Life Giver

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Book excerpt

CHAPTER 1 - Coming from the Sea

            Walking up the steep slope from the harbor, Yeolani felt like a fool yet again. His father, coming up behind him from the boat, certainly reinforced that notion having found yet again nothing good with his son's work on this latest fishing trip. Of course, Yeolani had been sea-sick. He had made it a tradition, ever since he was nine and deemed old enough to join his father's crew, of losing his breakfast over the side.

"Feeding the fishes," his father had called it.

But, this voyage, Yeolani had been so ill on the three-day trip that he hadn't even been able to keep down water and so had passed out, leaving the rest of the crew to do his work. His father, the captain, couldn't rouse him and instead threw the rations of ale at his son, leaving none for the crew which led to a near mutiny onboard. Left with only the water barrel, they had sailed back into port with only half a hold full. How was Yeolani expected to inherit his father's boat if he couldn't tolerate being out at sea? Every trip, the moment he stepped onto the gangplank Yeolani invariably ended up losing whatever he'd managed to eat. It was so bad that the sixteen-year-old had taken to eating only after they'd come back into Simten's port and carrying only water with him for the three-day voyages.

If he looked scrawny and wasted, it was Yeolani’s own fault, his father insisted, but the boy had better figure out how to endure or someone on the crew, if not his own father, would slit his throat just to be rid of him, and someone else could inherit the family business. Now, after another failed voyage, Yeolani could feel his father's anger like a hurricane brewing just offshore, waiting to reach their home on the bluff where the thrashing could occur and not be witnessed by his crew. His father would probably get good and drunk beforehand, but Yeolani knew his anger didn't need liquid encouragement.

However, as he topped the bluff and turned up the path, Yeolani stopped cold, knowing something was wrong. In the fading light, he could see the village not far down the path, and he struggled to identify the changes to his expectations. Laundry flapped in the constant wind, not brought in for the evening. No smoke tore from chimneys. Even the woodcutters usually coming from the Fallon Forest just beyond the town were absent. It was all wrong.

Father, still grumbling and huffing after the climb up from the docks, didn't notice a thing. He swatted Yeolani on the back of the head for not moving along and then went around his son who remained rooted in the sandy footpath. The older man noticed nothing and had stomped all the way to their home that clung like a barnacle to the cliff on the southern edge of the town. Somehow the act of opening the door broke through the boy's frozen study, and he staggered the fifty yards to his home. He felt weak-kneed and unsure if it was the lack of food or his sudden fear.

Yeolani threw open the door and almost plowed into his father's back, where the captain stood frozen, now drinking in the scene he had ignored before. The blackstone hearth was cold. The usually carefully cleaned table still bore the wooden bowls from the morning breakfast. Mother would never allow that to remain. She kept an impeccable if humble home. In the corner, Yeolani saw his mother on her knees beside the rush bed, draped over the still body of his nine-year-old sister, weeping and moaning. Mother's hair was unkempt, her apron dirty and her haggard face puffy with her grief and deathly pale. How long ago? Yeolani could not bring his mind to finish the thought, let alone speak aloud.

"What have you done, woman!" Father bellowed, though it came out as a growl. Before Yeolani could react or his mother could duck, Father reached out and backhanded his wife, throwing her against the hearth. "You've killed the child!”

"No, Da," Yeolani gasped, reaching for his father's arm to stop the second blow, but weakened as he was, Father simply shrugged Yeolani off onto the floor and used his momentum to slug the boy before returning to his unconscious wife.

Desperately, Yeolani looked around the single room home for some weapon and found the knife his mother used in her cooking. He snatched it from the wash tub and leaped at his father, climbing onto his father's back as the man continued to beat his wife. The boy carefully placed the knife at his father's throat, and the man stopped his swing, slowly straightened up, and lifted his hands.

"Da, you will stop now," Yeolani hissed into his father's ear. "She's not to blame for Nevia's death. There's a sickness in the village."

With the full weight of his son clinging to his back, the captain moved carefully, deliberately, and from behind Yeolani couldn't see his movements, so when the captain's calloused hands wrapped around his son's knife hand, he wasn't prepared. He grasped the boy's wrist and, with a tremendous tug, threw Yeolani sprawling into the cold fireplace. Stunned, Yeolani only just managed to remain conscious as his father grabbed him by the leg and pulled him from the ashes. He knocked his head on the hearth as he landed on the floor rushes and dizzily couldn't roll to absorb the blow when his father's kick caught him in the ribs. But he still held the knife.

"You," kick, "were never," kick, "my son," kick, and this time, Yeolani rolled toward the descending boot and stabbed at the foot with what little strength he could muster. Blood and shrieks barely registered, but the momentum of the next kick stopped as his father hopped around on his undamaged foot. Yeolani staggered to his feet to defend himself and his mother who still remained unresponsive on the floor.

Enraged and careless of his wounded foot, the captain rammed himself bodily into Yeolani, pinning his son up against the wall with one arm under his chin, and began beating him about the head with a free fist. Yeolani realized then that his father would murder him and had probably already murdered Mother. If Yeolani did nothing, he would die. His pinned body allowed little movement, but he pried his hand free and, without any thought or hesitation, sank the knife into his father's side. The blade cut deep into the liver. The arm across Yeonlani’s throat eased, and his father's bloodshot eyes, a hand width from his own, widened in sudden pain. The restricting arm fell away. Then his father collapsed sideways along the wall.

Yeolani stood against the hearth a moment, still in his shock. How had this happened? It took him an eternity, it seemed, before his legs crumbled beneath him and he landed with a thump between his parents’ bodies. With trembling and bloody hands, he reached over to feel for his mother's pulse at her neck and found none. In his wake, Yeolani left his father's blood there on her pale skin. He felt sick again at the sight and would have thrown up if he could.

            Then, with the shakes making it almost impossible, he reached for the knife still in his father's side and tugged it free. How was he doing this? His mind was a haze, as if he were again on the ship, going through the motions of drawing in the fishing line without his awareness. Again, he left a bloody mark on his other parent's neck. No pulse. He couldn't look at what he had done and instead crawled wearily toward his sister's body. She had been dead for half the day, Yeolani estimated, so he resisted leaving his bloody mark on her neck as well.

In a matter of moments, Yeolani had lost his entire family.

Carefully, the boy lifted his sister's head and sat down on the bed with her body in his lap, brushing her fine hair back from her forehead, and let his mind drift. He might have died himself, and it would not have mattered in the least.

CHAPTER 2 - Burying the Dead

            The next morning, the young man came into the heart of town pulling the cart his father used to load fish and to bring wood from the forest. Yeolani had eaten a dried fish and a bit of bread and felt much better for it, though he avoided the water his mother had left in the pail. Something had killed his little sister, and from the sounds in the village, some sickness was afoot, probably cholera, and he didn't want to add himself to the toll, even if he felt he deserved it. Someone from his family had to survive just to carry on.

After a night of drifting on sour dreams and panicked thinking, Yeolani had made his decisions. So, he could avoid questions about what had happened, he laboriously wrapped his parents’ bodies in the bed linens so that their injuries didn't show. He intended to blame the plague for all three deaths. There wasn't enough linen to complete the job for his sister, but he placed her in their mother's shawl and laid Nevia gently between the adult bodies. Then he struggled to put them on the cart. Still nursing his bruised ribs and lingering seasickness, Yeolani pulled the handcart into town where the cholera outbreak filled the square with other plague victims.

            As he suspected, he wasn't the only one bringing dead loved ones into the square that morning. He recognized two crewmen from the ship who must have been spared because they also were on board when the illness struck but were now burying their wives and children left behind. Now, he studiously avoided looking at them. How was he to explain his father dying when he had been on the ship with them? Instead of worrying about that, he went to the bonfire, as was the requirement, to add his family to the burning pyre. Everyone knew you couldn't risk burying when disease could spread so quickly. The bodies must be burned immediately before the entire village was consumed.

As he stood in line waiting for the priest, Yeolani spied a woman he didn't recognize. She had a long, honey-colored braid and a huge pack. She scurried about like a baby goat, trying to meet all those that brought bodies to the pyre. She seemed vibrant, young, though she was probably in her late twenties. She moved with authority and stopped anyone who came in bringing a body. Yeolani thought he knew everyone in Simten, but he didn't know this woman. The priest who oversaw the speedy funerals didn't object, for she only pestered the living, so he left her alone. And when it was his turn to face this insistent young woman, Yeolani swallowed a pit of fear. Would she notice the blood seeping through the sheets covering the bodies he was bringing?

Of course, she did. "I'm sorry for your…loss," she petered out, looking him in the eye, flicking her green eyes to the bodies and back toward him, widening a bit in surprise.

"Your whole family?"

"Mother, father, and little sister," he mumbled, hoping his voice didn't crack, as it often did under stress.

"From the cholera?" the woman queried. By the tone of her voice, he could tell she didn't believe him.

"If that's what's going around. I was on board our fishing boat until last night, and when I came home, I found them dead,” he lied.

The healer pursed her lips knowingly. "You shouldn't try to lie," she whispered. "You're not very good at it. Tell me what really happened."

Something about her command made his tongue loosen. Yeolani looked around to be sure the magistrate wasn't nearby to listen in and then confessed to her frankly. "My father and I got off the ship last night, and when we got home, my little sister was dead and my mother was probably dying. He was so upset that…that he began beating my mother. I tried to stop him, and a lot of good I was at that. Then he started beating me…"

To his surprise, the lady, without asking, flipped Yeolani's tunic up to see the bruising on his ribs. "Hey, warn a body!" he barked in alarm but stopped himself when her amazingly warm hand rested on his side where it hurt the most.