Prologue: Light Wanes
There is a sort of presupposition among the simple or innocent that thieves and murderers were always thieves and murderers, and that they steal and kill just for amusement. These, in their ignorance, forget that all were once young and, if only for the briefest time, unaware of the world's cruelties. But when such blissful naiveté fades and the cold hard facts of life sink in…is it then that the evil awakes within? Or do some cling to hope, fighting, fighting…but I am getting ahead of myself.
You, reader, listen to my tale. Listen and decide for yourself if I am to blame for who I am, or what I have done.
My tale begins when I was young, very young, too young to trouble myself with anything. I had food for my belly and clothes for my back, and people enough to pet me and tell me what a pretty child I was. I chased butterflies in summer and built grand snow-forts in winter, and through exploration received many bruises and black eyes as all adventurous boys do. In my small world there was nothing lacking.
But all sweet times come to a close, and all happiness must be stripped away. Sometimes it is all taken at once, other times it is taken away slowly, bit by bit, which is almost worse, like slowly and relentlessly picking at an old wound. Such it was with me.
Such stripping away began when I'd hear the men and women standing in the town square, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues, and talking in hushed whispers about a drought. I did not quite understand what it all meant, but had sense to know it meant something very serious. But to me? To my special little world? Danger could not come near it, I thought. The world could be falling into ruins and yet I was convinced I and my family would remain untouched.
But I discovered that it was not so.
Drought, I learned, meant no or little food on the table, and such queer achings in my belly that I had never felt before. In my childishness I thought only of myself and my misery, not noticing my mother or my father or my sisters wasting away before my very eyes. They showed the same affection and deference to me as always, sometimes even giving me their food when I cried. My mother did this the most and I did not find it strange that she did so.
It was my father who went first. I cannot say I fully believed it (or understood it); I had thought my family invincible, and my father was the very foundation on which my family was built. It was then that I began to know fear. Not the practical fears of one who is grown -- how food will be found or money will be acquired -- but a vague, mysterious fear. I was afraid but knew not of what. There was the threat of death, of course, but that was not foremost in my mind. No, it was the gnawing, twisting gear of the unknown, of the future.
If I was afraid of the future, I was rightly so. Though the drought ended and for most life went back to its usual way, my own world was not so easily mended. At the risk of sentimentality -- what use is sentiment? it only dulls the senses -- I will say that the hole left behind by my father's death remained a gaping wound in our day to day living. But that could be borne. It would be borne because it must.
I lose my patience with my babblings. Let me put the rest as simply as possible.
With no man remaining to be a breadwinner and provider, my mother assumed the role. Thus she was both mother and father to me; one moment kissing a bruise and the next working beside me in the field. But such would be taxing to anyone. If I were just a very little younger I would have failed to see the change that had come over her: the darkness under her eyes or the hollowness of her cheeks.
It was she who was taken next. All the townsfolk said she died of a broken heart; I know better. I have suffered what people call a broken heart. People do not die from such things. The cause of her death was purely physical. Exhaustion. Overwork.
Now that there was the issue of what was to be done with us -- my sisters and I -- there was once again a great deal of shakings of the head and cluckings of the tongue. But this time I knew what it meant. Though the people all claimed a great deal of pity, very little was done to evidence this. Words can not fill the belly and good intentions can not warm, thus winter found us in a sorry state.
Would you believe me, reader, if I were to tell you that I was the only one of my family alive to see spring? Upon my honor--or rather, my sword-- I swear it is so, though I know not why. I had not the goodness of heart to merit the favor of the gods, nor the cunning to grant me and edge in surviving.
But I would learn the latter soon enough.