Brotherhood Saga 03: Death

by Kody Boye

  Should I bother him? he thought, frowning, training his eyes first on Virgin’s downturned face, then to the book that lay open in his lap.

  Though he knew Virgin would not likely care, he didn’t want to disturb him unless he was absolutely willing. With that sentiment clearly in his head, he cleared his throat, waited for Virgin to lift his head, then asked, “Virgin?”

  “Yes?”

  “I may sound stupid for asking this, but… what does ‘Yamda’ mean?”

  “Don’t feel stupid for asking. And ‘Yamda’ means ‘Halfling.’”

  “Halfling?”

  “It’s an Elvish word.”

  “Why did he call me a Yamda and not you?”

  “Likely because he already knew my name,” Virgin said, setting his book on the windowsill before stepping forward and crouching down beside the bed. “He also called me master because I was the one who brought you in for medical treatment.”

  “I didn’t expect him to speak like you and me do when he first arrived.”

  “Human language has become the norm throughout most of the sentient races,” Virgin shrugged, waiting a moment for Odin to either nod or shake his head before rising and sitting at his side. “As far as history is concerned—and excuse me if I get this wrong, because it’s been a while since I’ve been in any sort of schooling—humans rose up from their place within the world and were the first to start speaking on this continent. Dwarves came out of nowhere, learned the language, passed it on between one another. It was only natural for the Elves to follow suit once they realized they might be communicating with these people one day.”

  “I thought the Elves came to heal the dying mainland?” Odin frowned.

  “You mean with Diana?” Virgin asked. He waited for a response, though when none came, a smile split his lips. “Do you honestly believe that legend?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “I believe there once was a great fire that took place along the coast, yes, because there are still places—like Bohren, for instance, or the areas around Dwaydor—that bear the fruits of what flames can sew. I don’t believe, however, that a human would have ever sailed across the Crystal Sea with the Elves.”

  “Because there weren’t humans over where the Elves came from?”

  “By the Gods no, of course not.”

  “Couldn’t she have been an Elf?”

  “She could have,” Virgin shrugged, “and it’s highly likely, given the fact that she had magical talents that supposedly ‘healed the land,’ but like I said, I’m not much of the belief in Gods or what rule they have over the earth. Besides—if Diana were truly an Elf, then she was a very underwhelming one at that.”

  “But you don’t deny that it couldn’t have happened?”

  “It very well could have,” Virgin shrugged. “Considering how barbaric your… well, I should say, our kind’s uprising was, it’s highly likely that the humans met the Elves and their kind with resistance, which is why we were never keen on interacting with humans until they evolved higher intelligence.”

  “Evolved?” Odin frowned. “I… I don’t understand.”

  “I imagine you wouldn’t.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Many of our kind—the humans, anyway—believe that we were created by some higher force, but from what the Elves had said, they came here when humankind was still covered by fur.”

  “Fur?”

  “As I’ve read and understood, humans—some of what you and I are, Odin—evolved from a group of upright-walking primates that aren’t seen anywhere else in the world. Why, I can’t be too sure, but it’s highly likely that the Leatherskins killed off our fellow bloodlines when we rose to power out of fear that we would grow stronger.”

  “So you’re saying we used to be,” Odin began, then paused. “Animals.”

  “Elven scientists—people who study the progression and changes of things—believe that everything came from something. Our people believe we were once like Marsh Walkers that rose from the sea and were one of the first intelligent beings to have evolved in our world.”

  “I’d heard of that,” Odin said. “It’s just… so hard to grasp.”

  “There’s a lot of things you can learn while you’re here,” Virgin said. “You may even consider living here after you learn about the history of our people and maybe even humanity, if only because of the vast pool of knowledge you can gleam from it, but I’m not pressing you to do anything.”

  “You know why we’re here.”

  “I know, but until you recover, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to…” Virgin leaned forward until his lips touched Odin’s ear. “Steal the book.”

  “I know,” he whispered back.

  “This kind of conversation is good for the mind. It stimulates it to expand into territories many humans are not willing to cross.”

  “How long do you plan on staying up?”

  “Why?” Virgin smiled.

  “I want you to teach me the basics,” Odin said. “About what to and what not to do.”

  Throughout the early hours of the evening, after food was brought and dinner was eaten with much banter, Virgin told Odin the tales of the Elves—how, after living in oppression under a tyrannical ruler of a race considered ‘Godly,’ some three-thousand distinct families with ten bloodlines launched an escape from a distant kingdom and threw themselves across the Crystal Seas that no one was said to cross, during which time they endured centuries of travel upon the waters that, Virgin said, no human being could ever cross.

  It would take ten lives and more to cross the Crystal Sea, Virgin had relished, tracing his finger over a map that displayed the outer edges of the Tentalin and Neline, which lay far beyond the reach of normal travel.

  Virgin continued his tale by saying how, when they approached the mainland, the Elves had come to find that there were ‘creatures beyond their comprehension’ that ‘resembled animals but held the tools that only intelligent beings could use.’ Monkeys, upright, fires lit, weapons made; leathery creatures, mischievous grunts, cackled laughs, crude ornaments of torture; little beings, pressed to the mountains, looking out with eyes reflecting light from the distant horizon—these were the things that were seen upon the initial approach to the island, and when flushed from the sea and to the shore by storms that almost destroyed their vessels, they walked across what remained of the ravaged shoreline and looked upon these creatures with eyes alight and hearts beating with wonder. They saw these things, Virgin said, and recognized that intelligence could very well develop in these isolated groups of animals, so they fled, he continued, to the south, where the forests lay broad and eventually eclipsed into a land divided and nearly unconquerable by even the grandest of peoples to wait for the times that were to come.

  In the years that followed, Virgin went on, waving his hand through the air as if painting the greatest picture anyone had ever seen, the Elves continued to watch the creatures evolve into beings intelligent beyond any of their preconceived measures. They saw, in the peak of the age, when the beings that had evolved into Leatherskins were slaughtered in a great war and how, after being driven from the mainland and across a land bridge, an earthquake devastated the land and once more thrust these creatures back a few more steps.

  “By then,” Virgin said, raising his eyes to look Odin directly in the face, “we… humanity, I should say… was like we are now.”

  “Like we are now?”

  “Intelligent, knowledgeable, capable, without our fur.”

  Thus continued the tale and how, after the Leatherskins were forced away, Centaurs were the next to fall victim to humanity’s great tragedy. It was here that Virgin paused and traced one of the main maps laid across the bed to circle around the Whooping Hills, which Odin had crossed no more than a few weeks prior, then tapped the area where the Abroen firmly stood. It was there where the Centaurs had roamed, once upon a lonesome year, and it was there where humanity had, in a rush to claim as m
uch territory as they could when divided into three separate coast-bound countries, tried to conquer the Whooping Hills, during which time Centaurs were declared perversions upon the earth and killed because of it.

  “I only know a little bit,” Odin sighed, lifting his hand and brushing his hair behind his ear when Virgin gathered the maps and began to place them back on the bookshelf.

  “They were killed because humanity thought Centaurs were the result of women sleeping with horses that the Gods had punished. Not once were they allowed reprieve even when they tried to say that they were as much human as they were.”

  “And were killed because of it,” Odin said.

  Virgin nodded.

  When he returned to the bed and nestled in beside Odin, he began to speak of Elven society—how, when led into the forest, many Elves broke away from one another after a monarchy was declared and a queen chosen to rule their people, of which only three had existed within their lifetimes.

  “How long have the Elves been here?” Odin asked.

  “Far too long for us to keep concrete track,” Virgin said. “Millennia, at least—ten of them, if not more.”

  It was here, after Virgin declared the three discreet territories that made up the Elven forest and homelands, that he went into politics—how queens were usual seldom, alone and bonded with normally one mate, and how several princes and princesses were divided among the kingdom, of which would eventually rule when the queen was taken by death either naturally or unnaturally. The Halfling also declared, with pride in his voice at his revelations thus far, that Elves were not described as ‘men’ and ‘women,’ as they were human terms, but as ‘stags’ and ‘does.’

  “This is always how it has been,” Virgin shrugged. “Never address an Elf as a man or a woman, but as a male, stag, female or doe.”

  “Why deer?” Odin frowned. “Why not something else?”

  “Because it is what they chose, and they who are the proud and innocent.”

  He concluded his grand series of statements by explaining that Elves preferred vernacular to be ‘clear and concise’—not, made up, of contractions, but spoken in full to preserve the language they had so precariously evolved from humanity after watching it grow.

  “They must have known they would become the dominant race,” Virgin said, leaning against Odin’s side and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “We—Elves, are much as we are—don’t reproduce often, for it is something that is slowly becoming a dying custom.”

  “Won’t they go extinct if they don’t have children?” Odin frowned.

  “They will, one day, but to kill one Elf is a feat many find impossible to triumph over. You should know.”

  How well I do, he thought, sighing.

  Immediately, pressed into his brain as though a wax seal on a letter, an Elf came into his mind. With his flourishing hair and his tall, broad stance, he could have easily been called the greatest being that had ever walked the earth, other than what Virgin had described as the race of ‘Godly’ creatures the Elves had once been enslaved under—and in other, choice conditions, might still be. That alone was enough to make him tremble in fear, for if his father had been created by a bond between a Fair and Dark Elf, he would have been conceived where the two had coexisted, at least in part.

  She only said he came from the ocean.

  The thought chilled him to the bone.

  “You should rest,” Virgin said, pressing his weight onto Odin’s shoulders to ease him further into bed. “We’ve talked much too long.”

  “Will we talk more?” he asked.

  “There is much we can discuss while you are laid up,” Virgin agreed. “But yes, we will talk.”

  “Where are you going to sleep?”

  “On the floor.”

  “Why not with me?”

  Though lit by nothing, Virgin’s eyes seemed to sparkle in the darkness.

  “I didn’t want to burden you,” the older Halfling said, seating himself at the foot of the bed.

  “You’re not burdening me,” Odin said. “You’re helping me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “You are.”

  “Thank you, Odin. That means a lot to me.”

  Odin scooted over so Virgin could wedge in beside him.

  That night, he fell asleep with the Halfling’s arms around his waist and thoughts of the past in his mind.

  The sound of a cooing bird woke him from a peaceful night’s rest.

  Pushing himself up as carefully as he could as to not aggravate his wound or rouse Virgin from sleep, Odin cleared his eyes to find the creature sitting on the outer edges of the empty flowerbed. Alone, not in the least bit hampered by the hour and watching the inside of the room with a pair of beady eyes that could have been described as coal-like, it leaned forward and tapped on the glass as if beckoning him to come forward, then spread its wings and flapped once, then twice before settling back into place.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  When the creature cooed once more, Odin cast the sheets and covers out from over him, then eased his legs over the side of the bed as carefully as he could.

  He pressed half of his weight onto his lower body.

  Pain flared up in his torso.

  You can do this, he thought, coaxing himself out of bed by sheer willpower. You’re not that badly hurt.

  Not once had his legs been slashed, smashed, pushed into the earth and ground to dust, nor had his hip been dislocated or broken in the time when the Nagini had first thrown itself upon him and the moment he thrust his silver sword into its neck. He’d suffered no more than injuries to his torso, and while in more pain than he had ever been in throughout his life, he felt the appearance of this dove was important, if only because he’d encountered the creature once before.

  As he eased away from the bed, he tried to keep his movements steady in order to keep from surprising it. One false step would not only harm himself, but likely scare the bird away.

  You can do it. Come on. Just a little ways further.

  He took two more steps.

  The bird raised, then cocked its head.

  Odin examined it in the pale half-light that seemed to be caught somewhere between the mountains and the height of the building and tried to decipher what it was the dove could want. He’d once thought it a messenger, dumb and unable to merit its training, but when he looked down at its one leg and saw no form of tube in which something could be written, he raised his eyes to look directly into the bird’s face.

  Odin leaned forward.

  The bird cocked its head to the opposite side.

  When he pressed his hand to the glass, the dove leaned forward and tapped its beak directly across from where his hand was.

  “What are you?” he whispered, more than tempted to open the window and take the creature into his arms, but unsure if he should.

  Could the bird be someone’s pet, smart and able and desiring no more than human companionship, or had it just chosen to follow him on the chance that he might be friendly, offering it a hand of grain or maybe even a fruit or berry?

  His attention still fixed on the bird’s eyes, he parted his lips and sunk his teeth into them when he found he could not figure out what the creature wanted.

  Behind him, Virgin muttered something under his breath.

  Don’t get nervous. Just keep watching it.

  “Do you want something?” he asked, pressing his opposite hand to the glass, after which the dove jumped over a slight jut in the wood to tap his other hand. “Are you just following me, or do you really want something?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Virgin asked.

  Immediately upon hearing the Halfling’s voice, the bird jumped from its place and took off into the darkness.

  “Nothing,” Odin sighed, turning to return to bed.

  Virgin said nothing. He merely wrapped his arm around Odin’s waist after he crawled back under the covers.

  Thoughts of the dove and what its pre
sence could mean continued to haunt him for the rest of the morning. Like a bird from which a black feather had fallen and a mountain that shed its tears of copper, the idea that the creature and its behaviors could be something far more significant than he could have imagined hovered before his eyes and seemed to tick like some bizarre timepiece. First, the prophet proclaimed, came the anxiety, of which threatened to swallow him whole, then came the horrible revelation that the creature could be nothing more than a fluke—a series of events repeated by chance and the things that governed it, trickster Gods or wandering waves in the ever-vast plane of life. Such was Odin’s distress that when his thoughts forced him to wander from his bed—cold, alone and without any company—he tripped over his own two feet and fell to the floor, possibly aggravating his injuries more.

  Had Virgin been in the room and not out fetching food, he would have likely cried out in surprise.

  What’s wrong with you? he would have asked.

  What was wrong with him, Odin decided, was that his mind was breaking—cracking, slowly, like a piece of pottery left in an oven for far too long, waiting to implode upon itself.

  I’m going crazy, he thought, crying, his tears snaking down his face and onto the floor. I really am going crazy.

  Here he was, dozens upon dozens of leagues from his home country, lying on the floor of an Elven hospital awaiting a man who could possibly be his lover to rescue him. Pathetic could not describe what he was, lying on the floor in nothing but pants and bandages and crying, nor could it declare his actions or the thoughts that plagued him. Careless or consolable could not be passed upon his conscience, thereby allowing him a moment of respite, nor could the words distressed or depressed be endowed upon him like some great king’s sword in a country far, far away.

  Insanity, they said, was a condition derived from pressure weighed too harshly upon the mind.

  Am I? he thought. Am I really?