The Goodness of Strangers

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

I want you to picture it with me Stanger- wind that isn’t choked with greasy smoke. Blue sky, crisp and clear, unmarred by flame.

Can you see it? In your mind’s eye?

I want you to imagine for a moment, pears and currants sweet and plump with juice. Pheasant and lamb and beef… great halls filled to bursting with gold, velvet and wine-soaked royals, sitting with commoners and court officials alike. Imagine Stranger, music everywhere. In everything. A steady pulse to which the world danced and bloomed. The trees would sing every morning as the dawning suns kissed their canopies. The birds would sing to welcome the farmers and woodworkers, mothers and their dream drunk babes. The hearth would sing with fire that restored, warmed, bathed its keeper in light and safety. Scorch marks didn’t adorn threshold and skin alike. They were safe Stranger, as safe as can be and it was beautiful.

Can you see it?

I won’t blame you if you can’t, what with Remembering being punishable and all.

No, no, don’t sit up. It’s all right. You’re safe here…or as safe as you can be considering your condition. We can talk freely of Remembrance here. Do you have anything you’d like to share perhaps? Some tasty morsels you’ve hidden away, just for yourself, something secret and sweet? It’s been so long since anyone has shared a secret with me, a little Remembering ripe dripping, dripping DRIPPING. There must be something you’re hiding, I can tell, I know you’re hiding something-

oh.

Alright now, no need for dramatics, its fine, its fine. I’m sorry. I…I get carried away sometimes. Tara would tell me all the time – let me fix it, don’t flinch, I won’t grab you again- she’d say ‘Zeb, you’re like a boulder rolling down an icy hill…you just don’t know when to stop’. Oh well, you don’t have to share anything with me if you don’t wish to.

See Tara?

I can stay my need if I want…if I try hard enough. I wish our Stranger wasn’t being so selfish, so very selfish.

Ah, ah. Don’t sit up. Didn’t I tell you? You should save your energy anyway Stranger, so it’s just as well.

All is well.

I am well.”

“You’re awake! Good.

“You had me worried there for a moment, slumber took you so swiftly. Drink this, it’s clean, pulled from the roots above. Purified by the dark earth. How truly miraculous, the wonders of nature that defy the awful Thorn (may he drown in the blood of those he’s ripped from life).

So Stranger…you are young, yes?

You were probably raised on the Thorn’s ‘Way of Kings’ (may he burn in flames of his cursed design). You were raised on the unflinching rhetoric of tyranny. It’s alright, you needn’t deny it, I’ve already figured it all out. You weren’t holding back your tasty Remembrances to be selfish…you probably don’t have any. Couldn’t share them, even if you wanted to. I should have known by your garb alone…no one would be caught dead in the Valley without a smothering fabric. Well, I suppose they might be caught dead but not purposely, you see what I mean?

Anyway, you’re from the Obsidian Citadel. Our black star to the east. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re a citizen of the Citadel?

Ha ha! I knew it, Tara! I’m brilliant! I haven’t lost my spark. I haven’t lost it Tara, it’s here, right here, I’ve got it I’ve still got it. I’ve got it …

Right.

So, you’ve never met a dragon who was unkind to you, who ripped at its own body to fit in a hole just to get a taste of your flesh. You’ve never had to watch an undying flame consume your loved ones or choke on air that was meant to sustain you. I see it in your eyes. You’re afraid. How blessed you are to know fear Stranger! To know terror and to long for days of rest and peace to return. No one here knows fear anymore…we have nothing to compare it to. We have nothing nothing nothing nothing.

Ah well, let me tell you my theories about what happens behind the Capital walls and maybe you can tell me if I’m correct in my musings? Just blink twice if I’m close, alright?”

***************************************************

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. That’s what that fool Zeb said. As if I knew there was a Valley at all before a month ago. As if the beasts I encountered were dragons. I’ve seen dragons, with their saber like teeth, thundering wings and skin like a million glittering gems. Blessed protectors of the nation’s capital, the Obsidian Citadel. What I saw in the Valley? Demons. Mighty, horrific creatures, with soulless eyes, exposed muscle on fractured bone and a heart shredding scream that could’ve torn my soul from my body. Gods and the stench of them. I smelled them before I laid eyes on them. I thought I had found a mass grave until it began to twitch and writhe. I lost my footing just as I realized I wasn’t walking on rotten earth, but the flesh of one of the beasts. And it wasn’t particularly appreciative of the interpretive dance I did in an attempt to get the rancid meat off of my shoes.

It’s been an eon since the Piercing Stone (may he reign in glory and light forever) rose to power. An eon of peace in the Citadel. An eon since the Times Forgotten had slipped away in anonymity and shadow and an eon since the gods decided to leave our twin suns in the sky, bathing our city in eternal, golden light. I always loved the warmth of their all-encompassing light, but that was when I was under the protective dome surrounding the capital. Out in the Valley, the suns were a cruel whip across my flesh. Without the dome serving as a shield, the suns ripped at the land, stripping it of all moisture, setting the vast plains alight in super cell fire storms. Zeb tells me the sun gods blistered the skin from his daughter’s body like a spit roast left too long unattended; that if you look hard enough into the ashen clouds blanketing the Valley, you can see the gods dancing on the scorched ember souls of the forsaken.

“They’re forever trapped in the sky, cursed to stare at the heavenly gates they’ll never enter, tainted as they are by the gaze of vengeful Thorn, Sin Eater”.

That’s what Zeb calls the Piercing Stone, our merciful king. “Thorn”- the name blasphemers use to describe the One Who Rules Forever. It seems this Valley is full of those blasphemers. Although they are decidedly less cannibalistic than I was led to believe in the Capital. Certainly, just as strange as thought they’d be though. I can’t help but wonder if this Valley is where they are sent by the courts after they’re caught spewing their vitriol within city walls (execution was outlawed one hundred years ago, else they certainly would have been sent to the chopping block). Zeb is obsessed with the Citadel, even more than he was about my name (thank the gods he’s given that fixation a rest). He’s got theories about my reluctance to share my name, just like he’s got theories about everything (“besides you simply being too weak to speak, you probably weren’t given a name! In the Capital, everyone is just a smaller piece of the greater whole. Insignificant on their own…perhaps you were assigned a number? Tara tells me that this doesn’t make sense though…”). He called these theories his “musings”. More like the rants of a mad man but I’d never say that to him. Not to his saucer like face anyway. He’s spent the last 3 days forcing these musings on me and I entertain him as well as I can considering I still have limited speech and mobility. I can move my head and hands slightly, so I keep my movement restricted to basic gestures- one of which Zeb is becoming increasingly more familiar with. I would feel bad for the fool, bumbling about on twisted ankles in the brown darkness of the underground, but something about him affronts me. Well, beside his constant blaspheming. He’s been gentle enough with me after our…incident that first night. And honestly, it’s not his actions that bother me, although I didn’t enjoy being yoked up during one of his tirades. It’s what he says that bothers me most. And by extension, what he doesn’t say. What’s hidden behind his enormous eyes, frantic and always a little crusty. If he isn’t sharing his thoughts on the Citadel, then Zeb is sharing his wife’s thought on it instead. Now Tara I feel bad for, if only because she was stuck in this divine hell with this mole man. And according to his incessant mumblings, she might have found sweet relief in death. I shift slightly, trying to relieve the growing tension in my back. I shimmy slightly upwards, trying to adjust my head and neck and notice Zeb isn’t stirring his muck any longer (he seems to run an apothecary of sorts and he’s always brewing something with a strange heatless flame).

Has he been looking at me this whole time? Zeb has a staring problem to be sure (how could you not when you have fist sized eyes?), but he’s never peered at me like this before. At least not while I was awake… who knows what this wretched fellow is up to when only his spectral partner is watching.

“Stanger? Are you sleeping? Can you hear me Stranger?”

I spare him a pathetic groan, less in acknowledgement and more in a desperate plea to the gods above to spare me from whatever was coming.

“I have another question for you, and none of those rude gestures from before, very unbecoming of a citizen of the capital you know. I’ve been talking to Tara, bless her, and she was wondering about the little drum in your chest.”

I turn my head quickly to him, eyes wide. How the hell does he know about that? When I was wandering the Valley, that very first night, something heinous followed me into the cave I crawled into for shelter. It oozed out of the shadows, its voice drooling out of its head like oil from a leaking lantern and it whispered to me that it was following my “red rhythm”. I screamed and swung my torch, in desperate hope that it would flee. But it didn’t. It simply pulled away and waited at the mouth of the cave, peering at me silently.

Just like Zeb was doing earlier.

That “red rhythm”, or little drum to use Zeb’s words, was the source of all my woes. Everybody seemed to be able to hear it but me which was unfortunate because it was often interrupting key moments of my life. Like the coronation. And my last conversation with Devan. And the spell the Arch Mage was casting for my protection. Considering my current position, wrapped in dirty bandages, with at least 4 broken bones and a headache that felt like a bullet had taken residence in my brain stem, I would say the interruption really lowered the effectiveness of that damn spell.

“Don’t look so shocked Stranger, I told you my wife was perceptive…at least I thought I did. Maybe you were sleeping? Maybe I was sleeping… Well, I told her its rude to ask others about their internal bodily instruments, but she was curious and told me it could be dangerous, and you know that I can’t have you endangering my beloved in our home. So, I figured I’d ask you although, I’m positive if this drum in your chest is dangerous, that you wouldn’t have known it to be so. And you certainly wouldn’t have brought it here to harm my love because we’re friends, aren’t we Stranger? Good, good friends. Or we should be. We should be friends. I don’t even need to know your name to know I can trust you and your little drum. The alternative is just too awful to consider-”

I stared at Zeb, absolutely bewildered. How long could he hear this thing? Did Tara have information on it? (I can’t believe I’m considering the thoughts of a ghost). I need to know. I need to ask him exactly what he could hear, what Tara told him. I need to understand what this beating was and why couldn’t I hear it?

“-and besides, how else would they have gotten that drum into you to begin with, I mean, Tara says it seems to be attached to you, but I disagree-”

Piercer’s gaze, why won’t he shut up? I raised my arm limply and attempted to wiggle my fingers to get his attention, but he was pacing frantically now, arguing with Tara about whether I was a threat or not. My temples throbbed. Oh yes Tara, look at this body, listless and broken, covered in lice and dirt. The body of a beast surely.

“-my dear, you aren’t listening to me. Yes, yes, I know the Stranger is, well, a stranger. But they aren’t a danger. Ha! Rhymes! Sorry, sorry yes, I’m paying attention. They’ve been here all this time and have only been rude,”

I winced, regretting my one finger salute from earlier,

“- but never cruel beloved, never cruel.”

Enough of this. I looked away from Zeb and his ranting and shifted my weight to the left. There was a pail, collecting water there. I was thirsty and it was close to overflowing…If I could just get a drink, maybe I could talk long enough to get some answers. I huffed a bit, extending my neck out as far as I could, but I still couldn’t reach. Maybe if I stuck out my tongue?

“Ah, ah! Now what do you think you’re doing?”

I flushed. It must have been a sight, a mummified, dusty person with a fully extended tongue and a one-man band in their chest, preparing to lick the pooling condensation off a pail.

Idiot.

“You could have knocked over my bucket. That would have been very bad, very bad indeed. What would we drink? Answer me that Stranger, what would have to drink if you knocked over my only good bucket?” Clearly, I would’ve had the condensation Zeb, were you not paying attention?

“Z-eb. Pl…please.”

Zeb’s eyes nearly jumped out of his skull and honestly mine did too. I didn’t realize I could speak yet although the way the words scraped out of my throat, I probably shouldn’t have. The condensation wasn’t sounding like such a bad idea anymore.

“Zeb…wa-wat-”

“Oh! You CAN speak!” He rushed to my side, nearly knocking over the damned pail in his hurry.

“Oh, gods above, how exciting! Surely, you’ll tell me your name now. Won’t you?”

“W-wat-er. Please.”

“Not until I hear your name Stranger. I’ve decided you MUST have one. Even if it was one you picked yourself. All things on the gods’ wretched earth have names. So out with it, let me hear it now. So, my sweet Tara will trust you and your little drum. So, I can prove you are kind.”

“Zeb. Please. I-I’m so-”

“ENOUGH. You will tell me your name this instant. Right. Now. I have given you sustenance and medicine and kindness and patience and that’s more than you deserved considering how rude you’ve been, but I thought we could be friends. Good friends in the home I built, under the Valley, safe from the flame and the touch of the Thorn (may he die a thousand wretched deaths). I thought you were different, I wanted you to be different. But Tara thinks your drum is evil Stranger, that you mean to do me harm! You wouldn’t hurt me, surely? Not after I shared my stories with you. Not after I shared…”

I heard a knock at the door leading to the tunnels. Zeb continued talking. Another knock. More talking. I felt a prickle on the back of my neck; who could possibly make it here without Zeb’s help? He took so much pride in how hidden his little abode was and yet here he was, with a prospective and increasingly more agitated guest.

Another knock, more forceful this time.

Zeb was practically in tears, yelling at Tara to give him a moment to think and thrashing by the hearth, spilling foul smelling concoctions on his feet. I strained to see the door, as it cracked open slowly.

“Z-eb…th-the door. Zeb, pl-ease.”

“I’m telling you Tara everything is fine! You’ll see, I can’t even hear the drum anymore! Maybe you misheard as well, maybe you’re stressed beloved, it’s been a hard week with the leak and the Stranger’s appearance and all-”

A woman stepped through the doorway, bathed in golden light and warmth, a look of serenity gracing her features. Her eyes, skin and hair were jet black, darker than obsidian and she moved with the silence of shadow. A halo hovered above her head (the source of the light) and a light metallic ringing filling the air, although from where, I could tell. Behind her entered the source of the knocking- a massive man adjacent being, so thoroughly covered in hair, he resembled a bear. His fists were clenched, and fury radiated off him like steam.

And still Zeb rambled.

The woman turned to me and looked me over, still in that metallic silence. How does Zeb not see them? The furry man set a pack down by the door and stalked towards Zeb, who was now fully breaking down on the floor with another concoction in his hand. I opened my mouth, and the woman covered the length of the room in the same instant and wrapped her fingers around the bottom half of my face. Her fingers her warm, uncomfortably so and her nails were sharp as razors. She smelled like hot sand and honey. “Hush now lovely,” -her voice was deep and resonated in my chest like a second heartbeat- “we can’t have you making too much of a ruckus and upsetting your friend even further.”

I glanced at Zeb frantically, willing him to snap out of his hysterics but he was silent and staring vacantly ahead at the man-bear. He got up off the ground, his saucer like eyes, wet and red with tears. “You…you’re here. In front of me…how? How are you here?” He hobbled forward slowly, bewilderment plain on his face. His chest rattled like cage doors as he walked on and through the man-bear and straight to the door.

“Tara! My heart, my love you’re here! Oh, oh thank the gods, they haven’t forsaken me! They’ve heard my pleas to return you to me, oh Tara, I’ve missed you, so much.”

In the doorway stood…nobody. Not a soul. It was just Zeb, holding the empty air and heaving sobs of gratitude; behind him the man-bear scowling with disgust, the glowing woman still standing with my face in her hand and I, thoroughly confused and struggling to breathe.

The woman released my face and wiped away tears I didn’t even know had started pooling around my ears. “Don’t worry, we’ll explain all of this shortly. But first we have some questions for you ‘Stranger’ and it would be in your very best interest to answer them, as truthfully as possible. Durk has made Zeb’s dream come true, and he can do the opposite for you if you aren’t cooperative.”

I looked to the man-bear, and he smiled, or snarled, I couldn’t quite tell. What I could make out clearly was the size of the knife on his belt. I nodded painfully and the woman smiled as if she didn’t just threaten my life. She pulled the pail close and offered me a hand. Sitting up was a monumental effort but the cool water slaking my thirst washed away the discomfort.

“Now…let’s make an exchange. A story for a story. How does that sound? You tell me how you came to this place, every detail, no matter how small. And I’ll tell you who we are and why we’re here.” She smiled again; teeth white as bleached bones. “If you give us what we need, I may even tell you your true name.”

I nearly choked on the water and looked her in the eyes hard, trying to see if she was lying to me. But her face revealed nothing. What were my options really? If I didn’t talk, she’d sic Durk the living furball on me. And I was really enjoying my time without a knife in my lungs. Its not like I could resist, even if I wanted to.

“Fine.” I croaked. “Where do I begin?”

The obsidian woman clasped her hands together excitedly and leaned in close to me. I could see the reflection of Zeb blubbering blissfully on the floor in her eyes.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning and see where that takes us?”