As I was walkin' up the stair,
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...
* * * * *
Did you see him, someone whispered to someone else in the mouth of an alley.
They were bundled up against the chill, yet the wind still managed to find gaps in their clothing and cut through them like an invisible icy knife. They couldn't help themselves: they shivered, stamping their feet and rubbing their chests, uncaring of who looked at them like they were crazy. Most folks kept moving so as to avoid exactly what ailed the two in the alley; several passed them, in fact, often without a second glance -- with the sole exception of a pair of Street Constables, who gave each of them a hard look before resuming their patrol. Warning them without words to be up to no mischief, for sure.
No, who? asked the other after the Constables were out of hearing. Their curiosity was plain, as was their confusion..
The monk, answered the first. The monk with the rusted chain around his waist.
* * * * *
You had the same dream, Matta? inquired a woman scrubbing dishes at the King's Pride, a tavern in Myrken that Chewdry would certainly never visit, much less be proud of. Her words were accompanied by quick, light splashes of water, the whisper of a drying cloth.
Aye, replied the woman named Matta, who was behind the first woman. Matta was kneading dough; the heavy, wet
whump of the dough-blob hitting the counter top seemed to punctuate her every sentence. Her arms were white, covered in flour to their elbows, and she didn't seem to mind at all. Right frightenin' it was, she added.
Whump.
I dreamt of my cousin, said the first.
Splash, splash. Roben -- remember him, the dark-haired lad? Aye, poor Roben. Stung by one of them flux-bugs, and dead as dead can be in two days. The folk at the Rememdium couldn't do anything, they said, and God bless 'em, they tried their best. We don't fault them, Matta, not at all -- just the cruelty of nature, I suppose.
Splish-splash.
Aye, Matta agreed.
Whump. Take this winter, she thought. She was Myrken born and bred; she knew what this place was capable of, and what they had seen thus far was merely a hint of what was to come.
But he wasn't dead, the first went on. He was alive! And hale and hearty, to boot. I was so happy, Matta. We talked for, gosh, it must've been hours. Seemed like hours, anyway. But then...
The splashing slowed, then stopped; the first woman trailed off, falling silent.
But then you woke up, Matta finished, and he was gone, and you were alone in the dark of your room, and you had a headache fit to split your brains apart.
Whump.
Aye, whispered the first.
Silence, save for the sounds of their work. Then, a few minutes later, the first woman mustered up the courage to finally ask.
Matta, she said. What -- who -- did you dream of?
My husband, Matta answered.
Whump. That didn't surprise the first woman; she would've dreamed of hers, too, were he dead.
What did he say? What did you talk about? the first woman inquired, emboldened by Matta's willingness to respond.
The same shit he always said, Matta told the first woman.
Whump, and then Matta turned to face the other woman, who did the same.
The very first thing he said to me, Matta said, folding her arms beneath her breasts, was
Glory be, woman, you could've at least brought a mug of beer.
The first woman couldn't help herself: she laughed. Matta did, too.
* * * * *
Dawn arrived, but you wouldn't know it save for the pale pink coloring of the clouds in the east, a color that faded soon after -- the winter sun was a weak thing, offering little light and even less warmth. By an hour before noon (as best as anyone could reckon, anyway), it was snowing again.
In the courtyard of St. Iona's, before the house of the One True God and the eyes of every passerby, a man stood naked as the day he'd been born. Goosebumps pebbled his skin, but he seemed not to care about the cold. About anything, for that matter, such as the creeping blue tinge his toes were developing.
There had been few people on the streets today, as no one wanted to be out in this weather. Even the most determined shopkeepers had grudgingly accepted there would be little to no business, that they had better things to do than stare at snow piling up on the ground outside. In time, however, people trickled into the streets -- children, more often than not, finally let loose by their parents to play in the snow with their friends. It was a group of children that first saw him, in fact, that went to tell their parents about the weird man in front of the church who must be
really cold.
It did not take long after that for word to spread. It took less for people to be there, to witness the spectacle for themselves. People stared, of course -- they were inclined to do so, even if it was something abhorrent. They whispered, wondering; they gathered, watching. Silent, but unafraid. Curious was perhaps a better description, as if every man and woman was waiting to see what he would do, or what would happen.
Again, it did not take long for a pair of patrolling Constables to arrive, to express their surprise and mild alarm at the throng; and it took less time for them to shoulder through the crowd and approach the man -- slowly, carefully, not wishing to disturb him into sudden action.
There was no need, they discovered. Beneath the man's long and tangled, wind-tousled brown hair, the Constables saw that his ears had been sliced off. The jagged stumps were crusted with blood, glittering with ice crystals. Too, his eyes were gone -- gouged out by the look of it. Snow collected on his eyebrows, his eyelashes; it had frozen the blood the empty sockets had wept. As they drew closer, however, around to the front of him, they saw his lips moving soundlessly, like a man praying.
How long had he been here like this, they wondered. Even closer, then -- and then they stopped in their tracks. They had heard something. The wind? A word? Suddenly uneasy, they each placed a hand on the grip of their brass-studded truncheons.
And then, barely above a whisper, the mutilated man spoke.
Now I will never see or hear her again, he said. Now I will never see or hear her again.
If the Constables were confused, the man's next words made it even more so -- they were of no tongue either man knew.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et in semper, et in saecula saeculorum, he breathed.
Gloria in excelsis Deo.