by Travis Bughi
It would be several months of traveling before they would reach the Forest of Angor, yet somehow Gavin and Takeo avoided striking up any conversation for over a month. They made do with grunts, the occasional sentence, and an endless view in every direction but that leading toward the other. After the first week, it became a sort of twisted competition, one that Gavin eventually lost.
“So, what’s your story?” Gavin asked as they were packing up for another long day of travel.
“Hm?” Takeo replied, his lack of speech so engrained that he didn’t open his lips.
“Ah, never mind. Probably some tale of growing up under the guidance of some rich ruler. It would have to be for you to rise to Katsu’s second-in-command.”
“I was never anything more than a bodyguard,” Takeo corrected, “and I grew up in Savara as a mercenary.”
“So backstabbing came easy for you, then? Huh, must be in your blood.”
“If you want me to beat you senseless, you’re out of luck.”
“Just hoping you’d return the favor.”
They went quiet for another day and night, but the next morning, Takeo felt guilty. Beneath the mist and shadows of his despair, he realized that Gavin had never wronged him. Not even once. So, as they began their walk, he spoke without any prompting.
“I was raised by my brother, Okamoto Karaoshi,” Takeo started. “He taught me to fight and kill without feeling. He taught me to do everything without feeling.”
“Wait.” Gavin looked sidelong at him. “Now you’re talking?”
“You were the one asking.”
“Yes, yesterday.”
“I didn’t know there was a time limit on when I could reply.”
“Whatever, stupid samurai. Just keep talking. This silence is going to drive me mad.”
Takeo told his tale, and he left out no harsh points as he’d done with Emily. He let the gruesome reality of his story tell the truth of the man he’d once been. He’d been heartless. He’d killed countless people. He’d thought wrong or right depended on whether or not your lord was pleased. Then he’d met the angels, and they’d shown him that he’d been sick for far too long.
And then, moments later, they’d died.
Gavin didn’t interrupt Takeo until he got to the angels. When he did, it was only with the wave of his hand, and they spoke no more that day. When Takeo went to sleep that night, he wondered if Gavin would still be there in the morning. He was—awake and packed before Takeo opened his eyes.
When they began walking that day, it was the ex-knight who spoke first.
“I knew about the angels,” Gavin confessed. “Ephron told me about you and the others. He also told me that he forgave his siblings’ killers, and that one day I’d have to, too. I swore I never would, and then Emily returned with you, and seeing that was like choking on hot embers.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Good, because I never will.”
The silence returned, and Takeo welcomed it. Lacking interaction from others allowed Takeo to suffer within his own mind. He could do nothing else but get lost in his own thoughts, dreaming and thinking of Emily and how he’d never see her again.
Every night when he tried to sleep, he tossed and turned instead. Without another body to hold, he felt awkward and stressed. He could never figure out what to do with his arms. The best he could do was grip himself, which only added to his feelings of loneliness.
Nearly every night, he would dream of Emily, and nearly every day, he’d play over and over every smile she’d given him, every kiss they’d shared, and all the kindness he’d never known he’d needed.
“I was an orphan, too,” Gavin spoke suddenly after another week of silent travel. “I am no saint, either.”
Takeo grumbled, too lost in his own despair to be pulled back to reality so easily. Blinking in a haze of self-pity, he managed to look to Gavin. That was enough for the knight to continue, apparently.
“Sorry,” Gavin sighed. “The silence is killing me again. If left inside my head with nothing but my thoughts, I’ll kill myself before we get to Angor. No drink to numb my mind. Just . . . just let me talk.”
For the first time in too long, Takeo felt the twinge of a smile.
“I . . . I know what you mean,” he replied. “Okay then, talk.”
So Gavin told his own story. He spent the entire day talking, pausing only to breathe, eat, and drink. He didn’t ask for Takeo’s input, and Takeo didn’t offer it.
Takeo found out that Gavin had been an orphan, a thief, and a liar. The ex-knight had known survival first, and morality had only been broached to him through the influence of a gnome who had taken him in. He had never intended to walk the straight and narrow, not until he’d seen the weight of his actions on someone undeserving—his friend, the knight named Sir Duncan Macalister, who’d shown Gavin that honor had worth and that goodness was its own reward.
The angels, though, had touched him deepest. Like Takeo, he hadn’t fully understood the wickedness of his ways until he’d basked in their light. With his illness revealed, he’d set about attempting to cure himself. He’d picked up a sword, a shield, and an appetite for justice. He would be a better man.
“When I met Emily, I knew there was something special about her,” Gavin said as the sun was setting.
“Stop. Please, no. Not her. Not yet.”
“It’s going to happen, Takeo,” Gavin replied, tone hinging on apologetic. “Eventually, we’re going to have to talk about her.”
“Not yet, please.”
Gavin silently acknowledged the plea, and they never spoke of Emily again until they’d reached the Forest of Angor, stumbled through its thick southern end, and finally discovered the werewolves, who were surprisingly human. Though challenged at first, all Takeo and Gavin had to do was speak Belen’s name and show the letters. No further questioning was done.
They brought Takeo and Gavin to an encampment that, to Takeo, looked reminiscent of a ninja gathering. People meandered about quietly among tents and campfires, their establishment looking temporary and hastily erected. The area around them spoke of a casual indifference, too, as Takeo spotted gut piles and latrine holes scattered about with no regard for their effect on nature. Takeo wasn’t sure what to think about that, but he was too distracted to entertain the idea. They were seated in the middle of the camp by the fire, and Belen came to them in time.
Neither Takeo nor Gavin had met the woman. They didn’t know that the older lady with auburn hair and a wide nose was the one they were looking for until she sat on the log opposite them. She wasn’t wearing amazon clothes, just simple leather breeches and a brown tunic with a fur coat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was putting my son down for a nap. I’m told you two are carrying letters from my husband?”
Takeo nodded and drew out the three letters, handing them over to her. All three were opened, their wax seals broken, and she paused to glare at each of the two humans before taking them. Gavin looked sidelong at Takeo, who let his embarrassment show.
“You’ve read them,” she noted. “You must not have been sent by my husband. Can I ask why you are bringing these to me?”
“These were carried by Emily,” Takeo explained. “She kept them on herself as she traveled with the intention of bringing them to you, often risking life and limb to keep them safe. One was written by Mark over a year ago. The other was written by him a few months ago. Emily died before she could bring them to you. It wasn’t her that opened them. It was me.”
Belen raised her eyebrows and blinked. She glanced around for a moment until her sight fell on the letters again. Setting her own letter aside, she pulled out the first one written by Mark, worn and weathered, and cleared her throat.
“I suppose I should be sorry to hear that Emily died,” Belen said, “but you’ll have to excuse me. You’re emissaries on her behalf then?”
“Something like that,” Gavin answered.
“Do you know I’m only her
e because of her? That my son is a werewolf, thanks to her?”
Neither man replied. Belen read. At the end, she sighed, almost in disgust, and then she opened the next letter.
She took that well, Takeo thought. Unlike Gavin, Takeo had read all three letters. He knew that in that first one, Sir Mark had written briefly and coldly that he would not help Belen or their son. Judging by Belen’s reaction, she’d already expected that response.
I suppose if I’d gone so long without word from my other half, I’d have put one and one together, as well, Takeo mused.
As Belen read over the next letter, her eyes shifting from left to right, her face began to change. This letter was significantly longer than the other, and Takeo waited patiently for the change he knew was coming.
Belen’s hard face grew softer at first, her judgmental stare relenting slowly to that of acceptance and possibly sympathy. Her arms, at first held close, began to fall away, and her shoulders gradually slumped toward the ground. Gavin must have noticed it, too, for he glanced at Takeo more than once. Takeo never took his eyes from Belen, though. Belen scanned the last line, and a single tear formed at the corner of her eye.
“Decrepit, delusional, old man,” she swore, raising her free hand to wipe the tear away. “He had better not be lying.”
They were interrupted by a portly man with red hair and a stiff upper lip, who strode over at the sign of Belen’s trouble. It dawned on Takeo that he’d been watching them the whole time.
I am still slow, he realized. Okamoto would have beaten me for not noticing that.
“Belen,” the man said, stepping close and leering over the two humans. “Are you alright? Do you want us to send them on their way?”
“No, Ralph, thank you.” Belen managed a smile and touched Ralph’s leg. “They are helping me, really. How is Cyrus?”
“He fussed for attention, but I ignored him. He was asleep again in no time.”
“Thank you,” Belen replied. “You’re too kind. Can you fetch him for me, though? I want these two to see him.”
Ralph gave Takeo and Gavin a hard stare, one they both avoided by looking the opposite way. They turned back when they heard him leave.
“Ralph means well,” Belen apologized. “However, he is woefully ignorant. Like most of the werewolves here, he was born one. It is a rare person—me, for example—who survives an encounter with a werewolf long enough to become one in turn. Ralph does not understand that this forest is not our home—it is our cage.”
Ralph returned a moment later carrying a sleeping child in his arms. Takeo had little knowledge of what children were like, but he knew by powers of deduction that this child was no more than a year and a few months old. Black, curly hair dominated the child’s head, and he slept quietly, murmuring softly as he was placed in his mother’s arms. Belen held Cyrus close, tucking him toward her chest, and he cuddled into her warmth. When he cracked open his eyes, Takeo was surprised to see they were two different colors: blue and brown. The child must have been surprised, too, because he tucked his face back into his mother’s chest.
“Cyrus,” Belen whispered. “Baby, wake up. Look.”
Cyrus looked again, albeit reluctantly. He stared between the two of them and then tucked his face away again. Belen rocked him gently.
“I take it you two read the letters?” she asked.
“Only him,” Gavin replied, “and he didn’t tell me, either.”
Takeo ignored the resentment in Gavin’s voice. It was to be expected.
“How rude.” Belen tisked. “To summarize, my husband has offered our child hope. Before we were both turned into monsters, my husband and I shared a disdain for nonhumans. It’s as humorous as it is tragic, really. We both became the things we hated, and that forced us apart.”
She swept up the three letters with her free hand and tossed them into the fire between them. Gavin’s hand flew up as if to catch the letters, then he paused to watch them flicker and burn. The bright light flared from the new fuel, but Takeo did not squint or blink. He continued his vigilant gaze on the child and the mother.
“I cannot convey to you in words,” Belen began, her voice barely above a whisper, “the guilt and pain I feel, knowing that my son will never know life outside this prison. It has no bars or walls or guards, and yet he is trapped. If he grows up here, he will do so ignorant like the others, believing that happiness exists only here. The other werewolves will whisper to him that the world is terrible and vile, and that being here will protect him. They are only half right. It is us that are vile and terrible, us that kill and hunt. If we leave, we will be killed because we are animals.
“Cyrus hasn’t killed anything other than a harpy yet, but one day he will watch himself kill something that begs him not to. He will know then that he is the real monster, and then he’ll hide it away like all the others, sheltering his fragile mind from the terribleness of our affliction. Given the chance, I would sacrifice everything I have to spare him that. I would give my life to give him the freedom that was taken from me. I would gladly suffer if it meant he was given a chance. So, tell me, is it true?”
She was still whispering, her voice so low that Takeo and Gavin had to lean forward to hear. The other werewolves in the camp were turning their heads, trying to listen in, but Takeo guessed they heard nothing. He lowered his voice, as well, and spoke for them both.
“It is. An angel still lives.”
Gavin’s eyes went wide, and he stared at Takeo once more with mouth agape.
“Tonight then,” Belen whispered. “You’ll have two weeks until the next full moon. I suggest you use that time wisely.”
“You son of a. . .” Gavin muttered to Takeo.
Later, under the cover of darkness, Takeo and Gavin stole Cyrus away into the night. The fear in the little boy’s eyes mirrored the tension they both felt. If it hadn’t been for Belen’s soothing words and promises, the boy might have cried and awoken the camp. That would not have ended well. According to Belen’s words, the werewolf camp was as much a prison as it was a sanctuary, and Ralph played both deacon and warden alike.
If they were caught trying to leave with the child, they would not leave at all.
So they left as quietly as they could, hoping that Belen could delay the discovery of her missing child long enough for it to matter. It was risky, but it worked. By the time the full moon struck and Cyrus turned into a ferocious beast the size of a gnome, they were safely out on the Great Plains.
“When were you going to tell me, huh? Ever?” Gavin swore as the two of them held the tiny werewolf down by its paws. “I take back any good thought I ever had about you! You lied to me from the start.”
“I didn’t lie!” Takeo grunted with effort. “This task needs you.”
Cyrus howled, kicked, and barked. His eyes, now grey, looked hungrily at his two captors, and his jaws snapped toward each of them in turn.
“Don’t let it bite you!” Takeo shouted over another howl. “Hold it still!”
“Damn, this is going to be a long night!”
The werewolf was strong for such a small thing, but they held it all night long, and when morning came, they both passed out, exhausted, right alongside Cyrus.
“We have to think of something else,” Gavin grumbled, voice groggy, when they awoke. “I can’t do that every night for a week. I’ll slip.”
“I have an idea.”
The next night, they dug a hole and placed Cyrus in it. He cried and begged for his mother, whimpering out one word at a time in a way that broke Takeo’s heart into smaller, shattered pieces.
“Ssshh,” Gavin whispered as the sun set. “Hey, it’s for the best, little guy. Don’t worry. We’re here to help you.”
Yet still he cried as they filled in the hole, forcing his limbs together so he wouldn’t be able to get free. They left only his head above ground, packing in the dirt around his body as tightly as they could. When the moon rose, and the werewolf came, Cyrus’ tears were switched fo
r howls and barks. Neither Takeo nor Gavin slept much better, not with a werewolf snapping at them a few paces away, but they weren’t as exhausted the next morning.
“Just one week a month,” Takeo offered as a way of apology.
“You had better hope Ephron can do something,” Gavin muttered, “or this will all be for nothing.”
They were headed for the Khaz Mal Mountains, a several months long journey along across the Great Plains. They had at least three more full moons until then, but they were already trying to hash out how they were going to keep Cyrus confined in the stony terrain of Khaz Mal.
“We can’t bury him there,” Gavin argued. “There’s rarely enough dirt, and even then it will be too cold for him to last all night.”
“He’ll be covered in fur,” Takeo said with a sigh. “He’ll be warm enough, but no, we can’t bury him in rock. We’ll have to wait at the mountains’ edge until after the next full moon cycle. How long from there until we reach Ephron?”
“I won’t know until we get there. He moves around, but I can always feel him when I get close.”
“Can we reach him in a month?”
“Most likely, yes.”
That would have to be good enough, they agreed, and so they pushed on, bringing the increasingly reluctant Cyrus with them.
The little boy cried himself to sleep most nights. He whimpered for his mother in his sleep. Sometimes he refused to eat, but neither Gavin nor Takeo forced him. They let nature take its course, and after a day of no eating, the boy’s hunger would win over his fear. At least he never tried to run. He seemed more afraid of being alone than he was of them.
He wouldn’t talk much, hardly speaking a word other than ‘no,’ and they didn’t encourage him to. Gavin and Takeo still hardly spoke to each other, except to comment on things they saw or where they were headed, and neither had yet to bring up Emily again. It seemed to have become a taboo subject, which suited Takeo just fine.
On rare days, he barely thought of her at all.
Sometimes he craved that pain, though, and when they settled in for the night, he’d lose himself in a dream of her smiles and warmth. His chest would ache, and his breathing would become strained. Sometimes he’d cry, but only rarely. His pain was a numb one, so very numb, a dull sensation that stretched through his body, making him feel dead inside. But that was just fine with him. Besides pain, he didn’t want to feel anything anymore.