The Chicken Thief 02

The Dark Times: A Night of Mourning

The common room at the Misty Maiden was mostly deserted that night.  Wil and Aleister sat alone in the corner by the big fireplace, their faces terribly drawn and exhausted-looking.  They both still wore the black suits they had worn to the cemetery that rainy, miserable morning, but their collars were open now.  Howiss had said they could take all the time they needed.  It had been a long, sad day for everyone.

Neither man spoke much.  The empty snifters in their hands said enough for now.  Wil had stopped crying hours ago, but his eyes still burned and his throat was still swollen and a bit sore.  Even Aleister allowed a hint of his grief to show through.  He looked tired, and his eyes were red-rimmed and somewhat glassy.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Al,” Wil said softly.  He struggled to contain his tears, and only the slightest quiver in his voice betrayed his grief.

Aleister said nothing, but smoothed a hand through his silver-gray hair.  He was a human in the later part of his middle years, but just now he looked much older than that.  His piercing blue eyes lacked their usual keenness, and his chin and cheeks were dark with the day’s stubble.  He was normally impeccably groomed, but just now he looked haggard and worn, nothing like his usual self.

“She was… she was everything.  My whole life,” Wil continued, unable to look up at his dearest friend.  His gaze was fixed on the narrow silver band he wore on the third finger of his left hand, the simplest and most meaningful piece of jewelry he had ever worn.  He spun it around just below the knuckle now, a nervous gesture he had been doing a lot these past few days.

“I know, bub,” said Aleister softly.  He turned his glass slowly, watching the little circle of dark liquid shift around inside.

“My whole life is gone now,” Wil said, his voice quivering a bit more, near the edge of breaking.  “Just… gone.  Taken.  And no one knows how or why.”

There was nothing Aleister could say to that.  The how and why were as much a mystery to him as they were to anyone, including the healers who had tried so hard to figure out what was going on, where the problem was and how to fix it.

“My poor Khelshie,” Wil moaned, unable to contain the fresh flow of hot tears.  “My poor wife.”

It had all started very abruptly, several days ago.  Wil and Khelshie, his beautiful elven bride, had been eating dinner at the Misty Maiden Inn, and she had suddenly gone quite pale and told him that she was feeling unwell.  Wil had taken her back to their room upstairs and she had lain down and fallen asleep, which was very strange for an elf.  She had never awakened.  Wil had fetched a healer right away, and the healer could find no sign of illness or injury.  The next day, she had taken a terrible fever, and the healers had sent out for special help.  Khelshie was not a hob or a human, after all, but an elf, and the only ones that knew how to mend a sick or wounded elf were other elves.

The next day, a pair of Edannese healers had arrived.  They had shooed everyone out of the little room and set about their work, but even they had come out befuddled and worried.  They had been unable to break the fever, even by magical means.  They had vowed to Wil that they would stay with her until she was either cured or dead.  Wil had not taken much comfort in that sentiment.

The next day, the fever seemed to break.  At first, the Edannese healers were relieved, sure that she would come out of her torpor and that they would be able to puzzle out the strange malady.  After a short while, though, they began to worry.  Her temperature had continued to plummet after the fever had broken, and had not stopped falling when it reached more normal temperatures.  It had continued to fall until she had grown cold to the touch.  The healers were just as unable to raise her temperature as they had been unable to cool it.

The illness lasted five days.  On the fifth day, the healers had insisted that Khelshie be taken out of the human city and into the natural surroundings of a nearby forest.  They had no hope that such efforts would cure the affliction; this was something more like last rites.  Her pulse had been steadily weakening, and the elves wanted her passing to occur in a beautiful, serene, natural place rather than a dirty, smoke-filled human inn.  Wil had been too distraught and shaken to protest, and likely wouldn’t have argued even if he had had all of his wits about him.  He helped the Edannese healers carry Khelshie out into the woods, helped them lay her out on the moss-covered ground in a comfortable position, and he stayed with her until the end.  When she breathed her last, Wil was there with her in the forest, holding her hand.  Aleister had been there as well, offering what comfort he could.

That had been just yesterday.  Today had been the funeral, if one could call it such.  The elves had taken her body back to Edann moments after she had passed on, and had refused Wil’s request to join them.  Wil had not liked the idea — had, in fact, been quite hurt — but he understood.  The elves were an intensely private people, and non-elves, even those who had taken an elf as a mate, were not permitted to discover anything about their spiritual or religious practices.

The funeral, such as it was, had been nothing more than a gathering of saddened friends, placing flowers on the mossy mound in the forest where Khelshie had breathed her last.  There had been a surprising number of people there; Wil and Khelshie had made a lot of friends in the area, and everybody had come to pay their respects.  Chief among the mourners had been Aleister, Wil’s best friend (besides Khelshie), mentor, and best man at the wedding.

“I can’t believe she’s gone, Al,” Wil sobbed.  “It doesn’t seem real.  It can’t be real.”

“I know, Wil,” Aleister said softly.  “It feels like a dream.  A nightmare, really.”

They fell silent again for a while.  Wil steadied his emotions and sniffed back his tears, and Aleister refilled their glasses with dark brandy.  They sat back in the large, comfortable chairs, neither man drinking or speaking for a very long time.

“I feel lost, Al,” Wil said after a while.  “Like there’s nothing left.  No more life to live without her.”

“That’s enough of that kind of talk, bub,” Aleister said, a dark warning in his voice.  “If Khelshie heard you talking like that, she’d slap the words out of your mouth.  Reckon I should as well.”

Wil said nothing for a while again.  Such long, drawn-out silences were completely contrary to his nature, and Aleister found it rather disturbing.

“I’ll allow that this is perhaps the greatest loss you have ever suffered, bub,” he said softly.  “It’s quite high up on my own list as well.  You know that.”

“Aye,” said Wil very quietly.  He looked up at his old friend, dismayed at the grief and loss he found on the man’s face.  Aleister would never admit it, but Wil knew that Khelshie was like a daughter to him.  Just as much as Wil had become something like a son.

“Listen, Wil,” Aleister said, shifting in his chair so that he faced his friend.  The old man’s eyebrows were knitted together in thought, and he paused a bit before continuing, choosing his words very carefully.  “I am fortunate in that I have my studies to occupy my thoughts and distract me from the loss.  Tomorrow, I will fully engross myself in my work, and I won’t likely leave my workshop for perhaps a week or more.  When I finally do emerge from my workshop, I will have enough of the grief behind me that I am able to function again.  I will still grieve, in my own way, and you know that better than anyone.

“You, on the other hand, will wake up tomorrow to an empty room.  I imagine that you will weep and cry for a few hours before you head over to my house to bother me while I work.  You know I don’t mean this in a cruel way, and you know that I enjoy your company.  You will likely stay for the day, and we will eat supper together and converse into the wee hours.  Then you will probably excuse yourself and come back here, to this empty room in the inn.  Or ask to stay the night and end up sleeping on my sofa.

“My point is, Wil… what will you do the next day?  Or the day after that?  Right now, you don’t know the answer to this question, and that is perfectly understandable.  But you will eventually need an answer.  As hard as it seems to believe just now, your life must go on.  You must move forward.  Your life doesn’t stop just because hers has ended.”

Wil took it all in, nodding slowly as Aleister spoke.  Had a stranger been eavesdropping on the conversation, he would have perhaps found the human’s words to be rather harsh and cold, perhaps even tactless.  The hob had just lost his wife the day before, after all!

Wil knew differently, though.  Certainly, Aleister tended to be quite blunt and plain-spoken, sometimes even to the point of seeming quite cold and rude.  But Wil had gotten to know the man quite well over the past ten years; Aleister firmly believed that one should strive to end a problem before that problem had begun.  He had heard trouble in Wil’s words, and he would not allow that trouble to bloom into a proper dilemma.  The man was simply less concerned with tact and courtesy than he was with results.  Wil had found that this was often the case with people who were terribly intelligent, and especially so with wizards.  Aleister was both of these things.

As a wizard, Aleister cared very little for the things that existed outside of his workshop.  He took no interest in politics, cared nothing for the goings-on of his neighbors, and refused to listen to gossip.  These things had nothing to do with achieving an understanding of the weave of magic, and were, in fact, quite distracting.

He did, however, care for Wil and Khelshie.  Wil was certainly a distraction, even at the best of times, but he was a welcome one.

“You need to find a direction, Wil,” Aleister continued.  “Something to drive you, something to motivate you.  A hobby, maybe.  I don’t know.”

Wil nodded sadly, thinking it over.  After a long reflection, he spoke softly.

“Can I sleep on your sofa tonight, Al?” he asked.  “I don’t think I can face the empty room, now that you mention it.”

“Of course, bub,” said Aleister, rising from his chair and smoothing out the front of his expensive suit.  “Just as long as you remember the rules.”

Wil slumped out of his chair and nodded again.

“Don’t touch anything that might touch me back,” he said, reciting the rules, a rather long list of strict codes that had continued to grow ever since the two men had first met.  “Stay the hell out of the pantry.  Don’t mess up the papers on the desk or sit in the desk chair.  Don’t even look at the books on the top shelf.  Fire is not a toy.  Don’t tease the homunculus.”

“Homunculi,” Aleister corrected.  “I’ve been busy.”

They left the inn and trudged through the dark streets to Aleister’s large, old house on the edge of town.  It was a solidly-built structure with thick stone walls and a sturdy slate-covered roof, surrounded by a massive herb garden and a low stone wall.  It looked more like the country manor of a wealthy baron than a wizard’s lair, but Aleister had always looked more like a wealthy baron than a wizard.  The house was in better repair than the surrounding buildings, which were mostly large, ramshackle slums and run-down tenements.  Aleister rather liked the neighborhood, though, because none of the neighbors ever bothered him.  In fact, most of them went well out of their way to avoid walking in front of his house, lest he see them from inside and put a hex on them.

Wil stayed with Aleister for the next month.  The two men mostly kept to themselves inside the big, roomy house; Wil didn’t care much for the dank and spooky basement laboratory, and Aleister was too absorbed in his work to come out of it much.  Wil moped around for a few days, feeling empty and blue and missing Khelshie terribly.  He tried to lose himself in some of Aleister’s books, but even the forbidden books from the top shelf — the ones with the terrible, dark secrets and the clever magical traps holding them shut — failed to hold his interest.  He cooked four big meals a day, but he was never hungry enough to eat more than a few nibbles here and there. 

Occasionally, he would venture out into the city streets to try to walk his misery away, but it followed him around like a lost kitten, constantly demanding his attention.  Everything about the city held precious memories of Khelshie; it seemed that they had walked down every street together, had eaten in every inn and public house, had admired every garden, had played with every stray dog and fed every stray cat, had trespassed in every back yard and stolen down every back alley.  There was nowhere he could go and not remember her, not feel the strange, terrible emptiness in his heart.

After a month of this, Wil made up his mind.  He could not stay in that city any longer; it was too full of her, and he couldn’t think of anything else while he stayed.  If he needed to find some kind of direction in life, as Aleister had said, he would need to find it elsewhere, where Khelshie’s memory wasn’t so thick and overwhelming.

He brought this up at dinner that evening.  He had spent most of the day in the kitchen and had prepared a fine meal of honey-glazed ham and sweet potatoes with three different side dishes.  The two of them sat in the large, comfortable dining room, just off the kitchen, at the big wooden table, the food artfully arranged and pleasantly aromatic.  Aleister ate in his regular serious silence, enjoying the meal without needless commentary.

“I figured something out, Al,” Wil said from across the table.

Aleister looked up at Wil and raised his eyebrows curiously, but said nothing.

“I have to leave the city,” Wil continued.  “Like you said, I guess I need some kind of new direction.  The problem is, when I’m here, my compass keeps pointing to Khelshie.  I can’t seem to think of anything else.  She’s just… everywhere.  Ya know?”

Aleister nodded and grunted, not wanting to speak with a mouthful of food.

“I guess I’m gonna have to wander around for a while,” Wil said sadly.  He didn’t much care for wandering anymore; he had thought that he had finally settled into a nice, comfortable life, something like his pa had wanted for him.  “Follow the road and see where it takes me.”

“Some would call that a ‘geographical cure,’ Wil,” Aleister said, dabbing a cloth napkin at the corners of his mouth and settling back a bit in his chair.  “Thinking that, by leaving one place for another, you leave your old problems behind.  It almost never works.”

Wil frowned a bit, and started to protest, but Aleister stopped him with a raised hand.

“I said ‘almost never,’” he said.  “It could be that, in this case, a change of scenery is just what you need.  The two of you spent ten long, happy years here, and I imagine that you see her face around ever corner.”

Wil nodded.

“Yup,” he said.  “Just about everywhere I look.”

“It’s a distraction,” Aleister said, leaning forward a bit and studying Wil seriously.  “When you need a clear mind, you must eliminate distraction.”

“Erm, yes,” said Wil.  “Something like that.  I just can’t think straight when I’m so sad all the time.”

“However you want to say it,” Aleister said, shrugging.  “I agree with your decision, Wil.  It is wizardly thinking; you recognize that your environment is a distraction, and you must make a change.  You cannot alter the environment, so you must remove yourself.”

“Ya,” said Wil.  “I suppose I would say it differently, but you have the meat of it there.”

“When will you leave?” Aleister asked, resuming his meal.

“Tomorrow morning,” Wil said.  He actually felt quite relieved just saying the words.  “Bright and early.”

Aleister nodded.

“Do me a favor,” he said around his mouthful of sweet potato.  “Make a big breakfast before you go.  I doubt I will have time to cook tomorrow.  And leave me some of your recipes.”

“Sure thing, Al,” said Wil, grinning.

The next morning, after preparing a great meal of blueberry pancakes, sweet potato pie, omelets, biscuits, sausages and strawberry halves, Wil stuffed a few belongings into a big, bulky pack and prepared for a long journey.  Aleister saw him off, munching on a biscuit as he stood on the porch in the bright morning sun.

“Take care, Wil,” he said, leaning against the post beside the steps.

“I will, Al,” said Wil, shouldering the straps of his heavy pack.  He picked up a pair of bags, one in each hand, and turned towards his old friend.  “I’ll probably be back.  Not sure when.”

“I’ll be here,” Aleister said, sparing a quick, watchful glance around at the neighboring houses before retreating back into his house.  Wil smiled at this; Aleister could be quite odd sometimes.  He wouldn’t want anyone to see him actually being friendly to someone.  It might spoil his reputation.

He started off down the path to the street, once again leaving his home and feeling lost and alone.  It had happened once before, years ago, and that time had not been his decision.