The Cold Effects of Southern Ground
Summary: A look at Zero's life before the Sorceress.
Written: 14-20 March 2008
Length: About 20,000 words; 8 chapters
-x-
There is a subtle essence that pervades all reality.
It is the reality of all that is, and the foundation of all that is.
That essence is all.
That essence is the real.
And thou, thou art that.
– Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything
-x-
The lay of the land was a familiar plain. Tall grasses whispered in the southern wind. The tops were burning red as gloaming neared. An aerial soared above, ever and on, to the north, the city that he would one day inhabit. Every full breath was dusty and dry: hardening, cheapening life That Side of the Rip. Barely alleviated by the humidity of the wide, wild river from which so many eked a livelihood. Beneath the loving, rippling arms of a caddie oak, a boy of fifteen wove vagaries and druthers. The grasses swallowed him. He knew peace.
He swatted at his face. A tickling. An insect? No, a giggle. A scent. A change in the wind. And a shadow switched the light of the sinking suns.
He flicked open his eyes. More than a giggle. A sister. A little brother. Family. Golden-haired and wide-eyed.
Thin books were brought together into a neat stack. Non-fiction of religious sorts; fiction of heroic fables. He held them close and tromped through the meadow. The splash of the river guided them home.
'It took us forever to find you,' the girl said. 'You do know how to hide when someone's looking for you.'
The boy looked at his brother with adoration extending. 'How do you do that, Zero?'
'I don't know,' Zero replied. 'Guess I do it without meaning to.'
-x-
Father always smelled of fish. Most of the men in the southern village carried this trait, carried it with pride. River trout and wet earth and bait. The innate aroma tried the arrogance of their old man, but brought comfort to his children. And Mam, made of bread and honey and coals, she smelled of home, yarn, soap. The ingredients of love and care.
'Zero! How do you get such a mess?' Mam tossed him a damp cloth from the sink. 'Wipe off before you sit at the table, huh?'
'He's fifteen!' Argued Dad, already gripped by potatoes and greens. 'That's what boys of fifteen do, Zasha! They get dirty! Where'd you find him, Nittie?'
'Oh, so you think Nitten found him! She didn't!' cried the little one, ripping the damp cloth from Zero. 'Why's she get the credit?'
'Because you can't find your marbles half the time, that's why!' Zero roughly, brotherly tangled the cloth against the shapeless face. 'That's what they say about you, you know! Vier Dertien, the kid with no brains!'
'Zero!' Mam scowled. She pushed him, with unwonted force, into a simple table chair.
Zero thought a brighter reprimand was on its way. But he caught Dad winking at him. Nitten was the gentle soul. Vier had all the energy. What talent did Zero have? A sharp wit. Intelligence to an impenetrable core. A man with that sort of character, his dad told him, got out of southern river towns like Liddell—out for good.
They were all seated. Quiet fell. Nitten's homemade wind chimes tinkled and crackled from the clematis post in the garden. They prayed the gods to keep food on the table. Zero prayed the gods did a lot more than just that.
-x-
At the start of spring, at the last frost, Zero preferred to spend nights in the barn. Cooler, breezier, and away from the cramped house for a while. Cosy in winter of dreary rain, but unnecessarily cosy in the arid summer. He slept in the stall of hay and grains. Their horse and donkey often watched from over the wall. Down upon him with caring, curious eyes.
He woke to find a slant of moon beaming bright against the hay, catching the straightness of his fingers before his face. He'd heard a slam… From far off, in a dream… And then the slam became stomps of feet across the garden path.
Nitten, brandishing a lantern. The light caught the stain of fresh tears.
Zero's insides turned black.
-x-
He loitered at the foot of his parents' bed. A candle was lit. The lantern still an object in Nitten's trembling hand. Vier sobbed. Little hands wrapped at his waist, and soft curls were hot beneath Zero's palm.
'Zero, make them better.'
'Vier, I need to think. Just give me a second. Nittie?'
'Come on, Vier.' She took him by the hand and into the kitchen. A mumble about water, a placation, a hold at his shoulder. A lie that it would be all right.
Zero scanned his parents. They were sick. How had it come on so fast? Rumours and fears had been passed through the realms, whispers of a plague… But that was in land beyond the Gorge. That was not the south.
'Mam, can you hear me?'
'Zero,' she responded weakly. 'You must get away.'
'I'm not going to get sick. You ever remember a time I've been sick?' He sounded it off, banging like a shotgun in the deadening pall of the room. 'Oh, don't worry, Mam, I'll take Nitten and Vier and go—before they get sick.'
'Son,' his father struggled to lift his head, and Zero couldn't watch the pale face in the warm light, 'get to your uncle's. Find—find finch.'
'Finch?' Zero repeated it. 'What's finch? A person, a place? Dad, what is it?'
But they were both too exhausted. Too gone.
He strode to his siblings. 'We need to go. Now.'
'I don't want to!'
'Vier, hush,' Nitten told him. She was the eldest, though Zero… Zero was the wisest—if the cruellest. He was coarse, and no flaccid whim existed in negative land.
-x-
They packed what they could carry. Zero took nothing of his own, only two tools, food, the last spare cloak, the last holed blanket. Before leaving, he brought in water, laid it next to the bed, kissed the hot foreheads of his parents. Two sticks in an 'X' were formed on the door. A sign of the hex. He took Vier's hand, cool, small, childish yet, and led them through the garden. Nitten took the donkey and the horse by the reins.
'Don't look back, Nittie,' Zero reminded her. 'It's bad luck.'
'Bad luck,' she didn't look back, 'is better than no luck at all.'
He scrunched his eyes together. Leaving, leaving—they were leaving.
He could look back. What was bad luck now? But there was hope, and it kept him facing forward. He prayed the gods to keep them safe. And he wasn't sure of the 'them'. Those left behind, or those going into the fresh greenish light of pre-dawn?
Vier was mumbling to himself. Zero heard the words. He didn't know how many more miles prayer would be with him. No longer was it a strand of unaware repetition. It was effort. It was a will he was forgetting to obey.
When they passed the river, the road to town wound on.
Zero angled his head over his shoulder. The meadow and the caddie tree. A place he couldn't forget. A name crumbled from the tip of his tongue.
'Finch.'
A name he wouldn't allow himself to forget.
-x-
No light burned at a solid farmhouse on the outskirts of Liddell. 'It's too early,' Nitten whispered. 'No one will be up yet. Hurry, Zero, help!' He did what he could. He unlocked the paddock. A horse snorted awake and murmured low and softly. Nitten led in their horse, their donkey. Once the harnesses were off, they were set free. Yet they remained, maudlin creatures, sympathetic of spirit, and did not wish to be a remnant of the past.
'We'll come back for you,' Nitten assured them. 'As soon as we know we can. But they'll take care of you. You know we can't take care of you.'
'Nittie, let's go!'
She lingered, a heart hurting. Zero turned his head to the sky. In the west, clouds gathered, bubbles of them contrasted by starlight and freezing fingers of the near moon. 'It's going to rain later. Fantastic. Nittie, come on! They'll be fine.'
She rushed from the paddock. Zero secured the gate. And still the horse and donkey watched them as into the night their family ran.
-x-
As Zero had predicted, it rained. For a while, thunder clashed and lightning veined. Nitten kept them going, even after Zero wished to stop. Vier was small, and half-feared a drowning before they reached their uncle's. She urged them. She knew the road better. Older, having travelled it more, she knew the twist of it, a homestead surrounded by a low picket fence, a village slumbering.
When the rain transformed in a heavy mist, they passed between boarded up stores, broken windows, and it was too late to go round.
Nitten angled, light on her feet, poised for flight. 'Zero, what is this dreadful place?'
'I think it's… No, it isn't. It isn't anything now. Look.' He indicated a home with a white-washed oval and line stark on a faded grey door. 'We're near the Rip now. The farther north we go, the more we're going to see that.'
Vier gaped, trembling in and out. 'What is it?'
Zero angled his brother's head away. Impossible to shield a boy of nine annuals from the truths of the world, though the input could be limited. Vier had had nightmares all his young life. Zero didn't wish to add to the measureless collection.
'A sign of the plague.'
Vier understood this well enough. Allusions to the plague were recalled. He shuddered and tried not to imagine the suffering of his parents.
'Death made this place a ghost town,' Vier said.
Zero shot Nitten a look. Vier was of too few annuals… Zero's agony was silent. He gripped tightly to Vier's hand.
He was too young… Too young. Not just yet.
-x-
Zero had a way with fire. They say that magic used to exist in the O.Z. In some people it still clung on, in little ways, and refused to leave. Nitten believed this of Zero. He had a way of turning a damp twig, a match, a leaf, into a fire to keep off the damp chill.
He sat near the flames, arms wrapped tightly at his knees, head tilted, eyes shut. Vier was huddled nearby, a mound of blankets. Zero had spared his.
'Looks like spring forgot to come tonight,' Nitten said quietly.
Zero didn't respond. He was troubled, thoughtful, and Nitten had seen such an expression only on the faces of old porch-dwellers of Liddell.
'What do you think it means?' she continued. 'The finch thing, I mean. Think it's someone Uncle knows?'
'I've no idea.' He roused to throw another stick on the fire. Sparks reached enviously for their brothers and sisters in the sky. 'Get some sleep, Nittie.'
-x-
'Hello,' a friendly, round face looked down at a trio of youngsters, 'you lot looking to cross into the north, are you?' He figured it would be the oldest one, a lass of seventeen annuals, who'd answered. But it was the boy, about the age of his own boy back home, who gave careful response.
'We're heading to our uncle's home in the shire of Enscommon. He lives in the village of Gatehill-on-Cleg.'
'You don't say!' The guard snorted. 'You don't have to tell me his name or what he does, lad. Still allowed to come and go as you please round the realms.'
'Sorry,' Zero mumbled, 'it's just that—you hear things.'
'That you do, lad. One does be hearing things. You say this uncle of yours lives in Gatehill, that right?' He watched the lad nod. 'Right, well, I'm betting you're looking for Captain Dertien.'
Zero's distrusting gaze narrowed poignantly. 'How'd you know?'
'He's my superior, so it happens. You're his relations. Said you might be coming through.'
Nitten's fists clenched. Vier started to question how uncle might've known they were on their way. He quieted when Zero pinched his shoulder.
'Better get a move on, haven't you?' The guard spun his hand in circles, stepping aside to allow them access to the pedestrian bridge. 'Send your uncle regards from the bridge patrol, if you'd be that kind.'
All manners of realm denizens wandered across the bridge that sunny, cool afternoon. Two teenagers and one small boy were hardly noticed. Zero was pleased with the anonymity.
Only when they reached the north shore of the gorge did Nitten, fit to burst, manage to verbalize the ubiquitous query.
'How, by the names of all the sacred gods, does Uncle know we're coming?'
Too forlorn, too eager to usher in hope and welcome it where it didn't belong, Zero formed a weak reply. 'Perhaps Mam and Dad are better—and sent word to Uncle that we are on our way.'
Remembrances of the ghost town, destroyed by sickness, wended and parked in Zero's imagination. A memento of cold swept up and down his spine.
Imagination, he decided, destroyed truth and mangled hope.