"In the Blind"
Letterewe – 1651
With the fur coat on 'hiatus' for the time being Penance found himself relishing, ever so slightly, Uallas' failure to see his little design scheme unfold properly. It was one of the only real joys he'd been able to feel in some time, and it actually gave him so much pleasure that he kept the fox head that 'bit' Uallas on a shelf in his room, sort of as a macabre souvenir.
Pacing in his room the next day, teeth absently gnawing on his already worn fingernails, Penance ruminated on the fact that Uallas' current difficulties were giving the boy so much pleasure. It really wasn't very nice of him. In fact, it was kinda mean. It wasn't that the bastard didn't deserve it, of course, but Penance thought it rather rotten of him to take so much joy in another's suffering. That kind of thing really wasn't right.
But, God, was it satisfying!
"Schadenfreude," he mumbled to himself.
The boy stopped pacing and tilted his head. He'd had to dip into his rather limited stock of German in order to find the proper word for what he was feeling. It was a little weird that English didn't have its own word for that kind of thing. Then again it was a pretty young language; it'd probably get its own cool sounding word for it eventually.
The boy leaned against the thatch wall and nibbled on his lip. He looked over at the fox head for a time, and then a cruel smile formed on his lips:
"If you were, y'know, alive, and also not a fox, this would be the part where you'd ask me why I feel so rotten, being happy to see that bastard wallowing in such a failure." Penance slowly paced the room, absently stretching his arm, and he popped his neck. "It's 'cause I'm not really like that. I like to think I'm a pretty forgiving guy..."
Penance reached into his loose shirt and ran his fingers along the mahogany rosary beads dangling over his chest. The things felt numb to the touch, and he didn't think it was just because of his frayed nerves.
"I don't really like to hold grudges, you know. Guess that's against my nature..."
The boy's feet skidded to a halt. He stared forward, rusty eyes wide, and he flicked his tongue back and forth against his cheeks, meditatively listening to the wet, melodic sound it made in his mouth. When he finally stopped he snapped his mouth shut like a crocodile. He spun around, holding one finger in the air:
"But," he said, "nature doesn't matter in corners, right? Which means... uh..."
Penance stared at his bare feet, curling his toes on the floor.
"...that I should be a jerk?"
The boy wagged his head:
"What the hell did he mean by that stupid little speech, anyway?"
Again Penance looked at the severed fox head, leering at it with narrow eyes as he paced.
"He said that you 'followed the laws of nature to the letter', you galla beag, and what did it get you?" The boy stopped walking, arching an eyebrow. "Well, it got you killed, duh. That's just what happens to prey..."
He sighed, scratching his head.
"But, in 'dark corners'..."
Penance twisted the fingers on one hand in a sharp motion; he managed to crack a few of his knuckles with the movement alone.
"In dark corners I'm not prey. I'm not kind, but I'm not a jerk, either..."
Penance looked up at the fox head, and an unseemly grin spread over his face:
"In a corner, I don't have a nature! I don't have any limitations at all!"
Penance beamed, and he crossed his arms over his chest in triumph. Slowly, however, that cocky grin fell as he realized what he was doing.
"But I am talking to a stuffed fox head," he mumbled.
Penance tossed a rag over the creature's lifeless face. He left his room, scolding himself under his breath. He'd have to be pretty damned desperate to be talking to a thing like that. He could excuse that instance, though, as long as he didn't go and make a habit of it.
As if.
He went out into the kitchen and found Struana humming to herself on the floor. The little raven-haired girl was playing beside the cold hearth, stacking gnarled kindling sticks in a tower as tall as she could before they tumbled.
"H'lo, Penance!" She cheerily called.
Penance knelt down beside the girl. He watched her build her tower, and after a moment he took note of her long, luxurious black hair. He tousled one of her locks playfully, making the girl look back at him over her shoulder.
"Hi there... Struana..." he whispered.
X
X
X
When Uallas trundled back to the homestead from the forge that night he found Penance out in front of the house sitting against a post with Struana perched at his side. The boy was tousling the girl's hair, his arm moving with an unsettling, robotic rhythm, and his face was cold as a grave. He listened to the girl as she wove exciting tales of northern myths:
"No, no!" Struana wagged her head adamantly. "Gyre-Carlin isn't of that folk, Penance. Not from the far north. Those in the north were all ogres, and Gyre-Carlin is no ogre. None of her folk are. They are the fair folk I told you about, earlier: they're the fairies! Fairies of the deeper woods!"
"Oh, I see." The boy's voice was an empty, monotonous drone. He only very slowly looked up at Uallas when the man stood right before the pair, tapping an angry boot on the ground.
"You were to assist me with the castings this afternoon, were you not?"
Penance shrugged, again stroking Struana's dark hair with a stiff, unnatural motion.
"Was I?"
Uallas looked over at the little girl and motioned to the house:
"Struana: inside. Now."
The girl got to her feet with an uneasy wobble and bounded off into the house. Uallas looked down at the boy, teeth on edge.
"Explain yourself, Penance!"
Penance appeared to ignore the man. Instead he held his hand up to his nose and drew a short breath, as if smelling the faint trace of the child's hair on his fingertips.
"Know what Struana's best feature is, Uallas? I think it's her hair. She has very fine hair—"
"Cadha brushes it to no end. Now explain yourself!"
The boy lazily rose, popping his back as he did so. He looked the man up and down with similar indifference, and he flashed him a wan smile:
"I was just taking some time, Uallas, to enjoy the 'transient nature of things'. That's all..."
The man flared his lips, uncertain what to make of the boy's newfound moroseness. It wasn't the trademark sarcastic, bitter banter he was used to, that was for sure. This was something else in Penance's mood, he must've known it, but he didn't rightly know what it was.
"Get to your room. No dinner this evening, Penance. You've hardly earned it."
The boy shrugged, turning around. As he walked off he looked back at the irate man and gave him a cold, empty smile:
"See you tomorrow morning, Uallas. Whatever happens, I want you to know that it's been kinda fun, living here with you all..."
The boy entered the house, but as he predicted Uallas didn't follow. The man still stood outside, no doubt mulling over the coldness of Penance's words, and the meaning behind his demeanor. Maybe he was steeling himself for the worst. In truth he needn't have. The meaning behind Penance's behavior would soon be made clear to the man.
And it was far more horrific than anything he could possibly imagine.
X
X
X
The next morning was cold, and the rain outside fell in a musty, rank blanket. The wind howled like a tempest, screaming over the dark land like the piercing wail of a mournful banshee on the moors. Clouds obscured all the stars, and fog from the sea braved the driving rain, snaking across the ground like a cold and sinister hand coming to strangle the homestead itself.
When the appointed time arrived for Penance's daily slaughter there was no movement inside the home. Indeed, it wasn't until nearly a half-hour later than usual that a body moved through the place, skulking on near-silent tiptoes. When he came around the corner, peering into Penance's room, Uallas clutched a silver broadsword in one hand. The weapon glistened with every bolt of lightning that pierced the gloom.
He would be taking no precautions today.
Neither would Penance, but the boy had made his move far earlier than Uallas anticipated, and it was a fairly good one.
Flashes of lightning directed Uallas' eyes to the thatching over Penance's bedding; something was snaking down the wood, there. It looked like a thick and congealing syrup. Another flash of lightning exposed its color— crimson red— and yet another flash exposed a pattern: it was writing, splashed all across the wall in manic, barely-legible letters:
"YOUR FAULT."
Uallas' breaths grew harsh. The man gaped at the scribbling, eyes scrunched and confused. But then, ever so slowly, his eyes followed the dripping letters down to the bedding, and he saw Penance's burlap sheet resting over a body in the bed. His usually dun-colored sheet was nearly black— saturated to its fringes with blood— and of that huddled mass in the bed Uallas could detect only one striking feature:
It was a mop of radiant, shining black hair peeking out from under the burlap sheet. Beside it a rusty dagger lay strewn on the floor, caked in dried blood.
"S— Stru?" The man cried.
He raced to the bedside and knelt beside it, discarding his broadsword at once. First he hesitantly touched the girl's silky black hair, and then, slowly, he drew up that burlap sheet, wincing like a man drawing his leg into a scalding bath. Finally he threw the sheet off the girl's body in one fell motion.
That body underneath turned out to be a little bigger than an average 8-year-old.
By about 4 years, or so.
Penance said nothing as he lunged at the man. He struck Uallas right through the cheek with a small iron dagger, driving it as far into his mouth as possible. Uallas screamed in surprise and threw the boy off him, sending Penance careening into the wall. The man then struggled to get to his feet, choking on a mess of blood now cascading down his throat. Penance got the rusty knife by the bedside and aimed for the man's chest, managing only a glancing blow on Uallas's shoulder. He swiped wildly, catching the man clean on the forehead, but then Uallas gripped the boy in a hug and drove him into the ground as hard as he could. The pressure managed to break one of the boy's shins, and his left hand snapped like a twig.
But, with adrenaline burning up in the boy's veins, none of that really mattered.
Uallas gripped Penance's neck and started choking the boy, but still the man struggled to breathe as his throat continued filling with blood. The gash on his head sent rivulets of blood down his eyes, blinding him, and his grip with one hand was weak, as if Penance had severed some tendons with that stab to his shoulder. The boy had enough leeway with his free hand to reach behind him, retrieving his original knife, and with a tortured cry he thrust it up into the man's chest once, twice, and three times.
One would've done.
Uallas barked like a harp seal, reeling backward. He gripped his chest with one hand and his throat with the other, still spewing blood from his trembling lips. His hoarse barking suddenly drowned out in a wet, hacking cough, and his eyes turned to grey glass. With one last sputter of blood from his mouth the man slowly tilted forward, like a tree ripped from its roots.
He crashed face-down on the ground with the same level of dignity.
Penance slowly got to his feet, still holding his bloody knife in a trembling hand. He tossed it to one side with disinterest, and after a few more seconds of silent contemplation he set to work cracking his busted bones back into place.
It was several minutes before Uallas stirred. The man at first set to grousing and groaning with a pained and distant moan, as if he were simply waking up with a terrible hangover. Only when his nostrils flared, when he could first smell the stink of blood in the room, did he pause. And when he bolted up, eyes darting wildly about the room, he first looked at the bedside and surveyed that mop of black hair beside the sheet. He noticed the string binding at once end, holding all the strands of heather 'hair' in place, and when he looked down at his own hand he could see the shining black gunk that rubbed off on him. That gunk was more suitable for polishing black marbles.
But, in a pinch, it could do to make a very convincing replica of a child's soft, luxurious hair.
Uallas then noticed Penance sitting beside the doorway, one leg propped up against the wall. The boy wasn't looking at Uallas, but rather staring quite calmly at the thatching across from him. Not at the thatching itself, mind you; his eyes were gazing at least a thousand yards beyond all that.
The older man leapt to his feet and snarled like a bear. He stormed over to Penance and grabbed the boy off the ground, effortlessly holding him a foot off the ground, and he slammed the boy against the thatch wall.
"Y— you. You! You did all this?"
Penance nodded absently.
"You would make me think that my— that Struana—"
"Yeah," Penance nodded.
"—that she was dead? You would shock me with that grief!"
Uallas punctuated his words by pounding the boy's head against the wall. Penance didn't seem to mind.
"You'd be so vicious? So cruel!" He barked. "And just to save your own skin, child? Just to save yourself?"
Penance finally looked the man in the eyes, and he gave the man an empty sneer:
"Yeah," he repeated. "I would. And I'd do it again. A thousand times again, if that's what it'd take to get you off my back!"
The man leaned close to the boy's face, still bearing that snarl. Then, very slowly, that snarl fell apart.
It was replaced with a gentle smile.
"A thousand times, Penance?"
"Ten thousand, asshole!"
Uallas gently lowered the boy to his feet. Then man got to one knee, still smiling, and when he spoke he was far calmer:
"You did the most vile, despicable thing, Penance, in order to save yourself from my attacks—"
"I did what I had to—"
Suddenly Uallas reached up and set his hand on top of the boy's head. He gently ruffled the boy's hair. It was so unexpected, and so long since Penance felt that reassuring touch, that it sent a warm tingle rocketing through the boy's spine, dancing down his fingers and curling through his toes.
"That you did. By a long shot. Congratulations, Penance."
The boy looked up at him, and his troubled red eyes blinked in confusion.
"You have the lesson now, I think," the man explained. "You see, boy, even during those times that you may be hunted—"
"I'm still not the prey," Penance whispered, nodding. "I'm just another predator. Cornered, maybe, but that's all."
"And you must make your pursuers regret ever placing you in that corner, lad." The man nodded. He looked all around the ruined room, holding his nose at the coppery stink of blood in the air. "Well, suppose I'll be getting to work cleaning your room this time, hmm? Least I can do, being the loser. Well, it's the last time we'll need to go through any of this, I should hope. Better get a move on before Cadha and Stru come in for breakfast. Let me just get some water from the kitchen for these linens, alright? Touch not a thing, lad: you've earned the respite!"
Uallas departed, leaving Penance alone in the room. The boy wandered over to a slit in the thatching; the sun was coming out at long last, and it shone brightly through parting rainclouds. Penance watched this sunrise through the tight bars of his thatched wall, and he blinked as the bright light burned against his seawater eyes. He looked down at his feet and noticed the bundle of painted heathers— Struana's 'hair'— lying in a heap. He kicked them back beneath the burlap sheets, shivering involuntarily, and then he tried to enjoy the sunrise.
He didn't know if he could, though.
So instead Penance focused on that affectionate little pat to his head. The boy closed his eyes and relived that tingle in his spine and his limbs, the warm smile on Uallas' face, and the feel of his hair ruffling about beneath that old, calloused hand. Uallas wasn't just happy with Penance, then: there was something else in his face, too.
Actually, it looked a little like pride.
Kinda. Maybe.
Penance drew a long and stuttering breath, cautiously filling his lungs with air. He had his lesson, now: in the blind there was no nature, and if he wanted to survive in a pinch then he couldn't be nice or mean, brave or cowardly, friendly or monstrous.
Instead there was only this: in times of trouble, he need only to embrace that certain 'primordial savagery' within him; to accept that he was of a certain constitution, and that he would do whatever is necessary to survive when his back was to the wall.
Penance blinked as he thought about those words; now he remembered them well: Uallas told him those words on Penance's very first night at the homestead. The old man told him that a person who ascribed to that creed was a person who might lay claim to a special title for himself:
He could be called 'highlander'.
Again Penance stared at his feet. He didn't know if that was what he wanted for himself. He didn't know if that's the way he wanted to live the rest of his immortal life. If he did, of course, then it would be a very simple thing; he simply needed to be whatever he needed to be, at any given moment in time.
"Tautological, isn't it?" Penance muttered, his quivering voice dripping with sarcasm. He remembered Uallas' description of some other Immortal's words. He remembered the rest of that curmudgeon's speeches.
And there were lots of tautologies in there.
Penance didn't know if he should be happy that he was starting to think like Uallas, or if he should be terrified out of his skull. He also didn't know how to feel about what he had just done, and the lengths he'd gone to in order to do it.
So instead he focused on how Uallas felt toward Penance after he did what he did. Again he felt that small, warm tingle in his spine and his limbs.
And that, unlike all the rest, wasn't so unpleasant.
