Chapter 2 – Listening to Old People is Sometimes the Best Idea
Lenka Novakova glared down from her kitchen window at the bustling street below, clutching her shawl with one gnarled hand to ward off the cold sinking into her bones. Despite the overcast weather, small clusters of people chatted amiably around the public drinking fountain - some holding paper-wrapped packages from the dry-goods store, others holding bags of clay to bring back to the kilns – while children ran around shrieking like banshees over some on-the-spot game. The town had gotten much too loud. She thought wistfully of the days when Loew was just a quiet little farming town on the edge of the woods, with no noise save that of the farmers' roosters to disturb the morning, and glared a little harder. Ever since the town's potters had made an industry out of their art, Loew had done nothing but grow big and brash and noisy, clogged with the smoke from the kilns and the bustle of the people who worked them. Tch. More and more young men of the town had abandoned their family's farm in favor of making those newfangled golems, stealing traditions that had been passed from mother to daughter through the years for the sake of profit. And worst of all, none of them bothered to listen to her anymore.
Time was, the town looked to their wise old Auntie Novakova to tell them when to plant their crops, or to give them a remedy for their ills, or to say sooth on any number of other things. She would read the wind, and the trees, and the earth, and her own bones for the signs, and she was rarely ever wrong. The town respected her, had asked her for the honor – the honor! – of her wisdom, and she'd given it freely. And how had they repaid her, now? By laughing off her predictions as silly superstition. She'd tried to warn them about that hailstorm, but had any of those brash young pups listened?
Of course not.
Tch.
She reached up to grab her copper-bottomed kettle from its peg above the stove, holding it against her side as she hobbled towards the stairs. A good cup of tea would warm her up properly, but she had to get her water first. She paused at the door, tugging her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders, and stepped out into the street.
It only took a few steps before someone slammed into her shoulder in far more of a hurry than anyone had any right to be. She was knocked off her balance, teetering precariously before some bystander or other caught her. The kettle, though, had clattered its way into the street, the previously gleaming exterior covered in scratches, gutter grime, and puddle-water.
"There goes my tea," she muttered, brushing a hand against her shoulder as if to remove the lingering touch of rudeness left by her assailant.
The woman who'd caught her, a soft-faced housewife with the telltale dry hands of a potter, hovered nearby as if worried she would tip over again. A ridiculous notion, as Lenka was perfectly steady on her feet when not being knocked aside by some young hooligan. Speaking of whom…
"Excuse me, but do you know that young man's name?" she asked the woman, pointing in the direction that her as-yet-unnamed assailant had gone.
"Oh, him? That's Giriko Nakatsukasa. He only arrived a few weeks ago – he's in training to become an enchanter, if you can believe it. I didn't think the guild accepted outsiders!"
"Giriko, hm?" Lenka rolled the name around in her mouth, tongue curling around the foreign-sounding syllables. She had never liked foreigners. "If he's not from Loew, where did he come from?"
The woman shrugged. "He hasn't said. But I heard that he's from an island called Japan."
"Hmm. Well, island or no island, that ruffian ruined my kettle. Do you know where he might be found?"
She tilted her head to the side, considering. "You could check with the enchanters' guildhall. Someone there might know where he's staying."
Lenka gave her a curt nod. "Thank you."
Collecting her poor kettle from the street and resolving to beat this upstart foreigner in the head with it for the inconvenience he'd caused her, she shuffled off down the street again, this time glaring daggers at anyone within three paces. A few blocks' journey brought her to the headquarters of Loew's guild of enchanters. It was a terribly ostentatious building, shaped much like a kiln – more or less rounded, dome-roofed, and circled with façade pillars which mimicked the shape of the town's many crooked chimneys. The doors were kept closed by an antique kiln latch. Lenka lifted it and pulled open the door, determined to teach the newcomer who couldn't be bothered to move out of the way of his elders some proper manners.
Sitting around a table in the main hall were a cluster of youths, all maybe in their twenties, wearing bulky gloves that reached up past their elbows. Four of them were brown-haired and stocky, village boys that Lenka recognized dimly from festivals and the like. The fifth one - and the only one with bare arms - was clearly the foreigner. He was shorter than the other young men, and thinner, with inky hair sticking up in unseemly spikes above his head. His back was to the door, so she couldn't see his face, but his oddly-accented voice rang out through the hall as a final confirmation of his identity.
"- so here I am walking down the sidewalk, right, when there's this fuckin' wrinkly hag in front of me who's walking slow as SHIT. So I'm behind her for a while, and she's only taken, what, two steps?"
The men around the table chucked at the rhetorical question, clearly enjoying the theatrics that Giriko was injecting into his tale, and Lenka saw red. So not only does he assault an old lady and her kettle, but he doesn't even have the decency to feel sorry about it afterwards? The absolute nerve of this… this… interloper!
Lenka shuffled forwards with all the speed her rickety knees could manage, hoisting her kettle above her head and bringing it down towards the dark-haired miscreant's head with all the fury of a soothsayer scorned, certain of a solid hit.
He caught her wrist in a painfully tight grip without ever looking backwards, continuing his account, and looking for all the world as if nothing had happened. The other occupants of the table, however, fell into a taut silence at the icy anger now tumbling through his voice.
"So I move her out of my way. And now, apparently," he said, oddly accented words rolling scornfully off his tongue, "she's gonna try to beat my ass with… what is that, a kettle? You gonna make me some tea, old lady?"
Still gripping her forearm with bruising strength, he flipped his head backwards, neck lolling bonelessly as he sneered at her upside-down. Thin lips curled back over jagged teeth, and dark eyes narrowed with disdain at her feeble attack.
His eyes flashed as she looked at him, the grey morning sunlight fracturing into milky-white spiderwebs across his flat, black gaze, and the old soothsayer felt her heart stutter in her chest. Something was wrong with this man. Something was deeply, deeply wrong. Her eyes darted from his face to the hand wrapped around her forearm, saw the unnatural shine of his nails just a fraction of a second before he clenched his fingers, and she whimpered softly as beads of blood welled up around his digits' bladed tips. The spiderwebs crawled past his irises and across his sclera as he smiled wider, jaws parting, teeth sharpening, and Lenka could hear her blood rushing past her ears as her vision narrowed down, down, down to those spiderwebs, filaments of terrible magic that quivered with screams and burning metal and agony, agony, wrapping around an irreparably fractured soul that cut deeply against hers and left splinters of rage and pain and madness embedded in everything it touched and he was strong, so, so strong, and he could kill her here and now with barely a thought and not a single regret and they both knew it -
The horrible visions dropped away abruptly as he released her wrist, snorting contemptuously over her shuddering breaths.
"Go home, and take your stupid kettle with you," he said, blood-tipped fingernails flashing as he threw his arm nonchalantly behind his head.
Lenka hissed softly at him before backing away from the table, clutching her kettle like a shield against evil. Giriko just kept grinning, head tilted backwards, tongue lolling out between parted jaws. The men behind him were clearly confused, and Lenka wanted to scream at them to run, to flee, to hide, somewhere far away from that man and his sharp, sharp soul. But who would believe her?
No one listened to old Auntie Novakova anymore.
Not even when she warned of demons.
A/N: Ever wondered what a soul that'd been through the wringer of Arachne-related experimental trauma looked like? The answer is 'not pretty'. Also, more people in stories need to listen to their village soothsayer/wise woman/respected elders because it would probably avert at least one major crisis.