The Tale of Onora: The Boy and the Peddler of Death (3 page)

“It’s strung with the web of Queen Ennael,” he replied.

Disbelief crept over the boy’s face. “The fabled arachnid monster? How?”

The man winced in pain as though someone had just punctured his stomach. He gritted his teeth as he fought back his emotions and breathed heavily through his nose. The boy didn’t know the story behind it, but he knew full well what the tears of loss looked like, for it was loss that he learned everything through. It was something that he now believed he inherited from his father.

“I’m sorry”, the man muttered.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” the boy replied. He pointed to a large quiver of arrows that was encrusted with symbols of the moon. “But I’m not leaving until you tell me the truth about that.”

The man’s eyes followed the boy’s gesture and looked at the quiver. The boy recognized it and knew it well. Even though he had never seen this particular one, he knew that it once belonged to his mother. The symbols were from his homeland and scribed in the language of his race. It was adorned in her handcrafted designs.

The man had to accomplish great deeds to be given such a gift. The only other explanation was that he had to have been a better thief than those who dedicated their lives to the profession of piracy. The boy stared at the man and tried to figure out which it was.

“Are you a thief?” he asked. “Did you steal that from my mum?”

The man looked down as if to seek the answer from within. His eyes made their way back to the boy’s. “Had I done such a thing, would I be alive to speak of it?”

The boy gently shook his head. The tension in his shoulders relaxed. It was the first time he knew that the man spoke the truth.

“May I tell you something?” the man asked earnestly.

The boy looked on in anticipation, nodding eagerly.

“Your mother was the first woman I kissed in the new world,” He smiled bashfully. “Years later, I met her again… I’ll never forget my first time in your homeland. I wasn’t in the country more than an hour before my head was on a chopping block. It was your mother who saved me.”

“She saved your life?” the boy asked.

“At the eleventh hour,” the man replied.

He took time to recall the deeds of his complicated past.

“I’ve stolen everything,” he continued. “Hearts and lives alike. But that quiver… That I did not steal. No, that I earned.”

“Perfection,” the boy said. “On horseback.”

“Indeed,” the man responded.

Of all the things the man had done, this was the most impressive in the boy’s eyes. The man savored the newfound respect that it earned him.

“She doesn’t speak of you,” the boy said.

The man raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“Won’t speak of you,” the boy corrected. “That’s the better choice of words.”

“You must be gentle with her in that regard,” the man responded. “Your mother is one of the most beautiful beings that I have ever laid my eyes upon.”

The boy let slip a grin. “Obviously they weren’t the only things you laid upon her.” He wanted to connect with his father and to hear him laugh. This might be his only chance.

The man’s tough exterior crumbled. His mouth winced in an effort to hold in a chuckle. “Well, your good looks didn’t come from me.”

The boy’s confidence grew. “What happened between the two of you?”

“Your mother could have had any man she desired,” the man replied. “I imagine even now her features are the sort that young maidens dream of. I don’t know why she chose me. Had she not saved me when I was a boy, I wouldn’t have even made it to Maebelfry.”

“She saved your life twice?” the boy asked.

“Nothing is simple or straightforward between your mother and me,” the man responded. “The first time, absolutely. She unequivocally saved my hide. But the second time, not so much.”

“How so?” the boy asked.

The man thought about the dark secret that he harbored. He discerned what facts to omit from his son, what facts to protect him from.

“The second time, I was a man,” he said. “She saved me from something that she was responsible for orchestrating. But that’s an entirely different tale. It’s not pertinent to your question.”

“Orchestrated?” the boy asked.

“I don’t want to hide the truth,” the man said. “But you must learn that tale from her.”

“No,” the boy pleaded. “Please. She is my mum. I love her eternally. But I must know from someone outside of our family, someone from outside the reach of her retribution.”

“I understand,” the man replied.

“Was she a good person?” the boy asked.

“As good as they come,” the man said.

The boy grew more childlike, as though he were about to cry. “Then how could she do that to you? Why did the two of you part? Why couldn’t you stay?”

The man pressed his lips together in compassion. His eyebrows lifted with sensitivity towards the situation. He tried to speak, but he didn’t like what he was about to say. He took a moment to rethink his words. “Son, I don’t know how to explain to you… the way…” He looked lost. “There are…”

The boy grew incensed. “Explain what?”

The man’s frustration with himself and the way his life had played out caused him to pause. His breathing stopped. He exhaled loudly through his nose. “There are no words I know for me to explain to you how cruel life can be.”

“Try!” the boy said.

The man did not appreciate the boy’s tone, but he understood what it felt like to need to know the truth. He was a faithful companion to the hell that was created by trying to guess the meanings of the things that go unsaid.

“You may desire something so passionately that it feels right in every molecule of your body. It may feel like destiny, or that nature designed you for that specific reason.” The man quivered in antipathy. “But something terrible may happen to you, something that I cannot protect you from. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The man paused. He waited for some sort of confirmation from the boy to continue. The boy stared intently and gave an unconscious nod.

The man proceeded. “Sometimes, that which you want most in life does not return a similar desire for you. Sometimes dreams get destroyed. The pain instills restlessness into your heart that refuses to let you sleep. Ghosts of your mind’s projections haunt you. You’ll think of the smiles you’ll never see, the moments you’ll never share, and a future that existed in thought but not in reality. If they arrive, they’ll keep you up at night. A day may come when you cannot recognize the vacant eyes that stare back at you in your reflection. And you lose yourself. You could spend the rest of your life wondering why God let you die but refused to bury you. You might wonder why you were forced to wake up each day, why you couldn’t just pass away peacefully in your sleep. You might wonder how it was ever possible for you to be made to want something you could never have.”

The boy was so dumbfounded that he completely lost track of the questions he wanted to ask. Strategically guiding the conversation to attain the truth from his father would prove to be difficult.

“Did this happen to you or to my mum?” he asked.

“I think it was both, perhaps,” the man replied. His expression appeared as a physical riddle. “Without the amity of timing, a person who would have loved you more than anything, forever, may sail right past you and into the ocean of what could have been, and you are left wondering while you drown in the void of your solitude.”

The boy felt his stomach churn. He clasped his knees tightly together, as though it would somehow give him the courage to face what he dreaded. An ache arose in the back of his throat. He felt jealous that his father at least encountered someone he could have loved. The boy had nothing. He was born in a void of solitude and to this day he hadn’t been able to escape it.

“Will you tell me why the two of you parted?” he quietly asked.

The man watched his son’s complexion grow pale as the boy drifted into a fragile state. The man felt that one wrong choice of words could have a devastating effect, and so he thought carefully before he spoke.

“They say that the flow of time cleanses the past, that it heals all wounds of the heart,” he replied. “But I know firsthand that it doesn’t. Wounds I cannot speak of still exist. They never heal.”

The boy didn’t understand. There had to have been a possibility for his parents to be together. His mother didn’t speak of it and his father only spoke in metaphors and whatever the hell else he was trying to say. It left him more confused than before.

“You look like you need a drink,” the man said. There was no response. “Right. Tell you what, pick a chalice from the mantle.”

“Any one?” the boy asked.

“Whichever you like,” the man said.

The boy stood up and examined the chalices, laden with the fire’s glow. The man walked over to a shelf and plucked a bottle from it. He approached the boy with a jolly recklessness.

“Choose wisely,” he said. “They have a tendency to change your constitution.” He devilishly winked at the boy and placed the bottle down on a side table that looked like it had been cut straight from a tree.

One of the chalices was pure silver. It had a dark purple stone embedded in it. At first glance the stone looked black. The boy picked it up.

“I want this one,” he said.

“Ah,” the man said. “A true R
ökkr. Not one of my children has failed to choose that one.”

“What does it mean?” the boy asked.

“That jewel is a Shadean lodestone,” the man replied. “You are attracted to the shadowlight.”

The man grabbed an ivory chalice on the other end of the mantle. It was embedded with a turquoise jewel. There was something ominous about the chalice, but the boy couldn’t figure it out under the current lighting.

“What type of lodestone is that?” he asked.

The man raised the cup and peacefully admired the jewel. “Wakan. The Ani’Yun’wiya had it right. Magic that doesn’t heal is a waste of universal energy.”

As the hearth fire illuminated the ivory chalice, the boy gasped in horror at what it was made of. The cup portion was a skull that was cut in half and turned upside down to hold the contents. The stem was made of femur. The bone pieces were fused together with silver. The base was made of two mandibles, teeth still intact.

“Is that someone you knew?” the boy asked.

“All too well,” the man replied. “You see, when I kill something, I try not to let it go to waste.”

The man savored the terror that was exuberating from his expression and flowing into the boy’s mind. He wanted the boy to know the wicked side of his goodness. Just because he was a champion of freedom, of truth, and integrity, it did not mean that he wasn’t capable of being flawlessly evil.

“Who is it?” the boy asked, then corrected himself. “Was it?”

“In good time,” the man replied. He raised his right hand and commanded the cork in the bottle to remove itself. “
Kri’sha. Drewst dosstan
.”

The cork smoothly twisted itself out of the bottle and hovered into the air. The man gently guided it with his hand until it set itself down onto the side table.

The man raised his hand towards the bottle and commanded it to come to him. “
Ujool. Doer ulu ussa.
”

The boy watched in awe as the bottle came to life and floated into the man’s grasp. He was amazed at how casually the man used magic to assist his everyday needs. He wondered if his father even remembered how to do things manually.

“Give me your cup,” the man said.

The boy handed the chalice over. The man whispered to the Shadean lodestone, “
Pahntar ukt shar. Jous utka natha dro.
”

He gave the silver chalice back to the boy, but now the boy felt another presence in the room, scrutinizing him from the outlying darkness.

The boy examined the chalice. “What did you say to it?”

The man poured the brandy into his ivory chalice and set the bottle down. He held the chalice with his left hand and knelt beside the hearth fire, still facing the boy.

“I told it to open your mind.” He turned back towards the fire. “I told it to show you a life.”

The boy grew concerned with how a stone would be able to show him the history of any life, whether it was the past, present, or future. He wasn’t naive. He knew for everything he gained from the dark arts, there would be a serious price to pay.

“I’d rather you tell me,” he said.

“Truth is relative,” the man replied. “Our minds have a tendency to remember things only the way in which they happened to us, the way they made us feel. It results in us inadvertently lying about what we experienced.”

The man raised his right hand towards the flame like a person trying to pet a wild animal. The fire danced enthusiastically in the reflection of his irises as their façade glowed with its unpredictable movement. He called the fire by its name and commanded it not to burn him.

“
Chath
,” he said. “
Xun naut flamgra ussa.
”

The boy stared in disbelief as the man put his hand into the flames. It was as simple as someone dipping his hand into a fountain.

The man commanded the fire to lend him its heat. “
Tlu’og ussa dosst morn’lo.
”

He looked down into the chalice and observed the brandy. As it began to form bubbles and steam, he pulled his hand away from the fire. He set the cup down on the side table and motioned to the boy. The boy wearily knelt beside his father, uncertain of what he was supposed to do.

“Are you familiar with equipoise?” the man asked.

The boy shook his head. “It’s forbidden.”

“Most call it magic,” the man said. “As though it’s some sort of lost art form that must be learned through ancient sages. But it’s not. It’s merely symmetry, oneness, harmony, and affinity. It’s as simple as being present. Everyone can do it. Some are simply more in tune with it than others.”

“Why is it so rare to see it practiced?” the boy asked.

“Because we live in a world of fools,” the man replied. “The self-proclaimed master magi are no different than the peasants they protect their secrets from. They’d have you join the Order of M’elzar and seduce you with the promise of embarking on the path to providence. Were you foolish enough to be swept up by their enthusiastic recognition and their perverse encouragement, you might be tricked into believing that you were one of them and that you tread on the road to enlightenment. But you don’t, and if you accept their counsel, you never shall.”