It It isn't long before the glow of the fire blanketed house leaves his sight when he looks over his shoulder, leaving him with an inky black night beneath a clouded night sky. The rain makes multiple passes as he staggers through the mud, unwilling to risk dangers in the waist high grasses. His pants slip on him with the weight of the water, and he tightens the rope around his waist to hold them up.

Exhaustion begins to creep up his spine with the sunrise, his legs tiring as a faint pink rises before him at the horizon. With a life of small spaces and inactivity, even a walk of a few hours has drained him.

The boy makes it up the next rise of the rolling country hills before his bare foot catches the edge of a stone hidden in the mud, sending him sprawling before impact on his damaged shoulder. The pain re awakens the agony he had numbed himself too, a sob catching in his throat as he rolls, screaming as he curls the injured limb to his gut for any means of protection.

He is tired. And so before he has a choice, he sleeps.

Erik is awoken by his stomach. He is no longer hungry, but there is a churning within his gut that causes him to heave violently into the grasses before him. The bile yellow against thick green grass, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He crawls a few feet before staggering upright, the pain in his shoulder flaring with each breath. He doesn't know if he is going the right way, but his head feels like it is full of spider webs, and he is unsure of where he was supposed to be going. There is no house behind him, nothing to return to.

He has passed little to nothing save for a few sparse groupings of trees amidst the rolling fields of grasses. Birds had peered at him with tilted heads, curious from their nested roosts, but did not take flight into the cooling air. He had heard of seasons from his mother before, there were threats of being cast out into the brutal sun of summer, or the bitter cold of winter. He had learned his lesson from a time forced in each to comply quickly, even if he had done so the first time.

When Erik looks down his frail form some time later he sees redness below the stark blackness of his charred skin, the crimson seeming to try to claw its way to his heart. He has to stop to vomit on occasion, amidst the tremors of chill wracking his body. It is hard to stay up right after these attacks.

The sunset helps him see the destination, shining lanterns in the dark of the horizon of a town in the distance. The blackness creeps in quickly though, and not just that of night. He falls into the mud once again, he has not been counting the tumbles during his journey. A tear falls from his eye before dripping into the soft soil, running free against his will, on a mission to clear foreign debris from his eye. Why is he crying? Where is he?

He briefly hears a soft rhythm in the distance, a thrumming behind a steady beat. Erik tries to pick himself up, but his arms refuse to move, and he cannot lift his head. Eventually he allows the pattern to draw him to sleep.

Sleep releases him as his body seems to be lifted from the cold earth, unclear words spoken above him, a hard surface beneath him. He is jostled to and fro, but does not have the strength to open his eyes. There is nothing of his mind until he is moved, this time a scream catching in his throat as his injured flesh is disturbed. There is a second voice, and then a third, the last hushed with calm. Something soft is beneath him then, and then there is silence.

He wakes up in agony, only to turn onto his side to vomit. There is a wooden pail waiting for him there, and he finds himself on a soft surface above the floor, body regecting the lack of contents in his gut. A bed? Something cold is pressed against his forehead, and he scrambles backwards towards the wall, a noise of pain catching in the back of his throat as the sudden movement jars his abused body. His head is pounding and his lungs feel heavy and raw from the smoke of the fire.

A woman is kneeling by his bedside, startled by his quick movements with a look of something he doesn't recognize in her pale eyes. Slowly the boy relaxes, moving inch by painful inch to recline back in his resting position, only flinching mildly when the cool touch returns. It's a damp cloth, worn soft with frequent use, and the feel of it soothes the skin agitated by fire and sun. His eyes dart from her to the ceiling above him, skittish of looking for too long.

She has thick straw-colored hair, woven into two thick plaits on either side of her head, with stormy grey eyes set into her fair skinned and heart shaped face. Her skirts are of a deep, natural indigo, offset by a cream-colored apron to match the sleeves of her chemise. Her voice startles him, so unlike that of the woman that lived above his basement home.

"Do you know where you are Darling?"

"N-No."

His voice is a raspy whisper and he coughs, the action wet and painful as it jars his body. He can feel something slimy on his tongue and spits a glob of blackness into the bucket beside his bed. The woman offers him water in small amounts, and after the first sip he is leaning up to drain the cup.

"Easy. We need to go slow now, getting sick again won't help you."

He nods his understanding, and rests his head back on the softness of the bed, his skull sinking into a pillow as sea green eyes focused on the ceiling.

"Can you tell me where you are from? How you came this far?"

Erik swallows thickly, a cough racking his body once more, though this time it is free of debris.

"I slept in the cellar of a house by the road. It caught fire. It was a long walk here."

"Your mother, family? Did anyone survive?"

This gives him pause. He did not see her during his escape, nor after as he carried himself from the burning wreckage.

"The woman was not there when I escaped. The ceiling came down on me after I came out of the cellar."

"The woman?"

"S-She told me I was not to call her mother."

He hunched in on himself with reflex, the memory of her beatings oh too clear within his raw consciousness. It took a few minutes for him to relax when no beating followed, receiving another one of the strange looks from the woman at his bedside.

"Well, you're safe now. You can call me Mrs. Maggie. Why don't you get some rest while I fetch some more water from the well.

Erik is woken up by another fit of coughing, the body's attempt to clear his lungs jostling his small form with pain swiftly following. He makes a small noise, but grows quiet at the sound of voices, hushed for silence outside of his door.

"-only five, though as small as he is, maybe younger. I told you something wasn't right with that woman. Not after what happened to her husband."

"Don't get started on that again. You heard from the man with the wagon as I did, the house was burned to the stones."

"Argus, that face is not from whatever that boy saw in the fire and you know that."

"Maggie, what can we do for this boy? He's not going to make it. And even if he did, he's not natural."

"That's enough of that. What if it was that woman who did that to him. She never brought her babe into town, and nobody ever checked on her, after there was word of the death of her husband they may as well just have given her to the wolves."

"Because it isn't of their concern, and it shouldn't be ours either. I still don't understand why the boy is taking up one of our beds."

"I will not cast that boy out to die in the storms. He walked within a mile of town. In his condition. He should be dead, but he's not. I'm pulling for him even if nobody else will."

"He's got a fever. What can you do? This is God's plan for the boy."

"Then I will give that boy love until his final breath, and pray for him to reach the heaven he deserves."

The next few days pass in a feverish blur for the boy, body wracking chills and bouts of vomiting waking him from his sleep. Sometimes the woman interrupts him to eat, small spoon's worth of something she says is called broth. It soothes his sore throat, and warms him from within. He begins to dream of her soft smile amidst the flashes of heat and fire that plague his dreams.

There's a clatter that wakes him one day, as if a great many people are standing beside his bed, oblivious to him. It takes most of his energy to turn his head, finding only an empty room and the door that closes off his world, left open a gap. Erik catches glimpses of bright colors against movement and olive skin.

He blinks, assuming he must have dozed off, when there is suddenly a face peering around the edge of the door at him, finding it not worth his energy to question the presence he looks back. His head feels like he is looking through burlap again, but without the holes through his eyes, a thick veil cutting him from the world of the living. His teeth begin to chatter as a face comes closer, a body revealed from behind the door with a strange wooden thing held by a strap across their chest.

He can see her clearly once she is at his bedside, bright eyes staring from an aged face, her skin lined and wrinkled like the soft dirt of the cellar floor he lived upon.

She takes the small wooden stool by his bedside, a small noise leaving her as she settles herself. Her words are broken as she speaks, but his tired mind eventually pieces it together. She pulls his quilts up higher, the soft and worn wool tickling his chin.

"You no mind an old woman, yes?"

She moves the strange wooden thing to settle in her lap, and he looks at it curiously, good eye admiring the carvings on shining wood. The strings and pieces of metal confuse him. What is this thing?

She talks to him, but he fades in and out of sleep, stirred by loud voices and laughter, and the painful cough coming from deep within his chest.

Erik stops his sluggish thinking as she plucks the first few strings along the long thin piece of wood, the noise off the thing filling the room with soft something that takes all of his attention.

It reminds him of the sighs of the house above his head in a wind storm, steady wood creaking over strong stone in a pefect sense of rightness.

His mother used to do something like this with her voice, late at night amidst her crying. This is different though. It hangs in the air, light somehow as it settles upon his broken form to put his body at ease, bringing the first feeling of peace he thinks he has ever known.

"What is this?"

He is able to get the question out without much coughing, the rest of a few days after the fire assisting in clearing the smoke from his lungs. It s the first time he has spoken since answering Mrs. Maggie's questions.

"Is the music of my people. You like, yes?"

"Yes."

She smiles at him, a gummy thing with a few teeth spaced unevenly through her pink maw. He can feel his racing heart slow, and fights a yawn, knowing the movement will only cause his healing skin to crack and bleed.

Music.

In the feverish haze he remembers the word, and the beating that flowed him when he first learned of it.

His mother had been making a noise as she prepared his meager meal, like her voice, but rising and falling like the soaring creatures he had glimpsed outside through the windows. When he had asked what is was, she had given him a level look, the answer coming from her thin lips, sharp and biting.

"Singing. A type of music."

He had answered as any child would when chasing after praise, acknowledgement. Her voice was lovely, and he loved music! She had grasped him hard by his hair, now hanging shaggy and matted near his ears, telling him only that people with faces of the devil, did not deserve music. Erik ate swiftly after that, a desperation to get back to his cellar clawing its way up his spine like bile in his throat.

He wakes up some time later. The old woman is still beside him, looking tired as she stares at her hands. She is weaving something together between her hands, a large spool of red material resting bellow her rhythmic moving hands, the smooth wood of the two sticks she uses gliding silently.

The hinges of the door creak as it opens, a tall, olive skinned man with dark eyes and hair entering on heavy feet. Erik's instincts cause a tingle in his spine, and he lets his eyes close, feigning sleep. He has never seen his man before, but something about him is wrong, and his body itches to flee the room so he is not confined with the man.

"Ah there you are mama, you should be in a bed. We will only have them for a few days. The mattresses are wool."

"I am content here my son. You should be resting after seeing us through our journey."

The man makes a small noise, but is otherwise silent. Yet he does not leave, and Erik can sense when he is moving closer, feel the wash of his stale breath over his sensitive flesh. The old woman speaks, her voice firm and cold.

"Constantin, leave him."

There is a humorless laugh, and then the man leaves with the noise of heavy boots on the wooden floor.