Chapter 91: Volume 2 - CH 4.08

“Hold.”

A word asudden from Volker after much walking since then. I turned to find him halted, even as our destination laid yet a long ways off.

“From here to the gates, you walk—alone,” the war-chief went on. “Trouble avoids you now, not as earlier.”

I cocked my head slightly. “Alone? Man that I am?”

“The folk there are fraught, blind to aught but their own suff’ring. Your presence is little pain, for living is pain enough to them.”

I then gleaned a glint of gloom in Volker’s gaze. He watched the weighty air falling upon the district in question, as though the place were a panging scar upon the sprawl of the fólkheimr.

“That share of Hensen we set aside for the direly destitute. There, they may find succour. Though, woundful to say, they find little of it,” he confessed. “We Vílungen scant and scantle on, always with toes upon the cliff-edge to collapse. Indeed our lot is meagre; there be where our frail fortunes lay themselves barest.”

“A sight the jarl bids me see, I take it?”

“You discern his design, Man. Just as he does of something in you; something that gives him hope,” he said, then looking to me. “Though truth be told, I share little of his sight.”

Then, after a word of parting, Volker turned and made off on his own way. I watched him with many thoughts, sensing his gait, while tall and proud, walk a mite more slowly than before.

‘With your eyes, see the state of our society. With your compass, judge what Man’s deeds have wrought upon my people.’

Though he scarce said such a thing, I well-heard Alban’s bidding in my ears. And what a mountainous bidding to oblige it was.

But oblige it I will.

Straightening myself, I set forth into the destined district.

♰

I walked upon the dirt paths, delirious as they were with dingy wooden dwellings jutting every which way. Cobwebs of clothes-lines threaded around and all about without aim. And lining the waysides were scatterings of sullen and soiled folk, down on their bottoms, down on their luck, downcast, downtrodden.

A shantytown, through and through, made only more dreary by the ever-growing gloom of evening. Hensen was a fólkheimr formerly arising out of little else but oaken abodes of old. A mild majesty permeated it, to be sure, but none of the marvel was to be found here.

True to Volker’s words, no eyes gave much of their time to my presence, high-heighted and Man-like though it was. Glances might’ve been given here and there, but the smallfolk’s hearts certainly heeded me not. They were all of them ensnared in their daily desperation, a shared destiny brought upon them by some past tragedy. Seeing the citizenry in their squalor, I thought then how easily Mia herself might’ve ended up amongst them—or worse still.

A place of penury, beyond any doubt. The home of the forlorn, fringefolk forgotten by the fates. Nowhere was felt the freshness of life, of vitality, of vivacity. This townscape was wholly sunken in its own sombre air.

“Gwagghaaaa—!!”

And through that very air: an ear-splitting scream.

I jerked in its direction, finding a nondescript alleyway. Many of the nearby Nafílim, too, turned the same way, but, with only misery in their miens, moved nary a limb to go look. Theirs seemed the spirit of surrender, as if knowing that naught in their power could prove a remedy.

Yet what darkened my heart most was that the scream was of a child.

Unable to remain deaf to it, I stepped into the alleyway, where waiting at its end was a somewhat sizeable home. Its timbers were tumbled, its roof ragged and reclined, and its walls welcomed in the winds.

“Ah… agh… aghhaaaa!!”

From within the abode shrieked the same vociferous voice.

The doorway was doorless. Draped over it was some tattered cloth, one I quickly crossed on peril of trespassing.

“Ach… hagh… nnnggh!!”

There, a scene to sunder to the heart.

Children, all about—weeping, wailing.

“Aaaagh! Uwghaaaahh!!”

And the source of the screams: a young boy, flat upon a floor-laid mat. His eyes were bulging open, his lungs heaved with every scream, and his limbs were deathly tense as they waved and scratched wildly about.

Near him were five other little ones, boys and girls both, clinging tremulously to each other, their cheeks wet with tears. Each was fixed upon the youth, hysterical with a sadness no child should suffer.

Yet there was another girl, longer in her years than the rest, but young all the same.

“Brother! Oh, Brother!”

“Theo! Theo! Don’t give up, Theo! Please! Plea—se!”

“Uuaaah! …Hic! Brother, don’t di—e! Waaah!”

The collective lament of the children.

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Amongst them: a little sister, calling out to her frantic and fading brother. Tears coursed and coursed down her snivelling face. Clasped in her arm was a plush bear, threadbare, and poorly patched here and there with ill-matching shreds of fabric. Buttons were its eyes, though only one now remained.

Crushed by pity, I but stood there, fast frozen. Rolf Buckmann, feller of the catoblepas—a battle where was witnessed not a pause in his facing of the beast. An unsung merit to my name, yet in spite of it, I could do little but stand silent and stolid aface the suffering of these children.

“Gghhwah…! Aghhh…!” the screaming continued, and with it, the wails from the little ones.

“Brother! Don’t leave us!! Please! Alma will be good from now on! Please!!”

“Uuaaaah! Waaaah!”

“Theo! Stay with us, Theo! Stay strong!”

There—corroboration from the adolescent girl as she struggled to still the boy’s thrashing spasms. Amidst her desperation was a sudden swivel of the eyes up to me. In that stare: a look I’d seen never before.

A look that pleaded for succour, any at all.

A look that fumed with fury for the world and all.

A look that was a lightning bolt upon the ice binding me in place—at once, I rushed into the room, as if freshly unfettered.

“Clear the way! I’ll hold his legs!” I yelled above the clamour, before catching and clamping down the boy’s buffeting feet.

“Ughhah…! Gghah…!” On and on, he strained and thrashed, possessed by some demon of a distemper.

I looked to the adolescent girl. “Give him a thing to bite! Cloth, wood—aught at all!”

Heeding me, she glanced hurriedly about before turning to the children. “Kurt! That stick there! Hand it to me! And Romy! The blue box, on the shelf! Bring it here!”

The trembling children, too, heeded in turn, and tearfully fulfilled the girl’s bidding. About the room they then scrambled in clumsy panick. I watched on, weathering the boy’s wutherings, my heart sinking at the sight of their sniffling and quivering selves.

“You—have him bite this! My hands are needed elsewhere!” the eldest girl next said, thrusting the newly retrieved stick to me.

With my legs holding down the boy’s own, I obliged. An action fighting to fail, for the boy himself was bursting at the seams with violent strength, as if his very life were ablaze in its last moments. Only with my full and burly weight were his legs held in place.

His chin fast in my hand, I then forced open his mouth and wedged the stick between his frothing teeth.

“Ouummhh──! Mmmgh──!!”

“Theo! Come, bite down!!” The adolescent girl, seeing the ailing boy obeying, took to hand a blue box. “Hold him still! Just like that! Kurt! Come help, as well! Don’t let him flail now!”

Whilst dictating the chaos, the girl took out of the box a porcelain phial.

“Ugghh! Ffhhnngg──!!”

“Brother! Brother, please!! Don’t die!!”

“Theo!!”

“Oh, Brother!! Brother─!!”

“Waaaah! Aauuaaah!”

The children cried. On and on, each and every one. No cheek was unflooded with tears.

My face furrowed at the scene. Gasping breaths grated their way out of my lungs, as though I’d fast forgotten how to breathe. An unexpected sheen of sweat was upon me—my mind, my heart, laboured away at a war unlike any I’d waged before. Swimming against the tide of emotions, I continued on holding down the boy with all desperation.

“Theo! Be strong!” the eldest girl shouted. “You, have the stick gone! He must drink now!”

I did as told, gripping the boy’s chin before freeing the stick from his gnashing bite. In the same moment, the girl leant in and poured into the boy’s mouth a liquor from the phial. And right as the remedy was emptied, I swiftly wedged the stick back in.

“Gghhnnnngghh──!!”

A guttural groan from the boy, punctuated by a crack from the stick between his teeth. It was for the best; without it, he might’ve very well bitten off his own tongue.

“Gghh… nngghh… hhghh…”

And then, a peace, setting in piecemeal—the boy’s mad flailing finally began to abate. If only the same were true of his eyes, which remained wide open, twitching here and there. Unsure of his condition, I continued keeping him still as best I could.

“Gh… urh…”

The moments released their tension, for at last, the boy’s eyelids drew to a gentle close. And once the girl removed the stick from his mouth, all that left it then were the shallow sighs of slumber.

I followed suit, freeing a deep breath from my lungs after letting myself off of the boy’s once-bedevilled limbs.

The children’s wails had ceased. What remained were only their soft sobs.

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