“I’ll set her up in the kitchen,” Cleo began. “It’ll warm up the quickest. Go and collect some more brush to supply the fire.”
Once the woman was laid out on the table in the kitchen, she watched Aarez rush back out into the night air, the first flakes of a new storm already descending. Cleo placed a soft pack under the woman’s head and covered her with the pair’s blankets. She even pulled the poncho from around her torso and tucked it under the woman’s chin. Within minutes, a generous fire blazed in the kitchen’s hearth, but the warmth made little progress in warming the woman’s frigid skin.
Cleo pushed her forefinger into the woman’s neck. She felt nothing but her own jumbled nerves, so she retracted her finger and rested a spoon under the woman’s nose. Here too, the woman displayed no sign of life. Cleo felt neither the push of warmth, nor the pull of air.
Aarez then stumbled into the kitchen with a bundle of snowy branches in his arms. “You’ve got to do something,” Cleo shouted as he dropped his load. “I don’t think she’s breathing, and I couldn’t feel a heartbeat.”
“What do you want me to do? I’m no apothecary. No doctor. I don’t even know exactly what is wrong with this woman. Other than a frozen brain.”
“Can’t you—”
“What?”
“Can’t you use your echo? Lend her some of your life?”
“Cleo, it doesn’t work like that. Besides, even if it did, I wouldn’t—”
“Please,” Cleo pleaded. “Please just try.” Tears chilled her cheeks. Aarez said nothing, but he leaned over the table, his face next to the woman’s. His eyes fluttered to her chest for a moment as though he contemplated her heart. Finally, he sucked in a great gulp of air, then placed both of his hands on the woman’s cheeks. Cleo zoned out of everything except for her companion and the mysterious woman. Her vision tunneled around the pair, all other senses abandoned.
Aarez, with his eyes clenched, looked intent on his actions. His brows furled and forehead wrinkled in concentration. Despite the nip in the air, sweat beaded down his temples. His own breathing slowed to a dangerous pace. The olive sheen of his skin drained from his exposed skin on his face and hands, resulting in the corpse-pallor of his alter-ego Pidgeon. His mouth twitched and opened to reveal small delicate teeth. An autonomous tongue roved over their grooved surfaces. He clenched his mouth closed suddenly, as if in reaction to pain.
Cleo considered pulling him back, but she hesitated. The process appeared to be working. The woman’s eyes fluttered behind their lids as though she were experiencing some snowy nightmare. So, with nothing else to do, she watched, powerless. Of the winds ferociously howling just outside the manor’s windows, she heard only a whimper. To her ears, Aarez’s hoarse breaths sounded as loud as thunder.
Cleo brought her eyes back up to his face. She gasped at how devoid of life it sat, even more so than when he worked with Sir Lucas and referred to himself as Pidgeon. As though sensing her eyes, her friend looked up, his expression contorting in horror.
“Hulp me,” Pidgeon’s voice gasped.
At his words, Cleo sprang up and hugged him tight, pulling him back from where he leant over the woman. The two crashed to the ground, Aarez immediately sinking into a comatose-like slumber. He melted into the comforting confines of her arms, the only signs of life coming from him were the light breaths that came at random from his nose.
Cleo wept for nearly an hour, thinking that she had doomed her friend to death. She sat, her back stiff against a counter, and rested his head back on her shoulder. Her body, finally warmed by the hearth, retreated into its own sleep, easing her mind from its plague of guilt.
Chapter 11
Aarez grumbled to himself as he sat atop Slipper, urging the mare into town at a pace that was quick, but not so fast as to generate further winds that whipped at his face. The horse and her rider pushed into the clearing where the cozy town of Mirr lay seemingly unbothered by the winteryear.
It was decided that someone would stay at the manor with the woman in case she woke or needed anything. Cleo’s infamy tipped the scale in her favor over Aarez, despite her connection with Oslow and Jean.
Aarez sighed. It was Cleo, his teenage charge, who was responsible for saving the stranger last night. For bringing her in, and for convincing him to try to revive her. Guilt gnawed at his stomach for not acting sooner. Perhaps the draw on his life would not have been so debilitating. His arms and legs were sore. It was as if he had physically pulled against the woman’s spirit as she sucked hungrily at his own. He wondered what would have happened if Cleo had not pulled him back when she did. Thinking of his charge brought about feelings of concern, rather than the anger he would have expected. She had endangered his life. He should be furious with her.
As Aarez walked Slipper through the town’s central thoroughfare, he heard, for the second time since waking up, the voice that he could only imagine was that of Pidgeon.
“I hope you’re not mad at me, sur.”
It unnerved him, sending a tingle down his spine. When it first roused him from a deep sleep earlier, he had chalked it off as a post-dream hallucination. Now that it recurred in the light of day, the maturing ventriloquist worried that hearing voices normally isolated from his conscious was a sign of more permanent damage.
Aarez frowned, remembering his explosive reaction upon waking earlier.
“You’ve got some nerve asking that of me,” he had said, standing and dusting off his clothes to distract his jittery hands. “I told you it doesn’t work that way. We are lucky that I didn’t die. Or kill her.”
Cleo had just looked at him with sorrow as if she had already raked her guilt over the coals, punishing herself. Her eyes were tainted red and sagged with fatigue, her cheeks puffed and moist from crying. She offered no excuse.
Aarez had distanced himself as quick as possible. After pocketing a handful of nuts, he stepped outside and decided to clear snow from in front of the manor and stables. He had been saddling Slipper when he heard her voice whispering at the edge of his hearing. He turned and saw her watching him from the doorway.
“I’m going into town to see if I can get any medicine for her,” he had said.
Over the course of his ride into Mirr, his anger lessened. By the time he dismounted before Oslow’s store, an idea had wormed its way into his mind that he should apologize to Cleo. Without debating with the mutinous thought, he ducked inside, escaping the raw afternoon air.
A bell hanging near the entrance jingled. Oslow called into the store. “Not open today.”
A roar of hunger tore out from his stomach after being hit by the intoxicating scent of cooking bacon from some back room. Drool inched down his lips. The nuts he had eaten suddenly felt light in his stomach.
“It’s Aarez,” he responded. “Can I talk to you, Oslow?” A moment later, Jean and Oslow entered from the back. “We found a young woman. In a cave near the manor. She was unconscious. Cleo wanted to help her, so we brought her in. She’s still unconscious now, though her breathing and heartbeat are as normal as they can be, considering.” Aarez shivered under the scrutiny and of Oslow’s milky irises.
“Jean, can you run to Mabel’s and get tinctures for sleeping and hypothermia?” Oslow asked.
“Of course.” She bundled into a coat and rushed out into the blustery winter air.
“What else?” Oslow asked.
“I know that you know,” Aarez said. “When you touched my face, I felt a spark from your hands. You knew right away that I was an echoer. Are you one too? Is that how you knew?”
Oslow nodded. “Something like that. Can I get you something to eat or drink? I think I heard your stomach louder than the bell. I’ve got bacon and sausages cooking.” He gestured for Aarez to follow him into the back.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can see right through that.” Oslow retreated back through the doorway, tapping his staff along the ground. “Yes, I knew that you were an echoer by feeling y
our face. And a very powerful one at that. May I inquire?”
Aarez decided that he was not going to wait in the storefront, so he followed the tanner back through a hallway to a living area. “I have to tell you anyway. I can lend my life force to objects. They become alive. It’s how I earn my keep in Nimbus. I’m a ventriloquist.”
“I think I see where this is going.”
“She wasn’t breathing. Her heartbeat was faint, if that. Cleo suggested that I try to give my life-force to restart hers. I was hesitant. I had tried it once before, to resuscitate someone, but it hadn’t worked. That’s why my career as a surgeon or healer never took off.”
Oslow chuckled at the dry humor.
“Obviously I had not tried it since maturing as an echoer. But now I know that people cannot be the recipient of my life. Even near death as she was, the girl nearly killed me; she was hungry for it. It took all my strength to resist. I felt the impulse tickling the back of my brain. An itch that I couldn’t scratch. An urge to give up and dissolve into a puddle. I don’t even know if, after everything, I’m all here.”
“What you did was dangerous. I wouldn’t advise you to ever consider that again, but I doubt you will. May I?” Oslow gestured with his hand. Aarez guided it to his face, then felt the slightest shock when the tanner’s rough hand settled on his forehead. “It doesn’t look like you did any permanent damage to yourself. I’m speculating here, as I am no surgeon myself, but if the girl survived after that, she’s probably going to be fine. Rest and recuperation for both of you.”
“Oh, good.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of power you possess, to disperse your life as though it were as supple as your breath.”
“I never exactly had a teacher. No one in Nimbus could—actually, there is one who supposedly can help echoers.”
“Oh?” Oslow smiled, his eyebrows rising. “Who?” He stirred the contents of the skillet as though only mildly interested.
“Apparently Skuddy knows of a man who can help any entertainer out. This man trained Skuddy and Gnochi both. It is said that he may be able to help me better control my echo. But this man, Javawooga, is something of a ghost.”
Oslow nodded, making an affirmative noise. “Listen, Aarez. I don’t claim to be able to train you in all the forces controlling life, despite the fact that I can see them clearer than you can see the hands before your face.”
Aarez looked down at his hands.
“But once this whole predicament blows over, come find me and I’ll see if I can help you learn to control it.” Aarez was not sure what predicament Oslow referred to, and he got no chance to further question the tanner because at that moment, Jean returned with the medicine
◆◆◆
Cleo dreamt of the menagerie. She had Gnochi’s journal across her lap, his voice in her ear rattling off some first age detail before a crowd. She scrawled their every question and paraphrased his answers as best she could, especially when he indulged a tangent. Despite her consistent complaints, he seemed unable to regulate the speed of which his mind and mouth worked together.
Gnochi stopped lecturing. His hands flew to his mouth, a gasp on his lips. Cleo saw his eyes locked on the journal. She did not know what had caused the interruption until she looked down at the open page and saw that it was not words that she had been writing, but a drawing. A woman’s face decorated the thin sheet. She looked familiar, but Cleo knew no name to call her.
Feeling a tear of pain from deep in her chest, Cleo coughed and clutched at throat. She felt nausea rising, but it was not bile that shocked her tongue, but blood. The metallic liquid bubbled in her mouth as though boiling. She felt it trickle down her nostrils. A single drop fell onto the page where it soaked into the drawing, precisely following the woman’s hairline. After the first drip bled through the page, rippling color across her scalp, the flow ceased. Cleo fell back, lightheaded, coming to rest in soft grass that cushioned to her head, wrapping it in a cocoon of sinewy blades.
She awoke with a start, breath caught in her throat. Sitting up from where she had slumped to the floor, Cleo saw that the woman who they had rescued was awake and staring at her with one of the kitchen’s carving knives gripped in a shaky hand.
She was the woman from her dream, Cleo realized, though her hair sat a shade darker than the dream blood. For a minute, neither moved or spoke. Both seemed content to watch the other. The woman’s eyes, as vibrant as a jungle beset with torrents of rain, stared with a natural ferocity. She wore a scowl that shrunk her mouth and cheeks.
“Thanks for restoring the fire,” Cleo said, noticing the proud blaze in the hearth.
“Where is he?” She replied, her voice cold and sharp as an icicle.
“He went out to get you medicine.”
“He—I saw him in my mind.”
“I should apologize for that,” Cleo said. “He was totally against it, but I kind of forced him into trying. We didn’t know if it would work.”
“He brought me back.” It sounded both as confident as a statement, but as confused as a question.
Cleo smiled. “I’m glad.”
“How did you find me?” The woman’s voice finally seemed to soften, as if it were the last piece of her body to thaw out from its near-death freeze.
“I stayed in that same cave a while back with my—with Gnochi.” Cleo thought she saw the woman’s eyes widen at the mention of the name, but they thinned an instant later. “My name is Cleo, by the way.”
“Kiren,” she replied. “His name is…Aarez?”
“Yes,” Cleo answered. “We are planning on riding out the winteryear here, so you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to recover, unless you have to be somewhere.”
“I ran away. Well partially,” She said. Cheeks that reddened with embarrassment dissuaded further discussion on the topic. “Where are we?”
“In a house called the Hopewell Forest Manor. Somewhere between Pike’s Cathedral and Mirr.”
Kiren did not respond to Cleo’s coordinates. She got up and walked around the kitchen, settling before its sole window. Reflected snow-light illuminated her face, painting her features with a pallor reminiscent from the night before.
Cleo spied fatigue in her eyes. “Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
“No, I just want to lie down. Whose poncho is this?” She tugged sluggishly out of the poncho and made for the great hall, where Cleo had set up their cots.
“It’s mine. Well, technically, it’s Gnochi’s, but I use it.”
Kiren stumbled around the cots and made for the front window. The howl of the frigid arctic wind greeted their ears.
Cleo sat down on her cot, affirming to herself that she would keep better watch. Fatigue from weeks of sleepless nights had caught up with her, though. She soon dozed off.
The click of the front door tore Cleo free from her dreamless nap. Before she was fully awake, her hand gripped the staff by her legs. Afternoon light waned as twilight approached. Through sleepy eyes, she saw Aarez at the door, looking at Kiren, who looked at her companion with a wary gaze.
“Aarez,” Cleo said between yawns. She set the staff down, stretched her arms, and shook her hands, willing blood to bring extra morsels of warmth to her chilled fingers. “This is—”
“Kiren. I know.” Without waiting for an invitation, he walked over to where she sat and squatted before her, his muted brown eyes searching through hers. He furrowed his brow.
Cleo watched Kiren’s face for some indication of emotion or state, but the only defining features were the corners of her mouth which turned down in a slight frown. After a moment of stillness and silence, Cleo heard Aarez whisper out a rough apology.
Kiren lurched up on her haunches in a swift motion and wrapped her arms around Aarez’s neck, silent tears falling from her eyes as though the fierce storm clouds raging behind them had finally born rain.
Cleo backed away, obvious to the fact that she was intruding on a private moment. What happened whe
n Aarez leant his life to Kiren transcended farther than Cleo had previously thought. She imagined that the two now shared a familiar bond. She wondered if they had seen the other’s lives play out in reverse or if she was simply fantasizing the event. Cleo started walking toward the kitchen but stopped as they broke off their embrace.
Aarez stood, scoured the room, his eyes eventually finding Cleo’s face. He approached her, then, in a voice devoid of anger, sadness or hysteria, said, “Never again. Not even if you are dying.”
Cleo knew exactly what he meant. She nodded, afraid her voice would betray her fear. Fear of losing his friendship, and more importantly, his trust. Aarez ascended to the second story. Cleo heard a door open, and shut. She looked to Kiren, only to find the woman sitting and staring at where he had squatted, not moments before.
Chapter 12
Jackal returned from walking the perimeter of his compound’s walls. The surrounding desert offered no relief for wary eyes and he had been feeling fatigued of late. He closed the door to his office and leaned against it, letting out a sigh. A stack of paperwork on the desk required his attention, but he loathed to dive into it. Plans put in place for more than a decade were unraveling. His eyes fell to the report detailing Ren’s fall and arrest. It seemed, according to the sheet before him, that two of Ren’s crew had stolen Gideon’s pendant. The fool thought that Gnochi, and the girl who was tagging along with the bard, were responsible for the theft.
“I could’ve assured him otherwise, had the he simply asked me,” Jackal said to himself. “Much embarrassment would have been avoided.” He sighed, eying the report of how Ren had assaulted Gnochi, almost derailing his own plans in the process. Gnochi’s ability to persevere against the additional challenges speaks to his value.
Perhaps he had been too hasty to get rid of what could’ve been a solid asset. A terse knock sounded at the door. “Come,” he grunted.
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