Here’s the deal… I’ve been working this one… reworking it… reworking it again, and I need the assistance. You started to follow me because you loved Chapter 1… so did I. Chapter 2? Not sure. My quick hit is it feels like an info dump… but the next chapter will find our hero fleeing for his life… coming home was not what he expected. But I feel this chapter is too long… needs to be tightened.
Your feedback is appreciated… good or bad. Thanks everyone!!
Chapter 2:
When Donnivus was finally able to lift his head, his eyes scanned the darkness, even as sheets of rain cast the graveyard in shades of ash and charcoal. Thunder rumbled above and lightning cracked, illuminating the landscape and hundreds of stones rose from the ground. Mounds of dirt, wet from the rain, and the air grew heavy with the smell of rot.
He sucked in a breath and knelt down, his hand resting on his mother’s stone. Yesterday, there had been no stones here. What of his father? Grandma Eva? Are their stones among the sea of rock before him? Rain trickled down his back and made his clothes cling like a second skin. A cold shiver crept down his spine. He could check every stone or he could go home.
Donnivus rose, staggered back from the stones and looked toward the wall surrounding his home. He could no longer deny the realization clawing across his skull.
Weeks? Months? His hand lingered on the pouch of amber, and his chest tightened so hard it ached. His feet pressed into the grass as he turned toward his home. If there was any home left to return to. An owl called into the darkness.
The rain stilled abruptly as it began, and the ground beneath his feet was slick. He strode to the secret hole in the wall near the blacksmith shop. After Donnivus came home bloody and bruised, his brothers showed him this secret entrance as another way to escape his tormentors. Red leafy vines obscured the opening that used to be much smaller. Now it was large enough for a tall man the size of his father to walk through. He ducked under the hole, unsure of the space. He had been crooked and bent over his entire life, standing up straight felt odd. He swallowed hard again. His brothers would have laughed.
The village was silent. The air died. Even the owl paused its song.
He flattened himself against the wall as a pig darted in front him, followed by a panting dog in chase. Both animals too thin, sickly and scrawny. He leaned back to look down the street, and a creature lingered in the shadows. The head shaped like a bear on a human body. The creature turned toward him, its black, soulless eyes fixed on him. It waved.
He slid back into the shadows, his skin tightened on his bones. He closed his eyes. No, it was just his mind playing tricks on him. When had he last eaten or slept? Yes, he was just seeing things. He dared to look again, and the street was empty.
Taking a deep breath, Donnivus maneuvered carefully around the blacksmith’s house. He peered around the corner, expecting a glow, some warmth. The door was open, and he peered inside. Stone pots were strewn on the floor, and the hearth was dark with ash and wet wood. Vacant and abandoned.
He wound down the gravel path of his home and found more signs of neglect. Doors hanging off the frames. Doorstops overgrown with vines and weeds. As chieftain, his father expected his people to maintain their homes, keep order in their village. The smell of death—thick with grief—felt clammy against his skin.
Turning a corner and striding through the remains of broken vendor booths, he saw a lone lantern illuminating the doorstep of long house. His chest ached again. His mother always left that lantern lit on nights that he stayed out too late, hiding in the shadows from his tormentors.
He quickened his step, reached the steps and scrambled up toward the door. The walrus’ tusks his by the door rattled, and the sound soothed his fear slightly. He pushed hard against the heavy door, and stopped as he entered, water dripping from his clothes to plop on the floor.
“Who’s there?”
He followed the weak voice to the great room, and by a dying fire a bent figure rocked back and forth in his mother’s chair, a gift from his father. “Grandmother?”
She stilled.
“It’s me, Donnivus.” He inched forward; his heart spasmed in his chest.
She looked over her shoulder, and her braid slipped from beneath the shawl.
He froze. Her hair had always been long and a brilliant, snow-white. Now, in the glow of the fire, it lay in thin, wiry tangles. “Are you al…” Right did not seem like the proper word. Tears welled beneath his eye lids.
She did not answer. “Grandma Eva?” he said again, forcing his feet to move forward, fighting the urge to run to her. Questions rattled in his brain. When did mother die? My brothers? What happened to them? Where is father?
He reached her and hesitated to touch her as he stood off to the side of her. The fire crackled at his back, warming the chill from his skin, but not his heart.
“I knew you’d come back, told your father you would.” She grabbed hold of his arms, and he knelt down into her embrace. “My you have changed,” she said into her ear. “It is so good to have you home.”
He shuddered beneath her touch. Home. Whatever had happened. He was home.
When he could take a breath without shaking, Donnivus drew back from her. He reached into his pouch and held out the amber stones for Grandma Eva. The firelight made the stones glow, and their heat warmed his hand. “I got the amber for mother.” Desperation coated his words.
Grandma Eva covered his hand with her own. A crooked smile crossed her face, but her eyes reflected a different emotion. “When you disappeared, you mother believed you would return.” She stifled a breath, almost a choking sob. “That hope kept her alive for a year, until the plague… your brother died shortly after her.”
Donnivus’ throat tightened. “A year? How… how long have I been gone?”
Grandma Eva stilled, and she looked down at their hands. She squeezed his hand in her own. “Six years.”
“No. It can’t be.” The air roared in his ears. He’d stolen the amber in the morning. He’d traded six years of his life for his broken body to be healed, and he’d escaped that night. Those years they weren’t supposed to be taken immediately. He came home in just a day. Donnivus looked own at his hands, his healed hands. “I thought he’d take the years from the end of my life.”
“He?” Rebuke tipped her words. “Who took these years from you?”
He slumped, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his legs. Grandma Eva could always make him feel small, even now. “A man who knew magic named Zivon.” He took a pained breath. “He healed me. He said some words, waved his arms and then… I felt different.” He straightened. Even after everything he had been through, he still looked for approval. “I thought only a day had passed since….” He shook his head. “I’m a fool.”
“No gift ever comes without a high cost.” She shuffled forward on her chair. “But he did not heal you fully.” She grabbed his chin between her bony fingers. “The scar is still there.”
He touched the small patches of skin puckering on his cheekbones. “I’m still cursed.”
She laughed. “Curses only have power if you believe in them.” She leaned back and her gaze settled on the embers of the fire. “And your father was a fool. A fool who passed his foolishness to his son.” She shook her head, and her strong, gutsy self appeared. “Our only curse is the choices we make.”
“Grandma Eva,” he said, his voice soft. “Where is father” Is he?”
She stiffened and pulled the shawl around her shoulders. “Gone, he went looking for you. He sent me a letter that he arrived at Remengart, and that is the last I’ve heard from him. This was a few months ago.”
Donnivus closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. His father was alive. “He looked for me?” The words tasted wrong on his lips. The same man who abandoned him in the snow, left him to die with the wolves. The man who allowed him to be bullied, shunned and tortured his entire childhood. “Why?” he hissed.
She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You are his only remaining son. Your father has always believed in leaving behind a legacy. You may not have been his favorite son, but you are his blood.”
“It never mattered…”
“Stop,” she scolded. “You are no longer that child.” She gripped his chin hard in fingers. “Tell me how you came upon Zivon.”
“It’s a long tale.” She released him, and he rubbed the firey sensation from his chin. He leaned back against the rocker and stared at the sword hanging above the fireplace. The sword that his father loved more than his sons. A gift. When he was younger, he always dreamed of being worthy to hold it, wield it. Now it was just another example of his father’s legacy that never included him. Why would father look for his crippled son?
His mind spun like a spider weaving a web. Where to begin? With the amber he collected? The kidnapping? The bargain he made with the magic man? Zion had flowing hair and kind eyes.” The choice he made now seemed more like a curse, than a gift. Was the time lost worth the body he gained? “They worshipped him.”
“They?” Pain cut through her voice and her nails gripped into his shoulder, but he didn’t pull away. Blue veins bulged from her thin skin.. “Who are they? Her fingers were claws.
“The Forsaken kidnapped me after I stole the amber from their beach,” Donnivus shuddered “Three of them.” He could still smell the stench of death on their clothes.
The fire crackled. His grandmother’s chair creaked.
Donnivus touched her hand still clinging to him. “Grandma Eva?”
“Go on.” She tightened her grip.
“The Foresaken took me to Blakulla where they intended to sacrifice me to Zivon.” Donnivus said, gritting his teeth. He pried her fingers from his shoulder, and his hand rubbed away the pain from her grip. He turned to stare into the face that always been kind and soft. The hardness of her expression forced the words to stumble from his lips. “I exchanged the life of my family for a normal body.” He clenched his teeth, and crossed his arms across his chest. When had it grown so cold?
“Save your self-pity for someone else. I will not tolerate it now.” She narrowed her eyes, her boney fingers tapping on the chair.
“No, I made the choice willingly.” His words came out sharp and cold. He stood over her, feeling strong, sturdy. “He offered to heal me if I gave up six years of my life. I should have been here to save my mother; my brothers.” The words pinched his tongue, but the regret did not fully form, and the lack of the feeling soured his stomach.
“There was nothing you could do,” Grandma Eva shook her head. “The plague took them,” Grandma Eva put a hand on his shoulder. “Even our priestess could not save the many who’ve died. Even…” She lips thinned. “Even my magic could not save them.” She patted his head. “We must move forward. You are home, and strong. We have much to plan.”
His throat clotted. She dismissed his failure if he had just forgotten to shut the front door, but this was so much more complicated. Failure clung to him like his wet clothes. Forgetting would not be simple.
Grandma Eva leaned forward, grabbed the iron stoke by the fire and poked a log, sending orange embers into the air. “The Foresaken are here now. After your father left to look for you, they came.” A sharp thread of fear snaked from his heart to bury itself in his stomach.
“When the plague came, we found a cure, but so many had died. Hundreds from our village and neighboring villages. The fields needed to be planted, and there wasn’t enough hands to do the work.
“The Foresaken had food, and we had the cure. It was a good deal for both of us, although I never wanted it. A few of us didn’t trust them, but so many others were hungry, desperate. They made a deal with the demons, telling themselves it was just until the crop harvest. In the winter, the Foresaken would leave. Winter came, and our people decided the Foresaken weren’t so bad. All the years we fought against them, were tormented by them, lost our children to their sacrifices and yet, now we are allies.”
(more to come, as I want this to end on a cliffhanger, but at this point, I think it’s too long.)
Thanks everyone!
Merry
