Marek (Buried Lore Book 1) (10 page)

Celeste
passed the boy some food but the father grabbed it out of his son’s hand and
shoved it into his own mouth, chomping the food in his few remaining teeth. The
woman did not look at her husband. She seemed detached from the rest of us.
Perhaps it was her weariness. The boy watched his father eat. He had done this
before, waiting patiently for his father to pass him his share, but the older
did not look to sharing. Instead he had the guarded look of a dog waiting for
another dog to take his bone away.

I
decided not to put up with such vulgarity so I passed both the woman and the
boy some food and instructed them to eat. The father, his brows knitted and jaw
clamped, stared at me. I felt a tingle at the back of my neck as if I had just
encountered a fierce beast. There was something wrong with this man and I
detected a mind diseased. The mother passed her portion to the son who picked
at his food nervously, one eye on his father. I wondered whether I might have
done the wrong thing and the mother and son would pay for this action later.

The
man answered Zola’s queries on their destination. He had lost his fur trade as
animal numbers were down that year, and he was travelling to another town
hoping to find work. He complained of foreigners who had migrated from areas
where pelts were plentiful, as well as those who had plundered across borders,
bringing their booty to sell at local town markets. The quality of their furs
brought a much higher price
than his own
.

The
man also told us that in his travels they had found several slaughtered animals
unaccountably left to rot, the meat too far gone to eat, and the pelts too
mottled and unusable. He said that something wasn’t right in the forest. Zola
assured him it was just other animals preying on the weaker ones to store fat
on their bodies at the beginning of winter.

When
there was nothing left in the small pot, the father stood and barked orders for
his wife and son to follow. The woman nodded her thanks and the boy, with his
small elfin face, stared longingly at us. I watched them disappear into the
trees and wondered where they would spend such a cold night and whether they
too would warm themselves near a fire. I could sense that the woman was unwell.

I
curled up once again nearest to Celeste to keep her warm. She accepted the
warmth though I could still feel the tension in her body: apprehension that
something bad might happen should she sleep.

Some
time during the night I awoke to a noise, like the grunting of an animal in
distress. Zola was missing. I could feel her presence, for my senses in this
regard had heightened over the week. I was taking more notice of those sounds
in my head that I once thought
were
nothing. Little by
little my ability to hear the words of others over longer distances was
increasing. I could hear Zola’s voice but I could also hear another. ‘Dead?’
someone whispered.

I
followed some tracks in the mushy earth. My skill had also given me better
night vision and the tracks were easy to see, leading me to Zola. She was
talking in hushed tones to the young boy from dinner. Zola did not look up. She
would have heard me coming the moment I stepped away from the camp. The boy was
nodding.

There
was a pile of clothing on the ground near both of them, and as I stepped
towards it I
realised
with horror that it was the
boy’s mother. I rolled her over to see her eyes staring vacantly upwards to the
tops of the trees.

‘What
happened?’

‘The
father has abandoned them, and his mother has died from her illness,’ answered
Zola. ‘The boy must come with us.’ Zola’s thoughts were unreadable and there was
a sense of calmness about the boy. We stripped the woman’s coat from her and
placed it around the boy’s skinny frame. I also took her shoes. The boy did not
grieve for his mother’s passing; rather, he was eager to be gone from her body,
as if he barely knew her or perhaps did not accept it was really her there dead
on the ground.

Back
at the fire Celeste had awakened, appearing anxious and agitated. I explained
about the boy. For the rest of the night I could not sleep with visions of the
dead mother, and, although I did not feel much goodness from the father, I was
still concerned about him. Even those with diseased minds are often in need of
charity.

Once
I heard the boy’s sleeping breaths, and checked that Zola’s eyes were closed
too, I crept away from the camp. Only Celeste saw me go and I smiled
reassuringly to indicate that I would be back soon. Under a fall of sleet I
followed the tracks to the tree where the woman lay. This led to more
footprints, one large and one small foot, when suddenly stumbling over what I
thought to be a large mound of earth or a dead animal. I rubbed the spot on my
leg to make sure nothing was damaged and then reached to feel the lumpy ground.
Touching something soft and furry, which I took to be an animal, my hand then felt
the leathery hardened face of a man.

My
eyes adjusted slowly and I saw that it was the man we had seen earlier that
evening. I listened for his breath that wasn’t there and lifted him into a
sitting position only to feel that his body was almost skeletal and weightless.
I had only seen him hours before, so how could his body have deteriorated so
quickly? Then I remembered the body in the village. It too had been shrunken
almost beyond recognition.

‘I
had to do it.’ Zola stood close by, magically appearing beneath a narrow shaft
of moonlight. I had not heard her come and my heart pounded with fear.

‘Do
what? You mean you did this…but…’ I stammered. How? I wanted to know but Zola
was quick to take the remains from me and throw them far into a thicket.

The thought that Zola could be responsible for this killing was slightly
repulsive yet she was not only
mesmerising
and
intriguing
,
she had another attraction
. She was powerful.

‘It
is what you do with garbage,’ she said, as she turned to walk back to the camp.

‘And
the mother’s death?’ I said, trying to keep up with her.

‘I
helped with that a little,’ she said shrugging her shoulders. ‘But I only
shortened her life by days. She was ill and would have died a painful death, so
bad was the infection in her lungs.’

I
turned Zola gently by the arm so that she would look me in the eyes. ‘Tell me.
Are you a demon? Are you what those villagers fear most?’

‘I
am what I am, just as you are. We cannot change who we are. I am not a monster,
Marek
. In time you will see that.’

‘But
the boy,’ I protested. ‘What about his parents? He is orphaned now.’

‘The
man beat his wife and son. He was a tyrant who spent coin in houses of gambling
and drinking, instead of food for his family. He got what was coming.’

‘But
do you not think we could have helped him? The man was in need of help too.’

Zola
laughed harshly. ‘You have a lot to learn about life. It is brutal in the
forest. You are not coddled here like you are on your island in your safe
little house above the beach, with the sun shining and a constant supply of
food from the sea. Out here in my country, people steal, kill and do anything
they can to save
themselves
, and forget anyone else!
What did you think that man would do to his son after the mother died? Do you
honestly think he would provide for him? No,
Marek
.
You are still too young to see that the boy would eventually have been so
starved he would have fallen on the ground, too weak to walk, and then
abandoned by the father he should have trusted above all else. And should he
have survived the trek to wherever they were aimlessly headed, he would have
likely been sold.’

I
thought about her words and I was suddenly overcome with guilt. Her description
made me sound privileged and she was right. I had come from paradise with a
caring father who had raised me well. Food and warmth had been plentiful, and
kindness nearby.

‘And
the boy?’ I asked. ‘Does he know his father is dead too?’

‘He
saw me kill his mother but he will not remember. I have made sure that he
forgets the image. I have told him his father left and his mother died of her
illness. He is accepting of this for he has seen tragedy before. He will come
with us and he will learn and be useful. I will find him some work to do.’

I
wondered if perhaps this was her aim all along and tried to erase the thought
from my head; after all, she had done so much for us. If not for her, both
Celeste and I might have died back at the village, our bodies burned and
remains thrown to the wolves.

Though
I was still both mystified and horrified at the death of the man, I could not
bring myself to ask her by what terrifying black magic he had been executed.

We
returned to our camp to find the fire still blazing, again from Zola’s magic. I
found Celeste and the boy sitting across from one another. No longer did the
boy’s face wear his worry, replaced by a wide-eyed look of expectation and
curiosity.

‘Are
we leaving today?’ he asked. ‘Are we going to the town as you said?’

‘Of
course, Zeke,’ said Zola. She perched down beside the boy like a bear with its
cub.

I
ruffled the child’s head with his mass of soft brown locks, and looked to Zola
who, it seemed, had saved us all.

Celeste

Marek
was fooled. Zola had won another of her own games. If only he could
have seen her then – really seen her – like I could. They told me
that the boy’s parents had abandoned him but I knew the truth. I could see that
Marek
lied when he told me
this
as he could not meet my eyes. He did not know the real truth and in some way I
was glad to be without a voice. What I had seen was so horrific it was almost
unmentionable. He did not know that it was I who woke him up when I returned to
the fire running, my heart thumping loudly in my ears, and collapsing at my
camp bed. I had clutched my ears and closed my eyes to try and shut out the
images of Zola taking the life from the man in the crudest of ways. I had
followed Zola through the forest and stood hidden behind trees.

I
wondered how long I would have to put up with their lies and how long it would
be before we were all killed.

Later,
that morning, when our eyes met I could tell that she knew I had been there.
She wanted me to see, perhaps to instill more fear. I watched as she had killed
the boy’s parents. I also saw her kill the man first with a poisonous kiss. He
did not move, rooted to the ground as if under a spell. She pressed her lips
against his neck and then his mouth. At first he did not seem to mind, then his
arms went up to grab Zola’s neck to stop her but by then he had weakened and
collapsed.

Zola
warned the woman she would die without pain. But pain was not the mother’s
concern. She wanted to live long enough to see her boy to the next town to find
her brother. She said she only had days to live but wanted to make sure the boy
was looked after. I watched as the boy pleaded for his mother’s life. Zola’s
feeble reassurances of the boy’s safety weren’t enough to allow the woman to
die peacefully. After that I ran back to camp.

Marek
gave me the dead woman’s shoes to replace the strips of leather on my feet. I
chose to wear them, not to keep out the wet, but to not upset the boy, nor
offend the memory of his mother.

The
boy’s head rested against Zola’s knee. It might have seemed a tender moment to
some yet I wanted to be sucked into the ground, to disappear and be free from
the demon that had captured
Marek’s
heart. I felt
terror, yes. But more than that, I felt hatred. She had bewitched him also to
believe the parents had abandoned their son. The child witnessed it all, yet
when he first came back with Zola from his mother’s execution he had the dazed
look of someone who had just woken from a long sleep.

By
Zola, he was given the new name of Zeke, and whatever she had done had cured
him of many bad memories. He did not remember his name or the village he had come
from. He talked about other things he remembered doing like hunting and his
mother’s cooking. Zola described her house and said that he could work for her
and eat as much as he wanted.

‘Do
you like pony rides, Zeke?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘I know a woman who owns a
big house with lots of horses. I will take you there. My special friend, Jean,
and I will teach you to ride.’

‘Who’s
Jean?’ asked
Marek
.

‘Jean
is someone I have known a long time He is one of us,
Marek
.’
They exchanged a look and Zeke didn’t miss it either. He too knew there was a
secret between them, yet he was young enough to accept charity from anywhere.
Zola was making his new life sound very exciting, yet I saw some doubt in his
head. There were pieces of this puzzle missing, which he could not explain. I
would somehow find a way for us to escape this devil.

‘I
wish Mama could come too,’ he said. ‘She likes ponies.’

The
four of us now travelled along the pathway that would likely lead us all to
hell. The tracks here looked familiar. I had a memory of this. I had been here
before.