He laid a hand on the paper, stilling it and keeping his other hand steady on the ink. Moving the paper under his forearm, he reached out and lathered the tip of the quill in the black tears, as his stepmother called them. Boys in the courtyard train with swords, young men use their swords in whatever fashion, but cripples, cripples are made to dwell in brooding cottages with sheets of paper and bottles of ink, which are black tears from their black eyes and hearts. Young as he was then, he’d taken a knife to his skin, to see if his flesh wept black blood as well. It didn’t. It was just as red as anyone else’s.
The ink splattered over the paper as the cottage shook once again. The wood keened, as if the wind was laden with termites feasting on its skin. The termites on their steeds of wind nibbled on his self-built shutters until their power in numbers enabled them to barge in, a sweeping gust clearing the area. It scattered papers and inks, a tornado of words finished and unfinished. The sky had warned him, and it was not prone to trick him, as it was the nature of this land that Craig’s Keep be the windiest residence, with its sheer altitude.
He stretched a leg out and pushed his weight forward until the chair fell backwards. He twisted around and reached out, but missed, instead gripping the bed’s sheets. His shin thudded against the legs of the collapsed chair. The chair, self-crafted as well, made a comforting footrest, amid the clamor of the extremities exposed to the cottage and his helplessness to even get a grip. If he’d managed to sink his fingers in the trenches around the bed where the mattress had not filled out, he … he could’ve what? Dug under his blankets for water-resistant paints, a sturdier brush, and capture the beautiful calamity of a coming storm in an abandoned cottage, isolated from the keep and frequent hospitality to a crippled eldest son of a lord?
The door was opening and shutting, as if repeatedly slapped for its impudence. Wood was sparse in the mountains, and hauling it another cost, though none to his own self. He said these to be self-made, but in actuality, the assembling of the cottage, the framework, was more his brother’s work than he. The furniture, of a subpar level, crooked and weak, he had claimed. Only one’s own work could be trusted. He would’ve blown the glass for the windows himself if he could.
The glass was beginning to fog, the white mist like a stag of frozen dust snowballing into the window. The rims were half-formed ice where water had leaked through. Snow, the eternal canvas forever blown into the world by whatever gods and goddesses there may be. Snow, the eternal canvas, of blood and the shared cold in man’s hearts. Snow in the mountains here, of the Tergen, were the burial place of swords and shields, pikes and bows, the sung about fallen heads of kings.
But that was far too long but all too fresh ago, and now was not a time for the invocation of old blood shed. Now was the time to lie under blankets, watching the snowflakes fall like so many little stars.
---
By the glint of the morning sun, just melted snow was the only dew in Craig’s Keep, and warrior, scholar, merchant, priest, prince or all aforementioned, like the legendary kings of days past, would wake up to the same miniature stars and suns lying wherever the snow might’ve rested for a night.
Perhaps prince to his mother, but merely the son of the lord of Craig’s Keep here, Devin lowered his stiff leg to the floor, rummaging around for a firm position amidst the mess.
His foot squeaked with a slide, and he felt the damp wetness of something more cloying than melted snow.
He swabbed the ink, which he later saw was red paint, away on the floorboards and carefully stood up, initially supporting himself by his arms and then using it as momentum after pushing off. He fell forwards and had to jam an arm out to halt his descent.
Often in the mornings, Devin felt like an uncoordinated puppet controlled by a clumsy mummer. He began his stumbling trek to the window.The sporadic array of furniture was more to aid him, like incarnations of his mother in wood, guiding him with her hand. Other times, he only felt whatever sensations a dream allowed him; after all, there was no use for him.
The chords struck by the vocals of early risers echoed through the passes, the white snow-drenched mountains and valleys below him rolling on past the horizon, where it dissipated into a stormy haze resembling the impending ferocity of a blizzard. Winter took his hand, like it always had, and led him away from the window.
Devin felt a bruise he hadn’t noticed yesterday, perhaps because he may’ve received it then, on his forehead, and rubbed it like he was partial to, despite the static eruptions of pain. He used to think he could punch it out; sword against sword, punches with punches. The time he’d done so was years ago, when they still deigned to hurt him. At a deep cranny in his mind, he suspected because they dared to hurt him, but he would not give undue respect to his brother for an act he may or may not have done. It was likely to be the latter.
The crossing of the sun further east heralded the knock at the door. His brother, Hart, didn’t wait for a response before opening the door.
His brother paused, one hand gripping the doorknob still, exhaling, his cheeks a vermillion red matching the fur of his cloak. Used to this routine as Hart was, last night’s weather had taken its toll on the land, proved by his more ragged breathing this morning.
Devin wondered how hard he would be breathing if he’d been in Hart’s place; but then reality came in, gliding just like the wheelchair his brother was now hauling in from behind him.
“Thank you.” Devin got on the chair, shifting to a position where the wood wasn’t so flat and hard; in other words, twisting to get nowhere.
Hart yawned in reply and clasped a hand over his shoulder in reply. The only childish sounds he remembered from their childhood that remained today were simple things like yawns. It seemed whatever avenue of time, sleep trails behind, stalking until it gets the chance to lunge and embrace you, smoothing its hand over your eyes to take you to an eternal sleep. Devin used to think dreams were forays past the barrier of death; how else did priests receive prophecies of war from gods staking their claim in the world?
The wheelchair rolled over a clump of packed snow, hard as the complexion of the northerners’ but less cold. He gripped the arms harder and steeled himself. It was likely hurting Hart more than he.
A towering pine would peek out from behind slopes of snow occasionally, their green needles shuddering in the brisk breeze. The snow on the needles, the snow covering the expanses of steeps, the snow being parted by the wheels of the chair, all glistened, like soulful voices praising the god under his light of day.
The silence kept between the two was almost suitable with the surrounding landscape. Devin felt his hands come together, if only for a brief moment, and a murmur left his lips.
“Brother?” Hart lightly tapped his shoulder.
He turned around and met Hart’s questioning eyes, a blue that leaned toward the sleek sheets of ice that doubled as the sky.
Devin shook his head, breathing out and turning back around.
The disrupted silence seemed awkward now.
“Should I envy you that you can walk here?” Devin kept turned forwards.
“Shouldn’t you envy that I can walk at all?” Hart's tone was haughty, but then he broke down into nervous chuckles.
He could feel Hart’s clenched fingers tighten behind him on the wood. It was old, and more brittle than it looked. His father had opted for a new one, but Devin had refused. Some things one cannot retrieve from the depths of a childhood. He’d rather starve and be able to continue sitting in this, with its etchings, like the mark at the center of the back where his father had marked his height, or the heart his brother had carved into the arm, spelling out the name of a girl he’d seen in the kitchens.
“I don’t envy you even slightly.” Devin said it carefully, his tone even and colder than the frost embedded in the soil that would remain so even when the god let out springtime’s sun. “Besides, you are more fit as heir than I. And one day, your mother will not care for Craig’s Keep, she will be behind you, with that vain smile, as you are knighted, and then later, when you marry – who can tell what fate may decide – the king’s daughter, after fetching her in her damsel state and doing battle for her hand in marriage, of course. Don’t weep the shallow tears of the southerners while your brother sits in his own tower, waiting for something he cannot presume to gesticulate.”
“If I were so inclined to be a knight, where would my chivalry be to let an old crone wither away amidst ink and paper?” Hart flicked his hair, an old habit of his. “Brother-” for he never called Devin by his name –“Do you honestly think I would abandon you? My mother is still your mother, no matter of blood, and the lineage of Craig’s Keep runs through both our veins.” Strong and calm, just the impression his brother liked to keep, but it had faltered at the end, and they both heard it, that single wavering note, a deep chord ruined under otherwise deft control.
“How you lie,” Devin said.
“How you jest.”
“We are nearly there.” Devin gestured at the mounts tethered close by to a tree.
“Let me carry –”
“No thank you. Do not let recent grievances define your subsequent actions.”
In the end, he was forced to rely on one of the guards there to hoist him up. He ignored their prying eyes. When he looked over, he noticed Hart was doing the same. Conflicts between the brothers would be hand-waved as brotherly rivalry; an idea had been planted in their heads by a woman with eyes as blue as Hart’s that Devin was spiteful of his brother’s prowess, such as the skill of walking, to which his lack of she proclaimed the god had cast on Devin as belated punishment for his mother. Rumor had preceded fact, like it always had.
This ride back was not as silent and filled with the ribald jokes of the guards. Both brothers seemed more mindful of the trees than trading words with others.
Devin’s grim gray eyes soaked in the countryside, all its crags and infertile farmland, but one eye took it all in as best it could. If rumors were true, Devin was spiteful – nay, he had clawed his eyes out himself in rage - of Hart’s full eyesight in both eyes as well; perhaps a punishment sent by the god for his father, for staring at the wrong person and birthing the wrong kid?
---
Thanks for reading! Just in case I'm breaking an unsaid law; is this posting too long lengthwise? If it is, I apologize and will keep it in mind for the future. Was this too wordy? The writing style's different from my usual, but I thought I'd stick with it. Redundancies? Implausibilities? Contradictions, typos, eye-wrenching telling and or you suggest I should filter this to the trash can? Rip it apart to your heart's content, por favor.
