Black Heart Stomp
What I did to time was ball it up, and
throw it out, when I was unhappy,
years ago; chucked it, sprained my hand
wadding it tight, waiting for an end,
the end of a long season, haul
too long to tolerate, questions
I couldn't answer, changes I couldn't make, tall
orders hovering. Couldn't take suggestions
(stubborn pride); couldn't find solutions
(ignorance, fear); but I could hold my breath
and squeeze away a year
-What I Did To Time, Kate Light
0.-0.-0
"We're working on your blocks tomorrow. And you still punch like you're kneading bread."
I didn't even pause as I rummaged through the cupboard looking for an end of bread to put my honey on. "Can't, Dad. Geary and I were gonna head out on the reef tomorrow." Aha! Success! I pushed aside a sack of brown flour and found it. And it was hardly even gnawed on! I balanced it on top of the jar of honey, closed the cupboard, and set it on the counter.
A silence from him. He was seated behind me, awkwardly it seemed, like he was far too big and apt to break things than our spindly furniture would tolerate. He'd always seemed that way to me; as fast and huge and sudden as a storm front, or fuck, I don't know, a Big Scary Thing, blowing in and out, leaving nothing behind. He had a cup of steaming tea in one hand, a sack of which that had been a gift from the neighbors.
He broke the silence brutally. "No. You're going to come up to the deck and you're going to be early. For once." He finished, darkly. Still mad, then. I hadn't shown up on time for the past week.
I flashed him an annoyed look, scraping honey on my bread. "Dad, there haven't been any pirates for months. It's winter. We don't have to worry about being in shape 'till spring." A line of honey had run down to my wrist, I paused and licked it off in the most dignified manner possible. "Plus Ferr's sister just had her baby, and I really wanted to see it and-"
His hand hit the table, making our whole creaky house shudder; a hard, meaty thud. It was a miracle he hadn't cracked the table in half, but he was far too good to overdo it like that. He only succeeded in making me flinch and freeze, drop the jar of honey, and watch it crack. It oozed onto the floorboards slowly.
"This is more important than being with your friends, or playing with babiesClaire." He said coldly. "It's time you learned that." He relaxed, as if he hadn't done anything, as if the atmosphere didn't have the feel of the air before a storm, and took a drink of his tea. He shot me a glance, and suddenly he wasn't just Haschel, the town head, the guy who laughed and took in a drink with the other men once a week. He was the military leader of the entire Island, and could break my arms without batting an eye.
Even if I was his kid.
"You'll be there, Claire." He said, and rose to stretch and head outside.
I bent and tried to mop up the spilled honey. I nicked myself with my clumsy hands on the sharp edges of the glass, and cursed when the blood dripped into what I was trying to salvage. I gave up and walked off, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.
0.-0.-0
That night, after several relatively boring hours of hiking, we camped alongside a river. Dinner was more jerky and some wild onions from a large patch we'd found on the way. (We did catch a rabbit, but neither of us could cook much and Mullet didn't have any pots or pans, so what we ended up with was blackened half-raw over-spiced rabbit on a stick. We each took a bite and promptly chucked it in the river.)
The clouds drifted away and the night was clear, which made it even colder. I didn't sleep much, but Mullet tossed me his coat out of some bizarre sense of helpfulness, so that helped with the cold. It really wasn't enough though, and I swore that night that when I got to Deningrad I was going to buy an entirely new outift consisting entirely of fur and wool. Providing I could find the money. Remember. Still financially fucked.
When morning sluggishly illuminated the eastern sky, my joints felt like they'd rusted over during the night and my legs seemed to have stopped receiving blood flow for several hours. I heaved myself to my feet to throw some more wood on the fire, and used a chunk of bark crusty with pitch to get it going. Waking up Mullet was as easy as poking a toe in his back until he twitched, blinked, then rose to his feet with a creak. He headed to the riverside to wash up. He must have brought a razor too, because when he came back he was clean-shaven and much more awake looking. He even whistled a bit as he bent down to return his razor and mirror to his bag.
Breakfast was what was left of the jerky, and of course, plenty of wild onions. I munched on some as I washed my face and neck in the horrifically cold water of the river. Tiny and sweet and fragrant- but not an actual breakfast.
Eggs, I thought wistfully. Eggs and fresh bread and mango and gallons of sweet tea.
I crunched my last onion in my teeth, shook my wet hair out, and headed back to camp.
It was little more than a hollow in a jumpled pile of enormous rocks left by some glacier eons ago. Glaciers weren't something you heard of every day back home, but every so often some explorer would jot down notes in a travelogue, and there you'd have it. It was sandy in the middle, protected from the wind, and kept the light of our fire visible only to us. The river roared by mere yards away, a constant presence that made your ears ring after a while. It was iron grey and deep, treacherous looking as the sneer on a one-eyed cat.
I hopped up onto one of the taller rocks, and slid down the other side on my butt. I landed without any sort of grace on the sand, and rolled to my feet. Mullet glanced up to check, and then went back to repacking his travel bag. It was hard to tell from his features, but he seemed better rested.
"Morning, Mullet." I said. He'd seemed all right with the name last night. A little taken-back for a second, but he shrugged and let it lie. Besides, he was now and forever Mullet to me, despite whatever his real name might have been. "Water's cold."
I must have been tired. I was on the same word-usage level as him.
"Yes," he replied. "Didn't drink it, did you?"
"Nah," I said. Who knew what had shit or died in the river upstream, and I didn't want to spent the next week finding out the hard way.
He tightened a strap on his bag, then dropped it onto the sand with a thump. He then leaned over to swipe his coat off of the ground from where I'd left it, and shook it out. He slid one arm in, then the other, and when the whole green heavy thing settled onto his shoulders he relaxed a little, as if the coat was a part of him and he was glad to have it back. Soa knew I didn't want it- it was warm, yes, but it was scratchy and hard and smelled like he'd been sleeping in it for sixth months. Which, for all I knew, he had been.
He stood up straight, all the kinks rolling out of him like water off a duck's back, and pulled his satchel back over his shoulder. "I'll get you to Deningrad, like I said," he said quickly. "Then you can figure out where you're going."
"All right," I replied, and stood up, twirling my arms around like I was gonna fight, instead of trudging through mostly empty forest for several hours. I then bent over and stretched my legs, then squawked and ran to catch up, because Mullet was leaving, heading upriver over the rocks. I didn't run far, as I didn't want to wrench an ankle, but when I yelled to wait, he paused for a moment, then continued as I caught up. The wind was stirring the dusty blonde strands of hair over his face, and he ran a hand through them to get them briefly out of the way.
"How far is it, you think?" I asked then.
He looked up and ahead, his eyes far away for a moment as he strove to recall. "We head upriver a ways…. Then there's a bridge, eventually. The road leads to the city." He thought it over a moment more. "We should get there by this afternoon."
"…All right."
"What?"
"Will we stop for lunch?"
"We don't have any food."
"Can we find someone who does and take theirs?"
0.-0.-0
The Mille River (or the Big Milly, as everyone called it) runs down from Kashua Glacier in a roundabout fashion through the Evergreen Forest before finally emptying into the sea at Furni Harbor. It's one fast body of water, and tricky as hell in some parts, but large stretches of it are actually quite calm and navigable. It pauses in a great blue lake in the northeastern quadrant of the forest, where a logging town, Neet, appeared one day and amassed quite a bit of wealth in a few short years.
Because of Neet's newfound economic importance, and because the recent King was desperately trying to drag Mille Seseau out of a depression that meant that nobody had enough money, ever, a great public works project went in place to build a fully functioning road between Deningrad and the logging city of Neet. This project did an excellent job of providing work, and also neatly disguised the fact that the Royal House was as corrupt as it was possible to get, and had been that way for a long time.
Maybe it was because the last good king had left only a plain-faced bookish daughter and a pack of greedy advisors in charge when he died. Perhaps it was because the new King was a foreigner from Tiberoa, who enjoyed fine dinners and pleasing diversions over tax disputes. But in any case, Mille Seseau was a boil waiting to be lanced, and believe me, I didn't want to be there when the pus came squirting out.
It would be years before the King's advisors would finally get up their courage and instigate the bloodiest civil war the Continent had ever seen. They'd kill the King and hole up in the Castle for months, trying to make Mille Seseau into the Free Republic of the North, only they would have trouble with stopping bickering long enough to choose a leader. All the while the plain, bookish daughter would be in hiding with her two tiny daughters, gathering supporters with her sheer intelligence, charm and incredible oratory skills. She would make an army that loved her completely, and would march straight into Deningrad to take back what was rightfully hers. The Free Republic never had a chance.
Theresa was plain, yes. But she'd become the best Queen in all three countries on the continent. She was wise, she was clever, and she was one of the most charming people many would ever meet. She'd take the city by storm- creating schools and orphanages, and even planning the world's first major library that would put Deningrad on the map as a place of learning and sophistication.
But, this was way before the idea of assassinating the King would occur to anyone, and Deningrad wasn't the starkly honorable place it would become. It would take a long time for Theresa to stamp out the city's less attractive venues- but when I first sauntered into it, it was a place where you could buy anything and anyone. It was a place where women stayed with their men or in a brothel, no exceptions. It was where you didn't cheat at dice if you didn't want your corpse leaking fluids onto the floor. It was where you kept your head down and didn't talk to anybody. Deningrad was a cold and vicious and uncompromising place, that's to be sure, but it was and still is the largest and most beautiful city I've ever seen.
That's not what I said when I walked in through the front gates. What I actually said was, "Holy shit this place is HUGE!"
And it was. It really, really was. Mullet nodded in agreement, and I turned to see what he was looking at. My jaw dropped.
The Crystal Palace… how the fuck do I describe it? You've seen it, everyone's seen it, it's only the most famous piece of architecture on the planet. You know how it looks. How it looms over the city at a crazy angle, like it's about it fall and shatter at any minute. How fantastic terraces and towers jut out of it every so often. How the entire surface gleams with this wild and clear blue light that you can't tear your eyes from. It's sharp and deadly and brutally beautiful, and I loved it from the first moment I saw it. Even Mullet was caught up; I caught him gazing up at it with this soft faraway look in his eye that seemed entirely out of place.
"It's so different," he murmured, and I barely heard him. "So different…"
I watched him, then, with the entire city buzzing around us, a thousand sights and smells and sounds in one small place. He looked like he'd forgotten all about me.
Well that would make it easier.
0.-0.-0
Don't hate me. Please. Yes, he'd saved my life twice, and I'd saved his, well, money and general well-being once. Yeah, he'd looked after me the entire way here for no real reason other than he had one hell of a sense of obligation.
But I had to do it, believe me.
I hate goodbyes. Never been good at them.
His head turned just as I slipped out of view. He was saying something that I couldn't catch, and then a look of confusion cross his face, but then I was well out of sight and walking as quickly and unobtrusively as I could down a side-alley. He didn't see me. I know he didn't.
I should have felt a lot worse about leaving him like that.
I didn't, though.
What I felt bad about was picking his pockets of every semi-valuable thing he owned before I vanished.
Shit happens.
0.-0.-0