Chapter 24-
“What is it dear??” a man asked frantically, joining his wife in the doorway. When he saw the scene which had unfolded in their room, an expression of shock came over his own face.
“What the hell-” he reacted before turning his head down the hall.
“There’s a murder!” he shouted. “A murder in our room, by a savage woman!”
Sonsee had no other option; she pushed Fars’ body off of her spear and collapsed it before hobbling toward the entrance.
“Stop!” the husband commanded, holding his hand out.
“[VANISHING POINT]...”
She made sure that her path put her to the right of the door, so that she was able to create an axis around her that would spin the man through the doorway. He emerged from her ability frazzled and confused, suddenly finding himself at the back of the room.
With all of her energy, Sonsee hurried out of the room. She passed the woman, who screamed directly into her face in terror. Sonsee closed her eyes and grimaced unpleasantly. When the woman was done shrieking, she opened her eyes and flashed her perhaps the most honest glare of her life.
“I’m really not in the mood for this,” she thought, clutching her wound.
The blonde woman fainted at the sight of a muscular savage woman covered in blood and looking none too pleased. Realizing that help would be coming within seconds, Sonsee continued on her path to their car.
---
The door flew open, Gallow looked up from his bunk bed to see Sonsee, drenched in blood and looking exhausted.
“Sonsee-!”
Her eyes darted about the room for a moment until she saw Janna, looking up surprisedly from a book. Relieved, she let herself collapse to the ground.
“Sonsee?!” Gallow repeated, leaping from the bed to her side. He knelt down and saw that she was still conscious. “Alright, I need to roll you over,” he explained, taking a vial from his jacket pocket.
Now that she was face-up, he was able to dispense a vial of Spring water to her wound. In a moment, it was healed and she slowly sat up and leaned against the door.
“Janna,” she began. “Where did you go?”
Janna looked at her without a clue.
“I went to the bathroom,” she answered. “And when I came out, you were gone, so I came back here to look for you.”
Sonsee’s face turned dead serious.
“There was an assassin on the train.”
“What??” Gallow and Janna exclaimed in unison. From the side of the room, leaning against the window, Bleech looked on with a suppressed curiosity.
“A man attacked me while I was looking for Janna,” she continued. “He was a Vocation-user.”
“A- a-?” Gallow tried to grasp at the situation. “But that means someone was trying to kill you?”
“There’s no reason that someone would try to assassinate me,” Sonsee argued. “The only reason they would target me is to weaken us as a group.”
“What happened?” Gallow prodded. “Is he still on the train?”
“That’s- heh…” Sonsee gave a dreadful chuckle as she explained to them what had transpired.
“Y-you- killed him?” Janna asked shakily.
“Yes,” she replied. “And now they’re going to come for me, I’m a criminal.”
“Wasn’t there any way that you could have kept from- from killing him?” Janna pleaded.
It was silent for a moment before Sonsee said anything.
“Sometimes,” she proclaimed seriously. “The people trying to hurt you won’t allow for a compromise. If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed me, that’s the way it is in the wild.”
Janna couldn’t stand the idea of Sonsee taking a life, she dreaded the thought that this might happen again.
“Was he the only one?” Gallow asked pragmatically.
“The only one here, to my knowledge,” she responded. “But he mentioned at least one other, I think he’s part of some kind of organization.”
They held in place for a moment, unsure of what to do.
“Hey,” Bleech broke the silence. “Have you guys noticed that the train is slowing down?”
Their eyes bolted to the window, where the landscape was becoming less of a blur and more of a painting.
“That’s not good,” Gallow gulped.
“They’re trying to search the train for me,” Sonsee realized. “They might be here any moment!”
“We need to get out- now!” Gallow ordered.
He poked his head out of the door, there was nobody presently in the hallway, but they had to act quickly. The train hadn’t come to a standstill yet. He hurried out of the door to survey their options. Quickly, he discovered that there was an emergency exit door around the corner from the rooms.
A moment later, Gallow returned to the room to report back.
“There’s an emergency exit, but it’s locked,” he explained. “That’s the closest escape, but I don’t know how to pick it.”
“I do,” came from the back. They turned to focus on Bleech, who had finally spoken up. “My dad used to work on these things, when he visited us, he brought the same locks back for us.”
They stared blankly at him.
“W-we used them to lock up our house,” he explained, suddenly flustered by the attention. “I would sneak out a lot- so I know how to open one up…” he blinked nervously.
Gallow blinked back.
“Well, get to it then!”
In a minute’s time, Bleech had the door open. The train was still moving at about fifteen miles per hour, but the desert wastes had transformed into one of the South’s several lush forested outskirts.
“Alright, on three, we’re gonna jump into the brush, alright?” Gallow instructed.
The others nodded in agreement, Janna was carrying a single suitcase with her.
“One, two-” Before he could give the last count, the door at the end of the car was thrown open.
Sonsee jumped on instinct, Bleech followed suit, leaving the last two behind. Janna was a bundle of nerves, she wasn’t prepared for this much action so soon.
Gallow grabbed her hand, prompting her to look up at him. He gave her a courageous smile, his hair was whipping in the breeze of the open door.
“Strength that resounds like a horn…”
Gallow leapt from the edge, Janna’s boots left the ground. Adrenaline crashed through her veins as she experienced the intense rush of Navigator’s movement enhancing Gallow’s, pulling her along with.
For a moment, she felt suspended in the air while the train was still moving behind them. The railroad was only a few feet from a long path of brush, where the dry desert lands met the greenery.
While in midair, Gallow yanked her arm so that he was beneath her in their fall, and they both crashed into the large row of brush, sinking into the foliage.
Janna grunted as she fell directly onto Gallow’s chest; Gallow grunted as he was sandwiched between the branches and the girl. She tried to sit up, but he kept a tight hold on her stomach.
“Wait!” he whispered. “You need to wait for it to pass!”
They both laid in the bushes for a minute, listening to the rumble of the engine to pass by them and eventually fade away.
“Alright,” he signalled. “We should be good…”
Slowly, she poked her head up and surveyed the rail.
“All clear,” she affirmed.
Gallow sighed.
“Good,” he responded, the tension gone from his body. “Now please get off of me.”
Janna realized that she was sitting directly on top of the young man and immediately turned beet red.
“I- I’m sorry, Gallow!” she assured him, flustered. “Anyway- I better get my things…”
Her suitcase had flown out of her hand in their jump, and she quickly set about trying to recover it. Gallow sat up and looked around.
The tracks were laid out in front of him; knots of grass began to sprout up in the cracks of dried earth as one strayed further from the railway. The line of brush acted as a kind of barrier, beyond which the greenery increased exponentially; granted, the greenery was more yellowed from lack of rain, but there were trees scattered about the area.
“There needs to be some kind of water source near here,” Gallow commented.
“Hm?” Janna looked back at him with her newfound suitcase in hand.
“If there’s plants growing here,” he expanded. “There needs to be water, right? So if we just follow where they look healthier, that should lead us to some kind of safe haven.” He paused for a second. “Hopefully.”
---
“Are you ok?” Sonsee was standing over Bleech, who was kneeling down, examining a scrape on his leg.
“Yeah,” he said, focusing on the cut. “I just scratched it on the ground when we landed.”
She opened the sack at her waist and produced what looked like a bandage.
“Here,” she assured him, dropping to her knee. She began to tie the bandage around his cut, securing it tightly. “If you keep pressure on it, the wound should stop bleeding soon.”
“Thanks,” he offered sullenly.
“Is something the matter?”
“No, I just…” he was clearly annoyed. “It just hurts and I’m upset I guess.”
“Well, then,” she responded. “We should find the others.” She scanned the area with her hawk-like vision and caught sight of Janna’s navy blue dress.
Bleech said nothing as they reconvened, he merely stood to the side. Gallow explained his plan to follow the path of greenery, which Sonsee promptly agreed was the right course of action.
“There’s a threat of another assassin in the next town over,” he explained. “So it wouldn’t be too bad of an idea to go off the beaten path a little.”
Luckily, the plan led them in the same direction as the rail, but further north. The sun beat down on them as they marched through the land; in the distance, the increasing number of plant life looked like it was pointing to a mountain pass.
When they had been walking for some time, Gallow piped up.
“Hey, Sonsee?”
“Yes?” she replied.
“How did that guy’s Vocation work?”
She explained the entirety of their confrontation, still fresh in her mind. At a certain point, he interjected again.
“Where did you learn what a convex mirror was?”
She thought for a moment.
“When I left my village, I wandered around for some time in the wilderness…” she began to lapse into memory.
“I left my village years ago, I wandered the wilderness for some moons before I found a town in this region that would accept me.”
The three others listened attentively as she recounted her story.
“I met a woman- a schoolteacher, who took me in. Her students did not want me in their class, but she gave me a home and taught me how to speak like an Andeidran.”
“You don’t think of yourself as an Andeidran?” Gallow posed.
“I am a person of the land,” was her reply, she barely needed to think about her answer. Janna found this to be especially interesting; she felt a twang in her heart, at first it was the realization that Sonsee considered herself so distinct from her, and then it became a kind of comfortable warmth at the kindness they’d shared together.
“After I could read, she would lend me all kinds of different books,” she continued. “When I had a question, she would answer it. Her collection was not very large, but I learned a lot from what was there.”
“Did they try to convert you?” Gallow pressed, half joking.
“No,” she responded. “The town had no priest, like Sigrit. I remember her saying it was ‘such a shame,’ but I don’t think it would have done much good for me.”
“You don’t think?” Gallow asked. “I mean, those religious folk are a little off, I always thought.”
Their rapport continued for some time. Janna listened attentively to the two adults converse; she had never had the chance to have a “grown-up conversation,” and enjoyed listening to the rhythm of the back-and-forth.
Bleech, however, was sent tumbling down into his memory as they spoke about priests and such.
---
Bleech grew up in his small dirt-town without a father for much of his life. Each time they received a visit from him was a treat; his father was an honest and hardworking man who was only absent so he could work the railroad and send money back to his family.
The lack of a strong father-figure in his life was something he struggled with even at such a young age. He had a good relationship with his mother, but she was unable to teach him how to be a man the same way his father could. Even in the short time they were able to spend together every so often, Bleech found the wisdom of his father was awe-inspiring.
One particular afternoon, on one of these such visits, his father sat him down and taught him the art of paper folding.
“I learnt this from some of the Easterners I met on the railroad.”
“You mean from the coast?”
“Heh, no, they’re from across the world.”
“The world?!”
“I know, the railroad will only take you so far...
Look, this is a craft they do in their home country, you take a sheet of paper and start by creasing it here…”
His father folded him a paper crescent moon, whose shape held so tightly despite being made of such flimsy paper that Bleech couldn’t help but try and emulate it. It was such a perfect construction that he didn’t dare to unfold it to figure out how exactly his father had made it, but instead he studied it from the outside. He had never seen any craft before, and definitely nothing close to this; it was delicate but impenetrable, real but only representative, there was no light from a false paper moon.
This little trinket became a prized possession of his. His father was never able to buy gifts for them, as all the money he kept was spent on food for himself while he was away. The memories they shared together were the most tangible gift they shared, and now this paper moon was the only embodiment of those memories.
During the times when his father was away, Bleech ran into troubles with his mother; he was a moody boy, and had trouble making friends with children his age. There was, however, one boy a few years his junior whom he took an affection for. The boy’s name was Roderick, and they first met outside of their Church. Roderick was an orphan, and was looked after by the priest of the town, Father Jonathan. Roderick attended mass each Sunday, and looked at the Father like no one else did, with a special admiration. Bleech picked up on this on the off occasion he did pay attention to the boy during those times.
Their relationship truly began one day after the mass, when Bleech’s mother was socializing endlessly with the other women of the town. Bleech found himself alone, as usual, while the other children played. Roderick approached him sheepishly and asked if he would play with him.
Bleech’s first reaction was to refuse, but he caught himself when he looked into the boy’s sweet eyes, then at the rest of the children. He realized that they were not entirely different, and felt a movement in his heart.
“Sure,” he replied. “What do you want to play?”
From that day onward, Bleech acted as a kind of older brother for Roderick, and they grew to have a kind of special relationship together. Bleech never interacted with the other children in town, and never understood why such a friendly boy was unable to make friends. From his perspective, it didn’t make sense; he himself didn’t deserve friends, being such a moody child, but Roderick certainly did.
One day, however, as he left Church, he heard a child tease Roderick.
“Bastard!”
“Huh? Bastard? What kind of kid is saying that?”
Bleech kept this incident in his mind for some time. A week later, he visited the Church to look for Roderick, but found only Father Jonathan in his dimly lit office.
“Roderick is out with a woman from town,” he’d told him from his desk. “If you come back later, he should be back; give it, say, two hour’s time. They’re just buying some things.”
Bleech was about to leave when he stopped and contemplated for a moment. Anxiety welled up in his heart, but he decided he needed to ask for the sake of his only friend.
“Father?”
Jonathan looked up from his work.
“I heard the children in town say something about Roderick…”
The priest focused calmly but intently on his words.
“It’s just- I want to make sure he’s alright…” Bleech explained. “They called him a b- a bastard.” He stuttered while trying to say the word.
Jonathan was silent for a moment, then removed his glasses.
“What I’ll tell you is very private,” he began. “And only because of what you mean to him.”
Bleech’s heart was curiously calm.
“Roderick is my son.”
He was speechless.
“Y-you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re-”
“I know, Bleech.”
They were silent for a moment. Bleech couldn’t believe what he was hearing, the Father was sworn to an oath of celibacy, he was the holiest man in the town, he was supposed to lead the people.
And he had… failed?
“It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s something I live with every day. I love that boy more than anything else in the world.”
Bleech was suddenly upset.
“More than God, apparently?” His tone was spiteful, everything he’d known about the order of society was beginning to be upended.
Jonathan didn’t speak for a moment, not for lack of an answer, but to articulate exactly what he meant to say.
“When I love my son,” he explained. “I am loving God.”
“You’re saying he’s your God?” Bleech spat back. “What sense does that make?”
“You have a child’s understanding of God, Bleech.” Jonathan replied. “And I say that kindly, not to insult you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jonathan’s stare looked right into the boy’s heart.
“God isn’t just some person in the world,” he began in a slow, thoughtful voice. “God created this world and everything beyond it, didn’t he?”
“Of course,” Bleech knew his answer.
“Does a painter exist solely within his painting?”
“What?” Now he was befuddled.
“Does a musician exist only in his own song?” the Father continued. “What I’m trying to say is, that artist is much more complex than his painting, all of those strokes came from somewhere. The painting is just a small expression of who they are, the creator exists outside of their work in way that’s much fuller and more complex than any character in that painting would understand. God is true love, and true love isn’t some shallow affection, it’s the essence of that presence outside the painting. Even if we can’t express what it really means in words or images, they let us in on that feeling.”
He paused a second and finished.
“When I look at my son, when he’s smiling up at me, I can feel that love, and I know that God is with me.”
Bleech was left speechless once more. He needed a second to process what the Father had just said.
…
……
………
“I’ll be back later- to see him.” And Bleech left to return home.
The woman who was out with Roderick was the boy’s mother. While they were out on the town, the rumors of his true parentage only intensified. In only a few months, the gossip circuit would force Father Jonathan to reconsider his role in the town.
Jonathan decided that he could no longer suitably lead a community that didn’t trust him, and left to start a new ministry in another town.
Before they left, Bleech and Roderick had one last goodbye together. The younger one cried, Bleech was barely able to hold back his own tears as they hugged for the last time.
“Here,” Bleech said, reaching into his pocket, hands shaking. “Have this, from me.” He held out the paper moon his father had made for him. Roderick tearfully accepted the gift.
When they were gone, Bleech’s dislike of those around him was exacerbated to detest. All these people, who claimed to be so pious, would never understand God in the way that Father Jonathan had, and yet he was the one exiled from their community. The normalities- the standards- of his society were no longer necessities, he recognized them as being chains that held people in, in from the ideas that would challenge them. He decided that he would leave the community as well, not in body but in mind and heart. He no longer wanted to integrate into society, he wanted to leave the boundaries that had been set up, to try and understand the love outside of existence.
Because he was so young, he couldn’t really grapple with such an intense and external concept like this, which frustrated him endlessly. Still, he promised himself that he would find something like it, find it somewhere, sometime, when enough place and time had passed.
---
“Hey, is that a cabin?”
Bleech was suddenly roused from his thoughts by Janna’s voice.
They had been trekking through a mountain pass for some time now, where a dense forest had grown, nestled comfortably between the orange, sun-baked rocks. Off in the distance was indeed what appeared to be a small log cabin, situated in a clearing by a stream; it was a picturesque scene.
“It’ll be dark in an hour or two,” Sonsee calculated. “When that time comes, would you rather be farther and colder, or try our luck there and stay the night?”
“I think you know what my answer is,” Gallow chuckled.
“What about you two?” she posed to the children.
“Sure…” Bleech said, wanting to remain on his train of thought.
“Well,” Janna replied. “I don’t see any harm in at least trying.”
As the party approached the cabin, Gallow was the first to pull ahead, looking it up and down to assess whether or not anyone was home. He found the door and walked up, but before he could knock, he heard a rush of air whizzing towards him.
Gallow quick-stepped backwards with Navigator and watched the blade of an axe fly past his face.
Shocked, he reached for his gun and turned to the direction of the attack. A tall, wide-built, older man was standing between two trees, dressed in simple clothes, with dark eyes and black hair speckled with white.
“What are you doing here?”