Ask And The Wind

They held hands tightly. The boy stepped from the rocky shore onto the soft, mossy earth and felt his old life rush past him like an icy wind. He looked down at Ada, pale and trembling beside him, and the cold fear that had overtaken his chest as they sailed across the dark, slate sea now warmed into a quiet rage. An ember.

He turned back to look at the water behind him, and his heart ached. Everything they had known was far behind them, somewhere past the empty horizon, that impossibly still line that cut the bellowing sea from the colorless sky. Everyone they had known, now far below, resting in the deep.

“Keep moving,” barked the burly stranger, shoving the boy forward with a careless, calloused hand. The boy pulled Ada closer to him as they made their way up the mossy knoll towards the great stone monastery, just visible over the crest of the hill.

“Ask,” Ada whispered, her voice so soft and broken it was all but lost to the blustering winds around them. “I want to go home.”

Ask looked down sadly at her glistening eyes, wide with fear and confusion. He squeezed her hand tighter. “I’m sorry, Ada,” he whispered, trying desperately to keep the grief from clawing its way up his throat. “Home is gone. We’re all we’ve got now.”

_____

The towering doors shut behind them with a boom and an echo. The stone room was vast and empty but for a few low-burning torches lining the walls on either side. Even with the dying of the wind, it seemed to Ask that the cold in this place was deeper and more biting than before.

A woman dressed in black walked towards them, her steps sharp against the stone floor, their echoes shrill as they soared like birds to the high ceiling.

She came to a stop a few paces short of the two children and their grim companion. Her gaze lowered to meet them, but her chin held its height as she took in their tattered woolen coats and their trembling hands.

“Just these two?” She inquired, raising an eyebrow to the burly man.

The man scoffed. “Have a shortage of little ones, do ye?” He asked, turning his palms up and looking around the room, mocking. The woman said nothing, but gave a tight smile.

“Very well.” She said, her lips pursed. She reached into a pocket hidden somewhere in the folds of her dress, and pulled out a small velvet bag. She dropped it into the man’s outstretched hand, and it landed with a metallic chink, a simple sound but heavy with finality. “Give Prior my best,” she said with a nod.

The man turned without a word and retreated the way he’d come, the great doors letting in a gust of frozen air and a ghostlike howl, a parting gift.

Once again in the quiet, Ask swallowed, looking up at the pale creature before him.

“I am Sister Rejda,” she said, her voice as tight as her lips and as empty as her eyes. “You will address me as Sister when the need arises, but you will otherwise be silent, unless called upon to speak by myself or another of the brothers and sisters here. Is this understood?”

Ask and Ada looked up at the woman in silence. Not a handful of seconds had passed when the woman’s bony and bleached hand reached out and struck Ask across the face.

Ada gasped and began to cry. Ask merely turned back to the woman, his whole body trembling with rage as his cheek grew warm and red.

The woman descended, like some great dragon or creature of old, bending at the waist until her face was inches from the boy’s, her reptilian lips poised to whisper in his ear. She spoke softly, but surely, letting each word fall before beginning the next.

“Is. This. Understood?”

Ask gripped Ada’s hand ever more tightly, and clenched his jaw to keep the rising tide of tears behind his eyes. He looked straight ahead, focusing on the far door that lead deeper into the monastery. The one from which he might never return once he passed through it.

He wanted so desperately to lash out at this witch who whispered threats in the ear of a child. He wanted to spit on her, to rip her tightly braided hair from her skull, and throw her into the deep of the sea and let the demons take her.

But he thought of Ada beside him, so small and lost in this new, cruel world. Clinging to him like a rock among racing winds and rising waters. He was no longer a child himself, but a father. A guardian. And the only thing left that mattered was keeping Ada safe.

“Yes, Sister.” He let the bitter words leave his lips and pulled the tears back from the brink of falling, the ember of rage in his chest cooling into cold, heavy stone.

Sister Rejda stood. “Come,” she said, and turned on her heel, hands clasped behind her back as she marched towards the inner door.

Ask looked down at Ada and gave her a firm nod, forcing a comforting smile to pull at his lips. Then he stepped forward and followed the witch, hand in hand with Ada, and watched the dark door draw ever closer.

Sister Rejda held it open, peering down on them as though from a great height, a crow on the spire of a church with blood on its beak.

Without looking back, the children stepped through into the new and unknown, hands held tightly.

_____

The bleak light of a gray dawn found its way through a meager window at the top of the stone wall, and below, curled on the cold floor, covered in rags and dirt, Ask stirred to life.

It had been two weeks since he’d stepped onto the accursed island of Saruskgeld, and three days since Brother Grejgid had dragged him through the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the monastery and thrown him into this cell like a bucket of piss.

He’d been given no food. He’d seen no faces. Only a dented tin cup of filthy rainwater shoved through a hole in the door each morning.

Ask pushed himself off the ground, arms weak and aching, and leaned back against the wall. He craned his neck upwards to see the weak ray of blue light as it fell softly into the room, slowly pulling git out of darkness. He was grateful for the small gift of morning light, the only sanity to be found in this place.

The distant clunk of an opened door sounded from elsewhere in the labyrinth, and was followed by the echo of slowly nearing footsteps. Ask clawed his way to his feet, every bone stiff from lying on stone, every muscle groaning for sustenance.

The bolt slid and the door swung open with a groan, and Brother Grejgid’s piercing eyes pinned him with their venom. Ask did his best to respond in kind, but mustering even anger and spite required energy that he simply did not have.

“I want to see Ada,” he said, forcing the words to come out clean and certain. Brother Grejgid tilted his head in question.

“Do you repent your discretions, and beg the gods and their servants for pity?”

“Yes, Brother.” Said Ask, nodding his affirmation. A satisfied smile tugged at the Brother’s lips, and he swept his hand toward the open hallway.

“Very well,” he said.

_____

She was so small.

Their father had teasingly called her Little Mouse, for she’d always been such a small thing, with wide and bright eyes and a life to her that was light and quick and lovely. And above hall, she’d trade anything in the world for bit of cheese on a cracker.

Ada lay before him now, covered in woolen blankets and shivering with cold. Her skin glistened with sweat and her little face, even sleeping, was etched with pain.

Ask held her hand, and he could feel the heat coming off her, the body begging for relief.

“How long has she been like this?” He asked, almost in a whisper.

Sister Marta, seated at the adjacent bed, mopping the sweat from the brow of another sleeping girl, shook her head.

“Fever came down two days ago. She was doing well.” Sister Marta smiled at Ask, remembering. “She wanted to see you. And when I told her you could not come, she rolled her eyes and said ‘He is always getting in trouble. He should give me a turn.”

Ask couldn’t help but smile. She had always been a squeaky little mouse.

Sister Marta stood and walked over to Ada’s bed, bending over and laying the back of her hand on Ada’s forehead. “Last night her fever came back,” she said, brow furrowed.

“Will she be all right?” Ask looked up at her, searching for the truth. Sister Marta paused and met his gaze. His eyes were bright, the color of the sky on a clear morning, and behind them was a desperate hope.

“I wish I had an answer,” she said finally, shaking her head. “For now, all we can do is wait and see.” The boy’s gaze fell slowly. He looked to Ada and watched as her chest rose and fell in shallow arcs, and did his best to dispel the thought that he might spend the rest of his life waiting.

_____

Every soul in the monastery slept, but Ask lay awake. His mind spun about the room, thinking of home, of his father, and the happy lives they lived for so short a time. He thought of Ada, her little body fighting the world, and himself, unable to lift a finger to help her.

He sat up in bed, every inch of his skin itching to get out of the room. Out of the monastery. Off the island and into the sea.

Quiet as he could, Ask donned a wool coat and a pair of boots, and swept from the room like the ghost he was, pale and thin and full of bitterness and regrets.

_____

The icy breeze coming off the dark sea was a blessing, and Ask drank it in like water in a desert. He sat himself down on that same mossy knoll he’d walked over when he’d first arrived at this gods-forsaken place.

He hugged his knees to his chest and looked out at the sea. It called to him like nothing ever had. That vast, endless expanse of water and wind and sun, where his father was not dead and his sister was not dying.

He was too young to be dreaming of a world without pain. Too young to wonder if death might hold more peace than life. But here he was, dreaming all the same.

A soft call sounded somewhere to his right, and he spun, searching the dark. His breath caught in his chest.

There, on a rock placed carelessly on the mossy earth by the gods themselves, perched an owl, its face bright beneath the moon. It looked at him, eyes dark and endless, unmoving. The two of them regarded each other across the small expanse.

Ask had heard tale of owls with the faces of angels, but like most stories he’d been told, he’d never thought he would see such a thing in his life.

His father claimed to have seen an owl once, and though Ask had never believed him, he had always loved listening to the story. A grey owl, he’d said, nearly four feet wide with its wings outstretched. He’d been walking across the grassy plains atop the cliffs of the Sifrig Sound, when the great bird had rushed over his head, rustling his hair and causing him to fall to the ground in a startled panic.

Ada had always laughed. Their father, frightened by a bird!

But Ask knew that even the strongest of men could be frightened by things they didn’t expect. Things that they never could have seen coming. Like finding oneself an orphan, imprisoned on a lonely, mossy rock with nowhere to run.

There was something strange and comforting about the quiet creature sitting beside him. It didn’t belong on this island any more than he did. But here it was, calm, full of peace. Free.

Something sounded over the water, and the owl snapped its gaze to the horizon. In a sudden rush of wings, the bird took flight, disappearing into the darkness over the water, gone as quickly as it had come.

Ask looked after it for a long moment. Something pulled taut, deep in chest. A longing.

He clenched his fist and whispered a promise to the sea. A promise that he would find a way out, take his sister away from here, and search for a place they would both feel free and safe and able to love the life they’d been gifted. To feel each breath like a blessing and never worry about the next.

The cold stone of his heart warmed once again into an ember, not with rage, but certainty. He felt in his bones that he would not die on this rock, and he would not suffer to live here for long.

He would tell Ada of the owl he’d seen. She would smile. She would heal. And they would see this island disappear into the mist behind them as they sailed out into the grey unknown.

A gust of icy wind blew in from the sea, chilling him to the bone, almost in challenge.

A small smile tugged at his lips, and the night wind howled.