The Gift of Volkeye (13 page)

When the boy was close enough to him, he leapt and came down on his knee.

The child wailed, as he slumped to the ground with his leg bent at a ninety-degree angle in the wrong direction. The backside of his pant leg had gone a deep red, for his bones had poked through the skin. He fainted a few seconds later.

The homeless one turned to finish the job and saw that the unibrow boy had picked up his camera and taken off running. He darted after him.

The beginning of the chase was difficult, as the grass was over two feet long and wet from rain. However, they were now moving from the large open pastures directly into the Mashyuvian Forest.

(Little did the boys know, a man that had spotted them outside of the Mune Ju Market earlier was watching them closely from behind. It was the
unibrow
that had called this man’s attention. Not that there weren’t others carrying such a distinct feature, but this particular child had the make of someone whom he didn’t care to meet face-to-face ever again…as he feared that he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from killing this man.

The unibrow roused his curiosity so much to the point where he just couldn’t resist following the ruffians.)

Upon entering the forest, the wanderer hadn’t tired, jumping over rocks and clearing large gaps with the ease of a gymnast. The thief, however, who was slowing with each passing second, suddenly threw the camera aside, hoping the boy would let him be. However, he didn’t notice that the camera had landed on a jagged rock and shattered into about twenty pieces.

The other boy’s heart sank, eyes ablaze with fury. When the thief stumbled over a tree root, and he finally caught up to him, his face was streaming with tears.

The thief tried to plead his case. “I…just wanted…to
borrow
it, you stingy ass!” he lied.

The vagrant seemed to not have heard him. He sobbed as he lifted the thief to his feet.
“You broke it!”

There was no hesitation. He leaned the thief’s body over a large tree stump and sat atop of him, proceeding to commit what would’ve been his first murder. He began to pummel him.

Momentarily oblivious to pain, the boy was hitting him so hard that he didn’t notice two of his fingers were broken. Nor could you see the pretty black skin on his hands any longer, for his fists were covered in blood. At present, this was not the boy with a face that would be so admired by a certain girl in a couple years to come. Wild-eyed and furious, he looked like a raving savage.

The thief’s face bled profusely from the cuts and gashes where the boy’s knuckles had dug into his skin. Had the thief been conscious to see how much blood he was losing, he might’ve panicked. However, it was just as well that he wasn’t awake, because he wouldn’t have been able to see a thing anyway. His eyes were swollen shut!

Any other person would’ve had mercy at this point, but the boy couldn’t bring himself to stop hitting the thief. Suddenly two strong arms wrapped themselves around the homeless boy, pulling him away.

“He broke it!” he cried furiously.

Whoever was behind held him tightly but in a grip that wasn’t the slightest bit malicious. The person whispered in his ear.

“Stop. It’s not worth it. Don’t become a murderer for the likes of
him,
” the man said, gently setting him on the ground.

The boy obeyed and wiped his eyes. He watched the man walk over to the thief and dig inside a backpack, pulling out…

…Doctor’s tools?

The man removed a small silver blade from one pocket and leaned over the limp body of the beaten boy, putting a deep slit above each eyelid. Blood flowed from the openings and ran down each side of his face, drenching his T-shirt.

Once the wounds stopped bleeding, the man took a cotton swab from his pocket and spread a blue paste across it. He rubbed it over each cut and watched them sizzle as they cauterized.

The limp boy began squirming a bit.

At least when the demon-bred son of a bitch comes to, he’ll be able to see!
the man thought, now absolutely certain he knew who this child was.

He waved some smelling salts underneath the boy’s nose for a brief moment and then walked away from him, letting him regain consciousness on his own. He wanted to check on the other young man.

The wanderer was sitting at the spot where his camera had landed. Finally noticing his hand, he grimaced with pain as he held two of the pieces flush to one another, as if he could somehow weld them back together.

“Someone very important must’ve given you that.”

The boy nodded. “My father…he’s dead now,” he said, trying to fight back tears.

The man had a strong urge to hug him, but he fought his fatherly instincts and refrained. He didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable.

“From the look of it, there are some parts I won’t be able to use, but I
can fix it for you…if you like,” he said.

The young man still hadn’t looked up.

“I understand that it has sentimental value, so if you don’t want me to touch it, I won’t…but…just so you know.”

Finally, the boy looked up and met eyes with the strange man.

“I’ll use as many of the parts from your father’s camera as possible. When I’m finished, it may not look the same, and it may carry just a few...
extra features
...but I’ll do my best to retain its essence.”

The young man frowned with curiosity.

“You have family around here?” the doctor asked.

Squinting in pain from his injury, the boy answered him. “No family. No home,” he said. “Can you really fix it?”

“Sure. I can help with your hand, too…it doesn’t look so good,” he replied.

The young man was still puzzled by him, but now grinning.

“Hey, you hungry? I have a son and daughter, who are a bit younger than you, but I think you’ll all get on quite well,” the stranger said nervously, hoping that the boy wasn’t too stubborn.

Realizing that he was, indeed, very hungry, the vagrant got to his feet. He raised his good hand and shook.

“Name’s ‘Teshunua.’ ”

“Zynathian.”

5

Bahzee sat staring with disbelief as he finished his story. “It was Felix wasn’t it?”

Teshunua smiled at her. “Oh, you’ve had a run-in with him too, huh?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the blasted reason we fled here in the first place!” Bahzee exclaimed, even more curious. “I’m assuming that you know who Felix’s father is, so...if you don’t mind me asking…how did you get away with that?”

Teshunua gave a sinister grin.

“Hah! That was one of the advantages of being homeless. Felix couldn’t send his father to kill someone who had no address,” he said, laughing. “They could’ve searched for me till Felix finished puberty and still wouldn’t have found me!”

“Aw, man, I wish I could’ve gotten in a few licks on Felix, myself!” she said enviously. “So did you two leave him to recover on his own?”

“We waited for him to wake up and once he was able to stand…”

Teshunua quickly assumed the posture and countenance of Zynathian.

“Get gone now, you little demon bastard! You don’t know me, but I had a run-in with your father long before you were born. You look just like him, and I would recognize that goddamn unibrow anywhere! Anymore evil deeds, and I’ll thump your skull and feed you to my bird!
Now get lost before I bend you over my knee and give you a few licks of the strap!”

The two of them broke up with laughter.

“Will I meet him sometime soon? …You say he has two children also?”

“Yep. In fact, my cousins will be down tomorrow,” he said, happy to see Bahzee so interested in meeting his family.

“What are their names?”

“Khyeryn and Lyn Sha.”

1

“Son, give me a name, and I’ll have someone’s head for this!”

Felix was in too much pain to talk, slouched on the floor with his back propped against the wall. He whimpered in pain, as Sing Tzi Yi took a wet sponge and began dabbing the end of his damaged nose.

He jerked suddenly and caused Sing to tear off a small patch of dried blood.

“Arggggggggghhh!”

The little clotting that had been already begun was formed in vain. Again, the blood streamed.

WHACK!

Sing’s head was shoved to the left as Phyllamon’s calloused hand crossed her face.

“Watch what the hell you’re doing, woman!” he said.

Now Helena came storming down the hall.

“Oh, my poor baby! What happened?” she asked, shaking Felix gently as if to wake him from a coma. Then she turned and marked Sing with furious eyes. “What did you do to him, you little whore?”

“I did nothing. His Royal Highness beckoned me a moment ago, and this is what I found.”

Helena looked up at her husband to see if the handmaiden spoke the truth.

He nodded. “Felix crawled through the door like this,” Phyllamon said, desperately wanting answers. “Son, tell me who did this! I’ll have their bodies sliding down metal spikes by the evening! Give me something!”

Phyllamon waited eagerly, hoping Felix was coherent enough to whisper a name or place. He leaned in closer.

“Bah-z-zee…boyfriend…south…Rha-meer-y-laaaa,” Felix managed to say, even though it pained him so.

Phyllamon’s brow wrinkled. He rose from his knees and began pacing.

Felix slumped up against the wall and passed out. Sing, realizing that he was unconscious, began dabbing at his nose without pity, reveling in the act of causing blood flow, rather than stopping it. Helena was too puzzled to take notice.

“What does he mean, my love?” she asked.

Phyllamon turned to face her. “Peculiar,” he said.

Typically, he never thought that he paid any mind to the mumblings of his miners, but (now that he’d heard it from his son) the word ‘Rhameeryla’ sounded very familiar! Once, Phyllamon even thought that he heard this word in conjunction with Zynathian’s name. However, he dismissed it then. Not only was he uncertain if he’d heard properly, but even if he had, so what? The last twenty years had taught him to never trust any leads on Zynathian, for they only wound up disappointing him. But now, he wondered.

What else did Felix say? South?

Phyllamon abruptly stormed down the corridor.

“What is it?” Helena yelled after him, nervously.

“There are things I must see to…we’ll discuss them later!”

As the echoing sound of Phyllamon’s heavy boots died, the castle physicians arrived. Helena turned to face her son. To her and the doctors’ horrid surprise, Felix was bleeding profusely from several more gashes in his face!

(While no one was looking, Sing had gone to work on Felix, digging deeply in his face with her nails.)

Thinking he’d died whilst her attention was elsewhere, Helena keened in horror and promptly passed out. As she lay with her mouth wide open, greenish hued fumes of toxic breath rose in light waves.

A physician, who had rushed to her aid, made the mistake of leaning directly over her open mouth.

“Ugh!”

The doctor fell flat on his back, twitching, as one having an epileptic seizure.

“Idiot, I told you to watch out for her breath! Be thankful it was just severe halitosis that you encountered! Had it been one of her other
fragrances
, you might’ve died, you buffoon!” the eldest doctor said, scolding the foolish man.

The other two of them were wearing small facemasks, and this one wasn’t, for he was fairly new and therefore inexperienced. He’d forgotten the
“Never go anywhere in the castle without your Helena Protection Mask”
rule, so now he lay on the floor, vomiting.

The two wise doctors once had first hand contact with Helena when she confronted them about a cyst on her genitalia (which she’d attained from so seldom washing her body, but of course they couldn’t tell her this!). Since that day, they’d never been unprepared again. And though, like Phyllamon and Felix, they’d built up immunity to Helena’s stench, which could no longer make them collapse to the floor with seizures, it was still quite
unpleasant for them to be near her. So, they always carried their masks.

Once the new doctor was finished spitting up his first two meals of the day, the eldest physician handed him an extra mask. Next, the two of them grabbed up Helena and carried her off to the infirmary.

The last of the castle’s physicians was a large muscular black man, who was none too gentle with Felix as he threw him over his shoulder. Before he entered the stairwell, Sing watched him slam Felix’s unconscious body up against the wall several times, and she was absolutely certain that he had good reason.

The people in this castle are mad! All of them, willing to lead lives they hate just to receive a meal! I’d rather be dead!

Sing rose from the floor, her mind racing.

We’ll soon see if death is my fate!

It was a rare occurrence in which the entire castle was so incredibly distracted that they weren’t watching her. Sing knew then that this was the moment that she’d been waiting for. She felt that the divine was speaking directly to her.

It’s time!
she thought, darting off, vanishing into the dark hallways.

2

“Whoa, Jalum, cool it!”

He was giving Khyeryn a very rough ride, due to the fact that he was hungry and irritated. Anyone with good sense knew how dangerous it was to ride Jalum while he was upset, so Khyeryn knew he had to feed the bird before heading home.

“I’m trying to find you a treat right now. Just be patient!”

As they flew along the coast of the Mashyuvian Ocean, Khyeryn searched below for dense patches of scattered bright colours, meaning fruit. Finally they spotted it. Just ahead, there was a huge tree with large, deep red objects dangling about.

“Jay it’s a pomegranate tree—your favourite! Take us d-”

Khyeryn’s thought was cut off as he beheld a magnificent castle, resting at the peak of a hill. It overlooked the ocean and was absolutely beautiful (yet eerie in a way that he couldn’t place).

“Land down there, Jalum,” he said, gazing curiously at the sight before him.

3

“You say Felix has been attacked, my Lord…by whom?” Murlach asked.

“I’m not certain…but I have a feeling that Zynathian was involved.”

Though he was doubtful, Murlach knew better than to disagree with Phyllamon under the circumstances. He just listened intently.

“Prepare every piece of weaponry that’s aboard the tank, and make sure that it’s fueled and ready to go.”

Murlach nodded.

“Infantry?” he asked.

“Bring Zu…but I want him on ‘standby’ unless we really need him. You can also add that four-armed Cyclops chap and the short stubby thing with the large teeth…the rest are up to you. I want everyone ready within the hour.”

With that, Murlach exited the chamber.

4

The infirmary was a large damp cellar in the basement of the castle—dim and rank smelling. It boasted a putrid odour of blood, for Phyllamon often did unspeakable things to people in this room when the doctors were absent.

Helena’s unconscious body lay on an oak table, while Felix was sprawled on a large slab of stone that resembled a square coffin.

Instead of using the smelling salts to rouse Felix, the angry physician slapped his face repeatedly to awaken him. The other two doctors allowed it, because they knew that their colleague was only taking vengeance for his cat.

One day recently when Felix had just returned from another of Bahzee’s refusals, the doctor happened to be roaming about with the cat in his arms. It looked very much like Bahzee’s feline, Toodles. In a spiteful rage, Felix grabbed a piece of broken stone from the castle floor and took the cat from the doctor’s arms, jabbing the rock shard in its chest. The cat died instantly.

“Bloody hell, I hate those things! They’re always making a mess with hairballs and such! Now clean up the blood, and get your filthy dead animal out of here, you ruddy muck up!” Felix had said.

Now that the unconscious little demon was at the physician’s mercy, he refused to not take advantage. Dorcey, his name, hit Felix with blows that would wallop his head back against the stone each time. The other doctors had begun to worry.

“Don’t kill the chap! You’d best be careful if you don’t want to wind up in a cell with the Karnovs!”

Dorcey then punched the less swollen side of Felix’s face, breaking more bones. Then he cleansed Felix’s cuts with a sterilized cloth and gave him a minute dose of morphine. Finally, he took the salts out of his pocket and placed them under Felix’s nose. The other doctors did the same for Helena.

The patients began to squirm, and it was Helena that sat up first. Felix was also awake but with a splitting headache and a face much more swollen than it had been when he first arrived home. His eyelids fluttered, seeming as if he wanted to slip right back into unconsciousness.

With some effort, Helena got to her feet and made her way over to Felix. The doctors all backed away from her even though they were dressed and masked for the occasion. She leaned over Felix, weeping.

“Oh my, you look terrible.”

Felix, breathing heavily through his mouth, managed to spit out another few words.

“Okay…need rest…food…but can’t chew. No…more…talking.”

Helena quickly helped her son to his feet.

“Come, we’ll get you something. Out of the way, you oafs!” she demanded of the physicians.

While watching them leave the cellar, the doctors removed their masks and shared a smile. They were all too relieved, assuming that they wouldn’t have to deal with Helena for some time. However, they were oblivious to the fact that they’d be treating her within the very next hour. She’d be rushed to them, bleeding to death.

5

“Okay, Jay, you eat. I’m gonna’ have a look around. I won’t be far.”

Jalum turned and gave a low growl, telling Khyeryn to keep his word.

“I promise I’ll stay close.”

However, this did not satisfy Jalum. He advanced upon Khyeryn, snapping his beak to let him know that he meant business.

“I promise, Jay…and I’ll holler if I need you.”

With that said, Khyeryn was off wandering.

Jalum went back to eating, but did so slowly, concentrating on every sound in the forest. He quickly took note that there was no high wind, so he’d be able to hear Khyeryn if called. While it seemed that there was nothing harmful out here, Jalum couldn’t help but be worried.

6

As Helena stumbled into the room with Felix leaning on her shoulder, she couldn’t help noticing the deep gouges in his face, knowing that there was no way possible that she could’ve missed them earlier.

Helping Felix sit down next to a huge window, she handed him a set of strap-on binoculars. He’d always loved these, and he smiled at the fact that, even though her body and breath smelled worse than camel ass, she was still a good mother.

Indulging a rare act, Helena bent down and kissed his forehead. Though her poisonous halitosis made his skin sizzle, he still put on a weak smile.

“I’m going to have some soup made for you Sweet Pea.”

Then she was off to the kitchen to boss the cooks around.

It took three quarters of an hour for the chefs to prepare something that Felix would be able to swallow without enduring the agony of chewing—a homemade cream of potato soup. After letting it cool for a few moments, she took him the soup and left him alone.

Upon leaving, Helena’s mind went back to the gashes on Felix’s face. She stood idle a moment until realization struck her.

Sing!

7

Khyeryn waded about the beautiful ocean of colours, pulling him every which way. The fragrance of this immense garden was as hypnotic as the aesthetic appeal, and although Khye hadn’t noticed, he’d been lured only thirty feet away from the castle gates! This was much farther away than Jalum wanted.

8

Felix sat cross-legged on the stone windowsill, looking about their garden through his binoculars. His father had just entered the room and was relieved to see him up and about.

“Feeling better are we? You’ll be pleased to know that I’m sending some scouts to the south in light of your situation.”

Felix didn’t hear anything his father had said, for he was trying to get a better look at whatever it was that was drawing near. At first, he dismissed it as one of Murlach’s creatures that had been let out to stretch its legs. However, as it got closer, Felix was doubtful because he was almost certain that this beast was human-sized!

If only the plants and bushes weren’t so bloody tall!