The Human Experience

Half P, day 6, 3400.

Warden Ruell came today. He is from the place for bad kids. He said me and him had to have a talk about why I did that to my sister. I told him because ever since the stupid baby came Mommy and Pappy won’t pay attention to me. They are way too absesed obsessed with their stupid normal child. He wrote stuff down and said am I aware I could have killed her? I said obviously I am ten not stupid and I know babies die when you throw them out windows and that was kind of the point. Except Vara didn’t die she just got brain damage. I was going to finish her off but I saw her on the grownd ground with her eyes all rolling around and I had another idea.

I don’t think Vara will be normal anymore. She will be different and maybe even like me. She will be a reminder of what happens when I’m forgotten.

Where was Lykus? Why was Hector still here? Orcadis had promised. He’d fucking promised. And they’d taken his mead, too. Bastards! Why? Why was he still Hector? Why?

“Will you desist?” blurted the female guard, whatever her name was. She lifted her head from her hands to glower at Hector from her seat on the bench opposite him.

Hector blinked with mock innocence. “I’m sorry, am I bothering you?” Then call your master and tell him to put me back like he said he would!

“Hector, don’t goad them,” Del whispered in his ear.

“I’m not,” he lied, and pinned on a fake smile. Put me back, put me back, fuck you, put me fucking back!

From the driver’s bench, Kaed chuckled darkly. Delia sighed and looked longingly out the window as if the only thing worse than having travelled a week with Hector was being trapped in a stagecoach with him for all that time.

The male guard, Red Face or Dimrod or something, returned Hector’s fake smile. “The Greathelm assured us you would be returned to your preferred state as soon as we cross into the Oviahn Province of Van Ferrall.”

Preferred state. Just listen to that shitfaced mongrel! Dimrod wasn’t as easy to get to as what’s-her-name. He never raised his voice, hadn’t once forgotten his polite mannerisms. His companion, on the other hand, had used her electric gun on Hector twice in the last two days.

“I want my preferred state now,” Hector growled, and lifted his muddy boots on the bench between Dimrod and what’s-her-name. “Orcadis said he’d keep me comfortable throughout my journey. Either he puts me back or I’m not budging from this stagecoach.” The woman’s face darkened and Hector lifted a hand. “Electrocute me all you want, sweetheart. Maybe when we reach Inaultis you can haul my unconscious body up the mountain.”

Tension festered in the atmosphere, but the woman set her jaw and leaned back against the wall without a word. When it grew clear neither of them would answer, Hector began whistling the most annoying Ferralli folk song he knew. He had to do something to occupy himself, after all. Why not make these Priers as crazy as they were making him?

Moors of heath rolled by the open window, wafting the light herby scent of heather blossoms over Hector’s face. He ripped the curtains closed so violently the rod with curtain and all toppled from the ledge. Swearing, he dove to retrieve it, and when he couldn’t prop it back over the ledge, resorted to smashing it against the wall.

Varali had had sleek raven hair all the way to her waist before she’d cropped it short in front of the Ferralli elders at her initiation. Every P-turn or so Orcadis would take her back to her home village to see her parents, and every time she would return with heather flowers braided into her hair.

Del drew him away from the window. Through his own heavy breathing he couldn’t hear what she said.

Then the dirt road veered sharply right and Lovers’ Lagoon passed the stagecoach before Hector’s eyes. He dropped the curtain rod.

“What the hell is this?”

Dimrod blinked innocently. “To what do you refer, Mr. Savage?”

“Why are we entering my home village?”

It was Kaed who answered. “This is the shortest route through Van-Ferrall.”

“I’m in exile! If I’m seen passing through here, I’ll be stoned to death!”

Kaed yanked the reins back as the coach hobbled over potholed terrain. “You’re safe so long as you’re accompanied by Metal Heads. These are Father’s orders. I’m only executing them.”

Cottages drifted by the windows as they drew closer to the heart of town. Hector sank down on the bench, shielding his face from the window with his hands. “Orcadis is testing me, is he? Why is he taking us through here? My parents don’t even know I’m alive. They don’t even know...”

He stiffened in his seat, the realization breaking over him in a cold wave.

They don’t know Varali is dead.

“I have to tell them,” Hector muttered. He peered at his company through the black curtain of hair over his face. “It’s my responsibility to tell them their daughter is dead.”

What’s-her-name puffed herself up like some great bird. “A minute ago you were afraid of being stoned to death and now you want to parade yourself through town? Your impulse control befits a beast. And we don’t have orders to stop here.”

“Now you do,” Hector snapped. He hastened to tie his hair back in a braid so he’d blend in as much as possible. “Just stop the coach down this next road. I’ll jump the fence to their house.”

Dimrod gave him an indulgent smile. “Mr. Savage, let us try to understand one another. We’ll be travelling together for quite some time, so I suggest–”

“I suggest you get it through your thick iron skull that I’m in charge of this mission, and for all your freeze-vapour and little slicing disks and mind-reading, I could break both your necks in half a second.”

Del sighed. From the driver’s seat, Kaed laughed again.

The woman turned a piercing stare to Del. “Aren’t you supposed to be his mentalist? Do something! Control the ogre!”

“The ogre?” A grim smile curled Del’s lips, sharpening her soft, airbrushed features. “Orcadis isn’t here.”

Kaed hooted his amusement. Both guards, as they’d done since setting off from Fort Neoma, paid no attention to him.

“Kaed, stop the coach,” Hector said.

“Love to, but I could never disobey my caring and adoring father.”

Hector shrugged. “Alright.”

He kicked open the door and jumped out, his legs instantly folding when his feet hit the dirt road. Hector rolled down the brushy hill leading to the roadside houses. By the time he’d scrambled to his hands and knees, pain throbbing through his ribs, the stagecoach had already screeched to a halt amid a swirl of dust.

“Belred! Go after him!”

Chickens flapped out of his way as he ran through the yard. His long, slender limbs had him swinging over the fence easily, and soon he was sprinting with such speed his boots barely skimmed the mud-flattened grass. He might have been that carefree boy with the wind in his hair and the angry mob at his back, confident enough to taunt his pursuers as he bolted through town with the merchandise he’d stolen from them. Many a good farmer had dropped a pant size or two running after Lykus, waving pitchforks or throwing stones. They’d eventually stopped chasing him for minor infractions like that. Even the older boys, the track champions, would only give pursuit for arson or animal-killing or something.

But Dimrod didn’t know Hector’s running record, and, stout and square though he was, barrelled from the coach to follow.

Hector did several hairpin turns, ducked beneath a line of laundry set out to dry in someone’s backyard, and wound between cottages until he came to the edge of a woodlet nestled within a dale. And though he hadn’t been here since he was ten, he found himself descending the root-knotted slope with certainty, following the markings he’d engraved into the trunks so long ago.

Dimrod wasn’t visible through the foliage, so Hector allowed himself to slow as he neared the cottage buried in the thick of trees. His heart pounded, and he knew it wasn’t all from the running. Would his mother recognize him? Would he be a resurrected nightmare, dredged up from Pyrrhus’s Pits where she’d laid him to rest?

Light filtered through the overhead canopies in roving patches, creating flashes of greens and browns as various plants were hit with bursts of illumination. Brushing back a branch, Hector saw it: the house where he’d spent the first ten turns of his life.

For the first time he considered they might not live here anymore. Had they been driven out of town for spawning such a devil as he? Or maybe the memories of their infant daughter dropped from that second floor window had been too much to handle.

But he couldn’t turn back now. He had to try. He had to apologize, and most importantly, he had to tell them he’d have given his soul to save the very sister he’d tossed off a ledge like the contents of some chamber pot.

He stepped to the front door and almost laughed. That infernal welcome sign was still there! Hand-woven by his mother, an insane confirmation of the family’s supposed normality. He’d despised it since day one.

‘Leave your ill-will at the door, for only love can cross our shore!’

More like ‘drop your pitchfork and have a cup of tea while I reimburse you for whatever damage my son has caused.’ But of course, that wouldn’t fit on a little crocheted sign.

And that wouldn’t have convinced her she loved her son every time she walked through the door.

Hector pressed his fist over his heart as if that could calm it. You owe it to them, damn you. Do it!

Setting his jaw, he pounded on the door.

Queran Impbreeder opened it.

If time had barely touched Orcadis in the turns since Lykus had seen him, it had raked its claws down his father’s face. He wasn’t wearing his braid (stars, how was his mother allowing this?) and his once coal-black hair hung in limp grey strings to his shoulders. The lower half of his face hid beneath a wiry beard, and his eyes hid beneath a frazzled awning of a unibrow like terrified creatures withdrawing in their hiding holes.

At first those terrified creatures searched Hector’s face from beneath the safety of their awning. Then his father’s brows lifted and Hector saw fear overtake the careworn features. Hector stepped back, his chest tightening.

But Queran turned the cringe into a smile. He shuffled over the threshold with his arms extended. “Sonny, is that you?”

It was Hector’s turn to cringe. Sonny. Just another father-son stereotype his father had clung to in his efforts to delude himself about Lykus. He’d done all but stab his eyes out, poor man.

“Hello, Pappy,” Hector forced himself to say, because Queran would respond to ‘pappy’ and nothing else from his ‘sonny.’

Laughing, Queran seized Hector in an embrace, patting his hair heartily. “Tychon’s light, I thought y-you w-were dead!” He squeezed tighter, knocking the wind from Hector’s lungs. “Bless you! Bless you, son! Oh, Gods, thank you for answering my prayers!”

And he sobbed. He sobbed so earnestly Hector imagined Orcadis grinning as he recited his favourite mantra, saying breeds thinking, because Hector could swear his father had convinced himself of his love.

Warmth pricked Hector’s eyes. He felt dirty. He didn’t deserve this acceptance. His purpose here was to be the deliverer of grief, not joy. It always was.

“When we’d h-heard you’d disappeared, we f-feared...we thought...oh, I’m s-so grateful!”

“Varali’s dead,” he heard a foreigner say with his voice, his mouth. He sucked in a breath but still felt like he was being strangled.

Queran stiffened and Hector locked his arms around him, returning the hug so desperately he lost feeling in his fingers as he clutched the back of his father’s shirt. “I tried, Pappy, I tried so hard. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save her. Forgive me, please forgive me.” And he dissolved into tears, expelling them like poison, feeling them dark and acidic in his chest and wanting to throw up his insides to be rid of them.

Hector didn’t notice his father’s knees buckling until they both sank to the moist leaves blanketing the earth. All the while Hector wept, clutching his father with his face pressed into the man’s chest, and all the while Queran sat still, his ragged breaths rustling through his beard.

“Lykus,” he said, his voice the ghost of a whisper. “Did you...?”

Those two words had Hector shrinking into himself, every inch the beaten animal. When he only lowered his head, Queran took his shoulders with surprising strength and held him at arm’s length. His bloodless lips quivered, his eyes pleaded.

“Lykus!”

Hector gulped air to calm himself. Finally, his face so hot from tears it throbbed, he choked out, “I loved h-her, Pappy. In the only w-way I knew how, but I did.” He coughed through his spastic breaths. “I’d sooner have killed myself.”

And he slumped back into the leaves, exhausted, every breath tearing at his lungs. His father didn’t ask further questions, but Hector went on to tell him of her Infection, the attack in the linden tree, the painstaking minutes he’d spent trying to resuscitate her before the medics arrived.

Finally Queran fell back against the porch with a groan. A single tear squeezed from his lashes, zigzagging through the pained creases at the corner of his eye.

“Your mother’s dead, too,” he said, staring vacantly off. “Now I thank the stars for that.”

An invisible hand ripped Hector’s insides. “When?”

“Been four turns now. She’d been sick a while. Coughing blood and all.” He turned his gaze to Hector and the clouds of vacancy parted for pinpricks of light. “Sonny, I can’t believe it. You...you’re showing emotion.”

Tears streamed silently down Hector’s face. He didn’t have the breath to explain about the operation and what a vile curse it was.

Queran scooped up his son’s hands. “I knew it,” he whispered. “Vara’s death unleashed the emotional wealth I’ve always known you had.” Hector’s stomach plummeted into the ground. His father continued. “This was the price. It took the loss of one child to bring my other to life. I lost my Vara today, Lykus.” He squeezed Hector’s hands, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “But I gained you. I gained you.”

He drew him into another hug, and Hector just sat there, his tongue tingling from sobs, unable to break his distraught father’s heart by telling him his ‘inherent goodness’ was a computer named H.E.C.T.O.R. in his brain.