Chapter 2
It didn't pay to sit down too long, even after several hours of lifting and sawing and building – the stones of the ancient wall, crooked yet sturdy, were so hot that it wouldn't have been the first time he'd burned himself, even through jeans.
The sun was relentless here, a force so powerful that he found it a wonder that everything in its path didn't simply shrivel and wither. It was certainly what he felt like doing whenever he moved out of the slightly-more-forgiving shade. As he bent and heaved another slab of stone brick up onto his chest, he wondered once more what the hell he was doing in a climate like this – he wasn't made for warm weather, even British warm weather, let alone the suffocating furnace that had come to be his temporary home.
The village was set in a small valley; the few dozen houses the same colour as the beige sand and dust that were the foundation of this country. Each house had a roof that rose, cone-shaped, from the middle. It reminded him of the ice-cream at Honeydukes in summer. There was no sweet shop here, though, only the few vegetables the locals could grow and sell, and whatever the farmers had to hand. Aside from the odd tree, warped yet surviving, there was no greenery; no grass or flowers. He had only a few t-shirts and jeans, now faded and dust-ridden beyond repair, with increasingly yellow sweat stains on the back and under the arms. He could fix them, easily, but someone would notice, so he kept them in their pitiful state and did his best to wash in water from the well. If only his mother could see him now, he often thought, but then stopped thinking it, because it hurt.
They didn't ask questions, the people here, and for that he was grateful. Although they seemed to realise he wasn't a typical gap year volunteer, he still appeared young enough to fit into a similar mould. One of the older men, a teacher, had asked him once if he was on a rehabilitation trip.
"Vous savez… drink, drugs?" the man had asked, hesitantly, curiously, not wanting to pry too much.
He saw the opportunity and took it.
"Yeah… yeah, something like that," he replied, with a deliberately sad shrug.
"We all have regrets, mon ami," the man had answered, putting a hand on his shoulder. "All have… how you say? Monsters."
He had looked away at that, his shoulders tensing.
"Oh, I've seen monsters, alright," he muttered quietly.
He wasn't sure exactly how long he'd been there, but the locals had warmed to him. He played football with some of the boys from the village sometimes, old piles of sand stones acting as goals. They'd laughed when he told them he didn't know the rules, and had rattled away in French. He could just about follow them, but only when they pointed, and they laughed more when he missed a goal, which was often – that he didn't mind, though. It was nice to see someone smile, and he didn't remember the last time he'd been relaxed enough to really smile himself.
At night, when the heat relented a little, he'd sit outside the little round, stone house he'd acquired on the edge of the village, and think about where he could go next. He'd learned after Paris not to stay in one place too long, the smell of smoke and blood and dark magic still fresh in his mind. Looking up, the stars were out – an enormous cloud of light in the pitch-black sky. He had to leave here, he knew, his shoulders dropping slightly at the growing realisation.
Looking back across the village he saw a familiar flutter – but it was a flutter that did not belong in this place. He tensed, ready to dive into the house under cover, until he realised what it was he was looking at. The owl approached him swiftly, dropped what it was carrying at his feet, and then turned quickly about in the air, before streaming off the way it had came, not stopping for payment, or a snack, or anything. It was a war bird, and they knew not to hang around, no matter how long a journey it'd been.
He watched the bird until it disappeared into the shadows of the night once more, then looked down at his feet and picked up what it had dropped – a small, white card, with some kind of flower on it. He turned it over – blank. Frowning, he looked around him, although he wasn't sure why – who round here would know what the hell this was? Then, as if it had read his mind, the card appeared with a message, one that made him roll his eyes and swear sharply under his breath. He rose and walked back into the house, closing the door quietly behind him.
In the morning, the red-haired man did not turn up to the building site, and when the teacher had gone to the small stone house he found it empty and spotlessly clean – as though no-one had been there at all. The rickety wooden door lay open, and the only thing that remained was a small white card, with a message across the bottom – one that didn't make sense, at least not to him. He frowned, and put the card back on the bare floor, the tiles slightly warm and rough under his fingertips. He turned and left the house, with one final look back, saddened by the young man's sudden departure. He hoped the monsters hadn't returned, but feared they would have – he rubbed his own forearm absent-mindedly, and walked back to the school, the dust and sand kicking up around his feet.
Had he looked back once more, he would have seen a small flame light around the card, and reduce it to nothing but a tiny pile of ashes – as the flames licked the edges of the card, the message glowed bright orange before fading into the blackening sides:
'You look fucking awful with a tan, Weasel.'
