[Story Collection] Roses in Sun and Shadow

[Gabihime]

In the Chill of January

It was bitterly cold in the city at this time of night.??The old men who hunched near the hearths in their humble dwellings said that the night air 'cut like a knife,' and having had some small experience with both knives and exposure in his short life, Duriel found himself apt to agree with them.

It was January, when the cold really started to deepen, and handouts to the destitute in honor of the Christmas season had already thinned to nothing.??Although he was still only a boy and likely could've found shelter at someone's hearth, had he sought it, he was wary and distrustful of adults.??He had heard there was some sort of orphanage being organized in the city these days, and he feared being caught and given over to the state for care.??There was some sort of new law in Prontera that forbade the existence of vagabond children, like they were wild dogs.??He had heard some grown ups talking it over, about how it was 'for the good of the children,' but Duriel wasn't about to give himself over to anyone -- even if it meant some food on a semi-regular basis and a place to sleep that wasn't always infested with fleas.

He knew.??Grown ups weren't to be trusted.??They lied.??They stole.??They sometimes even murdered each other without so much as a second thought.

Now, Duriel himself was not above petty larceny, and he was often guilty of small crimes of theft in order to feed himself when the weather was cold and his belly was lean.??He had his own little knife and often hunted outside the walls of the city in order to support himself, but he was still just a boy, and it was hard fighting in the snow and the bitter cold.

Adults though, they stole what they didn't need, more than what someone needed to survive.??Adults were greedy, and they were liars.

All adults were liars.

Duriel did not trust them.

So he did not ask for charity, merely took it when it presented itself with no strings attached.??On a night like this, it would be best to find a stable to sleep in, or a shed, or perhaps, if one was very, very lucky, an abandoned house.

Tonight, he was very, very lucky, although his luck was at the expense of someone else -- as inevitably it always was.??That was the way of the world.??He had learned this lesson a long time ago, when he had still been a child.??He was still, even now, a boy, but he had long since ceased being a child.??Children played with toys in the sunshine and on the green grass.??He hunted monsters with his notched little knife, and hoped each day to get enough to turn in so that he might buy some small morsel of bread, or cheese.

So it was Old Widow Clary's misfortune that was his fortune.

She had been dead and buried for two days now, and although by this time her small home in the slums of Prontera would have commonly already been the property of new poor folks -- poverty not able to stand much on ceremony -- Old Widow Clary's house was still dark and empty.

Her neighbors were shunning the house, and had tied the door shut with a heavy rope and laid the whole thing over with charms and herbs to warn off evil spirits.??Someone had even drawn a circle of salt on the step before the threshold.??Old Widow Clary's neighbors were clearly afraid of devils and haint spirits, Duriel could see that himself, even if he hadn't heard the word of it on the street.

In a way, it was understandable.??She had not died well.??It had been a bad fever at the end, and her whole body had seemed eaten away from the inside out.??Never a large woman, at the end she had been like a strange, wispy straw doll.??The people of the Prontera slums called it "the gutrot" and were sure that Old Widow Clary had been the unfortunate target of a curse.??She'd been so healthy before, after all.??People don't take sick and die so fast, they said.

Duriel's mother, who had been a lady alchemist in the good times before, might have told him that what Old Lady Clary had died of was called a "cancer," and that it was a sickness that even the brightest of scholars were still studying to try and understand.??No devils had witched her to death.??Her own body had done the work itself.

But his mother had been dead a long time now, buried in the ground because she hadn't been able to overcome her own sickness in the unheated little shack they'd shared before he'd been turned out on the street by their landlord on account of his father's unpaid debts.

Duriel didn't know where his father was these days, or even if he was still alive.??He had been a grand man, once, in the good times before.??But the bad times had come and father had drunk himself stupid, gambled what little pittance they had away, and let mother die from pneumonia.

It's not fair, what they did to us, Duriel had once heard his sotted father howl angrily at the night sky.

Of course it wasn't fair.??Life was not a fair thing.??This was something that Duriel understood now, a hard little boy of nine years.??This was a truth his life had taught him.

Which was why he was not afraid of haint spirits and demons, but sensibly had some fear of the January cold.??

By pressing himself very flat he was just able to fit himself through a small window in the back, near where Old Widow Clary had piled a small stack of split logs for her little fireplace.??It was dark inside the little house, so he stayed very still as his eyes adjusted.??He had a little candle, but he saved it only for emergencies.??He was very frugal with his things.??There was light enough to see, so there would be no candle tonight.

The Widow Clary's home was two rooms: a kitchen, where the laundry was done and the baths taken and the food was cooked, and the back room, with the fireplace and a rocking chair, the bed, and all the things the old woman had saved as memories of her married life.??Duriel had little use for the dark, abandoned kitchen, once he verified that it had already been looted of its food, likely by the same neighbors who had tied up the front door.??What he wanted now was the little bed set against the wall, just a straw mattress with two quilts on it, probably the Widow Clary's own work.??Most of the people in the slums did all their own sewing, or did trade work for one another.??Widow Clary had sewn many a quilt for the people of the slums, and some that they even sold in the stores in the nicer parts of town.??It was how she had fed herself and bought the firewood to heat her little house.

As Duriel kicked off his shoes and crawled into the bed, he made another discovery.??Besides the quilts, the bed had a real feather pillow, not one stuffed with straw.??

This was, perhaps, bliss.

So as the cold wind shook the spidery trees outside, Duriel let out a contented sigh and drifted off to sleep.

*


He couldn't say how long he slept, whether it was hours or just a few minutes, but he awoke with a start, not for any reason he could say, but just because he had a feeling that something was not right.??He gripped the hilt of the little knife that was never far from his hand, even when he slept, and stayed very still, listening.

There was something in the room with him.??He could hear it, very quietly, breathing.

And it was very close by.

His knuckles were white on the hilt of his knife as he sprang out of bed, ready to confront whatever devil or spirit had come to spoil his safe and warm night's rest.??Whatever it was, it wasn't going to get him without a fight.

But he saw no demons, devils, or flaming disembodied spirits.

The room was very still and quiet, and appeared to be very empty, except for himself.

But then he spied it.

At the foot of the very bed where he had been sleeping, there was a small lump under the blankets, as if something were hiding there.

He balled his hands into fists and squeezed them tightly, then took a deep breath and crept back toward the bed.??When he reached it, he firmly took a hold of the edge of the quilts, and with a fierce yank he had exposed the monster that had dared crawl into bed with him.

It was a spindly thing, with hair sticking up in all directions.??After being so rudely uncovered, it seemed to grow even smaller as it suddenly huddled against the wall.

It did not take very long for Duriel to realize that this was not a monster at all, but simply a very skinny and unkempt little girl.??He sat down on the bed beside her, flabbergasted.

It was a very little girl, from what he could tell, maybe only two or three years old.??She wasn't tall enough or strong enough to have reached the small window that Duriel had climbed through, and there had been no other unblocked entrances to this place that he had been able to find, not even one of a size to fit a girl so small and so thin.

"How did you get in here?" he asked her, confounded, being careful to pitch his voice low, lest the neighbors on the other side of the wall hear them talking and decide they were not in fact wicked spirits.

The little girl said nothing in reply, only shook her head, which sent her wild hair flurrying.??She eased away from the wall slowly, as if getting over her shock at being ousted from sleep in such a way.??Although she did not speak she was apparently not afraid of him because she crawled to sit beside him, grimy hands in her lap.??She was a ragamuffin, and looked it quite a bit moreso than he did, mainly because she was quite dirty and her long hair was so tangled and flyaway, and then there was the fact that she was just skin and bones.??But still, although she showed serious signs of neglect, she looked as if she had been neglected days, not weeks or months.??Someone had been taking care of her until recently.??It was possible that she was one of the neighborhood children, one who had been locked in here accidentally and now could not be found.

But Duriel thought he knew all the children of the slums by both face and name, even the little shrimps like this one.??This was a girl he did not recognize.??Still it was worth a shot.

"Are you lost?" he asked her.

She again said nothing, but after a moment she shook her head, indicating that she was not.??If she was not lost, then --

"You're here because you want to be?"

She seemed to think about this, but then nodded once.

She wasn't a street urchin like he was, he knew for a fact that he knew all the orphaned kids who still lively freely on the street, evading the authorities.??No, she hadn't crept in here some way for warmth and security, like he had.??If that was so, then maybe -- but everybody knew that the Widow Clary lived alone, had no children any more, just lived by herself in her little two room house and sewed quilts for people.

And still, here was this little girl, sitting calmly next to him on the bed, hands folded in her lap, wriggling her little toes every once in a while.

"Do you live here?" he asked incredulously.

At this she nodded, and he found that he was relieved more than surprised.??That was one mystery solved, then.??He had no reason to think that a little girl would lie to him.??Although he mistrusted adults, he did not mistrust children, particularly not bedraggled, half-starved orphan girls.

"Where?" he asked her, because he was not sure where a little girl could be so completely hidden from her neighbors, particularly the busybodies, which the slums had no shortage of.

She turned her head to look at the corner and then pointed at a simply made ladder that led to the attic of the little house.

"She hid you up there?" he asked, seeking confirmation of her nonverbal signals, and she nodded.

Still, he couldn't really make sense of it.??There was no reason for the Widow Clary to hide the fact that she'd taken in an orphan to look after.??The authorities didn't care much what happened to children so long as they weren't on the street.??He crossed his arms and sighed.

"But why was she hiding you?" he asked.

She said nothing, just looked at him with large, calm eyes.??He couldn't tell what color they were because they were both sitting in the dark of a room lit only by the moonlight coming through a small, high window.

It was possible that the Widow Clary might have had some reason to hide her -- if the baby had been stolen for instance.??By why on earth would the Widow Clary have stolen a baby when there were plenty to be had -- given away even -- left on doorsteps, or before the lintel at the cathedral.??It just didn't make any sense.??He sighed again and would have likely continued to mull it over had not a singular event occurred.

The little girl's stomach growled.??Then, as if reminded that it had not yet eaten this evening either, his own stomach growled a response.??He rolled his eyes and then afforded them both a laugh.

"I guess it doesn't matter, does it?" he asked her, and she said nothing, just put both of her small hands over her empty belly.??He dug in his little pouch until he produced some bread, which he split between them, and a little piece of cheese, which he gave to her.??He cut up an apple with his little knife and they shared this between them, sitting companionably and silently together on the bed.

After they had finished their dinner, he sat back against the wall and yawned.

"You're alone, aren't you?" he asked her.??It was impossible that this little girl was unaware of the fact that Old Widow Clary was dead.

She was still again, but at last nodded.

He shook his head as he closed his eyes.

"Not any more, you're not," he said, and it felt nice to say.??He was happy to sit back and be quiet for a few moments of contemplation, but suddenly his eyes popped open as a new thought crossed his mind.??"But hey, what's your name???I'm Duriel."

The little girl just stared at him, and then wriggled her toes.

"Not going to say, are you?" he asked rhetorically, then leaned his face against his fist in contemplation.??"Well, I've got to call you something."??He tried to think of something nice, that a little girl might like to be called.??"How about Yoyo???You're kind of wiggly, like a monkey."??He was looking at her toes, but when he looked up, he found that she was looking at him in reproach.??Apparently she did not want to be named after a monkey.??"Loonie then???Your hair is all wild like a lunatic."??Again, this met with a look that signaled she was less than overjoyed.??"Maybe Creamy?" he asked, and thought hard.??He was quickly running through all the names he had thought of.??He was not a boy used to naming things, let alone little girls. "How about PoriPori?"

"Gabriel," said a small, clear voice, and he turned suddenly to look at her.??

She said nothing, and looked much as before, with wide eyes and occasionally wriggling toes.??It was as if the night itself had spoken the name for him to hear.??He smiled at her, a small smile that he rarely gave anyone.??Life had been hard on him, and the world was a difficult place, but he could still smile at a little girl.

"Gabriel.??Your name is Gabriel," he repeated and at this he was rewarded by her smile, sweet and genuine.??She nodded once, and then, as if she wanted to make sure he absolutely understood and would not attempt to call her 'Loonie' or 'PoriPori' in the future, she nodded again.

"Gabriel," he said again, and then reached out and put his hand on her unkempt head, "You're not alone any more.??From now on, we'll be together."

And they were.

*