EVERYDAY SOMETHING TRIES TO KILL ME

EVERYDAY SOMETHING TRIES TO KILL ME, by Todd Honeycutt, artwork by Andrea Alemanno

 

Timo had left the Queen’s court three weeks ago, too long for such a simple errand. “Bring me a giant’s eye,” the magician had requested. “The left one, of course, is preferable.”

As if the side of anything mattered.

Two days he’d traveled up Mt. Haun, following the source of a stream. His aching legs remind him that he’d rather be on the horse he left in the temporary care of a family where the stream emptied into the mighty Solblat River. This high up, the stream still runs as wide as a person is tall; he fears he isn’t as close to the source as he hoped. The hollow that nestles the fast-moving waters is thick with the heady smell of pines and spruces, interrupted—as here—by copses of birch.

Soon, the land would be snow covered, but not yet.

Timo’s heart stops when the woman startles him.

He hadn’t expected anyone, as he’d seen no signs of a person’s passing.

Strange area.

 

 

The woman sits by the stream, so still and focused, staring intently in its waters. Her tattered gray-brown robe blending perfectly with the deep shadows cast by the descending sun, the hunter had almost walked past her.

With her white hair pulled tight into a braid and her lithe body taut with age and wear, Timo recalls his grandmother, long crossed to the next world.

Her expression tells him this woman might have a tongue to match his grandmother’s, too.

“Old Mother,” Timo calls, not wishing to frighten her.

She springs up as if to fight.

Timo takes two steps back. “My apologies for disturbing you. I didn’t expect to find anyone so far away from anything.”

The woman peers at him, and her expression and her stance both relax. “You’re not so far from anything as you think.”

Could she be one of those mountain poets of renown, escaping the world? “What catches your attention in these small waters?”

She sits and her dark eyes gaze returns to the stream. “Fish who’ve escaped the heron’s grasp. Rocks who don’t fear the water that surrounds them, as you or I might.”

“May I join you, Old Mother? I’m in need of rest.”

“You’d do better to return from where you came. But sit if you must.”

Timo sets his pack down, removes his cloak of forest green wool that marks his special status serving the Queen, and kneels by the stream. The cold and wet washes the dust from his throat, then he splashes water on his face and fills his flasks. He sits, keeping his right side to the Old Mother to better hear her. His left ear had been damaged by a blow from a startled bear some years ago, and Timo had been lucky to walk away from the encounter only losing most of the hearing in that ear. The Queen’s magician and healers, despite their promises and testimonies, had not restored it.

“You have a home nearby?”

“You looking for one?”

He laughs. “Haven’t wanted a home since I left my village many years ago. No, Old Mother, that’s not what I’m seeking in this quiet place. I’m on the Queen’s business, and an odd one at that. Need a giant’s eye.”

“A giant’s eye? Just one spell calls for that, and it isn’t nice.”

How could she know what spells require such an item? “I’m a hunter, Old Mother. Not for me to know the why of things.” Timo leaves unsaid that with his success, the Queen’s magician would help his ailing uncle, who no longer recognized people he’d known for a lifetime and whose hands shook so that he could no longer string a bow. As a young boy, Timo had learned much following his uncle in his wanderings, and it pained him to see his decline. The magician spoke highly of a potion, as magicians always did, but there was a price. Not that their promises had restored his hearing.

The woman rubs at her arm, her skin thin, papery, tightly wrapped around her bones and muscles. “Which queen sends you?”

“Vitus.”

“Vitus? I don’t know her. What happened to Saran?”

Is the woman mad or touched? “Saran is Vitus’ mother’s mother.”

“Her mother’s mother?” the woman asks the stream. “Has it been that long?”

How wary should Timo be? He considers pulling out his sword, a gift from the Queen that glows when magic’s about. But the woman looks addled, feeble. Not a threat. She might suffer from what ails his uncle.

“What brings you to this ‘quiet place,’ as you say? There’s no giant’s eye here, much less a giant.”

“I overheard two farmers speak of a giant living near this stream’s source. Then, as another sign of the gods’ favor, I followed a wolf most of the way up this mountain.”

She stares thoughtfully into the treetops and shakes her head. “No giants, not here, not there.” The woman pauses and her face lights up. “Wolves are the wiliest of spirit animals, revered by the gods high and low alike. I doubt you could follow a wolf for long. Even I can smell you.”

“I know the ways of animals, Old Mother. She wasn’t aware of me.”

“Just happened to assist your Queen’s business?”

“A person can sometimes be lucky.”

“If your luck brings you here, to this mountain, you have no luck.”

The day’s been long. Timo feels his weariness as he sits on the cool ground.

“I’ll gather some wood, mend a door or a roof, if you have need.”

“I’m not helpless,” she snaps, and whether it’s anger or insult, Timo can’t tell. “I cut my own wood, mind you. Every day, something tries to kill me. Every day, something tries to kill me and fails.”

“It’s harsh times, indeed, if someone’s trying to harm you, Old Mother. I mean no offense, just a gift in return for this most welcome conversation.”

She stands suddenly and looks across the stream into the forest.

Timo follows her stare but sees nothing, hears nothing among the luminescent white of the birch bark. “What is it?”

“It’s too early for him,” the woman says. “Leave. Before you can’t.”

Timo fears little, but her tone makes him wonder if he should be afraid. A bit of bile rises in his throat.

He stands, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and steps toward the woman, whose arms are outstretched as if to protect her from a blow.

A sliver of a child appears across the water, making his way through the trees, smiling, beatific. A relation of the woman?

The boy holds a worn leather bag. “Timo,” the boy’s voice carries across the hollow like bells ringing from a high temple, resonates in the hunter’s chest. “I have the eye you seek. Yours, if you kill the witch and destroy her amulet that binds me to this place.”

The woman clutches at something around her neck.

“Witch?” Timo says.

“You led him here, Moltinan,” the Old Mother says, “but he can’t free you.”

Moltinan, did she say? Moltinan the wizard, over a hundred years gone, cursed and banished for his crimes?

Timo pulls his sword out of its scabbard. He flinches when he sees its bright glow.

The woman leaps across the stream—Timo doesn’t think her capable of such a feat, given the distance is wider than she is tall—and she and the boy tangle in flashes of light and billows of acrid smoke, hisses of demons and the piercing shrieks of hawks.

The hunter, his sword high, slogs through the knee-deep water. As he climbs the opposite bank to join the fight, the woman cries out and falls.

The boy, glee covering his face, raises his fist and utters a single word of satisfaction. “Finally.”

That voice frightens Timo. Wizards, sorcerers, witches—they always had something, something he couldn’t see, couldn’t predict. They couldn’t be trusted.

Desperate to grasp an advantage, Timo swings and just misses the boy’s hand. The boy shifts away, his eyes on the glowing sword.

They circle each other. The boy’s attention wavers between the sword and the fallen woman. Timo wishes that she’d rise, continue the fight. He doesn’t know what he’s gotten into, and his sword alone might not be enough.

“You need that giant’s eye, don’t you?” the boy says.

“Not from you.”

“It’s as simple as destroying the amulet. An easy task for one as strong as you.”

Timo shakes his head, his eyes fixed on the circling boy.

“All that awaits you here is death.” The boy’s voice tingles Timo’s spine.

“Then I will greet her.”

The boy leaps at Timo and Timo responds fiercely with his sword. A blow sure to be fatal hits the ground as the boy disappears into the air.

The hunter searches amid the echoes of the boy’s final cry and finds only the woman lying on the ground, whispering.

“What is it, Old Mother?” He bends his ear down to her lips.

“Must never be allowed to leave.” Her words are weak, faltering. “Moltinan.”

He wants to ask how that spirit could possibly be him, but her halting words continue.

“Kept the land safe all these years.” She coughs weakly, recovers. “Told you to leave. Find my book.”

“Let’s go to your hut, Old Mother.”

He moves to pick her up.

“The wolf…,” she starts, but says no more.

Between the day’s hike, the fight, and now the Old Mother’s death, he’s tired, so tired. Her hut is easy to find; a heavily worn path from the stream leads to it. He carries her there, lays her on her bed, sets out his bedroll, and sleeps on the floor beside a cold hearth.

 

#

 

Timo wakes to a musty smell and the faint light of a chilly morning sun and the rapid knocking of a woodpecker searching for food. His back stiff, he stretches, then remembers the night before.

The Old Mother lies where he left her, looking fuller, more substantial, than when she had lived, as if a weight had been lifted from her. He inspects the small room, her meager belongings. A worn table and chair. A well-used copper pot. Two chipped cups and a cracked plate. A handful of spoons and knives, along with a ladle. A heavy fur blanket perfect for winter. A wood ax hanging on the wall. A small chest contains the remains of a dress or gown disintegrated by the years and a book with a single ruby embedded on the cover.

He envies her simple life.

He notices the amulet around her neck and recalls the spirit’s demand. He touches it, a piece of rounded, burnished amber placed in a silver setting, hanging with a simple braided leather cord. It doesn’t look special, but appearances often deceive.

Timo cuts the cord and takes the amulet. Immediately, the Old Mother transforms, causing the hunter to recoil. Her hair and nails fall off, her skin contracts to a tough leather, her face contorts into a person he no longer recognizes.

The amulet feels heavy in his hand.

He swears an oath aloud to never put it around his neck, and he places it in his pouch.

Timo spends the morning gathering wood and builds a funeral pyre in a small clearing well enough away from trees. He places the Old Mother on it as gently as possible, then lights it. When the fire is so hot it’s uncomfortable to stand near, he circles it and offers prayers to the gods high and low. As is his people’s custom, he sings, offering songs of joy and beauty and peace to carry her soul to the next world.

The pyre burns and burns and when it finally settles down, he reads her book. It tells the history of the wizard Moltinan, his conquests and corruptions. How a magician, Devina, had aided him, then betrayed him to save herself when an army closed in. How he’d been captured and his soul separated from his body and imprisoned on a mountain top as both a punishment and a warning to others. As Devina’s reward, she was tasked to guard Moltinan.

Timo wonders if the Old Mother and Devina were the same person.

Satisfied he’d honored the Old Mother, he grabs his pack and continues his trek up the mountain. With nightfall approaching, he’s confused by the familiarity of a rock along the stream, a heavily worn path that leads away at an odd angle.

A spirit appears in the guise of a young male warrior.

“Timo,” he says, “I offer you the same gift as yesterday. A giant’s eye for my freedom.”

How could Timo be back here? He prided himself on his sense of direction. Pushing thoughts of enchantment out of his mind, he pulls out his sword, its glow no weaker than the day before. “You aren’t meant to be free.”

“I finally killed the woman who kept me trapped, but you needn’t take her place.”

“I’ll not take her place, but I refuse your offer.”

“She was strong, where you’re weak,” Moltinan says. “You won’t last this day.”

Moltinan raises an arm. A flaming sword appears in his hand.

He attacks; the hunter parries, counters, parries, counters. As Timo thinks he might win, the spirit vanishes, leaving a slight trace of something rotten, like spoiled eggs or a days-old deer carcass.

Timo waits and, when he’s satisfied the spirit’s gone, he finds the Old Mother’s pyre. He stirs the ashes and watches a slight smoke rise and a multitude of embers glow, mystified at the enchantment he’s stumbled into.

 

#

 

Each of the next few days, he tries to leave. He pushes further up the mountain to find the stream’s source or follows the water down to where he left his horse. No matter the path taken, the hunter curses at the gods when he finds himself back at the stream to meet the spirit.

His sword constantly glows, never wavering.

Each evening, Timo meets the spirit, which manifests in different forms—an elderly man, a fair lady, a bull, a tiger—always dangling the offer of the giant’s eye. Each evening, Timo refuses, and the two fight, the outcome unchanging.

He comes to welcome that rotten smell, relieved at the spirit’s leaving.

His surprise and anger turn to resignation as he ponders the same two questions. Did the Old Mother die because he had arrived to take her place? Would he remain here for a hundred years, as she did?

 

#

 

Autumn begets winter’s heavy snows. To eat, Timo barely finds enough hare and squirrel and edible roots in his limited range to fill his belly. Despite growing gaunt and weak, he hones his blades to settle his fears before each evening’s encounter.

During the days of the longest nights, Timo twists his left ankle leaping after a snow hare.

He blames the low gods for his carelessness.

Then curses them when his foot can’t carry his full weight.

Why would anyone have trusted the guarding of Moltinan to a single person? If anything happened to him, wouldn’t Moltinan be free?

It’s too much to carry, this responsibility.

The snow hare taunts him as it waits and watches thirty feet away. Timo throws a rock he knows will miss. The hare scampers away.

He contemplates not leaving this spot; let the magic carry him, if it must. Then duty wins, and he fashions a crude crutch from a fallen limb that allows him to hobble down to the stream.

When he sits on the rock, Timo feels the amulet’s call, almost crying for him to wear it, to make him whole, to help him in the fight.

He’s puts his hand on his pouch, feels its weight.

Moltinan appears in the form of a giant, twice as tall as Timo.

Why so large, this time of all times? Any other day, Timo would relish having more to hit.

He musters his strength, keeps on his right leg as much as he can and struggles through the pain.

“So weak, even for you.”

He is weak. He can’t even think of a response. He readies his sword for the coming fight.

The giant moves slowly, the one thing in Timo’s favor. The giant swings and Timo parries the blow with no small amount of effort. The dance begins, a swing and a parry, a swing and a parry. The hunter loses himself in the fight, stands his ground, forgets the pain in his left ankle.

Then the giant feints, Timo’s sword swipes into the air, and he feels something press against his right side.

The giant laughs.

Timo checks for blood, but his leather feels intact.

He got lucky.

Luck doesn’t last forever. If the fight goes too long, he fears weakening and losing. He starts to go on the attack, but the giant presses him and Timo again is on the defensive. He blocks Moltinan’s blows, once, twice, three times as he steps away to gain distance, the giant’s eyes aglow in the joy of the fight.

Timo feels no joy, only exhaustion.

Pain shoots up his left leg when he trips backward over a protruding tree root and yells as he falls into the snow.

Timo drops his sword to avoid cutting himself, instinctively rolls twice away from the giant who must be scrambling after him. There is a shock as the wet and cold of the snow clings to him. Desperately, one hand pulls out a dagger and the other clutches the pouch with the amulet. The hunter springs toward where his foe should be, and his blade catches the giant in the gut.

Moltinan disappears.

The hunter falls back into the snow, spent and hazy. He dreads taking his boot off—he can feel his ankle swollen inside it. He’ll need to find his way back to the hut after finding his sword and his crutch. For a moment, these tasks all feel like too much.

Timo groans as he sits up. Today will not be his death day. He again checks his side where he felt a hit. The leather isn’t even nicked.

He thanks the gods for his luck, but wonders if he instead should thank the amulet.

 

#

 

The snows yield to spring’s warming days and the scent of pine pollen.

As time passes, he worries more about his uncle. Every night, he regrets not following the Old Mother’s warning. He promises, if he gets the chance, to listen more to his elders.

He weighs letting the spirit go. Would that even free him? What would it matter if Moltinan escaped? What harm could spirits do? Let the Queen and her magicians deal with him. Why should the land’s safety fall to him? Which of his deeds had brought him this fate?

He prays, earnestly, for a fool to stumble up the mountain and exchange places. But none are more foolish than him.

If only he had more than a hunter’s simple tools and wits to fight the spirit. A magician, a knight, a priest, a queen—all would be more equipped than he.

Once, he believed that having a solitary patch of woods to wander and hunt in was all he needed.

Once.

 

#

 

On a day dark with clouds and thunder threatening rain, Timo sits on the same rock where he had too long ago found the Old Mother staring into the stream. He studies the fast moving waters, wondering if fish ever had bouts of melancholy or if their only thoughts were of food.

When the spirit arrives—today in the form of a fierce maiden—Timo’s the first to speak. “There’s no giant’s eye in that bag, I’ll bet. It’s all glamour.”

“I very much carry an eye, plucked from a giant while the youngling slept. Yours to bring to your queen.”

Timo pulls his hand away from the pouch with the amulet when he realizes he’s holding it. There’s something that demands him to wear it. Or is the magic reaching toward Moltinan?

“I couldn’t leave here even if I took it. But why should you stay, tormented as you are? Find your peace in the next world, and I’ll build a great pyre and sing songs to carry you on your journey.”

“Why should I stay?” The spirit looks to the sky as the first cool drops of rain fall. “I’ve been trapped so long, impotent. Time enough to dream of roaming the world from mountains to seas, creating spells, drinking mead. If my captors had wanted me to cross to the next world, they would have sent me there.” He pulls out his flaming sword. “No. They knew that my time wasn’t finished.”

“Your time is well past, spirit.”

“When you’ve been here another year, another ten, another hundred, then tell me you’d rather pass to the next world than roam this one.”

“A hundred years? You claimed I wouldn’t last a day.”

Moltinan charges.

Timo remains sitting on his rock, his sword sheathed. The amulet feels the heaviest it ever has. He tenses and feels a tingling as the spirit’s sword—then the spirit itself—passes through him.

Furious, Moltinan howls and leaps at Timo again, with the same result. The spirit swings and swings, circling and swirling around and through Timo. The hunter sits, quiets as best he can the excitement in his chest, quells his body’s urge to respond, attack, flee.

Echoes of Moltinan’s frustration ring throughout the wood as the spirit vanishes and leaves the too-familiar scent.

Timo smiles at his intuition that Moltinan, residing in a magical realm, could only affect magical items, like Timo’s sword. He hadn’t been so skilled or so lucky that Moltinan never struck him. The spirit couldn’t. If he’d worn the amulet? That was a question for the queen’s magicians.

A new cycle begins. At the end of each day, Timo comes to the stream. When the fuming spirit of Moltinan arrives in varied forms—a crane, a bear, a wizard, a queen, even the Old Mother—the hunter encourages him to move to the next world. The spirit rages and attacks; Timo refuses to fight.

Might isn’t the only way to fight might.

The hunter thinks the spirit fainter each day, more translucent, simpler, and Timo’s mood lightens, until one day the spirit doesn’t come at all, and the next day, Timo’s sword no longer glows.

Could the Old Mother have followed this same path and freed both herself and the spirit? Maybe she was too angry, carried just as much bitterness and spite as the spirit she’d been forced to watch over.

Timo fulfills his promise and builds a pyre for Moltinan in the same spot as the Old Mother’s. Though he has no body to place on top, he lights it, and when the heat is strong and the smoke thick, he walks around it and prays, and he sings from his heart through the night.  The tears he sheds aren’t for sadness with Moltinan’s passing, but relief that he may leave this place.

With the ashes cold, he puts the Old Mother’s book in his pack, nestled beside the pouch containing the amulet. He casts a weary look up the mountain. The stream won’t lead to a giant. He has no intention of continuing his search. He’d spent enough time in the Queen’s service.

Timo follows the stream down and doesn’t allow himself the hope that the family has kept his horse all this time.

When he returned to the Queen’s court, they’d have to be satisfied with the book and the amulet and a tale.

Then he’d tend to his uncle.

 

THE END

________________________________________

Todd Honeycutt is a public health researcher and speculative fiction writer who lives with his family in New Jersey. In alternate universes, he hunts for obscure first edition books and wild mushrooms, but in none does he hunt big game. He has recently published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, DreamForge, and Nature: Futures. This story owes a great deal of debt to the poets Lucille Clifton, who inspired the title (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50974/wont-you-celebrate-with-me), and Mary Oliver.

Andrea Alemanno  is a compulsive illustrator  who fills the line spacing, preferably at 300 dpi.
She’s  from Italy and loves to move into a new city searching for inspiration. In every city,  she constantly keeps drawing.  Now, 3 decades later (and a little bit more), she is  still drawing and learning something new everyday.  She loves the traditional touch into a digital tools world so uses pencil, ink and digital colors to give life to her artwork.  Sometimes she shares her knowledge with wannabe illustrators.  Her work has been selected for several awards and she’s currently working for Italian and international publishers.

 

Andrea Alemanno  is a compulsive illustrator  who fills the line spacing, preferably at 300 dpi.
She’s  from Italy and loves to move into a new city searching for inspiration. In every city,  she constantly keeps drawing.  Now, 3 decades later (and a little bit more), she is  still drawing and learning something new everyday.  She loves the traditional touch into a digital tools world so uses pencil, ink and digital colors to give life to her artwork.  Sometimes she shares her knowledge with wannabe illustrators.  Her work has been selected for several awards and she’s currently working for Italian and international publishers.