Chapter Five

Talking fleshy

Letum

The female shouts penetrated through the thin walls of the healer’s abode when I was doing what I had been bred for. I could not conjecture what would happen after I had crossed the doorstep of the ward next to the one my work had summoned me to. I should have merely consorted an old man to the next part of his life that destiny had prepared for him and have left the healer’s abode full of the fleshies with his soul, but an anomalous feeling inside my gut made itself felt when I was passing the white door of the ward. The oddity was I had no physical pain or disturbance but something deeper I lacked words to describe out of never experiencing anything akin to what was now presented. I stopped, watching two men and a woman exit the room. The woman–a healer–stormed by me right to the nurse who was talking to her colleague in illuminated by the cold grayish-white light of the fluorescent lamps hall while the men were leisurely abandoning the ward.

“Crazy bitch,” the one with deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth whispered.

The second man looked much younger and more compassionate. “She endured the terrorist attack and lost her husband, Mark. Show some respect,” the latest rebuked the old one.

They were not abandoning the room then. Someone was still there.

A female.

And here my curiosity got the better of me.

I glided through the finite gap of the closing door and found myself standing in the middle of an ascetic room with a faint resemblance to an old small wardrobe which would not contain more than two coats and a quite modern narrow couch where a tied woman with no eyes was lying. Although the ward was being heated by the powerful electrical system, allowing no coldness, the hair of her entire body was standing on end.

I took a noiseless step toward the couch. The female was murmuring something I could not perceive at first, but heeding her slowing down a breath of hers, I managed to hear a name. Lewis.

I recalled what the man with a more pleasant appearance had said about the woman on the couch. She had lost her husband during a terrorist act. More likely, her recently passed away partner had been named Lewis. I had no clue why this name bothered me. It sounded somehow familiar and important. Standing back, I directed my sight to the foot of the couch where fleshy healers predominantly put a card with a medical history of patients. With no deviation, the printed name I saw on the piece of hemp paper struck me to the place where the strange feeling had its roots.

Hope Nataly Hill.

The mentioned feeling in my gut pinched me from inside, and I unwillingly uttered, “I am so sorry,” out of the blue and it scared me to chill on my skin–all the regents had no feelings for the fleshies. What was propelling me at that moment remained as an unsolved mystery to me. I was about to depart in a hurry to get my mentor as soon as I was only capable of unraveling the riddle of my emotions when a velvet female voice pierced the silence of the half-empty ward, bouncing from the pink-orange in the last beams of the setting sun walls and echoing as if we were in an endless cave. A scent of wetness coming from the tiny bathroom only amplified my imagined pictures of the dark space with the excessive moisture caused by the absence of sunlight which would initiate evaporation.

“Who’s here?” Hope forced, being weakened by the effect of the sedative drugs the healer had more likely used to quiet her.

I was aghast by the question so much that my tongue was not able to maneuver to forge a single word.

“You–” I paused to shoo the shock off. I wondered how silly my facial expression was at the very moment, “You can hear me?”

Hope’s head sluggishly fell on her left shoulder. It was obvious that she did not control her body. The drugs had been relaxing the muscles. And yet, being a step away from a sound long sleep till the morning had come anew or even later, her lips curved, forming feebly, “I’m… blind… not deaf.” Leaving me stunned, the eyeless woman passed out. Only her even breathing was disturbing the peace of the ascetic ward.

I understood that there was a big need to talk to someone about what had just happened, but lingered staring at the fleshy female, serenely sniffing on the compact square cushion beneath her head. Her brownish slightly-waving hair framed her relaxed, atypical face. Hope’s lips were narrowly ajar which made her look like a sleeping child. It was quite difficult to tell how old she was because the scar tissue took up a good part of her face, including the eye area and a quarter of her forehead. The asymmetry of her face caused by the absence of the right brow impressed me so much that my eyes were fixed on her face as if trying to picture her portrait as detailed as it was only possible, nevertheless, I had no need or idea what for. I could not get rid of the scratchy feeling inside me. Fixing my eyes on her, I thought ‘Poor woman’ or ‘how hard her destiny is.’ The problem was I had never done things like that before. A job is a job. I had not ever thought about the the fleshies I had to show the path or their lives. I was emotionless to the mortals.

Then why on earth was I not able to take my attention off the usual fleshy female? Not answering my silent rhetorical question the living liked to ask so often, I turned around, summoning the brightly shining portal in the shape of a line as wide as a hand which snaked up the walls and the ceiling to open the passageway from the fleshy realm to the Afterword. I passed the barrier, leaving the ward and Hope in the embrace of Morpheus behind me. To my surprise, I cast the last sight to the woman on the couch, lying in the rays of the portal. I thought that even if she had the capability to see, neither I nor the way to my place would have been caught by her sight. I was invisible to fleshy’s eyes, just like the world I permanently resided in, sometimes visiting the world of living in the line of duty.

The barrier was crossed, and I stepped on the soft mossy floor of the training center territory. It was late evening there, so the not black yet but navy-blue, starry sky was following me to the very doors of the three-storied building which was gleaming with a color of water at night–transparently dark. Inside, I shut the creaking door as a need to be oiled behind my back and headed to the only person I would throw myself into the sword of the saint silver for–to Baleruhb, who could be always found in his study or the training hall on the second floor. I knew the mentor would not be exercising at that time of day, so I followed the way to the stairs in the east wing. Choosing the optional rhythm of my pacing to be brisk enough yet unsuspecting to others in case I was viewed by other habitants of the Afterworld who were still practicing in one of the halls, I skirted the fragile at first glance edges of the handrail made of black glass. The echo of my steps bounced from the granite walls and flew around the vacated corridor, where somewhere down slaps of hands against the punching bags in the boxing room and female heavy breathing were heard. I would have recognized Tory’s fashion of whining when she was hurt even if I had been deaf.

I’m… blind… not deaf.

Her words flashed in my mind, and I ceased going as if the phrase had shaken off the haze of destruction, reminding me where and why I was aiming to. I would share an hour of conversations with her later, for now, I had to reach Baleruhb’s study.

My feet restarted touching the granite floor of the training center toward the destination. I had passed at least four halls where the youngest were exercising with open doors and, luckily, managed to get past them disregarded. Despite the weather outside was always the same–neither hot nor cold–the temperature in the hall varied, depending on the quantity of practicing males and females, and the air there was constantly seasoned with a scent of sweat and blood, although now I could smell the fresh notes of wet ground and plants which always occurred after sundown when got all the windows got wide open all over the training floor by mentors in charge to ventilate the space.

I quickened my pacing at the view of the dark-brown stairs which led to the second level where exactly I was heading. Upstairs, I snorted, being not dazed by the sight of the entire story flooded with candlelight from the only opened door. Baleruhb did not appreciate the lack of light during work or study. My approach was not that unexpected out of my boots with heavy track soles being extremely comfortable but too loud not to out me come from afar. Before I came to the attention of the owner of the room, he called me by name from behind the open door, which made me smile. He knew the manner of walking of each of his mentees.

“Good night, Baleruhb,” I greeted the man with a short-cut who was looking for something on his bookshelves.

Baleruhb turned his wide back to the mentioned shelves and presented me with a short nod, “How was your day, boy?”

I shrugged, “Quite fine. Another addicted fleshy thought that it was his drug ‘parish’ when he saw me, exclaiming ‘Wow, dude, that fucking pusher didn’ lie to me’. I wonder when he understands that the fucking pusher pushed him his last dose in his life.”

The man who looked no more than thirty by the fleshy standards, but was more than thousands of circles ago, bared his teeth with a chipped tip of his left fang, “These fleshies are so fascinating, aren’t they?” He sat on the edge of the wooden desk, topped with folders and books in a language I had seen once but cared not much about memorizing at least the name of it without speaking of the alphabet or a word in it.

“One would not realize that he had died,” Baleruhb went on, “another would cry and beg for one more chance to live his life again in an appropriate way. I like the kind of them who treat death like an old friend of theirs–with honor and respect. It makes our duty more special, do you think so?”

Was my luck beginning to change because our discussion had started with the topic I needed so I did not have to make up any doltish reasons and pretexts to direct the flow in the right direction? Well, I hoped so.

“Oh, I do,” was my answer, “I find observing them quite whimsical, especially talkative ones, and their reactions when fleshies do not notice that their paths in the Afterworld blend in the Great Line because of being too busy talking to you to even look around.”

“Hah, that was not my favorite type,” black-haired Baleruhb admitted with a resemblance of a curve on his lips. “They always talked about their grandchildren and what high prices for rice and buckwheat in the supermarkets were. It annoyed me a lot. I am glad I am a mentor now so I have no point in leaving the training center.”

I chuckled, going to the burgundy velvet armchair next to the massive working table which my mentor invited me to sit in with a lax wave of his moderately big hand, “Fortunately for us, we are not to be detected by living fleshies, otherwise we would be bored to will of dancing in the field of white lilies barefoot instead of seeing a single fleshy again.”

The corners of the mentor’s lips quivered, forming two tine dimples on his cheeks, “Thousands of circles ago time was different, Letum, you were a newborn, so I doubt you remember the era before the Deathly Battle when we regents were capable of talking to fleshies and even touch without causing their death, while they honored us like respected creatures.”

I had not seen it myself, however, I was aware of that foggy part of the history of our kind, being told by those who were progressively waking from the haze of the curse. “I am aware of that,” I admitted, taking my chance to lead to the bothering me puzzle, “But I just… I do not know why, but I just cannot believe it, you know. I mean, regents had such power. Has no one spoken to a single fleshy since the Deathly Battle? Were there no cases?”

Baleruhb lowered his eyes to the rustic pattern of the dark granite floor beneath his feet, then tsked, but not by way of expressing that he was annoyed by my ignorance or my curiosity of mine. It was more like accepting the past and previous events. “No, Letum, there was not a single regent being noticed to talk to fleshies. The bitch named Agata is one to blame, boy.”

“But the curseress’ spell is losing its influence on us. Lots of the oldest who survived are putting up together the broken-up pieces of their memory. Did you think of a possibility to get those power and skills back?”

The mentor squinted, piercing me with his sight full of confusion and suspicions, “Why are you so eager to find it out, Letum?”

I should have known better than that. Of course, my question would cause this sight of him. A mentee did not come to his study with such a morbid interest in the past and present. It was important to me to steady myself and not give up on what had truly happened in the ward of the healer’s abode in the realm of living. I did not want to endanger the woman–Hope. I trusted Baleruhb, it was doubtless, but there was a but–it was the first communication between a regent and a fleshy, so I had the courage to state that she would not be allowed to live her life by the oldest just like that, and it gave me no peace. The poor female had endured so much without that.

I shook my head in an attempt to distract him from scanning me, “I have taken a soul recently. A male one. He died from the gas that had burnt his lungs severe enough to cause asphyxia. The man was one of those who do not care about themselves after they die but their relatives. He asked me if his wife was there because he wished to tell her I love you for the last time. When I assured him that his wife was still alive, he asked me to quote him the day I would see her,” I shrugged, “I saw her later, in a matter of fleshy hours. Her time had not come, so it was accidentally. I wanted to tell her what her husband had told me, really,” my hand snaked up the column of my neck and scratched the back of my head, “I have no clue why.”

Looked like I had managed to convince the mentor in my story. His features visibly relaxed, “I dare to suggest that it is right because of the theory of easing the curse you have revealed,” he cocked his head, “I cannot accept or deny the fact all of us are unable to experience any kind of emotions to mortals not because of Agata because I merely do not remember it, but I believe that once emotions were streaming through us much brighter than now. Maybe you experienced something called sympathy in the fleshy world.”

“Sympathy?” It was a new word for me.

“Mm-hm. It is a feeling which appears in your chest when someone is in a hard situation and all you want is to comfort that person. Curiously, it happened to a fleshy. I cannot recall a single case even before the Deathly Battle, though, it might be the influence of the curse.”

“Oh, that is interesting.”

Baleruhb stood up from the edge of the desk he had been sitting on for all the time we had been talking and slowly shorted the distance between us. “Does anyone know about it?”

I shook my head, not really understanding what my mentor was up to.

“Good. Do not tell it to anyone before we are one hundred percent sure it is what it seems to be. I want no unrest.”

I assumed his decision was connected to the rumors that had started spreading after the body of a newly-born regent had been found with five stab wounds to his chest under the bridge that connected the left and right banks of the Afterworld. The young guide to the other side had been mercilessly murdered by the blade of the saint silver–the only metal that could pierce the flesh of regents. The metal had been prohibited from minting after the Deathly battle when thousands of us had died a heroic death, protecting lands from the heirs of the Death. Apparently not each of the dwellers of the Afterworld agreed with the law, keeping the arms still with them.

“Letum,” a sound of my name which had flown out of the mentor’s mouth drew my attention to him again. I thought I had pondered a little and had not noticed when Baleruhb had taken a seat on the edge of the wine-red armchair arm on the left side. “Is anything else bothering you, boy?” He joined his hands and rested them on his lap. He eyed me from head to toe, pending my reply to be vocalized.

I wordlessly shook my head.

“Then, let us leave it here. It has been a long day.”

I took the dismissing hint and hopped abruptly, “Certainly it has. I would better go to my chambers to rest. See you tomorrow at the ring.”

Baleruhb smirked, “See you, boy.”

I exited my mentor’s study, closing the door behind my back as noiselessly as I could, and found myself standing in the dark empty hall.

“Letum,” Baleruhb called me out.

“Yes?”

The mentor wetted his lips by licking them and pointed at me with his index finger, “Correct me if I am mistaken, but did not you have to guide the soul of William Harrison from the fleshy world?”

Deathly sons.