The Cradle

The inquisitors wore heavy black robes that obscured their faces. The Grand Inquisitor lead them, his bright, hopeful face uncovered, exposed by the candelabra in his hand. The castle depths stunk of mold and moist earth. Their prisoner dragged her feet. One blackened eye slipped from her blindfold. Barely focused, she rolled it around to collect any details she saw. The candle light revealed layers of smooth blocks with wetness that reflected the noxious gleam of flame. An exhaustive noise like escaping of bad air from a hidden vent filled the corridor. One of the inquisitors took hold of her head with his gauntlet, and reapplied the blindfold to keep their captive confused- most important among the other tortures. Pain compels confession...but confusion invokes honesty.

Their Captive struggled to breath. Her exhausted body reduced her movements to short limps. Exertion hammered sharp pains into her joins. They stole her ability to stand up straight with their machines. Every muscle ached with malnourishment, and her skin festered from twilight pale to lake shore green, covered in a web of lacerations and contusions. Her dangling thumbs split by screws. A cage around her mouth kept her jaw shut. Boot steps on slick stone went on and on. She welcomed this brief pause from their interrogations, but she lost track of how long the procession to the deeper dungeons lasted. Time escaped her. The moons and suns lost to her. She hadn’t seen either one for so long that she began to wonder if they even still scoured the heavens. Her mind, it felt, seeped from her ears. Drip, drip, blood leaked in softening beads. A muffled ocean left her head as her ear drained and she heard clearly once more in her eclipsing moments of awareness the echo of the heavy boots and their sudden stop. A jingle of delicate metal, and the snapping of a latch. The agony of grinding latches and a tunnel of air rushing into a pit. The odor of stagnant water stabbed her nostrils like a trident.

“This will make her talk.” The Grand Inquisitor turned to the captive, and said into her ear. “A device of my own design.... Take her blindfold off. I want her to see it.”

One strong hand took the blindfold and tore it away with a strand of her hair.What she saw filled her with a jolt of soulless lightning. The curved rails of a rocking horse- but without the playful pony seat for a child. Confines for hands and feet on each end. In the middle of the contraption, an erect skewer pointed straight up. The mechanism sat above a pool of dark, murky fluid with unidentifiable floating meat bobbing up and down in the green foam. Small bubbles rose to the surface and popped. She thought she saw an eye attached to the meat but the firm gauntlets wrapped the blindfold back around her face. They carried her to the contraption, but the shock renewed her vigor. She kicked and swung her body weight against the hold of the inquisitors but they only held tighter as the door closed and latched behind them.

“Save your strength. This one you will not be able to use your magic on, witch. These walls have been blessed by Tomas De Torquemada, his holiness in flesh. ”

She tried to say something but the cage kept her jaw in place- she mumbled, pleading what they already heard before “I'm no witch- I'm no witch” The Grand Inquisitor understood.

“Still, she resists redemption. Then who was it that summoned the locusts to eat the crops? Who invoked the cursed air to cause every birth in your hamlet to be born inside out? Who then? Because it was you that they saw naked in the woods dancing with forest animals. It you they saw flying across the moon at night.”

The captive wanted to weep but they only provided her with enough water to keep her tongue wet. They gave her more wine than water hoping the alcohol would loosen her tongue- the drunkenness eased pain, but only for fifteen minutes before her body began to revolt with alcoholic poisoning. Sometimes they poisoned the water with bitter drops. She dumped most of what they served down the drain outside her cell.  She knew who the witch was- not the name, but she had seen her too. She already tried to explain that the witch hexed her, and used her shadow as a catalyst for her dark arts. The Grand Inquisitor grinned knowingly when she brought him this argument. He persisted his practice with full enjoyment. The Captive’s resilience impressed him. “Not many have your spirit, witch”.

The inquisitors took hold of her by the shoulders and ankles. With her face towards the ceiling, they latched her palms onto the rails with her fingers pointing to the length of her body. The binds felt rigid and rusted. The binds around her feet felt almost loose, but the inquisitors tightened them by twisting in the screws until her feet felt firmly secured. With her back arched, emaciated stomach in the air, she held herself up with dreadful anticipation- imagining the blade barely kissing the flesh of her back. In her strongest state, the position might be maintainable for a few minutes. But being isolated in a cramped, damp cell with only moldy bread to eat and drinking water dripping from the ceiling- her arms and legs trembled the very moment the inquisitors took their arms away from her. They observed as they always did, listening and losing patience, but for the Grand Inquisitor, who crossed his arms, standing before his subordinates, presenting himself as fair judgement- waiting for her to lose composure and confess at last. The Captive tried to hold still, but the cradle rocked back and forth, tipping her balance, thrown onto a scale she could not control. A cold tickle shaved a strip of flesh from the crease of her spine. She tried to breath through the mask. Upside down, the metal rested on her face. Hot breath made the grainy iron wet and slippery. Her lips felt like the cups of a tentacle. Blood rushed to her head. Back and forth- her shoulders trembled. Her ankles almost snapped into splinters by the confines. She corkscrewed he waist but it did nothing for her. The rails creaked as they swayed. A slow, lazy song. She tried to hold her back up, but she moved it no further upwards. The durability drained from her body. She felt it with every tessellation of her bones. She tried to tear her body away. The restraints kept her body well in place.  The water beneath her bubbled. Not the little bubbles that she thought she noticed- a slow boil that increased as if something rushed to the surface. A whipping splash sent cold waters across her body. She gasped thinking of the hot irons they inserted in her armpits. How cold they felt at first… something beneath her gargled, and squirmed back down with a following splash.

“Yes, there’s our pet. Sinister little thing. It will eat anything.”

The Captive felt her body sink.  The tip of the blade pierced her spine and she shot back up as warm wetness trickled down her back. With a scream she resisted the pain and tried to remain solid. This captive was no old woman- nor a helpless heiress. Her shoulders and back muscles broadened by field work- legs thick and muscular from walking several miles with buckets of water. A princess would’ve given up and let her body be impaled. The Captive remembered cold nights suffering with deadly infections, winters with only roots to eat- none was enough to kill her. She maintained her determination and rose with a jolt up. The cradle rocked, throwing her body back against the blade. It pricked her open wound, causing the mask to ring as she groaned. Her elbows cracked and her weight gave in again onto the blade. Screams rippled against the pool. Blood blossomed as it dripped.

“Maybe she’s ready.” One inquisitor said.

“No. Not yet.” The Grand Inquisitor replied.

The slobbering smack of water returned as the freezing breath of what lived below her returned. The sound it made in the water- the captive imagined but only could fear as much because her senses bounced between failure and activity- a damp slurping. With the blade in her body, she twisted her hips. Momentum swung back and forth, back and forth- but what if… she kept the blade with its point in her flesh. With her weight centered, the rocking stopped. She rose from the blade with a fatigued growl. Only 16 years old- but her voice broke and sunk back into her lungs as if cancers infected her throat.She swung from side to side, the flexing hammering bolts of pain across her midsection, and even deeper into her bones. But she understood that her interrogators didn’t care about her innocence or guilt- no one would save her, if she couldn’t save herself. The wood of the rails felt heavy. They intended to keep the device in place, but she once hauled a middle aged tree that fell up a slope to her hamlet for a christmas fire. With a strong thrust one way the rail lifted but fell back down. The skewer found a piece of the sheet she wore and tore into it. She pressed the otherway, the rails lifted, and dropped once more with the blade piercing a new hole into her body.

“Escape is impossible. Tell us, tell us now…”

With a last force, she exerted so much strength that her joints popped and snapped as the rails lifted. This time the rail didn’t fall back into place, but hung suspended, the balance compromised on the edge of a knife. either way. A terrifying thought occurred- that it would fall back and her body would be thrusted onto the skewer and when the blindfold fell from her eyes a spike would be protruding through her stomach. Her fears eased when the mechanism tipped towards the water. Now she feared drowning as the rails dropped. She gasped and confined the air to her lungs. The device cast her into the pool, upside down, but still attached. The water filled her nostrils and ears. The mask caused significant trouble, but it also formed a small bubble through which she took tiny breaths. Not enough air to fill her lungs, but with precious seconds she welcomed the relief through the weight of the mask now fell from her jaw to her throat. She heard the scrambling of the inquisitors, but something else stopped them. The blindfold feel loose, though the pit absorbed any light and left her in a blinded state nonetheless she felt it’s presence slither through the water, felt it nibble at her hair, and at her toes. The inquisitors stopped at the pool. The grand inquisitor hollered, “Stop! or this was all for nothing!”

The tentacles wrapped around the rails and constricted until the wood cracked. The metal gear on the captive pulled her down, but for a brief moment she was free in the water, sinking lower and lower. The creature swam down, and she grabbed for it- taking a chance that maybe this pit lead to a lair. She landed on the floor and moved along the bottom, hands out, feeling the ridges and a gaps for a way out. Water flowed into her mask. Her lungs burned for oxygen. Her arms lost control, and dangled in the water, as her feet lifted from the rocky bottom, and her head sunk downward. Yet she moved. She felt the sand grains scraping against her. Her organs adjusted to movement. A tentacle wrapped around her waist pulled her into a deeper, darker crevice, and took her into a darkness she never thought possible, yet cold as a frozen pond. Wounds itched, and sediments in the water bounced from her nose.

The creature pulled her to the surface. No light but for a a few glowing fungi along the jagged edges. She gasped for breath, her wounds throbbing from the contamination of the pool, her flesh shivering. She looked around, her hands attached to pieces of rail. She pulled the away and left it. The creature snarled, and with what sounded like a thousand small pegs, it beat around her in a circle, prodding her with a pair of pincers away from the bubbling hole she just entered through. In the center of the room, she found a sticky nest- adhesive pastes held her in place. In the light of the mushroom above her head, she saw a host of skeletons among her- and  nests of bulbous eggs inside of them. Her panic subsided when she realized that she was beneath the castle- no longer inside of it. Despite her hunger, and enduring the pain of tarnished extremities she drew a circle and a star with her own blood on the mask over her face. She called in the Enochian tongue- and from the dark, scaled hands with three fingers came and took hold of her constraints. The metal rusted away and broke into a cloud of powder. The wooden restraints rotted, and the latches fell with a rattle. The monster lurked nearer. A slushing gargle rolling from its hungry jaws. She backed away, loose, but mere feet away from the flat, mashing rows of subterranean teeth. Her hands stumbled around rocks and puddles. She smashed a glowing mushroom, leaving pieces of illuminating tissue smeared on her palm, and along the tatters of her sheet. The creature snapped, and took a piece of fabric and tore it away,  snarling with confusion, as it leapt to a wall and began racing around the perimeter. The captive rose to her feet. She felt a stream of cold air, and she meandered after it with the monster following. Its heavy, amphibious pods pedaled towards her. She only saw the bits of it that the glowing revealed- scales and fins, gills, and a long tail with a spearhead shaped tuff at the end. A water creature, not equipped for being on land. She felt safer, the sensation crumbled to dust  as a sizzling string of drool splattered from the ceiling onto the bald spot on her scalp. A talon took hold of her arm, and but she took a rock and smashed into the talon. A face emerged, and she struck the creature into the mouth- breaking a row of teeth out as the monster tumbled to the ground she turned around and hurried like a blind person in a burning building. The stream smelled fresh as summer rain. She padded further, a pale gleam shone down a faint stream trickling down misting rocks. Sunlight.

In the light, the monster stopped, sitting still, its forked tongue hanging, its chest heaving, desperation pulsing in its eyes. The captive climbed up the rocky path towards the opening. The monster panted, heavy and slow, desiring and starving, but unable to pursue as it released an anguished groan when it tried to transit. Her limbs barely took hold. She stopped, and invoked a source of energy, anything to get her just a few feet forward. Her entire body ached and trembled in pain. She caught her reflection in the stream, and she didn’t see a face she knew as her own- but the scarred, grime coated face of a hag. She didn’t know how much to attribute to the techniques employed by her hosts, or to the passage of time. Her youth, she could recapture. She did it before many times. In the fresh cold water, she slurped and slurped until her stomach hurt. She soaked her hands, and scrubbed her face, digging her nails into the wrinkles and digging out the encrusted filth. She peeled away strips of flesh like dried glue. She looked again, and in the reflective surface she saw the young woman once more. She exited the cave with an agonized grunt into the grassy swamp between the coast and the ramparts of the castle. The inquisitors would be searching, she knew. But she had so much more work to do. As she marched through the mud of the swamp, she felt the spark revive in her blood. The tingle of lightning, the kiss of night rain, the whisper of the dark grew stronger with every beat of her heart. She heard horses neigh from the castle. The shadow from the sentinel towers crossed the swamp. She slipped into the much, and crawled into the shadow to conceal herself better. Exhausted. Hungry. Injured.  The sunrise clouds brightening through a red veil of bending light. The wounds in her back wreaked by the cradle hurt the most. Almost with a crippling agony did the pain develop, as if a poison had been smeared onto the blade remained and burrowed into her marrow. Her spine ached as she stressed her lower back. She felt something adjust and pop. Scars from weights and clamps branded her mashed elbows, knees, ankles. To avoid the agony, she tossed her upper body back as she stepped forward. The pain minimised, but still present. She took a branch from a fallen tree and used it as a cane, stabbing it into the mud and leaning on it as she pulled one leg after the other.

The swamp thickened, but over the mud and patches of weed she saw the forest. Horses cried. The gates of the castle clanked in the distance. She looked back at her progress. A trail about a mile long ran from where she emerged.

The deep swamp felt different. Still,  windless, not even a chirp of a cricket or screech of a vulture. Only the slushing mud. That’s where she spotted the outer rampart, hollow, half of the stone facade gone and sunken, iron pikes prodded outwards towards the trees. As she entered the shadow of the rampart, leaned against a fallen block, fighting aches, breathing slow though air felt like pins in the vulnerable crags of her throat. She looked out over the deep end of swamp and saw the countless bones, and tattered flags of an army long since swallowed by the mud of the swamp. She didn’t rest long. Horsemen galloped from the castle.

The Captive struggled to hurry. Her injuries nearly crippling, she dropped down, and dug her malformed fingers into the mud, and dug out bone after bone. Some bodies had sunk in neat piles, others fell in in pieces, all of which she dumped back into the mud with desperate growls. With each approaching sound of the horses, the agonies of their techniques recurred and materialized at a physical level. The condition of her fingers, barely able to open and close them, hardly affected her excavation. Some places of the swamp, she found the mud to be like a thick cake, but as she moved towards the forest it became more runny and watery. Dark brown, to a fine green- yellow like the skin of a rotting squash.

Once she found the remains of the horse, she hurried to compose. “No one ‘dabbles’ in necromancy.” someone told her once. “because the simplest spell requires the offering of blood to spill”.

She dabbed her finger into her ear, reddened with blood she drew the circle on the skull of the horse. Holding it tight, and proclaimed an invocation- every vein in her neck throbbed as she sung the words. She howled like an animal, digging her hands into the bone- her finger printers filled with bone and mud, until she could feel the body of the horse through her hands. She repeated the words. Again and again.

Whips lashed at the horses.

Worms surfaced, hundreds of them squirming up like flower stems towards the sunlight. Bones wearing rusted armor arose, chunks of mud dripping from their hips and ribs. The horse skeleton remained in the mud. The captive focused, repeating the words. Skulls dropped from the shoulders of the dead soldiers, and the bones sunk back into the mud. The captive considered the complications of such efforts, the risks, the sweet entertainments, and broke her concentration because the ripping of hooves interrupted the squirming of the worms.  She bit open both palms with what teeth remained in her head, and used the blood to cover the exposed bones of the horse. She coated the skull, the spines, the ribs, widening her wounds until her head almost floated away. With the skeleton painted, she tried once more with the incantation, sitting on the horse's back, she felt it rise against her body as if lifted from the mud. She let a triumphant squawk escape as the horse trotted away from the castle towards the forest in an unlaboured manner impossible for a living horse. Without fatigue, or consideration for what lies in front of it. It moved at a faster pace than the captive. Her hair fluttered in the speed the horse carried her on. Weight off her body at last, her feet almost dropped off they felt so relieved. She held tight, hooking her fingers into the empty eye sockets, saddling her legs around its ribs. The momentum slid her from the back of the horse, but she hung on, and climbed back on top. The bare spine irritated the wounds created by what her captors called the “spanish horse”. Such pain meant nothing to her in the excitement of her escape. She smelled the trees.

The dead horse cut through brush and overgrowth like fire. It took her into the woods until the cover of leaves blocked the sun. The horse moved forward, until she whispered a secret into its ear socket. The skeletal horse then took a new direction, away from the Captive’s home, and towards the most ancient part of the forest. The trees grew thicker, and taller. Little men, long since cursed, trapped in the shells of tree bark marked her path until the forest air began to sour.  Here she climbed away. The horse collapsed into a pyramid of ash as she made her way to the hutch underneath the roots of a great tree. She smelled the burning herbs, the boiling water, the rapping of winged creatures against the wires of their cages. A hanged rabbit swung by its feet, its ears harvested. Smoke rolled from the opening of the hutch. Feet shuffled within. The Captive held out her bloody, crippled hands as if they held candles in the dark. She took enticing steps, cracking branches and leaves with her bare feet. The Witch heard nothing. She rummaged around the hutch, a shrill of a woman she used to be, her mind completely occupied with the majesties of her darkest ambitions. When the Captive entered, the witch dropped the rabbit ears into the fire. The smoke concealed the Captive, but her form emerged from the smoke as she came inside. The witch continued her work. The Captive sealed her attention onto the hag. She took the cauldron by the rings on the side and tipped it over. The foam rose over the rim, and a steaming curtain filled the hutch as the the liquid unleashed a wave of skin melting fluid across the dirt floor. The witch screamed and lost control of her body, falling to the ground, her magic unable to save her as what remained of the Captive stood above her.

“You’ll lead them here. They’ll find me now.” The Witch said to the Captive, her

raw throat choking on dry air.

“You betrayed me.” The Captive looked down at the sweltering hag as the skin bubbled and dripped from muscle. The hag took a few final breathes and lay still as the steaming puddle soaked into the dirt.

The Captive faced for home, but she knew that she could never return. Her escape confirmed to the inquisitors their suspicions, and in her small village there could be no hiding. She pondered, while looking over the lifeless witch, whether or not the Grand Inquisitor hoped for her to escape because to do so required her use of archaic secrets. She anticipated the shame from too many sinister glances, too many unwelcomed noses poking in. Freedom at last, her valued reward, before the predator’s night. The wolves and rats stalk, and the enchantments of the forest animates what has died for the time the moon shines on the remains. A dangerous place, somewhere no one treads. The Captive left the hutch, taking with her what she coveted from the witch, and what she needed to mend her wounds. She looked in every direction, smelling encroaching smoke all around her.

Abasement of the Remorseful

-Kaleb worked with window fixture repair and installation. A twenty four inch plate of glass streaked with morning rain trapped between its brother pane in the track. The sun rose. Purple clouds looked like looming spacecraft. He set the glass, and sealed it. The owner of the home watched over his shoulder. A surgeon, with his arms crossed, his mind contemplating, wanting to help, no doubt wondering if he could do this work himself, but Kaleb set the glass so quick and so immaculately flush that his troubles eased and his inspection harvested no complaints. Kaleb ran through the usual business and wasted no time being idle. Six more appointments waited. He never arrived late.

-Across town, Imogen sat in the back. The kitchen smelled like onions. The waiters sat idle and bored. She put the paperwork down and confronted them. The floor manager among the waiters, fifteen years older than the teenagers and young ladies that worked below him. He begged Imogen to see for herself. Only one person entered the whole day. He sat in the back, and waited. “He has his water, the floor manager explained, “and he wants nothing more.”

The customer wore a black suit. A silver cross around his neck. When he drank water, Imogen saw his wrist. Tattoos sleeved his flesh, and she imagined they ran all the way down his form. He wore a high white collar that reached to his sharp, raptor jaw. A buckled hat covered his head. Imogen went back to her paperwork. When she came out to steal a shot of whiskey from the bartender she saw the back table empty. Not even a ring left from his glass. No empty sweetener packets. No spilled liquid. She looked at the clock. Four more hours, provided she finished the paperwork.

-Hildegard walked from school everyday. Alone. She kept her silence among her peers, lowered her head, preferred to remain unnoticed, yet felt no fear nor remorse in her actions. If one did call on Hildegard, she politely ignored them, though some of the kids felt her capable of damning tricks due to her antisocial nature. In truth she wasn’t antisocial, she was anti fool. And fools never believe they are capable of making bad decisions when their entire existence serves to leave a warning behind for those fearless, unremorseful spirits that walk among us in the quiet lanes. She loved them for that. Her teachers too, hard skinned individuals whose profession is to wrestle with these fools, and force them to learn something they believe will not enrich their character. Hildegard understood at a young age, due to her long walks with no company other than her own thoughts, that there are two kinds of people in small towns. There are the people with a lot of money that move away from big cities, but don’t want to live in the country. Or fools that simply never left. Hildegard dreamed all day of places she wished to see. Foreign places where the roads are gardens, and thriving with wildlife to accompany her. She liked animals. They bit and scratched things that came too close. Just like her. She looked forward to turning twelve at the end of the month. She figured her party would be just like the others. At least there would be a pie. She hated cake. She walked in the middle of the street, imagining that the world ended and she needed to rebuild this ghost of a town. No cars on the road. No people. The fantasy could be reality if only a strong disease wiped the humans away but for the ones without friends.

A single car waited on the railroad tracks. A Mercedes. A man in a black suit and high collar sat there on the trunk. He smiled at Hildegard with a beakish mouth. His eyes buried under the shade of his hat. Silver cross glowed. He asked her for help.

“By the Christ, am I glad you came by. My engine died. I need someone to help me push it.”

Hildegard ignored him.

“Now, little girl, you won’t leave me here to get crushed by a train. Will you?”

Shy walked by.

“Okay, then. You don't know I seen you before. What about I offer you something? I know what it's like to have not a friend in the world. Help me out, and I show you.”

“I like being alone.”

“Me too- been alone my whole life. It’s your birthday coming up? It’s no fun to celebrate one's birthday by themselves, hear me speak truth. Let me give you a present! It's the least a friend can do.”

She went over to him, wary of strangers, but intrigued by the proposition. What manner of gift do men such as these provide? She wanted to know.

“Now, why not give this car a push. And I will give you your gift.”

She lay her palms on the sun baked steel of the rear bumper. The preacher went back to the front, and took the brake off. . She pushed with her legs, digging her toes into the gravel between the rail ties. The preacher pulled a tire iron from the front seat, but slid it back under after feeling the car shift an inch. The preacher smiled, impressed.

     The trunk popped open. Hildegard screamed at her discovery as curiosity furrowed into revolt. Blood soaked dresses and numerous pairs of lady’s footwear poked up from the fabric like fish heads. She pushed away , her body still that of a little girl, but her mind she was a sprinter. But the preacher already had her trapped. She felt her skin adhered to the steel just like glue. She pulled until flesh peeled away, but before she could work herself loose the preacher pierced her chubby sides with twelve fingers tipped with toxic claws. She tried to get a look because he no longer sounded like the same man- or a man at all. His voice now that of another being. He smelled too! Like pure copper. A leathery hand clasped over her mouth. Her vocal chords strained. Foam dripped from between his fingers. They tasted like rubber chalk. She kicked and scratched but nothing she did injured the preacher. Even as she took a hold of his ear. She dug her nails in and tore the tip away. She hurled it to the ground while he wrestled with her. In a glimpse she saw that his ears weren't round, but sharp and pointed. Blood dripped down the side of the preacher’s face. Though he smiled just like before, but this time with a jubilant sprite dancing on his tongue. His teeth, she noticed, all flat, and long like nail files that extended from his deformed features. He hurled the girl into the trunk, and slammed it shut on her. He picked his ear back up. It almost twitched out of his hand, but caught it by pinching the pointed tip between his sixth finger and the index finger. He noticed it changing color and hurriedly jammed it back on his head. The girl still screamed and beat on the trunk. The preacher couldn't wait for his ear to re attach. He jogged back into the mercedes and drove off.

-Ulysses walked into town. He found the silence heavy like a tidal wave hung suspended. Strange, even for a small town. Not one car drove down the road. He knocked on the door. His mother opened it and she gleefully embraced him. He changed from his road greased rags, and into nice clothes from his closet. Then he came back into the kitchen where mom watched the sunset with troubled eyes.

“Did you hear about what happened?”

“No, mother.”

“A little girl’s disappeared. Kaleb and Imogen’s little girl. Been listening to it on the radio.”

“That’s a shame... A damn shame.”

“She didn’t come home. They found her school bag by the railroad tracks.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing stays lost forever.”

That night, Ulysses laid in bed without sleep. He climbed from bed and left the house with a rusted piece of jewelry dangling before him. He followed its whispers around the old shilohs, and the abandoned loading dock by the river, and then around the trailers. He wrote down the noises he heard. An old man smoking on his porch waved at Ulysses with two fingers. He waved back. Along the river bed he walked, then up onto a shelf of trees he hiked. Thunder brewed in the distance. But the rain would go south and miss the town, he hoped.

Kaleb saw his daughter every night. Sometimes walking in the halls, sometimes riding her bike up and down the street. Sometimes eating at the kitchen table with her elbows on the surface- the way He and Hildegard scolded her not to do  at every meal. It didn’t make him angry anymore. Only made him miss her more. Yet still, if he called to her to be careful, to mind her manners, to brush her hair or teeth, she vanished. Imogen saw her too. Near as much as she saw her husband, because she spent most of her time at the restaurant ever since the disappearance. They saw someone else too. A preacher in black with bleeding fangs and starving, desperate eyes bulging from his skull. His steps echoed at night. He held a night claw hammer in one hand, and nails in another. He spike in latin verses while Imogen bathed. He stood in the corner and counted to one thousand while Kaleb read in the living room.

One day, Kaleb woke up and found the marital bed empty, and three suitcases missing, Imogen’s closet cleaned out, the bathroom sink cleared, and twelve thousand dollars missing from the bank account. She took the car too. No note, but he knew where she went. She left weeks before, but every morning it felt like a fresh development.

“Even if you find him, there’s bringing her back.” Kaleb recited to his steaming coffee. His only prayer in the world. Morning fog covered the streets. He waited for Hildegard's likeness. Even if he couldn’t touch her, at least he could hear her bare feet against the hardwood. He neglected his appointments, sitting around, listening and watching. But she didn’t come. The searches recovered no body. The river flooded and kept searchers away from much of the land they would otherwise be able to transverse. Rain storm after rainstorm came. The search is delayed, the search is delayed. Eventually, it's been weeks. Not even a sign of the girl. Before Kaleb knew it, the day ended and night fell. He wasted the light away, and didn’t even feel tired enough to fall asleep. He sat in a lounge chair, the ticking clock lost. A glass in his hand. Eighty proof. He hoped he’d find it a sleep aide, but all it did was make him wish for sobriety. No fun or ease came from the booze, only a feverish feeling that he could not kill. A knock disturbed his drunken trance. Small raps, two at at time. Ulysses, he knew- the town weirdo, a former classmate. Harmless, but a nocturnal animal with "obscene hobbies". Naturally, many suspected Ulysses of the disappearance. Most in town blamed him whenever someone ran away or died. Kaleb encouraged them all to stop treating poor Ulysses like a witch, issuing that they mind their own business and let the wierdo be weird if it's not hurting anyone. Still, no one knew what this man did in his spare time, but none liked the family he hailed from because of their scandalous history. One great ancestor was a slave catcher. Ulysses’father a con artist. His mother now too old to continue her drug habit, but in her  younger days she hustled fools in the bar. Ulysses, as much as Kaleb knew, nothing like them. In fact, he realized why he liked Ulysses so much- he reminded him of Hildegard.

He got up, calling for the visitor to stop because the knocking drove bolts into his brain. Kaleb turned on the porch light. Ulysses wearing a raincoat and boots stood outside. He looked like a ghillie suit, covered in all manner of growth, as if he’d spent these few weeks living in a bog. Kaleb opened the door, exhausted and sad, he told Ulysses to go home but the town weirdo insisted. “I know where she is.”

Ulysses lay out five cards in a cross, two in the middle he overturned them. The lights flicked. Kaleb neglected to pay the power bill. And the water bill. And the cable bill.

“You saw her?” Kaleb asked again.

“Yes. Shall we go to the police?”

“No…. they’ll take her away.”

“Then, I will show you.”

Ulysses held his hand out for Kaleb to grab, and then they set out. Ulysses asked Kaleb to wear boots at least, pointing to Kaleb’s bare feet, but he ignored Ulysses and left the house. They crossed down a stone stairway through the foliage down to leafy hills where pioneer cabins once stood. Kaleb knew it will. He used to walk through these trees everyday. Ulysses held a dangling piece of metal, and he watched its every movement like a hunter watching a doe. He even held it to his ear, and stopped moving until he collected some new information, and pointed a new way forward. They marched through a flooded woodland. Branches and rocks stabbed his feet, but Kaleb didn’t care. Even as the water rose to his knees, and the thick mud clasped his feet. The cold! Despite his wounds, he felt no pain. The mud and water numbed his lower body. Mist floated on top of the water. Before long, Kaleb did not recognize the land. The trees each looked ancient as if composed by secrets. They reached up, the autumn claiming their coats, but with black bark against the moonlight they appeared as horrid spirits reaching for the moon as if it were fleeting hope. The branches swooped and dripped. He feared they searched for him, hungered for his bones to be splintered and flesh removed, replaced with the blackened bark, and he would live as one of their cursid selves. But the metal that Ulysses held caught his attention as if glowed in the moonlight, without rust, a silvery luster sparkled.

   “We’re near.”

    “I need a minute…” Kaleb leaned on Ulysses. He took rapid breathes. Anxiety shook his spine. “Just to breathe.”

    “I came to you the minute I found her. I warn you-”

   “What happened to her?”

   “It looks like…” Ulysses pulled a flashlight out from his pocket, hit the switch, but no light came on. He shook it, opened the back panel and started fumbling with batteries.

“Looks like what?” A poison syrup flowed into his guts.

“Someone experimented on her.”

“What? Experiment?”

“You won’t believe me until you see I’m afraid.”

“What did they do? What did they do?” Kaleb knocked the flashlight from Ulysses’ hand and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“They tested magic on her.”

    Kaleb let go of Ulysses, but stared at him with conjecture, until the silence between them indicated to Kaleb that Ulysses believed what he said. Ulysses reached down into the mud. The flashlight landed with the source faced down, the mechanism standing upright. He picked it like a flower, and scraped the mud off with his thumb. He turned it on. Kaleb never saw him insert the batteries. The light cut through the dark, and focused on one tree not twenty feet away, yet hidden under a veil of vines and swamp smog. Ulysses focused the light on what looked like a darkened star. Her narrow limbs bound to the tree trunk. A bag over her lopsided head. The light revealed her lifeless body, and the inflictions taking her to judgement. Kaleb covered his mouth, his teeth nibbling on the fat of his hand. His attention unbreakable. He and Ulysses marched until they stood mere inches from the tree. Kaleb reached upwards, but could not reach her. He asked Ulysses for help getting her down-

“And what do you intend on doing with her? Not bury her, or you would've called the police. So what happens once you have her down?”

“I… I don't know, I only want to look at her.”

Ulysses shined the light on the stones growing from her thighs. Each one a different color, though each shined like a piece of  silicon, and shaped like a network of cubes interconnected like a chain.

“That’s from overcharging the body with alteration energies. These are from the body draining the excess.”

“Is it painful?”

“Life a truck being squeezed into your skin. The bag kept her screams quiet. See that marking? No matter how much she screamed, the sound echoed only in the fibers of the canvas. Resilient girl, looks like she almost fought her way free…” he shined the light on a small hole in the middle of her chest. No blood, nor burns- a perfect ring cut into her clothes and flesh. Ulysses walked around the tree with the light to show that the hole exited the opposite end of het tree. “So they killed her with that.”

Kaleb vomited. No matter how much he purged, the noxious syrup stayed in his gut. He wiped his mouth and stood back up, but kept his view away from the corpse of his spawn pinned above him. What  unknowable horrors inflicted onto the girl remained both fascinating, and heart wrenching. Ulysses kept inspecting the body, writing down notes.

“I can bring her back, Kaleb. If you wish for me to do it.”

“Will she be the same as before?”

“No. She will remember everything that happened to her before she died, and she will take everything she gained from the afterlife with her. Do you want me to go through with this?”

“Yes. Yes, Please do so.”

“As you request. Go home. Rest. I won’t promise perfect results. I’ve only done this one other time. But I’ll need to be alone for the ritual.” He began producing artifacts from his pockets. Kaleb remained, looking at Ulysses with disbelieving concern of a lost child. “You don’t want to see this. Go home. I’ll tell you if I am successful in the morning.”

“You expect me to leave?”

“I don't want you to see this. I don't know what you will do. Go home.”

“I want to see her…”

“No, you don’t.” Kaleb looked again at Ulysses, this time his eyes glowed in the dark a faint blue. Mist and ice flakes dropped from his lashes. Ulysses no longer minded Kaleb. He already begun.

Kaleb watched some. His heart raced, but his stomach ached like a ticking bomb. A strange affection warmed his shoulder, an invisible hand. Betrayal is leaving this place, he thought, struggling to watch, too afraid to intervene because the voice of Ulysses’ was no longer his own- he spoke to someone, a stranger in his throat. The tree dropped. Not a thundering collapse, but as if lowered by suspension cables, it leaned over slowly, landing in the mud without a sound, stirring no mist and disturbing no life. Ulysses climbed on the trunk, and unwound the bindings about Hildegard. He took the canvas away, and gagged at what he saw. What the perpetrator hoped to achieve from her Ulysses would never reveal to Kaleb, but Kaleb saw Ulysses put the bag back on and swear. Kaleb felt curious, so he approached. Ulysses’ whole body misted, and cold blossoms of air exhausted from his nostrils and mouth, but also ears and hair. He produced a mason jar filled with a homemade concoction. A dark, but sweet looking solution. Ulysses pulled out a paint brush, dipped it in, and began to coat Hildegard, clothes, hair, bag, and all. Kaleb figured his toes must be blue by now because he didn’t know if he was sinking or just collapsing under his own fatigue. A wandering hand lifted towards Hildegard, Kaleb had no control of his body. He wanted to see her, to see her sugar sweet face just once more, he’d give anything, anything… he reached, Ulysses concentrated on his work and did not noticed the wandering hand until the bag had slid part way down, where a mouth should have been. Kaleb gasped. His spine shook. His genitals lifted and his ears twitched as bodily fluids rioted inside his body. She had no mouth, but instead the proboscis of a mosquito. He fell back into the mud. As Ulysses attempted his spell- the body remained still, but wings- transparent, paper thin wings far too small to carry even a small human, flapped against the trunk from behind her shoulders.

Kaleb heeded the advice of Ulysses, and disappeared from the scene as fast as his condition allowed. He walked like a drunk, though the alcohol already passed. Even as he stepped out from the chilled swamp of flooded river and stepped on hard ground. He felt like a walking dream. Until he came home. He saw the car. And a light on. He wandered inside, finding the door wide open. Inside he walked, seeing Imogen there at the kitchen table, every pore of her body filled with blood and mud. He recognized her by her steel glance, those black pearls in her sea of blue. She held something for him to see. He tip toed closer, a great happiness reborn, but along with it, a dire sense of regret for he knew what Ulysses was doing, but began to fear that he made the wrong decision.  In fact, deep in his heart, he knew it to be a terrible idea…. But he couldn’t leave her alone, once she was dead.

He stood at the opposite end of the table. Imogen held in her filthy palms a severed ear. Kaleb took a closer look. Imogen anticipated Kaleb’s disgust, but he looked at it with a matter of understanding. A pointed ear.

He told her nothing of Ulysses and Hildegard. They bathed, and went to sleep. At sunup, both found themselves deep in the wonderland of all powerful sleep. But the house was cold. The front door hung open, and autumn drafts chilled the house. Muddy footprints lead up the stairs, a rain coat dragged against the wooden steps. His cargo slept soundly. He carried her wrapped in a wool blanket to the top of the stairs, and then silently through the hall. The room at the end, he determined to be hers because it was the only one locked. With a quick whisper, the lock undid itself, and Ulysses entered. He felt uncomfortable in this house, in this room. He did not intend to idle, so he lay the girl down, and tucked her in. Ulysses left her door open, but shut the front door as he left. Feeling his work done, Ulysses re entered obscurity where someone might need his talents.

Brina the Victorious

We read often

as the scholars best know how to write

of old songs by our forlorn ancestors

from the lost epoch.

Some of war, some of grief,

some of mirth and glee

some of adventure and deceit

and some of jokes and ribaldry

and many of enchantment.

In the far north this song was written

In a time of kings and roving barbarians

composed among frozen mountains

discovered in frost bitten ruins.

Of all these old songs I can tell maybe some

but not all.

But Listen, true lords and noble ladies!

I will tell you of “Hemford and Brina the Victorious”.

Hemford was known from the deserts of ebony to the coasts of Ivory

An adventurer ordained with a wealth of treasures, knowledge, and wisdom.

From a miner’s camp he started, but only in wandering, never in work, did he find his greatest pleasures. Great deeds spreads by mouth gossip of slayn giants, drowned sea monsters, and fallen castles to the south. Taken by his hand alone.

In the far countries deep inland, they whispered of famined villages' soil revitalized

by his invention. Of crumbling bridges reconstructed, of clean water filtered from brackish, soiled water.

But few know of his later years when he grew disenchanted of questing for idle things like riches or reputation, and became enamoured with a deep yearning to share his wealth and experiences among great mountains and open skies, maps of lost cities, tombs of ancestors, this is what compelled him to take a journey to the cold land. Up a northern path he treaded. His greatest days long  passed.

His flesh sagged from the bone. Brittle hairs hid his scars. He moved slower. The slope lifted over tree tops. The hawks watched the old adventurer. But he stood up straight in his chainmail. An axe on his hip. He entered a hamlet along the road as the sun dropped among four shacks in the middle of feeble fields of frosted dirt and runt crops budding with a single leaf. The peasants returned home from the fields in a group, and as they passed they recognized Hemford by his attire and fabled weapon. The fur cape and the Shield-Splitter. They flocked around him, some begging, some holding their children for a blessing, some asked for stories of the outside world.

some offered him gifts- money, daughters, livestock, all of which he rejected without casting a noticing glance. Apart from a cloak provided to him by a small child to cover his bald head from the falling snow.

Hemford denied his fame, claiming that travelers and songsingers over time exaggerated his greatest glories- but that he would tell the true stories to anyone that might accommodate him for a night and he only wanted to stay with whoever was the hardest worker in the village.

Many lived collected under four sod longhouses. A scant minority lived in shackles around the outskirts of the village. The town appeared leaderless, without a smith, without a healer, without a jarl or landlord.

Brina, son of Arnhoir the Honest, boasted to the embarrassment of his father, that it was he that  works from before the sun rises to well past its descent. Arnhoir grabbed the boy, his face red and ashamed. Arnhoir the Honest, the smallest property of the village- a mere shack with frigid dirt flooring, goats as housemates, a humble fire pit, with hay for the small clan to sleep on in the corner. He farmed a weak plot. Yet he and his sole son worked hard to cultivate the land. Hemford read the hardship in their color drained faces, the worn and tired eyes, the deep wrinkles and hardened flesh, and recognized the misery from his own time in and among poverty.

Hemford pointed his battle toughened finger at Arnhoir and asked him the name of his clan. Arnhoir admitted that his clan had no name. His wife died of madness, two first sons died of plague. Arnhoir pulled his only son to his side to declare that the boy was the only thing he had, and thus was not worthy to host such a legendary idol.

But Hemford already made his decision, and he declared thus:  “Anyone who labors  hard is a hero to me”.  Arnhoir's son smiled as a great joy ignited in his heart.

Hemford entered their shamble of a shack. He ate there, and retold stories of his adventures, companions, enemies until the wolves howled at the emerging moon. Hemford showed them the scars on his body, the knicks taken out from his armour, and where he found the weapons he decorated his belt with. Never once did Hemford purchase any of these- he either made them himself or recovered them from the tomb of a long dead tyrant. Brina's eyes lit up like lighting following a passing storm. The boy stood again proud and as tall as he could make himself, and implored Hemford to adopt him as a colleague, perhaps a squire- anything that Hemford needed, Brina claimed to possess the ability to do. Polish armor, sharpened weapons, saddle horses, tell jokes, sing songs- but Arnhoir recoiled in horror. He ordered his son to be quiet, and turned to Hemford, petrified to see the old adventurer with an expression of deep consideration. Arnhoir explained to Hemford: “If you had any children you would understand. He can't leave. He doesn't know what's out there. Doesn't know of the dangers. He doesn't even have a sword, or armour! And I'm too poor to provide him with any equipment.”

Hemford slapped his knee. “Then I shall! There is no expense too great for me. Your son is at the age when I first set out to find fortune. I'd hate to be the one who might refuse such a chance to experience the miracles of our world.”

“Where are you off too?” asked Arnhoir.

“To find the ruins of AzkurKoatza, sire.”

“Nay! I will never submit my only son to such an errand. No one knows if that

city even exists.”

“I found this map on the body of a crusader floating down the river. If the map is accurate, then it shows the way to the ruins.”

He showed Arnhoir the map. He studied it, but handed it back admitting to Hemford that he was not literate. Hemford pointed to the scribbles, showing him the village they currently rested in, and then showing him the path northwards just under the cliffs of the frozen coast. Some forty miles away.

“What if your wrong, and it isn't there?”

“A warlock in the desert wrote a book about the lost cities, and in this book he tells that the city is lost under the glaciers of the frozen coast. Something is there, and I'm going to find it.”

“I've never been apart from my son, sir. I don't know if I can go without him for long.”

“If that's your decision, sire.” Hemford said, but felt crushed as the Brina's lightning eyes sunk, and he slumped defeated.

Hemford went off the next morning, waking up just as light appeared over the horizon. He noticed Brina absent from the shack, but he took his leave believing the boy to be working as he claimed to. However as he crossed from the town and crossed over the fence of mountains, the young Brina intercepted him. Hemford asked him to explain how he caught up so fast, and Brina explained that he never went to sleep, and left once his father and Hemford dozed off he took his leave, knowing from the map which way Hemford would travel.

Hemford shook his head, though deeply impressed with the boy's determination, expressed his wish that Brina mind his father, as the farmer was right. Dangers are abound in this world. But Brina refused to listen. He began to emotionally plead with Hemford, asking him to take him from the back breaking work that never amounts to a thing, from the small hamlet of daily routine that he could only escape through imaginary treks. For years, he claimed, he wanted to see the frozen coasts, for years, he longed for his chance to depart from the hamlet and never return.

Hemford took the boy by the collar, looked at him with conviction, and told the Brina: “We stop at the city on our way, and get you a weapon and something to protect yourself. We go to the frozen coasts, and I take you back. What your father does to you or me is up to him.”

Brina lost his dreary demeanor and danced like a merrymaker, and joked like a jester the whole week and a half it took them to reach the city gates. There, Hemford purchased for the Brina a bow and arrows so he could hunt for himself, a fishing pole to catch fish, a net to catch bugs if he became desperate for food. He took Brina to an armorer, and paid the man to make for Brina a cuirass of leather since iron he feared would be too heavy. He purchased also a barbuda helmet, the only pre made one small enough to fit the boy’s head. He then bought a saber for the boy to use. Hemford spent the rest of the journey sharing everything he know about the art of sword fighting, surviving in the wilderness, and ways to avoid death in general.

When they arrived to the frozen coasts, Brina was so amazed by the magnitude of the glaciers that Hemford worried that the boy stopped listening to his lesson. Hemford lead the way down the cliff, lowering himself down by rope, and Brina following just behind him. Once on the rocky shore, Brina looked determined and focused. He practiced all that Hemford taught him along their search. He dug out fish trapped in ice, he shot a big crab, and they ate its meat for days. Brina and Hemford dueled to keep their skills sharpened, and to Hemford's suspense Brina  kept up with him and even countered his strikes. They found each other laughing as they dueled, losing idle time as their practice became enjoyment.

After two weeks, Hemford showed Brina on the map where they were, and pointed to the cave before them. “That's it. It's what the warlock writes about. Looks just as he describes, and smells the same too. Be prepared, and stay close to me.”

The two went inside, Hemford leading and Brina behind. Glowing ice cycles illuminated the frost bitten walls. Vines of ivy hung from the ceiling. Rats squeaked, and water dripped into frigid puddle, freezing once it met contact. The deeper in they went, the darker the cave became. The glowing ice worked only where it met sunlight to absorb. Hemford lit a lantern and held it out. The oil smelled like whale and cast moving shadows onto the walls. Brina felt himself growing nervous and more nervous as the path tilted downwards into a stream of moist,warm air.

“Something is down here.” Hemford slid down and pulled Brina with him. They tumbled over rocks and frightened away the rodents with their clanking of equipment. Other sounds emerged from deeper in the cave. Ferral sighs and groans. Hemford pulled Brina up, and told him to be ready for anything. The lantern shattered, and the oil burned, revealing the rest of the way impassible due to a collapse. Hemford pushed against the blockage, removed loose stones, but he found that the blockage went on for miles and sealed the passage shut. The feral groans arose once more. Hemford came away from the earth rubble and told Brina to remain by the fire. Something came for them. A dozen groans darted along the walls, snarls and smacking of flesh as tiny eyes emerged in the fire light, holding small but sharp razors cut from unmeltable ice. The creatures pounced, and the two fought them back as they retreated back up the incline. Halfway up, Hemford looked around. Blood on his weapon, and dead feral creatures littering his path, but Brina was gone. Hemford hurried back down, slashing and hacking at the creatures . Brina's sword lay against a rock on the incline. His helmet down further way, and the rest of his supplies scattered down. At last he found Brina laying in the dirt, face down, arms and legs twisted, the creatures prodding his body with their spears. Hemford released a rage he thought only possible for a younger man, and cut the rest of the creatures into ribbons, chopping the little devils apart even after death before going to Brina with a heavy dread filling his heart.

He rolled Brina over, and saw the boy died when one of the creatures nicked his thigh. Brina probably didn't even feel it,or was too proud to say anything, and when he lost too much blood he tumbled down the incline. Hemford scooped the boy up, and carried him out of the cave.

Hemford lived for two more decades. In that time he refused to return to the far north, his memories and shame too great. However when an old companion from the northern city called on him, Hemford was compelled to head northwards once more. He took the same path as before over the mountains, but didn't stand up straight like a legendary adventurer- more as the old man he felt he had become. He pulled a hood over his head as he crossed through the hamlet. He hoped none would notice him, so he moved at night, silently, hiding his armour and weapons beneath a cloak. Unfortunately he forgot where he acquired the cloak, and one of the villagers recognized the gift they bestowed to the hero, and they cried to the rest of the hamlet- only fifteen people lived there then, and they all just as before assembled to once again meet the famous adventurer. They didn't ask him this time about his own journeys or stories, but about Brina- what became of Brina? And Hemford began to fill with tears, much to the grave concern of the villagers. Among the crowd stood Arnhoir the Honest. Hemford hung still, wordless, motionless, Hemford he dropped his head, swallowed, and turned to the hamlet. He told them about Brina- how the boy caught him as he travelled, about his resourcefulness in nature, and how the boy kept Hemford alive after the rope broke as they descended the cliffs. He told them that Brina nursed him, aided his healing, and searched for the cave as well as brought food to nourish Hemford until at last the boy came back to camp with the news of his discovery. Limping, and on crutches, they went into the cave, deep inside, only to be ambushed by monsters in the dark. The villages held their breaths. Arnhoir looked like a statue about to tip over. But Hemford told them if Brian hadn't been there with him, that he would have died in that cave or on the rocky beach, and that he was honored to have such a companion. The villages came closer. They wanted to hear more about their great hero, and so he told them all about the adventures and treasures recovered by the stalwart farmboy. How Brina slew more brutal monsters than he ever had, and braved far worse challenges than Hemford dreamed of accepting. Hemford looked above the villagers at the aurora burning in the night sky, and suggested that he believed Brina to be a king by now. These stories captivated the villager's imaginations for years to come, and as the generations developed, these stories became embellished- Brina the Victorious became a word greater than the entire life of the meager hamlet. Long after the village became a ghost's wail in the wind, the stories remained.

Hemford left the next morning, awaking from an old woman's chicken coup and moving on, but along the way out he saw Arnhoir the Honest toiling. Lifting a worn out hoe with a labored grunt over his back and wedging it in the cold, barren soil. He stopped to rest, looking tired, but with a light in his eyes. “I'm glad my son is out there doing great things, sir.” he said to Hemford. “But if you run into him, just tell him that his father wishes he would come visit. Just one time."