I've Met Monsters

Bail

My freedom would last for exactly eight more minutes. Sitting atop a hill in the small village of Hora, I watched the wind ripple through the grassy dunes all the way below me. I felt like a king when I sat on the highest hilltop. It had the wells with the best water, so I got sent there often enough to have the whole layout memorized. The sun touched my skin as I sat in a beam of light, warming me against the cool air that blew when I sat that high up. I did my best pretending when I sat high on the hill, watching the world below me. If I squinted my eyes just right, I could see for an eternity on the blurry horizon.

Four minutes left.

I began to stand up, taking one last look at the land around me before I grabbed the water buckets and started down the hill again. I made it a race with myself, seeing if I could get to the bottom before my own time limit. I managed to win, but only barely. My feet skittered to a hard stop, and I almost collided with a tree. Stopping, I saved the water from sloshing out of my buckets.

I began my trek back into the village, hurrying as fast as I could manage with the extra weight in my hands. I passed plenty of the other villagers going about their day. Some of them headed to the windiest part of the hills, bringing their clean and soaked clothes to hang and let dry. Others walked back from the lake, fresh fish bundled together for the market. I nodded and greeted each one of them, receiving kind greetings in return.

I passed by the cottages on the outskirts of the village, mostly made up of fishermen and those who did their business traveling to other villages close by. Sometimes, I would sit on a hill and watch the farmers tend to their crops. Then I would watch those same farmers say goodbye to their families to deliver their goods and bring money back home. Everyone had their place, moving around me like cogs in a machine. I was one of those cogs. Small and rusty, but one nonetheless.

I walked past the bakery and stepped onto the cobblestone pathway in the marketplace. Almost everyone had business to attend to. I had to squeeze past people moving by too fast to notice me trying not to spill water on my feet. I apologized for every bump and near collision, getting mostly grunts in return.

I gazed at the small buildings around me that made up the market I called home. I smelled food cooking for lunch, making my stomach rumble. In the distance, people sat for their meals, ordering enough food for twice the amount of people they had with them. The leftovers would go in the trash for me later. It smelled like it would be good too.

Nodding at the passersby, I got myself closer to the apothecary at the far side of the market. Every building looked the same but not in an unpleasant way. They missed a brick or two in the structure. Some had chipped paint from the strong winds of the wintertime, and some didn’t have doors or only had half a roof but managed to hold onto perfectly preserved stained glass windows. No hail or monsoon could touch something as beautiful as that art. I liked to think nature either respected it or feared it, not daring to be the thing to ruin something irreplaceable that acted as a little piece of the past.

“Bail,” Mrs. Falcone said, stopping me by grabbing hold of my arm. Water sloshed in my buckets but not a drop left them. “I thought that was you scurrying through the crowd.”

“Mr. Florian is expecting me,” I said as she mussed my dirty blond hair with wrinkled fingers. I didn’t mind it, letting her flop it over my eyes and brush it back again. “He needed fresh spring water distilled in the wells.”

“Working on something?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I just fetch what he tells me to fetch.”

“Oh, I know, and look what it’s done to your shoes.”

She made me look down at myself. My clothes looked filthy from days of work and no chance to wash up properly. Dust and dirt covered the black pants and blue shirt I’d mended too many times. The sleeves could only be worn when rolled up. None of my buttons came from the same place, but all my shirts looked like that. My shoes, once durable and strong, had holes in the soles and no laces. I’d never been able to afford my own new pair. These ones I’d gotten in the trash outside of a cottage, and I’d done my own repairs on them. I had to make more before they completely fell apart.

“They’ve been worse,” I said with a smile. “It’s no problem.”

“Nonsense. You come by my shop tomorrow and I’ll have Mr. Falcone get you set up with a nice new pair.”

My smile only grew as my heart warmed at her kindness. “Thank you so much. I can do some chores for you in exchange. Is there anything you need done at the shop?”

“Oh, lots of things that Mr. Falcone is much too old for. We would love your help. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I thanked her again before moving along and trying to get to my destination without making a mess. My rumbling stomach distracted me only slightly. I just had to make it until sunset, and Mr. Florian would give me some time to go eat.

I pushed open the rotted back doors to the apothecary, getting into the kitchen. I set both buckets on the long counter filled with ingredients for what looked like a wound or infection. Mr. Falcone didn’t have everything he needed, though. The lily petals had fallen out of season, so I hadn’t been able to get any. If he wanted this to work, he needed help.

I took a breath, placing my hands on the wildflowers that would work as a replacement. I shut my eyes and focused on something beautiful. I pictured what it felt like to watch the sunrise, all alone at the creek deep within the woods. When the trees stood bare from the winter and shaking from the icy wind. I imagined the pain of that coldness on my uncovered skin, but I reveled in it. I reveled in getting to feel it for myself and getting to open my eyes to a new morning with so many possibilities I knew I would never see, but I could imagine living through. When I woke up, I could do anything I wanted. With working legs and strong hands that could mend things, I could find a way to survive, couldn’t I? I could work on a ship and pay my way across the sea. I could buy a spot on a carriage and let it bring me somewhere new. Somewhere that had never seen snow or filled with nothing but flowers. I could do those things, but I never would. I would wake up in this house. I would go to sleep in that room. I would die in this village.

I took all the joy and despair of that, and I put it into the wildflowers in my hands. They soaked up my magic like a thirsty plant in the desert. Life bloomed inside of them, but only I could see it. Others could feel a sort of echo of it, sure, but no one but me would see the real colors there.

Someone grabbed hold of the back of my neck, squeezing so hard that I would have cried out in pain if I hadn’t trained myself not to. That person dragged me into the other room, his voice harsh in my ear.

“Why are you lingering?” Mr. Florian hissed at me. “I asked you to be back so you can babysit. Did you forget that?”

“No,” I answered. “I wanted to make up for the lilies.”

Mr. Florian only squeezed me harder. “Did I ask you to? Did I tell you to use up power for that? No, I didn’t.”

He threw me into the main room, and I landed hard on the floor. My knee throbbed in pain, but only for a few seconds. Sitting up, I watched Mr. Florian enter from where I’d come from. He towered over me, beating me by a good six inches at six foot four. More than that, he had broad shoulders and waist and the strength of someone who ate three full meals a day. Working with my body most of the time, I had muscle, but it all felt like nothing. At least, not when anger colored Mr. Florian’s features.

“Wait here,” he said, walking past me. His boot stomped down an inch from my fingers, and I knew he did it on purpose. A break would take a lot of strength out of me if I healed it myself, and I knew he wouldn’t give me the medicine to fix something he’d done to me. He never had before.

Taking a breath, I stood myself up. When I leaned to the side, I could see Mr. Florian at the front doors, opening them and letting in about seven sets of parents all dropping their children off. They handed money to Mr. Florian, and the children all ran in to see me, screaming my name.

I knelt down to catch them, trying to hug as many as I could manage.

“Oh, look at you!” I said to Bonnie, lifting her tiny body in the air. “Soon you’ll be too big for me to hold you.”

“No!” the not a toddler screamed at me, tightening her arms around me. “Don’t let that happen!”

“I can’t help it,” I said, setting her down while the other kids came for me. “Everyone’s gotta grow up.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “Why?”

“It’s dumb,” Gavin agreed, crossing his arms about as belligerently as possible.

“It’s the farthest thing from dumb,” I said. “Growing up is the very best. It means that you get to do all sorts of things you couldn’t do when you were young. Being young is wonderful, but it can hold you back. When the time comes, you have to let it go.”

“Why?” Bonnie asked again. “If being young is good, then being old like you is bad.”

I smiled at the child calling a nineteen-year-old that. “Yes, being young is very good. Being older is very good too, but for all kinds of new reasons. You trade one life for another.”

“I like my life, thank you very much,” the twelve-year-old Finn said to me. “I don’t need to hear you praise having to grow up and get a job.”

I’d had a job for fourteen years, so I didn’t know what his life could have been like. “Feel however you feel,” I told him. “I just want the kids to understand that leaving one thing behind for something else isn’t always bad. That’s how you grow. You don’t want to stop growing.”

“Why not?” Bonnie asked.

I pointed to the flowers growing in the pots outside the window. “Because then you never get the chance to bloom. If you don’t bloom, then you never know who you can really be.”

A door slammed shut, making me look toward where I knew Mr. Florian to be. I saw him counting out paper money, flipping through it before he shoved the wad into his pocket. When he looked up at me, he smirked, then walked away.

I cleared my throat, looking to the kids again. “Who wants to learn how to sew?”

 

 

Bail

“Okay, so who wants to de-pot the flowers?” I asked the group of children all piled around me on the floor. I stood with a baby in my arms, listening to the kids cheer for our next activity. I called for them to follow me, then marched onward toward the back exit of the building.

The kids walked behind me in a neat line, all exclaiming some form of joy at the idea of giving our plants a new home. I whistled out a tune, getting them to do it along with me as we made our way to the back door. We passed Mr. Florian at the medicine window, making a sale to an out of towner. I looked to the ingredients Mr. Florian had laid out on the counter at his window. He sorted it right there in front of his customer, letting her see everything. He wouldn’t allow himself to fall into a situation where someone might call him a cheat.

We walked outside together, ignoring Mr. Florian and the look he gave me. I got a chore done at the same time I watched the kids, so he should have been happy about it. If I got scolded later, he would have to reach for an excuse.

I still had Baby Lea in my arms, which made things a bit more complicated. Nothing I couldn’t deal with, in all honesty. I’d mopped the floor more times than I could count, a baby strapped to my chest and another napping in the corner.

“Did you hear about the Kashaph?” Gavin whispered to Annie. “My mommy said they were coming soon.”

“Are they? How come?”

“They want to do a test again.”

Standing in front of the flowerbed, my blood ran cold. I said not a word, choosing to listen and not go into a panic at the name. It came up often, so we had no reason to worry unless we had a true visit on our hands. Not a Kashaph or two stumbling in for a little attention and maybe a few services. I could hide then, and they wouldn’t find me.

“Did they find anyone last time?” Jade asked. “I wasn’t here.”

“That’s when they took Angie,” Bonnie said. “She was so happy. Her mama and daddy had a party.”

They always threw a party when the Kashaph took people to their temples. Being recognized by as someone blessed by the gods needed to be honored. So few people could hold magic and survive it, and the idea of someone who could not only hold it but create it from nothing but themselves, seemed like a miracle.

“I want another party,” Graham said, picking up a bag of soil from its spot leaning against the building. “I wish they would pick me. There were times I thought I had magic.”

Something cold sparked in me. “Did you? Why’s that?”

The boy sighed, putting the bag at my feet. “Sometimes when I get real mad, I think I leave magic places. Things feel different. Warmer.”

It didn’t sound too far off, but I wouldn’t have described it that way. It felt more like the emotion of warmth, rather than the literal feeling. The warmth that came with being so, so sure you walked on the right path and were doing the right thing. It felt good to give up a part of myself, leaving magic behind. It felt like leaving pieces of myself that could help someone else.

And I couldn’t tell a soul.

“Maybe they’ll pick you,” David said. “Then we can have a big party to say goodbye.”

“That’ll be so sad!” Bonnie shouted. “We won’t see him for so long.”

Too long. The Kashaph didn’t bring the children around villages very often. They would be safer in the temples, and honestly, we would all be safer with them in the temples, too. A young Kashaph couldn’t control their emotions, making the older ones accountable for their actions. They did the easy thing and hid them away.

I made the choice not to worry about a visit since I had the kids with me, and they deserved my full attention.

I bounced the baby on my hip, instructing the other kids on how to properly pull a plant up by the root without destroying it. The new plants sat in pots on the ground, and we had a spare flowerbed I wanted them all transferred to. I just had to decide if I wanted to organize them by color.

“Why are we moving them?” Bonnie asked, holding an empty pot. “They’re pretty like this.”

“But they won’t grow,” I told her. “You have to move them to something bigger or the flower is going to stay the same. If you really want it to grow, it should be in the ground.”

“Bail!” Maddy called to me from the far end of the flowerbed. “Like this?”

I turned to see her holding a broken flower, all its roots still in the pot. “Um, almost… Here, let me help you.”

I set the baby down on my jacket. I’d shrugged out of it one arm at a time as a new customer walked up to the counter. I didn’t really look his way, more focused on making sure Lea had something to concentrate on so she wouldn’t crawl away. I gave her a toy from my pocket. I’d hand sewn the little stuffed dog for a situation just like this.

“Do you see the tattoo?” one of the children whispered to another. “The markings on his arm?”

I stopped uprooting my morning glory to look at the counter again. I saw the man standing there, with dark hair past his ears and eyes like a leaf dried from autumn. Really, his size drew my eye, making my heart race as gooseflesh rose on my arms. He looked nearly as tall as Mr. Florian, if not the exact same height. It might as well have been another foot, given his broadness. Muscle pushed at his sleeves, making the fabric tight enough for me to worry about it holding together. The tunic had two buttons undone in the front and the edges frayed. His shoes looked new though. That seemed strange.

He had a tattoo on his forearm of a dove. A tattoo that the clan of Herem all got upon their acceptance. I’d never seen one so young. The man couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. I wondered how many lives he had taken. I’d heard rumors that the Herem wouldn’t consider you unless you’d hit a hundred.

“Is he going to hurt us?” one of the children whispered.

“He is not going to hurt you,” I said, maybe a little too loud. “Nothing is ever going to hurt you. They’d have to get through me first.”

Annie smiled up at me. “You would protect us?”

“With my life,” I promised.

“What if you weren’t strong enough?”

“I would find a way.”

When I looked up from the children, I made the mistake of glancing at the man standing in front of the counter. He looked back at me, his eyes locking onto mine and holding it there. Terror ran through me as I tried desperately not to let it show. I couldn’t tell if he tried to intimidate me, but his size alone worked. The stare could split a diamond in two, and he directed it right at me. But I stood between him and the kids, so I didn’t back down. I wouldn’t be the first to look away.

After another long beat, the man turned to Mr. Florian. “I need everything on this list,” he said, sliding a piece of paper to him.

Lea started to cry before I could properly plant the flower I’d been uprooting, so I went to her and picked her up from my jacket. I hushed the child, bouncing her and singing quietly until she started to calm down. I wiped the tears from her cheeks, soothing her while the redness faded away.

“Are you staying in the village?” Mr. Florian asked, staring at the paper. I could hear the disgust in his voice. No doubt the mercenary could too.

“Would you have a problem if I was?” the man asked, challenge in his voice. “If so, I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you about it.”

Mr. Florian placed the paper back on the counter. “I don’t sell to Herem,” I heard Mr. Florian say. “Leave.”

The man leaned on the counter, both of his hands resting on the surface. “You sell to Herem today. You get one chance and exactly fifteen seconds to have everything I need set on this counter. If you’re lucky, I’ll pay the same amount for it that I would have paid if you had just given me what I wanted to start with.”

I almost wanted to scold Mr. Florian, telling him to stop being stupid and just serve the mercenary. It seemed wild; the idea that he wouldn’t do as he said. If anyone would defy both reason and logic, it would be Mr. Florian, thinking he stood mightier than everyone around him. He would pay for it. And oh, I wanted him to. A dark, ugly part of me wanted him to say no one more time, knowing what would happen.

“Leave,” Mr. Florian said, and wretched excitement rushed through me.

The man nodded once, then slammed Mr. Florian’s head against the counter. The kids screamed, and Lea let out a cry so loud I thought it would attract people to the backside of the apothecary. But no one came, and Mr. Florian’s head stayed pinned to the counter so hard I thought it might split.

“Go get what I asked for,” the mercenary said, cold and calm. “When I let go of you, you’re going to gather it all up, then I’ll be on my way. Is that boy over there yours?” he asked, nodding my way.

I froze, holding Lea tight. If the man wanted to come for me, he could. It would have taken him seconds to kill me. My magic couldn’t work fast enough to protect me against someone trained to kill. Even so, I would defend the children if he decided to come our way.

“Yes, he’s mine,” Mr. Florian grunted.

The Herem nodded again. “So if I kill you, he can get what I need. Good to know. Are you going to cooperate when I let you up?”

“Yes,” Mr. Florian grunted again.

The man let him go, and then he hurried around the space to gather the ingredients on the list. I watched, waiting for something worse to happen. Thankfully for Mr. Florian, he did as the Herem said, setting a bag of things on the counter. It surprised me when the man left even a little bit of money there in its place when he took the bag. Silver coins clattered onto the counter. He didn’t look at a single one of us before he left.

 

***

 

I had to clean the back room when the kids all went home. With the sun setting soon, the village had quieted down. Oddly enough, that didn’t mean less people walked around. They just got quieter. Not quite enough though because I could hear people whispering, wondering if the rumors of the mercenary had been true. I did my part, lying to them. I saw such relief on their faces.

While I cleaned and organized, I even got in a few sales of our more general medicines. I left the money in the lock box, hoping it would make Mr. Florian’s mood turn lighter. I wouldn’t know until later if I would go to sleep with forming bruises.

I had my back to the doors into the store, so when Mr. Florian came through, I couldn’t see him. I focused very hard on a stain at the counter, scrubbing it and holding my breath as he went about his business.

“Get this place perfect,” he grunted at me, immediately popping the bubble. “The witches are on their way.”

My stomach dropped, and I whipped around to him. “What?”

“Are you dense?” he said curtly. He smacked me in the back of the head. “They’re coming to test people. I know you heard about it.”

It had only been whispers. The Kashaph showed up so infrequently that I didn’t worry about the rumors often.

“Are they just testing children?” I asked.

“How should I know? Make everything look nice for them. I want this place to look like somewhere a god would shop if they needed medicine.”

“Yes, sir.”

I scrubbed again, assuming he had left when I heard him walking toward me. I kept my eyes on my work, trying not to breathe too loudly. Mr. Florian kept his voice low and even.

“I’m sure I don’t have to give you a warning,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“But I will.” Moving closer, he said, “I know you don’t want those witches dragging you away. You hide, you stay out of the way, and you make sure they don’t get even a hint of your magic. If I think for a moment that you’re trying to signal them, you know what I’ll do.”

I took a careful breath as I weighed the benefits of speaking or not. If I talked, I’d probably get hit. If I stayed silent, it would look like I ignored him. It depended on his mood, which slap would hurt more.

“The last thing I want is to be taken by them,” I said. Mr. Florian knew that better than anyone. Mostly because not only would everyone else have thought me out of my mind for feeling that way, but if they knew I had magic… only hell would come.

“You might be the only person I’ve ever met who’s foolish enough to truly think like that. You know, people pray to the gods to be blessed with magic. Of course, they never answer, but still.”

“It’s no blessing,” I said. “Not the way they do it.”

“That’s fine. Reject the idea of being worshiped by anyone who looks your way or doing real good for the world. That sounds like you.”

If I wanted to be accepted into the temple of the Kashaph, then I would have been filled with joy at the idea of a testing later on. Though most of my kind got discovered much younger than me. Children couldn’t control their outburst of emotion, leaving imprints on things all the time. Hiding magic proved difficult. Not that any parent would have. Most would have considered it cruel to keep their child from what could be viewed as a deity status.

Most.

“I’m meant for a quiet life,” I said. One with freedom. One where I could feel what I wanted to feel in the ways I wanted to feel it.

Mr. Florian snorted. “Quiet life. You’ll live and die in this village, boy, so I suppose you’ll get what you want. If you want to be nothing, then be nothing.”

I nodded. “I’m nothing.”

He smiled at me.