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Sincerity in Muteness
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Chapter Two: Intriguing Oddities
There was a boneman on the eastern dunes of the coast, one whom bayed the celeste sea very little mind.
In the beginning the young, lithe elf thought she had been dreaming. Men of bone on this land? Impossible! Yet she was an inquisitive creature of the day, swaying into the pink skies of a new dawn, journeying through ruined spires and toppled sea wreckages in search of oddities swept in by the tide. There were hidden treasures clustered in misshapen nooks carved by the sea as well. Most of her days had been left as such since her arrival on the barren land of a Nameless Isle, other than mild exploration of the native inhabitants, of course.
The remainder of her people; elves, men or sourcerers, had stayed within the great castle on the hill, cut from the living rock and sanded down into a monument of the elite. Yet though the lower source-barers trod through the poorer districts in search of ways to gain entry to such a palace, she had far more opportune thoughts, finding valuables in districts others scarsely cared to gander. Truly simple pickings for a knife-ear who knew how to stay quiet. Yet the sight of a bone man gave her pause, for to admit the truth, she had never seen one up close before.
Poised, he was over the remains of a forgotten soul who had been too ill-fortuned to survive the sea. His corpse had been sunken halfly into white sand, holding only the valuable necessity of clothes that had long been ripped and taken by scavengers. Like herself. Only the toes of a leather boot remained on him, peaking out from the grain. In contrast his upper half had been dug and dragged to the surface, but even that had begun to cake in the mid-evening sun.
Masella glanced down over the frayed duster of her half-naked form, spying dried shades of red that had yet to fade from the seams. It barely fit her, for elves were known for their long bodies whilst humans had curvy, stumpy limbs that seemed to impress the earth no matter where they strode. The material barely passed her waist. For fear of sharing more flesh than necessary, she had strewn palm leaves into a dress covering her midrif and concealed her assets by the long length of her hair.
Masella hid behind the wreckage of an old fishing boat dug deeply into the dunes. Peeking over creaking boards, her twin ears pricked in wonder of the boneman's existence.
Had I seen the man of bone before? she wondered, then slipped further over dampen wood. Her sandy lips firmed in thought.
The last her memory held was the scene of a long, tall galleass drifting with black sails below a midnight sky. From the nook in her chamber she had beheld an unwrinkled ocean. One that had reflected the waxy pallet of a white moon in full clarity.
Grief had not been alone in that evening. It had been solely encouraged, firstly by the heavy groan of manned oars that sounded from the galley like a sad song, and secondly by the muster of hidden spells that filled the grim, dimmed un-light of the slave quarters, providing a hazy, ashen tang to the air that made her tongue fall sour.
She remembered the crimson robes of the Magisters, the crown of sceptres circling their crowns; a snear plastered on kneatly shaven jaws, while their eyes shone under a gold-rimmed cowl like beads of firelight. There was always a mace dangling by their thighs. Some even held a sheen of red.
The young elf shuddered against the boat from the memory. For a moment she feared to return to it, for the very sight of any Magister filled her with dread. Still, she forced her eyes shut, and remembered the smaller moments. The mumble of strict curses. A crisp creak of turned pages. There had been a man beside her cage, one who spoke in muffled tones heavily influenced in accents of other nations. Many she scaresly understood.
She remembered how the words slipped into her twitching ears like the hiss of a feline caught unawares. Ever-curious, she had knelt beside the crack in the wall that parted them, only to find a tatter of cotton breeches, a rugged mesh of jerkin and a tousle of locks curled behind one keen ear. The other had been completely torn off.
Masella scrunched her nose and shook the memory away.
The Boneman was neither of those things. Though he in himself was familiar. It might have been the subtley of his mumblings that roused the similarity, or perhaps it was simply the longing of a companion that set her rememberance awry.
Where sinew had been tanned his was nonexistent. Where the indents of a jawbone took place a marred maxilla replaced it; sharp like clear-edged glass. Bone fused magically, he was, with matted tissue that slipped into sand as fluidly as if muscle and ligament were intertwined as a watery wrapping. The only patch of clothing he bore was a prison garb she had also once wore, and a cowl craning his skull, though even that seemed to barely shadow the glint of curiosity in his creases.
Masella's dangled legs instantly slipped from the boat - into the dunes of the coast. She dove into the sand, prepared for the Boneman's awry attention. Only he did not peer her way. Her eyes turned more curious, less kind. She listened and observed his maddening rumbles, while her hands playfully braided her hair.
"Does the beard act as some form of anchor, or maybe it simply needs a good tug to be set free. The eyebrows, perhaps..." the Boneman had continued to murmur, stiffly leant over a weathered corpse whilst tugging at the dead bristles with a bony forefinger and thumb. He relented, agitatedly scratching his vertebrae. "Perhaps fire might singe the flesh free from his bones. But then I'd have no flesh to mask."
The Boneman paused, tapping the end of his chin before attempting another tug, only instead at a half-singed earlobe. The skin instantly slapped back into place. "Bugger."
He sighed, wafting the dead head away with the back of his hand. He drew himself upright, turning sharply left to the west. From there one hand dug inside his mantle, pulling from the feathered rim a tome backed in leather. It was there, stood away from the sun, that he begun to read a volume of Cranley Huwbert's famous encyclopaedia.
His murmurs soon warped into a forgotten tongue, one that seemed to mesh with the wind and harmonise with the waves. Masella remained sat in her own little hovel, satisfied in merely studying the oddity that swept onto her shores, for there was simply nothing to do on an island built for the ill-fortuneous.
For several hours the Boneman remained in his trance, never once glancing up from his book, even when Masella had parted from the relic of the row boat long ago to observe the dead man's corpse more clearly. Gingerly, she had reached into his breeches, straining against the soggy puddles that had rumbled in from the rising tide to find coins, cockles and a dagger from his pockets. She then shrunk away, slipping her satchel from her shoulder and carefully folding her new oddities into it.
Her focus peeked up from time to time, only to find that the Boneman had once again not seen her. It was only when she dared to slip further up into his shadow, craning over his shoulder to see the laced text of his encyclopaedia that he begun to stir. He would have blinked, she supposed, if he had eyes and lids.
Still entranced, he barely had the instinct to glance back. Only when he did, he collapsed away from the young elf, raising his hands and dropping his book with a thud. "No! Stay back! Who- what do you want!"
Masella raised a hand to her mouth, lightly muffling her laugh. The Boneman continued to dig away, throwing sand in her direction, though it merely tickled her feet. "Stay away you, you! I have no valuables, I swear!"
The elf tiptoed closer, shifting her weight to spy each new snippet of skull through his shroud. He crawled further and further away, digging long fingers into the sand, scraping grey legs behind him; marking a trail that even blind men could see.
Masella realised his agitation and slowly stepped away. She smiled a wary smile that did not quite reach soft cheeks, even if kissed by the midday warmth.
"You… you're not here to harm me?' he queried having noticed her lack of violence. He dared to lean slightly forward.
The elf shook her head.
"Oh? Oh, that is… good! Who knew a mortal could starve the desire to murder and maim? Surely you must be a rarity in your species, though come to think on it, I know very little of your species. You are a... human? No, no you are far taller, much leaner, pointed ears... an elf? Yes, yes you must be. But... where was I?"
The Boneman sighed, plucking his encyclopaedia and raising to his feet. "Whatever brought you to me, I'm afraid I cannot be of any help. Unless… tell me, how would you remove the flesh of a human without mangling it? Despite my attempts I cannot seem to get the blighted thing off. It's almost stuck, as it were. On such a perfect specimen, too."
Such a question would have worried many on the island as it were. Sometimes, when listening closely to the wind, the ungodly clang of steel could be heard drifting over the forest, or the call of battle would ring true from many of the statues dedicated to the Seven Gods, as if the benevolent themselves approved such murdering.
Masella listened to the wind, just as she had learned to do so many nights ago, closing her eyes. All she heard was the plight of gulls cracking cockles across the shore and the lapping of blue waves floating in abundance of chalky foam.
She raised her head to the Boneman, searching his skull for any form of trickery, insincerity, wickedness. Yet all she saw was what he was: bone with an acute air of source. It tingled upon her fingers when he brushed past her, bright and flickering like the jewel fixed into his crown. And when he knelt over the corpse, she found that attune to magic weaken, withering from her chest like a dying fire.
The young elf quietly raised her hand to her collar. It hung from her neck, light as a feather but as strong as the hardest iron. Her heart fluttered briefly, remembering his magic, but then her hope sunk, as she remembered that her own magic was constrained to mild flitters.
She met him over the corpse, stilling when she saw his further attempts to remove the pocked skin. She fell to her knees, plucking a scythe-like dagger from her waist belt and placing it gently into his hand.
The Boneman stared at the weapon with dead eyes before letting it fall flat in his palm. "A knife? Yes, that might work! Wait, no, too mundane. I need something that is source-woven, something magical…"
He groaned, raising a hand to his brow-bone. "Take it. Take your knife and go. I have much to ponder on."
Masella tilted the dagger in her hand, admiring the glint of silver and the elven markings etched into the deer-headed pommel. Her gaze remained on it for several heartbeats before her hand slipped it back into its sheathe. She rose, willing to leave the living skeleton to his wishes. Though then she heard something stir within distant undergrowth, far off into nearby shade. It was something broad, she was sure, for she noticed branches give way to the glade's shadows. Birds fled from nearby nests to circle high in the sky.
She tapped the skeleton's shoulder. Once, twice, thrice. Each time he battered her away with his hand to write curved scripture into his journal. The stirring of the forest grew closer. Branches crackled further outland. Darkness begun to flash in metallic radiance.
Without a word the young elf grasped him by the scruff of his mantle and begun to drag him back towards the row boat. He yelped, grasping at his shroud, mantle, sand. She drug him further and further still, her feet so into the ground that she begun to feel damp soil beneath her toes. Finally, when his kneecap met the fore end of the boat, she mounted him, pressing her scythe into the chink of his collar.
If he were human she was sure his throat would clench, his eyes bulge, his heart hammer beneath her thigh. But all she felt was a cold press dead bone that should not have held consciousness. His shaky hands fell outstretched over his shoulders in mock surrender.
Having sensed motion beyond them, the elf held her breath, lowering herself so that her breasts grazed his ribcage.
"Good heavens," the Boneman whispered as he too held his breath. She heard a prayer escape his chaste mouth and fought not to chuckle.
From the breath of the forest two men steered through the undergrowth, arms clamping on vine and branch, snapping and forcing the very essence of nature aside in fisted gauntlets. Masella glanced along the edge of the row boat, finding bright robes stark against the sea and coast. Her grasp on her scythe softened, just as her own sense of self begun to stiffen. Yet she dared not to utter a sob, even though a tear filled with fear slipped down her grey-speckled cheek.
"Why're we down here when there are more captures by the Keep?" one of the Magisters demanded, his words dripping from his tongue like a vile of salamander venom. He frowned down upon the corpse on the coast, booting grains of the shore over the pale-stricken dead, clouding the open eyes and hung lips.
The other Magister raised a shoulder and gazed into the capital of the island almost dreamily. "It's the commander's orders. Pluck the weak from the beach, bury the dead that the sea won't lap up like evening supper. Keep the strong clustered in the fort until they too grow hungry and weak. Cull until no more can be culled. No more no less. Orders are orders."
"Aye, but why do we dally, Lockheart? When there are more of us then there are of them! They cannot use their source now, friend. We could pick them off, one by one." The Magister thumbed the hilt of his mace eagerly. Like a farmer readying his hound for the hunt.
The other Magister, Lockheart, tilted his crow-craned shroud back to his friend, placing a long finger to weathered lips and shaking his head. "No pity, have you? They were born with the source, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer more than they have. Come, it's getting dark and the last we need is for them to make another enquiry on missing men."
Masella did not dare to even whisper until the last of the Magisters disappeared from the entirety of the coast. It was only when sunlight fell into the distant hillside, when night swept across the ocean and warmth claimed very little of the land, twisted by an evening's cold, that she braved a stance.
She quietly rose to her knees, barely registering the faint shift of leather as her dagger slipped back into her pouch. The elf pressed a hand to her mouth, cupping soft lips.
She shook her head and fell back from the Boneman, shuddering against the sand. Magisters so close to the water, she whimpered. Is nowhere safe?
The Boneman gradually sat up. When he seemed sure nothing spontaneous would happen from the elf, he turned to find his tome and tucked it back into his mantle. Peeking over the row boat, he gradually stood, kneecaps cracking and stray bones shattering, then finally shifted into place.
"You should not fear them," he said, parting stray undergrowth aside with his fingers. His foot caught an upturned root and he tumbled forward, just managing to balance before he met the sand. "Blasted nature, always getting into things! But truly, mortal, those men are nothing to fear. It does surprise me how easily fearful you creatures are, though you do so easily dance with death. I'm not quite sure how you stand it."
The Boneman returned to his corpse, only to find that it had been mangled beyond repair. "Damnation! I will have to find another."
Even as the words left his mouth, the elf could sense the slight dimming of his brow bone, creased in disappointment. He begun to leave the coast, hand scratching the back of his spine when she grasped his shoulder, twisting him back to meet her.
"What now?" he demanded, stamping forward. "I am busy here, is that not evident? My back was to you, my face turned away from you… perhaps my skull was facing the wrong way? Damnable thing." The Boneman strode over to the water and peered into his reflection, the white bone crowned with a jewel shivering in the surface. He shifted it from left to right, up to down. "No, it works quite adequately. It seems you are at fault."
Masella scowled, slowly folding her arms, bunching her breasts.
The Boneman tilted his head, scratching the side of his jaw questionably. "How interesting. Just one moment." Again his tome was out as scarred fingers flicked through century-old pages in haste. He pressed the tip of his forefinger into one page, then a wry frown formed over his jaw. "Narrowed eyes. Scrunched brows. Down-turned lips. Disappointment? No. No… anger? Frustration?"
Masella found herself ever more curious, tipping her chin up if to see the text more clearly.
The Boneman quickly snapped the bind shut. "It's come to my attention that you haven't spoken. Once. Why is that? Please tell me mortals haven't lost the ability to speak, amongst other things."
The young elf raised a hand to her throat. She rubbed the base, frowning deeply. Her lips parted to speak, though only a rasped whisper was uttered. She then begun to move her hands, shifting them into gestures, meaningful signs.
The Boneman stared at her in utter bewilderment, searching through his journal for answers. "You're mute? Yes, yes I have studied this before!" He carefully moved his own hands, bones scratching bone, fingers touching face, shoulders, chest.
Masella grinned with an eager nod.
The Boneman breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally! Now, knowing you can understand what I'm saying, please shoo. I have much to do and little time to do it. There are only so many bodies on this island, and so few are in adequate condition. I must be off, as must you. Alone. Without me."
He pointed into the forest before flashing his shroud, twisting away. Yet she, entranced by even the very idea of his creation, could solely follow his steps. Until, late into the evening, she took his shoulder in her hand and tipped his skull up to the fort cresting the hill above them. Quiet, he watched her hands play in story, reinacting in sequences even he could not fully comprehend.
In all, one matter stood out to him, one that had a boned finger tapping his chin in interest. "Travel together? And why on this very earth should I do such a thing? I'm in no immediate danger here. In fact, you're the first living mortal I've seen in over three days. I'd take that as very good fortune, until now at least."
"There are people up there. Bad men. Magisters that tried to find you, me," she gestured, though she struggled in her coherence, for even as an elf that had lived a century and more, broken Rivellonian, like for so many other elves, was as fluent as a river stretched over hillsides, damns. Broken and trying. "People leave the ruins above. People like us, source-barers. They will hurt you Bone-man. I could help you."
"Now that you mention it, the arrival of yourself might mean that times have changed on this island. It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose. But why of all would you wish to help me? We've only just met."
The mute stared into the mass of spires and stone above her, finding her flesh prickle at the very sight of it. So many Magisters. And the one who took her was bound to be in that Keep, somewhere. Probably sneering down from the highest window, gazing upon the groves and dunes under his authority as a demigod, though truly not satisfied with any of the layout. His words still clung to her like saltwater;
The Voidwoken could paint this place in so many pretty colours.
Though she preferred solidarity at times such as that, she knew her survival was due to fate. An ally in lands thick with greed were what she required in order to continue living as any living undead could. Too often had she witnessed the corposes the boneman picked cleaned along the shore. She had no wish to be one of them. And the face of the undead, even strange that he was, would more often than not ward off any who would dare try to defile her.
Fortune smiled on her that day, it was true. And she was not going to let it waste.
"I find you interesting," she merely grinned, watching her companion stiffen in the utter absurdity of such an answer. Still, she slipped her fingers in between his, even though he attempted to shrug the foreign flesh from his extremities. "I know this land, boneman. I have seen its people. Tell me what you need. I will help you find it. Then, you will help me leave. I long for home. You will help me, I know it to be true."
"Yes," he grumbled, "by walking the sea floor."
"Then we take a ship," she gestured, "we sail away. You will not survive alone. Neither will I. Together, we shall leave this place behind. I know it, Boneman. I feel it. Tell I what you need. What makes you pick at corpses?"
The Boneman shook his head. "My name is Fane, if we are to traverse this land together. Not Boneman. And, if you must know, I'm searching for a mask. Not just any mask, but a magical mask. One that was ingeniously designed I might add, that allowed me to take your primitive form. Only it was viciously robbed from my person."
"By whom?" she asked innocently, batting her lashes.
"By a witch, who else? Only it seems she was far more resourceful than I took her for. There was a storm, oh about four days ago. It caught our ship and left me stranded. I searched that ocean floor for days looking for her body, only she must have returned to this island. I've been searching for her ever since. I have to say, I didn't think anyone survived the wreckage. But that hag must have. And she's somewhere here, I know it."
"And if you do not find your mask?"
How he managed to scoff was beyond her. Surely he lacked the orifices. How he had the gift of speech was just as pondering. "I find the answer self-evident. I'll be chased by the entirety of Rivellon by every idiot wielding a torch that does not appeal! And though that might not seem terribly bothersome to you, if we are to be working together, I can promise you now it will not go well. So, if I am to traverse this land, I will need a mask to disguise my features. Sooner rather than later."
The mute winced at the harshness of his tone, slowly loosening her grasp on his hand. Still, their fingers remained linked, loosely tangled together. She could understand his anxiousness for such a mask, though. She in herself was not that different. Only her facade was far more real, and hid the bone so far deep that no mortal could truly tell the difference.
"And what will you do when you find this mask?"
"Well, if you must know, I have far more pressing matters on Reapers Coast. This prison island will not get in the way of my research. I cannot simply wait for all of you to die. Even though I am an Eternal, it does not make time pass any faster. And my patients has its limits. So, we should retrieve my mask and be on our way. Unless you have some matters that need attending to first?"
Yes, she thought solemnly. There are a few.
They remained together even when rise of a new dawn begun to crest the distant hills of the island. Through that time Masella watched the shadowed height of the castle, sunk deep into the clutch of a mountain. Her heart sunk upon the sight of it. For so long she had slaved under its forboding shadow. For so long she wept and fled from its baring, for there were always screams coming from the keep. So many screams that haunted her dreams, twisted them into terrible nightmares.
One day, she knew she would have to trespass its halls if she were to ever return home. To Maigneux. To the Proud Spire. To her joy of dance and songs and merriment. And so she would seek the Magister that swallowed the light from her lips and warped her source into a wand of his own choosing. She, living and dead, would obtain her retribution, even if it meant plucking the life from his own lips and sending him into the depths of the beyond, mute and afraid, like he had done to her.
For a moment a cynical smile warped any innocence from her face. For some reason, she liked it.