Airel - Aaron Patterson [19]
The man had a name, but none could pronounce it in human tongue. The people of his village knew him simply as Kreios.
The cold wind was whipping but dead, along with his wife. He felt all of it was forced on him with equally outrageous swiftness by the cruelest winter he could remember. He wished only to honor her, not to compare such empty things to one so full of life, warmth, and beauty.
He dug a shallow grave in the rock hard frozen earth under the very oak tree where they had proclaimed their love for one another only five years earlier. He could still feel her heart in his memory, fluttering with anticipation. He had gotten down on his knees, poured out his soul, and vowed to love only her forever and into eternity.
Now he poured out his soul once again, drowning it in her grave—and he felt the unjust spitefulness of a life lived in subjection to reality. He placed her cold body into the colder ground. Now, the snow made everything look clean and fresh, providing a bitter irony in contrast to what would be the last thing he would do for her.
The baby cried and wriggled in his arms. Kreios turned and went back inside his mud hut, and shut the cold out with a thud. He wrapped his daughter tighter in the warm skins, put her in his own bed and lay down with her. When she fell asleep he rose again, restless. She would need milk soon. He knew where he had to go to get it. Two days walk from his small village was a town called Gratzipt. His brother lived there with his wife and she was with child. She would have the precious mother’s milk his daughter would need.
Crouching down, poking at the fire in the center of the small hut, he tried to think. No matter how he looked at it, he would have to take her there. Milk was the only life source for a newborn child—nothing else would do. But there was not one mother in this village who would give suck to his little girl. Not in the winter and not for someone like Kreios. This village had written him off years ago. They were scared of him and his odd skin color. His strange ways. Even under the scorching summer sun his skin always kept its pale tone; never burning or darkening. Local myths cast him as a wizard or worse.
Brother will take me in or I shall die myself. I will not let my sweet girl starve to death. With the sure and steady hands of a warrior, he pulled on his thick heavy coat. He gathered all the scraps of dried meat, putting them, along with his few worldly possessions, in a leather pack. He took a sling and placed the baby into it, then hung it around his neck, carefully tucking her close to his chest under his heavy coat.
He tightened the thick leather belt around his waist in preparation for his journey, and walked out the door into the crisp winter air. The howling wind had subsided now, and he reflected on the change now undeniable in his life and that of his little girl, and felt an overriding peace—if even for a moment. It is you and me now.
He thought about the long walk that lay ahead and the chance that the Brotherhood might be watching the roads. She had no chance of making it for two days. She needed to eat within the next few hours. He knew she would be dead by the time he reached his brother’s village if he delayed any longer.
It will draw out the Brotherhood and would violate the pact. “I must,” he said simply, into the thinning winds. In this statement, the future, with all its potential for good or evil, seemed to be encapsulated.
Kreios shook his head heavily and padded silently through the snow toward the road with the village to his back. In about one hundred paces he would be in the woods, under cover. They will know—they have eyes everywhere. He did not bother to argue with himself further. There was no use fighting nature. For his beautiful child he would risk his life, as well as that of his brother, if that was what was required.
Kreios reached the edge of the wood. The forest had been named for the small and remote village it hemmed in, the place