomas Vainio

  'The old rat is away to find out. I do not know. Probably not.'

  Pandora closes her eyes. She rubs and pulls her face until she gives her cold response: 'Where are the daggers, Loge?'

  'They are away, hidden, for now.' Loge says while averting her gaze. 'You need to be careful. You are in danger.'

  Pandora sighs and struggles to get up. Her muscles feel weak and feeble. She has to lean to the nearest chair for support. Loge too gets up from the floor, but instead of facing Pandora anew, she takes the step or to stand before the fireplace. Loge raises her hand over the burning flames, and so the nigh eternal flames shrink and squall until they reach the slap of red metal. As the hand falls, the final sparks of the flame vanish leaving the metal to cool among the charcoals and dust.

  'Pandora.' Loge tries to begin, but she does not know how to continue.

  'That thing killed my father. So I will kill it, even if it kills me.' Pandora's hands close to fists, and she explodes in anger; 'So give me my dagger!'

  'I... I do not have it. Pan does. He is up again, said he needed the sun.' Loge reluctantly looks at her toes as her index finger points up.

  And so Pandora starts her slow and arduous climb of the stairs. Step after step she forces her body to move, a task that soon begins to feel inhumane. Her eyes remain barely open, she cannot walk any more, she simply crawls one step at a time. One sluggish move after another, forcing every muscle work regardless of the cries for rest.

  When she reaches the top, she sees the door to Pan's attic room wide open. She sees how light shoots in from the open window. She feels the cool breeze flow and tumble against her faze.

  Satisfied of having finally reached the top floor, she rolls on her back, and takes a moment to rest. A moment of laying on her back, as her legs dangle over the first steps down. She thinks of how it has been some time since she last ventured all the way to the attic, and how there is not that many places to hide daggers.

  Pandora slowly gets up on her two feet. She takes wobbling steps, and enters the room. What greets her is a strange collection of buckets and flower benches overflowing with dirt. In every corner, over every piece of furniture. She runs her fingers through the dirt, and sprinkles some back to the flower bench. 'Yarn's failures?'

  Pandora looks around and wonders if Pan hid the daggers under the dirt. She almost knocks over the nearest to her to know for sure. But her eyes wonder and she notices the pair of legs hanging over the open attic window. Ten toes waggling in the air. The boots and socks lie in wait under the window frame.

  She sighs and takes her small steps towards the open window. Past the two waving feet Pandora sees the rooftops and towers against sky filled with tattered clouds. Almost as if they Sun itself had tore apart the blanket of clouds as a result of a tantrum.

  Pandora pushes the feet away and leans her head out. She looks down to the courtyard to see how it lies empty as always. If anyone were to walk down there they will just head straight to the well with their pails and buckets. Thus her gaze eventually wanders towards the distant horizon. 'I want my daggers. It is not over yet.'

  Pan's feet stop waving next to Pandora's head. The boy leans down and looks at the short platinum hair by his feet. 'Why is not over yet?'

  'That oversized rat killed my father, it deserves to die by my hand.'

  'You are far more likely to die by its hand.'

  Pandora pinches Pan's ankle with her sharp nails, and so Pan yanks his feet away from her reach. The girl remains silent for a moment, a moment spent staring into nothingness. 'One of the daggers belonged to my father, I want my daggers. I will train day in and day out, so that when I meet that monster, I will gut it. I will stab its brain until it flows out of the nose like goo.'

  Pan groans and protests loudly in disgust. 'What is wrong with you? That is gross!' The boy drops his head down and stares right into Pandora's eyes. 'And if you try to do it alone, you will yourself killed! The Rat-Kings rule where the magisters dare tread not. The night watch sits in their offices paid off by the rats' gold. The only day they get up is when their own pants have caught fire. And things will never become so dire that the magisters' red cloaks would be send forth to battle the Rat-Kings in the sewers.' Pandora stares right at Pan's still gaunt face, and eventually the boy crawls away from her sight. He mumbles; 'I should know, I am but a Rat-King's pawn.'

  'Then I will one day change the night watch.'

  'They will never let you join once they hear what you did. I bet all the kids are talking about what you did.'

  Pandora closes her eyes trying to recall everything she has heard in her life, until a smile spreads on their face. 'They do not have a choice if I pass the magister's test.'

  It takes that silent moment before Pan knows how to reply. 'The magisters only discard the worst of their kind to the dusty forgotten confines of the night watch. The incompetent, the embarrassments, those they wish to push aside from embarrassing the rest. I have seen some, they spend their days counting their gold and growing fat.'

  'And I'll deliver the kick needed to topple their desks.' Pandora swears to the sky with her closed fist. 'Better yet...' She does not finish her words as she ends up coughing without control. She moves away from the window, and just falls down on the floor.

  Pan is quick to slide in from the window, to nudge Pandora's shoulder. The boy sighs, and closes his eyes. He moves his hand over the girl's forehead and reaches his other towards the sun. Pan knows that what he did yesterday was not enough to heal her entirely. Thus with his hand basking under Sun's direct glare he guides and instructs the flow of energy to pass through him to Pandora. To fuel and hasten her recovery once again.

  After a moment reprise, the girl utters the words; 'I'm fine now, thanks.'

  But Pan's reply is just as short as it is blunt; 'Lies.' And when his hand finally falls off her forehead, the two just sit on the floor together. The boy is exhausted. But he still utters the question on his mind; 'How can you do it?'

  'Do what?'

  'You screamed yesterday in pain yesterday...'

  'When I was five, I broke my arm. My mother took me to the chapel of Io. There a priestess came with a heavily robed afflicted, and my broken arm was mended. Better than new. It was only a year later I learned how it was not healed truly, my broken arm was just shifted over to the afflicted... And you look terrible.'

  Pan coughs. 'The sunlight is making me feel wonderful...'

  She laughs as the boy slowly pulls the socks and boots from behind his back, and the girl stubbornly decides to helps him to put them on. Pan's stare lingers with annoyance, but Pandora cares not for it, she finally asks; 'So care tell me what all these buckets full of dirt are all about?'

  'For seeds I've found, for plants I am going to make grow.' He waves his arms in grandiose manner. 'A room full of green, oranges, carrots, potatoes. Dandelions and acorns.'

  'You should move out of the city. Become a farmer or something.' The girl continues to snickers on her own as the boy's glare grows ever colder.

  'Perhaps you should follow your own advice, run before your new one-eyed best friend finds and catches you.'

  The laughter disappears. 'Oh, are you going to rat me out to your friends below the streets?'

  The boy's gaze falls to his toes as he mumbles no.

  'Then how about you tell me where my daggers are?'

  Pan remains intentionally quiet as the girl asks and inquires yet again, as the voice grows louder with the demands for an answer. When he finally looks up, the one-eyed boy smiles with a foxy grin as he puckers out the words one at a time. 'Where you will never look.'

  'WHERE?' She shouts in anger and causes each of the buckets to rise in the air.

  'Your mother has you go collect water using the smaller bucket. The one almost always turned over so you can stand on top of it to peak out to the street in front of your home. The daggers are all there.'

  Pandora's nose twitches, her eyebrows squirm like a pair of angry attack worms.
The buckets and flower benches slowly lower down. Few of them little bit faster than others judging from the puffs of 'You lie.'

  'I break into homes, I pick pockets, I steal gold wherever I go so I can give my King Sus what he is due.' The boy replies without a moment of hesitation, without a single twitch on his face, without a single blink of his eyes. 'Pandora, go see your mother. By now she must be worried dead for where you are.'

  'And you lie.' Pandora turns away from Pan, she walks briskly towards the corner with a bucket sitting on top of the another. She flings her left arm lazily towards it, and as her fingers jerk to a claw, the two buckets slowly rise ever higher and float aside. The daggers lie in the corner as a single pile of silver. She throws her right hand at them, and each of the silver daggers jump up and fly to rest on her right hand. When she turns to face Pan, her right eyebrow is raised, and she just repeats the two words; 'You lie.'

  The silver daggers weigh heavily on her hands as she sits back down on the floor. The two do not talk to each other. Pandora just stares at the silver blades in her hands while Pan's gaze wonders up to stare towards the glimmer of sky.

  The boy scratches underneath his eye patch; 'Do you know how to fight with daggers?'

  The girl bits her lower lip, before raising her face up to give her response with eyes full of melancholy. 'No. Do you?'

  Pan shakes his head from left to right before standing up. 'But I am a thief. I am expected to get away if noticed. To dodge and twist. So get up, pick your knife, and try to cut me.' Declares the boy with his hands at his waist.

  Her stare turns blank before she too decides to stand up. She holds on to a single dagger, her father's. The rest tumble down to the floor. The crooked blade points at the one-eyed boy and after some shaky hesitation, it lunges onwards to pierce thin air.

  Pan dived to pick a dagger off the floor, and so he points his own dagger at the girl. 'Um, Pandora, this actually is starting to feel very stupid.'

  'Yeah.' Yet neither of the two lower their daggers.

  They keep their hands raised, they begin to circle one tiny step at a time. They are learning where to pay attention, what to beware, how long is the reach of their blades, because neither knows for sure. The only way for them to learn is by trying it out, and so the game of chasing shadows begins.

  Pandora moves her entire body to slash and stab while the boy does his best to dodge aside and twists his body out of the way. Their feet rumble against the wooden floor as the flowing silver glistens in the sunlight.

  Little by little the confidence grows and with it the silver blades creep closer. The edges dulled by time strike and slide against each other. Again and again, until the blades and hilts become interlocked.

  Both kids flex and twist their arms in the attempt to overpower the other, to push the other kid down. Yet whenever Pandora manages gain the fleetest upper hand to push the boy down, Pan finds a way to readjust his own footing and regain the balance.

  For minutes the two remain locked in their wrestle of two silver pointed blades. Their faces are red, and each of their breaths is filled with wheezing and mumbled taunts made out of nonsensical words. Both too stubborn to give up as the daggers rattle and shriek.

  Thus little by little a plan begins to form inside Pandora's mind, her mind pinches and shoves the ankle of Pan, and as the boy's stance falters, her other hand lets go of the dagger and she quickly punches him to his eye patch. The boy hits the floor, and the dagger slides off his hand, bouncing off few times before lying still.

  'I win.' Pandora declares with a sheepish but a tired smirk painted across her face.

  'You cheated.' The boy mutters on his back, rubbing under his eye patch.

  'Meh, all is fair in a fight!' She offers her hand to help the boy stand up, and pats on his shoulder. 'Want do this again some other day?'

  Pan pouts at first, but soon the frowned face disappears to make a grin. 'Sure, but the next time you got to watch out for the plants!' He boast at first, before poking his index finger to the nearest bucket of dirt. Pale tendrils soon rises up pushing the dirt aside, twisting, and growing ever larger. Transforming to the shapes of the dandelion plant. Razor edged leaves stick out over the edges of the bucket, while puffy yellow flowers stand tall at the end of the round stems.

  'Right, sure thing. I'll beware the harmless plants.' She laughs and rushes downstairs, and just before her head vanishes under the first step, she shouts out: 'You really got to tell me how to do that someday!'

  Pan stands still scratching his head next to the bucket of dandelions. He stands still until he finally picks up all the silver daggers off the floor, only to notice that Pandora had taken the one she had claimed to have belonged to her father.

  The boy sighs, and decides to hide the rest to a drawer box this time around. As he gets close to the desk, he notices the old rat sitting next an old bottle of dried ink. 'You saw the punch coming.' The rat retorts.

  'No I did not. No eye remember?' He waves his hand in front of the eye patch.

  'Your little tricks of mirror misdirection cannot fool me boy, I remember which eye you paid as the price.'

  'Fine.' The rat shifts around and just falls belly first onto the table. 'As for recent events... I would avoid our good old friendly merchant. He is bit out for blood, and after that lost eye of his, he certainly longs for any cheap replacement.'

  'What was he even doing in the theatre ruins?'

  'If you recall kneeling before the multitude of minds, Sus does not trust easily. The minds have started to... wonder and ask why I am interested in this distant corner of the city. Such a tiny and poor fragment of Sus' vast domain. Thus, they thought to grab the loyalties of the kids before I can lay my claim to the streets.'

  The boy can sighs and groans, at least he has an idea what the old rat has to gain, before he asks the real question: 'What of Pandora.'

  'Oh, no worries. Our merchant has been quite embarrassed so he will not be coming upside for a while. Not to mention that word will spread. There will be more reds skulking around with their halberds. And our merchant has lost a great deal of respect, and it would be bad for business to hunt down a little girl. So Pandora is safe for now. We just have to focus on that skull to keep it that way.'

  'Okay.'

  'Hmn...' The rat points its paw to its back. 'How about a back rub to an old tired rat?'

  'Fine.' The boy rests his knuckles on the rat's furry back, and gently moves it back and forth.

  ***

  Pandora waves a quick bye to Loge and to the group of boys that had finally found their chance to sneak away from their homes. Atlas, the twins, and Hip try their best to hold her and ask what really happened the nigh before, and about of the silver dagger hanging on her waist. But Pandora just steps aside and waves her hand as she steps out. She claims to to be tired, which is not that far from the truth. As she has almost closed the door, she sees how the boys turn to Loge ask her to light the fireplace so they can work on creating new hammers.

  A deep breath. Pandora leans her back against the door. She knows she has to go see her mother, but she is terrified of the prospect. Questions like; what is she going to do, what is she going to say, race and bounce inside of Pandora's head.

  Yet she cannot stand by the door forever, so with one careful step after another, she builds up her walking speed. She heads past the well, to towards the red door on the other side. Perhaps she could sneak into her room and pretend nothing had happened. That she just overslept? The girl laughs at the thought, and raises her hand to pull the red door open.

  Home sweet home. She steps in peering left and right, raising her toes for careful steps. She feels a piece in her throat as the floor boards creek under her feet. She is almost ready to run out, but she hears the voice of her mother calling for her name. Pandora is frozen, she sees her mother. How her platinum hair that is usually braided to a knot is loose on her shoulders in a tangled mess. She sees how her mother rushes towards her, she feels the slap of her mot
her's hand against her cheek. A sting of pain far worse than any before, a pulsating red palm mark lingers on her cheek. Pandora expects her mother to shout, to scream, yet she kneels down to her knees and wraps her arms around. Pandora does not know what to do, she can just stand still as her mother continues to smothers her in the embrace of a hug. Pandora hears her mother sob against her ear, how she calls her a stupid little girl without a single ounce of malice.

  When the mother finally lets go of her daughter, Pandora draws the bent dagger of her belt, she hands it to her mother's hands. As her mother stares at the old blade, she shuts her eyes and asks; 'How could you possibly be alive?'

  The daughter fidgets before she offers her answer; 'I jumped, stabbed that were-rat in its eye. That drove it back underground.'

  'Then where have you been the night?'

  'Around... it did shove me against a wall, I kind of forgot where I was until the morning light.' Pandora smiles as she lies.

  'Fine.' Her mother stands up with the dagger, and goes to place it next to its pair on the wall. She looks at them with her daughter at her side. How both of the daggers lie in wait for her late husband to go work once more. Pandora's mother is happy to see her daughter alive and safe at home, but in her heart she fears for vengeance.

  ***

  Loge watches how the four boys start to work on the fireplace. How they line up bones from the the small pouch and begin to discuss what combinations they should try again. The four boys are more or less absorbed into their own little world while Loge can only fidget her toes against the steps of the stairs.

  She watches how the boys continue to shape and mould, melt and hammer the searing hot chunks of metal over and over again, how they form them into pieces intended to crush the finger bones in between. Yet the metal they produce only shatters on impact, and the anvil beneath slowly takes more and more beating, thus forcing the twins to reshape and enchant it time and time again.

  So little by little, Loge moves one step up until she finally reaches the upper floor and decides to wander off. She peers into the empty rooms in search of something to do, something to pique her mind, or for any book quietly humming to her ears. Yet there is nothing on the first floor.