Lycenea

by Rory D Nelson

  Chapter 10: Insidious Refuge

  Sylvia awakes groggily, dazed, cold, disheveled and in a great amount of pain from the night before. She grew tired walking in the night when she was usually fast asleep in bed, had found a suitable place to rest in an abandoned barn and had slept there for several hours, only to be woken by several large gnawing rats. Disgusted and frightened, she jumped up as quickly as she could, inadvertently catching herself on an exposed nail and ripping her sweater and staining it with blood from a small laceration. She tore the sweater off and ran out of the barn.

  Being unaccustomed to the large drop in temperature during the night, she was unusually cold, and so she retrieved a jacket from her bag and put it on, whimpering as she did so. She didn’t know what was worse-the uncomfortable cold or the discomfort from the jacket rubbing painfully across her fresh wound. She fights back the tears that begin to well up in her eyes and moves on as quickly as she can.

  Though she can ignore the throbbing pain in her back, she cannot fight back her need for sleep; and so when she approaches a large, abandoned house, she ventures inside. The smell from rotting floorboards and rat shit is pervasive, and she gags reflexively as she enters. Most of the windows had been shattered by vandals long ago, creating a vicious draftiness in the house, which chills her bones.

  In the kitchen area, the roofing is so badly decayed the roof had collapsed entirely, smashing down on an oak dining room table, which collapsed through the rotting floorboards that had been weakened by dry rot.

  Sylvia passes by a kitchen nook and observes the stairs that had long ago succumbed to decay, causing the wood to splinter, making it all but impossible to travel upstairs. Walking further into the home, Sylvia observes a master bedroom. Thick, dark hued, heavy drapes had once been fashioned over the windows. Now, the drapes are tattered, soiled and full of mildew, staining them an ochre-orange hue, making it impossible to determine what color they were originally.

  Fortunately, though, most of the windows in the master bedroom are intact, and the drapes prevent the wind from penetrating into the room. It is by far the warmest area of the house, and it will have to suffice. Sylvia lays down on an eroded mattress. The mattress had become the unofficial home of many burrowing rodents, and the stuffing inside was used by transient birds to build nests.

  Recently and unbeknownst to Sylvia, the rodents had recently been cleared away or devoured by hind-serpents, who used the massive mattress to hide their eggs. It is also the reason the master bedroom appeared devoid of any other rodents, for they could smell the presence of hind-serpent eggs and prudently stay clear. The young are due to spring forth at any moment, and the pack will not be far behind.

  Sylvia huddles on the egg-infested mattress and succumbs to sleep almost the moment her head hits the mattress.

  Sylvia finds herself sitting up in her bed at home, while Adele combs her long, lustrous auburn hair with a large, boar’s brush. It feels soothing and pleasant the way she gently but firmly tugs on her hair. Tears glisten in her eyes, and she is powerless to stop them from falling. It had all been a nightmare.

  Sylvia looks up at Adele, who smiles affectionately at her. “It was all a bad dream you had, bumblebee.”

  “Ai. But it scared me tripe, so it did. I dreamt you were all dead, so I did.”

  “Well, we are her now little one.” Adele hugs her tightly. Sylvia hears the bacon sizzling downstairs on the main floor of the cabin, the delectable smell causing her stomach to rumble. She is famished. She also makes out the sweet smell of cinnamon and honeycomb in the porridge fiber, and she finds herself drooling at the thought. She wipes away the spittle from her face.

  “Let’s go downstairs and have breakfast. Last one down’s a campie bear.” Adele takes off first and then yells. “Go.”

  “You cheater,” cries Sylvia. Sylvia races after her, but it is too late. Adele had beaten her downstairs.

  “No fair, piggy.”

  “You are a piggy.” “Oink Oink” Mocks Adele.

  “Now, girls, mind your manners before breakfast,” scolds Father, wearing an exasperated look on his face. Father then takes his finger and pulls back his nose to resemble a pig and snorts, “Oink. Oink.” Sylvia erupts in laughter. Adele rolls her eyes in feigned annoyance but then giggles herself.

  Mother smiles but holds her hands on her hips, as if exasperated. “Now can all you piggies go and wash up before breakfast?”

  “Ai,” responds Adele, Father and Sylvia in unison.

  Once the trio had washed up, they sit down to breakfast and hold hands in prayer. Sylvia cannot contain the giddiness she feels, nor can she remove the smile plastered to her face. She is beaming. Father begins. “We do give thanks to you God and to you Christ for sacrificing yourself to save us tripe sinners, so we do. Bless this bounty that has been guided by beautiful hands which serve you well and us well.” Mother opens her eyes and looks at father, beaming. Sylvia reflects that they are still very much enamored with each other. Though she is supposed to keep her eyes open, she is much too happy and doesn’t want to miss anything. It is as if Sylvia is trying to hold onto this happy image so it will never fade away. Tears well up in her eyes and flow down.

  Father continues with his beautiful prayer and is about to end it. “And we thank God and in hissss namesake.” That was odd. Sylvia looks at the rest of her family, and they appeared to be completely oblivious to father’s guffaw. And then it continues. “Hisss Hisssss Hisss!” The door inexplicably bangs open. Terrified, Sylvia gets up from the table. Her father continues with his inexplicable and sinister babbling, while her family remains oblivious, their heads still bowed and their eyes closed. “Hissss Hisss. Hissss.” Her father continues to sputter.

  Sylvia begins to cry. The rest of her family opens their eyes, and when they do, their eyes are impossibly jet black and grey, devoid of any human warmness. Their small, beady eyes inside their large white irises are beyond creepy. Sylvia is shocked into silence. She is paralyzed. Her mother and sister open their mouths to reveal a long, leathery, forked, snake’s tongue emerging. Sylvia screams at the top of her lungs.

  And awakes to the real world. Terror grips her as if a vise-grip had locked itself onto her heart. She hyperventilates and cries hysterically. All around her, there are approximately a dozenhind-serpents, and they approach her with mortal intent, hissing and displaying their forked tongues, menacingly. She remembers from her father that movement would give her away. She can’t move anyway if she wanted to.

  The hind-serpent’s emotionless eyes had been locked on her, but they suddenly avert in response to what? They appear to sniff the air. She cocks her head and tries to make out the creature that is running upstairs. A voice speaks in her head. Sylvia, move to the end of the bed and make yourself into a ball. Now! It is Merlin’s voice. How did he get into her head? She doesn’t hesitate. Trusting him, she complies, making herself into a small ball.

  And then the roof above her partially collapses, though none of it lands on her. Shadow lands down on the bed with a thud and turns towards a couple of alpha males in the pack. They strike out at him preternaturally fast, aiming for a vein in his throat. But they are too slow. Shadow extracts his razor-sharp claws instinctively, and when the first serpent strikes, he slices his paw towards it, severing its head from its body, killing it.

  At the same split second, Shadow sidesteps slightly, sending the second serpent off-course. While the serpent’s head misses its mark, Shadow whips his head like a coiled whip and grabs it by the neck, shaking it so violently the thrashing smashes its head, hemorraghing it as its head comes into contact with the floor. It's dead the moment its head penetrates through the floorboards, staining it with crimson.

  The other snakes hesitate briefly, unsure of their enemy, but they continue to encroach upon the bed nevertheless. Merlin calls out. “Shadow, to me.” Shadow jumps off the bed and leaps over ten yards and at least seven feet in the air, staying clear of striking distance. Merlin emerges in the
room with guns blazing. He pulls his twelve shooters with lightning-quick deftness, shooting and thumbing down the hammer almost simultaneously. He empties the revolver of twelve shells in less than three seconds and then grabs his other gun and continues.

  The results are instantaneous, deadly and accurate. Each shot rips through the snake’s neck, severing the head from the body. No shot is wasted. The scene is almost surreal. Hind-serpent’s heads seemed to continually fly off from their bodies in one fluid motion. None of them even have time to react or move. It is almost as if time stood still for them. Perhaps it did. Anything is possible with Merlin.

  The hind-serpent’s legs twitch frenetically as their leathery bodies move onto their backs as if they were trying to decipher the jumbled message from their spinal cords, which had been severed with their heads. Perhaps their legs aren’t aware they are dead yet. Copious amounts of thick crimson spew from their headless necks.

  Merlin knows the scene will further traumatize Sylvia, as she wouldn’t really believe the serpents are really dead. To avoid her hysterics, he runs to her and picks her up. “Don’t open your eyes, bumblebee. Not until we get outside. Promise me.”

  “Promise.” She croaks.

  Merlin seems to glide out of the house rather than walk, for Sylvia hardly feels an impact at all, almost as if she were gliding along a calm lake. The man had entered her mind; perhaps he had induced this euphoric feeling in her as well. Almost as quickly as they venture out, he is through the house. She obediently shuts her eyes. When she opens them, the first thing she notices is the brightness of the sun that beams down on her. She squints and averts her gaze.

  He gently sits her down and bends on his knee before her. She likes that. “Sylvia, please don’t run away anymore. This is your home. You don’t have to run anymore. Let me help you.”

  She hugs him tightly and then wipes away the tears that had run down her cheeks. “Promise?” He asks.

  “Ai. Cry pardon.”

  “This is a dangerous world. You ken?”

  “Ai.”

  “There’s someone else that missed you.” Shadow bounds up to her, nuzzling his massive muzzle in her side, playfully. It tickles her, and she squeals in delight. He keeps nuzzling her until she falls over, giggling hysterically and then he licks her face with his massive tongue, which nearly takes up her entire head.

  “Not you, boy!” Shadow leaps up, obediently and stands before Merlin.

  Merlin points to Janice, who had tried to follow him as closely as she could. She had missed the violent shootout with the snakes. Merlin had planned it accordingly.

  Sylvia looks over at Janice, who appears disheveled and puffy. Upon seeing each other, tears well up in both their eyes and then they run into each other and hug fiercely. “Don’t ever do that again! Not ever, promise me.” Janice pleads.

  “Ai. Promise,” says Sylvia.

  Still crying, Janice looks over at Merlin and whispers, “Thankee Merlin.” Merlin receives the message in two ways, telepathically and from the minuscule undulations, her lips make in the air. He nods and tips his hat and turns around his stallion, galloping off. Shadow follows closely behind.

  Chapter 11: Dante’s Cruel Tutelage continues

  Dante sits at the mess hall, with Cammilia laying her massive head in his lap. It is uncomfortable and awkward for her to crane her neck down so far, but Dante is especially needy. And as the doting guardian, she will do whatever is needed to comfort her kin, despite her discomfort.

  As usual, no one talks to Dante in his group, at the behest of their self-appointed leader, Maximus. Though boys from the other sparing groups could have interacted with Dante, it is an unspoken rule that they could only associate with boys from their group. It ensures a sense of unity and loyalty within the group. Other groups are considered competition and so avoid each other except when it is necessary.

  Dante had now been at the rectory for four months. The class that initially had over fifteen hundred recruits had less than half of that now. He is proud to be one of them. He enjoys his academics and loves to listen to Merlin at daily mass. His mind is a sponge, and he readily absorbs the material and takes pleasure in even the smallest of incidents.

  Once in Algebra class, Maximus had complained that math was useless and he would never use it as it pertained to warfare. Merlin approaches him, and with lightning, quick reflexes throws a deadly boomerang that bounces off several walls before he catches it in a thickly gloved hand, only three inches above Maximus’ head. Maximus is stunned into silence.

  “If my mathematical coordinates had been off, runt, you would be sitting there without your head.” Several in the classroom, Dante included, gasp in amazement. “So you see I think we can agree how important mathematics is. Do you ken, runt?”

  “I cry pardon, Merlin. And yes I do see,” says a frightened Maximus.

  “Accepted. And Maximus?”

  “Ai, Merlin?”

  “Gratitude for your volunteering for rectory duty for the next two months.”

  “Ai. Merlin. I will not speak out of turn again.”

  “See that you don’t.”

  The smile had seemed painted on Dante’s face, for he could not remove it for the better part of the day. It had sustained his morale for the entire week.

  That delight had now passed, and at the moment Dante is in a great deal of pain. The morning’s exercise sessions were especially brutal. For two hours, he worked his board relentlessly, hoping to smash through it. After forty-five minutes, he heard the wood splinter, but the pain in his knuckles was excruciating. His shoulders were throbbing from the constant blows. He could hear the groans from the other boys. Some cried out and stopped altogether. When they did, they were immediately ushered out and removed from the program. This was all part of the weeding out process. The group continued to cry out “Fye! Fye!”

  Another recruit broke through a board and then Dante heard Maximus proud exclamation “Ai!” This only pushed him harder. With only five minutes to go, Dante hears the loud splintering of wood and feels his fist emerge entirely through the board. “Well done Dante.” Germanicus says.

  The next set of exercises is bar work. And the first exercise they perform is pull-ups on iron bars. The goal, which seemed simple enough is to perform as many pull-ups in a two-minute span as they can without stopping. They had performed the exercise many times, but this time there is a twist.

  After one minute, Germanicus determines they are performing the exercise too slow. So, to induce them into performing the exercise more swiftly, he takes a branding iron and lights one of the iron bars for several seconds. The heat quickly transfers to each iron bar the recruit performs on, and the results are immediate. The bars become extremely hot, inducing many to fall from the bars. They are ushered out and given their leave.

  Dante, among many other recruits, works through the agony, continuing the exercises, despite the blood blisters that form and pop, seeping blood onto the bars and making their grips especially slippery.

  Several boys slip off. Germanicus catches them and pushes them back up, for the boys had to remove themselves voluntarily.

  That afternoon, Dante has trouble clenching and unclenching his fists. He has to force his own hand around his spork in order to eat. His knuckles are raw and blistered, and his hands agonize with every slight movement. Throbbing shoulders awkwardly lift his food to his mouth. Still, he pushes through it because he is famished. Avoiding daily pain is a lesson in futility.

  Dante is so immersed in his own physical pain; he fails to notice his group approaching him. Cammilia does not. As they approach, she lifts her head off Dante’s head and growls. The other boys’ wolves growl as well, baring their razor sharp teeth in a threat.

  “Phates, heal girl!” orders Maximus. The other boys in the group take the example and heel their wolves.

  “Dante, heel your dog,” orders Maximus.

  Dante looks up, sensing Maximus’ lack of animosity and complies. “Heel gi
rl.”

  Cammilia complies but stays close.

  “May I sit?” He asks.

  “You don’t need my consent,” says Dante indifferently. Maximus sits down.

  He looks at Dante, trying hard to read his inscrutable face. Was he scared? If he were, he surely doesn’t register it in his deadpan face. It intimidates Maximus, though he would be loath to admit it. “We are well met. You have done well. I would not have expected it from a blind boy.”

  “Merlin is blind.”

  Maximus laughs, the others joining him seconds later. “Ai. But you are no Merlin.”

  “No one is,” retorts Dante. “That is why he is the Merlin.”

  “Do you know who I am?” asks Maximus.

  “The son of Menelaeus.”

  “And the best prospect here. But I am also powerful and can grant you things, as only a prince can.”

  “I am not in need,” replies Dante curtly. The resolute look on his face leaves no doubt.

  “You will never reach knighthood. That is a fact. Primera docturna. Do you know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “First test.”

  “In a little over a year, if you are still among us, which will be unlikely, you will have to be separated twenty hectares from your canine companion. And you will have to reunite with her and make it back to the rectory in three days. Many have died trying to do it. You can be hurt and killed. Alone. Blind. There will be no Merlin and no Dottore. Your animal will find you, but if you panic, you will separate yourself from her and become lost. You risk this group, and I will not let you.”

  Maximus reaches into his pocket and pulls out several gold pences. He places them in Dante’s hands. “There is more where that came from. Leave voluntarily by tomorrow, and I will ask my father to give you anything you want. You can have the best post you can imagine and never want for anything. Your life will be set. I can see you are in pain. It will get much worse. Please.”