The Resurrection Kid

By Michael Owen Reeve

 

Chapter one:

CRADLE OF SIN

 

I

 

T he intermingling grasses of the veldt dance in the warm breeze as if enthralled in celebration, back lit by the waning light of an afternoon sun. 

 

Today is special.  After a long draught, the thirst is finally quenched with the blood of a dove.  A lone crow ruthlessly picks at the dying dove's carcass. It stands on the dove's broken wing, pinning it down with its crude, reptilian feet. The crow openly rejoices at the dove's misery, savoring the hot blood and the tinge of death together as any other connoisseur would enjoy wine and fine perfume. The smart crow had arrived to the carnage first and it had even beaten the flies that normally invaded such a prize. The crow swallows a succulent morsel, smiling in its own way to the dove's shrieks of pain. "You shouldn't have been so impetuous," cajoles the crow. "Thought you could soar with eagles, did you? Apparently old Thoragil didn't agree, eh?"

 

                 The dove, caught in its death throes, convulses and chirps insane curses at the crow, blood welling from its other, severed wing. The crow obligingly steps aside, croaking in its hideous language, "Fly, stupid Dove. Fly away. To your worms and play that you so love."

 

                The dove stands on its rickety feet and makes a last, feeble attempt to regain flight.  Blood sprays from the stump of its missing left wing.  At last, the dove chirps once more and dies of exhaustion and its wounds. Its beak plunges into the dirt and snaps. The crow saunters over to the little bird's lifeless vessel, cawing in its crow-laughter as it pecks out an eye and swallows it whole.

 

                A stone rockets across the ground, pegging the crow squarely in the back. Its brittle bones break instantly, and it splatters lifelessly on the floor like a small puddle of tar and feathers.

 

                Two boys, one seemingly taller than the other by at least foot, walk their horses slowly to the carnage. The smaller boy stares regretfully at the poor crow his brother had just killed. He stands slump-shouldered, hands on hips with the thumbs looped in his belt, as if vicariously carrying the burden of grief were a physical weight upon his shoulders; a cross he has borne many times throughout his young life. A single tear shimmering its way down his cheek. The taller, "older" brother ruffles his "younger" brother's hair and stomps the crippled crow to death; maliciously grinding its bones into powder. 

 

The lighter brother sighs. He gingerly lifts the bleeding hulk of the once flighty dove into his arms and holds it against his chest. His heart beats softly in his chest while the dove’s is stilled within its breast. He kisses it. His hands and shirt and lips are stained the same pink from the crimson of the dove’s blood. He spits the small drops out with a grimace, ignoring his brother’s comtemptuous requests for a sip. He breathes into the dove’s beak. And then the dove is whole again. Its small heart no longer still. Its wings no longer broken. It leaps into the vapors of its home from the deathly ground, pausing only to shit once upon the head of the darker brother and to chime a tune of thanksgiving to the lighter brother and it is gone from this tale.

 

                A centaur-shaped silhouette stretches across the ground beneath the brothers' feet. Both boys gasp and unconsciously stand-at-attention. They mutter amongst themselves quietly amongst other who had incurred the wrath of an Out-rider, one of the mounted soldiers who patrolled the outer reaches of their home. They are silenced by a word from behind --- "Enough!" Chastened, the boys turn uneasily to face this unexpected occurrence of Authority, dreading the pain he may inflict with his hands or tongue.

 

                It is only Grampah, slumped forward on the bare back of his elderly pony, supporting his head in his right hand in a thinking gesture. This is his usual posture of contemplation, his gray eyes peering at his "grand children" through his dusty spectacles. His brow furrows, forming a caterpillar-shape before softening again. He clicks his tongue against what's left of his teeth, signaling to pony that he wished to dismount.

 

                Instead of lifting a leg over the pony's back, he merely shuffles forward over the pony's head and raises his hand to signal it to stand. He walks to the crow's corpse with the pony in tow, sparing the boys from having to meet his glance a few moments more. "Well," he croaks in an old man's voice.

 

                "It'za crow, Grampah," the younger boy says. The old man immediately fixes him with an exasperated stare: I'm not blind, boy. Just because I'm old don't mean I'm stupid! His eyes flick back and forth between his "grand children." Their heights may fool most people into believing one of them is older than the other, but the fact is that they're twins.

 

 

 

                Not for the first time, the agling is reminded of how dissimilar they are; as the saying goes, these two wards of his "are as different as night and day." To his left, the younger-looking-one seems far too ordinary compared to his sibling, yet is, by himself, quite unique. The first striking thing upon first glance at him is his eyes. They are small, colorless globes in the middle of his pale, round face. His skin, although unwrinkled, is as pale as ash. His hair just long enough to stick out over his face and touch his shoulders and is as white as his small teeth.  No wonder the old man calls him "Bleach."                 

 

 

 

                The boy to the old man's right is the exact opposite of the other; both in appearance and manner.  Both are a terror to discipline, yet this one, he suspects, is pure evil. The lad, in stark contrast to the tattered ensemble preferred by his brother, this one is impeccably tailored in flashy, new duds, complete with a midnight-black cape with a high collar, chained across the throat with a silver clasp. Only his face and hands can be seen from behind the dark clothing, a gray tint to his skin and long, painted nails. His tousled black hair is full, although contrasting to the gaunt face and haggard skull from which it grows. The old fellow suspects that one may of missed a few meals, yet the arrogance and conceit apparent in his eyes precludes any pity he may of felt for him. Those very same eyes are literally and figuratively as black as coal, self-inflicted wounds that offset the portals from which a damned soul perceives the world. He is "Blacky."

 

                Just as the old fellow clears his throat to begin a lecture, a sudden, miraculous explosion interrupts him. He wasn't quite off-guard, so he obligingly turns his back to the spectacle and stares at his dancing shadow. He knew this would happen. After all, it happens twice every single year, doesn't it? He isn't surprised that his benighted grandchild shields his eyes beneath the shadowy tent of his cape. He's also isn't surprised that the other one is staring, enraptured at what he knows he should not be seeing. What does surprise him is that the horses are spooked away, but not his faithful pony. The old cuss had died and obediently lay stiffly at his master's feet.

 

 

 

                He stares straight at the fiery spectacle, knuckling blood from his eyes as if they were tears.  A woman of angelic beauty can be seen in the sky, her fiery red hair billowing out around her head like a flaming halo. She stands in the sky, hovering hundreds of feet above him, naked. He can't entirely see her body because her most private areas are covered with a sash of pure shadow that surrounds her entirely. Bleach can't understand why a woman with such radiance would choose to wear something as hideous as that shawl. It doesn't emphasize her beauty, but actually abolishes it.

 

                Just then, the monstrous head of a serpent rears up from behind the woman. It meets Bleach's gaze, staring at him, hypnotizing him with its eyes. The serpent's body is composed entirely of a bleak darkness, but its eyes glow. Not with a light of their own, but with the blinding gleam of the sun reflecting off of a well-polished sword, just before the thrust. His spine all at once stiffens and wilts with the arctic chill of absolute fear. Then, all at once, he sees nothing.

 

                "I can't see, Grampah!" complains the small boy. Actually, the elder man isn't related to the boys by name, blood, or species. They're halvan-nymphs, the sons of a great warrior and the Goddess of Harvest. The old man is of the Dav-Torve; the acursed's spawn.

 

                "Well, heal yourself with the spell I had just taught you, stupid boy! Does it take pain to cause you to forget your lessons?!!?" calls Gramp's voice from beyond the curtain of darkness. It doesn't echo as if from within a tunnel or from above as if you just happened to fall in a hole, but is clear and precise. Bleach can feel Gramp's fingers trying to pry open his eyelids. Bleach tries as hard as he can, but they just won't open.     

 

                The boy does as he is asked, and the world slowly comes into focus as if it were being painted meticulously upon a canvas. The Suns of Galfaste, once more flying their figure-eight formation around their queen, begin to set in the west. When his gaze returns to his grandfather, leaning on his cane before him, he mutters an apology and glances aside to his brother who had been smiling at his blindness. Grampah sighs and begins his lecture: "You must never be so foolish. God's Flower is the mother of us all. We are her children. If not for her gifts of light, all life in this world would cease to exist. So, upon the hour of her desecration, you must avert your eyes as a show of respect. Never awe at her naked glow, for not even you is worthy of such a vision."

 

                In an instant, it is has become nighttime. Bleach collapses, falling asleep even as he hits the floor. The coniferous blossom, which he had intended to plant with the help of his brother, fell heedlessly onto the grass beside where he lay. Blacky would have crushed this as well if Grampah had not caught his foot with the cane and tripped him. He whirls upon him with uncharacteristic grace for a creature of his advanced years, neither stumbling nor with deliberate slowness. "Blacky. That was a vile thing you did! Is your heart so cold and hard as stone that you know no compassion? All creatures were born to die, but it is not your task to decide their fates!!!"

 

                Blacky screws his mouth in a shrewd smile, "Deride yourself, 'thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me; would'st give me water with berries in 't; and teach me how to name the bigger light and how the less, that burn by day and night; and then I lov'd thee in mine own, and shew'd thee all the qualities of the isle.'"

 

                Grampah is nonplussed momentarily by this and then recalls the same play; "'Abhorred slave; which any print of human goodness will not take, capable of all ill... I have used thee, filth as thou art, with human care; and lodged thee in mine own, till thou didst seek to violate the honor of my child.'" At this, Bleach cries fitfully in his sleep.

 

Blacky, demurred rebukes him with, "You presume too much."

          

Grampah carries his "grand child" off to the camp, a scornful eye on Blacky.  "I am by name... you are by nature.  Son of Dav I am; Son of Dav you should be."

 

The First Night.

 

Walking in a house he didn't know, it was dark, yet he could see perfectly in the dimness. He was awake at night in a strange house.  He could hear crickets. He couldn't hear his own feet as he walked or his breath. He moved in the darkness with the grace of a cat. And as even as he thought it, here came one. He kicked it.

 

He shocked himself by doing this, but was shocked once again as his hands, as treacherous as his walking feet, reached for a knife from a cupboard in the dark.  A pale shard of moon light from an window from which he'd entered this dark room reflected off the glimmering  steel, blinding him for a moment. He hissed. When he looked again at the blade, he saw the reflection of a face

(that was)

that wasn't his own. Before he could remember whose face  in that brief second

(it was his face)

if it wasn't

(it was)

his own, his otherhand formed a convulsive fist and  struck at it in rage. He held his injured hand in, drinking from his bleeding hand. He didn't know where he was

(he did)

and didn't know who he was any more

(he did know)

and now he was bleeding. This horrified

(aroused)

him that he should living such a nightmare

(dream of ecstacy). The blood tasted foul

(splendorous)

 in his lips.  The fear

(ecstacy)

sent shivers up his spine so that he was stiff from the waist down

(incredibly stiff in that regard)

and up the back of his neck. The cat, a smaller blob of darkness in the greater darkness with its luminous emerald eyes, the one he'd kicked by accident

(on purpose)

hissed at him from the dark. He bent his own back up and hissed at it. The cat relented with a whimper and ran from what it took to be an even bigger cat. The cat ran down the hall and thudded gracelessly into a door in its haste. It raised its voice plantively in the dark and a girl's voice whispered to it from the other side of the door. "Quiet, you stupid thing. You almost killed yourself and woke up the house with your racket."

 

        He felt himself moving closer to the door and the girl's voice, moving with quiet grace that even a cat would envy. As he neared, the cat's screetches became… 

 

 

 

 

II

 

Bleach awakens and yawns widely. Grampah, sitting in his usual chair in front of the fire, stokes the flames. He glances over his shoulder at his grandchild, steadying his horn rims with his thumb. "Well, well! What a mighty sound from such a small boy! Make your bed and wash, you can have breakfast when you're clean!" Bleach looks out the window that overlooks his bed, basking in the light of dawn. All of his life, he has slept since sunset to sunrise, and he still finds pride in the warm glow. It's as if, in her wisdom, God's Flower refuses to grace the sky with her presence, unless her favorite (himself) is awake. It's a beautiful, but childish fantasy, and he knows it, but still... There's always faith. By contrast, Grampah never seems to sleep.

 

                Bleach quickly, but reverently, tucks the sheets of the small bed under its meager mattress and fluffs the pillow. Although faded from many years of use the topmost blanket or pillow case shines with a wealth of color: a beautiful rainbow-arch originating somewhere in the "horizon" of the design and ending at a pot of gold; the thousands of hand-woven coins each bearing his youthful face. This was a gift from his mother, which she had crafted on her rare visits,

 

Bleach frowned. He had to check the chart on the wall. His hieght is marked there each birthday. The chart’s last measurement shows his hieght at his tenth such day which happened three weeks ago. In the middle, a month after his fifth birthday, there is a small, crying face to indicate his mother’s death that he drawn. As was custom, the reaps of each years harvest was also considered. The numbers for harvest started diminishing around her death. And a new Harvest Goddess hasn’t been appointed since then. 5 years ago. She’d been dead half of his life. Sometimes, he greatly dreaded growing older and increasing that sad gap of loss. 

 

                Well, he can’t dwell on the past much longer. Atleast, dwelling while standing in one place won’t do any good, but he could dwell while he washed.      Bleach rushes out of the cottage, wearing only a towel tied around his meager waist and runs bare-foot down the paved streets of the city and quickly arrives at the communal bathhouse, which is in the center of the Town Square. Once inside, he rips off the towel without the least of cares and dives straight into the cold water, making sure that he is a considerate distance away from the elders. Underwater, he curls himself into a ball, and "turtles" to the surface, holding his breath as long as he can. When he can no longer hold it, he springs his body upward.

 

                The dull crack of his skull on bone echoes throughout the enclosure. Bleach whirls around, almost tripping Amy with his flailing feet. She stands before him, two years his senior, and a few inches shorter than his brother; her nose bleeding profusely down her chin and into the water. Bleach's panicked mind becomes unhinged, leaving him dumbfounded and speechless.

 

               

 

 

The pangs of long-suppressed amour towards her suddenly well up from his heart and he would of spouted poetry in declaration of his love for her, yet the words become caught in his throat and he chokes them down with all of his effort. For the moment, his usually pale face was suddenly flushed with color. S-s-s-sorry, Amy," he finally blathers, cursing his idiot tongue at his time of need.