The Winds of Crowns and Wolves (3 page)

As the night drew to a close, sleep
beckoned. The soft exterior of his bed cocooned him like a newborn
butterfly, and it prevented him from spreading his wings.

Neach was an odd member of his family.

Born with vivacious auburn hair, which had
waves like the sea to the west, he stood out as a stark point in
his family, which boasted a darker skin and dark hair. His
complexion gave off a pasty glow in the sunlight, which perplexed
him even more.

Unlike his ancestors past, his eyes were
blue like a cold mountain stream, translucent almost, but with
caricatures of mountains etched into his iris. He stood out,
undoubtedly, but he embraced the differential between himself and
his family.

He rose from his winter slumber as alert as
when he had gone to sleep. The events of the prior night plagued
him through his rest, and he couldn’t quite understand why.

A particular vision he witnessed in a dream
depicted the wolf as nearly human, remaining on all fours, but
speaking to him in a language he could understand. It seemed
preposterous looking back on it, but in his dream there was
communication.

With a shudder, Neach disbanded any thought
of the wolf in his dream, and ventured toward the center of the
hut.

The sun had yet to rise, but it was
customary for the men of the village to rise before anyone else.
There, he found no sign of any of his family. It was likely they
remained asleep, except for his brother Ealar, who awaited him
outside.

Ealar had assumed partial role of his duties
in the community, and now that Neach was also a man of the
community, their father Asgall was able to turn in his tools for
good, to the next generation.

The air was thick with a fog that seemed to
sprawl over the hills, and nestle itself comfortably in the valley.
The newfound men leisurely strolled toward the plot of land, which
their family called its own.

Once weekly, Neach and his father had
ventured out to the plot with Ealar as a sort of training lesson.
Asgall showed him how to till the land and cultivate it, in order
to receive the highest crop yield possible. True to his father’s
form, he led by example, not by words. Though he rarely spoke, his
contributions were always well thought out and meaningful.

The sun had yet to rise, as was typical when
the plot was tended to. Darkness cradled the village in its palm,
as if it were a play toy. Rolling fog infiltrated its every corner,
and provided an iridescent filter for the moon, which still shone
high above the hills. The brothers reached their destination as the
first hint of sunlight could be detected in the increasing
brightness of the night sky.

As they came within a few feet of the family
plot, something struck Neach’s eye that had never before done so.
In the farthest expanse of the field, a black rock sparkled with
the light of the moon. Intrigued and uninterested in tilling the
land at the moment, he rerouted his path to coincide with the
location of the rock.

“
I’m going to see how the
potatoes are doing at the edge of the field”, Neach stated, with a
new found authority.

In silent agreement, Ealar parted ways with
his brother, and set off to attend to the near side of the field.
The glistening of the rock seemed to increase as he got closer.
From afar, it appeared that it was a piece of stone that must have
been tossed around in the ocean and brought downstream, and found
its way to the field. But as he knelt down beside it, an
inscription could be read.

Scrawled with what appeared to be a
rudimentary writing device, was something which nearly knocked
Neach off of his feet. The black rock, the one which shimmered in
the moonlight, which appeared to be an out of place piece of Earth
in their crop space, bore his name. Written in its entirety,
something which hadn’t been used since his youth was the name
“Coinneach”. Baffled, Neach sat down in wonder.

It took nearly twenty minutes for Ealar to
notice that Neach had failed to begin any kind of work on the far
side of the field. Instead, he was propped against a large oak
tree, with a blank look upon his face. Incredulous and sleep
deprived, Ealar approached his brother with an intensity he had
never seen before.

“
What do ya think yer
doin’! Ya haven’t done a damned thing since we got here! Yer going
to need to pull yer weight if you want us to survive this winter,
Neach!” an overexcited Ealar exclaimed.

Without so little as a word uttered, Neach
gestured toward the discovery he had made only minutes earlier. At
first perplexed, Ealar comprehended the motion and ventured toward
the rock. Suddenly understanding his brother’s quiet and inactive
nature, Ealar turned back toward Neach with a look that most
closely resembled horror.

“
How in the-wh-where-WHAT?”
he yelled.

The response which met him was a simple nod
of the head by Neach. This cold winter’s morning, two village men
sat stunned beneath the cover of a large oak tree. In an
inexplicable series of events, a common day, which was meant to
deal with crops, now provided a much more fertile dilemma.

The men agreed to not speak of this until
their work on the plot was done. For the next few hours, they
tilled and groomed the land for the next planting, and checked the
progress of the already planted crops. The potatoes seemed to be
growing well, as their flowers poked out of the ground. A speckling
of pinks and white scattered throughout the field proved to be a
telling sign of a high crop yield in the years passed.

In many situations, it was commonplace to
add a combination of ground up roots to the soil to ensure healthy
growth. The winter was in full swing, and any extra measure which
could be taken to make sure that the crops survived was vital.

For what seemed like a century, the brothers
worked in silence, focused on the goal at hand. As the day came to
a close, and the sun began to slip below the hill’s crest, Ealar
and Neach found themselves in possession of blistered hands, and an
inkling of curiosity about the rock which they had found
earlier.

They gathered their tools and set off for
home, as darkness encapsulated the valley. In the winter, the work
days were much shorter in the winter, as they lacked a viable
source of light to keep them working after the sun had set. It took
quite a while for either brother to speak a word to the other, but
eventually it was Ealar who broke the silence.

“
What do you think it
means?” he asked with a puzzled look on his face. He spent the
majority of the walk with a look of disdain upon his face, as he
considered the significance of this rock in the middle of the
field.

“
I couldn’t tell you, to be
honest”, Neach offered, “maybe we should ask father.”

With both resolved to the fact that this was
the best course of action, they continued back to the village. As
Asgall and Ealar had both proclaimed, this part of the day was
always the worst. After a long day of demanding tasks, when all you
want is a hot meal and the comfort of your bed linens, a long walk
still awaits.

It dragged on for what seems like ages,
until they got to a fork, which led you in opposite directions of
the town. The fork was designed to make travel easier for those who
found themselves located on either side of the village. In its
earliest form, it was a simple dirt cutaway which provided a guide
for the weary travel, but in recent memory, stone borders had been
added to provide a more distinct outline in the darkness of the
night.

Tonight seemed unusually dark, Neach thought
to himself. The typical slight brightness offered by the moon
lacked presence, as it was hidden behind the encroaching clouds.
Enveloped in almost total darkness, Ealar and Neach suddenly
realized that they had headed in the wrong direction. Bound for the
other side of the village, the brothers sat down beside a tree
located just off the path. The exhaustion from the day of work was
taking its toll, and they decided it would be best to spend a few
minutes resting.

“
So how was the cabbage
looking on your side of the land,” a belabored Neach
asked.

“
I always knew you were a
freak,” responded Ealar.

In utter disbelief, Neach watched as his
attempt to engage in discussion with his brother turned into a
hostile attack against him.

“
You always keep to
yourself, you rarely smile, I always KNEW something was off about
you; now it makes sense,” continued the eldest brother.

“
What do you mean I’m a
freak?” asked Neach.

“
You saw that damned rock,
it had your name on it, why would it have your name on it?” a
volatile Ealar contested.

Easing into the realization of the events
unfolding before his eyes, Neach calmly responded to his brother
with a well thought out, respectful statement.

“
Well you can go to hell
then, you rat bastard!” exclaimed Neach.

Neach attempted to retract his previous
statement with a rationalized approach to what was occurring.

“
Look, we’ve seen some
things today, we’re exhausted, and this is all turning into
something I don’t like. Let’s put aside this bickering and figure
out how we’re going to get home in this darkness.”

In agreement, Ealar rose from the ground and
looked toward the west.

“
I think it’s this way,” he
proclaimed.

Without hesitation, the brothers headed
westward, hopefully toward the comfort of their own homes. Both
were brooding over the day, and it was unlikely that anything else
would be said for the rest of the night.

Again, they reached the fork, and this time
made the conscious decision to head in the direction they believed
was that of their home. With his legs barely functioning, Neach
struggled onward. Both men felt broken, emotionally and physically.
There was no recovery which would sooth their ailing hearts and
bodies quite as good as a long night’s sleep.

With thoughts of warmth and comfort dancing
around their minds, the brothers entered the gates of the village.
A candle was lit in the window slit of their hut, and it was clear
that someone remained awake inside.

Upon entering, it became apparent that this
someone was their father, Asgall.

He sat in his chair, with a glass of mulled
cider in his hand. Lacking interest in the boys, Asgall continued
to peer out the window into the darkness.

After removing their garments and slipping
into their sleep clothes, the brothers returned to the center of
the hut to present the predicament that they had discovered
earlier. Two more chairs sat across from Asgall as he relaxed next
to the fire. Ealar and Neach claimed one individually, and they
prepared to approach their father.

A short period of silence was broken by
Ealar. He seemed rather lively today, despite all of the work which
he had been engaging in earlier.

“
Father, we found something
today,” he blurted out.

His attention now drawn to his eldest son,
Asgall turned slowly toward him and gave him a puzzled look.

“
What is it that you think
you’ve found, son?” a weary Asgall questioned.

“We found a rock, it-it had Neach’s name on
it, his full name!” exclaimed Ealar.

With an abrupt turn back toward the window,
Asgall realized that this was the moment he had dreaded. It was
time to tell Neach the truth.

“
Ealar, would you mind
leaving your brother and I alone for a few minutes, please,” asked
Asgall.

A confused Ealar arose from his chair and
quickly scampered toward his room. The stage was set now, and
Asgall would need the performance of his life to recount the tale,
which had been circling through his mind lately.

Across from him sat the newly ordained man
of the village. Neach’s auburn hair was disheveled and filled with
dirt, and infant signs of a beard were evident underneath his jaw
line. From an outsider’s perspective, this moment seemed rather
calm, but from inside the hut, the tension was palpable. Heavy
breathing and an uncomfortable look upon Asgall’s face told the
tale enough for the curious eavesdropper, and after a period of
hesitation, he began to tell the story.

“
You were only just a boy
then, Neach, at my best guess a few days old at most. I went out to
our plot one day, it was typical of any other day really, but then
again what is typical,” rambled Asgall, “when I reached the field,
a stone caught my eye across the grass from where I stood.
Intrigued, I headed toward it, and when I got there, I couldn’t
believe what I was seeing. There you sat, wrapped in a robe, fast
asleep, behind a rock that bore the name ‘Coinneach’. I have
thought about this moment for years now, son, and I always thought
it would be easier than it is today.” The soliloquy of sorts was
finished with a large sigh by the tired older man. The toil which
this information had played on Asgall was evident by the bags under
his eyes, as a single tear rolled down his cheek.

To say Neach was confused would be the most
understated proclamation ever made. Not sure whether he should
scream, cry, or simply run away, he remained quiet and seated, as
everything he had ever known about his life was shattered before
his very eyes. He hadn’t had time to say anything before his legs
made the decision for him.

Away he ran, out of the house, into the
darkness of the night, without a single care about the danger of
the endeavor he was embarking on. Asgall held his hands on his
head, as he watched his son bolt through the frame of the door and
off into nothingness.