His Frozen Fingertips

by Charlotte Bowyer

  The child muttered something rebellious under her breath, or at least it sounded that way to Asa. He waited for her to poke at him in that bold childish way but instead she shook her head determinedly and set forward towards his face.

  He was seized with a sudden, irrational fear of her.

  The doctor snapped at the girl, clipping her around the back of the head. She was propelled forward a few stumbling steps but shrugged it off, as though she were used to it. Asa froze as still as he possibly could, a silent statue, as she came up next to him and set about completely undoing his wrist bonds. Blood rushed to his aching hands. Asa pulled them reflexively back to his body, a gradual smile coming to his dry lips for the first time. He fixed his eyes on the girl, who was looking at him.

  “Thank you,” he croaked, blood from his wrists running down onto his tunic. “Thank you.”

  She nodded at him. He waited for a moment, and then mimicked the action, trying to convey his gratitude. The doctor made furious notes on the paper, a sinister smile upon his face. As soon as it appeared though, it was replaced by a frown. He snapped at her, making her flinch and recoil from Asa’s side. She left the room in a hurry, sparing not one kind glance back to the prisoner that she had unshackled.

  Asa kept his hands glued to his lap, sitting up so that he could look the doctor in the eyes. The doctor reached out and took one of Asa’s hands, prizing his grip from the cloth of his trousers. Asa winced at the feeling of the hot, dark skin touching his cuts, muttering a curse at the odd man under his breath. The doctor took a cloth bag from a pouch around his neck and from it withdrew a pinch of dark powder. It had the appearance of something that you would smoke. Asa’s hand still held in the vice-like grip, he rubbed the powder into the cuts.

  It was as if fire was being poured over his skin.

  Asa screamed, tugging backwards with his feet still restrained. The leather bonds strained and broke, sending him head-over-heels off the hard surface and onto the harder floor. He lay still there, the fingers of his left hand clawing desperately at his right wrist. Odd mixtures of profanities and pleads to some unknown person spewed from his lips. He heard the light, pleasant laughter of the doctor and knew it, just knew inside. He was going to die here.

  Strong hands gripped his shoulders and held him still. He shivered, closing his eyes for what he assumed to be the last time. Instead, blood rushed into his feet, sending strange a pins-and-needles sensation through them. The doctor rubbed the tense muscles on his back, making Asa hiss with relief. His feet and hands were warm again, more like his own. For the first time in hours, he stood.

  “How are you?” The black-eyed man spoke for the first time to Asa. His voice was accentless and soft.

  “Fine,” Asa said automatically, and then paused. “Wait.”

  “What?” The doctor looked penetratingly at him with his deep eyes.

  “You speak my language?”

  “We’re not speaking anymore, child.” An ancient wisdom trickled into his words. “We’re not speaking any language either you or I know. Though you only know your language, and me mine, we are surpassing the boundaries of speech. Surprising, as it does not often happen, in one as young as you.”

  “Then what tongue are we conversing in?” Asa inquired.

  “As for that, I have no idea.” The doctor pulled him up and sat him squarely on the surface, peering closely at him. “I think that this is a necessary bridge that we have been able to cross.”

  “What are you?” Asa’s voice grew bolder. “Why am I here?”

  “That is a long story.” The doctor smiled a secretive smile and started to pace in front of Asa, whose concerned gaze followed the unfamiliar man as he seemed to rack his brains. “And not one for this day, I’m afraid.”

  “It must be one for this day,” he said darkly at the dark-eyed doctor. “I must be gone as soon as possible. As for whatever evil ideas you have planned for me . . . they are futile. I will find a way to escape.”

  “I am not the one you should fear, Asa,” the doctor sighed.

  Asa stared at him. “Did I tell you my name?”

  “No,” the stranger told him. “I knew it because you told it to my brother.”

  “Your brother?”

  “I am not the only one of my kind whom you have met, Asa,” the doctor explained. “There are two others you encountered before you escaped from inside the walls.”

  “Parlan!” Asa exclaimed. “The madman. But no, what do you mean? Inside the walls? I don’t understand you, sir.”

  “You must be confused,” the man stated.

  “Explain, then.”

  “It started long, long ago.” The doctor gazed out into the air for a moment, as though wondering where to go next. “There were five of us back then, you see. Five had seemed like a good number. Three would be too few, seven ridiculous—and no one would ever entrust anything to an even number. There would be no majority among six or four, and we needed to have a clear vote on our actions. Two girls and three boys. We were chosen, created, to do one thing. We were to control Eodem. The country was already filled with those such as you, such ordinary and primitive peoples, yet quarrelsome and warlike. We were only young, and we were so eager to help. It was our purpose. But people were afraid of our strange, white eyes.”

  “White?” Asa interrupted. “Your eyes are black.”

  “I said white, and white is what I meant,” the man snapped, before shaking his head and resuming his steady tone. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, white eyes. Our creator, who has been gone for many moons now, sent us away from her with the greatest power and the whitest eyes of any ever seen. People were besotted by us. They worshipped us as gods. Silly, but that was what happened. Though we started out so similar, we soon grew apart. My elder siblings began to fight.”

  He sighed, a hand combing through his long brown hair, which was strained looking and dull. His tanned skin looked a warm caramel in the darkening light.

  “And?” Asa prompted.

  “They fought for some time.” The doctor looked weary. “Thousands of years. Indeed, they still fight today. I am the youngest of them in some ways, but in maturity I am the eldest. Parlan and Gil fought first. They taught us all why we should not do so. The stress of the matter brought them both close to death. Gil never touched her weapons again and Parlan, he was driven mad. He was never completely sane to start with. Then came the next pair. I have not heard from Ria in many a century, but all I know is that she was forced to flee from her area of the country as my second eldest brother, Erebus, threw her out. Erebus is terrible in anger, his power far surpasses all of us.”

  “Erebus?” Asa’s voice cracked and died. “You’re his brother?”

  “Why should that surprise you?” the man asked. “Even the most powerful have family. I cannot say that I am on his side, though. It is most prudent for me to be neutral. Erebus took the Southwest of the country and my younger sister took Parlan and created her own separate nation in the Northeast. She built a tall wall around it, fencing in the population and telling them that they were freed. I don’t know what to feel about my sister, Ria.”

  Asa’s mouth slackened. “Queen Ria?”

  “The same.” The doctor nodded.

  “Ria. Queen Ria?”

  “Are you alright?” the man asked with static sympathy. Asa nodded mutely. “I’m sorry for being insensitive. I have lived too long to have time to take things at anything less than this pace, if you see what I mean? Good, thank you. Erebus is winning the fight. Now it has come to what could be called cold warfare. He was always good at those kinds of spells. And now you two civilians come bouncing through the walls, for all the world looking as though you were going to bop him on the head with one of your toothpick swords! Wearing the badger, too, Ria’s favourite animal. Has Ria given up, then?”

  “Her son was killed.” Asa swallowed.

  The doctor stilled. “She had a son?”

  “Yes,” Asa replied. “Prince Edmund. He
was killed by Erebus.”

  “Erebus killed his own nephew.” The black eyes showed little to no emotion, and his words were considered and steady. “That is terrible.”

  “Same flesh and blood,” Asa snorted, crossing his arms.

  “He’s mad.” The doctor shook as he stood. “They’re as bad as each other. Oh fortune! It’s all gone bad now, that’s for certain.”

  “Why?” Asa asked.

  “He killed my nephew. He killed his own nephew. That child would have been a demi-mortal, and our own law forbids the slaughter of our kin. Ethereals do not kill their own.”

  “That’s what you are, then?” Asa probed, eyes narrowing. “An ethereal?”

  “I am one, yes,” the man said, closing his eyes. “But that is not all I am. My name is Kaspar.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Asa voiced this question for the first time.

  Kaspar looked as though he was making an immense decision. He eventually met Asa’s gaze and gave him a reassuring smile. “I cannot stay neutral on this. I will help you. Stay where you are and I shall retrieve your angry friend. He has not been quiet on the subject of your capture.”

  He left the room, feet light upon the hard floors. Asa lowered himself gingerly off his perch and down where he could sit. His head fell forward into his hands as he thought about what Kaspar had said. His world had been a lie. People he knew had lived and died at the whims of these immoral beings. And for what?

  “Where in Eodem have you put him? Tell me or I’ll run you through myself!” A ferocious roar echoed through Asa’s ears. “Answer me, you demon!”

  “I am taking you to see him,” a calm voice murmured in response.

  “As if I would be stupid enough to believe that!”

  The door of the room burst open, and Avery stormed inside, his eyes a flaming amber. He turned his back to the room and stared down Kaspar with a wild reckless bravery that Asa had never seen before. He stood there taut, like an arrow ready to be let loose from a bow.

  “Well, he was here.” Kaspar sounded surprised, if concerned.

  “I knew that you were lying to me, you black-eyed ghoul,” spat Avery.

  Asa rose off the floor and pulled himself up on the surface that he had been sitting on. Avery cleared his throat.

  “Avery, I’m fine. I swear it.”

  His friend spun around, eyes locking with his in a moment that Asa could only describe as one of sheer relief. His face broke from a cross scowl into a smile. Avery walked the few steps across the small room and crushed Asa in a hug, causing him to cough as his lungs were crushed.

  “You had me scared back there,” he admitted.

  “And you continue to frighten me every day of our luck-lacking lives,” Asa jested.

  “Ahem.” Kaspar cleared his throat. “When you two have finished your little reunion, I would like to explain the situation to your companion here . . .”

  He ran through the same details that he had told Asa earlier, skipping over some particulars but filling the general outline in for him. Avery was mostly silent, occasionally asking a curious question or fiddling as he sat down on the floor with Asa, as though they were infants in their first schools.

  Asa leant back against Avery, exhausted. His friend jerked as his weight was transferred but made no complaint. Asa exhaled, trying to find some place of inner calm inside him, but to no avail. His heart jolted in his chest.

  “Are you in pain?” Avery muttered in his ear. “Can I help?”

  Asa shook his head with a wince. He stared up at the ceiling.

  “No pain, as of yet,” he replied. “Don’t worry, you are.”

  His eyes locked with his friend’s and a small smile crept onto his face. Avery wrapped his arms around him, but Asa unpeeled himself after only a few moments. He raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Avery looked hurt.

  “No offense intended, but you haven’t bathed in six or seven days, mate. You don’t smell all that good.”

  “Hey!” Avery sniffed. “You don’t smell of roses either.”

  Kaspar clicked his fingers in an authoritative manner and the same young girl from before appeared in the room. She was dressed in simple but neat clothes, a grey pinafore tied around her brown dress. She fiddled with her collar as the tall man spoke to her, full eyes fixed on her bare feet. She nodded before retreating away from him as quickly as she could, stifling a half-skip on her way out.

  Kaspar sighed. “I have told her not to do that.”

  “What?” Asa asked, bemused. “She was just skipping. She’s little. Children like to dance.”

  “She annoys me,” the ethereal said simply. “The sounds that she fills this house with . . . I have been most merciful in my self-restraint.”

  He shuddered, fingers curling. Asa shifted and sat up, away from Avery. When the little girl re-entered the room, scraping an enormous silver basin along behind her, he tried to catch her eye. When she looked at him she flushed and giggled, hiding her face in her hands. Deep-brown irises peered through her fingers curiously.

  “Then why is she here?” Asa demanded. “Why is she not brainwashed like everyone else in this town?”

  “She was the princess,” Kaspar said. “It would not have been proper. Anyway, those in the town are not brainwashed. I merely subdued them. It would not be kind to make them witness the instability of our nation.”

  “They’re asleep in their shoes!” Asa exclaimed. “They wouldn’t know what they wanted.”

  “Who rules here?” Kaspar grew still, radiating a fury of such proportions that Asa could swear that he felt it brush against his skin, a physical barrier. “You know nothing.”

  “Fine,” Asa conceded, backing down despite himself.

  The child had brought a large jug of steaming water to the basin and was filling it with shaking hands. She left the room again and again, returning each time with the same heavy weight clutched in her small arms. It seemed that in that moment time slowed down to Asa, he saw her struggling with her burden alone but the bath could never be filled. However, with a few stumbled journeys back and forth, she managed to complete her task. She approached the ethereal with a wary expression, mouth moving.

  Kaspar ignored her with a practised patience, gesturing to the steaming tub of water as he walked towards the door. His hand cupped possessively around the child’s head, pulling her along close to his side.

  “Bathe,” he ordered, not altogether harshly. “I will find some suitable clothes for you to wear. Your garments are falling off your backs.”

  The door closed with a muffled tap, but the bolt passed through it and when Avery tried it, the handle would not turn. His shoulders dropped as he returned to the centre of the room, emotion stirring in his hazel eyes. Asa tried his hardest to smile, to cheer him up, but could not find the energy. He pushed himself over to the tub on his hands and knees, sticking a cold hand into the depths. It was only then that he realised how filthy both of them were. Avery’s blond hair was far from its usual straw colour, instead having become a light brunette, flecked with dark specks of dirt and dead leaves that had tangled in there. He reached up incredulously to touch his own and found it dry, as brittle as fresh hay.

  His skin was not much better. Black mud billowed out into the water where he touched it; the skin beneath it scarred and more tanned than it had ever been before. He touched his fingers gingerly, patting the discoloured skin until it turned yellow white. Jaundiced. Sick. Avery started to wash his hands as well, the water ripping skin from his sore palms. Asa winced for him and turned his attention away from him and onto scrubbing the dirt from his forearms and face. Rivulets of liquid dirt trickled down his face and splashed into the basin. Asa reached deeper into it and found a rag, which he used to dab at the grime that coated his neck and behind his ears.

  Avery poured water from his cupped hands over his hair. As the brown tinted liquid fell to join the main body, the original golden colour of his hair showed through. It was like
rubbing dust off an old object, Asa mused, pausing his own washing to reflect on his friend. As he raked his fingers through his short hair, Avery was just cleaning the accumulated dust off himself. Like spring cleaning in a way.

  Asa pulled his tunic over his head, surprised at how loose the material was. Whether it was weight loss or fabric strain was unclear, but he wondered how it had come to pass that he had not noticed the excess of clothing. He looked down at his pale chest, unused to seeing it in the light. He had only taken his shirt off once since they began their journey. This was not unusual, as a child he had been sewn into his undergarments when a particularly cold winter struck, but older Asa was fastidious and did not leave his house often before he had last gone. He could see his bottom ribs with a disgusting clarity, his hipbones jutting out over the loose band of his trousers. Whatever muscle he had prided himself on having built was gone, replaced by this farcical look of skin on bone. He caught Avery looking at him, shocked into silence. Asa shook his head and rubbed his thin frame raw with the rags, hating it. Without him even fully realising it, a hand stopped his own, removing the rough cloth from his fingers.

  “Stop,” Avery said, and it was enough. Asa relinquished the rags without complaint, face emotionless but mind reeling.

  Stop, Avery had told him. What did that even mean? Asa did not know whether it was his thoughts or his actions that his friend had taken offense to. It could have been neither. It could have been both. Avery might not have spoken. Quick, shallow breaths rose in Asa’s throat as he stared dumbly at Avery’s clever face. Stop, he had said. Stop. His head ached with the light and the sounds that amplified as though he was in a magnifying glass. He could not stop this. Stop. Asa lifted his head. He was stronger than this. He fixed his gaze on Avery, copying his even breaths. He could do this. He was in control now.

  NINE

  ASA FIDDLED UNCOMFORTABLY WITH the red neckerchief that was tied around his neck. His clothes were rubbing in unusual places and he found himself pining for the tunics and loose trousers that he was able to wear at home. Though these were of comfortable material, they were too light and in a strange style. He was by one of those gauze-covered windows, looking at the dark streets lightening as the orange rays of the morning sun started to filter onto the road.