Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1)

by Jonathan Renshaw

  Barely stifled curses poured from under the door to Clauman and Nessa’s room as the panelled building shook with the thunder of “Cock-a-doodle-dooo!”

  Borr and Harriet, powerful sleepers both, awoke well after sunrise and were surprised by their guests’ subdued and somewhat grumpy manner at breakfast. Clauman made his feelings for Snore quite plain. Harriet insisted that he was exaggerating and that it could not be that bad and that, if he chose to, he could ignore whatever clucking had woken him.

  Clauman dropped his spoon and looked at her without expression, and then said that either his family or the rooster would be leaving immediately. Snore was given a hock on the far side of the buildings.

  That day the men worked well together setting traps and making repairs to goat pens, chicken coops, and the long-neglected roof of the inn. Their language was the silent understanding of getting the job done. When words were used, they were few and to the point, like “Mallet”, “Next beam”, or “Let me have a go”. Aedan found this quiet camaraderie both surprising and amusing.

  Borr was an experienced carpenter with an impressive tool shed, though it was no tidier than the house. He had cut many of the inn’s logs and panels himself. When Aedan remarked on the enormity of the task, Borr merely shrugged his heavy shoulders. To follow orders and plod through chores appeared to be his complete expectation of life.

  At dinner, Aedan fully understood why Harriet had called the previous night’s pot roast underdone. A charred crust lined almost everything on his plate. Borr’s look of delighted surprise was gone and Harriet wore one of satisfaction. This, apparently, was how it was done. It made no difference what herbs were used – all her meals tasted like soot. Nobody dared comment. Aedan learned to pinch his eyes shut and swallow hard. He’d always thought that when people said someone could burn water, it was just an expression. Harriet, however, had apparently mastered that dark art; she could burn anything from water to wooden spoons and whatever else that came in contact with her pots.

  On the third morning, Harriet bustled out onto the porch where Aedan was sitting at a small table, writing.

  “What are you writing?” she asked, without preamble. “Here, let me see that.” She pulled the page out from under his hand.

  Aedan was surprised at her abrupt approach, but was not entirely upset. After all, what was a writer without a readership?

  “The adventures of the mountain warrior,” she read. She was silent for a while, letting her eyes rove over the lines. When she finished, she put the page on the table and sat down. Aedan waited, breathless.

  “Just as I feared,” she said. “All empty boyish silliness. You have obviously let your imagination go wild with weeds like a garden full of … weeds. Imagination is not good for you, just like weeds aren’t. So I am going to help you dig out the weeds and put yourself in order.”

  Aedan frowned, not sure that he liked where this was going.

  “You see,” she resumed, “I happen to know that someone your age has no understanding of such notions.” She pointed at the page. “Love, tragedy and revenge,” she said, shaking her head. “These are exactly the kinds of ideas that I will not allow in your sweet little head, my boy. What could you possibly know of such things?”

  Aedan gathered himself to answer, but she was too quick for him.

  “You see – nothing. One thing you’ll soon discover is that I know how to read people. I’m glad that you are writing – it shows some refinement, but I cannot allow you to ruin yourself with such empty ideas – and violent! Really Aedan, this is too horrible for someone so young and delicate. You see, I can tell by your injuries that you are made soft. It’s time for you to accept that. I’d like to see you writing valuable thoughts from now on – recipes, garden arrangements, even plans for my new shed.”

  “But I … I don’t want to.”

  Harriet wasn’t listening – something she had apparently developed to a fine art. She was on her feet pacing, her finger tapping against her pursed lips like someone planning a large-scale renovation – which was exactly what she was doing. And Aedan was the object of this renovation.

  “We’ll begin by putting you in charge of household chores. Sewing was the thing that gave the finishing touches to my refinement – but needles can be dangerous. Maybe we’ll keep that back until I’ve taught you responsibility and foresight.”

  Aedan looked out onto the empty road and wondered how those qualities had contributed when Harriet and her husband had built an inn on a dying route. Back down that road were Aedan’s friends who knew him for what he was, who wouldn’t try to change him into something else. He reached up and felt the little leather case that now hung from a cord around his neck. Though its touch gave him comfort, it had been a mistake to draw attention to it.

  “What’s that?” Harriet said.

  Something changed in Aedan’s face. With both hands he gripped the little case and pressed it to him.

  Harriet narrowed her eyes, but stayed where she was. Her glare dropped to the treasure Aedan held, and he clasped it tighter.

  “This is a bad start for you. A very bad start. And I can see there is a lot we are going to have to mend here. I may not be a mother, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make even the worst person into someone decent. I’ve done so for my husband and I can do so with any boy.” She threw her head back and glowed with defiant pride.

  Aedan recognised the ambition in her eyes. She was not a mother but she certainly wanted the job. Though he dreaded what was coming, he did not have the strength to oppose it, and Harriet was strutting like a boxer.

  As soon as he was alone, he hobbled off the porch down the stairs, dug a few handfuls of soil from beneath them, slipped the leather case into the hole and covered it again. He had a suspicion that Harriet just might root through his things when he took a bath. If she found that case, if she looked inside …

  That night he spoke to his father about Harriet’s threat to reform him, but Clauman merely laughed and did nothing, perhaps thinking of his dinner and hoping Aedan would be made to cook. Then Aedan spoke to his mother. She listened attentively, promised to stand up for him … and quailed under Harriet’s domineering presence.

  From then on, Harriet took charge of Aedan as a personal project, mending him with constant criticism and ensuring that he was never without some self-improving duty. Until he could walk, he was given drapes to clean, furniture to polish, vegetables to cut and so on, and as soon as he was able to move with only one crutch, he was promoted to sweep. He couldn’t help but notice that the dirt he removed was thick and old.

  Harriet was only ever satisfied with Aedan when she had just corrected him. Anything that came of his own initiative, or for which he showed any kind of eagerness, was a threat that had to be weeded out. He was not allowed to be one of the men. He was constantly pulled from their company and sent elsewhere on some domestic errand.

  His opinions on anything were found to be wrong. Harriet pointed this out and generously supplied her opinions for replacement. It quickly became evident that she knew all there was to know of anything worth knowing. Whenever she received new information she would secretly digest it with a bored expression that said “old news”. On some topics the breadth of her opinions made up for the scarcity of detail. Sailing, for example, was dealt with in one grand sweep: “All sailors are fools, because what happens when their boats sink? If we were meant to breathe in water we would have fins.” This was followed by a patient smile and a lift of the chin that signified, “Bet you hadn’t thought of that.”

  Laughter would have been dangerous, and Aedan just didn’t care enough to argue. Yet, silly as the woman could be, it was clear that she was proving herself a good companion for his timid mother. So he withdrew into a little shell and let the tide roll him around. But the waters were only just beginning to stir.

  No matter what he was doing, Harriet found the time to supervise him, to point out the spots he had missed or scoop out carrots
that had been sliced too thickly. She monitored everything he did. Evaluated him constantly. The worst was her encouragement.

  “Well, Aedan,” she would say. “You worked well today and showed a much better attitude. I was really pleased to see you pulled yourself together and did a better job of sweeping the porch. I think we are improving you well. Tomorrow I want to see you doing even better than today, and I want to see you smiling as you work. It’s not just the results, but the attitude too. Smiling is the key. Sometimes humming a song. I’ll be watching and listening for those tomorrow. But you are doing very well, very well indeed.”

  This was harder to bear than her anger. She was really just exulting in her domination, securing her rule over him.

  Aedan came very close several times to smashing the broom across the table. This house was becoming a jail. If he hobbled out for a walk, he would be confronted on his return with a tapping foot and a demand to know what he had been doing.

  But he had to depend on her too for the medicinal herbs her garden provided, the massaging of his stiff and shrunken legs – in which she showed more skill than his mother – his food, his bed and, at times, the arm that helped to steady his tottering steps. She was an attentive nurse. Having to lean on her arm undermined his right to complain, or rather, his urge to scream. He wished he did not have to depend on her so, but what choice did he have? Gratitude and suffocation held each other in place, but it was the latter that was growing.

  Harriet told everyone with obvious triumph that her efforts were turning this delinquent into a more polished and respectable boy. Aedan was convinced she was trying to turn him into a girl. She seemed to have done the same with her husband who, big as he was, quailed under her stare and took orders as meekly as a chambermaid.

  Aedan found some comfort in being able to slice a few earthworms into the stew on occasion, any spiders he found got dangled on Harriet’s chair, and where else to put that smelly dead frog than in one of her spare boots?

  By listening to Harriet’s instructions and then disregarding them and doing whatever he felt like, he actually learned to cook quite well. Harriet generally shook her head in disapproval when she tasted his dishes. “Underdone” was the usual pronouncement of judgement along with “not enough salt” and “badly sliced”. Then she would down her portion and help herself to seconds.

  After a few weeks, Aedan arrived late at the dinner table and a fairly typical scene played out.

  “What did I tell you about being late?” Harriet snapped.

  “I was getting my boots on. Couldn’t find the one.”

  “Well you should have put it where it could be found, now shouldn’t you?”

  Aedan grumbled something about putting them on the sill to dry and one falling out, but he said it too softly. He didn’t really want to be explaining himself to her.

  “Excuse me! Don’t you mumble at me, my boy.”

  Nessa and Borr cringed. Clauman picked up his bowl and headed out to the porch, something he had taken to doing in such moments. When his temper was roused, he could be terrifying, but walking out on conversations was another thing he was practiced at. He showed particular contempt for these petty squabbles. Harriet followed his back with her eyes before returning to Aedan. He was staring at his bowl, trying to hide within himself, to find some quiet corner where his presence would not be offensive. He just wanted to be left in peace.

  “Are you sulking?” Harriet demanded.

  “No.”

  “Look at me when you speak to me.”

  Aedan looked at her and sighed.

  “Did you sigh? Ha! So you are sulking. Gave yourself away, didn’t you? Don’t you turn your head away.” She waited for Aedan to turn back. “Sighing is the first mark of sulking, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to put an end to sulking. Now you snap out of this and fix a smile on your face this instant or you’ll be scrubbing floors till midnight.”

  He could no sooner have smiled than sprouted feathers and begun laying eggs. So he scrubbed.

  He began doing things poorly. Why, he was not entirely sure. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to keep some part of himself from Harriet’s conquest of him.

  It was this very imprisonment that sparked something in Aedan. In a dusty part of his mind he began to remember that he was not a mule – a drudge without mind or soul. He began to realise that he missed the freedom of wandering through the trees, of racing the wind and laughing in the exhilaration of a rabbit-chase, of searching the hills for mysteries and listening to the forest for secrets, of climbing so high that he was afraid and then casting his eye over a world far wider than it had appeared from the ground, of wondering what lay in a direction and setting out to discover – of pursuing a course that was his own.

  So one afternoon, while Harriet was burning something for supper, he slipped out and asked his father if he could join the men, then hobbled out into the yard where he worked beside them on the jobs that his crutches permitted, getting himself as dirty as he knew how. When Harriet found him, she threw a mighty tantrum and ordered him to clean himself and get back into the house where he belonged. Aedan’s reply was strategic: “My father said I could work with him.”

  Harriet glared at Clauman who looked back without expression. Neither said anything and she stormed back into the house. Aedan released a small sigh, wondering how long the respite would last. When he turned, he saw his father was looking at him with a hint of amusement.

  As soon as the work was done, Aedan limped out into the trees, in search of the solitude he had so desperately craved for the past weeks. It was difficult going. His left leg had healed enough to take weight, but there was something wrong with his right. The pain when he stood on it was acute, mostly in the knee. He hoped it only needed more time, but there was a niggling worry at the back of his mind; the whole limb appeared slightly shrivelled.

  He moved through the woods and his thoughts soon began to tug in other directions. After covering a very painful mile, he found an isolated spot where the birch trees grew thickly and he could sit and let his mind loose without fear of interruption. He had kept his feelings deep, guarding them well from Harriet’s prying. Now they tumbled out.

  Sadness over the events in the Mistyvales, the invasion and destruction of peaceful lives, had gradually been giving way to anger, a white hot anger that rose in him now and caused his breath to come quickly.

  For mere profit, men had brought death to the gentlest and kindest person he had ever known.

  He would repay Quin with a fitting violence, a fitting justice. And not just Quin.

  Lekrau, the nation that had been no more than a rumoured threat had entered his life and torn half his heart from him. Lekrau had become his personal enemy.

  He realised how much he hated tyrants, the strong who stood on the weak. If he had only been stronger … It was a thought that had returned to him often in the past weeks. He needed to learn to face up to men. He needed to grow strong, stronger than the tyrants that marched over his life – Quin, Dresbourn, and even the one man who had begun it all …

  Then, once he was able to keep his feet before even the strongest of men, he would avenge her. And after that he would avenge every person that had fallen to that hateful nation. Before he died, Lekrau would know the sting of its own whips, its slave ships would find the bottom of the sea, and chains would be turned on their masters. If no army was bound that way, he would raise it. There was no solace to be found in hoping these traders would avoid him, that they would pick another place, another town. That was no better than wishing tragedy on others. There was a time when the hunter had to be hunted.

  One day.

  Suddenly the thoughts were no longer idle ideas. The images seared, fixed themselves in his mind. It was not the purpose he had expected to hold, perhaps not the purpose his parents or even Kalry would have wanted, but as he pictured burning ships and slavers hurled into their own dungeons, there was a fierce stirring in him, a hunger that demand
ed action. No, she probably wouldn’t have wanted this, but every time he thought of her – and he knew it would happen often in the years to come, for how could he ever forget her – every time, he would see those flames, and he would let them grow.

  It had to start now.

  Fighting against the pain, he got to his feet and worked his way up to the top of a knoll that faced west, that faced Lekrau. He dropped both crutches and grimaced as he took weight on the shrivelled right leg. Then, throwing his fist in the air, he let out a scream of defiance that tumbled through the valley and echoed between the rugged crags. It might have seemed a small thing – the raging of a mere boy – perhaps even something a man might have laughed at, yet there was flint behind it, flint that could one day set whole nations alight.

  The echoes faded, but in Aedan’s head they seemed to grow louder, building, growling, sparking. When he returned to the house, his step was firmer, his face grimmer, and something flashed in his glance.

  He did not work in the house again and instead remained with his father and Borr. Harriet voiced her growing concerns – that he was losing all the ground he had gained, that he had slipped down the ladder again into reckless, filthy and shameful ways. Aedan began to realise that there were some people whose good opinion he actually didn’t want.

  From then on, things changed quickly. He brushed from his mind the dull passivity that had gathered there. He ate well and started to exercise his shrunken right leg, overdoing it at first and causing enough pain to rob himself of sleep for two nights. But when he found a bearable routine of flexing, stretching and slow walking, he began to build the muscles without damaging them. The leg still hurt, and sometimes he was forced to use a crutch, but he was at least able to walk again. He took full advantage of this, disappearing for hours at a time into the woods.