The Collected Short Fiction, page 167
Women groan about the agonies of giving birth. Well, lass, they have my profound sympathy. Shite and blood burst from me. I thought myself liable to split apart at the seams, as it were. Miracles and horrors! Three eggs dropped from me and lay in the muddy stench. A clutch of my very own. Each glistened in the muck; roughly the size of a hen’s and translucent. Shrimplike embryos coiled in jelly. I recognized the black wisps of my hair, the imprint of my own coarse features, my own eye gone molten yellow that flashed with unnatural awareness. Within a few heartbeats, the eggs crusted over, sealed by a jagged black shell.
Feral cunning overtook me, reduced me to an animal. I scooped handfuls of dirt and dead leaves over the abominations, then slipped back among my comrades who’d made merry at my cries of gastric distress. Life in the Legion is cruel.
Nightmares lashed me, surely as Vanger’s whip. I was shorn of rest and sanity, condemned to drift as a voiceless spirit while doppelgangers assumed my life. Brazen, evilly grinning doubles doted upon by dear mother, my friends and colleagues. Each new dawn found me shaking in my bedroll. Only Jim Dandy and Hurt noted my ghastly pale countenance for I strove mightily to conceal the nature of my ills. The instinct that compelled me to bury the eggs also warned that I lived in the shadow of some obscene, circling terror. Should anyone discover my secret, I would be undone in spectacular fashion.
The moral I learned from this experience, is always heed your suspicious inner voice.
On the seventeenth evening Jon Foot himself materialized from the whirling smoke of our main bonfire. The dogs barked with insane fury and then cowered at his sandals. Two sentries pissed themselves. Most depictions of the warlock are exaggerated. Artists render him as a monster: red eyes, spiked horns, a death’s head. Eight feet tall, razor talons and a lizard’s tail. In private, he may strip his costume and resemble exactly thus a demon. However, when I met him, he appeared altogether ordinary. Softening into middle age, his hair receded and his belly rounded. Brown of eye and mildly spoken. His black cloak smelt of sulfur and he smiled too much. He smoked a clay pipe. That was the extent of his nefarious comport.
Soldiers vacated a tent on the edge of camp. Jon Foot quartered within. Shortly thereafter he summoned, one by one, those of us who’d ventured beneath Castle Warrant. The interviews were brief. Men emerged from their audiences none the worse for the wear, although none would speak of what had transpired nor meet the eyes of those who inquired. Vanger’s lieutenants roamed among us and boxed the ears of those who pressed the point. Soon enough, the gossip stilled and the men fell into sulky routine.
My turn rolled round after midnight.
Jon Foot’s tent fumed with smoke from an iron brazier and his pipe.
He reclined upon a stone chair carved into the likeness of a centipede rampant. It much resembled the one I am told existed at court in the Privy Council. The warlock took my measure with a long polite stare. He finished his cigarette and lighted another from the small flames of the brazier.
In that lull, I realized the sounds of camp were not muffled by the tent walls. Nay, we inhabited a bubble in a sea of silent darkness. Cozier than my terrifying span trapped in the caverns, yet much the same.
“Master Ruark, so good to make your acquaintance. I’m sure this will be the high-water mark of my day.” He affected the cultured tones of a highborn. His politeness smacked of malice. Or, perhaps his tepid certainty and unwavering gaze preyed upon my guilt. His demeanor suggested that he knew everything about me all the way back to the rainy morn I dropped from Mama’s womb. He laughed and said, “Yes, yes. I know much. Much, however, isn’t the same as all. I cannot see what happened to you in the dim cellars of Henry Belfour. You were lost and now you are found. How does this happen?”
My intent was to mumble an inoffensive lie or three, to deflect and prevaricate as peasantry has treated with the rich since the beginning of time. Foot, black magician, must have cast a geas upon me, for matters took a bizarre turn.
“I got hungry and I ate three of them fucking eggs you’re on about,” I listened to myself say. Every other muscle in my body froze. I swayed, rooted in place.
“Damn. Captain Vanger counted the haul. A perfect set if not for the ones you abandoned. And the ones you devoured, alas.”
“Too bad. They hit the spot.”
“Thank you for your honesty, son.” Jon Foot levitated to his feet. “Apparently you met an old friend of mine down there in the cellars.”
“Aye, someone else was there. Whispering.”
Jon Foot nodded wisely. “Others sought the Clutch. Bad ones. Ethan, Julie the Fifth, Carling... Phil Wary. Black sorcerers, each. It would be no matter to disguise themselves and walk among your comrades. To divide and strike. You were befuddled and cut from the herd. Mere chance delivered you from doom... Did he speak to you? Surely, he did.”
My mouth opened again, though I resisted mightily. “Aye. My father came upon me in the dark.”
“Your dead father.”
“As a doornail.”
“This won’t do. I’m sorry.” He actually did seem a trifle melancholy. Then he took a small skinning knife from his pocket and sliced me from crotch to sternum. I cannot emphasize how disconcerting it is to watch in hapless wonder as the cut is assayed and one’s intestines slop onto hard-packed dirt. What’s worse? The warlock crouched, poking through the mess the way priests divine the future from pigeon entrails. The shock awakened my muscles. I regained sufficient control to stagger backward through the tent flaps.
Jon Foot watched me go, knife dripping in his hand. “Come back here, son. I want to hug the shit out of you!” He spread his arms and smiled with pure joy. His shadow against the wall coiled most unnaturally. It bristled with barbs.
Me and my train of guts paid no heed of his imprecation. Three steps took me across the threshold. I collapsed near a cook fire where soldiers just off watch gathered to warm themselves. The last moment I recalled of that particular life are their shouts, their expressions of panic and disgust. Sweet oblivion swept over me, and I was dead.
I revived, blanketed in slimy leaves, in the woods behind this very cottage. Naked and bloody and stinking, but whole. The pink flesh of my belly was without blemish, its cleaving wound had perfectly healed. They say that home always seems smaller when a man returns. This was the opposite. Trees loomed, the night stretched wider and deeper.
Guided by memory and habit, I emerged from the woods and knocked on the door. Ma swooned at the sight of her son, gone nearly two years. More than surprise smote her. More than alarm at my gory visage. Far more, as I discovered upon glimpsing myself in yonder body mirror. Upon departing to seek my fortune in the wide world, I’d attained middling height and shorn my whiskers daily with Da’s razor. Now, my form had reverted to that of a child of no more than five winters. My face had altered into a somewhat familiar stranger’s. Partially my grown self, partially a changeling’s. Mom would remark later that for a several moments she took me for her grandson.
Days of confusion followed. My thoughts buzzed. Waking proved difficult to separate from dreaming. I raved of centipede men and eternal darkness. Mother tended me as my strength and wits were gradually restored, and by the end of a week I’d grown fully into my father’s old logging clothes. I began to feed myself. I shaved again. She gently inquired what I recalled of the time between my murder and awakening. What she wanted to know was if I’d witnessed the afterlife, if I’d gone there and dipped in a toe.
I shook my head and claimed ignorance of aught save a smooth, formless void. How could I tell her the truth? I recalled the formless dark. Indeed, I also remembered the licks of fire shooting through its depths, the black rolling back to reveal a deathly white, an iris of bones of men fused together unto eternity. How could I speak to her of the awesome cold, or of the death groans of hidden stars? How could I articulate the sense of folding into myself, of being trapped inside an egg, drawing sustenance from its yolk as a chick does?
I lacked the courage to describe a vision of rebirth wherein my eggshell cracked in half and I floated upon a woodland stream near a summer twilight. Willows entangled themselves against a red sky. Other reborn souls rode the current in their shells. They cried to one another, mewling as babes. Bitterns jigged between the reeds, their tarnished bills poised for the killing stroke. The towering birds pecked and stabbed at tiny prey and swallowed piteous shrieks of my fellow travelers. I met the glaring, avaricious eye of fate as it plunged its bill toward me and the red sky cracked as the eggshell had, and tarry black spilled forth instead of light. I drowned in blood, not water.
My weary mother deserved a fairer tale. All mothers do. Thus, I spun a pretty yarn about warmth and quiet and the peace of the womb. I had changed enough from the son she bore and raised that she had little choice but to accept the lies as one might from a fresh-faced stranger. Wearing a new face and armed with bitter experience, my gift for fabrication was much improved. Despite the uncanniness of the situation, it proved easier for her than I might’ve suspected. We were able to make a fresh slate of it.
As the doldrums evaporated, I realized the starkness of Mom’s situation. Since Dad’s untimely demise and my departure, she’d become haggard and mournful. Our ancestral hut had gone to wrack and ruin. Where had my younger brother Marlon gone? Four summers my junior and a forester in the making, I assumed his absence meant he was afield cutting wood or away at the market in King’s Grove. Mom covered her face and wept. The gods demanded balance – three nights before my return, Marlon vanished while logging a nearby hillside. He’d been in the company of fellow woodcutters. They searched for him in vain. The men concluded he’d run afoul of wolves, which were particularly ravenous of late.
Immediately, I dressed in my father’s work clothes, gathered meager supplies, and set forth with his bearded ax slung across my back. The hillside wasn’t far. I supped with the loggers who toiled there. These were men slightly younger than myself alongside whom I’d labored and feasted in days gone by. None recognized my countenance, although each embraced me as a Ruark for I bore an unerring stamp of the family bloodline. I introduced myself as a traveling cousin and was thus reborn full and true. Solved my problem with the Legion. The functionaries hate it when folks they’ve killed turn up alive and well. Their foreman told me how Marlon walked into the bushes and vanished. He didn’t figure I’d have any better luck turning up a corpse, but gods be with me in my task.
I sought my brother high and low. Scoured the nearby hills and hollows. Finally, I kicked over a pile of human bones deep in a thicket. Couldn’t tell whether they belonged to him or not – hacked and charred too badly. Reminded me of something. I buried the bones and said a few words in case the gods were watching.
Reinvention and a newfound loathing for travel served me well. I put my faith in the fates, relegated miseries to the past, and set to work. Strong whiskey and back-breaking labor kept me on the straight path and with scant time for contemplation on matters best left undisturbed.
Soon, I became an accomplished logger and attracted a crew of strapping lads. As you can see, riches didn’t follow. Nonetheless, we did well enough. I was content to dwell here in this cottage alone for a score of years. Over the years, I sought out Dandy, Hurt, and the others and introduced myself under this new identity. Never did I choose to wander, however. Nor did I pine for the company of a wife. Not until I met your mother in King’s Grove by happy accident. Charm, wit, beauty. Youth! Too good for a woodcutter with white in his mane and sap in his beard, I vow. She smote me with a bat of her lashes. Long after our honeymoon, I harbored the notion she’d merely taken pity on a poor boy. In hindsight, it’s more likely she fled demons of her own. City life is as treacherous as any bad stretch of the forest. Eventually you came along, my dear, our only child.
Despite an abundance of joy, I occasionally dreamed of death and of things worse than death.
The second time I died was on a midsummer’s night, nine years gone. Like my father before me, I chopped a tree and it corkscrewed beyond control and crushed me to jelly. You and your mother wept. Then she disappeared. I imagine how it went – a strangled cry jolted you from nightmares. Though you desperately searched this hut, though you combed the yard and the woods, you discovered nary hide nor hair of her. You collapsed near the hearth ashes in despair. Calamity upon calamity! What would become of you?
But three nights later you opened this door to soft knocking and found me, naked and delirious upon your step. I claimed to be your uncle. What choice did you have other than accept providence? Parents dead or missing. No man to protect you, no man to provide. A girl alone in the wood is easy prey for beasts. Besides, there could be no question of our kinship. I am inalienably a Ruark. Sad to say I am also a wee bit more than that.
This second death had traversed a similar arc to the first. I envisioned an abyss of terrible cold and darkness; I floated a stream as a fingerling babe upon a half shell and was devoured alive by bitterns. I clawed back into this world in the bog just yonder. The only real difference being my transformation from toddler to graybeard occurred as I stumbled along the path to your door. You accepted me and my hastily contrived tale of prodigal uncle, home at last. Robbers stripped me and left me beaten bloody. By the grace of the gods had I managed to reach sanctuary...
The moment I learned of your mother’s disappearance, I finally possessed an inkling of the horrible nature of the black eggs, if not their unholy provenance. Once a man departs the mortal realm he can only be restored by the subtraction of another soul. Rebirth via the egg claimed the flesh and blood, the very consciousness, of those whom I cherished. My suspicions were confirmed when I located her skeleton in the blackberry tangles that border the meadow. My wails of anguish scattered birds from the trees. A dark cloud blotted the sun and rain lashed the field.
Full to the craw with dread, I went to the bog that twice vomited me forth and beheld the remnants of the obsidian eggs. Animals steer well clear of that plot. Pieces of broken shell lay there, perfectly preserved. After a bit of rooting around the bed of decayed leaves and mossy loam, I uncovered the third egg. It nestled in a patch of muck, glittering like a flinty gemstone prized free of the Dark Lord’s own tiara.
Gods help me, I intended to destroy the egg lest you one day feed its unnatural hunger. I failed. Each time I bore the egg away, it slipped from my pocket and reappeared in the bog by some malignant supernatural trickery. I kicked it, smashed it with my ax, piled tinder wood atop and set it ablaze. All useless; no measure so much as scratched the gods damned egg. I even resorted to prayer, if you can imagine your old man upon his knees, yammering to the invisible powers with the zeal of a penitent. What a farce.
Despite these theatrics, a small voice in my head was pleased. My soul and my thoughts are corrupted, you see. To eat of the black egg is to be damned.
Both times I’ve rowed back from the abyss, my essence mingled and consumed an innocent sacrificial soul. In the process, some essential piece of my own being was replaced. Cold and darkness seeped into my bones. That cruelly selfish portion bid me to quit my attempts to destroy the egg and speak of it no more. It promised to ease my nightmares, it swore I would forget, but only if I played the fool, the supplicant. To my everlasting shame, I heeded this whisper. Grateful as a dog for the whipping to end.
Light burn me, I’ve tried to be a good father. Once in a blue moon, I ignored my instincts and summoned the courage to perform one last valorous deed before the bell tolls an accounting. Perhaps Jon Foot’s dark magic could reverse this damnation. Too bad he’s dead and beyond the reach of all men. The names he mentioned – Julie, Ethan, Phil Wary – are mysteries that confound solution. With rare exceptions, sorcerers tend to keep a low profile.
There have been times, such as last night, fortified by loneliness for your mother, or by the powerful spirit of the jug, that I crept out to the bog and sat cross-legged in the moss and schemed of ways to slip this noose around our necks. Generally though, it’s much easier to live the life of a garrulous drunkard and cheerfully wait for fate to run its course. Yes, so much easier to not dream of bitterns pecking my eyes and balls for eternity.
Soon, I shall die. Then, I shall return and you will be gone. You will vanish as my brother and your mother did. After you, there is no one. I will reside here, an unfamiliar ghost of myself, alone.
He slumped against his pillow. The effort of reciting his tale of woe had drained the man and turned his flesh a chalky white. Bruises around his eyes and nostrils lent him the aspect of a corpse about to endure ritual mummification. He coughed. Blood speckled his beard.
The woman held his hand. The fire had burnt low, casting a shadow across her face. She said, “Uncle, I mean, Da, that was an amazing story. Especially the part about Jon Foot. Did you really meet him? Was he so very ordinary? Surely, you never met him.”
“Merciful... Did you listen to a word?”
“You are a sweet, confused sod. Fret not over damnation nor curses, nor phantoms. I ate the egg.”
“You what?”
“We ate the egg, to speak true. Did you suppose I slept through your blundering around the cottage at all hours? What matter to follow you? And what matter, after you’d come and gone, to examine the item you coveted in your fevered state? A great white goose egg. Pristine as snow awaiting my eager hands to pluck it from the nest. Pluck it I did; plop into my apron and borne home in a trice.”
“No.” Horror twisted his countenance. He covered his mouth against a deeper, ripping cough, and blood came freely between his fingers. “Oh, daughter. There are no geese here. No geese. Nothing lives in the bog.”
“Our luck was good,” she said with placid determination. “The omelet we enjoyed this morning contained rich red yolk and a lump of half-formed gosling to boot. Praise to the Light. It is the first meat we’ve enjoyed since you took ill.”
