Chapter 3 - Strangers

Gudja had not slept a wink the entire night. This was partly due to having been asleep, or more like passed out, for a large part of the day, but also because he had not been able to calm his thoughts.

Reality of the past day had been all too different from what he had expected when he descended the mountain. He did not yet have the words to describe all the thoughts circling in his mind but the overwhelming sense of helplessness and loneliness overcame him time and time again. By the time birds begun to chirp outside, his eyes were red and swollen from multiple rounds of crying, such that the woman ordered him to go out to the stream and wash his face the first thing she woke up.

After washing his face, he returned to the hut to find the woman stirring a thin broth which she promptly handed to him with a jerk of her chin telling him to eat. Gudja fumbled in his basket and found his satchel containing the crystals. He took one out and placed it on the woman’s hand.

“Baba, are these stones of any value?”, he asked.

“Ahh, cloud crystals eh”, she responded after observing the soft sparkling shard in the sunlight for some time. “A piece like this could sell for three silvers.”

As Gudja attempted to return the satchel to its place, she shook her head.

“You can’t give this to me boy”, she said. “What can I do with it out here. Noone will buy it from me. They can’t afford it. Days will come for you where you wishes you has some extra coins.”

“But then how can I repay you? This is all I have”, Gudja said anxiously.

“You gives me a night of company, boy. That is enough. Now, let’s go eh?”

Contrary to one’s expectation, the woman walked briskly, seemingly unaffected by her arched back. She led the way, he followed. They spoke very little as they circled the fields surrounding the village, avoiding any uncomfortable encounters with the village people. For additional comfort though, they had tied a cloth around his head to cover the protrusions.

After some time, they arrived at a house built slightly sturdier than others, with a decent gate and smoke drifting from its proper chimney. This house was also set a little apart from the main village, though not quite as remote as the shack the woman lived in.

“Beard! Beard!” the woman shouted as they walked up to the house.

A man some twenty years younger than her emerged from the rear of the building, a hammer in hand.

“What is it, you old hag!” he bellowed back, making Gudja flinch.

The man turned from the woman to look at her companion and rolled his eyes.

“Look beard, I just need you to take this boy to Tolbrij”, she said sternly.

“Fine. But only because you asks me”, the bearded man scoffed. “Get in the cart! We leave as soon as I finish stowing.”

He observed the boy from head to toe with a disdainful look in his eyes and walked away muttering to himself, “should have seen this coming…”

Gudja turned to the old woman nervously.

“Boy, that beard owes me long time. He will bring you to Tolbrij in one piece”, she comforted him.

“Now, you should remember this well. When you is in Tolbrij, find the Obelisk. A tall pillar with lots of writing. From there you walks down the street of smiths until you finds a sign with a hand with six fingers. That gaffer has an eye for peculiarities eh.”

“The obelisk, the street of smiths, six fingers…”, he repeated.

“Obelisk, street of smiths, six fingers… six fingers…”

“Aye, that’s all a hag like me can do for you young man.”

He could feel tears flooding his eyes again and blinked in a hurry.

There was really not much to say about the journey to Tolbrij. The horses pulled the cart loaded with crates of produce along the winding road down the valley. Gudja attempted to thank the owner of the cart but he would have none of it. Instead he would glare at the boy if he so much as turned to look at him, but unexpectedly tossed him a quarter loaf of bread as they camped for a night on the roadside.

And so, the journey continued in silence with just the rattling of the wheels and the occasional screech of a bird of prey circling the rocky terrain. At dusk on the second day, they reached the gates.

The guard called out to them, “What business?”

“Crops and wool!”, he shouted back and the gate was promptly opened.

The check was mainly a way for the townspeople to know whether a formal welcome was needed and judge the capacity of the market. They were barely past the gates when the bearded man spoke directly to Gudja for the first time.

“That’s it, get off”, he said impatiently.

Gudja scrambled to his feet and uttered a quick word of thanks as he hopped off the cart.

The dusty air hit him first. Men and women – though mostly unwashed men with hoarse voices – were kicking up dust from the dry ground as they bustled about, grooming horses and loading carts.

What bothered the boy from the mountain more though were the inner voices of this mass of humans.

Everything from small wishes to thoughts which were much more alike to what he had learnt greed to be were screaming inside his head.

Thanks to the cloth around his head, no stones were thrown at him and he did not hear the dreaded word “devil”, but his disorientated fumbling still drew some stares.

Trying his best to ignore the most disturbing of the greed he could sense from his surroundings, he followed the directions he had been given – to the obelisk and the street of smiths. The sign of a hand with six fingers stood out with it’s distasteful embellishments despite the rust and dirt which covered it.

At this point, Gudja had given up trying to think of his purpose, what he was looking for, or what he had hoped for in the new world. Each step he took through the mass of people – little did he know that this was just a tiny northern town, each turn and decision he had to make was overwhelming.

He could not think of anything beyond what was to come in the next moment.

Cautiously, he knocked the door to the narrow building, squashed in a row of equally narrow buildings on either side.

After a while, the door was opened by a young man in his twenties. Short dark hair was trimmed at his ears and his shirt thrown on as if he had answered the door in a hurry.

“What”, he said impatiently.

“Good day sir”, Gudja started politely but this made the man frown and grow even more impatient.

“You want my old man, he dead. Two winters ago” he said drearily, seemingly having had to say the same to many visitors before Gudja.

Then, something caught his attention.

“What’s this”, he asked as he grabbed at the cloth around the visitor’s head.

Gudja immediately drew back and mumbled something inaudible, which was clearly not to the liking of the man. He made a second grab at the pale boy, this time gripping his arm tightly, and tearing off the cloth to reveal the deformation.

By this time, they had drawn attention to themselves and passers-by gasped at the revelation. However this time, there was no obvious fear in their reaction, but rather suspicion and curiosity. Nonetheless, it did not take long for him to be tackled to ground and dragged away by guards who had detected the commotion.

He was now sitting in a damp cell, if it could even be called a cell. It was in a corner of a watch tower, one of a couple of cages barred to the front but separated from each other by slabs of wood. Most of his belongings had been taken from him, but they had not been particularly thorough and he still had his satchel underneath his clothes.

Although to be completely honest, he felt like the small fortune was not of any use if people did not even speak to him.

It seemed hopeless.

He drifted his attention to his sixth sense. The cell next to his own had been bothering him for a while. The greed of whoever was captured there was so intense that it was drowning out all other noise. He could barely even sense the guards half way down the hallway.

“Sir”, he whispered, but jumped when he actually received a response.

“Hah, I am not a ‘sir’ right now”, said the other side bitterly.

“If I may ask…”, Gudja said slowly.

“Whatever it is, stranger.”

“Why do you wish so strongly for reputation, for recognition?”

There was a moment of silence.

“What did you just say…?”, the other side of the wall said after a while.

“I asked, sir, why..”

“I know what you asked, god dammit, how do you know I need reputation? What are you, a sorcerer?”, the man asked, clearly agitated.

Gudja realised that his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

“My apologies, sir, I am not sure what you would call me… but I am just a human who can sense your greed… so I have been taught”, he tried to salvage it.

After another painful pause the voice prompted, “Tell me more.”

While it was predominantly Gudja who told the story of his village and his journey the past couple of days, the man, who turned out to be just two years his senior and called himself Falco, shared that the family of the woman he loved disapproved of him. Hence, his strong desire for recognition.

They had sent him away as they thought he was a threat to the girl’s integrity. He had escaped his more comfortable exile only to be caught and placed in this temporary cell by the town’s guard who did not know what to do with him.

To put it the way Falco did; he had to return quickly before she did anything stupid, as she was a rather bullheaded and tenacious woman, though he did not share details on what exactly she may do.

Gudja was not sure what it meant for a woman, or even a man for that matter, to be bullheaded and tenacious. He knew what a bull was. It was a male cow which would charge with his deadly horns. He had never seen a living bull but the elders had displayed the skull of one for the children to learn.

Perhaps Falco's lover had a male head with horns. Not that Gudja really knew what a lover was either.

Falco showed the most interest in the history Gudja had been taught in his community, to compare it to what he claimed was the reality and lectured the boy from the secluded settlements on the current state of the world.

The night was young and gave the two prisoners plenty of time to exchange stories and laugh from time to time at just how ignorant Gudja was of the world.