CHAPTER FOUR
Remains
When Coh woke up the next morning, the pain in his side was back. Perhaps from doing far too much the day before. Maybe.
His thoughts were cut off as a spasm hit him and he was left clutching his pillow. His teeth found his lip and he tasted blood shortly after. He shivered, a cold flush running along his spine like a half dozen spiders. He felt a warm ache chase them away shortly thereafter and sighed.
He shook himself, longer hair turning into a bigger mess, and he sat up. The ache continued, but it wasn’t too horrible. He scratched at his bandages, them itchy from the constant sweating, and then he stood.
He undid the latch on the wooden shutter. Blistering morning light cascaded down upon his face and he inhaled. The sharp scent of late summer hit him and he shuddered contentedly. The memory of pain washed away.
Luke’s muted voice filtered into the loft, “Coh? You up yet?”
Coh nodded, then remembered he couldn’t be seen. He flushed.
“Yes,” he called, “I’ll be down in a moment.”
A shuffling of feet and indescribable noise followed. Coh smiled to himself.
He clambered down from his bed and went over to his trunk. He slipped off his sleeping clothes and slipped on his day wear. The ragged brown wool of his tunic of choice hugged his chest, pressing down a bit too much, but someone had taken to banging on the ceiling door. Probably Luke. He rolled his eyes and decided he could deal with it, before walking over and opening up the hatch door.
Luke frantically blinked at him and blocked his sun-blinded eyes with a hand.
“Did you move the sun to your bedroom?” he asked.
Coh scoffed. “I said I was coming.”
As he moved to get down the ladder as well, he made sure to nudge Luke’s hand with his foot.
“Stop that!”
“Girl,” Coh retorted. Not the best comeback, but he was too sleepy to be brilliant.
#
Working in the barn left you with much too much time to think, Coh decided. Unfortunately, he had also been working all morning.
He gnawed on a piece of hardtack where he sat in the corner. It was lunch-time and he was sweating buckets. He swallowed the last bite of the horrible bread-like stuff and picked up his canteen. He took a long swig and frowned at the grime-coated hands attached to the recycled animal part.
He’d been eating with those hands?
His face screwed up in disgust. I really need to try out some of that ‘forethought’ thing everyone is so excited about.
He closed the canteen, put it back down, and wiped at the sweat on his brow.
His mind went back to where it had been before his meal. The Incidents, as he cleverly called them. Incidents that made no logical sense.
Sure, there was plenty that made little sense--like the fairy-lights people sometimes saw at night, or werewolves, or how the Dakas got away with burning churches and other religious places without some god smiting them--but this made less sense than most of that, in his opinion. Someone had answers for them, right or wrong. He--he had no answers.
The first incident had been simple. He went into some odd, supposedly-haunted, and very dark woods to hunt with his brother. Something weird happened. Weird place, weird happenings--it made sense. Everyone had always had stories about the Damis Forest, after all. Even Luke, with his child-like personality, knew there was something wrong with that place. Maybe instinctively. Unlike him.
But the second time? It had happened in a dry goods store and there had been no smoke beast. It had been a normal day. Sure, he’d been hurt and it had been after the smoke beast problem, but--
He sighed; rubbed his face.
If anything, it seemed like The Incidents were caused by him. He was the only common part. Perhaps he’d picked something up from the forest, or maybe the forest had nothing to do with it--either way, he was scared.
People who did things were called witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, and more in terms of ‘what they were’. However, they had many other names. Freaks, weirdos, unnatural monsters. No one ever mentioned their King was a wizard himself, even as he called them such things and started up the hunts. The difference was simple. The King had the mark. The mark was sacred. Special. That was why Dakas could do magic and not break any laws--they had the mark.
Coh did not have the mark.
If he was doing magic, he would either be recruited (unlikely) or killed (likely).
All that led up to the question--how long could he hide it and how could he hide it? Even if he wasn’t a warlock, but he’d managed to get magic tossed at him or something otherwise odd like that, he would have to keep this a secret.
When there was a prison sentence at Avaran hanging over a person’s head, or death, how could you decide if they could be trusted or not?
He knew not.
All he knew was that his break was probably up and the stalls wouldn’t clean themselves, nor would the feed buckets fill themselves.
And, no, he didn’t want the magic to do either of those things in a snap. He wanted whatever abomination that had possessed him to go away. If it didn’t, he’d deal with it, like he dealt with everything else. He recognized mostly unthinkingly that wanting whatever this was to go away was like the childish prayer wishing for the sun to rise early, to get rid of the dark.
He tried to ignore that feeling. Quite unfortunately, scraping out a life in a town by wilderness taught you to trust your more primal instincts.
#
Coh edged closer to Luke, feet near silent against soft earth. “Luke?” he asked, whispering. His brother’s shoulders tensed, hands clenching, before he seemed to realize it was him. He turned, one foot over the other, until he was facing him--doing his usual towering act. Coh frowned.
“Yeah, Coh?” Luke asked. He wiped his hands on a rag he carried--dirty smears rubbing off, old dirt from the rag rubbing back on.
“Could you take me back to where I kilt it?”
Luke blinked and his mouth popped open in surprise. He said, “No.” His eyes flashed with vague annoyance.
Coh shuffled his feet, unsure of how he’d upset him already.
“Please?”
Luke huffed and dropped his cloth. His eyes were alight. “ ‘No’ means ‘no’, you moron. I’m not taking you back so you can get yourself killed and so mom can skin me alive, a’right?”
Coh frowned. “You didn’t have to call me stupid.”
Luke opened his mouth to say something else, but then caught himself. His mouth closed with a click of teeth and he sighed. He rubbed a hand over his face.
Coh nodded, understanding. Sometimes Luke didn’t need words. You could read his face like a book.
“It’s okay. No worries.” Coh paused. “Good luck with--whatever you’re up to.” He picked up the rag and handed it back to Luke, who took it wordlessly.
Coh walked off before Luke could say anything else, but he heard an apology yelled after him.
Good enough.
#
The ground was muddier than Coh remembered. It stuck to his boots and made squelching sounds as he walked, which assuredly alerted most nearby wildlife. He winced with each step.
He found where they’d been and, while the creek was flooded, mossy rocks almost submerged, the ground up higher on the ridges was dry. The land where he’d find the body of the beast was dry. Which was good, because there was still the possibility the monster had a mate somewhere in these woods. He didn’t want to be heard if it was mourning or something all too human like that.
He sighed and started to go back downhill, into the small clearing in the evergreens and various softwood and hardwood trees. Ferns tickled the legs of his pants and his mud-slick shoes slid against pine straw.
#
It was the same pine-laden patch of forest. Coh could see the arrowhead that had gotten lost in the mix up, same with his somehow-splintered arrow which lay in scattered pieces. The feathers were nowhere to be found and mud-trails showed signs of water rushing through.
He was lucky to have found anything at all, he decided. He shook his head, dazed. He popped his knuckles absentmindedly and then looked back down. Things were still the same. It was still in the same position, certainly. He remembered seeing the thing still, legs locked in a mid-flail position, eyes wide, tongue hanging loose. He wasn’t sure to be happy or unhappy thusly at what had become of the monster.
He touched the gray-silver ashes with the toe of his boot and the fine grit shifted. That was what remained of the beast--a perfect outline of silt-like substance.
He shook his head again. Someone must have come and burnt it. He had a feeling that wasn’t the case.
He shrugged his shoulders and then rubbed his palms on his pants, before he crouched down beside the gray mass. He gently reached forward and touched it with two fingers, rather in the way he’d been taught to pet Solomon’s falconry hawks. He tensed at the remembrance of the old friend that had left him in the cold. He shook himself a half second later and closed his eyes tight, eyelids wrinkling. He focused on sending back the power, the strange otherness he felt. Something shifted in him and a certain tiredness weighed on him. He smiled and his eyes popped open. He expected to see--well, he wasn’t sure. Seeing green flames flickering along the gray made him snarl.
“No!” He stood up too fast and he ended up half bent. “No.” His right eye twitched at the corner. “That wasn’t--”
He heard a crunch behind him and he immediately kicked the fire out, before he unsheathed the new hunting knife he’d taken with him. He gripped it tight and turned to--see a harmless black-and-white rat-killer. He stared at the terrier dog for a long moment and dopey brown eyes started back. It yipped at him and wagged its wire-furred tail before racing off.
His eyes followed it as long as he could see white flashes between trees, witch hazel, and other life. He tsked, curious about who let their dog roam near this place, and then heard the sound of feet crunching on pine straw, which was followed by the abrupt noise of a cleared throat. He’d felt the secondary presence already and it was the real reason he'd snuffed the fire.
He wasn’t surprised to turn once more and see Luke, eyes cold as river ice and arms folded across his chest.
Luke called him a particularly rude name, which sent Coh wincing and cowering like a dog used to being hit, and then socked in the arm. “You,” his brother said.
“Me.” Coh bobbed his head and shifted back.
“When I said I wasn’t going to take you to the woods, I didn’t mean for you to take yourself.” Luke let out a low growl.
“Sorry,” Coh mumbled.
Luke sighed and rubbed the heels of his hands onto closed eyes. “Fine, whatever. You burnt it, then?”
“No.”
“Then who--? You know, I don’t care. Let’s just go before someone thinks you’re a Morder-worshipper or whatever; like those lot who burnt down Evynside’s church.” Luke grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to walk beside him.
Coh decided not to remind him that no one would be all too surprised to see smoke coming from the forest, nor would they investigate.
He had better things to say. He had questions--well, one question in particular--to ask.
“Um, may I wash my hands?”
Luke stopped and shot him an odd look.
“I sort of touched it.” Coh gestured back at the grit with his knife-holding hand.
Luke’s face contorted. He opened his mouth, but it took him a second to start talking. “That’s disgusting.”
“Sorry.”
Luke just rolled his eyes. “What were you hoping to do? I mean, what? It was like poking a dead bird with a stick?”
“No.” Coh couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Luke sighed, and pushed him ahead. “Go wash your hands, but no funny business. Then I’m walking you back to the house.”
Coh hummed in agreement and started to walk off.
#
Coh looked at himself in the stream’s fast moving water, his face a fractured blob. He sighed and just dipped his hands into the water.
Ice seemed to latch onto him, pulling him by the hips, the spine, the neck. He bit back an unmanly scream and forced himself back.
He landed in a puddle and the seat of his pants, along with the back of his shirt and pants’ hem, were soaked in an instant.
He panted and just sat there--thoroughly humiliated.
What was that? His mind was in panic-mode. What was that? He heard his pulse in his head and saw black spots, so he dropped his head between his knees. The dizziness went away; mildly.
I have to learn how to control this.
He shivered with unease and cold, not moving, until Luke called from him up on the ridge, telling him he was going to be sick if he kept acting as mad as that homicidal chicken they had last year. Coh blinked at the nonsensical statement, but smirked. That was all Luke. His mood improved a bit.
Coh glanced over his shoulder at his brother at that and grinned maliciously. “If I’m that crazy, you’d better run.”
Luke rolled his eyes, and then tossed a pine cone at him, seconds later.
Coh laughed as it missed horribly, dropping into the stream with a splash. He fought back a wave of nostalgic sadness.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called as he stood.
#
Returning home, there was only a couple meager hours until supper and bed. Coh yawned and rolled his shoulders, remembering faintly that polishing the horses’ saddles and reins had also been included in his list of chores for the day.
“You gonna be okay? Mom wants me to tend the fire,” Luke said.
Coh turned from where he’d been heading for the standalone barn to see Luke already halfway to the porch of their ramshackle home. He grinned and nodded. “Perfectly fine,” he paused, “and you don’t always have to watch me.”
Luke snorted, in obvious disbelief, but he just waved at him and then turned away, a hop to his step once again. As always, Coh had to wonder whether or not Luke was just plain forgetful, or whether he selected which memories he wanted to keep, because his mood-swings were getting more and more common.
“See ya,” Coh called. The house door swung shut heavily in response.
