Chapter 21-
With a grunt, Gideon leapt to his horse, the early morning sun slowly warming his frigid hands. If he started now, he could make it to Fenway by evening and take the next day’s train back to Hilltop. While adjusting the saddle of his ride, he caught the sound of footsteps crossing the road to his right. He turned his head and caught Dasodaha in his sight, carrying a rucksack over his shoulder.
“Excuse me,” his call was worded politely, but spoken like a command. Daso broke his pace, but made no hurry of turning his gaze to the Captain.
“Excuse me,” Gideon repeated. The young Native man made no reply, the muscles of his face didn’t even budge. After a moment of silence between them, Gideon tried again.
“You’re a wanted criminal, Dasodaha.” No response. “Taking you in would be the most merciful thing I could do, and I’ve already let you off the hook for long enough. Any other officer would have killed you on sight.”
Daso refused to utter a word, to even open his mouth.
“Once it was said that the eyes carried more meaning than the lips.”
And Daso’s eyes told the Captain exactly what he felt. For a moment, they stared at each other, into each other, and eventually through each other. The cold morning wind stirred up Daso’s long hair, bringing it over his face, but never able to obscure his piercing green eyes.
Gideon felt frustration build up in his chest, compounding on itself every moment.
…
After a minute passed like this, Gideon scoffed and looked back down at his horse.
“Very well then, but…” he paused for a moment. “I think I trust you…”
…
“You have that resolve.”
With a flick of his arms, he was off, riding at the wind. Daso had won, his silence had choked Gideon’s supremacy out. Whenever he needed to assert his authority over a recruit, he used his voice, his presence, but Daso had subverted that.
“Defying the idea of authority… I wonder, can God exist in that man’s world at all?” These thoughts floated through his mind like the birds above his head, all in the direction of Fenway.
That is, save for one bird. It flew towards Sigrit, white feathers, silver-tipped, and a peculiarly shaped beak. A petrichor.
---
Two days later, the town gathered for the funeral of Eli Halloway. At one time, there had been a priest presiding over the community, but he had passed away himself many years ago. In his wake, no other holy man ever arrived; they were left stranded by the Church, missed by the railroad, perhaps not important enough.
Stranded in a Godless countryside.
The procession was short, a few townspeople who had known him better got to the front to say a word. Most spoke about his hardworking nature, his gallant spirit, and his courage for raising a bright daughter all on his own. Janna stood at the front in a modest black dress, and spent most of her time looking down or to the side.
Gallow watched the traditional burial ceremony with a quiet respect for the man. He gazed over at Janna, to make sure she was ok.
“What am I thinking?” he chided himself. “Of course she’s not ok…”
She kept a stoic expression over her face, she looked strong and mature. “I can do it,” she thought. “I’m going to be ok…”
The first heap of dirt was tossed over the casket. Janna felt the strength being knocked out of her core, like she wanted to vomit up all of her sadness. She held for a moment while they threw more dirt on top. It was a vain effort, she couldn’t stop the mounting agony inside of her from bursting open. She felt the first inevitable tears hitting her eyes and cast her head down. Seeing the casket was one thing, but the burial was the final testament to the irreversible change that had occurred. There was no going back, no Springwater to make everything alright.
Gallow watched the girl break down and fall apart, her legs frozen stiff, like a corpse. It was not a dramatic weeping, it was a quiet, tortured moment of suffering.
He recalled his time in the waters, when he watched his memory laid out to bear. Nobody was moving, like they were afraid to come to her side.
Nobody knew what to do. Gallow thought very intensely for a moment.
“Of course,” he silently noted to himself. “It’s obvious what to do.”
Gallow walked quietly to Janna’s side and laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him through her tears. She didn’t have the strength to return the gesture in kind, but she didn’t need to.
He smiled down at her, through his own heartache.
“There’s too much crying recently, don’t ya’ think?”
---
The clamor of wheels on tracks echoed off of the rising buildings and towers of Hilltop. Birds perched on ledges and rooftops fluttered away in a panic. Nature had not yet adjusted to the age of steam and steel.
“And perhaps it never will…” Gideon pondered, stepping onto the platform amidst the throngs of exiting passengers. In times of peace like these, the countryside was too quiet to satisfy his soul. He had realized long ago, after his first taste of combat in the Andeidran-Demeena War, that tranquility only really gained value when it was against chaos. As such, the intensity of city life was the only sensible option for him.
The fight with Warren had been taxing and near-fatal, but it was a meager highlight compared to the boring journey that bookended it.
Upon arriving at his upscale apartment, complete with warm running water and electric wiring, he took a seat at his desk and sent a telegraph to an old friend.
Just within city limits, situated on the coastline against the crashing waves, Hilltop Medical Academy stood resolute. A towering building, modeled after the classical architecture of the forefathers of modern medical science, its pillars held up a massive marble ceiling, topped with a sweeping dome, itself tipped with a bronze spear that seemed to blossom out into a three-petaled flower: a reference to Amanacles, the ancient God of Medicine and charity, who had tried to bestow upon the world a panacea in the form of a flower. The flower was stolen away by Hephenon, the God of the Earth, who felt it was his property, who doomed it to only be attainable by those below the ground it was planted on. The modern interpretation of this story saw it as a message that a utopic cure-all was a vain and foolish pursuit, only reachable by death. The designers of the Medical Academy, however, decided to subvert the fable and place the flower as high as possible, as if to say that the path to a miraculous world without illness lay below, in the halls that regularly housed the greatest minds in the country, if not the world.
It was under this flower, in a building with history weaved into its bricks, that a man resided in his study, patiently filing paperwork. His desk was carved from beautiful dark wood, atop it was a placard which read: “HEAD DOCTOR, Angelique BLACKWELL.” He was dressed in a black silk undershirt, typically worn beneath a white leather coat that hung to his knees. His lengthy blond hair was draped over his shoulders and tied into a ponytail, as well as braided along his left bang.
His attention was stolen away by the clicking of the teleprinter at his right-hand side. He leaned over and reached for the message, printed on admittedly cheap stock paper.
“DEAR Angelique
CURRENTLY IN HILLTOP AFTER ASSIGNMENT
TIME FOR A VISIT AT ACADEMY?
I AM FREE TOMORROW
CAPT GIDEON JEPTA”
Blackwell’s eyes lit up, a smile came to his lips when he read Gideon’s name.
“Ah, Gideon!” he exclaimed to himself. “It’s certainly been a while…”
Happy to take a break from his work, he set about returning the invitation, promptly and gleefully accepting. For a moment, he considered using more than two punctuation marks to show off his affluence, but laughed off the idea; it wasn’t Gideon’s style of humor.
The next day, the Captain’s brown leather boots clacked up the ornately carved stairs of the Academy. He arrived up the flight of stairs to a set of great bronze doors, gently pushing one open. For a moment, the sound of crashing waves and birds invaded the marble halls. Stretching tens of feet high and many more long, the main hall of the Academy was decorated with paintings and sculpture celebrating the great thinkers of history.
Gideon, who had not visited in some years, found himself again as astonished as he had been on his first viewing. Truly, this building was a monument not only to medicine, but to art and history.
Angeliqueue, alone in his study, curiously checked the clock at his desk before having his attention stolen by a knock at the door.
“Ah!” he exclaimed in his usual way.
Upon opening the door, he was greeted by the kind face of Gideon Jepta. When their eyes met, Angelique assumed a stiff salute, breaking their gaze to look off with a stony expression. After a moment of holding the position, his cheeks puffed and a smile curled at his lips. Gideon also tried his best to suppress a wobbly grin until both friends burst out laughing.
“Don’t mess with me like that, Angelique!” Gideon snorted.
“Hey, but you’re back from assignment, aren’t you?” the doctor replied. “I was giving you a hero’s welcome!”
Gideon chuckled. “Yeah, well, it’s just good to be back home…”
“You’re from Hilltop, aren’t you?” Angelique posed.
“Born and raised,” came the response.
“Hey, do you ever notice a difference between natives and foreigners?”
Gideon sauntered over to the chair opposite Angelique’s desk.
“Oh, and have a seat,” his friend added.
Gideon got comfortable in the plush leather chair while Angelique did the same at his desk.
“Well, to answer your question,” the officer started. “Besides asking for directions, I notice a lot of foreigners won’t order mustard in their pork stew.”
“You need to admit,” Angelique shot back. “That’s an acquired taste.”
“Alright, alright,” Gideon conceded. “But the thing that really peeves me off…” he left the sentence hanging for dramatic effect.
“Yeah?” Angelique asked tensely, playing into his friend’s setup.
“...Is people who call the Godking Tower the Hoover Tower.”
Angelique sat up, eyes wide. “I call it the Hoover Tower!!”
“You do?!”
“Yes!” he cried. “I’m sorry!”
“You friggin’ tourist!!” Gideon howled with laughter.
They leaned back in their seats and chortled over the exchange for a few minutes. Eventually, when the conversation lost a topic, Gideon decided to speak up after thinking hard about what he was going to say.
“Hey, Angelique?”
“Hm?”
“I hate to ask this favor of you,” the officer looked down at his twiddling thumbs. “But… at the Academy here… do you offer any kind of… scholarships?”
Angelique blinked at him for a moment.
“Scholarships?” he responded. “Well, I suppose we do… it’s rare, but we’ve made some exceptions.”
“What kind of exceptions?”
Angelique held his chin for a moment.
---
Janna walked from the funeral alone, save for Gallow. He walked her back to her house; it was around dusk. She slowly opened the creaking door and stepped inside. Before closing it, she paused and looked up at him.
“Mr Gallow…” she managed slowly.
“Yeah?” he offered kindly.
“...Thank you for… today…”
He gave her a small, strong smile and replied, “Of course, no problem.”
The door closed, and the sheriff of Sigrit took a deep breath before turning himself around back in the direction of his office. Upon rotating, he caught sight of Sonsee, standing against the setting sun, a little under ten feet away, staring at him pensively.
“Hey,” he called in a relaxed voice to her.
“I watched the funeral,” she said quietly. “It would be inappropriate for me to attend for someone I’d only heard of.”
“Not at all,” Gallow replied. “I know you care about Janna at least a little bit,” he chuckled.
She held her tongue for a moment and looked down at the ground; she was just a silhouette before the setting sun.
“I saw what you did when she started crying,” she said. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Thanks,” Gallow said before he took a step and began to walk, adding, “it wasn’t anything,” as he passed her. He was five feet away when she spoke up again.
“I know that whatever you think of yourself… You’re a good person.”
He stopped walking and pivoted one foot in her direction, looking sideways at her, wordless.
“Sonsee…” he slowly began. “I know that you’re probably hurting from losing the Garden as well, but I want you to know… I don’t think we ever truly lose the spirits of the people we love… until we stop carrying them in our hearts.”
She stared back for a long moment.
“Then…” a little smile appeared across her face. “I’ll carry them all in my heart… the dead… and the living…”
“Of course…” and he walked away.
---
As Janna slept that night her dreams were infected with agony, she awoke, only to be greeted by the house that could only remind her of what she had lost. The next day, she asked Gabriel if she could move into the inn for a while, if there was any space available, of course.
The elderly saloon-owner looked at her and smirked.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he claimed. “But this is not the type of establishment a young’n such as yourself should be frequenting…”
---
“You want me to-?” Gallow asked with confusion.
“I can’t keep her at the inn, where all the fighting and drinking goes on,” Gabriel proclaimed. “So I figured the next best option was to ask you. You’ve got space for her, don’t ya’?”
“Well… I suppose I do…” he answered, running through the logistics in his head. “It’s just a lot to spring on a guy, y’know?
“Sounds like a yes to me!”
Gallow sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I guess I was gonna say yes anyway…”
Janna arrived at his doorstep the next day, carrying trunks of books and clothes. Gallow, unused to both of these things, lacked the immediate storage space to keep them in. She found herself keeping her clothes hanging in the small closet adjacent to the side-room she slept in. Her bed was a makeshift of an old mattress lended them by Gabriel and some blankets from her home which she’d kept since childhood. During the day, she remained in her own space, studying diligently. With no extra space to keep her books, they piled up around her bed, creating a kind of wall around her sleeping area.
The days passed like this for some time. Weeks passed, and she remained in a semi-depressed stupor, pouring herself into her reading.
One evening, Gallow returned from a town hall meeting, where he had reported the usual lack of any activity which required his intervention. It was close to ten at night, and upon hanging up his coat and hat, he took a moment to breathe. His eye was caught by a ray of light crawling out from beneath the crack of her door.
“She’s still up?” he thought, somewhat annoyed. He approached the door and opened it quietly, prepared to tell her to go to bed, but was greeted instead by Janna, already asleep, with an open book on her chest, the lamp at her bedside still on.
A wholesome smile crept onto his face at the sweet scene. He carefully crept over to her bedside and knelt down to turn out the light.
“She really is a sweet girl…” he ruminated. “Every time I’m around her, she has this quality that calms me down… even when I’m stressed with being around people, and even in her depressed state, she always puts me at ease…”
---
One quiet morning, Gallow was perched in his chair, dreaming the day away, when he hear a knock at the door.
“Hey, g’morning,” he greeted the visitor. It was a man he had never seen before, with a bushy mustache and having seemingly just dismounted from his horse. He was dressed in a blue, government-issued uniform with copper buttons and a short brimmed cap.
“Post office, a letter here from Hilltop,” he said gruffly, handing an envelope to Gallow before jumping back onto his horse and taking off.
“Hilltop…?” he wondered aloud.
“Hey Janna,” he called, opening her door. “There’s a letter for you.”
After retreating back to his own space, he waited a moment, hearing the sound of crinkling paper opening and stationary being taken out. A minute passed while he pictured her reading whatever had been sent. Then another passed. And another.
Without warning, the door opened softly. There stood Janna, with a dreamy look on her face.
“Yeah? Is something wrong?” he asked worriedly.
She looked at him for a few seconds, trying to find the right words, before bringing the letter up to her face.
“It’s… a scholarship…” her voice was timid but full of repressed energy.
“A-a what now?”
“It’s a scholarship!” she suddenly squealed.
“To…?”
“To Hilltop Medical Academy!”
He looked at her with disbelief. “Are you certain about that…?”
“Gallow, I read it!”
He looked at her silently for a moment.
“Well,” he started. “I guess we’re going to Hilltop!”
---
Hidden away behind the brick gauntlet in a faraway land…
“Your Lord, Warren Roseraid has been killed.”
“Killed?”
“Yes.”
“Is that confirmed by the Clubs?”
“It has just been so, yes Lord.”
“...You know the next logical step, I assume?”
“To contact The Tiger?”
“Indeed... it’s time for that man to emerge... from his absent tomorrow.”
“As you wish, Lord.”