The Temple of Heart and Bone (8 page)

The fallen leaves of the forest
crunched under his feet. He began to move faster and faster. He felt a strength
pushing him on, a strength he had not known in the time since his awakening. He
had to get to the cottage. The trees of the forest blurred past him. His
vision, which had still been hazy when he left the farm, grew clearer as he
traveled. He heard the birds of the forest sing out warnings as he crashed through
leaves and old, snapping branches. He found the path he had walked as a living
man. He was close. The path had grown over, been littered with years of
detritus from the surrounding forest. The sense of the familiar, however, urged
him forward. There, in the distance, he could see the clearing which had served
as their little garden.

Emerging from the trees,
Drothspar stepped into the remains of their garden in the afternoon light. The
rich soil had been fertile; grass and weeds covered the ground thickly. He
walked toward the cottage itself, more intact, he thought, than the farm he had
left earlier. As he moved around the structure, he noticed that the wood of the
front porch had been charred in some places, but it appeared that the fire had
not taken a deep root. The majority of the structure remained intact.

The windows had been broken; the
door hung awkwardly from its hinges. Drothspar entered, pushing his dagger
before him as if to ward off any images he might find that were too horrible to
assimilate. The room was dark, though light poured in through the windows.
Leaves—old, new, and all dead—had blown through the windows and settled on the
once clean cottage floor. He searched through the rooms, assailed by memories
of living and of his life there. He beat them back with his mind, searching for
some sign of what might have happened.

Almost everything was gone. He
couldn’t tell if it had been looters who had sacked the house, or if someone
had simply packed in a hurry, with no intention to return. A few rusted pots
were strewn about the kitchen. The remains of curtains hung near the shattered
windows. Some of the curtains were partially burned. Torches, he thought.
Someone had thrown torches through at least some of the windows. Aside from the
burns on the curtains, the wooden beams of the ceiling and walls appeared to be
entirely intact. Someone had been here. Someone had stopped the torches before
they had time to work on the interior of the house.
Li
, it had to have
been Li!

Returning to the door, he
examined it more closely. It had been broken in from the outside. He ran his
hand along its cracked surface, trying to understand what cried out to him and
just as afraid that he would. He stood in the doorway and looked into the
cottage. He walked inside and dropped roughly to his knees. He started pushing
leaves and dirt around the stone floor. There, in the center of the room, he
uncovered a dark, black stain sunk deep into the porous stone. He set one hand
down in the middle of the stain and bowed his head. He pushed away the leaves
and the dirt to see how wide the stain had been. It was at least three feet
across. He had seen such stains before. It was too big, too much. Someone had
died there. He shook his head slowly, grief welling up inside him. He looked
down at his empty frame, wondering where he felt it. It was too much, he
thought to himself. This was all just too damn much.

Li had died there, he was certain
of it. While he had been away, dead or dying in the forest, she had stayed
here, defending her home and herself.
She
had been the one to gather the
torches thrown through the windows.
She
had been the one to die here, in
the center of the room. She had not cowered in a corner. She had not hidden
from her attackers. She had stood here—defiantly most likely—and faced them.
She had died here, her life spilled out around her to sink into the cold stone
floor.

He hadn’t been here for her. He
knew that. He felt weak again, tired. It had been so damn futile. They had died
apart because they had had an argument. It wasn’t even a serious argument, but
a minor spat over honey. Honey!

If he had been here, he could not
have saved her, he had no illusions about that. The men who had done this, he
was certain, were the same men who had ridden him down in the forest. He could
not have hoped to have held off so many men. If he had been there, though, he
could at least have died with her. He could have held her hand and told her he
loved her before their last long night together. Instead, he had left without a
word, walking out into the night worried about honey and pride. Now, he
couldn’t even cry, and he wanted to so very, very much.

He knelt there on the floor,
touching the blood of his beloved. He prayed, silently, to his Maker, begging
God to care for the love that had been his life. He apologized for all of his
arrogance, for all of his faults, for not being with Li when she had needed him
most. He begged the Maker to hear him, even though he was no longer sure what
he was, miracle or curse. He looked with clearing vision at the uncovered bones
that made up his hands. Is this all that I am, he asked.

He stayed kneeling on the floor
for quite some time. He prayed every prayer he could remember, from his
childhood to his novitiate. He took the most comfort in those simple prayers of
youth, repeating them often, searching them for strength and faith. He had been
told, as a priest, that there would be times of great trial in life. He had
been told that his faith would be shaken, would be questioned, might even be
broken.

“Why,” he had asked, “why must
that happen?”

“To test us, child,” Gathner had
told him. Gathner, the chapter archpriest of Drothspar’s order, was a serious
man. He stood just over six feet tall and had long white hair and a long white
beard. He was in his late fifties and had piercing blue eyes. Gathner had
creases in his face that added weight to his wisdom. He looked to have been
roughly chiseled from a block of mottled granite. Though he was a thin man, his
voice carried with it a power and authority that belied his slight frame.

“A man who lives a life of plenty
and knows only joy will, if he is wise, be thankful to God,” Gathner continued.
“But how will he know who he, himself, is? It is not in joy and plenty that we
are tested, because it is not hard to live and be good in such times. It is in
times when we are in need that we find our true generosity. It is in times when
we are suffering that we are made whole. It is in times when we are lost that
we find our true selves. It is in times when we think that no more harm or evil
can befall us and, still, it does; these are the times when we find our true
strength and our true faith. It is not the tragedy that defines us, child, it
is our response. We, alone, define ourselves in all things.”

Drothspar clung to the words of
his mentor, and begged God to let him cry. Oh, he wailed silently to himself,
this is all just too much. He pressed his forehead to the stained floor over
and over, rocking back and forth unable to think through the loss and pain. He
willed for the blood of his fallen love to rise up through his cold, hard hands
and wind itself around his arm and body. He rocked and rocked, letting
everything flow out of his mind except the motion of his movement.

The cottage had grown dark with
the fall of night, though Drothspar had taken no notice. He felt lost,
unattached, out of control. His thoughts churned like a storm-tossed ship,
unable to find solid anchorage. No thought lasted in his mind; images rose like
waves and crashed into non-existence. He was certain that the ship of his mind
would shatter on some rocky outcropping of horror that would emerge from the
black storm of insanity.

Was that it, then? Was insanity
his only remaining course? He howled in his mind. It had to be, what else could
there be? He was bones, that’s all. Not a scrap of flesh dangled from his
frame. Not one organ remained in his structure to provide life, or being, or
purpose. Nothing remained to him. His love was gone. His mind was following.
What was he doing here? Why, why was he still alive? But, he chided himself
bitterly, he wasn’t alive. What, then, he asked himself, what in the twelve
depths of hell was he?

What was he? What was he? What
was he? Like the rocking of his body, that thought echoed over and over in his
mind. No answers came, and the question only came faster and faster. His mind
raced to shout it at him over and over.

“What am I?!” it shouted.

“What are you?!” it yelled.

“What is this?!” it screamed.

Over and over, like rotating
mantras the questions assailed his mind. His rocking became feverish, and his
hands reached up to his skull. He pressed on either side of his head, hoping
that his hands could contain the wild, churning thoughts that appeared to be
boiling therein. Weaving and rocking he moved faster and faster. His head
twisted on his neck. His black, empty eyes searched the cottage, the world for
an answer that couldn’t be found. He shuddered erratically, unable to control
the thoughts in his mind or the movements of his body. Finally, with a violent
lurch, he plunged his head into the stone floor, as if to knock himself
unconscious.

His body collapsed and sprawled
out around him. He had felt no pain at the impact, and he was not unconscious.
His mind, in its depths, still raced, but on the surface, he only called,
weakly, to his mother. He called to his mother as might a wounded and
frightened child, unsure of all around him. He called to his mother and to his
Maker, alternating between some protective childhood and shattered fragments of
prayerful lucidity. He begged his mother and his God for protection. He begged
his mother and his God to keep his sanity, to keep it warm and safe. He sobbed,
silently, trying to explain to his mother and to his God that he wasn’t sure he
could care for his sanity anymore. “No,” he told them, “I’m just not certain
anymore.”

He grasped a handful of leaves
and clutched them in his hand. He gathered more and more leaves to his breast until
he had a pile large enough to hug. He clung to the leaves as a child might
cling to a favorite stuffed toy. He would squeeze the leaves, crushing them to
his frame, and then relax his grip, as if he were crushing not a toy, but
comforting a lover. He would release his hold on the leaves, and pat them
gently, trying to make some order out of them. Then, gripped in a fear that
couldn’t even show in the expression of his face, he’d crush the pile to
himself again. The leaves would enter his rib cage, and he’d desperately
scramble to assemble more, afraid that the leaves, like everything else, would
desert him.

He had no idea of how much time
had passed on the floor in the leaves. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
Nothing mattered to him at that point. “Nothing,” he thought to himself.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” he
repeated in a sing-song voice in his mind, “nothing, nothing, nothing.” It
became his new mantra. Rocking in the leaves, fearfully working to keep his
pile with him, he sang his chant within his mind, over and over. His head still
swiveled from time to time, looking for answers. Occasionally, his view jerked
to one corner of the cottage or another, as if some answer were lurking there,
hiding just out of sight. His head would snap from one position to another, as
he tried to catch the furtive movements of the elusive answers. His empty eyes
would focus on the equally empty space, waiting for the answers to misstep and
appear. Then his body would go back to rocking, and leaves would again scatter
on the floor.

The sun returned to the sky with
the morning, shining through shattered windows to find Drothspar still prone on
the floor. Unable to sleep, his rocking had subsided, receding to almost
rhythmic twitches. Leaves would scatter with the occasional violent lurch of
his body, but the intervals between the occurrences were becoming greater and
greater. The twitches devolved into tremors, slight movements which only
rustled the mass of leaves around him.

Dust rose up into the cool
morning rays of the sun’s light. The sun continued to pour through the windows,
covering the skeletal form lying on the ground. The light became a blanket,
warming both leaves and bones. If Drothspar felt the warmth of the sunlight, he
did not acknowledge it. If he had been living, he might have been blessed with
sleep, but no sleep came. In time, a protective form of silence blanketed his
mind just as the light had blanketed his body. As the sun reached over the
cottage, no longer visiting through the windows, Drothspar’s trembling body
stilled. The leaves did not rustle, the bones did not shake. All was silence
around him, save only for the stirring of the vagrant breeze.

The skeleton lay motionless on
the floor of its former home. Trees surrounding the cottage sang a soft, dry
dirge in the stirring winds. The waters of the nearby lake rippled, shattering
reflections of the sky overhead. As the day moved on, clouds in the sky bundled
together thickly, darkening the day prematurely. The dirge of the trees became
louder, picked up by many others as the wind blew strongly off the lake. The
ripples of the water became waves lapping against the shore. With a clap and a
hiss, they joined in with the rustling of the leaves.

Light bled from the cottage to
dissipate in the world outside. The darkening clouds kept their promise, and
rain began to fall, gently at first. The patter of rain tapped on the roof and
slapped at the leaves in the trees. The hiss of the water grasping the shore
was replaced by the ever-louder sizzling of the rain on the lake itself. The
strong scent of moisture filled the air. Slanted diagonally by the winds, the
rain came first in one set of windows and then the other, covering the floor
and leaves with water. Still, the silent skeleton did not move.  No tremors
touched the body now. Only the sounds of the falling rain disturbed the
stillness in the cottage.