I jumped off the sleigh and started toward Noel in an effort to stop him from damaging my home any further.
“Did you come to see him die?” Noel shouted, taunting me. “Or, maybe you wanted some more food from the filthy fat woman!”
I was distracted for a moment, as Markus now moved through the shadows near the carpentry. And, while I looked in Markus’s direction, Noel hit me with a large stone that glanced across the side of my head, and I went down. The lantern hit the ground, spilling its liquid flaming content across the snow. Dazed, I had enough awareness to roll away from the fire. Then hazily I watched Noel bend down to pick up a thick branch and heft it like a club, wrapping both hands around the end for greatest power. He began swinging it at the air with great fury as he shouted, “I’ll bet you have it too! Get inside, fatty.”
Noel charged. And he laughed. He knew he had me. Though stronger, I could never outrun Noel. Stunned, I tried to shake the cloud from my thoughts in preparation for the impending attack. I struggled to my feet, desperate to master my unbalanced equilibrium; then the world faded and tilted as I fell to the earth in failure. My vision cleared a little, just enough to see Noel rear back on the branch, barreling down on me in his final assault.
“Go rot with them!” he screamed.
Then a blur from his left took him out at the knees. Markus tackled Noel and sent him sprawling to the ground with a large thud.
Markus and Noel continued to struggle as I tried to make sense of what was happening, and I looked about to see what other damage might have been done.
Noel shouted at Markus, “What are you doing?”
And Markus pushed him to the ground.
“What’s the matter with you, Markus?” Noel asked in his angry confusion. “Are you siding with piggy now?”
“Go home, Noel!” Markus shouted.
“What?”
“I said, get up and go home,” Markus yelled even more forcefully. “You’re not wanted here!”
“Why are you getting into this?” Noel demanded of Markus. “He’s trying to get in to see that dirty—”
And Markus hit Noel as he shouted, grabbed him by the collar, lifted him into the air and threw him to the ground once more. I wasn’t the only one who had grown stronger over the year.
“I’ll say it again, Noel,” Markus shouted fiercely. “Get out of here. Go home to your mother.”
Noel backed away in defeat but cursed both Markus and me as he retreated from us. “I hope you burn with them, Markus! You and that fat, piggy friend of yours. When you have caught it, too, we will burn you all!”
Markus took a threatening step in Noel’s direction, and Noel ran off into the night.
I was bewildered by what had come over Noel and Markus and also fearful of what I might learn now that Noel’s assault had ended.
Markus anticipated my concern, but decided to challenge me in other ways. “Where were you?” he asked, in an accusing fashion.
“I had work to do. I was looking for someone,” I said defensively. I was still confused and unsure about what had transpired here in my absence. The rock hadn’t done much more damage than a momentary stunning, but I was still getting my bearings.
I looked to Markus to see what he might tell me and noticed Jonas as he moved forward from the shadows where he was hiding.
“What happened here?” I asked.
But they did not answer me. It didn’t matter. Jonas’s eyes always told the truth.
“Tell me!” I yelled at them, not wanting to acknowledge the reality I already understood better than I should.
“Don’t go inside,” Markus said solemnly. “It’s too late. You can’t do anything to help them.” And he began to walk away from the carpentry.
“Markus!” I called to him.
But Markus ignored me and said to Jonas, “Come on. It’s time for us to go.” And he continued to walk off into the smothering night.
Jonas gave me a gentle wave as if to say, “I am sorry. Kris.” And he ran to catch up with Markus.
By now, of course, I knew that plague had come to the carpentry shop. Desperate remembered anxieties threatened to seize my body, first squeezing my heart and then capturing my ability to breathe. Slowly I took back my body. I fought back the destroyer, fear. I must go inside. Despite the warnings of Markus and the ones ringing in my own head, I had to find Gabriella and Josef. With a snort I shook off the debilitating grip that held my life hostage and headed for the side door to the carpentry.
As I entered the kitchen, I saw the broken shards of glass littering the floor, and furniture broken and tossed in disarray. Gabriella startled me as she entered from another room carrying a tray of medicine and damp rags.
“Gabriella, what has happened?” I blurted out to her. “Did Noel do all this damage?”
Gabriella looked up at me in shock and terror.
“You need to leave here,” she entreated.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“You can’t see him now,” Gabriella weakly commanded. “Go, Kris. Please go. You must go.”
A blood-soaked handkerchief fell from Gabriella’s tray and plummeted to the floor. She bent to pick it up and tried to place it in her pocket, but the tray slipped from her hands and crashed to the ground.
I ran to her and led her to a chair by the fire. “You must sit and rest a moment,” I said to her gently. “I’ll take care of it. I’m here.”
She crumpled into the chair behind her that rested against the wall. I collected the spilled and broken items from the floor. I could hear Gabriella softly weeping and my heart filled with great sorrow for what she had undergone.
I crossed to her and wiped her tears with my handkerchief. I knew the depth of her pain and the suffering she would endure ever more, as I would, when Josef finally was lost to us.
Gabriella at last caught her breath. I placed my hand upon her shoulder, and she reached up slowly and placed her hand upon mine. I stood with her in that way for some time to share my deepest sympathy for her suffering and sorrow.
Then I said to her, “I will go to see him now. You stay here and rest. I will look in on him and try to make him comfortable.”
And Gabriella quietly nodded as she began again to weep.
I left her there to rest and release her stream of despair, and I quietly walked through the house until I arrived at the bedroom where Josef was sleeping. I listened at the door for a moment, but it was quiet inside. Though I did not want to disturb his needed sleep or impose myself upon his time of suffering, I knew I must enter, no matter what I might find there, and help him as I could.
I opened the door slightly and pushed upon it gently so its hinges would not creak and so I would not startle Josef by bursting in upon him.
An oil lamp burned on his bedside table, emitting black smoke. It gave the room a hazy patina that washed over Josef and the objects in the room, making them appear more distant and otherworldly. The dimly lit haze flowed to the corners of the room and blended with the darkness of the shadows that lurked there unmolested. In the weak light, it seemed as if the darkness itself was watching and waiting, preparing to creep in on Josef to consume him. He had wasted away quickly in my absence, only the shell of the man he had been weeks ago. He was lying in the bed with an expression of agony on his face. It was a look I knew too well, seared into my memory and the weakened walls of my heart so many times over.
I moved to the fireplace and laid a fresh log upon the fire. It instantly brightened the room and generated greater warmth.
“You should not be here,” Josef said from behind me. Then a wet cough rumbled deeply from his chest and continued to roll until he was required to pull in breath.
“I have nowhere else,” I told him. Then I stoked the fire with a poker until the flames surged again.
Josef watched me from his bed, and I realized that my life was now modeled on his. He had cut me away from the rotting bark which had once covered me, trimmed my coarse edges, sanded me to a greater smoothness
, and shaped me into one of his works by providing balance and strength, then clever design and a carefully layered finish that changed my rawness to something of greater value.
As I watched him, our eyes locked in silent understanding of the certainties we now faced. It hurt me so to see him dying in this way. But I also knew his spirit would not be lost because I now carried it inside me.
I pulled a chair to his bedside, and together we stared into the fire and sat in the comfortable silence of old friends who didn’t need words to share in each other’s company.
When he finally spoke, his words were low and gravelly, allowing himself just enough energy to convey his thoughts.
“I’ve always loved wood, working and shaping it in my hands. When I was a young man, I was to be a fisherman,” he said. “Have you ever watched the fish along the mountain rivers?”
“No,” I answered simply. But as I looked into his eyes, I knew there was more he wished to say.
“My father’s fish. I would often watch them,” Josef said. “In leaps they cut the air, fighting the current, moving against the stream.”
He looked at me as he spoke, but his gaze passed through me, and traveled deep into the past and the days of his youth.
“As a young man I thought their triumph was their struggle. But I was wrong. It is in their acts of helplessness that they triumph,” he said.
“What is an act of helplessness?”
“It is a choice when there are no choices. It is to laugh in a moment of despair, to walk when there is nowhere to go. It is to make toys you will never play with for brothers and sisters you will never know.”
Josef stunned me with these words that revealed just how well he knew the secrets of my heart. “You should just rest,” I said. “You will breathe easier if you are not trying so hard to talk.”
But, he ignored me and continued as I wiped the sweat from his forehead with a soft cloth. “Those fish were going home, Kris. To that place of connection,” he said, struggling. “That’s the gift you give. Not the toys. It’s the connection.
“Your gifts tell them they are not alone,” Josef whispered hoarsely. Then he shuddered and hacked uncontrollably, and his breathing became more forced and painful.
“What can I do?” I asked. “How can I help you?” I wanted to calm him and let him know I would do whatever he asked of me, if it would improve his circumstances or remove his suffering in any way.
“Pack up the shop. Everything. Take care with the tools. They are irreplaceable.”
“And what should I do when I have packed them all?” I asked. I looked at him in my silent desperation, for I did not know how else to respond.
“Go deep into the Northlands,” he continued. “They say people live forever up there.”
“You will get better,” I told him.
“Listen to me!” Josef said forcefully. “Do not stay here. Do not return to the mountains where you came from.”
“Sarah told you,” I said to him.
“No Kris. You wore it in your eyes when I first saw you.”
“I could have brought this sickness into your house. This is my fault.”
“Sha! Carriers do not live. They die quickly like those who are consumed. We have been well a year over. You are no carrier. This did not come from you. But others will fear you. The villages nearby are no safer. People will hear of your story. They may say this disease has followed you. They will blame you in their ignorance. They will hurt you if you do not go.”
He watched me quietly, for a moment as the significance of his words registered with me.
“Sickness is not the ugliest of killers,” Josef continued. “Fear is.”
Josef pulled me close to him. His hands were thin and weak, and his skin resembled yellowed and torn parchment. Then he whispered to me and shared his final words.
I closed his eyelids, pulled the blankets over him, and retreated to the carpentry, overwhelmed with sadness. I collected Josef’s engraving tools and laid them out on a fold of cloth. I wrapped them carefully, quietly in thought.
As I began gathering additional tools, knives, and many of the special rigs Josef had created to shape and carve delicate wood, Markus returned to the carpentry. He watched me for a moment as I categorized the tools, and he began adding chisels, mallets and other useful items to my collection. We worked together in silence, for it was clear it was my mission to assemble all of the important tools and prepare them for travel.
“He was good to me,” Markus said sadly. And his eyes began to water.
“He knew how you felt about him,” I said.
We continued to pack and wrap the tools securely, placing them in large satchels that I would carry with me in the sleigh.
As we finished, I walked through the carpentry, looking for any useful items I might have left behind. The carpentry seemed hollow and empty now, except for the piles of wood stacked in bins and on the floor. So many finely crafted works had been created here. So many delicate pieces of richly grained wood had been transformed into masterful furnishings, long-lasting benches and cabinets, and other functional devices and products. It was no surprise to me that Josef’s works would last beyond his lifetime, or mine. They were made with so much care, so much skill, so much passion. They were extensions of Josef himself, representative of everything he was, everything he shared, and the goodness in his life.
“Gabriella told me you spoke with him,” Markus said. “What did he say to you?”
And I thought back to the painful image of Josef dying in his bed, and his final words to me as he prepared to leave.
“Burn us down.”
Markus stood beside me as the light of the flames reflected on our faces and as the night began to glow with raging fire. I could feel the intensity of the heat and knew the wood and scraps piled throughout the carpentry would fuel this inferno, which would burn long into the night.
I had maneuvered Josef’s horses and the wagon into position away from the carpentry, tying Gerda to the rear. Markus helped load the satchels of tools and supplies and stowed them securely. I assisted Gabriella as she climbed into the sleigh with her eyes somberly diverted from the house and from Josef’s room. I am sure she was occupied by the lifetime of memories that flooded her thoughts and the relentless pain that tore at her heart.
The blaze burned so fiercely that it cast a glow up into the sky, and I imagined it might be seen for great distances. This was a fire that was as powerful and as passionate as Josef had been in his life, and it radiated nearly as brightly as he had for so many who had known him and benefited from his goodness.
“You put yourself in danger,” I said to Markus.
“No direct contact,” he replied. And he loaded the remaining tools and supplies into the wagon as I thanked him and climbed on board.
“It’s good it was us and not the others,” Markus said.
His words took me by surprise. “The others?” I asked with apprehension.
Markus paled as he looked at me. “Then you have not heard?” he asked.
“Heard what?” I said impatiently as worry began to sweep over me.
“It was the baker’s wife who first fell victim to the plague. Josef caught it there when he went to be of service to the family.”
“What?” I shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I thought you already knew,” Markus said weakly. “Many frightened villagers are gathered there demanding the bakery be destroyed.”
“What of Sarah?” I asked intensely.
Markus looked at me, as if his mouth had lost the ability to speak.
“What of Sarah!”
I snapped the reins before he could answer and drove the wagon forward with Gerda pulled behind. Markus stumbled in the wake left by the surging cart.
The wagon threatened to tear apart as I pushed it and the horses beyond their proper usage. When I at last approached the bakery and Sarah’s home, the outlying buildings were already in flames. A mob of
people had surrounded the bakery and its living quarters and had boarded the doors and windows shut from the outside in an effort to trap those remaining within. Enraged villagers threw rocks at the bakery and yelled insults and curses at its occupants.
I reined the horses in hard and pulled the wagon scraping and jumping to a stop. I was horrified by the scene before me. I saw Noel standing in the crowd near his father, who was lighting the ends of a wet rag hanging from the mouth of a large bottle. He tried to force Noel to take the bottle and instructed him to throw it at the bakery.
“No, Papa, no,” Noel said, shaking his head in response. But his father was wild-eyed and caught up in the excitement of the crowd that continued to shout curses and work itself up into a rage.
Noel’s father grabbed him by the back of the neck and screamed, “Boy! I won’t have weakness.” His father shoved the bottle into Noel’s hands and made him hold it while he instructed him again. “Now, do it!” he yelled.
I tried to stop Noel by shouting over the crowd, “Noel!” But he did not respond to me, so I continued to scream at him, “Noel, don’t do this!”
Noel jerked his head in my direction and looked me in the eye. His hesitation vanished when he saw me, and his anguish was replaced with a cruel smirk as he took delight that I would see what he was about to do. The crowd continued to shout and jeer and encourage him to take action, and Noel lobbed the burning bottle onto the roof of the house, where it shattered and exploded into flames on impact.
I vaulted from the sleigh and went for Noel and his father swinging. If I could get through the crowd I might make the bakery before it became consumed by the hunger of the fire spreading across the roof. Villagers who got in the way or tried to block me were slugged aside in my fury. Noel continued taunting me as I ran toward him. His father tried to stop me as I rushed forward, but I quickly knocked him to the ground and turned on Noel, whose expression had changed from gloating to fear. I drove my fist into Noel’s face, and he crumpled before me. As others reached out to stop me, I lashed out at them and struck whoever might be so bold as to interfere, and I broke through the crowd with a clear view of the cabin ahead. A hand reached out to grab my shoulder, and I turned quickly to push away a man I did not recognize who was intent upon stopping me. Just then the flat of a shovel hit me in the face, and I fell.
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