"In Sorrow's Lonely Hour"

Achnacarry, Scotland – 1837

He always knew that a grave would be cold.

Well, he figured, anyway.

Penance never had a 'proper burial' for any of his various personas over the years. When his immortal abilities were found out by a populace (and they were, ever so often, no matter the caution) he was often put to various nasty tortures and 'rituals' meant to cleanse his soul for heaven, or at the very least wash his 'curse' away from the locals. Hanging, burning, drowning, eviscerating; he'd seen it all.

Felt it, too.

The only thing he hadn't seen was beheading. For some reason no one seemed to want to use that against witches, or warlocks, or goblins, or whatever the hell they thought someone like Penance might be. There was an irony: an actual 'religious rite' that was guaranteed results—complete with celebratory lightning, to boot—and the only way to actually get him to heaven in the first place, but nobody ever thought to try it.

Well, to be fair it wouldn't really matter.

Penance knew for certain that his soul was never getting to heaven anyway, beheaded or not.

But then he also never thought he'd feel the coldness of a grave, didn't he?

And it was cold, at that. He twisted to the side as much as his weak body could manage. Every twitch of his muscles felt like ice picks digging into his nerves. And the feeling of everything above pressing down on him: so oppressive, so smothering, so...

...silky?

Penance's eyes flitted open; the boy lay on his side, his body covered by a soft purple duvet, and beneath that finely-threaded gossamer sheets. He twisted his head, feeling his cheek brush against a luxurious goose down pillow. Pins and needles wracked his muscles, and where he didn't feel that awful tingling he felt another sensation, and it burned deep inside his bones:

Cold.

He got the wherewithal to sit up and instantly bundled up the duvet around his body, shivering from jaw to toes. After a moment that shivering stopped and the cold slowly melted away. Eventually he got the courage to throw the linens off his body and take stock of his situation.

Penance was in a dark, rectangular bedroom, sitting on a very fine oak bed, clad only in a thick pair of crisp white drawers reaching nearly to his knees. As Penance twisted his legs about, slowly regaining motion, he noticed those drawers were starched beyond belief; their edges might've cut an overdone steak.

The boy arched his brow, wincing at the analogy. He gingerly adjusted the garment and smoothed out any 'offending' folds.

The first thought that came to his mind is that he'd never, as he recalled, owned a set of underwear such as this. That led him, quite naturally, to his second thought: someone had undressed him completely at some point, and then re-clothed him. That was mildly alarming in and of itself, but not nearly as alarming as the boy's third thought:

It was something to do with graves.

His eyes widened as he caught his breath: that terrible roar of the cave-in came rushing back into his head. He was supposed to be buried under a bed of rocks right now, about as thick as a pancake, so what was he doing in such dainty surroundings, clad in such finery?

Those were questions he didn't particularly want an answer to. Penance managed to whip his legs to one side, dangling them off the bed. Before him a window loomed, carved out of the beautiful gray stone of the bedroom wall, and it cast wan moonlight through its thick stained-glass pane. The pane was decorated with a frosted rose at its center, immaculately cut. Beyond the glass and one story beneath him a tree line stood against the night sky, jet black like a silhouette; the land plunged into wilderness not a dozen steps from the building's wall.

'Wilderness' was a good thing to have, right now.

He tried getting to his feet, but then he faltered. As he knelt beside the bed, one hand on the windowpane and one on a wooden nightstand, Penance's eyes were drawn to the nightstand surface. His little liquid-steel knife— previously secured in his old trousers— rested on the furniture, its watery blade burning under the moonlight like a cold star. He took it up immediately, tucking it into the tightly-drawn waistband of his drawers. Galabeg, too, rested on the tabletop, leering up at the boy with its dead black marble eyes.

"Of course you'd come out of all that unscathed, wouldn't you?" The boy scoffed.

Another small object rested on the nightstand, sparkling in the ghostly pale of the moon. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand: it was a ring, the outer band hewn of very fine soft gold, the sigil at its center pure ivory. A pattern rested there in raised bumps: what looked like five arrows held fast together, all their heads radiating out from the bundle.

Penance cocked his head to the other side like a curious parakeet, admiring the beautiful ring. The simplicity of its design, the sleek polish of the ivory and the brilliant fire of the soft gold captivated him in a way that fine jewelry usually didn't.

"Pretty thing, at least, is it not?"

The boy jumped up like a cat with its tail caught in the window. He spun about, body crouched against the corner of the room, teeth bared like fangs. The female voice came from the room's opposite corner. In the dark shadows Penance could barely discern the legs of a rocking chair, as well as the hem of a fine black dress. The chair slowly set to rocking, creaking out a slow and lonely rhythm in the quiet room.

"W— who are you?" Penance demanded. "Where am I?"

"A far sight different than the pit of a mine, isn't it?" The woman chuckled. "Quieter, perhaps. Emptier, certainly..."

The flare of a match erupted in the darkness like the flash of a canon's bore. The woman's bold green eyes stared down at a dark wood pipe wedged in her painted lips. Penance recognized her immediately: the finely-dressed lady from the mine. Her graying hair— all perfectly coifed in delicate and precise coils— lay bunched up beneath a thin gossamer shawl over her head, complete with a black veil flipped over to one side. With her raven dress and matching black gloves she painted a somber picture.

He was about to ask her about this, but then his eyes returned to that elegant wooden pipe in her mouth. He watched her light the tobacco in the end and puff it into a steady burn, working with experienced efficiency. She returned her eyes to the boy as she got the burn right, slowly pulling the pipe from her mouth.

"Shocking, is it? To see a woman indulge in such 'devilishness'?"

"I— uh," Penance looked away. For a moment his politeness overcame his adrenaline. "They say it's not the habit of a lady."

She smiled, again chuckling.

"Who do 'they' say it is the habit of, then?"

"Fallen women," Penance answered without thinking, but when he reflexively looked up at her— eyes panicked and mortified— she only smiled wider, leaning her head back and puffing out a mouthful of smoke.

"'Fallen women'," she mulled the words, letting off another empty chuckle. "That's fitting enough. We can go with that, I think..."

She stared into space for a time, but soon her eyes returned to Penance, rolling over to him like a crocodile turning up its slit eyes at the taste of prey.

"To answer your question: you are in the hamlet of Achnacarry, on the grounds of its castle. My name is Gilbarta—"

"'Cameron'," Penance finished her sentence with a whisper. When Gilbarta nodded in assent the boy swallowed hard and motioned to her somber dress. "The, uh... the Lochiel?"

"Lain in his casket and buried in the ground, these past six days."

Penance cocked his head, skeptical about her time frame.

"A whole woman's lifetime mightn't be enough, mind you, but I thought those few days were at least a proper amount of time to mourn," she explained. "At least before seeing to the wee mystery that was buried in the rocks of the Sgàile Gaor Bheinn: the little Lazarus lying alongside my dead son."

Gilbarta gave Penance a cold, probing look, her green eyes glowing over the smoldering pipe, boring into him like a tigress eyeing its meal.

First a 'crocodile', and now a 'tigress'; Penance's imagination ran on an unpleasant theme.

In any event the boy felt his 'politeness' begin to wan.

And his adrenaline started to rise.

He leapt up to the window and shattered its pane with his bare fist. He stepped out onto the ledge before remembering the gold and ivory ring in his hand. He quickly turned and made to throw it on the bed but Gilbarta— still sitting in her chair, unmoved by Penance's violent display— merely knocked some ash from her pipe and shook her head.

"You can keep the ring, if you wish," she said. "It's only some little thing, you know: a symbol for the great and powerful 'majesty' that is the Clan Cameron family line. That's all you're taking; that's all it's worth, anyhow."

Penance tossed the ring on the bed.

"I'm no thief," he spat.

Gilbarta laughed, shaking her head.

"It'd only boil down to petty theft. Still, a pretty thing, at least. Isn't it?"

The woman set her pipe on the table beside her chair and rested her thin chin in one hand, looking away from the boy. Still she laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that was liable to devolve into something else at a moment's notice. For all her dignified manners, however, it never did, and she eventually looked back up at the boy with clear eyes. She motioned out the window with her head.

"None here would stop you, should you desire to go. And we have a very fine front door, at that. All I wished to see in 'reviving' you, was..." the woman paused a moment, then looked down at her lap, scoffing bitterly. "God in heaven: I don't even know. I can't even say." She returned her eyes to Penance. "Was it 'curiosity'? I don't know. Why dabble with such Godless foolishness? But regardless, what profit do I have coming between you and your escape? You might very well cast a spell on me: set me aflame, or turn me into a toad..."

Gilbarta scanned the shattered glass on the floor, noticing the bloody pieces scattered about. She produced a kerchief and held it out for the boy.

"I don't suppose you'll at least bandage yourself before you go?"

Penance considered the woman's cold stoicism, and her almost zombie-like appreciation for the current situation. For all the times his immortality were ever exposed this had to be one of the strangest. This woman was no gibbering hysteric like others who had seen his gifts firsthand. She looked about as impressed as a farmer perusing the weather almanac .

Her behavior was unusual enough to stay his feet. For the moment, at least. Penance slowly moved down from the shattered window and showed her his bloody fist, complete with a lack of any wounds.

Gilbarta examined this miracle with that same empty gaze, grunting as she put her pipe back in her mouth.

"So," she muttered, "would one call you an imp? Or a spawn of the fair folk?"

"One would've called me a 'human', once."

"Had a spell cast on you, or the like?"

"It's a kind of magic," the boy said.

The woman again grunted, still surveying Penance's unblemished fist like a shopper picking out fish at market.

"Wondrous thing, that," she muttered, "to be more than 'human'—"

"This marks me as less than a human," Penance disagreed, pulling his fist away from her. He again moved back to the window. "It's a dark thing: a mark branded on one's soul. It is a devilish thing. And begging your ladyship's pardon, but it marks me as a bad guest to have, especially under a roof so fine."

The boy again made to leave, but Gilbarta's lackadaisical words again brought him to heel.

"I can't be much impressed by any of it, then," she said, again puffing a mouthful of smoke from her pipe. "I'm not a stranger to 'devilishness' after all, am I?"

When the boy looked back at her she shrugged, staring off at the far corner of the room, listening to the silence all around them.

"That I can handle: devilish things. Cold things. They give one a feeling, at least. Not like what grips one's heart, to have lease to see the emptiness of one's time stretched before you, and behind. Measuring its worth, and in it seeing..." Her voice briefly cracked, but she regained her composure, looking up at Penance with a polite smile. "I suppose I ramble at nonsense: at things you couldn't possibly understand."

The quiet rocking of the woman's chair slowly turned into something else in his brain: a metered ticking, haunting the back of the boy's skull. Penance willed it away with force, and still he played perfect poker with his face.

Gilbarta sighed, again staring at the far wall of the room with dreamy eyes.

"When a 'fallen woman' meets a 'devilish boy' do they get to argue over which one of them is the least human, do you think?"

Penance didn't know what to say to this, but it seems Gilbarta didn't expect an answer. She only scoffed, tapping out the ashy remnants of her pipe.

"But then what profit is there in that discussion?"

The woman leaned forward and got up out of the rocking chair; this made Penance alert like a startled deer and he leapt back, bracing himself at the ready. The woman, for her part, merely walked to the door and inched it open. She again motioned outside the ruined glass window.

"The path nearest this wall plunges under the canopy of thick trees, running all the way out to the wilds at Loch Arkaig. 'The Dark Mile', we call it. You can follow it to the wilderness, if that's your desire, or travel the opposite way through Achnacarry and get on the road to Fort William."

"That'd be a crowded place," Penance said. "I'll bet the story of what happened at the 'School of Gulvain' has gotten popular..."

"It would've, no doubt. The locals over at the pub down ale by the pint, and rumors by the gallon. Not to be immodest, but I spent the better part of two fortunes to smuggle you here: one was paid to fasten shut loose lips."

Penance scrunched his brow.

"And the second fortune?"

Gilbarta's cold smile suddenly changed. For the first time, rather than displaying that zombie-like countenance, she appeared genuinely ill-at-ease. She cleared her throat, giving a small, cute shake of her head before answering.

"Ice is a terrific expense this time of year, you might know. Especially when you're scrounging up enough of the stuff to encase a body for days on end. Even a small body, at that..."

"You froze me?"

The woman's uneven smile widened.

"After the first... uh, 'ineloquent' reaction to your abilities. I do hope you have no memory of the digger that brained you with his pickaxe when they first discovered the 'magic' at work in you?"

Penance absently shook his head. All the same he rubbed the side of his forehead.

"Well, then, that's all the better, I'd say." She looked Penance up and down, clucking her tongue. "I will admit: for a 'devilish' creature you play the part of a proper young lad well-enough. You've manners to spare, though they say the devil's minions are practiced tricksters, do they not? At least you fool a person as well as this 'fallen woman' can fool others into calling her a 'dignified lady'. Yes: I'd say we fool each other quite well, at the very least."

With this the woman opened the bedroom door and began walking out, her cadence as lively as a corpse's.

"I owe your ladyship," Penance whispered. "For your spent 'fortunes', at least—"

"Not at all," she disagreed, not bothering to look back at the boy. "In point of fact you've been an official 'guest' of the Clan Cameron all this time, though in a most 'unofficial' way."

Again she let loose with that laugh, the one that threatened to fall into something very different. Again she pulled herself back from the brink.

"Our clan tradition states that any guest of the house is, in fact, owed a thing befitting a guest: something taken from us in recognition of their time spent here, that the Cameron hospitality always be in their minds." She scoffed. "That is— was— another of our grand vanities: something to show our 'worth'."

She looked back at the gold and ivory ring on the bed, her eyes empty and tired.

"If you admire that thing, so, then you're welcome to it."

"I've no need of your finery," Penance declared.

Gilbarta shrugged, conceding his point.

"Who would have need of such a cheap thing, anyway? Well, If you won't take that, would you at least take a suggestion?"

Penance cocked his head. He hesitantly nodded.

"My kitchen staff has conspired against me," she explained. "They've sought to cook a meal for me, in spite of my disinterest. If you're seeking out the wilds beyond the loch the least you could do is fill your belly with marinated meat and hot bread. Or does a 'devilish' child not eat, either?"

A knot suddenly broke in Penance's stomach, naturally at the most inopportune moment; the low growl pierced the awkward quiet between them. It made Gilbarta do something she hadn't done since he woke: she laughed, and it was a genuine, spontaneous laugh.

Penance, meanwhile kept his icy bearing. Not that he could stop a flow of spit from forming in his mouth at the mere mention of a meal.

When he didn't answer Gilbarta shrugged and motioned to the wardrobe by the bed.

"Some clothes that might fit your 'devil's' frame. Mothballed and musty things, mostly, but a sight better for a dash through the wilderness. Better than running around in one's naked skin, at least."

Penance crossed his arms over his bare chest.

"My skin is thick," he said.

"And your stomach thin." Gilbarta shrugged. "Dinner should be served within the next hour, or so. Come down for it, or not. Stay, or go. What profit is there for me, arguing with a devilish magician?"

As the woman left the room she paused, slowly peeking her head back in.

"Down at the mine they told me your name is 'Penwyn'. Is that so?"

Penance nodded, fully intent on giving her that alias in order to keep things less 'complicated'.

But when he parted his lips to speak he was compelled to say something else. Something frank and candid. The woman's stoic bearing and mood— and her own curiously self-deprecating manner— made anything else he might say seem distastefully inappropriate.

And— for someone as good at lying as he was— that pang of conscience was a surprising thing.

"My name is Penance," he said.

Gibarta stared down at the boy's bare feet, again looking like someone had just told her about the weather.

"Mmm. Why not, after all?" When she met his gaze she gave him a cold smile. "A phantom thing, never to be realized. Fits the frame of a phantom boy, who could never be real."

"I'm real enough," Penance countered.

"Pity, that. I'd actually prefer fantasy, at present." The woman slunk out the door with a slow gait. It was both regal and downtrodden at the same time, like a wounded cat walking off an embarrassing injury. "Not that it matters: an evening of cordials can make you a fantasy, to me." She moved down the hallway, her voice echoing with another bitter laugh. "I could forget your name by the fourth glass. Your face by the sixth. Easier than forgetting some other things, at least. More convenient for you, as well, I suppose..."

Penance waited until the woman's echoing footfalls disappeared down the marble corridor outside. Once on his own, crouched by the window in the darkness of the room, he took a moment to reorient himself to his situation, something like a startled animal nearly run over by a carriage, still frozen in place by the experience.

And then that coldness took him over once again: that empty and stark instinct.

'Survival'.

The boy stood up straight and took a quick step backward, plunging out the shattered window and into the night beyond. Upon hitting the dirt his left leg bone cracked and his hip fractured like a chipped wine glass. He got to his feet and walked the pain off for a few halting steps, until he felt he could run, and the rest was a slow and quiet jog under the boughs of thick trees, moving through the lonely length of the 'Dark Mile', with nothing but the pattering of his bare feet in the dirt to bring a noise to his ears.

Well, that and the sound of over-starched drawers rubbing together at the thighs.

X

X

X

He reached the black shore of Arkaig soon enough, and with robotic precision he moved off the dirt path and waded out into the dark water of the loch until it was up to his knees.

'Procedure' was simple enough, here: to avoid any pursuit— even the possibility of scent dogs on his heels— he'd need to swim the better length of the loch, coming ashore at some random point far away from where he started. From what he could see of it Arkaig looked to be a rather narrow and spindly thing as Scottish lochs went, and so Penance figured he'd have little trouble traversing the waters, even without the sun to guide him. That was good, since he'd rather not risk drowning himself.

Of all the 'deaths' there were in this world drowning really had to be one of the worst.

He started wading further into the waters, but he stopped before the waves could lap at the fringes of those starched breeches. Something tugged at him— almost like a guilty feeling in his gut.

It'd be a shame, he thought, to ruin such a perfectly pressed and starched garment.

The boy blinked at this thought, resisting the urge to slap himself.

Other than being a nonsense thought, by itself, it certainly wasn't the thing a person like him would ever consider important. Penance knew only one 'important' thing in all the world, and it was the only thing that mattered in the long run:

Survival.

It was far more important, after all, than a pair of starched drawers.

Just as it was more important than a wound clock.

Or a burning forge...

He grit his teeth, pacing along the ankle-deep waters of the loch, an angry sneer burned on his face.

"Fine time for a fit of melancholy," he growled.

His head willed his body towards the cold loch waters, but his limbs refused the order. Instead he continued pacing along the shoreline, eventually bumping into an outcropping of jagged rocks. The boy balled his fists, angry at no one in particular, for no reason in particular, and he took to clambering up the rocks, as if to childishly 'defy' them for blocking his way.

That would really show 'em, after all.

In his angry, disorganized scramble he accidentally 'discovered' a small gap in the rocks and went tumbling into a narrow fissure, landing with his head on the ground and legs dangling in the air. Once he reoriented himself he took in the bleak view: it was a small natural cavern, barely illuminated by a crack in the rocks above his head, the rough floor covered by a bed of loch water and moss. The smell of mold and mildew was overpowering, saturating the air thick as a spring mist, almost enough to choke the lungs.

That was merely insult on top of injury; this was all unappealing real estate to the boy, regardless.

"I've had enough of caves for at least one lifetime," Penance grumbled.

He manage no more than two steps before his foot unexpectedly sunk down into a crack in the ground, wedging itself in with force, held fast in the jaw-like rocks. Penance had a devil of a time freeing himself from it, only to then sink his other foot in yet another crevasse. The whole watery, mossy ground was lousy with these nooks, and he couldn't manage more than a few inches without finding another one. He had to crawl on hands and knees just to find a part of flooring that was traversable, and he found it along the far edges of the cavern.

When he re-emerged from the cavern, ungracefully scrambling out into the moonlight, he savored the fresh air in his body, taking a few deep breaths to free his lungs of the sour and moldy air of the cave.

If only it were so easy to free his mind of its sour thoughts.

And what were those 'thoughts', exactly? What did he think about that Gilbarta woman, and her odd bearing? What exactly was it that so captivated his interest, seeing her reaction (or lack of one) to his abilities? Why should any of it even matter?

Penance didn't really know. He couldn't even say.

Was it 'curiosity'?

"You know what that did to the cat, you idiot," he grumbled to himself.

Still, he could feel some small part of himself conspiring against his own interests, intent on moving back up the path to Achnacarry and taking a seat at her table.

And why?

Penance didn't really know.

What he did know is that such a thing would be suicidal; this place couldn't be any less safe for him, regardless of the lady's assurances of secrecy and bribes paid.

Money paid to keep the average person quiet, after all, only lasts about as long as the fifth pint at the pub.

No, curiosity wasn't worth the risks in lingering anywhere near Achnacarry.

Nothing was worth that risk.

Galabeg would certainly agree.

Penance first smirked at this thought, but then his eyes instantly widened and his cheeks drooped, as if he'd just suffered a stroke. All color went out of his face as the muscles in his body tensed.

"Galabeg!"

The boy fruitlessly patted down every crease and fold of his drawers, but he knew the truth before he even started looking: she wasn't with him. Right now she was sitting prim and proper on a nightstand in that bedroom of the castle up the road.

Some part of the boy must have been conspiring against his own interests, he thought.

Because that's the only way to explain how he could've been so stupid as to leave her behind.

He looked back to the dirt path skirting the loch, brow furrowed. He sighed, shaking his head. Galabeg would probably agree that she was worth the risk of a quick backtrack, he thought. But nothing more, certainly.

Nothing else on this earth was worth the risk of remaining at this place any longer, he thought.

Penance reluctantly returned to the dirt of the Dark Mile, following its crooked route back to Achnacarry. As he walked he had no idea that his philosophy was about to be put to the ultimate test, because it turned out he was wrong about exactly how dangerous Achnacarry would be.

It was a far, far more dangerous place for him than he could've guessed, and that danger would appear quicker than he realized. The survivalist in him, naturally, would rail to no end against lingering a moment longer than necessary.

And, if that was everything Penance was, he'd be long gone by sunup.