The Bell-Ringer (The prologue to a book I actually AM supposed to be working on.)

Prologue—The Bell-Ringer

Orange light spilled down from the horizon like a dry sea. Where the waves crashed, dust was left dripping from the fields and the hills, clinging to the air and the lungs of those who passed. In that light, all was gold.

Two men, slathered in that dryness, one soaked in the weight of long furrows and the other a longer road, sat in a pool of shade, drawn together by nothing save a common thirst. A thirst for water. And a thirst for knowing.

“Strange things,” said one man knowingly, with a slow nod of his head, and a brief stroke of his dirt-blackened hand through his dust-browned beard. “Strange things have befallen these parts. I will tell you that, right off. But if you’ll be wanting more than that from me, you’ll be needing to share yourself.”

The other man nodded in response, and took a drink. He was a smaller man than that across from him, and by comparison, nearly clean. “Strange things have befallen all parts.”

“True enough,” offered the filthy plowman, as he turned his thoughtfully crooked brow towards the furrows, before him, and the road, in whose shadow he lay. “But I could have told that to myself. These ears have heard much, stranger; you’ll be needing to dig a bit deeper to find something as they don’t know much of.”

To this account, the stranger seemed willing to pursue. He leaned forward, and now that the dusty hood had been removed from his head, his details could be more easily made out. Eyes of the most severe and ravaging sort of blue shone out of his weathered face with such intensity that the bearded frowner did not at first notice the brightness of his hair or the strength of his jaw, though these came in turn. “Isn’t it amazing,” said the stranger, “That everyone seems to know the secrets that no one is allowed to tell?”

At this, the large man chuckled. “Yes, that I’ll grant you. And I suppose, though I don’t know much of you, to speak of, that secrets are the trade of a man such as you?”

“Sometimes,” replied the other.

“Then I think that we are not so different. You have your trade, and I have mine, and we both grow weary of our toil beneath the sun. We tumble into shade, now and again.”

“Indeed,” this from the traveler. “I am, I suppose, a merchant of secrets. Though I attempt to avoid being their cultivator. A friend of mine once said that all things planted in the darkness must sprout forth into the light, eventually.”

The farmer lifted his eyebrows. “A wise friend.”

“Perhaps,” said the other. “One accustomed, at least, with nature. Secrets grow in the hearts of men, as grain grows in the soil. In the darkness, they blossom. But they outgrow the darkness, in time, and they spring up.”

“And you are the dealer of such seeds?”

“I am. I carry them. And when necessary, I plant them. But more importantly, I prepare them for their bursting forth.”

“Tell me a secret, then,” said the dirty man, crossing his strong arms, and leaning back into the hill, once his throat was wetted enough, and the skin lay beside him. “And I will, perhaps, give you an answer, if it is an answer that you seek.”

The traveler laughed. “Would you give out your crops for so little?”

The farmer smiled wornly. “Very well. Tell me more about this trade, if not that. You have made me curious, and that is no small feat.” 

Pointing his eyes briefly at the far edge of the sky, where a razor drew out the line between blue and gold, the stranger spoke quietly. “We are surrounded by secrets; we are all their merchants, their planters, their tenders. We are all gardeners.”

“Go on,” prodded the farmer, after a pause.

“The spring is such a secret. It comes in, quietly, planted deep beneath the leaves, when the snow falls upon them. And there, in the dark, she grows. The winter knows nothing of her until the time comes, until the darkness can no longer contain her, and she bursts forth. The greatest secret ever kept. And everyone knows it.”

With an unsettled pinch to his brows, the farmer said quietly, “Are you a poet and philosopher as well as a merchant?”

“Perhaps.”

“And a traveler as well. That sword you carry, can you use that too?”

“I can.”

The farmer narrowed his eyes. “You are a great many things, then.”

“We are all a great many things.”

The man laughed, one long burst, and then settled back into his seat against the bank. “Very well,” he said, rubbing more dirt into his beard than it could hold, “you have dully impressed me, even if you have given me nothing to speak of. You are an educated sort, for this part of the world. Many times I have sat here and had my drink with strange men. Perhaps you are the strangest of them all.”

“I would not be surprised,” said the traveler, with a small helping of a smile that he did not seem to indulge in much. 

“Whether you are or are not, I will answer a question of you, if I can.”

The question came promptly. “What do you know of the AllDragon?”

Another laugh rang into the orange sky, longer than the last, but settling no deeper than the throat. The man’s eyes were still hard. “I know what everyone knows,” he chuckled.

“How do you know it?” Asked the stranger, seeming to lean closer whether he did or not.

The man shrugged. “I suppose I heard it as a boy.”

“Illegally.”

“Perhaps.”

“The story is forbidden to tell. But all men know it, don’t they? Why?”

The man looked puzzled. His frown deepened. “It is a legend. And an ancient one.”

“Yes,” the stranger smiled again, a very calculated, measured sort of smile. “One of the best kept secrets in the world. And everyone knows it.”

The farmer chuckled, and this time shook his head in amusement. “I suppose that you are right.”

“Do you believe the legends?” The stranger pursued, to which his companion sighed.

“I believe in few things. I believe that there is a force in the earth that makes the wheat to grow. And I believe that such power may be prevailed upon, by the touch of the rain and the sweat of man’s labors. Nothing more than that. And when it comes to belief, it benefits us little, in these parts. I do not believe in the legend. I have no reason to.”

“Yet,” the traveler set those eyes heavily upon him, “you believe that spring comes after the winter.”

“Yes,” the farmer muttered. “I have lived through enough winters, this last one only so recently passed as it was. I’ll ask you this, stranger: if the legend is true, and the AllDragon lives, then why hasn’t he come? Mind you, I’m not complaining. I’ve got it right, here in this dirt, lowly as it may seem to such important types as you. But there are others. Those up north, it’s their legend. Why hasn’t he come for them?”

He was relieved when the stranger lifted his gaze, and hung it back on the horizon. “Spring must wait until the right time before it can arrive. The winter becomes old; the hammer of time must be lifted, poised to fall. The arm that wields it must grow strong, for it must be strong enough to split the world in two. Spring comes in her time. She always does. Sometimes, she just needs to be awakened. Sometimes, she needs a bell-ringer.”

The farmer did not address him. He narrowed his eyes, and crossed his arms at the strange man. “You might want to be careful,” he said at long last. “People don’t talk like that around here. And oft times, they don’t take too kindly to those folks that do.”

“Careful,” said the man with a distant tone. “Yes. Careful.” His fixed stare, so intent upon the line that separated sky and earth, as though he was trying to read some hidden words, tucked into the crash of color. Eventually, he broke his eyes away, and turned his attention back to the farmer. “One question more,” he said, “and then I will be off.”

“Ask it.”

“I have heard tell,” he said, “of a young woman who lives not far from here. She is famous, in her own way; even as far away as the border.”

“Nonsense,” laughed the man. “No one is famous out here.”

“She is,” the other argued. “The story is that she found a boy in a forest, and that she took him in, though she was barely fifteen years old, and raised him by herself. The story also says that, by now, she has several such children under her care, all orphaned, none of them her own. They call her many names, and none of them right. Around here, they simply call her ‘the Virgin.’”

At these words, the visage of the farmer darkened, beneath his mask of beard and dirt. He raised a meaty hand and pointed a chipped nail. “Now you see here, stranger,” he said forcibly, “I don’t know what your business is. But if it be ill towards that angelic young creature, so help me, I’ll tear you in half with my own hands.”

“I mean her no harm,” the man said with defensive vigor. “None at all. In fact, I mean to do her as much good as I can. You know her?”

“Aye, I know of her,” he said gruffly. “Everyone around here knows of her. And a more divine creature I’m sure there cannot be. What is your business with her? I’ve a mind to know that much before I let you got a step further, you mark me!”

The stranger did not seem affected. “I am looking for someone—a secret someone, before you ask. And I have reason to believe that she could help me.”

“If that be your business only, then be about it prompt-like,” replied the farmer with the same coldness. “But you mark me. I’d kill you myself, if I thought as you’d be any harm to her. And so would the whole countryside. She’s a dearly loved thing, that child.”

“I understand you perfectly,” said the stranger, eyes passing back along the path he had so long walked. “If I carry on this road, will I find her?”

“Yes. In a small village called Eastgate, though I’ll tell you no more.”

“You have told me what I need. Thank you.” With this, he took up his water-sling and pushed himself up, onto the road again. He straightened the sword in his belt and pulled the hood back over his head, though he wore no cloak to hide the rest of him. “I thank you for your hospitality, friend,” he said.

The farmer had already risen, donned his own sling, and returned to the scene of his plow, which he lifted back up easily, and set into its furrow. “Good fortune be with you, stranger,” he declared. Then, as an afterthought, added, “I should warn you. There’ve been words spread about wild dogs in the area. They hunt about after nightfall, killing flocks up in the hills. I’ve never heard of anything like it, myself. Strange things.”

To this, the mysterious man with the dusty hood let out a long laugh, aimed at the air. He let his heavy eyes dart to the skyline, as though to pin it down, before he turned back to his brief companion. “Dogs?” he repeated, speaking through smiling lips and frowning teeth. “No. Not dogs.” And then, with a nod of farewell, he allowed the last words, “Strange things indeed, my friend. But stranger things are waiting yet. Still… spring will come. She just needs to be woken up.”

And with that, the bell-ringer turned. He eyed the road, and then he set his feet moving along it. The sinking sun draped off his shoulders like a cape, until finally its splendor faded from gold to gray. He shrugged it off, and shrouded in dust, the bell-ringer hung a hand on his sword, and let his eyes hang on the line. The sun would rise, there; soon. When the darkness could no longer contain the secret of its coming.

He filled his nostrils with night-time, and he pushed on towards Eastgate.

Catch Me (An Introduction)

-I-

“Would you catch me?” She asked. The wind sucked past her, gnawing at her skin with cold gums.

“Hmm?” Was the only response.

“If I fell, would you catch me?”

He shrugged, and came up beside her, until his toes were on the very edge of the building. She wondered what made him get so close; how he seemed so unafraid. Glass crunched under his shoes; she couldn’t tell how it had gotten up there.

The sidewalk looked up at them both from seven stories, with a very strange sort of grin. The manhole covers were eyes; the open storm-drain was a mouth, with a psychotic grin. Small clusters of things living and things once alive trickled along, spent or spending. Debris tumbled out from down steep alleys, and crawled into the gutters with leaves a decade old. People tumbled out from long tramcars and collected in the corners, with the leaves.

“I’m not sure,” he said finally. “From this height, I don’t think it would save you. It would probably just kill both of us.”

She nodded, eying the cracks in the sidewalk that scattered like veins, or the gaping mouth of the storm-drain wanting to swallow her. What would it be like to land on the cracks? Would she make more? Or was the cement too sturdy, too weathered, to notice the last sigh of one more person? Or what if she landed in the drain itself? Would she fall straight into the sewers? Into the river? Would she survive?

They did not speak for a while, as they stood at the very edge of the building, knowing full well that if the wind picked up, it would sweep them over the edge. At least, she knew it. She still wondered if maybe, somehow, he didn’t. Maybe that is what enabled him to stand so close. Maybe he was just an idiot.

He took a cigarette out of his pocket and tapped it against his jeans for a few moments before tucking it into the corner of his mouth, and fishing for the lighter in his shirt pocket. “You gonna have to jump?” He asked calmly.

Loosening a tight fist, she glanced at the paper wadded between her fingers. Her sweat had made the ink run, but the words were still there. “Yes,” she said quietly. “But I will wait until you are gone so that they won’t suspect you.”

He nodded. “Handy. Thanks.”

Silence. And then, she inched forward. One of her toes was hanging off the edge. A strong wind would ease her off. A strong wind. That’s all she needed. She should jump, right now. But instead, she took a step back and turned towards him. “Tell me again,” she said.

He eyed her for a few seconds, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and bounced it against his leg again. “Eyes like chocolate. Hair like old coffee. Tall, bony. Pretty, I guess.”

“Do you know me?” She asked.

He shook his head. “Never seen you before in my life.”

She moved a little closer to the edge and threw the paper note out in the wind. It fell before her, but would not land until long after she did. The wind would play with it for a while, first. “Where will you look first?”

He shrugged, and bit the cigarette, working it between his teeth. “Probably the wharf. After that, maybe Pete’s Pit. Those are my first guesses. They like to keep you moving around.”

She nodded yet again. How many times was that? Three? Maybe more. She was nervous. Seven stories seemed high. Higher than anything had ever seemed before. Debris tumbled or walked by, tossed by the wind or by the current of the side-walk. There was nothing in her mouth to swallow, but she tried just the same. “I’ll see you soon,” she said.

He grunted, and then turned and moved towards the fire escape on the far side of the building. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Avi.”

The wind stole away the sound of rust as he made his way to the alleys, and darted quickly away from the hotel. She was alone. She took a deep breath, heart hammering inside her, hands knotting and loosening. She had done this a dozen times; why was she so afraid?

It’s just a fall. You won’t even feel the ground.

She bit her lip and leaned out. Headfirst. She kept her arms pinned to her side as the air rushed past in in a stampede, the sidewalk opening like a mouth to swallow her, closer and closer and closer. Catch me, she begged. But there was nobody there. Just sidewalk veins and sewer mouths and debris in gutters. Catch me. She did not crack the cement when she hit it.

The Child In Uniform (A Short Story)

The Child In Uniform

The ticking of the clock seemed to stabilize the sheer enormity of the silence in the house; to give it order. To Adam, it was like a general, issuing orders. Marching soldiers. Rumbling drums. The whistle of the teapot was a mortar-shell. His thoughts were out of place, here, and he knew that he may as well have been a fish in the desert. He was a soldier. Yet, he very much wanted to not have to think like one any longer.

For a while, he was grateful only to escape the cannonball sounds of horse’s hooves on the street, only to find that they were slowly returning in militant regiments.  

“I remember my husband acting similarly, when he came back from the war against the Gaeling Throne.” Adam looked up from tea that was going cold and hands too rough for his tidy clothes. Lady Rosa was smiling at him, across the table, in that way of hers. The wrinkles beside her eyes were lined up like ranks, all pulling together to make that smile, like sailors trying to drag a ship onto shore.

He had to recycle her statement in his mind to understand it, before he frowned. “I am sorry, My Lady. I must be awful company.”

She shook her head—slightly, for nothing she did was drastic—and she sipped from her teacup again, before setting it down. “The silence of contemplation is to me as sweet a sanctitude as the joy of conversation. And you have much indeed to contemplate, Adam.”

He nodded a bit at this, and took another drink. A smile found him. “Your tea is very good,” he allowed.

She raised her eyebrows. “I had begun to wonder if you were going to drink any of it. I am glad that you decided to indulge me. And yes, I suppose after what you are used to, it would taste splendid. My husband used to tell stories of straining his coffee through old stockings.”

The smile that had found him out made itself fully at home, now. “Nothing quite that dramatic, my lady.”

“No,” she mirrored his expression, but hers was so much brighter, her teeth so much whiter. She had been giving that smile for years, many times a day, practicing and polishing. She was a professional. Adam was still a novice in training. And now, without his beard, his smile felt strange and exposed. Vulnerable. He had not yet gotten used to his own dimples.

“I thought about you often, while I was away,” he said after another few moments of silence. “About the Hall and the lawns. About all the time I spent here. Of course, the house was louder in my daydreams, and the streets quieter. Like it used to be.”

She enjoyed his sentiment immensely, by the glow in her eyes, and she turned, to eye the house. “Yes, it has been quiet. I can no longer afford to keep the house filled. I have thought, of course, about simply having the maids live here, just for the pleasure of their company. But they all have families to return to, of course.”

“I am sorry, My Lady,” he said quietly.

She waved it off. Then, for the briefest moment, a look of annoyed humor entered those marvelously auburn eyes as her thoughts changed. “Of course… once Emilia returns, you will see that not all of the house is doomed to eternal silence. She does more than her fair share to hold the quiet at bay; while, I suppose, I do little for myself.”

“Emilia,” he smiled, nodding fondly. “She must have grown so much since I was here last. She was a child, then.”

“So were you,” Lady Rosa reminded him. “But you were a child in uniform and she was a child still playing with dolls.”

“And here I am still a child in uniform,” he stated. “Does she still play with dolls?”

“Young men, mostly,” Lady Rosa rolled her eyes towards the roof. “And you should see some of the rabble that follow her home, now and then. Gracious, if her father was here...” She chuckled mildly at the thought, before changing the attention. “Can I get you something to eat? My cook, dear sweet Lila, got married two months ago, and while she doesn’t grace us with her presence—for which I am quite sorry—she does keep our larders filled. Scones? Cakes?”

Adam shook his head. “No, thank you, My Lady.”

“Well I shall help myself, then, if you don’t mind,” she added as she rose from the table and swept into the kitchen. That was how she always moved, Adam thought to himself, and how she always had. She didn’t walk; she swept about. She glided in her long skirts, never bobbing. A lady surely never bobbed. Soldiers bobbed. They swayed and swaggered, with loud steps. She was silent. “I find that a small dose of sugar in the afternoon does set me on a better course by evening,” she declared.  

Adam’s smile returned. “I do remember your propensity for chocolate, My Lady.”

“And I remember your propensity for stealing my chocolate,” she replied.

Humor filled his distracted eyes. “I always assumed that you knew I had taken it. I wondered that you never brought it up.”

“You needed it more than I, at the time,” said she. “Joy is deserved of the youth. Although now, mind you,” she narrowed her eyes at him as she worked, “I guard my chocolate with such ferocity that I doubt even your weathered eyes have seen, on the other side of the River.”

His laugh, so unused in its sound, so stiff and inflexible, was still a joy to the rafters and the unlit chandelier. As the lady returned and sat pleasantly across from him, he turned his gaze out to the large front window. White sunlight was waltzing in, spilled from the cracks in the dusted gray clouds, and he could see, from there, the careful white fence and bright green lawns. He had played there, once, before the uniform.

“I thought of Emilia, too, while I was gone,” he said quietly. “I often wondered what kind of woman she would become.”

“I still wonder,” said the lady with dampened skepticism, always tainted with her good nature, as she drank again. She pursed her lips for a few moments before speaking again. “And what about Laurena? Do you think of her, as well?”

Adam’s smile did not disappear; but it seemed uncertain. It was there because he had not taken it down yet, not because he wanted it there. It was a leaning painting. He looked out the window for a while more, then took up his tea again. “Only when I can’t help it.”

“Have you heard anything from her?” Lady Rosa inquired delicately.

He shook his head. “Nothing from her. But I have a friend, in Avor, who said that he saw her with a man, a month ago. She has a child.”

The lady said nothing, but she had that look in her eyes that he recognized, from his childhood; it was the look she gave when she knew that he had stolen the chocolates, but did not say. It was the look that said that she already knew, and was only acting like this was news. It was a look she wore frequently.

“Yes, well,” she finally said, “Avor is a ways off. At least you won’t run into her. I imagine that would be an unpleasantly awkward sort of reunion.” Her eyes were apologetic.

Adam said nothing. Soon, his tea was gone, and the cup was on the table. Small talk held little joy to him, and Lady Rosa had no objections to his quiet demeanor. The clock marched on, in the next room. The smell of tea and scones and upside-down-herbs hanging in the pantry were pleasant to the soldier, and the gentle humming of the woman calming. He could not be angry, here. Of course, there was little to be angry about any more.

In description, the pain he felt was rather like the pain felt by a man who had been stung by a huge hornet. Eventually, the agony went away, but the barb remained, hanging in his arm. Whenever the name of Laurena was mentioned, someone struck it. The barb jerked, and the wound hurt again.

But here, the pain was so subtle, he hardly noticed. Not in Elbraum House.

Somewhere, in the rear corridor at the end of the kitchen, a door slammed, as though some hurricane wind was set to rip it from its hinges. Lady Rosa did not turn to face it; instead, she met Adam’s eyes and smiled tiredly, managing the words, “Brace yourself.”

Emilia stormed into the house, her muddy boots stomping the innocent tiles to death. Her face was furiously red when she came around the corner and into the kitchen, hair plastered to her face from rain or tears, either way messier than it was supposed to be and had been that morning. There was mud on the hem of her bright dress. “Mother,” she declared in a heavy, decisive tone, much too loud for the old house, and even the commanding clock to stand up to. “I have decided.”

“Decided what, Dear?” Replied the mother, without looking up. 

“I have grown entirely exhausted of wretched human emotions. In fact, I have come to believe them to be entirely worthless and troublesome. They only on very rare occasions bring about anything worth bringing about, and most frequently they do the opposite. Furthermore, I do believe them to be constricting, disabling and counterproductive. In short, they are of no use to me any longer, as I refuse to be exasperated, bullied, or made a fool of by them ever again. Indeed, emotions are the foulest, vilest, most repulsive and devilest of all devils, and I shall have no part of them.” 

As though this was of no surprise whatsoever, the mother spoke. “You’ve had your heart broken by that boy again, haven’t you?”

Emilia’s anger was gone, and instantly replaced by a display of drama so intense that Adam was sure only a talented few could muster at will, as she threw herself into a chair and draped herself over the table like a limp towel.

“Thomas, wasn’t it?” Lady Rosa asked with skewed eyebrows.

“Jacque,” she sobbed. “Oh, mother, why does it hurt? Oh please, just let me die.” Her whimpers continued as she buried her face in her arms. Adam, completely overlooked, stayed where he was, as though he was one of the oversized paintings hung in the gallery.

The mother patted her on the back of the head, speaking in the same tone as always. “Alright, I shall. But first some nice tea, and you can get cleaned up, and I can introduce you to an old friend who is visiting from the east. And then, if you still want to die, you may have my blessing.” 

“Oh thank you mother,” she beamed. “You truly are a saint.” 

“Yes dear,” Rosa said calmly. And then, without hesitating, she gestured across the table. “You remember Adam, surely?” She asked.

Emilia looked up. For a moment, in her tear-glowing eyes, there was no sign of recognition. And then, after several long blinks, sheer terror filled them. She looked from Adam’s hard eyebrows to his soft smile, to his uniform and the medals on his chest, the sword ceremoniously included at his side.

She stood up so abruptly that her chair nearly fell over behind her. “Mother!” She squealed. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She seemed to have completely forgotten any prior offense that had ever been done her, in light of this new betrayal, as she darted out of the room as quickly as she could. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She repeated. “I am not ready for company! Have you seen what I’m wearing?”

Lady Rosa replied in a sigh that she pointed down the hall. “I told you that Adam was coming this morning.”

“But not that Adam!” She replied from the top of a stairs. “And not in uniform!”

Adam’s smile returned, real and thorough. Lady Rosa was smiling back at him. “You may find that she has not much changed,” she said.

Adam shook his head. “Nothing changes here,” he said, which could just as well have been replaced by “I would like to stay here.” But he didn’t say that. The sound of marching died, and was replaced by the sound of a clock. There were no more mortars whistling on the oven or cannonballs trotting by outside. He was happy, and as close to home as he had been in eight years. He forgot the River, and the terrible Shadow of that Wall.

There was joy in the silence. Contentedness in the small packages of breaths.

He was a child in uniform. And this was the place he had stolen chocolate from. There were memories, so long stuffed into his pockets, which he could polish to brightness again.