Chapter Text
The Boy
light in the sky - light in the box - a fall of rain a surprise -
A child! Quickly, is he alive!?
the voices so loud so close close closer and then hands - hands scared and hard - grabbing and holding holding but different different different then the ones he saw before they put him in the ground ground ground - is he dead? is he real - he is heavy in body and light in his mind because the pain - pulling him towards black and crimson
Are you all right, boy? Can you hear me? Give him here!
Can you speak? What is your name?
the the the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain he doesn’t have one he doesn’t have one he has a voice - words - a memory - no, a memory of a memory of a memory - and he hears himself say small, small and sad
...took it. The witch...he took it from me... he did he did he did in the darkness he hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt him - these new hands don’t hurt they hold they don’t hurt they tighten around him but he fears (what? what does he fear)(everything everything everything) because he is small and feels weak so weak and the pain and it didn’t stop the witch - did he fight? he doesn’t know can’t know has to know can’t move has to move but is so so cold cold and the pain holds him in a grasp like a tight tight fist making his heart lungs head eyes work hard so hard he just wants to breathe, breathe gasp
Keep him warm.
cold - wet - they are moving through the air and the blanket ? cloak ? keeps him from moving his arms and legs he’s trapped he can’t run he’s too tired and he hurts too much to sleep his eyes are weeping silent tracks of salt and iron down his cheeks into his hair onto his neck into the shirt someone above him someone holding him looks down starts pressing something to his face to his face no no no no he opens his mouth and sound with no words comes out and the grip loosens and tightens
Is there anything more we can do to stop the bleeding?
Not until we get him back to the Medical Spire.
no no no no no no please please please he doesn’t know what’s happening it’s all happening at once and it’s not stopping he closes his eyes and it’s not not not stop stop stop stopping wake up wake up dark dark darkness forever he wants it back he wants it wants want wants wants it time ? how much time he doesn’t know - too much - too little - too difficult to know to count to understand just breathing breathing breathing making sounds feeling pain pain pain the air changes sudden against his skin that feels and its warm its warm the noises around are not of the sky but the ground and they echo echo echo
Oh my heavens! Come in, hurry, come with me -
He’s lost some blood - we don’t know how much -
Let us see -
We found him like this, buried in a coffin in Thristas -
the cover on his face comes away and light comes in and he blinks his eyes closed but it feels wrong wrong wrong because it’s gone isn’t it isn’t it - taken stolen from one side everything and from the other - nothing - twitching wrenching away when he feels fingers in his hair on his forehead eyebrow and the grip slips -
What is your name?
- said something before but we think he’s hurt too badly -
turning away away from the light wanting to float up up up away wishing they were in the sky again it was horrible but better better than here
Put him on the bed.
soft white sheets in a bright white room he is free but not free and curls into himself so tight tight tight they’ll never break him open never never never
I’m scared the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain the pain always there he writhes from it but cannot escape because it’s inside of him he is inside of it he puts his hands his fingers towards what the witch took from him to see to feel to find
“Oh, my dear,” a woman with brown skin and an open face takes his hands and holds them away from what he tries to touch. “All will be well. You’re safe now. All will be well.”
Stop it stop it stop please please please everything was too much too much in all ways every way sights sounds touch
Leave the room and wait outside, please. We need room to prepare and begin treatment.
Quickly - the sleeping draught -
Near complete extirpation of the right eye - he isn’t letting me look very closely - bleeding subsiding. I can’t see debris in the cavity. We need better light -
Yes, of course you’ll be sent for when it’s done -
cup tipped against his lips and he spits reminded of the box in the box again under the ground and the water coming in with the rain the rain the rain overhead but - it overwhelms - tastes bitter and sweet and he hates it the taste the feel the smell
“There you are,” she speaks again. “You’ll go to sleep and feel much better when you wake.”
he won’t he won’t he won’t he won’t he w-
Beldaruit
The boy slept for five days under a heap of blankets charmed for warmth. He only woke (barely) when prompted to be fed by attendants. From what the doctors explained - the long slumber was a mixed result of his body’s response to physical trauma and the sleeping draught they put in his broth.
"He won't drink plain water - but he'll take broth if it's warm," they reported.
“When will he be able to talk?” Beldaruit asked.
“Whenever he decides to stay awake - we’ve begun tapering him off the sedatives. Recovering from this sort of injury is quite taxing!” The head doctor, Uwalia, told them with more than a shade of scold.
Beldaruit smiled, putting that little extra bit of glaze on it he warranted when he was very well aware of something someone assumed he knew nothing about. “Of course.”
Yet - his gaze flickered towards the pair of Knights stationed at the door - he was grateful this child’s medical care was being conducted with at least a verbal insistence on dignity.
Vinanna stood next to him, arms crossed and brow furrowed. He could tell she didn’t like the answers the two of them were getting either, but for reasons entirely different than his own.
The “heaviest dressing” was due to come off soon but from what they observed the disrupted flesh inside his eye socket was coming together nicely and did not require any additional debriding. The Brimmed Caps who abused this child so grievously either didn’t know human anatomy or didn’t care, because the musculature inside the wound was half obliterated and half retained.
Neither he nor Vinanna had been permitted to see the boy since he came into the care of the Spire. This made Vinanna tetchy, as securing the boy due to the circumstances of his discovery meant his keeping should be directly under her purview. If he hadn’t been in desperate need of medical care, he would have been allocated one of the cells in the Knights’ quarters until they ferreted out who he was.
It was already bad enough she had been obliged to take the medical staff at their word regarding the child’s body and it’s distinct absence of tattoos.
“They don’t even know what they’re looking for,” she’d said. “They don’t know conventional magic or forbidden spells from an infant’s scribble in the dirt.”
Beldaruit could feel the tension coming from her in short bursts as she stood next to him now, as though letting it all off at once would shake the ground from under their feet. It normally wasn’t this hard for her to be judicious.
“We cleaned up their bad work,” Uwalia explained. “Took care of the remains and preserved his tear duct. But a second procedure will be required to permanently close his eyelids once we determine he’s safe from infection. The proximity to the brain is troublesome with cases like this. We need to watch him closely.”
“He’ll tolerate it?” Vinanna asked.
Uwalia nodded. “There’s risk to be had in every medical procedure; but the first went well and that scenario was emergent. There’s no reason to think a carefully planned operation would be more dangerous to him now. He nursed a temperature the first night, but it was gone by morning. Very typical.”
“And you’ll let us know when he’s conscious?” Vinanna’s arms were still crossed. Through the open distant doorway, she peered at the body of the sleeping boy with narrowed eyes, as if she could will him into recovery. Or she suspected something false.
This question annoyed Uwalia, Beldaruit could tell, but she smoothed over her ruffled feelings and maintained her cool professionalism.
“Of course. As previously discussed, I will send word when he’s ready to speak with you.”
And not a moment sooner was the unspoken chide hidden in her words. She was a woman of specific authority crossing swords with the unstoppable force of the Great Hall’s internal governing system, but she was strong enough to keep her feet firmly planted in the interest of her patient.
Beldaruit sighed - in relief, though he knew Vinanna would attribute it to the exasperation she felt. This gave him longer to plan. “Very well. We respect your right to see to your patients as you deem appropriate, naturally. We thank you for your time today. Vinanna, shall we depart?”
“Yes, let’s.”
That hard note in her voice. He made note to navigate the conversation carefully, when the time came to have it.
Before they fully turned away, Uwalia gave them pause by raising up a querying hand. “Deputy Captain - before you leave, I must ask. Are your guards still necessary? The child is quite safe here.”
“My Knights will stay at their posts until dismissed,” Vinanna said, drawn up to her full height. “That is non-negotiable.”
Uwalia raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, shoulders straight and severe. Her expression kept careful and neutral. Vinanna, in her ill-temper, was coming down too hard on this civilian pushback and ran the risk of alienation.
Beldaruit intervened to inject some silver-tongued diplomacy. “I fear, Doctor Uwalia, that he is susceptible to dangers born of magic. We do not doubt the skills of your staff, but there are threats unknown to common folk which the Knights Moralis are uniquely prepared to defend against.”
Like protecting defenseless doctors from a mysterious child associated with the Brimmed Caps, for example.
“You’re a fearsome liar, my friend,” Vinanna said once they were extricated from the Medical Spire, entering the throng of business and pleasure that surrounded it outside. The crowd swallowed them with ease, eager to welcome two of their own.
“Aren’t we all?” He felt a little light-headed after all that. Ideas spinning and spooling out in his mind’s eye. His sealchair adjusted gait to keep up with Vinanna’s long stride. Even as a Wise, while in public he still caught the odd lingering look of pity or an open stare of flat, rude intrigue. On a different day, he would have had the energy to anonymously rebuke them in one of his usual ways.
“That did not go well,” Vinanna determined.
“I should say so.”
“He needs to wake up before our trail dies completely.”
Beldaruit thought of the way they found the boy in the ground - already posed like someone dead. It was affecting at the time, and over the past few days was transformed into a shard now stuck in the flesh of his imagination. Haunting Doctor Uwalia and her staff on a daily basis was not going to make the child better any faster.
“Give him time. It’s only luck we found him alive at all. Have you sent word to Engendale?”
Her favorite sore subject.
Vinanna made a noise of dismissal. “Fat lot of help, he is. He has nothing to say on the matter but platitudes. As far as he’s concerned, this mess means nothing in the diplomatic sense. I’m going to write again to tell him my plan to send teams to investigate the villages and towns around the forest. If the chiefs and mayors aren’t ready for my people, he’s going to be the one sorting out their complaints. Mark my words.”
“Marked.”
The Boy
He was tired and in pain and he didn’t understand anything. Not a single thing. He didn’t know where he was. He blearily opened his eyes - eye - and looked around. He’d seen this room before. As he got stronger, spent less time thrashing in the dark wet horrors of his dreams, the full scope of what he didn’t know was beginning to come clear.
Wrongness took shape inside of him. No words for it. But if this is what life was - it was miserable. It couldn’t be right. He cried. Often, for hours. It’s all he did when he wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t know why. He kept his hands over his mouth so no one would hear and come looking.
The sensation of loss crawled up the back of his neck on a million pinching millipede legs over and over again. A tumbling need in his chest asked his head to remember who-what-where-when-why. There was nothing.
He drew the blankets around himself and up over his head. Nothing.
Paralytic hysteria. Overwhelmed.
Breathing in the stuffy heat of the sheets, his own air.
Asleep again without trying.
Bad dreams. Bad, bad dreams.
Awake and not wanting to be.
His head ached. His nose, his eye, his ears, the teeth in his mouth. An all-over tenderness that wasn’t fixed by rest or food. Swallowing was hard. It got better, day by day. But there was a part of him that was bad now. And it did not improve with the physical state of his body. He could sense it.
He had nothing but feelings and even those were tied to the big white blank that scrolled unending between his ears. Empty. Pain was to be the only proof he was ever alive.
What happened before
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
The grown-ups came to give him meals and change his bed sheets and his bandages and he pretended to be asleep when they did. He was afraid of what they would do when they realized he no longer slept all the day long. He feared they would speak with him and know something was wrong with his mind. This fear overrode his disgust and distrust at being handled by them, so he let his body flop like a ragdoll in their grasp as they made their movements of care.
They did not hurt him. They never made to. Not like the witch did.
When he was alone again he examined his hands, feet, arms, legs. His. But he had no recollection of them before
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
What if his face was unrecognizable? He could not picture it. He did not want to see it
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
Sitting in a ball, legs drawn up to chest, arms wrapped around - he felt compelled to rock back and forth. The small comfort of weight and gravity, and the steadiness in the relationship between them. He closed his eye and rested his right cheek - ouch! - left cheek on his knee. Wisps of white hair - his hair - got in the way sometimes. When he lost the odd one it was gone forever in the bleached field of his bedsheets.
Bandages encircled his head. He explored their confines, the way they looped over his ears and padded the throbbing space under his right eyebrow.
He reached through time in his mind. And could get no farther than
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
Every time.
Speaking - asking questions - was inevitable. And once he opened that door, he would be just as liable to answer theirs. He deliberated on this for days - or what felt like them. The windows in the room were strange. He could not see the sun, the moon, or her stars. He shook under his blankets at the thought of being trapped in this strange, white place with no sky. Perhaps it was only a fancier coffin, and he was just as damned as he was before they brought him here.
Eventually boredom overwhelmed his sense of danger. He wanted something - anything - to change. If he started small, perhaps he’d be able to control what it was. He’d begin with the obvious, and ply them from there. He practiced in his head and out-loud, in the quiet. Felt the shapes of the words in his mouth and how dry they sounded when they came out.
“Where - am I?” he finally asked. Stumbling over the simplicity of it, despite his efforts.
The red-haired man filling the unused water pitcher by the bed at the time was so startled by his question he almost dropped it.
“One moment, I’ll be right back,” the man said before hurrying off -
Not the answer the boy wanted. And then a whole yammering crowd was in his white room, prompting his questions as fast as he could muster the bravery to ask them. This internal confluence was infrequent and almost as paralyzing as the realization that he knew nothing at all.
“The Medical Spire in the Great Hall!” said the adults whirling around him, who kept touching him. Well. He didn’t know what that was. So that information was useless.
They waved their hands in front of his face and told him to follow their fingers up down right left - farther and closer - no, keep your head still, thank you - how about - what about - how are you - yes no maybe I don’t know -
Question after question he hoped he would hear an answer that made some measure of sense. The concentration it took to build one that didn’t let them know what he was thinking or feeling made his chest feel full of bees - he drew everything in - taught - ready to run -
A face he remembered, the face of the woman who held his hands away when - ? (he didn’t know when, actually) came through the muddle of people and cleared her throat decisively.
Her voice rang over the top of every head, heavy with warm authority: “Away with most of you, I think, for a little while - let’s give him some peace. Ghensey - stay here and be my second set of hands if you please.”
The red-headed man from before stayed behind as directed, and the room grew mercifully silent as the others filed through the exit. He watched them go, and as they did he saw there were two tall figures clad in black and crimson standing on either side of the doorway outside
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
The door closed again. And it was just the three of them. The woman pulled a stool to his bedside and sat there.
His knees were already drawn to his chest, else he’d have brought them even closer. His arms wrapped around them and he pulled. Tight. Close.
The woman, dressed in an almost identical way to the others save a white armband, looked at him. So did the man called Ghenesy. He fixed his gaze away from them, to the floor. To keep them out of his mind.
“Are you hurting anywhere, small one?” she asked. And then she waited for his answer so long, the silence felt like something he could touch. It was deeper, somehow, than the quiet of an empty room.
“My head.”
He would give them little words. No big clues. And this, at least, was true - his head felt bruised and hot. As if someone had plucked at every fiber of him from the top of his scalp to the back of his shoulder. Especially on his right side. This was distressing because he seemed to favor his right hand over his left. Every time he moved, his body reminded him. Not so fast.
She nodded, as if she were expecting that answer.
“I am Uwalia, the Head Doctor. You were brought here by a scouting party of witches who found you wounded in the forest.”
the coffin the rain the water the dirt the witch his eye
These must be different witches. Had to be. Had to be.
“You are recovering from a surgery we performed on your right eye. Some pain is normal. But if it’s too much, tell me, and I will help you manage it.”
“It’s alright.” That was a lie.
“Did it wake you up?”
“No.” That was the truth. His dreams did that.
“That’s very good. If it hurts so you can’t sleep, I would like to know. Sleep is important for you right now.”
She motioned for Ghenesy to come closer. “This is Ghenesy.”
“Hello, there,” the man smiled. “Pleased to meet you.”
The boy eyed him, wary. He’d proven himself unpredictable when he ran from the room. But perhaps, if Uwalia who smiled so kindly was willing to grant him that allowance, the boy could too.
“Hello,” he parroted. Only the first part. On purpose.
“What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer. This time the period of silence was short before Uwalia brushed the question aside as if she hadn’t asked it, moving onto the next matter at hand.
“Ghenesy and I are going to change your bandages. This will be done every morning so we can check how you’re healing and reapply anti-septic ointment. The scissors, please.”
Ghenesy handed her something from a silvery tray of tools, and the boy whipped his face around to watch her. The idea of unattended contact on his right side - where he couldn’t see -
Uwalia looked at his face, and must have seen something there he didn’t know how to hide.
“You’ll be alright.” Her voice was soft but strong. “These are to cut the first bandage. It won’t hurt.”
But she wrapped the scissors in her hand and put her hand in her lap. He kept them in sight.
“I would like to do some tests to check if you’re alright. I’m going to give you three words to remember for me, and when I ask you for them I want you to tell me what they are. Does that make sense?”
He nodded.
Uwalia held up her fingers one at a time to illustrate each assignment. “Spire. Bedcloth. Wednesday. Think of these while we work. It’ll be over before you know it.”
She motioned again to Ghenesy. “Light, please.”
This was a signal for him to arrange a series of refractory panels around their magical lightsource - he hung this contraption on a hook above the headboard.
“Turn towards me now,” she said.
He was still hugging his knees. He inched closer. But not too close.
“Just one cut -” he heard the scissors rustle the linen bandage and then a satisfying schnkt as the blades parted its fibers “- and we’re done. If you could take these, Ghenesy.”
He waited, fidgeting with his hands, as she removed the dressings. And when he felt the final piece of it come away, he tried to blink away the darkness.
The darkness remained.
“It’s gone. Isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, small one. It is.” She met his remaining eye as she affirmed this.
He swallowed. His mouth and throat felt hot and full. A nauseous weight pinned down the back of his tongue. “Does it look bad?”
Uwalia unrolled new bandages. She opened a pot of green-smelling poultice as she spoke. “It’s healing nicely. It’ll never look like it used to. But it doesn’t look bad.”
Then her fingers were under his jaw - he twitched away from the contact.
So instead she motioned him to move his chin up, to put his face more directly in her lightsource. He obliged with hesitancy but without direct guidance.
“You can’t fix it,” he said. He recognized this was a statement, not a question.
“We can’t replace it, no,” Uwalia dabbed at the edges of what must have been his empty eye socket with something cool and slimy. The smell was sharp enough to make him gag. “Hold still there. Yes. That’s it.”
He wanted to squirm off the white, white sheets and into the darkness that was sure to live under the bed. He could twine his limbs through the ropes holding up the mattress there and make it impossible for them to pull him out.
Sensing this desire for escape, Uwalia moved with more speed. Words spilled from her lips in an attempt to assuage his discomfort. They flowed around him in a stream of imagery, each imagining a little sharper than the last. He grabbed at them like baubles on a mobile, letting them go when the weight was too heavy or touching was painful.
“We plan to sew your eyelids closed on your right side. We don’t have any specialist practitioners here, but even if we did I don’t think you’d be a candidate for a prosthetic.”
Some emotion in him lurched. Something new.
She began the final application of bandages, wrapping carefully round and round. He watched her make this careful circuit, wincing when she tucked them together against his hair as she went.
“Why?” He furrowed his brows. He didn’t want them to do anything else to his eye.
“The person who hurt you did it very badly,” she said. “Their cruelty is the reason. No fault of your own.”
“I want it open.”
The new feeling in his chest colored his words hot. Made them pointed and sharp. Louder than expected. He closed his mouth tight, ashamed. Why should he be ashamed? They were the ones not listening.
Ghenesy shot a glance at the back of Uwalia’s head before turning his attention back to the overhead light.
Yet she continued her work, patient and undisturbed. “Stitching everything up will keep it clean and healthy. It’ll look better, especially when you’re older. But we can wait a little to do that. You need to get your strength back, first.”
Uwalia was kind with her hands, her eyes, her voice - but it was as if her ears only heard his questions about this second procedure so she could tell him what he thought about it didn’t matter. Didn’t she just say that it didn’t look bad?
She finished securing the bandages in place around his head. “Not too tight? Too loose?”
He was wrestling with his pointy feelings to keep them from coming out but he shook his head in answer anyway.
“And do you remember the words I asked you to keep up here?” She patted the plaits of braids at her temples.
“Spire. Bedcloth. Wednesday.” It was easy. If recitation was the only test they had to ensure nothing was wrong with his mind, he could live with that. He dared to endure a flicker of sly confidence.
She seemed pleased by this and smiled. “Excellent. Now, small one - can you tell me your name?”
“I want to see it. My eye.” He didn’t want to answer her question. In spite of his apprehension he needed to see this wound, this thing concerning his face and his eye that everyone was making decisions for him about.
“Not yet. Give it some more time.”
"What's your name, child?"
They kept asking him that. Day after day. Person after person. The longer he kept quiet, the longer it would take them to find the truth.
The boy blinked at the old question and the new man who posed it.
The man continued, "Mine is Beldaruit. We met before - I don't know if you remember. I'm pleased to see you're on the mend."
He did not remember him. But this man - Beldaruit - who sat in a moving chair with the feet and horns of a buffalogoat smiled like the woman who changed his bandages every morning. The woman who said her name was Uwalia, who also asked him these questions he couldn’t answer. Beldaruit leaned forward and looked gentle, like Uwalia. Beldaruit was dressed in white and a soft seafoam green and shone like the walls of the room.
He said nothing. So many people had told him who they were. Every name he heard reminded him he had no knowledge of himself. He didn’t have a name like they did. He woke up without one. He was alone. He was apart.
Beldaruit put something on his bedside. “Doctor Uwalia said you liked these, so I brought some from the dining hall.”
Two toasted sweet buns sat on the table - next to the water pitcher - wrapped in a thin cloth and glazed with honey, topped with nuts and seeds. He reached for one, taking it by the cloth because he already learned the cleaner he kept himself the less time he would need to spend wet. The smell was round and pleasant. It was better than the salty smell of the air here, the bitter taste of medicines.
He looked at Uwalia, who nodded. Yes, her motion said. This is safe to eat.
The lingering warmth of the oven could be felt through the cloth. The taste was even better than the smell - a delight, a small spark of brightness that traveled from his tongue to his head. The most delicious thing he could ever remember eating.
But that something. That something was there.
Nevertheless, the sweet bun was gone in a few bites.
And then Beldaruit was holding out some paper, a pre-dipped pen. “Perhaps it would be easier for you to write your answers?”
The boy studied them while Beldaruit continued, “I can leave them here for you, if you wish. To use on your own time. It’s difficult, I think, to say all things in conversation. Sometimes it’s just better with paper.”
He took them, and the feeling of the pen in his hand was natural. It fit into the grooves of his fingers, which wrapped around the strange shape like a habit. But when he tried to write -
“I don’t know how.” He looked from Uwalia to Beldaruit and back again. “I don’t know.”
That empty feeling - the loss - it was there again. Crawling up the base of his spine on its many cold feet. And the expressions on their faces - the look they exchanged - said this admission was bigger to them than he thought it would be when he made it. He averted his eye. He did not want to see them seeing him. He did not want any more evidence of his miscalculation.
“Did your parents not teach you?” Beldaruit asked. Then, chasing the scent of the trail the boy was trying so hard to hide, he continued, "Do you have a mother? A father? Someone who takes care of you?"
No.
He looked at his hands. Folded tightly against the other. Nails picked at nails picked at cuticles. Pulled back the skin in little raw strips and made wet crescents of blood. He’d seen many hands since they brought him here. They were all bigger than his but none were turned against him. He could picture a pair from before, reaching from the dark.
The only ones from before.
Not soft.
Not kind.
Maybe at one point there had been someone else. He was beginning to doubt if he would ever really know, and suspected he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if he did. How did you know what you’d never known? Mourn what you’d never missed? The boy probed at his bandaged eye with light fingers.
His shoulders collapsed with his silent exhale. Defeat. "I-I can’t remember."
Strange as it was - the paper and the pen made the first admission easier. He couldn’t use them, not in the way Beldaruit intended. But it was the first meaningful alternative he’d ever been given. Do you want to eat this or that, do this or that - all small things. Small things were good of course. All together, they built up into a Big Thing.
But his words. His thoughts. His feelings - the ones he could recognize.
If he knew how, he could have put them on paper. He would have given them a silent voice.
Where do you come from? He didn’t know.
What is your name? No name.
Who hurt you? The witch. The witch. The witch.
Who was he?