Hellrien pulled her hat deeper over her eyes. It was warm, and she could feel the heat of the sun on her skin through her shirt and hauberk. She glanced at Maria Shelton. Of course the woman appeared as cool and calm as always. Frederick Fenrush’s strict training regimen had started to take effect and Hellrien had already lost a few pounds. Her body appeared more firm and her skin was healthier in color, almost glowing. She could almost keep up with the other soldiers during training exercises. In addition to training and guarding duties ’Blue Nose’ had retained her services as a messenger and errand girl so that Fenrush could concentrate on the more administrative duties. Yesterday Hellrien had sneaked out of her tent with some of the Dawners and spent a pleasurable evening at the Soot & Stain. It was already the time of late watches when they had stumbled back to the garrison, but Hellrien had still woken up feeling perky, cheerful and without a major hangover in the morning. The morning exercise had been mild enough to energize instead of exhausting her this time, she had the rest of the day off and for once she was in a good mood as she walked along the main street. First she had met Otley in the front of the Trestlebridge barracks. He appeared restless. He told that one of the guards hadn’t appeared to the roll call this morning. Hellrien gave the matter no further thought as she stumbled upon Maria at the market square. Maria had greeted her kindly and told her she was just about to take a walk outside of town.
”With whom, Mrs. Shelton?”
”Preferably alone. That Otley seems to have lost one of his guardsmen. The Watch is busy hunting for their lost sheep. I have a pretty good idea where they might find him!” Maria threw a disapproving glance in the direction of the Soot & Stain.
”Would my company satisfy you?” Hellrien asked.
The other woman hesitated. Maria Shelton had retained her proud and haughty demeanor and cold contempt towards Hellrien and the other Dawners throughout their acquaintance, but Hellrien had noticed that Maria’s demeanor towards her had melted a little as days went by and they grew more familiar with each other.
”I would like that, miss.”
”My name is Hellrien.”
Maria hesitated again. ”If you insist… Hellrien. In that case you may call me Maria.”
They walked east – past the rocky cliff behind the Shelton residence into the verdant meadows on the edge of the chasm, purple with fireweed. Thin clouds floated slowly westwards. The open scenery seemed to have a liberating effect on Maria. Deep, bitter furrows around her mouth eased and Hellrien could see that she must have been quite a beauty in her youth.
She walked closer to Maria. ”You have a pretty view up here.”
”I love it.”
Hellrien said, almost indifferently: ”Why doesn’t Mr. Cranes want to see his daughter anymore?”
Maria stiffened. ”What is behind your interest in this matter?”
”I just want to know”, Hellrien said calmly. ”Just nosy is all. I too have a father who doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Makes me curious.”
Maria stopped. ”All right”, she said suddenly. ”Let me tell you a story, and maybe then you will understand us a little better. Or perhaps you will judge and condemn us, but it makes no difference to me. You are only visiting here, and soon you will move on.”
”I’m all ears”, said Hellrien quietly.
”It all started almost three decades ago. We were all young back then. Andrew and I had only just married, Bill – that’s Mr. Cranes, my brother – had gotten married a couple of years earlier with a woman named Babs.” Maria smiled to herself. ”You wouldn’t have recognized Bill if you had met him back then, he was a different man. Full of charity and goodwill towards all of mankind, a true philanthrope. We were all close friends since childhood and we had one other person in our close group of friends, a woman named Dora. Dora was single, a silly girl, naive, thoughtless and light-hearted. Orcs were not a big problem back then, not to the degree they are now. There were flourishing farms around Kingsfell, relatively safe from lone, wandering orcs, with just a little precaution. It goes without saying that it was forbidden to wander to the north side of the Span during night-time, for everyone’s own protection. But Dora never paid no mind to rules and restrictions. It didn’t even occur to her that anything could ever go wrong. Too trusting, she was. And she had a habit of running out to the North Downs after sundown for nightly adventures, especially when it was full moon. She was a bit moonstruck like that.”
Hellrien loaded her pipe. She noticed that Maria stared at her hands and eye-catching set of weaponry. Maria stirred.
Hellrien said: ”So one night the orcs attacked and killed her?”
”No, Hellrien. It would have been better for all of us in the long run if they did, but it didn’t happen that way. Something did attack her during the night, and brutalized her. I don’t need to go into detail about all the things that something did to her, but she survived. She was severely traumatized, but her physical injuries healed. After a few months we discovered that Dora was with a child. We had managed to keep the… incident within a close circle. Only I, Andrew, Babs, Bill and a couple of the watchmen knew about it. Nobody would have blamed Dora if she would have… gotten rid of it. It was more or less a public secret that the healer back then sometimes… assisted young women with problems of that nature. But Dora was determined to have the child and raise it. Believed to the sanctity of all life, that’s what she told us. So she had the child. Dora didn’t survive the labor, but the child did. He… it… was an ugly boy, barely passable as a human, with sallow skin and squinted eyes. And the way it cried! The old watchmen talked about drowning it into the chasm, but Bill and Babs, they didn’t want to hear about it. The boy was the only thing left of Dora, and her last wish had been to raise it as a human, to give it all the love and nurturing she would give to a… normal child.”
Hellrien didn’t say anything. It was a sad, tragic story, and she had a feeling it would get worse still. She glanced at Maria from the side.
”Bill and Babs adopted the boy and named it Ray. Babs got pregnant with a child of her own only a couple of months later. Ray… was a peculiar boy. He certainly looked peculiar, but not too strange to draw any suspicions from the locals. We had all kept the secret and the promise we had given to Dora, and in small communities like Trestlebridge, where cousins often marry close cousins, it’s not uncommon to sometimes have… peculiar looking children, with peculiar tastes and disabilities. Ray was different, not only in appearance but in nature as well. He had a violent temper and surly, withdrawn temperament. He learned to walk early, but he didn’t learn to talk before he was five. He wasn’t exactly slow or dim-witted, but not especially smart either. He used to wet his bed until he was ten. He liked hunting frogs and little birds and torture them if he caught them alive. One time he drank half a bucket of house paint and was sick for a week after that. Other children liked to mock him from a distance, but nobody dared to go very close, as he was bigger and stronger than his peers, and had a violent, exploding temperament. But in spite of all this, Bill and Babs gave the boy all the love and nurturing they could, like they had promised Dora.”
Maria pulled in a deep breath before continuing: ”Poppy was born about a year after Ray. She was a real angel, a beautiful, raven-haired girl, gentle and sweet as a peach. That girl was the only other human Ray could bond with. Like two peas in a pod, they went everywhere together. Ray was very protective of his sister, and Poppy in turn loved dearly her adopted brother, her guardian and protector. Bill and Babs had had their concerns at first, but they were relieved and happy to find how kind and patient Ray always was towards Poppy. Babs died ten years later. Pneumonia. When both children were in their late teens, Bill suddenly found out that Poppy was with a child.”
Hellrien threw a glance at Maria: ”Did Ray…?”
Maria shook her head. ”No, Hellrien. I know what you’re thinking, but it didn’t happen that way. Bill confronted Ray about it, and Ray told him that they were… in love. That they were going to marry and have the child together, and maybe more children after that. And Poppy confirmed Ray’s story. Bill was furious. One night we had a meeting, me, Andrew, Bill and the old watchmen who knew of the secret. We decided that we couldn’t allow it to happen. It was an abomination. Ray was an abomination, and we never should have allowed the child to live in the first place. So we decided that… measures would have to be taken to correct that mistake. For both Ray and the child Poppy was carrying. We seized Ray and brought him to the edge of the chasm. The men did, I just watched. You should have seen that monster, Hellrien! The way he wrenched and tore against his capturers and howled like an animal! He swore vengeance against all of us, he swore he would come back and kill us all, and burn the town down!”
Maria looked at Hellrien. ”You don’t understand us, do you? Life is so very simple to you. You just wander from place to place like a piece of driftwood, you never grow roots, nothing and no-one ever touches you, you don’t have a home anywhere. It’s easy for you to judge. Not everyone has that same privilege.”
Hellrien didn’t reply. They walked in silence for a while. ”Bill told Poppy what they had done”, Maria said suddenly. ”He told her he would take her to the healer. To get it sorted. But before he could do that, Poppy ran away. The following night she simply crossed the Trestlespan and disappeared into the North Downs, never to be seen again. This happened maybe eight years ago.”
”And Ray?”
”We searched, but we never found his remains. The stream must have carried it away, that’s what Andrew and I thought. But Bill, he was convinced that Ray had managed to survive the fall somehow and disappeared into the wild. He was never the same man again. Tortured by nightmares and guilty conscience, they have been eating his sanity bit by bit for eight years. And Hellrien – Bill is convinced he saw Ray! At the night of the fire, among the attacking orcs!”
”What do you think?”
”You saw Bill. You saw what has become of him! His sanity is almost completely gone now. He sees monsters in every shadow. No, Ray is long dead. He must be!”
”And the old watchmen?”
”Dead now. Of natural causes. They were old. Me, Andrew and Bill are the only ones left who know the secret. And now you know it too. I don’t know what compelled me to tell you. It’s been weighing heavily on my soul for these past years.”
They stopped near the edge of the chasm, growing thick with fireweed. Purple flowers smelled intensely. Before them opened a magnificent view over the Span and into the hilly, verdant land called the North Downs.
”We should get back”, Hellrien said. ”The sun will set soon.”
They walked back in silence. They walked in the shadow of Ray Cranes.
