RAGNAROK IS COMING
— The Cricket Man —
A heavy bell of rust begs an unsettled chime. Its beggar has spent too many years hunched over a cold instrument but not fruitlessly. With skeleton hands of night coloured chalk, his crusted and broken nails flicked against echoing metal and it was a flawless step in a waltz, dancing with the heavy smoke and quiet eeriness of the night. His gummed and black mouth was stuck in a perpetual snarl, as if he had spent his life warding away sulphur demons and tasteless ones too. Beneath malnourished legs and bare feet- not between where the bell has sat so long there are roots growing through its tone openings- is a cobbled stone floor and that is, perhaps, the clue of civilization.
The beggar shifts for the first time this day, because he has learnt to cherish the small reliefs, and looks up, under heavy lids and brows. His bloodshot eyes are even more harrowing as they widen in all the types of confusion.
Some- the children, mind- have tales of this old beggar and his haunting bell. There are legends and rites crafted from a creature that amounts and exists for nothing but the rat eaten pockets of strangers.
His blood eyes never stray from his bell, they say.
The bell, they warn, should never stop chiming.
Never ask the old beggar a question you do not wish to be answered.
Never pass his empty hands.
Old, silly little rules to keep the children from this market of death and bad bargains. Ones to give coin and fear because both are profits here; so far from safety.
And so when the beggar moves those eyes to watch a creature of like, something equally as flawed and trapped, the other stalls take heed of his warning chimes.
He flicks that bell and its sound saturates into the earth, eaten and gone for even the beggar is afraid now. Afraid as a dragon darker than nothing and deadlier than the end of it roams his eyes of poison across the worst of traders. Slitted eyes that tell more stories than any sailor could collect or dream. Heavy pants of a heavy soul, of a heavy and strong body who might just tear this hole of thieves into pieces should it displease his countenance.
And when the dragon of legends trudged past the beggar, he collected a dusty breath; but then came a creature not of this realm. The presence of this one made the virgin wife selling children on the stall across from the beggar pull back her soft hands and dip her head. It made the Blackthorn slave trader collect his papers and tuck them away and the Cricket Man held his bent head under his bent hands.
The beggar only flicked his bell. A warning call, a begging call and a call of surrender.
The creature turned.
Slid his strong neck to the side and ran too bright eyes up and down the skeleton beggar. There was such power emanating from the man, such a deep and dark well of it that it should have been bottled and locked away. Should not be allowed to walk the mortal plains of this world.
And with nothing but a glance, the man looked away again. Walking past the beggar and the virgin and the Blackthorn but it stopped at the Cricket.
Everything- the rows of ugly souls making ugly money and even the animals trapped in their cages- stopped to watch and see the fate of the Cricket Man. That old warrior who fled the battlefield when it was quiet enough to hear the crickets chirping, his battered body trembled under the mud and blood-caked potato sack he had scavenged.
The man stopped and turned around. Looked behind him and spoke in unknown words to a woman and two boys. The man's family, undoubtedly. That woman who he looked at as if she was always inches from harm and his one and only duty was to find that harm and make sure it had no toes or fingers or skin left when he was finished. She was nothing but a pair of blue eyes peeking under the covers of traditional and sacred cloth. The cloth of married and devoted wives and in recognition of her importance, the beggar flicked his bell. He threw forth a chime that promised none of the rats would dare go near the two children that looked nothing like their father and the wife who seemed so frail she could be snapped by a strong clap.
It was a coincidence, to stop before the Cricket, and so the dragon of death, man of power, his pale wife and their spawns carried forth and down the winding path of the Bleak Market. When they disappeared around the corner and the beggar turned back to his bell, he found it had been warped. Crushed by a hand that was never there. The old man's heart nearly stopped dead at the sight and he began a breath that would curse that man and his power but the virgin beat him to it. She shrieked and frantically checked now empty cradles and marble cages where her children used to sleep. The Blackthorn was cursing and bashing his prisoned wrists against every available surface for the man had made the slave trader his trade.
But the Cricket Man, well he was weeping in raw joy as his once distorted frame seemed to be ironed of wrinkles and bends. As the Cricket stood on strong feet. He cracked straight arms and grinned rows of pearly teeth and cried tears fresh and sweet. And as that joy turned hysterical, the cricket fled. He ran like the wind pushed at his heels, away, away from this market where he was once abandoned because of his cowardice. He fled from this as he had that battlefield with the cries of names on his lips.
…o0o…