The Silver Claw

by Erik Williamson

  Emmie rotated the pale, oblong vegetable between her fingers in puzzlement, holding it up to the dusky light coming through their round kitchen window. She sniffed it and tried to break its hard skin with her teeth. Her forehead scrunched up—she’d never seen one of these before. She scowled at the odd root as though it was purposefully vexing her, exacting vengeance on her for considering chopping it up. With a shrug, she whacked it into little squares with her cleaver, pushing them into her heap of diced veggies. Joining the ones that had been considerate enough to let her know what they were before she hacked them into little bits.

  Emmie spread her hands along the short, rugged kitchen counter, presiding over her ingredients with satisfaction. She certainly appreciated the first few weeks when the ‘Dreggar ladies’ brought over hot meals every few days but Emmie took pride in her cooking and was pleased to be restored to her chosen role of chief chef. By her ninth birthday, she’d all but seized cooking duties from her dad. Once he realized she actually enjoyed it and wasn’t merely dutifully trying because his cooking was so bland and wretched, he gave her free reign. Emmie was far from a maestro in the kitchen, but because Ben adored his daughter, and despised cooking, he always ate with approval. Okay, ‘always’ was a vast overstatement. Some of her culinary creations were truly awful.

  Emmie breathed in the fresh autumn air coming through the window, listening to the river as it roared past. Over the last few months, she and Dad had settled into a nice routine. Drennich felt less like a place to die; this was simply where they lived now. Maybe even. . . home.

  Her comfortable veneer crashed down with a bang of the door as one of Urwen’s hired men bolted in. Emmie’s veggies spilled all over the floor

  “You got water? And, ah, clear the bed. Quick, girl! Ben’s had an accident.”

  Emmie did as she was told but was unprepared when Urwen and another man shouldered her semi-conscious father through the doorway and lowered him to the bed.

  “Da?” Emmie yelled. “Da!”

  “You’re panicking, Emmidawn.” Urwen blocked her way. She tried pushing him aside, but resting his hands on her thin shoulders was enough to hold her in place. “You panic, he panics.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, hiding the obvious terror they conveyed.

  “It’s not fair, I know. But no need to panic until we know if this is really bad or. . . well, normal bad. I sent Renn for the doctor, okay? Deep breaths.”

  Emmie nodded, then staggered backwards and wedged herself under the kitchen counter. When Renn and the doctor arrived, the brief glance Renn saw of Emmie was her crouched in the corner, head between her knees, hands frantically tugging at her blonde hair. Renn figured he’d better see if she was okay. Try to, well, he didn’t know what. But if it was him alone and frightened, he would want somebody to do that, even if he did barely know her.

  But Urwen grabbed him and pushed him back outside. “Get Mom. . . or Brie. Go!”

  Urwen turned to see Emmie striding purposefully towards her father, smoothing her hair down. Urwen gave her a questioning look: had she really gotten control of herself?

  “No panic, right?” she whispered with a calm but shaky smile. She sat across from the doctor at her dad’s side.

  “Hi Dad, just me. You’re home early.” She took his hands and tried to catch his eyes. “You’re scaring me a trifle. Supper’s going to be late, I’m afraid. All my, uh, well, the stew fixings spilled on the floor.” Emmie couldn’t keep the quavering out of her voice. “Da? Are you there?”

  “Hey, Goldie.” Ben’s eyes blinked half-open. He managed to give her hand a weak squeeze. “Late stew’d be great.”

  The doctor motioned Urwen towards the door. Outside, he scratched what hair he had left, grimacing. Urwen recognized the doctor’s habitual tell and lowered his gaze.

  “Hard to say what exactly happened or why. Sharpnie venom’s a bit of a mystery,” Doc began tentatively. “But a reaction like this? Damage’s been done. Usually we’re looking at a month, two tops. But he’s covered in bite scars. Symptoms present for over three years. No telling how that could accelerate the process.” His creased old face and brown baggy eyes were somber. “Best we wait for Brie or Jes before saying anything in front of the girl.”

  Ben sat propped up on the bed sipping broth, Emmie’s diced vegetables still strewn about the floor. It was looking like plain broth tonight. Nobody had much of an appetite anyway. Urwen stood facing the window. Brie and Emmie sat at the table across from the doctor. He fidgeted, stood up, and scratched his head. Oh God, no, Brie slid her arm around Emmie’s shoulders. Not the head scratch.

  “Does no one any good in the long run to put a cheery spin on things, so. . .”

  Urwen listened as the doctor repeated verbatim what he’d told him earlier. Urwen glanced behind him, afraid to see Emmie’s reaction. Ben set his soup down and looked to his daughter. She hugged herself; head down. Nobody spoke. Everyone was looking at her. She grew hot in the face at the unwanted attention.

  “I’ll leave you to talk.” The doctor tipped his cap. “You know where to find me. Night or day—you know that, right?”

  “Thanks, appreciate that.” Urwen showed him the door. Night had fallen without them noticing. “Ben, I should go. Unless, um. . .”

  “I’d be grateful if you both stayed. . . for a bit, anyway.”

  Urwen settled back in uncomfortably. Brie, on the other hand, would’ve flatly refused if she’d been asked to leave. She gently brushed Emmie’s hair out of her face, then resumed rubbing her trembling shoulders.

  “Say something, Goldie,” Ben said.

  “Not unexpected, I guess.” Emmie blinked back tears. “Least we get to say goodbye. Fear’s always been you’d leave without saying bye.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “But, Da, all those sharpnie bites? What were you thinking?” Emmie wiped her nose and cheeks. “A fisherman ought to know better. When. . . I don’t remember this.”

  “Thirteen years ago. . . best swim of my life.” Ben’s face broke into a glowing smile. “And a small price to pay for what I got in return.”

  “Thirteen years?” Emmie flicked the table with her fingers, brows furrowed. “That’d be about when you adopted me, but. . .”

  “I think it’s time I told you that story, Em.”

  It was time. . . Emmie put her hand over her mouth and sobbed. She closed her eyes again. Finally, she nodded and lay down next to her dad, burying her face in his shoulder.

  “I’m confused,” Urwen said, definitely sounding confused. He had a knack at expressing his emotions. “What story are we talking about?”

  “How I met my Goldie. I didn’t simply find a cute little girl in the woods asking for a dad, or pick her up, all ready to be adopted, at a monastery. It was quite a night.”

  “Emmie, you don’t know any of this?” Brie dropped her feet off the table, boots clunking on the floor. Emmie shrugged.

  “I’ve tried many times over the last couple years to tell her. She’s mature enough to take it.” He ran his fingers through her light, soft hair with pride. “She flat-out refused. Always baffled me—it’s not like my Emmie not to be curious.”

  “Wanted to tell me before he was gone. That’s what he said every time.” She sobbed. “That means. . .”

  “Shhh, Goldie. It’s going to be fine.”

  “Gonna be a good story, Da?” Emmie asked in a muffled, childlike voice, burying her head deeper into his shoulder.

  “Oh, the best kind. There’s a beautiful princess in distress and a gallant knight who rescues her. Well, just a worn-out old fisherman really. A daring escape. Even a valorous monk. What story’s complete without a valorous monk, eh? And a happy ending beyond my wildest imaginations, little Goldie.”

  “Brie and I should leave the two of you to—” Urwen began to stand.

  “No, please stay, both of you,” Emmie said, bolting upright. “I mean, Da, if that’s okay?”

  “It’s your story, hone
y. These’re good people. They’ll be your. . . well, it’s okay by me.”

  “I’d like you to stay, if you would.” Emmie lay back down into her dad again. “I think, maybe, knowing you know, I won’t feel. . . so alone. . . later.”

  “We’re happy to.” Brie smiled at her.

  “Story starts, I suppose, when Lyda died. I was a broken man. Nothing to live for. Until one night, alone on Lake Winnepaca, my life counted for something again. . .”

  Brie couldn’t sleep. She found herself, 2 am, hunched up under the old willow standing post over the rushing river. Somehow, she always ended up here when she was unsettled. Ben was near the edge of exhaustion when he finished telling the tale. Ben needed rest, Brie decreed; questions should wait until the next day. As difficult as that was, because, oh, the questions she had! She could only imagine what was going on in poor Emmie’s head.

  Brie wanted to postpone questions for her own sake, as well. Brie was grateful Urwen agreed to stay and keep an eye on Ben. Brie needed to be down by her old willow.

  For Emmie, too, this should wait. It was obvious from the day Brie met them, that in Emmie’s eyes, her dad could do no wrong. How often does one get the joy of finding their hero not only lives up to that title, but exceeds it by leagues? Oh, that they’d moved here sooner, Brie lamented. To have known Ben before his body was so far gone would’ve been a gift.

  The look of adoration on Emmie’s face was an image Brie never wanted to forget. Unfortunately, the story conjured up another image Brie could not forget, no matter how much she wished she could. Brie didn’t want to shatter that look on Emmie’s face by dredging up that other image just now.

  “Ah, Megg,” Brie muttered. “You told me this day would come. Never thought it would. I always hoped it wouldn’t.”

  Urwen made no sign of recognition at the mention of Kelebis, showed no sign of recall of what happened in Drennich around that same time. And Urwen wasn’t exactly a subtle man. He must have forgotten the name. Of course, he hadn’t been broadsided in the courthouse by blood-curdling sights and sounds. He hadn’t sat up all night with cold sweat on his forehead trying to gain enough peace to sleep, hoping it wouldn’t all come exploding back in a nightmare.

  Ben kept telling the story. Brie kept listening. But she couldn’t take her eyes off Emmie. So, Emmie was the girl she’d heard screaming as that vision had attacked her that night. Now Brie knew the man’s crimes, and the victim of those crimes—and that made it so much worse. This sweet, exuberant girl she’d come to love was the ‘her’ Kelebis screamed at Renn about; that he hated ‘her,’ a ‘her’ whose face he could not get out of his mind. Brie prayed he had gotten her face out of his mind. She did not want Emmie’s face in that man’s mind.

  Brie wanted no questions, no discussion tonight, because those people were not mist in the distant past. One of them was likely still rotting in a Longardin jail. Brie hoped he was dead. She’d seen that face far too many times in her nightmares. Her uncanny intuition told her he wasn’t.

  “You’d better be right about this, Megg,” Brie muttered.

  She needed to share her part of the story—hiding the truth never ended well—and trust for the best. Seeing the severity of Ben’s condition, that telling would need to come soon. Probably tomorrow. Where it would go from there, she couldn’t guess. She gradually rose from beneath the willow and headed home for a sleep that would indeed be invaded by that face once again.

  XVI - Drennich

  Renn sloughed across their meadow towards the dim outline of his house, dark inside and out. Odd. Whenever his parents were in bed before he got home, Mom always lit the torch by the door. Was always waiting in bed, wide-awake, until he was back. Probably better that she wasn’t tonight.

  Still. Odd.

  It had been an odd day, though. He’d angled for weeks to get this invitation, to hang out with the popular town kids. The day proved draining. Pretending he was socially able, along with a host of other traits foreign to his character, was more exhausting than he’d expected. Okay, he knew feigning a persona would be difficult. What he didn’t anticipate was how disingenuous—even wrong—he’d feel doing it.

  No matter. He could get over that.

  They’d invited him out to the river tomorrow. He should be elated: this was what he’d been striving for. To not be the reject. The butt of the joke. So why, when he dug deep down, did he loathe himself even more?

  Renn dragged his feet up the pebbly walkway. He felt dirty, that was why. Like he’d let somebody, maybe a whole host of somebodies, down. He needed to think this all through. He leaned his head into the door.

  No, he did not need to think this all through.

  He overthought everything. Sabotaged himself. What he needed was to get over it. Because he finally was one of them. If he could just get that pestering little voice in his head to shut up. The problem was that the voice sounded an awful lot like Brie. And while he couldn’t quite admit as much, it also sounded truer to himself. Renn crept into his unlit house. Not wanting to plow into some piece of furniture like the dumb klutz he was and wake anyone, he lit the torch inside the door. Renn turned and his breath caught.

  Mom sat at the old oaken table. Alone and in the dark. Her thick auburn hair, usually tied down unsuccessfully in the back, hung over her shoulders like a wild mane. She glared out at him from windows of thick eyelids and dark circles. Usually her thin oval face and emotive eyes radiated peace. Tonight she looked gaunt and not a little intimidating.

  “Mother, geez, why are you sitting in the dark?”

  “Have a good afternoon?” Jes asked coldly.

  “Uh, sure, I guess?” Afternoon? Strange thing to say at midnight.

  “Where were you, Rennwinn?”

  “Hanging out with friends.”

  “Oh. . . friends. How nice. Well, I did not have a good afternoon.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” Renn quickly tried to exit the room.

  “I was down at the docking beachhead around, oh, 4-5 o’clock.” Jes paused. “Just off the fourth pier.”

  Renn swallowed and turned slowly to face her. Her eyes—smoldering like the fierce northern Bandu eyes did in old stories—stopped him short. “Okay. . .”

  “When you hang out with your ‘friends,’ are you always all so disgusting?”

  Goosebumps shivered on Renn’s arms. He didn’t answer. Had no answer. Was he supposed to answer? Probably not—Mom was acting seriously unstable.

  “Old Weseca in the market, the apple bucket lady?” Jes shoved her mug across the table. “She a big threat to your ‘friends’?”

  “She’s just a crazy old lady.”

  “She most definitely is NOT!” Jes screamed and pounded the table so loudly, it was a wonder she didn’t break her hand. “She’s a sweet old woman, who’s lost all her family, and is trying to survive. Damn funny for a bunch of damn kids to kick her apples around?”

  Renn froze, confused and angry and. . . ashamed. He had never heard his mother swear—that was almost as distressing as her wild look. But. . . not tonight. He didn’t feel like doing this tonight.

  “Leave me alone.” I need to figure this out myself, Renn thought. I don’t want your help.

  When he tried to exit again, she leapt from her chair, her tangled hair flying loose. Renn was well over a head taller and much stronger, but at that moment those sizes felt more than reversed.

  “Or inventing rude stories about a lonely girl, new to town? Laughing behind her back. Your uncle adores that girl. What, you think Dreggar’s stupid?”

  “I’ve never said one bad word about Emmidawn. Not one word, Mother!” Renn shouted. Even if she was voicing his own thoughts, they were ones he’d chosen to ignore.

  “Don’t you take that tone with me,” Jes growled and cracked her knuckles. The knuckle cracking: warning sign if there ever was one.

  Renn could probably count on one hand the times his mom had been knuckle-cracking furious with him. With his brothers, yes, but not him.
And never like this. The Mom he knew was the peacemaker, always encouraging, seeing the best in everyone. Especially him. Renn was angry and miserable but now he was rattled even more.

  “Fat girl jokes. Now that’s funny. Wouldn’t you say so, Rennwinn?” She took a step towards him, candlelight flickering across her stern face. “That Ellika’s not actually fat, that’s something different altogether.”

  “Mother,” Renn chose his words poorly. “I’m making friends. Don’t ruin this for me. We were just having some fun, nobody’s getting hurt.”

  “These people are my friends and I don’t find this funny at all!” Jes growled. She advanced on him. “And if they’re my friends, what does that make me? What do you and your ‘friends’ say behind my back? Hmm? Or is that between you and your ‘friends,’ safely where you think no one can hear?”

  He’d crossed a line here—a dangerous one. Another thing he’d need to consider later. And later could not come quickly enough for Renn.

  “Where’s my old Rennwinn?” Jes took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “I liked the old Rennwinn.”

  “You’re my mother, you have to like me.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t even think that. I love you. No matter how much of an ass you make of yourself, I will always love you.” She pointed at him, a finger that felt like a dagger. “But like? I don’t like the Rennwinn I’ve been seeing lately.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Well, nobody liked the old Rennwinn.” Including myself, Renn almost added. Most especially himself.

  “Brie: town advocate. Devlin: militia captain. These people are nobodies?” Jes threw her arms in the air. “Or Kalderr. . . how about Kal? A lifelong best friend like Kal is hard to find. Dependable. Loyal. Although maybe not anymore, not after today.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this anymore.”

  The way to the bedroom blocked, Renn retreated towards the front door.

  “You will stay. And you will ask me about my afternoon.”

  Renn stopped. You didn’t ignore Mom when she issued direct orders. “Okay.”