Chapter 43: Silent Bell
Sister Letha of Cloughbark
The burn, the gasping burn against my neck, and I am branded:
Heretic to a heretic, broken truth gasped from my throat,
warnings create rage and mercies are rejected by the unmerciful.
My friend fell against steel gauntlets, and the burning that had been at my throat is now in my eyes and I cry. I try to tell him to stop struggling, to let it be. I try to tell the armored monsters to leave him alone. My words are stuck, my neck tries to flex around the rope, and I can only just manage to gasp a breath.
My legs twitch, catching at the air, feeling the queerness of nothing under my feet.
All the weight is at my neck, pulling me down,
and I swing in lazy arcs as my feet stretch to find ground
mirroring my neck trying to find sky.
My eyes are caught entranced at the struggle beneath me by those rooted, staked to the ground with their low understanding. They see only life and death. They lack my perspective as I flutter here, strangely safe from all the tatters surrounding them, those oblivious tatters breathing death as freely as the Templars mete it out. The tatters that flutter like flags:
The air is torn around this place
between the ground and space
where I am suspended:
the whole world is upended
below and the ground bells out.
The angry armor bellows,
he is no longer man but metal.
His hands ring every time he beats his chest, one hand gripped tight to the rope, his words seer the air. The woman rings even harder as she hits the metal in futility, trying to make a dent, trying to make him cease, but he drowns her out, his words are louder than the bell of his armor and the bell of her compassion. The fox-man creeps behind and tries to ring her head, and she crumples, hitting the ground with a thud instead of a crystal tone, like the ones she sang, though it feels so long ago. I alone am left as witness, a mute bell on a rope that the Templar tries to ring the music from. He cares not for my song and wishes me to cease, but he makes a far more discordant clamor.
The burn spreads to my lungs which feel simultaneously heavy and light.
Words of righteousness are choked out
by those who have no wish to hear,
unaware of what creeps so near.
The poison spreads
as I dangle above their heads.
Satisfied that I have ceased, the rope is tied off and they leave, the compassionate beaten by the misguided self-righteousness of the armored. The wind whistles through the branches of my belfry and I gaze down upon the ground so foreign now that I fly in a fashion. The departing drumming of hooves of heavy laden horses with unconscious and the conscious are the last, but the thrumming remains behind my eyes and in my distended neck, knocking against the rope pulled tight, but not tight enough. The light is breaking down into shattered rainbow speckles, scattering amid the tattered air.
The curious creature comes forward
His face resembling Fade forsaken in its awkward pulling
Stretched on a loom, patchwork made
It has sense but is senseless
Accompanied by the short silence
Gazing together through glassy eyes
"This one hums of lyrium," the curious one observes to the other, "but not to the extent as the others we found. She is far more cognizant, though."
The silent one points to the rope and the curious one nods, "We could cut her down, but that is not what she wants. Is it?" The question is thrown up at me like a ball, with the certainty that I would catch it.
"No," I whisper, though it costs me dear, the act of speaking softens my throat causing the rope to press harder, preventing me from swallowing the acidic taste in the back of my mouth.
"Normally it would not be about what you want," he says in an apathetic reassurance, "but you chose this path. I am not meant to remove you from it. You suffer in the sense that I suffer, do you not? We see, and yet are surrounded by the blind. Your vision differs from mine. You can see the gaps? I can merely feel them, but you can see them."
He asks questions but does not expect answers, taking for granted my replies.
He takes it all for granted.
He wants to take it all.
He has little granted.
He is like the Templars
in his tainted devotions:
driven to destroy
in order to make right
what he perceives to be wrong.
I am mute, as his companion is mute, but he feels her silence as he feels mine. He knows the answers, or believes that he does. Her mind is attuned to his, like a harmony floating above the melody. I am just a passing song on the breeze, the tempo slows. He continues to look up at me in empty appraisal.
We three are silent along with Nature, me above and them below, which should be clamorous and loud, calling and writhing in life, but it sleeps unnaturally. The autumn has not passed and yet the Cauldron longs for sleep, the sleep of one drugged. It is a groggy, grubbing sleep, a complacent nodding that enables the trees themselves to be uprooted along with the unhinged air. These creatures could take ownership while the rest of the Cauldron is incapacitated in its stupor.
"Beware," I croak thinly, my heart moved with the same compassion for them as from the Templars, banished and sundered from the Maker and yet unaware.
"Such a strange thing to waste your air on us," the creature replied, and the silent one looked up at me, something disturbing its blankness for a moment, like ripples in a still pond. Pain or compassion, I could not ken the momentary disturbance before it vanished, leaving emptiness as before. She senses what the other cannot, a sense that only her true silence can perceive. There is kinship between she and me.
The walk away and some stray minions wobble behind, tottering like unbalanced ships, lashed about by a violent wind.
Alone again, save for the sound that my body creates, creaking my weight against the bough that the rope rubs against, keeping me aloft. My mind wishes to ride away, for I can hear it galloping inside my ears, taking me far away. The gasping whistles of my own shallow, struggling breaths are slowly being drowned out by the thundering, the hooves of a spooked horse fills my senses, though I am calm, slowly succumbing to the end.
Above it all, the buzz of lyrium like insistent bees, threatening the greedy robber stealing sweetness.
Drifting, my mind jangles,
empty bell,
flowers fell,
blue and red,
upon the dead.
Lost the knell
of the dying bell;
no one left
to be bereft.
Maker take me,
the vessel empty,
fill me again.
You will be, are now, you were then.
Take,
take,
drip,
drop,
stop.
She is a raven that peers at me from the ground, her head cocked curious, not like the creature but in her own way. I look at her, wondering if she is real, if she wandered through the tatters and took the shape of human, unsure of what to be, so birdlike is she.
I move my lips, not to speak, but to reassure myself that I am real, that I still have hold of something while the rest of the world gallops away.
She perceives it, her eyes widen in realization, and she cries, but it is not as I expected. I thought she would crow or croak, like I am accustomed to birds. She has surprised me as I have surprised her. We are neither what we expected.
I feel the rope jerking slightly, as someone unseen scrabbles with the rope and I start to drop suddenly before steadied.
The woman shrieks, thundering words that no longer have sense at someone, words have lost meaning. They sound under water, beneath the crashing blood in my ears. The feet are returned to the ground, but my flight has stolen my bones, I cannot stand and I lower further until I am sprawled, limp.
She is yelling, directing, cradling me, trying to speak to me, asking, demanding, comforting, but again the words are meaningless. I cannot recall their meaning. I cannot make sense. My lips move again soundless. The rope has burned them away, they are cinders, though the brand has loosened and now the air burns as it fills the weary lungs.
She takes a skin, wetting her fingers and placing them against my lips.
It is the one action I understand.
It is kindness:
kindness from a raven.
Perhaps she will steal my soul,
but she will be welcome if she wants it.
The Maker can find it,
regardless of the guardian.
She will keep it safe,
and I can sleep.
Author's Note:
Some of what inspired this piece with Letha was the poem: Half-Hanged Mary by Margaret Atwood. It is based on a true story about Mary Webster who was hanged for witchcraft and survived. I highly recommend it.