Skillful Death (13 page)

“But you seem to be ignorant of knives, and the cleaving of souls,” she said.

“I am,” he said.

“Is this because you’re a foreigner? Did they not teach you these things where you’re from? What else don’t you know?”

“That’s not a question I can answer,” he said. This woman was so beautiful that it made his teeth ache to stand so close to her, unable to touch her. He wanted to hold her close enough to feel her pressed against his entire body. He wanted his fingers to know the texture of her hair, her skin, and her lips. He wanted his face to know the warmth of the side of her neck. But with all that desire, her questions were very off-putting.

“You can’t even answer that?” she asked.

“How could I? How could anyone know what they don’t know?”

“If you can’t even understand the depth of your ignorance, how can you ever hope to overcome it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s start with what you do know.”

“Okay.”

“You’re a foreigner,” she stated.

“I suppose,” he replied.

“You must know at least that. You don’t look at all like a normal person. Your skin is too light, your body is too wide, and your eyes are such a funny color.”

“I suppose. I don’t actually look at myself very often, so I guess I don’t notice these things.”

“But your skin. How can you help but notice?”

She held her arm up next to his so he could compare the tone. All he noticed was that her skin was close enough to tickle the wispy black hair on his arm. Dom was familiar with this line of questioning. He’d experienced it for as long as he could remember. His responses were nearly instinctual. He used the same evasive maneuvers one might give if they were caught napping. He led with denial and then softened to ignorance.

“Lots of people have different color skin. The skin of your own body is not even consistent from your feet to your head.” He used his own statement as an opportunity to review her body from the ground up. It was true—her skin tone did vary from part to part. But it was also true that her skin, in his humble opinion, was perfect.

“None so light as you,” she said. “And your body?”

“What of my body? Have you met the baker’s son? He’s far thicker than me. And the Buddha himself would make me look thin.”

“Your eyes don’t match any I’ve ever seen. They’re too tall and the color is too fanciful. It’s a wonder that they see at all.”

“What does any of this have to do with your knife?”

“I’m trying to establish that we both understand you’re a foreigner. Then we can determine why you know nothing of how to use this cleaving knife.”

“If you need me to do you a favor, then you could just describe that favor and whatever it is, I will do it.”

“Ah, but first I have to determine if you’ll be able to do my favor, or else what’s the use in asking?”

“I see,” Dom said.

“Where were you raised, that you don’t have this knowledge?”

Dom’s mind leapt to his normal approach. Denial was nearly exhausted, so he should transition to ignorance. But suddenly he didn’t want to work at deceiving this young lady. She was so lovely, but he felt a headache forming which thudded in time with his pulse.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know where you were raised?”

“That’s correct,” Dom said. “My first memory is of my master, Denpa. He took me in when I wandered the streets. Before that, all is blank.”

“Your memory begins afresh, with Denpa?” she asked.

“I suppose when I think very hard, I can put together small pieces, but they’re really just fragments. It’s as if my memory would start again every few seconds and I would put together where I was and what I was doing just by context. Sometime after Denpa took me in, I began to string together consciousness for longer periods of time, until now, when I suppose I’m just like everyone else.”

“But we’ve established, you’re not just like everyone else. You look different and you have a strange job.”

“I suppose,” Dom said.

“And what of this Denpa? Who takes in a wandering boy who can’t say where he is from?”

“It wasn’t simply where I was from. I couldn’t say anything. I had no words before Denpa. That’s why he called me Dom—the bear—because all I would do was growl when I was unhappy, or growl in a different way when I was content.”

“When we met, you said you didn’t know why they called you bear.”

“I don’t tell people the details of my life. Denpa says it makes them mistrust me.”

“So why have you told me?”

“You already mistrust me.”

H
E
WOKE
UP
IN
the same bed, in the same tent, with the morning sun and tree shadows dancing patterns on the wall. This time he was strapped to the bed. He raised his head to see a sparkly woman dabbing a wet cloth at his leg.

“Your back has healed quite well, but your leg is a mess,” she said.

“Snake,” Constantine said. His eyes felt glued shut. He struggled to open them fully and wished for the use of his hands to rub them.

“It’s all anyone can talk about, that damned snake!” She shook her head. “You’d think they would care some about the boy who was bitten by the snake. You’re very lucky, you know. Lucky that thing didn’t envenomate you when it bit your leg. You’d certainly be dead by now. It’s a good thing Sasha was there. Were you two together, or did he happen upon you on the road?”

“Sasha?” Constantine asked.

“You must be too tired to even think, you devil,” she said. “You needn’t worry. That damned snake won’t hurt anyone ever again. They’ve skinned it and burned the meat in a bamboo pit. Sasha has declared that he’ll make a beautiful suit from the skin. What a talented boy he is. I always thought he was a bit rough when he was a toddler. He always punched the other little boys when he thought nobody was looking, but look at what a fine manling he has become. You must feel proud to be his best friend.”

Constantine tracked the words okay, but he couldn’t figure out what the woman was talking about. He knew only two things about the woman: her touch was like silk against the fire in his leg, and she was the most beautiful person he’d ever regarded. His lips parted and his breath heated in his chest as she washed the oozing pus from the punctures in his leg. Constantine rested his head back and focused his attention on the hand which cupped the heel of his foot.

She continued to talk her nonsense.

“As you can imagine, they’re all on high alert waiting for the elephant. Some say it won’t come for another year, but others seem to think it will show up by the end of the day. I’m not holding my breath. But I guess nobody expected the snake so soon after the lion, after all.”

“Lion?” Constantine asked. He raised his head for a second and then let it settle back down on the soft pillow.

A breeze sent a chill across his naked skin when another woman opened the flap of the tent. Constantine raised an eyelid to see this new woman—a wrinkled hag compared to his caregiver—staring at Constantine with her hands on her hips.

“They did a terrible job of cleaning him up, but I figured the other dirt can wait until his leg is looking a little better,” the pretty nurse said.

“We won’t know what other rips and tears he might have until we clean off some of that dirt,” the hag said. “What if he has some infection brewing under this mud? We should take him to the river and dunk him upside down. You can hold him by his snakebit calf, why don’t you?”

“You’re terrible,” the young nurse said, but she was laughing as she spoke.
 

“I’ll get Grandma in here to geld him while he’s strapped down. Save us a lot of trouble later. He’ll be another randy colt nosing around the mare’s paddock before too long. Nothing but trouble, these fatherless wild beasts. They have nobody to show them how to hold their custard. Might as well cut it off and force some manners on him before it gets too thick for the blade.”

“Mother! He might understand you. Please,” the young nurse said, but she could barely contain her giggles.

Constantine did understand the words, but they didn’t mean much to him. The soft bed and gentle touch felt like heaven. He could almost forget that he was tied down and had lost his beautiful black snakeskin. He hoped the men hadn’t damaged it too much when they’d dragged it. He hoped they’d known to scrape all the fat and muscle from the inside of the skin with a sharp blade. He hoped they’d rubbed it with fat or lard before they’d stretched it. Some men seemed to know about hides and did a passable job of curing them. Maybe the four men who captured him were amongst the knowledgeable.
 

“If he wasn’t friends with Sasha, I’m sure they would have just tossed him in the bamboo pit with the snake meat. What a foul stench that thing has made. They can smell it all the way down to the carbon spring,” the old woman said.

“Do you think there are more snakes like that out in the woods?” the young nurse asked.

“No, not if you believe the hermit. He said that it would be once in twenty years, and it’s just in time.”

“I don’t believe half of what that foolish old man says.”

“Well it seems that at least two-thirds of what he says is right, so who’s the fool?” the old woman asked.

“An elephant is going to crash through town and Sasha will have to fight it to save his sister. You really believe that’s going to happen?”

“And didn’t you just see a lion attack the Harvest? And didn’t a boy kill a snake? And didn’t the men find a witch’s baby in the belly of that snake?”

“I saw that baby. It was a baby monkey,” the young woman said.

“You say that even though the Prystyl Road Witch just lost an infant?” the old woman asked.

“Please don’t call her that. Her name is Camryn, and you know she’s a friend of my sister. She’s a perfectly nice girl, but honestly, nobody witnessed that infant she claims she lost. I just saw her a few months ago and she certainly didn’t look pregnant then.”

“She’s such a close friend of your sister and yet you doubt her word. She’s lucky to have such a defender on her side.”

“This boy needs his sleep,” the young nurse said. “We should leave him.”

“Don’t let him drift off yet,” the old woman said. “His champion wants to greet him.”

Constantine stirred when the old woman tugged on his toe. “Stay awake, Forestling, we’re going to send in your friend.
 

The young woman propped up Constantine’s head and covered him with a thin sheet before the two women left. A few minutes later, the tent flap parted again, and the blond boy, the one who had bashed him unconscious with a rock, entered. He wore the fur suit he’d stolen from Constantine, and his scalp had the bright pink scar Constantine had given him on that day.

“They call you lion face because of the paw print when you fell in the mud,” the blond boy said.

Constantine tried to rise so he could fight this thief and finally deliver revenge. His straps held him down and Constantine flopped back to the bed in agony from where the strap opened a cut on his ankle. The boy took a seat on the bed nearest to Constantine.

“My name is Sasha,” he said.

“Sasha,” Constantine said, tasting the word again. It was bitter this time and made his tongue ache.

“My father said that the snake almost killed you.”

“Snake,” Constantine said.

“You’re lucky they came along, but you should not have been out there trying to get the snake by yourself anyway. It was my snake to kill. All I have to do now is keep the elephant away from my sister and I’ll be set for life. That’s what everyone says.”

“Snake,” Constantine said again.

“What did you want with it? You can’t fulfill the decree, you don’t even have a father. Everyone knows that a bastard can’t claim the bounty. My father thinks that you wanted the snake only because you liked its skin. He’s the only one who knows for sure that you’re the one who makes these suits. Most people believe it’s me.”

“Skin,” Constantine said.

“I’ll give you the skin. In fact, I’ll give you the skin and reward you for a suit made from it.  I need to demonstrate my skill, my father says. They kept the skin in really good shape. They tried to drag it back to town, but the horses kept bolting because they thought the snake was following them. They had to skin the snake on the side of the road and then they put the guts in a sack and the skin in another.”

“Skin?” Constantine asked. Was there a chance that this blond boy could deliver the skin to him? Was there a chance that the men who’d dragged him here hadn’t ruined it?

“Yes, they scraped down the skin and now they’re soaking it in glycerin and alcohol. It’s sealed up, so I wasn’t allowed to look at it. They said I could see it in a few days. Anyway, I’ll give it to you and we’ll give you shelter and food while you make it into a suit. You’ll have to do the work in secret though. Dad says we can’t have anyone else see you working on the skin or they’ll know that I’m not the one with the skill.”

All Constantine heard was that the snakeskin was safe. He could hardly believe his luck. His pulse slowed and he felt his desire to kill the blond boy mellowing. He remembered what he’d deduced earlier: killing this boy would bring the whole town down on him. They’d chase him through the woods like a rabid fox.