Never Knew Another (2 page)

We saw the walls before we reached them. They were taller than hills. Outside these walls, small buildings pressed against the merging trails. Someday, a new wall will be built around the new buildings, and this new wall will be bigger and more magnificent than the last.

The forest continued on beyond the human settlements. Trees are patient. They cede all ground to their usurpers, knowing they will always return to claim the ground again, eventually.

We call the city by the name our wolf pack gave to it. They say it is a dogs’ land. The dogs run the streets, tear into the trash heaps, and chase the cats away from the balconies. The dogs piss their boundaries into the mud. That is
Dogsland
, they say, and you smell the dogs everywhere. Why the dogs would want a place crowded with those bellicose monkeys is unknown to the wolves, but it is the dog shit and piss that walls the place off to the wolves. And good riddance to bad wolf land. The farmland isn’t as bad, but it is better deep in the hills, where the retiring soldiers receive parcels of land and try to carve farms into the hills. They stay long enough to lose their sheep to wolves, and watch their crops wither. When spring comes, they sell the land back to the king, and fade from our lands. I assume they go back to the city. They leave behind huts that keep the rain off wolf backs in the night. What dogs stay behind fade into the woods when the packs come, run wild and die alone. They belong in the cities, among men, and not in the forested hills.

My husband and I live where the forested hills and distant emissaries of the city press into each other, at the boundary of things, serving both man and beast. Some farmers live on, and fight on, growing wheat. They are the flock we serve the most, among the men. The city church is no place for wolves, and no place for Walkers.

Leaving the forests, I wondered how long it would be until we could turn home again. The stain had to be broken. The ground had to be healed. How long would it take? We knew many things because we were Walkers. We smelled a man’s life in his skin, and sometimes his death. We felt the flow of life around us, like Sentas’ dreamcasting with koans, but we did not see in metaphors as in a dream. We saw with holy eyes, smelled the secrets of the land. We knew so many things simply being raised to be the servants of Erin. We could merge into the mind of a dead man. We could wear the wolfskin over our backs and run with wolves. In all these things we knew, and all our blessings, we did not know how long it would take to clean this stain and hunt the demon children survivors, and all who aid them.

***

At the magnificent gates of Dogsland, guards inspected all the cargo and caravans and wagons—even ours. They had such serious faces. They poked the cattle, and pinched the wheat. They stuck their blades into boxes to find smugglers’ secrets. They were on alert. Something must have happened if they investigated even our little box so thoroughly.

We were so small with only us two and our boxes within boxes wrapped in leather and burlap, dragged behind us on sticks. We told the guard that it was best not to dig too deep into the box, for it contained a demon’s skull. He did not listen. We let the guard open the first box. He dipped his blade into the second. He bumped against the bone. His ears turned white, and his jaw tightened. He had felt a skull against his blade before. He needed no more proof.

We told him, for the second time, that it was a demon’s skull. We touched a leaf to the edge of his steel where it had banged against the bone. The leaf wilted there. We told the guard to sheathe his blade, and purify the whole thing at Erin’s temple before he accidentally nicked anyone. He nodded, his skin white.

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

“Near the red valley. He was wearing a uniform like yours,” I said. “A corporal of the king’s men, dead in the woods.”

“Oh,” said the guard, “Oh. I bet he was the traitor.”

“Who, specifically,” I said, “and where do we locate his friends and family?”

I knew the dead man’s name, but I wanted to hear him say it. He might say another name for the demon child than the one I knew, and lead me deeper into the truth of this lost life. Even good memories fade into untruth, and I had to sort them all out. This was Jona’s home, all the days of his life. Everywhere I looked, I felt his history in a blurred flurry of déjà vu upon déjà vu.

The guard looked at his boots. “Are you going to kill his family?”

I shrugged. “If they are of demon blood, we will have them burned at the stake by the king’s men with the blessing of the Church of Imam,” I said. “Unless we find them in the woods. In the woods, they are ours to kill.”

He was trying not to look me in the face. He was so young. I bent a little downward to catch his gaze. “Other then that, I do not know what we will do to his friends and family, but we will obey the laws of the city in all things,” I said. “We will hand any sinners over to you and yours.”

The guard nodded at us. He opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind. Then he coughed. “I knew that fellow when he was alive,” he said. “Didn’t know him real good, but I knew him. Nobody knew he was of demon. Jona was his name.”

“He may have been a good person, somewhere inside of the twisted stain of Elishta, but with demon children, the evil rises in their blood and they fall a little more every day, until they become…” I trailed off, inviting the soldier to speak into my silence. I waited and waited.

He spoke at last. “…Traitors. Yeah, I get it. Corporal Jona Lord Joni’s his name,” said the guard, “and his Ma lives in the city, but I don’t know where. Sergeant Nicola Calipari is the one that killed him, I hear. Sergeant’s… Well, I don’t know where he is, but you can find him if you need to if you ask around. Everybody knows Calipari. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you,” I said. “How well did you know Jona?”

He squinted down at the box between the two branches. He frowned. “Passing good, I guess,” he said, “Walked the rounds a few times before he got transferred to Calipari’s unit and I got over here. We did a bit of this or that. He never turned on me. Seemed good as anybody.”

“He probably was for a time. If they die before the blood influences them too much, part of them may escape damnation in Elishta, with their wicked fathers.”

He snorted. “You really believe that shit?”

“I believe what I believe, ”I replied. “What is your name? I may want to find you again, ask you more questions.”

“I’m Christoff,” he said, “Corporal Christoff. No last name. Never knew my folks. Named myself when I became a man.”

“A pleasure.” I bowed to him. “My name cannot be pronounced without a wolf ’s tongue, Christoff, so forgive me if I withhold it. Where do you worship?”

“Nowhere.”

“Well, did you ever worship anywhere?”

“My orphanage was a temple’s place. Not Erin, though,” he said, “Imam.”

“And you do not return?”

“No. You’re free to go anywhere you want. Look, I don’t have time to talk about this shit.”

“I only ask because you’re going to have to clean your blade at a temple. Imam is a bit more expensive then Erin, and it’s not your fault that you were doing your job.” I held a bag of coins out to him.

He opened his hand, uncomfortably. This would look like a bribe, in broad daylight. I placed the bag of coins into his palm, and I closed his fingers over it, holding them closed.

“If the temple must destroy your sword,” I said, “tell them that Erin’s Walkers sent you to get the blade cleaned. They will give you another.”

The coins were too much for just a cleaned blade. The extra weight would pay for the funeral that I smelled in his skin. I pulled him closer. “It wouldn’t hurt to light a candle for Jona,” I whispered. “We are, all of us, feeling for the worlds that move between the cracks in our senses. Light a candle for your friend. Good hearts push through many boundaries. Have faith, Christoff. Have faith in something.”

Christoff nodded. I hope he prayed before the sickness came. I hope he lit a candle and prayed for someone’s soul before the disease came out of his skin and made him beg for his own life in the long night.

We would never meet Christoff again in any of our stories or walks of life. I could smell his death coming soon. Yesterday he had run into something—a wooden crate’s nails, or a jagged candlestick. He had cut himself deep with the metal. I smelled the lockjaw that would kill him soon. If I had kissed his cheek, I’d have tasted it there, in his sweat.

I imagine there must be a girl at his funeral to cry and cry, a damp cloth with legs. Her love will spill from the corners of her eyes for weeks. Poor creatures, these young lovers, and a story left untold. I reach into a demon child’s memories, while good people live and die so quietly, and no one studies their memories for signs of good things done, and good people. Nothing will remain of Christoff in this life, except perhaps this imagined girl’s heart.

Christoff, I felt your whole life like a thundercloud.

These cities, each crack and crevice opened tears my heart away with a sadness of things lost. I saw too much. None of the people here tried to lead an unspectacular life. Christoff, I wish my work could bend to you, and to all your hurting brethren in the misery of Erin’s curse of cities. The stink of death was everywhere, here, and my husband and I could do nothing. Purify the ground; pray for these lost loves, lost lives, and lost souls.

Blessed Erin, may our task be quick. Bring my husband and I back to your woods, where death is the same as life. Give us again the place where the only glory is to eat a little longer in the winter.

CHAPTER II

W
e do not fully understand the fate of the demon-cursed. Corporal Jona, the Lord of Joni, might even still be alive inside his bones, his soul attached for an eternity to the tainted flesh. I toyed with the box, and wondered if Jona’s spirit still lingered, watching the world he had left. Could he see the fabrics of life like Senta mystics? Could he see the truths of the world like us? Did his human soul wander the woods, silently weeping her name to the starlight:
Rachel… Rachel…
Too late for his soul, we must study his life.

***

First, before we stopped at one of the churches of Erin in the city, my husband and I dragged Jona’s skull and uniform to the captain of the City Guard. We insisted upon a visit with him, right away. We wanted to make a scene there. If demon’s children could live here so long undiscovered, and serve in the king’s men, the city guard needed to be reminded of their failure, and the severity of it. We waited in the captain’s office while he washed his hands and face to meet with us respectfully. We carefully placed the demon’s skull upon blank papers on his desk, so the empty sockets could stare directly at the captain while we spoke.

The captain stopped at the door when he saw the skull. He spat and told us to put it on the ramparts or take it away, but never let the traitor look upon his captain again. We left it there while we spoke with him, to stare at him. It was his responsibility to catch them here, and now the church of Erin was involved because we found the skull. We wanted to make a scene, and shame him.

Names came to me when I saw the captain, and faces. I knew the captain would not know more than he had already told us. He had not been in the Pens with Jona. “Nicola Calipari,” I said. “Where is he?”

“That old dog? I don’t know,” said the captain. “If he’s on duty, he could be anywhere. His people will know where he went. Last I heard, he worked the Pens, near the abattoirs, but I know he made inspection rounds. He was on inspection when the corporal showed his true colors. Of course, records don’t mean anything for an old-timer like him. His men might be lying to me just to keep him on the books until he gets the farm. Last I knew he was in the Pens. Could be anywhere.”

We wanted to shame the captain, for allowing a demon child to work in his command for so long. We tested his blood for demon stain, to shame him. We commanded him to test everyone in his command. Let them bleed and know why they bleed.

We spread a sheet of his finest heartwood paper under his open palm. We nicked him with his own dagger, and let him bleed a few drops onto the page. Then we held the paper over a steel bin, and set the paper on fire. When the fire reached the blood, the red stain held the smoldering line of ash back. He was not a demon’s child.

The captain bowed to Erin, and promised to cleanse his blood at a temple of Erin that very night, even if he didn’t need it. He kneeled before me and begged for a blessing.

My husband placed the wolfskin paw upon the head of the man and spoke the blessing for the man. It was the first time he had spoken since arriving in the city. I had missed the sound of his human voice. I placed a red flower in the captain’s hair—red, the color of blood and hunting.

We told the captain that we would seek his help when we were ready, whenever we were ready. We asked for his patience in this matter. He nodded. He closed his eyes. We left him there, kneeling and praying. The king’s men would know we were here. They would let us work in peace, even unto blood and death.

Outside, I took my husband’s hand. “Speak to me again. Let me hear your voice. Speak to me that I may remember who you are.”

He sniffed the air.
It’s hard, here
.
I remember what it was like for the demon’s child from long ago—how he felt here. It still lingers in me, though decades have passed. This place terrified him. And, it saddens me. It isn’t our home. We don’t belong here.

“For me?”

“I’ll try,” he said.

***

We went down near the animal pens where the butchers kept their beasts. The animals arrived on river ships to the edge of the ocean water. They were shoved from dark cages below deck until they came to the city on ships, shoved from one dark cage to another, waiting for the death they can smell all around them, pressed together in the heat and the mud. The Pens district was where the smell was the worst.

This was Jona’s home. Every street was his. His ancestral lands sat in the center of it, his house was hidden somewhere inside the new buildings that sprouted up around it, obscuring its place. There were people here he had known for years. I nodded at my husband.
This
.