Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  The smallest boy, with the black hair, was the one who spotted Constantine. He yelled, “There’s that kid!”

  They fanned out and sprinted towards Constantine.

  The Midwife didn’t raise any fools. That may not seem particularly relevant, since she didn’t really raise Constantine, but regardless, he knew when to run. He ran downstream, past a deep pool and then plunged into the knee-deep water where the river bubbled over a ridge of rocks. The three boys chased him to the edge of the river. Two boys splashed into the water after Constantine. The third stayed on the west side of the river and kept pace.

  Constantine leapt up to the far bank and sprinted up the rocky hill on the other side. His clothes shed the water and were dry by the time he scaled the small hill. The little black-haired kid was wet to his knees, and the blond boy was soaked through to his waist. The blond had slipped while crossing the river.

  Constantine had been chased by a pack before—a pack of wolves, not boys—and knew what worked in the past. He stooped as he approached the big oak which stood at the top of the hill, and came up with two handfuls of rocks. He transferred all but one to his left hand and, with his right, launched a powerful missile at the blond boy’s head. His rock hit the blond kid just above his hairline, splitting his scalp. A flap of skin and blond hair flipped to the side. Blood flowed immediately into the boy’s eyes.

  Constantine knew that if the most aggressive one in a pack turned away, the others would flee as well. Constantine had never been in a close confrontation with a senseless boy before. The blond kid didn’t turn away. He came faster towards Constantine, lowered his head and took the next rocks on his head and shoulders. Constantine aimed each rock perfectly and threw with all his strength. He realized too late that all of his offense would not defeat this boy. With his last rock, Constantine removed the black-haired kid from the fight by catching him with a rock to the eye, breaking the orbital bone on the right side of the boy’s face. Half-blind from the hit, the black-haired kid stopped and sat on a rock surrounded by a carpet of fallen leaves.

  The blond boy threw himself at Constantine. In the side of his tunic, Constantine had a special pocket to hold his sharpest piece of flint. It could slice through the hide of the roughest tomcat, so Constantine knew he could open up the boy if he could had to.

  Before he could reach the shard, the blond boy hit him. The two fell in a heap next to the big oak. A root from the tree jabbed into Constantine’s back and bent his supple ribs. Pain exploded in Constantine’s chest when he tried to inhale. Soon, the boy sat on Constantine’s chest, pinning him to the ground.

  “Come help me!” the blond boy called over his shoulder to the black-haired kid.

  “I can’t. My eye will fall out,” the boy replied.

  The blond boy regarded Constantine with a frown. For a second, Constantine thought that the boy would go away since he didn’t have help. Instead, the kid reached to the forest floor with his left hand. It came back holding a rock the size of a potato. The blond boy brought the rock down on Constantine’s right temple, and that’s the last Constantine knew of that day.

  7 AWAKE

  WHEN CONSTANTINE WOKE, NIGHT sounds filled the air. He opened his eyes to friendly dark. He shut them again when his head began to pound. Leaves and twigs stuck to his back when he pushed his way up to a seated position. With his eyes closed and the ground seeming to sway beneath him, Constantine lasted about ten seconds before he slumped back to the forest floor. He might have spent the night there, naked in a pile of leaves. The roots were digging into his back and he was cold.

  His blood had grown thin, spending all those months dressed up in his handmade suits of fur. Constantine rolled to his side and forced his eyes open again. They focused on a dusty gray moth, perched on a piece of bark, slowly airing out its wings and getting ready for flight. Constantine raised a shaky hand up to his temple and felt the lump there. The skin swelled and sagged, drooping so low that it blocked part of his vision in his right eye.

  The blond boy who’d clobbered him left him with nothing but the teeth in his head. His suit, made from the hide of an old horse, was his second favorite. Now, the big blond kid was probably stretching it out over his pudgy frame. Constantine moved his hands around the rest of his head, noting how much of his face and scalp were sticky with blood. When he could stand without swaying, he descended to the river to wash himself. Constantine squatted in the cold water and watched the moonlight reflect off the ripples in the moving surface. They flashed blue and white in his tender eye.

  If the blond boy were a dog or wolf, Constantine would track him down and kill him with a big rock or a sharp stick. Once a wolf scared you away from a kill, it would find you the next day to steal from you again. But the blond boy had a father, and the father had friends. Constantine knew if he killed his assailant, most of Hyff Lane would be after him.

  Constantine ran on the balls of his feet through the dark forest. His headache pounded with each stride. He ran all the way back to the Midwife’s shack and stole the bread she’d hidden in her larder. She snored and expelled gases beneath her Midwife’s blankets. Constantine curled himself next to the embers of the fire and fell asleep chewing on hard bread.

  8 MIDWIFE'S MINISTRATION

  “OH, MY DARLING BOY! What has happened to you?” the Midwife cried when she awoke. Constantine was curled in a little naked ball next to the fire. She never saw his skin anymore, not since he made all his little suits. Her clients would talk of the wild boy who dressed as an animal. They never knew that the little forestling belonged to her. Now, here he lay, as vulnerable as the day she’d tucked him between her breasts and brought him home.

  She wanted to hug him and wrap him in her underclothes, as she’d done when he was an infant. But she also wanted more than that. She wanted to consume him, so he’d live under her skin and be a part of her, as he’d once been a part of his birth mother.

  Instead, she shook out the fleece that sat next to her bed. It was the softest thing she owned, and she loved the way it embraced her naked feet when she got out of bed. She shook out the fleece and draped it over his shivering body. He didn’t stir. A small pool of blood stained the dirt beneath his head. The Midwife rolled him over and saw the enormous lump on his temple.

  She lifted his eyelids. His left pupil contracted to the morning light in the shack, but his right didn’t. The pupil in his right was so large that it blacked out his pretty blue eye. It was the void of that pupil sucking the life out of young Constantine. The Midwife lifted the boy, still wrapped in the fleece and deposited his limp body in her own bed, tucking the blankets around him with care.

  She took time to make a poultice of willow-infused moss and pressed it to his bruised face before she left her shack. She needed to see two older mothers on the Yipre Road. They lived next to each other in the same stand of tall pine trees, and neither had any business being pregnant again. With five children apiece, the mothers were just greedy. But the Midwife could look past all that. Older mothers required nearly as much tending as the first-timers. Without proper Midwifery, neither would deliver a healthy baby. They knew well enough to keep the Midwife well compensated.

  The Midwife arrived at the first mother’s house and found her bustling with laundry.

  “You should be resting, dear heart. Where are your girls to help with this laundry?” the Midwife asked.

  “They’ve all left to go to the Harvest Festival with their brothers,” the mother said.

  The Midwife held her tongue, despite strong opinions on the type of girls who would abandon their household duties to go romp around at a Harvest Festival. The Midwife would never spend her time so fruitlessly, especially in August. Younger wives who had not yet been blessed with a child were busy this time of year. Therefore, the Midwife was in high demand. If a prospective mother could ensure her fertility in the fall, a late-spring baby would be her gift. Only the older, careless mothers conceived in the middle of winter. Who would want to be
heavy with child during the hot summer months?

  “You sit down and let me help with that,” the Midwife said. She first set about making the mother a cup of tea with special herbs. This tea would soothe the mother and make the spine and mind of the baby strong. It was crucial for older mothers.

  While the mother drank her tea, the Midwife finished the laundry. She wasn’t great with laundry, but after a few sips of the mellow tea, the mother either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The Midwife left her with a smile on her face and a week’s supply of the herbs.

  The Midwife arrived at the second mother’s house around midday, the perfect time to be invited to a meal. This family had better control over their daughters, who labored with the chores while the mother relaxed in her chamber. While they luncheoned, the Midwife counseled the mother on various ways to stay comfortable during the last month of her burden. The mother still had a supply of the herb tea from the Midwife’s last visit, but with a little persuasion, she purchased more.

  “We already have four girls,” the mother said, “and our one boy is not a masculine child.”

  The Midwife had to agree. This family’s boy child seldom did more than collect pretty stones and melt wax around them to create decorative, but useless, candles.

  “Is there anything I can do to guarantee that this child inside me will be a boy child?”

  The Midwife studied the mother’s form while she pretended to consider the problem. It was plain to see that she carried a boy. She didn’t carry at all in the legs and hips, only in her abdomen and breasts. From years of experience, the Midwife knew that the sex of the child had been determined months before. The Midwife would never give up a sales opportunity.

  “It will be hard to come by, but I can get you the blood of a bull. Drinking the blood will toughen the child within you and form him into the beginnings of a man,” the Midwife said.

  “Please do,” the mother said.

  The Midwife agreed, knowing that she could procure the substance for free and that it would have no effect on the mother’s pregnancy. The Midwife was always surprised by mothers. The bulk of them continued to grow more and more superstitious with each child they bore. She thought that at some point they’d grow pragmatic.

  “I must bid you farewell,” the Midwife told the mother. “I have an ailing dog at home who needs my attention.”

  “You’re so generous of spirit to go out of your way to tend to a dog,” the mother said.

  The Midwife smiled and nodded as she made her way out of the chamber.

  9 AWAKE AGAIN

  BACK AT HOME, THE Midwife found Constantine in the same position as when she left. She paused and let her eyes adjust to the gloom inside the shack, and then waited to see his chest rise and fall before she approached.

  The Midwife placed a hand on Constantine’s shoulder. His hair hung long and smelled of dirt. She left his side and fetched water for a bath. Smiling and humming, she built up the fire to heat the water. She tried to remember the last time she’d given Constantine a bath. Not since he’d been fast enough to run away from her scrub brush, she figured. Perhaps after giving him a good scrub, she could cut away some of that hair. He was almost old enough to begin working, but he’d have to look presentable first.

  With the water heating, the Midwife pulled back the fleece. Constantine, deep in a coma, had soiled the Midwife’s bedding. A snarl screwed into her mouth and she lifted the boy by a wrist and an ankle. He moaned and started to wake as she carried him at arm’s length to the bathing pot. The water was still cold, but she no longer cared. She let go of his ankle and dipped him in the frigid water. Constantine howled as she submerged him in the bath.

  He fought, still dazed and barely able to see. She held him in the water and rubbed his filthy skin with a cake of tallow soap. She had no objection to scrubbing a dirty boy since that task came up often in her work, but he’d soiled her bedding too. She’d have to wash everything that night and sleep in her clothes while her bedding dried. For that inconvenience, she took her payment from Constantine’s hide.

  The Midwife grasped the boy’s hair and plunged his face under the water. When she tried to scrub his scalp, he screamed and cried. The skin covering the lump over his eye gave way, and black blood ran down his face and tainted the bath water.

  “Oh, Constantine. I’m sorry to have hurt your head,” she said.

  He thrashed and she lost his grip on his hair. She still held a few strands of his dark locks, torn from his scalp.

  Constantine eyed the Midwife through his half lidded eyes. Her soap-filled hand had stopped trying to scrub holes in his skin, and she looked as if she might either laugh or cry. He couldn’t tell which.

  The Midwife sat back on her heels and regarded the boy.

  She raised a hand to touch his face and he flinched away. She pulled her hands to her chest, still clutching a couple strands of his hair. Finally, tears began to leak from the corners of her wrinkled eyes.

  Constantine jumped from the tub of cold water and sprinted. His failing balance carried him almost halfway to the door and then he veered to the right. As the Midwife watched, he spilled to the floor and then picked himself up to escape through the door.

  10 DREAM EMAIL

  I GUESS MY FAVORITE of all the files I’ve worked was the dream emailer. I’m sitting at my little desk, looking up at the tiny window. It’s too high up on the wall to show me anything but sky and clouds. The phone rings. It’s the dream emailer. He claims that he doesn’t want the prize. He heard that I’m good at stopping mysterious stuff from happening and he wants my help. He says that every time he goes to sleep, his subconscious is able to email people. He needs it to stop because, while he’s dreaming, he keeps emailing his ex-girlfriend. She then shows up thinking that he wants to get back together with her.

  His evidence matches the story, but what could be easier to fake? You can drum up an email header in less time than it takes to compose the body of the email, so who cares if it has a timestamp from when you were witnessed during a sleep study?

  He volunteers to come down and sleep in my office so I can watch his account send an email. I wonder though—what’s that going to prove? He’ll just use an accomplice to send the email from a remote location. Still, I give him the address and tell him I’ll see him in a few hours. It won’t hurt to shake him down and see what he wants me to believe.

  I have a tiny room off of my office. It’s a walk-in closet, really. I keep a cot in there. I’ve used it more than once when I had to be in the city overnight. Between that cot, a mini-fridge, and a microwave, I’ve outlasted three-day blizzards without any complaints. I’ve got only 9-to-5ers on my floor. After their day is done, I pretty much have a private bathroom too.

  The dream emailer, let’s call him Ted, shows up around seven and we begin talking.

  “When did this dream emailing start?” I ask.

  “I’ve been studying lucid dreaming for a few years,” he says. “Have you heard of it?”

  I nod.

  “I just started to get decent control a few months ago. I read about a little device someone made to help them out with lucid dreaming. They put a little clip on your nose with a sensor to detect when you drop into REM sleep. Then a little box shocks you on your wrist. It’s not enough to wake you up, but just enough to send you a signal inside the dream. Problem is, you have to get used to wearing a clip on your nose and a box on your wrist. I can’t deal with that kind of thing. I don’t like things on my body when I’m asleep.

  “I develop mobile apps, and I read about an app that listens to you breathe while you sleep and it calculates the total time you spend in REM. I put two and two together and I figure I can write an app to detect my REM sleep by my breathing. Then I play a low sound to get my attention. We’ve trained ourselves now, like Pavlov’s dogs, to respond to these little tones all through the day. You’ve got one sound to let you know you’ve got a text, another for emails, a third for meetings, another for phone
calls. I figure I can train myself to recognize a tone which means I’m in deep sleep—dream territory.

  “It took awhile, but it worked. Eventually, I came to recognize a particular tone to mean that I should question whether or not I was dreaming. One second, I’m riding a dolphin down a river of grape jelly, and then the tone goes off and I’m like ‘Hey! This must be a dream!’”

  “And then you take control. Lucid dreaming,” I interject.

  “Yes, exactly,” he says. “It’s a perfect world. You can control everything: where you are, who you meet, and what you do. It’s the perfect fantasy land.”

  “So if you’re lucid dreaming and controlling everything, why can’t you control yourself enough to not send out emails to your old girlfriend?” I ask.

  “That’s the thing. I’m good, but I’m not great. After a little while, I tend to forget that I’m dreaming. Suddenly, I’m just responding to the crazy dream world just like everyone else. Once you lose control of a lucid dream, they tend to get even weirder than ever. It was during one of those post-lucid dreams that I first found out that I had the ability to contact the real internet from my dream.”

  “How do you explain that?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” he says. “The first time it happened, I accidentally got drunk in my dream. I was intoxicated but sober at the same time, you know? I lost control of the dream and I found myself in the dream with a laptop, composing an email. I remember some of the details of the email, and how important it seemed at the time, but writing tends to swirl and flow in a dream. It doesn’t stay constant. The email I was writing was a big jumble of ideas. I tried to read it and it kept morphing. Anyway, my dream fingers hit the send button, and I didn’t think anything of it. At least until a couple of days—real days, not dream days—later.