Act 4. Who Has a Better Story

Act 4. Prologue

“My mum…she never told me I had a sister,” the woman says, her lower lip sloping downwards, trembling. She reaches for a tankard, tipping it to her lips. Tears gather around her eyes as she looks away.

Her mother never told her? He thinks, raising his own brow. Then the door bursts open like a boulder flung by a trebuchet on a castle wall. At the doorway, the bearded man hoists his pockmarked beanpole of a brother. His face burning red, sweating profusely. Behind them, scores of lightning branches across thick, dark clouds beneath an even darker green sky.

“Is he addled?” The woman leaves his side and rushes to aid the siblings. “I have no liquor in my home aside from mead and ale. Your brother be…by the blood of my ancestors.” He hears her labored breathing as she drapes the sick man’s arm over her shoulder. “His skin is flushed. A pox on this, he might have the plague.”

He observes them through the darkness behind his blindfold as they struggle to settle him unto her straw bed. The beanpole of a man shivers, curling into a ball, his lips dry and cracked as she made him sip ale from a tankard. His eyes move from side to side, glassy, and watery as he drinks. The woman winces as she places her hand on his forehead.

“Foul times. The gods truly are dead,” the bearded man takes a step back. “If the plague reached us here—”

“—the plague has not reached this side of the continent,” he says, “your brother’s holding a damned token.” He purses his lips, pointing them toward the man’s hands. The beanpole of a man firmly grasps a wooden effigy of a boy barely into manhood, seated comfortably upon a curious chair. The boy’s face is carved with blissful content.

“Are those…wheels?” the bearded man raises a brow, scratching his acne-ridden cheek. “On a chair?”

The woman snatches the effigy from the man’s hands with her own hands protected by a washcloth, throwing it toward the rush-strewn floor. She walks toward him, grabs her unfinished tankard from the table and splashes it over the totem. “We need to burn it before its curse spreads.” She turns. “I spent my tinderbox cooking supper.”

“Don’t look at me. We depleted our kindle this morning when ye found us, wench.”

“You have a flint, a piece of charred cloth, a birch bark, and a hemp tow inside your pouch strapped on your chest,” he says, shaking his stumped arms, rattling the chains dangling from his shackles.

“Shut yer trap, man. Me pouch’s empty,” the bearded man barks. “We dun have time for yer jest. I told ya, we ain’t got nay kindle no more. If the plague reached us here, we are doomed. Wench, boil water—”

“—Listen to him,” the woman says, “else your brother damns us all.”

“I told ye,” the man reaches for his pouch. “We ain’t got nay more kindle—” His brow furrows tight, his voice dying as his hand feels something solid in his empty pouch. “Ho…how? I swear I dun have nothing left.” He takes the object from his pouch and finds a sharpened flint. His eyes widen as he finds the very objects, one by one, exactly as his prisoner described. “Sorcery.”

“Perhaps you misremember,” the woman stretches her arm, her palms facing upward toward the bearded man. She raises a shoulder, glancing back towards the table, towards him, looking directly at his blindfold. She hides her smile behind her shoulder before facing the bearded man again. “Give it here.”

He raises his arm, adjusting the blindfold with his stumped wrists, keeping it from slipping. He observes the woman sprinkling salt in intersecting lines on a circle surrounding the effigy. He observes the bearded man carving an apotropaic symbol on the door frame while the woman gathers straw on the floor. She adds the washcloth she used to protect her hand from the token as kindling. He observes their peasant ritual around the dancing blue, green, black, and white flame devouring the forbidden craft.

The pockmarked beanpole of a man exhales a long release loudly behind them before drifting to sleep as the cold, strong wind shakes the windows. The man and the woman attempt to close the windows, ducking as thunder roars overhead.

“Ugh, one too many rain and sky gods have been murdered yet none of their thunder can match that,” the bearded man rubs his temple. “I dun think yer wood hut can shelter us, wench.”

“It will,” the woman declares as she moves closer to him. “It will. Right, man?” She plays with his ear.

“It will.”

He feels her soft hands slap his cheek as the woman wheezes. Her face contorts between agony and joy, gasping for air like a fish out of water as she laughs. A lone lantern offers a small light in her dimly lit house.

“You did not?” He says with a smile.

“You should have seen his face. Hoity-toity he says. He didn’t like one of my men’s fries, calling it soggy like his limp…you know,” She bumps her shoulder to his. “My man, Crum is his name, cuts the potatoes paper thin before frying them and serving them hot.”

“And your customer. He ate with his bare hands?”

“Like an animal,” she then proceeds to mimic a circus ape devouring fruits. Her cheeks bulging with each theatrical bite. “Om nom, nom, nom.”

“Believable sounds. I reckon you eat your potatoes this way?”

“Shut up,” she slaps him again in his cheek as they share a laugh.

“Shut yer cake holes, ye two. We’re trying to sleep.” They both turn toward the brothers sharing her small straw bed. “Kiss and be dun with it. I’ve seen maiden lads and lasses move faster than ye both.”

“Bold for the little spoon demanding us to be quiet.” He senses her finger pressing his lips as she giggles saying, “The little spoon wants us to…he wants us to…”

The low burning flame from the nearby lantern flickers.

“We better…” He senses her breath near his lips. “We better be quiet.”

They hear stones overhead battering the wheat-and-rye thatched roof. The air feels fresh, damp, and cold. The wind outside however, appears only to be whistling.

“Enough about me,” she leans closer, her shoulder touching his. “You weave better stories than I do. Tell me, man. Why do you weave your tales as if you lived through history? You don’t look old.” He observes her eyes climbing down from his blindfold to his lips. “You’re cute, foreign sun-kissed stranger. Perhaps a few winters older than me…I’m not certain. What’s with you and stories?”

“You wish for another tale?”

“Uh-huh.” She reaches for another plate of a bite-size fluffy grub. She takes a bite of it then feeds him with what’s left of it.

The grub tastes subtly sweet, the milk lingering beneath the soft, sticky rice. The cheese adds a gentle sweet-and-salty contrast. She laughs as he moans while chewing.

“Coconut? I recall you mentioning pirates have blockaded all western ports?”

She nods. “They call this grub as ‘puto’…” she says with her mouth full.

“I’m a what?”

She stretches his ear, “No, the people far east from us call this sweet ‘puto’, you silly goose.” She feeds him with another bite. “About my earlier question, what’s with you and stories?”

“Because a cripple boy dares to ask a question.”

“Which is?”