Now
admittedly, in the days of his youth, the royal gardens had been infested more
so by squirrels and birds than anything else…Well, there was the army of
kittens living in the pile of flagstone on the east end of the ground, but
aside from the kittens, there were only the birds and the squirrels and the occasional
rat.
Snakes were so rare as to be nearly
nonexistent and only slithered onto the scene once a cycle or so, and usually during
the hottest of the growing seasons. Most of them were garter and black snakes, with
a venomous copperhead making an appearance every other age, but they were never
very large and they never came in pairs or groups. They came one at a time to
the gardens and the boys dispatched them with little, if any effort.
When the boys were young, they reported
the serpents to the groundskeeper (a portly, not to mention, grumpy man by the
name of Mister Sheffer), and the groundskeeper would kill the poisonous ones
and relocated the rest. When the boys were older, however, Iman and Jaysh dealt
with the legless beasts and they were not so discriminating. Being wild and
fearless—and not a little bit bloodthirsty—the boys paid no heed to the shape
of the serpents’ head or to the color of their scales. If they found a snake in
the garden, that snake received a flagstone greeting and its dead body was hung
from the nearest tree, a warning to any of its snaky friends that might think
to trespass.
As Brine crept deeper into the overgrown gardens,
he found himself wondering if this ploy might have backfired on the boys. He
found himself wondering how many of the snaky
friends spied their dead brethren dangling from the boughs and made a
promise to themselves to return one day and settle the score. He hoped that
wasn’t the case, but who was to say about a snake.
Wait
a moment, he thought, reflecting on his Wogol studies, wasn’t it God who
said that the followers of Amontus were protected against serpents? That we could
handle the legless dirt-eaters without fear of reprisal?
Brine thought about this a while longer,
then decided that he’d also seen passages
in the Wogol about not testing the
will of God. He remembered reading that to test the will of God meant to kiss
goodbye any provisions on the part of the Almighty. But then he was left
pondering whether or not it was testing the will of God to take a midnight
stroll through the tall grass of a garden.
In
the low and booming voice that Brine imagined for his God, he heard Owndiah
answer, ONLY IF YOU KNEW THERE WERE SNAKES WHEN YOU BEGAN…SO DID YOU, MY
SON? DID YOU KNOW?
Kind of?
Brine squeaked, feeling much worse about his chances. In truth, had he
suspected there were serpents lurking in the grass—or had he suspected the
gardens were now a snake paradise—he’d have stayed in bed and counted
sheep. But at the same time, could he claim total ignorance about the
garden serpents? Could he claim not to have known about the thing in the sky
that was taking the shepherds…?
Ahead of him, the darker outline of sedge
and cattails materializing from the gloom and he spied an opening in the reeds to
the north where he’d be able to see the sun reflecting off the water once dawn
finally broke. He departed the flagstones and ran to intercept.
Taking his first step from
the flagstones, he thought, But wasn’t it Reets who always said you could
find snakes around water, because of the fish and the frog eggs. He was
probably talking about the Leresh and the Mela, but if it were true about those
rivers, then isn’t it safe to assume that any place where fish and frogs—
GET OUT! he screamed,
dropping in the knee-high grasses. He hadn’t quite made it to the breach in the
cattails, but he dropped down none the less, no longer caring about the sunlight
on the water or the threat of slithering death, but wanting nothing more than
to assess Miriana’s theory. He brought the flute to his tightly pursed lips and
blew like a pyromaniac trying to start a fire.
In his haste, he
misjudged the distance between the mouthpiece and his mouth and felt his upper
lip tear between the wood and his teeth. Fresh blood tainted his tongue, but he
didn’t let it stop him, nor did he hesitate when it occurred to him that he
didn’t know what to play. It didn’t matter, not so long as the noise was long
and loud and wonderfully distracting.
So far, he had that criteria covered. He’d
made only a smattering of attempts at the note-holes and already the sounds
coming from the instrument were those of a stray dog whimpering to be let in.
But what did he expect when his lips felt like granite and his fingers felt
like participants in a poorly-planned fire drill, bumping into each other,
missing their cues, acting as though they didn’t know what was going on.
There are less of us now…he
heard the boy warn…less than once were…
Brine blew harder—tried
harder—squeezing the flute with more and more force.
And do you know what, Harbinger? the
shepherd boy continued. Do you know what we were doing when it took us? I
imagine an intelligent messenger like you can figure it out. I bet an
imaginative young man like you can even picture it happening…out in the open, smothered
in darkness, whistling a little tune to keep up our spirits…does that sound
familiar?
Brine grimaced around the mouthpiece, but
continued to make his noise. A few times, he considered scrambling to his feet
and sprinting for the kitchen, but decided against such tact as it dawned on
him that movement might draw as much attention as sound. So he
kept his seat and he made his noise and, little by little, the light of morning
came to paint the eastern sky. And with it, he noticed the castle coming alive:
runners and servants on the path, guards on the parapets, the kitchen door clacking
against its frame, the weeds and bushes stirring with life.
He wondered if he could consider the
critters of the garden his listening audience. They were a much smaller
audience than he was used to, and none of them made eye contact with him or
wandered over to smile in his general direction, but they still seemed to enjoy
themselves. At the very least, they didn’t appear irritated by the music. No one scampered to the far corners of the
grounds and buried their heads in the sand. He could see them—or, rather, their
distorted representations—in every direction that he looked.
On his left, a brown blur dropped from the
branches of a dogwood and swept arrow-like across the lawn, dropping into the
grass and vanishing from sight. On his right, a yellow-green shape leapt from
the croaking bulrushes and landed with a plop in the scum-coated waters. And
directly ahead, something he registered only as the rustling of leaves was
moving back and forth in the trees at the rear of the garden.
Of this last animal—or animals, as
the case may be—he knew very little. He’d caught only a few snippets of
movement from the beast and always seemed to be turning his head just as the
creature disappeared from sight. But if he had to guess, he would have labeled
the creature a squirrel or rabbit or maybe a cat. Actually, the longer he
considered the matter, the more he was convinced that it was a cat.
Considering what had taken place in these grassy hallows all those ages ago, he
was surprised he wasn’t ankle-deep in felines.
How many kittens had there been? he
wondered. Fifty? Seventy? A hundred?
He couldn’t remember the exact number,
only that he and Jaysh and Iman had made several trips to the stables
and sheds and surrounding woodpiles. Whole days had been spent digging in the
straw and searching through the feed sacks, hunting behind stacks of boards and
underneath workbenches.
Eventually, after the little devils caught
wind of the boys’ intent, it had taken even longer to pinpoint their locale.
What was more, once the boys finally located the fiendish sneaks, the
extraction process itself was no walk in the park. With all the hissing and
biting and clawing you’d have thought their abductors were trying to toss them
into a cooking pot instead of stuff them into an old quilt.
The groundskeeper, Mister Sheffer, hadn’t
been pleased, either. He was a portly troll of a man, who would eventually succumb
to his own temper and obesity, and this little episode with the kittens hadn’t
helped matters. Brine remembered Mister Sheffer waddling into the garden that day
and he could tell the man was piqued.
You boys seen my mousers? he
accused, his face red and his mood sullen. I’m missin a whole slew of
mousers—A Whole Slew, I say! Cain’t find nary a one an’ I been askin all day—been
askin e’rybody, I reckon—but ain’t nobody seen hide ner hair of em. They seen a
good bit’a you three, he seethed, but nary a hair’a my mousers! He
turned his beady eyes from the sprawling hedges and fixed them on the boys.
So how bout it, he demanded. You boys got somethin to tell me, do yeh?
But Brine and Jaysh and
Iman took one look at each other, registered the same frightened expression in
the other’s eyes—if we tell the truth, we’re dead!—and shook their tiny
heads.
Thinking back on the moment, Brine felt
like shaking his head now as well. Not in sympathy with the younger Brine’s
denial, but in amazement at how puerile and naïve he’d been, convinced that
something as soft and playful as a kitten deserved to be freed from the
dusty tool sheds of the world and loosed into a place of comfort and frolic
like the garden, a place where Brine, himself, had experienced so many days of magic.
And hadn’t I? he wondered, staring
passed the foot of his instrument at the kitten paradise beyond; the quiet
flagstone walls, the green and looming trees, the iridescent flowers. This was
the place where he’d once been a boy, the place he’d come to throw rocks and
climb trees and chase the bigger boys until they agreed to let him play.
But, oh, how things change, hmm, Brine…No
more laughter…No more games…And have you seen any of the kittens?
Brine recognized this distorted
voice for what it was and quickly pushed it aside. It was one of the uglier
emotions that Amontus discouraged and Brine would do well to keep it at the
periphery of his consciousness. But what he could not keep at the periphery was
the tightening along his chest and ribcage.
There was definitely a tension in the
vicinity of his lungs that had nothing to do with his exhalation into the flute
and, likely, had everything to do with his trek down memory lane. He’d barely
had time to register the sensation and it was moving on him, crawling up his
throat and settling behind his eyes, turning his larynx to stone and setting
his eyes to burn.
All of a sudden, Brine felt like crying.
He couldn’t be sure of the cause, but the feeling was crystal clear. He wanted
to roll onto his side, pull his knees to his chest, and heave out his sobs until
there was nothing left to give. A purging, if you will, a process of expanding
his lungs and then compressing them until all the pain and heartache was
flushed from his system.
In the end, though, he settled for a few
deep breaths and a handful of warm tears, deeming full-body sobs as more
ammunition for the prejudiced locals who already thought him mad. If they found
him out here shrieking like a wildcat and trembling like leaf, they’d banish
him for sure.
But isn’t it funny, the
crackling voice continued. You leave for ten short ages and just look
what happens… Just look. No
tails in the bushes, no whiskers in the trees, no meowing in the air…
The burning wetness grew
worse and Brine had to stop playing and wipe a hand across his eyes. As he did,
an image flashed in the landscape of his mind and he saw a line of multicolored
kittens prancing from the garden, whiskers and fur as far as the eye could see,
which was to the gates of the garden in Brine’s case. But he didn’t need to see
the head of the procession to know where it was going. He knew without seeing
that they were headed back to the stables and the sheds, back to a life of
mouse catching and bird eating and earning their miserable keep.
All of them gone, Brine, all of
them. All of them gone from the ga—
Brine drew in his arms and legs, dropped
his head, and clenched every muscle in his body, turning himself into a
man-sized ball of hard flesh and stiff tissue. For a moment, it felt like he
might pass out from the strain, his heart slamming madly, his muscles
resisting. In the end, though, he managed to hold his consciousness and it was
the image of the kitten-chain that faded.
Once it was gone, he brought the flute to
his lips, waited for the tiny white dots to stop dancing before his eyes, and
resumed his music making. And this time, as his fingers massaged the holes and
his lips blew life into the slender beam of wood, the utter calm finally came and
Miriana’s theory was validated.
Around him, he felt a bubble of warm
nothingness so deft that it consumed even his thoughts. One moment, he was in
the garden of his youth with the grass beneath his legs, the sun against the
pond, critters capering in the brush, and the next he was nowhere at all. He,
like the rest of the world, had been dissolved within the music, so completely eradicated
that it was not until the shadow formed on the grass beside him that Brine
finally emerged from his trance and took the instrument from his lips.
