Saturday's Storyteller: "All at once, the woods were awake."
by Belinda Roddie
All at once, the woods were awake. The trees writhed and screamed a painful wake-up signal - a high-pitched yet guttural rumble among the foliage and the deep brown soil that smelled faintly of store bought perfume. The wind swarmed about the drooping branches and whispered instead of whistled, the language indecipherable in the cold air of the carnal morning. The birds, rather than singing, bristled the lobes of each ear with their vicious flapping of their wings, every feather slurping up mist and fog with a stroke and brush of the sky's blue veins.
I rose slowly from the rags that served as my bed among the wilderness, my eyes dry and a sour flavor lingering behind my lips in the sticky folds of my gums and tonsils. The sounds of the area did not alarm me, nor did they faze me. I was used to the cacophony, having been traveling through here for a good dozen days now, never seeing the edge of the forest during all the time I had walked.
Unclasping the chain from my side, I opened my compass, which was hidden in an heirloom pocket watch that told more direction than time. I favored such a device over a clock, using the sun as both my guide for navigation and for the passing of the day. If I obsessed too much over time, I became fatalistic, overwhelmed - as if I had been overcome by a terrible recognition of my own mortality. Something all too familiar with the pale cheeks of my two comrades, who managed to sleep longer than I ever could.
The sun heated my battered cheeks with a sterile warmth, brazen light dripping from the trees that continued their keening like they were already mourning for us three. I retrieved my coat from where I had hung it on a lower limb of an oak, drawing the tattered folds about my figure and stooping to lift a canteen from a weary patch of browning grass. The stream of water coursing over my face comforted me, and with my bare hands I scrubbed away the scar tissue that fell off in large reddish brown and black flakes from the right side of my head. The wound lanced all the way down my forehead, an arch of destroyed skin around my eye, before journeying its way down my jawbone. Now it was pink and open and oozed a clear liquid as I washed away dirt and other residue from my face. It would scab over again later in the day. It always did.
There was not much left in our bag of supplies. Our food was limited, even though the water was plentiful in the creeks and streams throughout the acres of woodlands. We knew if we had to, we would hunt, shooting down the birds that beat their wings so feverishly in the crazed chaos of the place. For a location meant to be so calm, the woods seldom slept, instead bleeding with harried interjections of confusion, agony, and fear. As if the trees too were alive and as ill as I was in the dawn.
***
I had met my two comrades on a lone trek from my village, where the contagion had spread to over half of the populace. The doctors, keeping their distance from me and covering their mouths with cloths, claimed that I had received it from a sick peasant. What they didn't know was that the disease was spread by blood contact, not saliva or exhalations, and that in truth I had contracted it from my brother - once a very proud war general, now a very dead war general.
I had fought alongside him as colonel, in the thick marshes of the Dimlands, with a cap bearing the royal family's coat of arms pulled across my brow. As we lifted our boots from muddied corpses after one particular battle, a dying private had spat a bloody, clotted farewell into my brother's eyes, cursing the name of the monarchs who had enlisted us. We did not think much of the goodbye gesture until the token scar formed on my brother's face, the same jagged spot of decaying flesh that decorated the skin around his right eye.
It was always the right eye.
As my brother slowly succumbed to headaches and fever, the doctors were too afraid to treat him. But he still desired to fight. He would not leave his uniform unworn or his horse without a rider. Even when he coughed blood, he swung saber and fired artillery into the thick of the rebellion forces - many of them with the same disease riddling their cheeks, noses, and eyes. Then a stray bullet lodged itself into my brother's cheekbone and sent blood spurting in every direction. He toppled from his steed and conveniently landed on me, his coagulating life force trickling into my gaping mouth as I lay dazed with my brother's body on top of me.
I coughed and spat as much as I could, but the damage was done. I was left infected and holding my brother's dying body in my arms. And from his quivering lips, he whispered something to me that I could not let go of: There was a cure. He didn't know where, but there was one.
I left my village after the war was over. The disease, unnamed, had not ravaged my body so badly yet. The doctors had given me a few years to live, more than most lower class citizens received. I was of a respected aristocratic family, my father having left a fine estate in his children's names. I departed from it all, leaving the property to my youngest brother, who had been born lame and never gone to war.
No one recognized me as the war hero the Barons had labeled me as. They did not recognize the colonel, the sister of the great war general, her shaggy hair covering the symbol of suffering on her face. They saw me as one of them - dying and to be pitied. Save for my new companions.
I had gone to every apothecary within a hundred mile radius and they knew nothing of a cure. There were talks of conspiracy regarding the disease, but I didn't buy any of it. The royal family had lost kin from the ailment, and they, too, sought out a remedy from the finest medics out there. What did my brother know that no one else did? What had he felt, or seen, in his time at war while dying from something else entirely? Who had he spoken to, and what had given him such hope?
I intended to find out, but first, I desired a drink. My appetite for ale and bread had grown stronger as of late, as if my body couldn't tolerate any remote lack of sustenance. I was losing my sturdy frame, built from years of training and combat, and looking more like a downtrodden rogue who had lost her way. I received a brimming iron tankard and was ready to drink from it before the bartender spoke to me in a harsh, warning tone.
"Any open sores?"
I licked my lips. "No."
"Good." The bartender snorted. "Bleeders are the worst. I'm not throwing out any more of my tankards."
He thought bleeders were bad. I thought the overly vigilant were worse.
I drank the cool lager and lulled my head back against my chair. The stools at the bar were all taken, and I certainly didn't feel like socializing. As I pulled the flat brim of my hat down over my eyes, I lifted the pocket compass (as I named it) and let the gold embroidery on its metal shell dance in the dim light of the tavern. I could almost see the etchings weave into the royal crest, the family I had put my entire loyalty into.
Not one word from them. No real funeral for my brother. He had died in obscurity, in my arms, on a battlefield filled with mangled corpses. And not a single salute from his surviving comrades. They had forgotten him. Practically in a day.
In this particular town, the numbers of the sick were fewer. It surprised me because compared to my village, the distribution of wealth was far more skewed. I had certainly seen more poor people than rich, and those rich I had seen kept their faces hidden in red spotted handkerchiefs. In this tavern alone, I only saw two others who had the same speckled brows - the same patches of flesh that had been stained with the unnamed ailment. They sat together, a man and a woman, holding hands and using their free fingers to scrape at crumbs on their plates.
I emptied my tankard and called for another ale. As I snapped a brass coin into the air for the bartender to catch, I realized that the couple was looking at me. The man was rugged enough, heavily bearded as if attempting to hide his scar with thick tufts of hair. The woman appeared as war-ridden as I was, the same silver weariness in her eyes that was apparently present in my soldier's gaze. She was dressed similarly to me in fashion as well - a traveler's garb, long coat and cap, ready for all weather - but had much brighter hair.
They probably noticed the scar. I raised my right hand and pinched my flapping index and middle fingers together - the standard greeting in towns such as this. The result was the couple striding toward me and sitting down at my table.
"Hi?"
"We know you," the woman said. "From the war. You're a Dolfhagen."
I stiffened. "You two fought?"
"My wife was a lieutenant under your brother's squadron before he became general," the man replied, grinning. "I was a cook."
"I don't remember you serving me gruel."
"We wanted to extend our condolences about your brother's death," said the woman. "We heard about it from an old friend who escaped from the Battle at Fort Rift. Where he saw your brother fall."
"I'm surprised someone bothered to remember him," I said.
I couldn't help being snarky, and besides, I wasn't upset with the two speaking to me. It was nice to actually converse with people from the war. We discussed the skirmishes at the Dimlands at length, remembering the carnage and the struggles. The man remembered one particular time when my brother and I, uniforms surprisingly unstained, took down a guarded windmill that was vital for the rebels' food supplies.
"I don't regret one day of fighting," the woman said to me, shaking her head. A strand of hair fell away from her face and revealed the black mass of dead tissue on her face. "Not one day."
***
My comrades woke up an hour after I did, and they drank and ate their parts of the rations as if they hadn't eaten in weeks. We did not speak much, only listened to the troubled complaints of the woods as its flesh rustled in the wind.
The sun was searing above our heads and we decided to keep walking. We all desired a cure. We all desired an exit from this place. And we all were very, very much awake.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
All at once, the woods were awake. The trees writhed and screamed a painful wake-up signal - a high-pitched yet guttural rumble among the foliage and the deep brown soil that smelled faintly of store bought perfume. The wind swarmed about the drooping branches and whispered instead of whistled, the language indecipherable in the cold air of the carnal morning. The birds, rather than singing, bristled the lobes of each ear with their vicious flapping of their wings, every feather slurping up mist and fog with a stroke and brush of the sky's blue veins.
I rose slowly from the rags that served as my bed among the wilderness, my eyes dry and a sour flavor lingering behind my lips in the sticky folds of my gums and tonsils. The sounds of the area did not alarm me, nor did they faze me. I was used to the cacophony, having been traveling through here for a good dozen days now, never seeing the edge of the forest during all the time I had walked.
Unclasping the chain from my side, I opened my compass, which was hidden in an heirloom pocket watch that told more direction than time. I favored such a device over a clock, using the sun as both my guide for navigation and for the passing of the day. If I obsessed too much over time, I became fatalistic, overwhelmed - as if I had been overcome by a terrible recognition of my own mortality. Something all too familiar with the pale cheeks of my two comrades, who managed to sleep longer than I ever could.
The sun heated my battered cheeks with a sterile warmth, brazen light dripping from the trees that continued their keening like they were already mourning for us three. I retrieved my coat from where I had hung it on a lower limb of an oak, drawing the tattered folds about my figure and stooping to lift a canteen from a weary patch of browning grass. The stream of water coursing over my face comforted me, and with my bare hands I scrubbed away the scar tissue that fell off in large reddish brown and black flakes from the right side of my head. The wound lanced all the way down my forehead, an arch of destroyed skin around my eye, before journeying its way down my jawbone. Now it was pink and open and oozed a clear liquid as I washed away dirt and other residue from my face. It would scab over again later in the day. It always did.
There was not much left in our bag of supplies. Our food was limited, even though the water was plentiful in the creeks and streams throughout the acres of woodlands. We knew if we had to, we would hunt, shooting down the birds that beat their wings so feverishly in the crazed chaos of the place. For a location meant to be so calm, the woods seldom slept, instead bleeding with harried interjections of confusion, agony, and fear. As if the trees too were alive and as ill as I was in the dawn.
***
I had met my two comrades on a lone trek from my village, where the contagion had spread to over half of the populace. The doctors, keeping their distance from me and covering their mouths with cloths, claimed that I had received it from a sick peasant. What they didn't know was that the disease was spread by blood contact, not saliva or exhalations, and that in truth I had contracted it from my brother - once a very proud war general, now a very dead war general.
I had fought alongside him as colonel, in the thick marshes of the Dimlands, with a cap bearing the royal family's coat of arms pulled across my brow. As we lifted our boots from muddied corpses after one particular battle, a dying private had spat a bloody, clotted farewell into my brother's eyes, cursing the name of the monarchs who had enlisted us. We did not think much of the goodbye gesture until the token scar formed on my brother's face, the same jagged spot of decaying flesh that decorated the skin around his right eye.
It was always the right eye.
As my brother slowly succumbed to headaches and fever, the doctors were too afraid to treat him. But he still desired to fight. He would not leave his uniform unworn or his horse without a rider. Even when he coughed blood, he swung saber and fired artillery into the thick of the rebellion forces - many of them with the same disease riddling their cheeks, noses, and eyes. Then a stray bullet lodged itself into my brother's cheekbone and sent blood spurting in every direction. He toppled from his steed and conveniently landed on me, his coagulating life force trickling into my gaping mouth as I lay dazed with my brother's body on top of me.
I coughed and spat as much as I could, but the damage was done. I was left infected and holding my brother's dying body in my arms. And from his quivering lips, he whispered something to me that I could not let go of: There was a cure. He didn't know where, but there was one.
I left my village after the war was over. The disease, unnamed, had not ravaged my body so badly yet. The doctors had given me a few years to live, more than most lower class citizens received. I was of a respected aristocratic family, my father having left a fine estate in his children's names. I departed from it all, leaving the property to my youngest brother, who had been born lame and never gone to war.
No one recognized me as the war hero the Barons had labeled me as. They did not recognize the colonel, the sister of the great war general, her shaggy hair covering the symbol of suffering on her face. They saw me as one of them - dying and to be pitied. Save for my new companions.
I had gone to every apothecary within a hundred mile radius and they knew nothing of a cure. There were talks of conspiracy regarding the disease, but I didn't buy any of it. The royal family had lost kin from the ailment, and they, too, sought out a remedy from the finest medics out there. What did my brother know that no one else did? What had he felt, or seen, in his time at war while dying from something else entirely? Who had he spoken to, and what had given him such hope?
I intended to find out, but first, I desired a drink. My appetite for ale and bread had grown stronger as of late, as if my body couldn't tolerate any remote lack of sustenance. I was losing my sturdy frame, built from years of training and combat, and looking more like a downtrodden rogue who had lost her way. I received a brimming iron tankard and was ready to drink from it before the bartender spoke to me in a harsh, warning tone.
"Any open sores?"
I licked my lips. "No."
"Good." The bartender snorted. "Bleeders are the worst. I'm not throwing out any more of my tankards."
He thought bleeders were bad. I thought the overly vigilant were worse.
I drank the cool lager and lulled my head back against my chair. The stools at the bar were all taken, and I certainly didn't feel like socializing. As I pulled the flat brim of my hat down over my eyes, I lifted the pocket compass (as I named it) and let the gold embroidery on its metal shell dance in the dim light of the tavern. I could almost see the etchings weave into the royal crest, the family I had put my entire loyalty into.
Not one word from them. No real funeral for my brother. He had died in obscurity, in my arms, on a battlefield filled with mangled corpses. And not a single salute from his surviving comrades. They had forgotten him. Practically in a day.
In this particular town, the numbers of the sick were fewer. It surprised me because compared to my village, the distribution of wealth was far more skewed. I had certainly seen more poor people than rich, and those rich I had seen kept their faces hidden in red spotted handkerchiefs. In this tavern alone, I only saw two others who had the same speckled brows - the same patches of flesh that had been stained with the unnamed ailment. They sat together, a man and a woman, holding hands and using their free fingers to scrape at crumbs on their plates.
I emptied my tankard and called for another ale. As I snapped a brass coin into the air for the bartender to catch, I realized that the couple was looking at me. The man was rugged enough, heavily bearded as if attempting to hide his scar with thick tufts of hair. The woman appeared as war-ridden as I was, the same silver weariness in her eyes that was apparently present in my soldier's gaze. She was dressed similarly to me in fashion as well - a traveler's garb, long coat and cap, ready for all weather - but had much brighter hair.
They probably noticed the scar. I raised my right hand and pinched my flapping index and middle fingers together - the standard greeting in towns such as this. The result was the couple striding toward me and sitting down at my table.
"Hi?"
"We know you," the woman said. "From the war. You're a Dolfhagen."
I stiffened. "You two fought?"
"My wife was a lieutenant under your brother's squadron before he became general," the man replied, grinning. "I was a cook."
"I don't remember you serving me gruel."
"We wanted to extend our condolences about your brother's death," said the woman. "We heard about it from an old friend who escaped from the Battle at Fort Rift. Where he saw your brother fall."
"I'm surprised someone bothered to remember him," I said.
I couldn't help being snarky, and besides, I wasn't upset with the two speaking to me. It was nice to actually converse with people from the war. We discussed the skirmishes at the Dimlands at length, remembering the carnage and the struggles. The man remembered one particular time when my brother and I, uniforms surprisingly unstained, took down a guarded windmill that was vital for the rebels' food supplies.
"I don't regret one day of fighting," the woman said to me, shaking her head. A strand of hair fell away from her face and revealed the black mass of dead tissue on her face. "Not one day."
***
My comrades woke up an hour after I did, and they drank and ate their parts of the rations as if they hadn't eaten in weeks. We did not speak much, only listened to the troubled complaints of the woods as its flesh rustled in the wind.
The sun was searing above our heads and we decided to keep walking. We all desired a cure. We all desired an exit from this place. And we all were very, very much awake.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
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