Chapter 1
He simply arrived on her doorstep one day, like a creature lost. Shivering despite the warm morning sun, filthy, both skin and clothing torn. The Widow Engel found him there that day, curled up on the steps, still as death. She emerged onto her stoop, knelt down, and touched his shoulder. "Are you alright?" she asked in her soft voice. "Can I help you?"
At her touch, he lifted his head and regarded her with large violet eyes that somehow were lifeless, as though whatever spark that had once illuminated them had long since departed. The red of his facial marking, blade-like with a dot beside, was almost completely obscured by sweat, dirt, and what appeared to be ash. She realized with a start that he was not much younger than she. Fourteen, perhaps?
He said nothing; perhaps he was too weak to do so. She gently took his arm and looped it over her strong shoulders, helping him to his feet. Carefully, carefully, she led him inside.
-.-.-.-
The cottage in which the Widow Engel lived was small and spare, but clean, homey, and bright with sunshine. The stranger gazed dully around the room in which they were standing, which made up the first floor in its entirety, but it was unclear if he was actually taking in anything he saw. "Please sit," the widow said, gesturing to a weathered-looking but sturdy chair at a wooden table. "You must be thirsty; you look like you have traveled far, and it has been very hot these past few days." Obligingly, he sat, and looked down at what remained of the decorative carvings the table had once had. He did not once look up until the widow had returned from the well outside and was touching his arm lightly to get his attention. He accepted the mug of cool water she offered, gulping it down greedily until not a drop was left. "Would you like more?" the widow asked him. He only looked at her, parched lips slightly parted, and then down at the table once more. She left and again returned with a mug of water, which he again drank urgently.
The widow sat down now at the chair opposite his, and regarded him. "I would like to help you," she said. "I do not know what you have been through, but..." He was still looking down at the table's carved remnants. "Will you tell me your name? Or what I can do to help?"
Again, the visitor had no words for her. The widow supposed that he had been traumatized by something so badly that it had shocked him into this lifeless state. Her eyes traveled over his filthy, knotted charcoal hair, his slight frame, his torn clothes. It was only when he set the mug down at last that she saw the gaping, infected wound on the palm of his right hand. She gasped, standing abruptly. "How long has that wound been untreated?" she cried, hurrying again to his side of the table and cradling his hand in her own. "We must clean this, lest the infection spread. Please, wait here." The stranger made no sound or gesture of assent, but nevertheless remained as he was. She hurried upstairs and to her dresser, which stood in a corner beneath the cottage's gabled roof. She took a tiny bottle from atop it and rushed back downstairs. To her relief, the stranger had not moved.
The wash basin was out in the side yard, and it was to here she led the stranger. He knelt beside it, thinking to drink from it, but she touched his shoulder and shook her head, so he sat back and waited. She dipped a clean cloth into the water and rubbed a chunk of lye soap hard against it until it foamed, then, tentatively, reached out towards his hand. He made no move to jerk away, and so she applied the cloth to the cut, wincing in anticipation of his howl of pain. But he did not move nor react, and simply looked expressionlessly off across the side yard to the orchards. Watching him nervously out of the corner of her eye, she cleansed the wound thoroughly. Strands of blood swirled momentarily in the basin before vanishing. "That doesn't hurt, then?" she asked, no longer surprised when she did not receive an answer. The water glowed faintly red.
She rinsed the cut and pat his hand dry with a second cloth. "There now," she said, almost to hear herself talk, to try and fill the silence. "I am going to apply a special oil I have. It's going to sting - probably a lot. But it'll disinfect your cut. I don't want any infection to spread." She looked at those beautiful violet eyes, so far away. "Are you ready?"
Again, he did not respond, and so she took his hand and placed it, palm-up, on her lap. She removed the stopper on the bottle and, carefully, tilted a few precious drops into the center of the wound. His hand flexed immediately, nearly into a fist, but he otherwise did not move. When his fingers relaxed again, she stood, gently helping him to his feet. "You are brave," she said. "That can be very painful. Come now, let us get you inside. You must eat, and rest, to get your strength back."
The stranger allowed himself to be guided back to the front door of the cottage. The Widow Engel followed him in, sensing, just as she crossed the threshold, a presence behind her, outside. She turned, but saw no one. This was as things usually were; visitors to her humble home were quite rare, indeed. In fact, this strange boy was the first person to call on her, as it were, in a very long time. Despite his traumatized state, she found herself glad of his company as she stepped in and closed the door.
-.-.-.-
Dinner was very quiet, save for the widow's occasional attempts at conversation, and the sounds the stranger made as he devoured his food. Clearly, he had not eaten in some time. She did not have much in this world - her orchards were all that stood between her and destitution - and yet, she was glad to provide for this lost soul. He had not said a word to her thus far, perhaps had not yet even registered her presence, and held a terrible darkness inside of him past which she could not see, but he did not gossip, did not judge nor spurn her. The stranger, though he could not possibly have known it, was a comfort to a young woman much in need of faith in others.
-.-.-.-
She lay in her small bed upstairs that night, having arranged a crude bed on the first floor for her visitor out of a few cushions and blankets. She stared up at the steeply gabled roof, glad for the secure thatching Pieter had made. There was a great, frightening world out there, filled with cruel, judgmental people, but in here, in her little cottage, or out in her beautiful orchards, she was secure. The harsh words of others could not penetrate these walls.
Downstairs, the faint breaths of her unexpected companion wafted up to her. Again, she found herself pondering what could have happened to a person so young - a child, really - that he was alone and out of his senses. Others would label him mad, she knew, not that she would have been able to turn to the other members of her small village for help, anyway. They were suspicious, and called her terrible things: sorceress, murderer. None true, but they hurt. The widow kept to herself, rarely venturing away from her many beautiful acres by the sea, and sold her land's valuable output, gemberries, through a middleman so that she would not need to go to market herself. It was a desperately lonely life, with Pieter disappearing over a year ago, now. Some said he had deserted the Imperial Army; others, that he had run off with a Republican woman. The most vile of all whispered that she had killed him, herself. The widow did not know what to think, and often felt haunted with the uncertainty. She and Pieter had been wed only a few months when he had disappeared, and so she did not feel she had ever gotten the opportunity to truly get to know him.
What she did know of Pieter, that she had learned through their whirlwind courtship and short marriage, was that he was a kind, if unremarkable fellow. He had provided for her well, never lording over her the fact that she had been lucky to marry into so much higher a social station than she had come from, never making her feel that the bounteous orchards were anything but belonging to them both. True, he frightened and, a few times, even hit her when he had had too much drink, but this did not happen often, and now that he was gone, widely assumed to be dead, the widow did not feel it was right to dwell on his faults. The Holy Book taught forgiveness, after all.
The Widow Engel rolled onto her side as a solitary tear meandered down her face. No, Pieter had not been perfect, but who was without sin, anyway? She missed his sun-weathered face, his easy smile, the warmth of another body in bed beside her. The sound of her visitor's breathing reached her again, and she took a shaky breath, exhaling a small prayer of thanks for a day spent a little bit less alone.