truth and darkness

Truth and Darkness By Jason Arrowitz

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for a Degree in Writing

General Option

Submitted:

5/16/11

Thesis Advisor: Prof. Anne Witkavitch

Jason Arrowitz – Truth and Darkness

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“His was a tale they’ll never read about. Hers was a story that will never be told.

Truth, as the Stranger would say, is a subjective phenomenon, bearing neither fact

nor opinion in any sensible direction. It is a tool to mediate history, to vilify and to

justify. It is as potent as any weapon of war. Branded almighty and irreparable,

truth is as much a function of the divine as it is of the foolish. If truth is to

illuminate, one might rather walk in darkness.”

- Outline -

Abstract - 3

The Sword - 4

Conception - 4

The Feather - 5

Out of Sight - 7

Out of Mind - 13

The Stranger - 19

Storm - 26

Lady Eva, Strong of Soul - 28

Reluctance - 38

Bob and a Cob - 40

Old Problems - 48

The Truth - 51

Afterword - 56


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- Abstract –

When a young girl‟s abusive father is suddenly caught and

murdered by the mysterious Stranger, her small world is suddenly and

irrevocably transformed. While the girl struggles with her new reality,

the Stranger struggles with himself and an unknown bond that they are

destined to create.

The chapter included is a small part of a much larger novel but its

importance is paramount. While the storyline in the chapter is rather

self-contained, the greater plot hinges on the characters that are

introduced and their importance to each other.


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- The Sword -

There it sits, wrapped in dust encrusted cloth, its face protected from the

heavy air. It rests. Cast in a shadow less created than imposed. A lamp, filled

recently, burns low atop a stack of withered books unmoved since their last

thoughtful captor. And the lamp does nothing in this space. Yet there, in that musty

corner lain, solemn and empty. Blending with the rest of those aging objects, spoils

of a life lost in time.

Footsteps echo from outside the room‟s only wooden door, the hinges crack

open as it separates from the wall and the room is, for the second time in ages,

revealed to the world outside. The air shrinks quickly then expands. A breath. And

there it sits, waiting with insurmountable patience. Astute, imagining his hands.

- Conception -

The rain fell from the storm and popped on the roof and coursed through the

wood and dripped on his bare shoulders. In carnal form his muscles bunched

beneath his skin and the water weaved through the creases of his back. And he was

like the tide, an ebb and a flow. Crashing upon the banks of his new wife, which

received him willingly, almost desperately. The sound of their contact filled the

room quickly, pounding the walls with ecstasy and he is captured. His new wife

taking him in, accepting him and his, and then there is a moment.

In the interim between rumbles of thunder it happened, a flash of lightning

tore through the sky and flashed through the spaces in the roof, lighting his wife up

before his eyes in a white hot blaze. But it wasn‟t his wife then, it was the image of


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a young girl. Straight amber hair, brilliant green eyes, milky white skin. And she

was doing less than accepting his tide. And then the instant was gone and he was

shaking, and his new wife wore a quizzical though haughty expression as she

massaged him out of her, rubbed her belly and smiled.

He would carry that twitch for a long time, shaking heavily during the

frequent storms that passed over the swampland, eventually managing to cure it

with booze.

- The Feather -

A feather. Not like any she‟d seen before, not that she had seen all that

many, but it was a feather and it brushed against her head as it passed and twirled in

the breeze. And was off. And she was off. Following it, her little sandals splashing

up dew from the tall grass, scratching against her thighs as she ran through. The

feather appeared just out of reach, curling up toward the bleak sun and falling back

to the grass. And she followed it, giggling. Skipping, thinking no more about where

she was going than how she was going to get back.

And the sun shone up in the sky, maybe morning, a thin haze veiled its

esteemed brightness, but magnified its heat. Strange, a bead of sweat traced a trail

down her forehead, over her button nose and as if instinctively, her tongue caught

it, and it was salty and she giggled at that. And she thought she lost the feather, but

it was there the whole time, drifting high above the grass now. Cascading down,

back and forth, back and forth; and the wind took it again, a little higher and a little

farther. She was almost there. A butterfly! She stopped to admire it, but couldn‟t


6

make out the pattern and didn‟t know the name for the color. It wasn‟t purple, she

knew purple. Her dress was purple. Maybe pink, but wasn‟t that like purple? Or

was that like red? Then it caught fire and she jumped out of her skin.

It caught fire on the wet blade of grass, and issued a dismal screech before

turning to ash and blowing away with the wind. Some of it caught in her nose and

she sneezed and there was blood in her palms. And then she was crying and crying,

she fell on her bottom and cried, not because of the blood, not all because of the

blood, but because she was confused. I told her there wasn‟t any blood on her hands

and she saw that there wasn‟t. Then I told her that the butterfly was still there and it

was. Stretching out its wings, I told her that the color was actually fuchsia, that it

was kinda like pink and kinda like purple and she understood. And now she knew a

big word. She was smiling, even though she was still crying a little. I told her not to

be confused and she wasn‟t. And I told her to get up and she did. And I begin to

think I like children, before her parents meandered through the field and she

noticed them and her heart leapt and I didn‟t actually like that. I didn‟t actually like

that at all, because her heart is mine. And then I did a thing and she was gone. And

then I did something else, and then she managed to kick me out. But not forever.

Not forever.


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- Out of Sight -

She could only see the tip poking out from her father‟s stomach, and even

that was difficult. Through tears she watched a outsider impale him and writhe on

his blade for an instant before it was wrenched out again and he fell stupidly to his

knees. He clutched at the wound and held his bloodied palms up to his eyes as if to

be sure of what had happened. And then he took a last look at his daughter with

eyes that groped endlessly, before he slipped off into whatever hell awaited him.

The Stranger didn‟t run to her side like she thought he might. Instead he

cleaned the blade with a cloth that stuck out of his pocket and dipped it back into its

leather sheath. She tried to call out to him as he stalked off toward the door, but she

could only squeal and cry and bury her face in her dirty hands. After a few minutes

of gasping and trembling she peaked through her fingers at the body at her feet. The

man had never been so still in his life, she thought, if she hadn‟t known better he

could have been sleeping if not for the growing red puddle that gave it away. With

his head turned away from her she couldn‟t see his eyes, but the stillness of his

body only sought to heighten the battle of sheer terror and elation in her heart.

Maybe, in the whispers of her mind, Yana had dreamed of a day like this;

where she was free from Lode Lowry‟s ceaseless stares, his groping hands, his stale

liquored breath. She was born in this house, made of old and rotten squat root as

they called them, fat little things that grew along swamp banks in the north. It was a

small place, no more than a single large room with a few crates that acted like

makeshift tables, with assorted tools and other odds and ends hanging from nails

hammered lazily into the walls. There were two sets of bedding, one in the far


8

corner which belonged to her father, and another in the opposite corner which was

hers but also her fathers, as he put it so many times before. Yana could remember

many sleepless nights spent staring at the wall or the ceiling, waiting for him to tire

out and finally release her hand or stop nibbling her ear like he did his long dead

wife.

Yana looked at her father who built the house, who fed her and kept her safe

and secluded except, that was, from himself. She was reminded of this regularly

where anytime she disobeyed his orders or wept for her mother, only to hear him

scream in his drunken stupor.

“She dead! She dead and I warrant you were the thang what killed „er,”

usually followed by a slap to the face or a kick in the stomach.

Once, he had even broken one or more of her ribs when she dodged his fist.

She couldn‟t breathe right for the last two years, and in the swamp where air is as

thick as mud on the banks, it made her black out on several occasions.

But Lode was dead. Her father was dead. And she was free. At long last his

temper and his unquenchable thirst got the better of him, and he tried the wrong

man, or rather the right man tempted him.

Yana didn‟t know what the Stranger‟s purpose was when he first opened the

door only several minutes before, but she knew how her father would react,

especially with his daughter‟s clothes half-off. She knew how much he hated to be

caught heatin‟, as he put it. She would have screamed out for help, but too many

times has she tried with bystanders only to have them look wearily from her to her

very large father with the half-burnt log in his giant bear-palm, and have them


9

scurry away like mice. So she lay on the floor, nearly naked save for a shredded pair

of jeans beneath her father‟s hairy heaving chest and sweaty brow. If her eyes

didn‟t lighten up at the sight of him her father might have carried on with it anyway,

too drunk to tell a clap of thunder from a slamming door. He looked over his giant

shoulders to see the shadow of a man in the doorway, only a silhouette in the failing

sunlight.

“Get‟n out o‟here,” he yelled, his brow coming together to form a wet V.

The man didn‟t reply, didn‟t beg his pardon, he didn‟t introduce himself or

offer more than the sound of his boots tromping farther into the house, floorboards

creaking beneath his weight. Fully provoked, Lode rose up to his full height, a good

six inches on the man in the doorway, and grabbed the half-burnt kindle that he„s

used countless times before. He brandished it like a club and smacked it into his

palm as the first warning.

“You might‟n be steppin soldier,” he said barely moving his mouth, he was

too inebriated for much else.

But the man only walked in farther. Yana sat up but didn‟t bother covering

herself, her mouth agape, she could only stare in awe.

“Whas‟ your prob‟em soldier, aint cha interducin yerself?” Lode took a step

toward him, picked up a flickering lantern (he always lit a lantern before his

evening escapades, afraid that once the sun went down he wouldn‟t get his eyeful)

and shone it at the man.

If there were a time that Yana might have felt scared through all this (she

assumed fear was something that was prodded out of her a long time ago) it would


10

have been then, when the firelight lit up the Stranger‟s face and his eyes were very

fixedly on her own. She didn‟t think he was staring at her exactly, but into her. It

filled her entire body in an instant, spreading warmth from her head to her toes. It

was the same feeling she got when she thought of her long-dead mother.

“Like‟n watcha see? Want‟n ta be keepin‟ your eyes?! Leave off! Aint no

place for a soldier.”

But the Stranger‟s eyes remained on Yana‟s, they were the darkest she had

ever seen. Perhaps they were brown and she couldn‟t see well in the bad light but

she didn‟t think so. She thought they were as black as the night sky. By this time

Lode had lost his patience completely, Yana was even a little surprised he hadn‟t

snapped earlier, heatin‟ and all.

He barred his teeth into a grin and took one giant swing, with the Stranger‟s

eyes on Yana she thought for sure she would watch the log smash into his cheek,

specks of teeth would spray out mixed with spit and blood and his entire head

would rock back as he fell dead to the floor. One thing about Lode that was certain,

none of the townspeople would bother with a man like him, especially after they

dragged poor Joey Clifton back to town.

The wood flew through the air at a ridiculous speed and likewise cracked

against the floor with ridiculous speed and snapped the blackened edge off like the

head of an axe. Lode‟s entire body shook, from the arm up, rattling his head and

chattering his teeth. He was sure that the man couldn‟t have gotten away from it, the

log was a good two feet. Even if he stepped back the edge would have clipped his

jaw. Yet there he was, staring at his daughter vacuously. He stepped into a


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one-handed backswing (the same backswing that shattered Joey Clifton‟s chest

plate into pieces beneath his skin) and, still seemingly unaware of Lode‟s presence

at all, dodged it amiably, this time shifting back only slightly. A stray frock of his

hair moved from the breeze. It was so fast that Yana couldn‟t actually see the

movement.

At last the Stranger broke his gaze from Yana to Lode and she could

imagine the look. Staring into him, not at him, but she didn‟t think it conveyed the

same warm feeling to her father. For the first time in her life she saw Lode tremble,

only briefly (the drink wouldn‟t allow for much more) before he held onto his club

like it was the chain keeping him to the soil, and she thought later, it very much

was. He swung it once more, dropping the lantern to the floor and gripping the club

with both hands. His muscles riveted, she saw them tighten like a coil and explode

creating a deep whoosh that, even if the actual wood never connected, would have

knocked back any normal man. The Stranger didn‟t dodge it this time, instead he

stepped in toward Lode‟s chest. The Stranger‟s arm came up to block the swing

while his right hand shot like a cannon into the soft spot below Lode‟s rib cage.

Yana could almost see the impact of it through her father‟s back. With the wind

thoroughly knocked out of him, the Stranger slid his left hand to his opponent‟s

wrist and twisted his hand, which twisted his arm to his back and swung him around

to face Yana.

She heard the Stranger speak for the first time then, she thought it was both

terrible and magical at once and he said it better than any rage twisted sentence

from her own mouth ever could.


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“Look into your child‟s eyes and see her,” before skewering him on a blade

he never needed to draw.

Before he turned away from her she tried to look into his eyes again. But he

dodged them this time, and hurried out like her mere presence before him were

driving him mad.


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- Out of Mind -

The smoke brought her back to the house made of squat root. Dazed, the

twelve-year-old looked at a small fire issuing from the smashed lantern by Lode‟s

legs. Half his body was already aflame. She had a sick idea to let him burn, but

realized that the house, which was more important than her father if only because it

was her mother‟s house as well, was worth saving. She got up on shaky legs and

almost stumbled over but held herself to the wall, picking up a splinter as she did.

She dashed to the wicker bucket that they used as a bathtub and struggled to tip it

over. She slipped then and knocked her jaw on the edge, scraping it. Hot blood

spilled out onto the rim of the bucket. Her eyes glazed over briefly and her leg

almost ran into the fire. She looked down to see red smeared across her entire leg.

She had slipped on her father‟s blood. Even dead, she thought sardonically. She got

back up and struggled to tip over the bath water and eventually succeeded. She

snuffed out the fire, both on the house (relieving her) and her father (dismaying

her).

She slumped down on her bottom and watched the smoke drift up from the

floorboards and her father‟s burnt legs and melted leather sandals. Her eyes stung

her, her pointer finger ached from the splinter, and her chin and head throbbed.

Blood had dried and crusted by the time she could manage to get herself up from

the floor and rummage through her clothes to find a dress her mother had sewn for

her. They were never rich, her mother used to say they were land-layers. They were

humble, taking no more than what they needed and needing no more than what was

necessary, as her mother liked to put it. This dress was sewn for her when she was a


14

bit smaller, about three years ago, which made it quite short on her when she threw

it on over her head. It was made of a very plain cloth (the only they could afford

from peddlers) and the color of a bright spring sky. It had a wide open neck and no

sleeves.

It was nighttime, a pallid moon sat high atop a throne of clouds, showering

them in a sick pale light. Below, Yana stood alone on the porch of her father„s - her

own house and saw that it was storm clouds that threatened to swallow the moon.

She was terribly thirsty but not a bit hungry. She didn‟t wonder, at the time, how

she would fend for herself when her father did all the hunting, and she knew where

the stream of fresh water was relative to her house. She grabbed the metal pale that

they used to fetch water and started to head out. She paused in the middle of the dirt

road in front of the house. She stared down it, south, where a set of footprints lay

surreptitiously in the mud, soon to be washed away by the coming storm. She

thought about him then, dangling the bucket on her fingers, thinking of how

intently he looked into her eyes. It was something she had never felt before, a

feeling so bitterly right that it made her whole life, everything up until an hour ago,

seem trivial, stupid almost. She wanted to laugh at it, at her entire twelve years, but

could only manage a raspy cough.

Yana had to navigate through a sea of bramble. She knew that Lode had cut

a path through the thicket to get to the fresh water but was also aware that in the

swamps vegetation grew over night. Thick and wrinkly green vines covered the

ground like intersecting veins and strangled every plant that crossed their path.

Almost invisible were their tiny barbs, which clung to your clothes (often being


15

removed by tearing the clothing) and scratching any exposed skin. Her mother

called them ankle-biter‟s, her father called them a plague.

When she reached the warbling brook she was soothed by the faint rocking

of thunder in the distance, and delighted by the moon not yet overtaken, glistening

brilliantly off the broken surface of the water. She dipped her bucket so that the

current would fill it up, like Lode had shown her before her mother died and she

was still wetting herself. Once full she put the bucket next to her, sat on the bank of

the water‟s edge and dipped her feet within. The water was cool and crisp, she

scooped some up in cupped hands and drank it vigorously. Then she thought of the

Stranger again.

Yana was too young to understand what love at first sight might mean, but if

she did she probably would have been rapt with the idea. It was appealing, to

connect body and soul to another merely by seeing them, having no idea who they

are, but knowing all the same that they need to be a part of your life. She wasn‟t

sure what love was or what it meant to be in love, she didn‟t know much of

anything. With no schooling she was left with the wisdom of her dead mother and

the awful knowledge that her father so rigorously imparted on her. If he were alive

right now, he would be on top of her breathing heavily, drops of sweat falling on

her forehead. She would stare passed him to the ceiling where she saw her mother

talking her through it, telling her that he would be done with it soon, that whatever

pleasure he got from it would be quickly and unceremoniously spent and he would

go away and leave her to wash herself. But Lode was very much dead, dead and

rotting away in a house she stopped from burning, his own legs chewed up by the


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fire with his sandals melted to his skin. And she would like to leave him there, she

thought, to rot in the house he made until the insects of the swamp devoured him

from the inside out.

“And now what,” she asked herself aloud in her sweet voice, though only

the bull frogs far away in the swamp answered her.

Just as well, she thought, that the only thing that would talk to me is the

swamp. When mamma died the swamp was a better pa. Maybe I’ll just go see the

frogs in the swamp that sing in the night, and dance on its banks in the falling, or

was it failing?, light, and dream of a day when I can croak, sing and flop as I live as

a frog in the big muddy swamp! I don’t think that’s how it goes, but- she was roused

from her thoughts by a sinking feeling. The feeling that something was watching

her. That maybe Lode wasn‟t rotting away in his house, but had somehow escaped

death twice and followed her path out here to get what was due for him. Or maybe

he really was still dead and his corpse had come to take something of her. She could

have jumped to her feet in an instant and scrambled into the thickest part of the

swamp in front of her across the stream, she could have run until her ankles were

raw, the soles of her feet bloody, her head swimming in a fog of exhaustion and

delirium. But there was another lesson hidden in that thought that Lode had taught

her, it‟s useless to run.

“Where‟n ya gonna go?” he shouted after her one balmy evening.

She had been good, she was always good, but that day she had been real

good. He had asked her to take care of the garden in the back of the house, where a

clearing gave way to the thick swamp forest that encircled the small cabin. And


17

take care of it she did. She cleaned up the awful weeds that liked to sprout up

between rows of carrots and cucumbers and something that we might understand as

cabbage. She did this with no lunch or supper, and she didn‟t utter a single

complaint. She had hummed herself through it, believing that if she were really

good and kept her mouth shut he might treat her like he used to. But when she came

in well after dusk, and he had been stuffed and rocked himself against the wall with

a large urn of the shine, his face lit up like a torch, half-lidded eyes rolling around in

the big empty shell of his head he saw her. He saw her with dirt up to her thighs,

mud clinging to her cheeks, fingers brown and raw with several cuts lining the tips,

he saw her, and whatever nonsense dream he was having quickly evaporated.

Maybe it was the drink or maybe it was the way the sweat made her shirt

stick to her chest, but he didn‟t spend any time, he tore her shirt off without uttering

more than a single disgusting grunt and then she ran. Half her shirt trailing behind

her, flapping as she fled, tears cleaning the soil from her cheeks.

“Where‟n you gonna go?” he called after her, pouring another gulp mostly

down his shirt. “Who gonna want ya?!” and he went to go after her but stumbled

and fell on the stoop right in front of the stairs. He uttered an indignant cry when he

saw the urn splash more than half of his precious „shine‟ down the stairs, and got

himself up shakily.

Where’n you gonna go?

“I know where I wanna go,” and she looked longingly down the stream

where somewhere along its banks the Stranger might be dipping his hands and

taking a drink.


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That he might be thinking of her, lonely and afraid, trying to reach out to her

and maybe even marking his way back to her. But she knew that he wasn‟t, that a

part of him couldn‟t. She didn‟t know how she knew this, but there was a saying,

wasn‟t there, that her mother used to tell her when they went to get water together.

Send your wishes through the water, she said, and they will always find

their place. And so she did.

_-_

When the Stranger bent down to dunk his head in the fresh water, no, before

he did it, he was aware of the girl a few miles upstream. He was aware of her now as

he was aware of her before, as he was aware of her when he reluctantly walked

away from her. He started to question his instinct for the first time of his impossible

life, and dipped his head into the cool water, hoping it would wash away the

thought.

Send your wishes through the water.


19

- The Stranger -

The Stranger didn‟t expect to care when he happened upon the house, miles

away from the last town and a mile or more before the next village. It stood there

made of some swamp tree, he wasn‟t sure the name, slumped, poorly framed and

poorly insulated. There were no windows. Whoever put the cabin up had no

recreation in mind; it was a house for the sake of a house and nothing more. It

bordered a branch of what they were calling Richard‟s Way, a long paved road

leading from Alekston in southern Shuvet to the town of Mars-Keth, in central

Ramil. The path he walked however was an offshoot of that road, which would

have more readily brought him to where he was heading.

He remembered looking down Richard‟s Way and then looking off to the

trail that headed south-east of it, made more by long years of traveling horses and

coaches than by anything else. He looked down it, saw how it dipped down a small

hill and then into what would quickly descend into swampland in nor‟easter Ramil

and he asked himself why he was even considering it. The act alone was puzzling;

the Stranger didn‟t think about thinking. He was, as he considered briefly to

himself, a man of instinct. Gut reactions, doing what feels right, this is how the

Stranger ran his life, right down to how and when he ate, an act which seemed more

and more trivial as he traveled alone. Restrained by his unfailing senses, he was

propelled down the path to the swamp and it would seem as he came upon the house

as it was that he hated his senses.

He stood there looking at it for a long, considering moment. The sun was

falling, spreading a golden glow across the path before him, lighting the forest


20

canopy a burning orange and seeping into the front of the wooden shack. Vines

crawled up the sides of the house like the swamp was trying to reclaim its lost

timber.

Reluctance, the idea that he had a word for but never the feeling, reluctant to

move his feet and see what lies inside, reluctant to discover something that he

figured better left unrevealed, reluctant to see. A slave to instinct, his legs moved all

their own.

When the Stranger pushed the crooked door open he saw a girl on the

ground, her shirt thrown to one side and an oil lamp laid at the other side. He saw

her eyes light up, she couldn‟t be more than twelve or thirteen. He saw this young

girl half-clothed with eyes like glowing emeralds. Reluctance was dashed away in

an instant and he knew exactly why his senses had brought him here, so far away

from his destination. He knew exactly why they brought him here and exactly why

it mattered.

And then the voice. Not her voice, he knew it wasn‟t the girl‟s voice, it was

a voice of a much older woman speaking lightly in his ear, almost chanting. Truth

in Darkness, the voice said. And repeated. Truth in Darkness, Truth in Darkness,

Truth in Darkness. And the whole world washed away and he stepped outside of his

body. Far away he could hear water leaking from some high spout. Each drip

echoed by the chanting, in line with it, becoming louder. First no larger than a

drizzle of rain. Then a drop, louder and louder into a growing puddle, a pond, a

lake, an ocean. Falling and splashing until it sounded like an explosion, punctuated

by the woman with the melodious voice Truth in Darkness, until there was nothing


21

more than the rupturing sound of it. Drip, drip, drip. And he saw himself on the

balcony of a tower, overlooking a black and dismal land with nothing but chanting,

the beating of drums and endless eruptions of droplets. Until his anger welled up

inside of him and the entire earth was torn asunder, spreading a growing crevice

from the base of the tower ever onward, splitting the land, magma bubbling up out

of the wound like blood and swallowing everything beneath. And he saw himself,

the white of his eyes lost in a pool of blackness, like his iris had reached out and

swallowed the rest of his eye, spreading. And he could only scream a futile scream.

And there was a feather, and there was the girl, and her name was Yana. Truth in

Darkness, Truth in Darkness, Truth in Darkness.

He saw the shape of a man turn his head from above the girl on the floor and

speak a garbled form of language that the Stranger couldn‟t understand nor cared

to. And he fell into the girls great emerald eyes and saw himself living beside her

for the last twelve years in an ungodly speed. Everything up until two years ago was

no more than normal for people like them, and then her mother died and it was the

saddest day of the girls life (he hadn„t ever felt this before, but knew in this place

that was certainly not his own head, what it was). The saddest not only because she

lost her mother but because it was the end of her childhood, it was when she ceased

being Yana Lowry and became only Yana, the girl with the large green eyes, lost

but for her one miserable reminder that she was indeed important as an object for

her father to thrust upon. And the Stranger sped on through the many torturous days

of rape and ogling and her father‟s heavy breathing on her neck, and his rough

hands on her skin, and his muscled hips on the swell of her back and his matted


22

sweaty hair. Dangling a bottomless urn of moonshine from his fingertips as he

moaned and humped and fell breathless beside his own daughter. Then he noticed

the creature rising up in front of him.

The silhouette grabbed a fire log and slammed it into his open palm, a paltry

threat. The thing became real, flesh and muscle and fat filled out the dark spot that

stood as his placeholder. The Stranger looked at him at last and pulled himself away

from the girl‟s eyes where he could still hear echoes of Truth in Darkness rattling

inside his head. He knew what would come next, and without needing to think, he

dodged it. The next swing was faster and harder but even that was nothing to the

Stranger, who could see from the contractions of his shoulder muscles what he was

going to do. Lode Lowry would swing again and it would be the last thing he did.

The only truth that the Stranger knew was that of battle. With the practiced calm of

a man in meditation the Stranger stopped his arm and pinned him in a way that

would make him look at his daughter. If the Stranger would ever be a

compassionate man in his impossible life, this would be the furthest from. In the

culmination of all the unspeakable emotion that swallowed him in the seconds he

gazed into the child‟s mind it occurred to him the one way to make Lode open his

own eyes and see every mistake he made leading up to this point, and make it clear

that he would die in its realization.

Look into your child’s eyes and see her. From there, he let all that he had

witnessed in Yana go through her father and, what Yana interpreted as groping eyes

(she knew little other expression from her father) and what the Stranger would have

no name for, would be revelation, reliving the torment that he inflicted onto his


23

daughter, the trauma she would suffer the rest of her life because of him. One might

think his death a mercy compared to what the Stranger had shown him, but he

wouldn‟t have died from such a wound so quickly. Unknown to Yana or the

Stranger, Lode was very much still alive when the house caught on fire, entirely

paralyzed and bleeding out, having his legs torch and blacken and feel the pain of

being eaten by fire pale in comparison to the curse of his dying thoughts, reliving

his child‟s life for another hour before he slipped into the hereafter.

Then the Stranger felt another new emotion, fear. Fear of what the child

could do to him, fear of the possibility that it would be another- no. So he turned

and left without seeing her again, without even looking in her direction. The

thought of her would never leave him.

Outside he ran as far and as fast as he could. He had left her naked, terrified

and puzzled. He could feel her for the sake of it all, feel her where he once could

feel nothing at all. And that too terrified him, terrified him that feelings, these

endless emotions, previously nothing but dead words with obscure meanings,

abstract things that the Stranger could neither fully understand nor cared to reared

up to devour him. Now like a sparked match the flame of emotion burned a hole

through his heart and lit an inferno in his brain. He was sure he would die from the

heat of it. The ominous feeling of the storm on the horizon, the stubborn falling of

his feet in the semi-dark, an eternity of past emotions he never felt rising up at him

from the dark pit of his mind. Fear, desperation, guilt, anger (earth-splitting anger?)

swallowed him like a burden he was never meant to bare.

An hour later he wouldn‟t feel anything.


24

The Stranger had stopped walking, merely two miles from where he was

last, and just as his senses had brought him to the cabin in the swamp with such

sincere importance, such sublime rightness he seemed to have lapsed at last back to

his old self. The self that felt nothing and cared for little more. His old self except

for one imperfection, one flaw that no matter how hard he tried to convince himself

otherwise (today had been a day of firsts for the Stranger) wouldn‟t recede or fall

away with the time like so many other unimportant thoughts of his impossible life.

It was a presence, an awareness, of the girl in the cottage. Not that he could see her,

or even know where she was, but it was something, like a tick in the back of his

head that transferred to him how she felt. The unperceivable ideas of emotion,

transmitted like a sunbeam from the girl to himself, held hostage amidst a swirling

darkness where there was only the oblique shade of ideas and thoughts that passed

in and out of his consciousness. There it was, captive and contained illuminating his

mind with the idea‟s of sadness, loneliness, longing, merely words, incapable of

actually feeling how she felt, but knowing all the same.

The Stranger didn‟t even notice that he had walked through most of the

decaying little town south of the girl‟s cottage. He turned back suddenly, unaware

of what his body was doing and went towards the stream, clearly audible in the

silence.

Send your wishes through the water. It carried on the rush of the stream

passed his ears, that soothing gurgle as only water can create as it flows over rocks

and exposed roots and pushes along ambling fish. It was the awareness that ate at

him, the water did little to quell the feeling. When he pulled his head back up his


25

path was set just the same, the feeling (if that‟s what it was) could be pushed aside,

in time the thing would fade and she would be just another shade of a memory

floating around in emptiness until it dissolved forever. Time was the only mercy the

Stranger had ever known.

To have seen the Stranger then, hunkered at the bank of the water with

thunder mumbling off in the distance, visible only in the moon now nearly eclipsed

by the storm entirely, one could see the face of time. Helpless to retread, helpless to

pause or stop, helpless but to go on ever forward. To let the past be the past, the

future be the future and the present be the ceaseless shift between the two. It didn‟t

help that his feet were still mired in Reluctance.


26

- Storm -

The storm overcame the swampland as a quiet lullaby, something soothing

and melodious. The thunder seemed stunted, like padded explosions in the

atmosphere that tapered off to a slow grumble. It was the storm that Ellie had

encountered only a few hours before, when she left the comfort of her village to

head east, on the back trail of a force she could neither recognize nor understand.

The storm had moved south-east since then and skirted the ocean, following a jet

stream where it would pick up more moisture and begin to fester as many of these

storms often did. It would then pick a strong southern direction, and release its

chaos into the Stormwater Downs, where it‟s no guess where the name came from.

Before it moved on, however, it would see beneath it a great many things

from its brooding perch in the heavens. It would watch Yana despairingly look up

into its twisting face, flinching as each cold droplet of rain crashed into her

forehead and dribbled into her eyes, unnoticed for the tears streaming down her

cheeks. She would ask the storm what she should do, but the storm, as omnipotent

as any god ever was, would only go on its course, breathing in soft booms, thinking

in blue-violet jolts of lightning and moving with the winds funneling upwards and

onwards.

It would see beneath it the Stranger, nameless and still, unflinching in the

face of the rain, caring little for the storm or the sun or the land. It would see only

this, perhaps it could sense the stubborn way his body moved away from the girl,

perhaps it could sense that small gleam of desperate hope (the Stranger wasn‟t even

familiar with this last concept) swelling in the back of his mind. Perhaps the storm


27

would intervene and send a bright and painful wake-up call through the top of his

head into the soles of his feet. Perhaps, but it wouldn‟t. It, like all great creations of

the universe, would carry on, unilateral and occlusive.

The storm would die where all storms like it before have died, and all

storms like it after.


28

- Lady Eva, Strong of Soul -

Could she go back to the house with her dead father lying on the floor in a

puddle of his own blood, half-cooked? Could she go back and just grab some

things. Oh, what things? What in the world did she have a right to in that house?

Even if Lode was dead and gone, she couldn‟t, not after the last two years,

rightfully and peacefully pull the corpse through the door and throw him into the

swamp for the creatures of the night to feast upon and claim the house as her own.

No, her only hope was in the man walking away from her, south bearing west. She

didn‟t know she knew this until she really thought about it, until the rain broke free

of the clouds and fell down upon her, drowning the question before she could voice

it aloud.

What do I do?

And the rain fell cold in her eyes as she cried and slipped down to her knees.

And she did so long and painfully, her chest heaved with the pace of her heart and

ached.

What do I do?

Her legs lifted her up from the mud and brought her slowly away from the

riverbank. Send your wishes- they brought her to the steps of her old house, up its

misshapen and unleveled stairs - through the water - passed her father‟s corpse,

where her hands picked up the half burnt lantern. She fumbled the glass from the

base and poured, from what her autonomous senses could discern, oil into the

chamber, though it could have easily been „shine. She struck a match off the wood

frame of the house - find their - like she had seen Lode do countless times before


29

and lit it. She stumbled to the matt she called a bed and sank onto a pillow stuffed

with down and sewn with thick fabric - place.

There sat in the air a heavy smog almost indistinguishable from the deep

shadow where the lamp light wouldn‟t penetrate. The dark corners, like her mind,

unknown for what may rest within and much too weary to discover. The lantern

was out of arms reach sitting on the floor, flickering strange shapes against the wall.

She refused to sniff the air, afraid that she might learn of the scent that sat beneath

the smoke. And the storm went on overhead, water snaking through the roof boards

and splashing around her in syncopated bursts. She slept.

Drip

Drip

Drop

The sun scratched the sides of the wall coming in from the door thrown

wide. It was filled with light like the angry mouth of Terrisius, king of man. She

woke. And she was fully clothed with jeans that she never owned and underwear

that had never belonged to her, wearing a cute and obviously expensive green

blouse. She inspected her nails, which were now free of dirt. Her hair was soft and

silken and it smelled like lily, her mom„s favorite flower. A smile touched her lips

at the thought of that. She grabbed her blanket in her fist, at one point she knew it

was ridden with mold and torn by time, now bunched beneath her fingers it was

fresh and new.

She threw the blanket off her and ran to the door, which itself grew into a

large ornate archway, adorned with golden feathers that seemed to move in the


30

shifting light. And she burst through and fell sprawled out in the mud. Everything

became dirty at once and that supreme cleanliness that she felt only moments ago

was robbed of her. She could do nothing but pick herself up from the mud and

attempt to let the rain clean her, though it would never quite suffice even in its

downpour.

Then she saw a figure approach from town. A lone person with a

presumably dark topcoat, a hood hiding their face and their presence obscured by

the rain. Yet it‟s shape was preserved as the rain ruptured on its shoulders. Yana

was at once euphoric and ambivalent, unsure of the person‟s identity. She followed

the first emotion, whipped some of the mud from her clothes and welcomed it.

As it drew nearer she noticed its shoulders were broad, nearly more broad

than her body was long. It was tall. And it held a dead rabbit, its ears clutched in the

person‟s hand while its body flopped against their leg. Then it wasn„t a rabbit. It

was something long and metallic. She knew who it was before it ever made face,

before it was within a few feet of her she knew. Her father had returned. Perhaps

gone on some long overdue excursion but had returned now. And nothing will have

changed. Nothing.

The sky opened up and the rain ceased to fall. The glowing eye of the sun

stared down at her, filthy and ragged. And nothing had changed. Then the figure

was in front of her and it wasn‟t her father at all. It was a man from town who

slouched and clutched at his chest. His breath gurgled in and out of his throat. He

looked down at her briefly with red eyes and his other hand drew back in a fist. She

threw her arms over her head and waited.


31

Drip.

Yana woke. Water slid down her cheek and soaked into the pillow.

Again.

And again.

Her eyes still blurred with sleep she blocked the last drop with her arm and

with her other hand wiped some of the water from her forehead.

The storm had passed and with it the last of her uncertainty. Just as the

dream had come and gone leaving nothing but the sound of the man with the

gurgling breath, so too had the storm. It left only the newness that the land gets after

its been awash with rain. And so she began.

From Lode‟s belongings she took a pair of worn jeans and hemmed them

like her mother had shown her when she was still very young. She tied the waist

with a cord that Lode had used as part of a fishing net. They were enormous on her,

but they would do. She moved over to her mat, slid it aside and pried open the

boards beneath with her fingers, which reminded her of the splinter she had gotten

the day before. Within she found a leather bag coated in dust and Earth. Hunched

over the hole where various bugs scurried away from the light, she brushed it off

and removed it.

Yana looked at it for a long while before she opened it, unsure whether she

felt like smiling or crying. She steadied herself with a breath and pried it open,

where it was closed with rawhide draw strings, and rummaged in it until she pulled

out one of her mother‟s only remaining articles of clothing. It was a poets top, made

from the same sky blue fabric as her dress. She slipped it on and found it to be quite


32

a bit larger than she was hoping. But it was the cleanest thing in her house and she

wore it proudly. She pressed the shirt to her cheek and hoped that in some way the

smell of her mother would come back to her, but all she could smell is the musk of

the leather bag and an underlying note of rot from the house.

Yana took another thoughtful glance at the bag before she turned it over and

emptied it on her mat. Within was an assortment of things from her mother: a shell

comb colored purple with faded green rings throughout, a bottle of perfume that her

mother had finished shortly before she died, a small stone oil lamp that was passed

down through her mother‟s family and a few other articles of clothing, most of

which were now too old and worn to be of any use.

She packed the essentials into the leather bag, or at least what she thought

was essential, and absentmindedly pushed the comb into her hair where it caught

easily in her knots. She placed the oil lamp, the remainder of the oil and the box of

matches into the bag, grabbed the rest of the cord that hung on the wall and put it in

also. Then she scrambled around the room and looked for the few bits of clothing

she could call her own, found them and threw it all in the bag.

Yana thought over what she had packed and counted each on her fingers:

Mom’s stuff, clothes, oil and matches…. Oh, food! She threw the bag over her

shoulder and ran out through the door and hurried down the steps. She saw the sun

in full since she woke. It was going to be warm, a thin haze hung in the air and

immediately dampened her clothes and skin. If she was going farther south and out

of the swamp it might be less humid but she wasn‟t sure, she had never ventured

much farther south than town. She ran to the back of the house where the trees had


33

long shadows.

The rear of the house looked even worse than the front, boards sagged off

the frame and left the boards that were meant to insulate the house weathered and

rotten. Mold crept up the framework and sought to engulf the entire back end

except where the sun scraped the top of the wall and roof. The garden had already

been picked clean and she was supposed to, as she remembered now, work on

weeding it and planting new seeds. Next to the house but before the garden was the

cold cellar, where they stored any meat that they could, but because they were on

the edge of spring she didn‟t expect that her father had put much there recently.

The cellar was marked with a stone slate with straw shoots that poked out

through the edge. She struggled to move it at first, her finger throbbed momentarily

before it finally and shakily budged. She never went to the cellar very often and

recently almost not at all. She imagined it was some large room beneath the house

with shelves of meat and other goods. Even though it was really no more than a

glorified hole filled with straw and framed sloppily with wood (the same wood, it

appeared, as the house) she wasn‟t all that shocked. Within she would only find a

single large jug of shine and something wrapped in green leaf. She pulled it out and

smelt at it, salivating almost immediately. She clutched her stomach; she couldn‟t

remember the last time she was this hungry. She gingerly unwrapped the leaf. She

was both dismayed and happy to see what was inside; a few pieces of jerky that her

father had made sometime during winter. Dismayed because she hated jerky and

happy because it would last for a while. She had a thought to rip off a stringy chunk

and push it into her mouth, but knew that it‟d be better left for an emergency. So she


34

tucked it away into her bag.

Yana walked lazily back to the front of the cabin where a final thought

caught her off guard. It was a terrible pain, wasn‟t it? It was, out of all the cruel

jokes the universe could„ve thrown at her this had to be the worst. Money. She

needed money to get by in the world didn‟t she? She hoped beyond all things that

her father had enough coin to give her a final good meal, that perhaps she could

absolve herself of him in doing so. She would finally be able to spend the money

that he had always held over her head. The money that he “worked his balls off for”

and never spent a dime on his child. She would indulge herself heartily.

The joke of it was simple. She needed whatever money Lode had made

before he died and he kept all of his money in the safest place he could think of: his

person. Yana knew where that was but knowing it didn‟t make it any easier. The

front right pocket of his jeans would always bulge with his coin purse, she reached

longingly into her own pocket and knew what had to be done. She cursed under her

breath and walked back inside.

It was the smell. Sweet at first then ultimately unpleasant. It crept into her

slowly when she entered and didn‟t become immediately apparent until she was

forced to recognize her father‟s body. Forced to recognize it because until now she

had forgotten that it was there, that he was there. She took a large breath and held it

in, she tried to snake her hand into his front pocket but found that, in the way he had

fallen, made that almost impossible. She would have to move him onto his side, a

task that repulsed her immensely. She knew all the same that she could do little else

and she steadied her shaking hands and calmed her hectic nerves. She took another


35

breath, pressed her hands to her dead father‟s side and pushed as hard as she could.

Her feet began to slide on the floor and she knocked the empty water basin aside.

She managed only to push her father away from her. Yana caught herself before she

slipped and fell face first onto his back. She backed off, agitated, then readied

herself and went at it again. She dug her feet into the floor and again managed only

to push him away from her. The blood beneath him was still moist and he left a dark

streak across the floor boards.

She tried this way a few more times, sweat streamed down her cheek and

soaked into her new shirt. She was disgusted when she saw his blood caked into the

wrinkles of her palms and got frustrated. The last time she pushed she did fall onto

her father, so angry that she screamed and pounded on his back as hard as she could

before her hands began to throb; it was like punching a rock. She ran outside and

screamed as loud and as hard as she could, skirted the brink of collapse but

managed to control herself. She shook; cold sweat clung to her skin.

Yana couldn‟t think of how she felt, she was disgusted with this final

stroke of bad fortune. She fell to her knees and went into the ceremonial bow, a bow

that she had seen her father perform only once in the last several years, at her

mother‟s funeral. She went into this bow with her knees folded up under her

stomach, her arms folded in front of her head and her face pointed directly to the

Earth. She cried lightly, for she had waited too long to pray. And out of all the gods,

she beseeched the only one she thought might actually help her.

Lady Eva, she recited in her mind, prayers from a childhood she thought

long forgotten.


36

Lady Eva, strong of soul, give me strength to keep me whole.

I don’t know what I’m doing, I barely know how I’ll get by. All I know is

that man, the one who saved me, he’s the only thing I can even think

about. I need this money, but more than that, I need to leave. I need to.

Please, give me the power to do this, give me the smarts to do this, give

me the courage to do this. I miss my ma so much it hurts, like a fire in

my heart. Please Lady Eva, hear me. Help me.

Yana stayed bowed for a while after she had prayed, calling on the King of

man and god, Terrisius, to put the memory of her father to rest, as her father had

done for her mother. She hated Lode, more than she could ever comprehend, but the

thought of his soul wandering the Earth long after his body had turned to dust

scared her much more than the peace the gods would grant him. Perhaps grant him,

she didn‟t know the punishment he would face in the afterlife nor cared to entertain

the thought, but she did pray, and she did wish for his peace if only for herself. Then

she cleared her thoughts, as her mother had showed her, something that until today

she thought was rather impossible. But now, exhausted and angry, she found that

emptiness to be a blessing and reflected on its peace when she began to move again.

Back in the house the smell was oppressive and the shadows were almost

tactile. Yana had a singular purpose now and there was no time to reflect on

anything. No time to think about the body as her father or even those distant, oft

forgotten memories of happiness. She could have moved on without the money of

course, but this was beyond that. In doing this she could put the anguish that Lode

had imprisoned her in and carry on a little lighter. Or, at least she hoped.


37

Yana moved to the other side of Lode and reached over, dug her fingers into

the softness of his opposite side, placed her feet against his body and pulled. He was

terribly heavy for her, his body gained more weight as she lifted him from the

ground and turned him over at last, pouring every ounce of strength she had inside

of her. Later, she thought, maybe even more than that. And his body came crashing

down on top of her feet, which she shimmied out. She didn‟t look for more than a

second at his dirt stained face or his empty open eyes. She reached into his pocket,

grabbed his coin purse and left with the door rocking behind her.

In the sun she almost felt reborn. Even though it was hot and getting hotter

and wet and getting wetter, she felt new. She rinsed her hands in the stream and

spread the cool water over her skin before she came back to the house for the last

time to get her bag. And though she knew better, she did ruminate for a moment on

the house and looked at it as the sunlight saturated the roof and doused the porch.

And now she could only remember her mother, her mother‟s smile, her mother‟s

love. She threw the bag over her shoulder, gave a final glance at the house and went

south towards town.


38

- Reluctance -

The Stranger had spent the night a mile away from where he stopped at the

stream, four or five miles out from town. He had seen nary a face since. Save a

single wagon drawn by a feeble horse and a man in a wide straw hat that sagged

below his eyes and hid his face in a light shadow. The man‟s wagon was filled with

bushels of apples and some other fruit of which the Stranger new not the names.

There were also bags, presumably filled with feed or what the people called rice,

though he had never eaten such a thing. The man had passed him slowly, the

Stranger thought his horse might have given out at any moment. But it faithfully,

and slowly, pulled all of their weight with breath heaving in and out of its frail

body. The man tipped his hat to the Stranger, who was rummaging through his

purse for something, and his hand instinctively shot to the handle of his weapon,

which caused the man to whip his horse into a labored gait.

The Stranger followed the wagon with his eyes until it passed a bend in the

road. He could only think of how far out he must be from Richard‟s Way, given the

sorry state of this roads traveler‟s as opposed to those he saw on that lovely paved

pass. He looked around him; the sun cut through a heavy haze in the air and lit the

new leaves on the trees in a pale green. There was an endless symphony that rose

with the sun, the fly‟s percussion, the frogs warbling bass, the swamp birds pitched

melodies that echoed off the trees. All of these annoyed him. And the frustration of

these new and irritating discoveries made his decision to come this way even more

aggravating. He turned towards the south where the wagon man had come and

wondered how he would get back to Richard‟s Way, or whatever pass would lead


39

him to the mountain in Ramil, and figured that eventually, and hopefully without

cutting through wilderness, a road that led east could be found if only he kept on.

So he walked for ten minutes, painfully slow and questioned his hesitance.

His body barely obeyed his commands and the thought of the girl, that damned girl

in the cottage, flooded back into his eyes and was only pushed away forcefully

when he rubbed them with his palms. He spat in the mud, cursed at it and kept

going south newly miserable. Thinking only of the mountain and what answers

might await him.


40

- Bob and a Cob -

Shortly after setting out Yana saw a lone wagon moving at a slow pace

towards her. Led by a single horse that looked more dead than alive it passed her

and offered no more than a single disheartened bray. Its driver wore a broad straw

hat that jounced as the wheels moved in and out of the muddy ruts. He hummed a

tune she‟d heard a few times before, usually while Lode was busy with something,

and it left a bitter thought in her head. The man tipped his hat to her as she passed

and she gave him a nervous smirk and nodded, she didn‟t know what else to do.

“Erm, scuse‟ me little lady,” the man called after her. Yana turned to the

man with the wagon, empty except for a few bags of rice stacked haphazard behind

the seat.

“Yessum?”

“You travelin‟ on your lonesome is you?”

A thousand evil thoughts popped into her head at once, she was

immediately ready to run. She answered back nervously.

“I‟m uh, gonna meet my brother in town.”

“Welp,” the man pressed on,”I passed a feller on the way up. Gave me n‟ ol‟

Hickory here a right start! You watch yerself now, some mean folks round these

parts,” and he patted the horse in front of him. Yana breathed a sigh of relief and

nodded her head a little more purposely.

“Yessum, uh, thank you!” He whipped the horse into its meandering pace

again and waved to her as he turned back north.

She knew exactly who the man was talking about, and that the man had seen


41

him recently made her heart leap. Yana had thought she would never catch up to

him, would have been happy to be on his back trail, even by days if it were so, but

now. Now! He couldn‟t be that far out from town, if she went at a fast pace she

could- no. She had to get to town first. Even the thought of getting to town was a

scary one, she had only ever been there with her parents and once her mom died

only a handful of times with her dad. The townspeople weren‟t too keen on Lode,

with no real surprise. She readjusted the leather bag on her shoulder and kept on.

It wasn‟t long before she started to see signs of the town. A great many ruts

in the hard packed dirt, a broken sign with words she couldn‟t read scrawled on its

face in red paint and columns of smoke rising into the air over a small hill in the

road. She heard leaves rustle on the side of the road and figured it to be an animal,

only to hear shooshes and giggles shortly after.

Yana walked on, aware that more than a few eyes watched her as she went.

She began to feel a bit uneasy until she heard whoever it was giggle loudly and dart

off into the thick. She kept going, the smell of freshly roasting meat began to fill her

nose and lifted her up and nearly carried her feet from the ground. She swooned

forward and leapt across large dirty puddles. She took care not to get her newly

hemmed pants dirty, though nearly elated she couldn‟t help but skip and run.

The sounds of the town came upon her and she just about shouted with glee.

It had only been two days but she was terribly lonely, and the town‟s people could,

at the very least, offer her some brief companionship.

The town was small, of course, nestled amidst the trees in the swamp land.

And mud was everywhere, caked onto horse‟s legs and feet, splashed across the


42

hitching posts at the side of stores, the stores and their porches slathered in the stuff.

Mud was on the wheels of coaches, buggies and wagons as they passed by or even

stood idle in the road. The houses themselves were built a bit better than her own

cottage, but used nearly the same wood and looked just as dumpy. Of course Yana

didn‟t think they looked dumpy, she knew only of her own house and thought the

township was rather beautiful.

She was happy to finally see people, a blacksmith hammered away at

something on an anvil, it was bright red and showered sparks onto the ground with

each strike. He looked at her with black specks that strapped to his head, his

forehead covered in dark grime and he smiled broadly, missing all but two of his

teeth. Yana returned the smile happily. She moved on and watched as people

walked astride her, passed her, tossing curious looks at the girl and then carried

about their business. She stopped to admire an old couple lounge in front of a

general store and share a pipe and laughing. She thought of going in and patted the

coin purse in her right front pocket, then heard the mighty roar of her stomach and

moved along.

She followed the street and endured the townspeople as they stared and

looked for one of the columns of smoke. She found a small place with an open grill

cooking large slabs of meat on the side of the road. She stopped, rummaged in her

pocket and looked curiously for the tender. The open grill was filled with black

coals, many of them aflame, others burned down to glowing red and orange embers

that created an incredible heat. On one side of the grill sat a few steaks charring

over the fire, and on the other side (filled mostly with the black coal that made Yana


43

feel like it was cooler) were stacks of sticks stuck with meat and vegetables.

While she looked an older man in a bloody apron popped up from behind

the grill, wiped his hands on his jeans and looked inquisitively at the girl for a

moment. He had a giant matted beard that hung on his chest and nearly no hair on

the top of his head.

“Um, scuse me,” Yana asked pulling the purse from her pocket. The man

with the beard grunted and came around the grill holding a large set of metal tongs.

“Where‟n yer p‟rents child?” He wiped his mouth on his arm.

“I‟m awful hungry, can I get somethin‟ to eat? I‟ve got money,” she showed

him the purse.

“Well whaddya want, then? Out with it!”

“I- I don‟t know,” she whimpered. The man‟s eyes looked lazily at the girl

then around her, bulged for a second then seemed to regain his thought.

“How bouts a bob n‟ a cob, eh?”

Yana had no idea what he meant, but hoped above all things that it was food

and maybe even meat.

“Sure! Er, how- how much is that?”

The man smiled broadly for the first time and scratched his neck.

“A silver piece oughta do.”

Yana opened the purse carefully and dipped her hand inside where she felt a

few coins and pulled them out. She looked despairingly in her hand, about four

copper pieces and three gold, with some more jangling inside the purse. She picked

up a gold piece and put the rest back in.


44

“I only have a gold one-“

“That‟ll do-“ he said quickly and his smile widened as he snatched the coin

from her fingertips. He chomped on it quick and threw it in a pocket in his apron.

Yana had seen Lode do that on occasion and had never figured out why. The man

handed her two sticks. One was one of the sticks stacked on the cool side of the grill

and the other one was a steamed ear of corn. She took them, beamed brightly and

thanked the man before she ran off down the road and thought she caught the man

snort laughter as she did.

Yana didn‟t look back to see a man with red oily hair walk up to the tender

and talk to him. The tender held up the gold piece, laughed heartily and pointed to

where she went.

Yana stopped at a wooden bench next to a hitching rail near a few stables.

On a bench near her was a man in a straw hat not unlike the one the old guy in the

wagon had on, shocks of long red hair poked out around the brim. She smiled at

him, even though he looked deep in thought while he chewed on something and

spat, brown and ugly, into the mud.

She sat, smelled the meat and salivated. She held the ear of corn in her other

hand and ripped off a chunk of whatever meat it was. It tasted delicious, better than

she had ever had before, she had never tasted anything like it. The only meat she

had ever really enjoyed was the deer Lode occasionally brought home and began to

dislike rabbit the more she ate it. So she relished in it and savored the meat as its

juices dribbled off her chin and fell into her lap. She pulled off the veggies

ravenously with her teeth and chomped on them, taking another piece of meat in her


45

mouth and lost herself in ecstasy. Until she heard a couple of children giggle.

She looked up and saw nothing but the man with the hat sitting next to her.

She chomped on the corn until it was a useless husk and sucked the rest of the juices

off it before she threw it beyond the road and into the forest. She continued with the

“bob” when she heard the giggling again.

This time she pretended to still be lost in her food and saw two kids sneak

out from behind a bush. They were young, maybe a little younger than her and they

were watching her.

“What do you want?!” she shouted and caught the kids with her eyes before

they could dart back into the bush. She noticed one was a boy and the other a girl,

red frocks of hair sticking out in all directions. The girl had rosy cheeks, the boy

was pale and his face was heavily spotted with freckles. The two quit hiding and

came out in plain sight.

“Where‟s your pa,” the girl asked.

“Yeah, where‟s your big ol‟ pa,” the boy echoed and laughed.

Yana‟s eyes fell, she had nearly forgotten about everything that had

happened the day before.

“I don‟t- he‟s-“

“Where‟s your pa huh? Huh,” asked the girl.

“Yer ma‟s dead aint she? Where‟s yer pa? Where‟s yer pa,” the boy echoed.

“I‟m by myself- okay,” Yana replied and went for another bite of her kebob.

“I hear your pa‟s a cheat and a liar,” said the boy.

“I hear your pa‟s a monster, I hear he‟s made you his wifey,” the girl


46

laughed.

“Just- leave me alone!”

Yana went to get up and saw a man directly next to her, unnoticed until

now. She looked left to the other bench to see the man in the straw hat stand up and

close in on her, not helping but doing little else to stop it. He spat near her sandals.

On the right, the man‟s face was cast in shadow, she could only tell it was a

man by his body which was almost pressed directly against her, slender but strong,

he couldn‟t have been very old. She could almost feel where this was going, after so

many months of it she should have felt it in the air long before now.

“Where‟n you gonna go,” asked the man with a giggle. Horrible memories

cascaded down on her and she was certain where this was leading, she had heard

that question enough from her own father. The man looked down on her and his hot

and malodorous breath fell onto her face. Yana quickly reached for her bag but he

grabbed it before she ever had a chance.

“Your pa owes my pa I reckon,“ said the man,”a great deal of money. A

great deal. Aye, I know he aint got what he owes, so I reckon my pa thinks his pin

cushion oughta drag him out his hidey hole, eh?” He snorted laughter and grabbed

Yana‟s arm with an oily fist.

“Stop! He can‟t do nothin‟- stop!”

“So you can talk, huh? Aye, won‟t matter a thing. Come,” he dragged her

away and she kicked at him with no avail. The kids laughed behind her, whirled

around in circles chanting “Poppa‟s girl, gonna hurl!” and laughed until they

looked like they would pass out. Yana cried aloud but no one would help her.


47

Likely they all knew who she was, even though she didn‟t know a single one of

them. She dragged her sandals deep in the mud but the tattered things she wore only

scooped it up under her bare feet. She cried and looked at the kids who followed

loosely behind them and chortled and chanted on occasion.

“How could you,” she sobbed,”how couldya care so little?!”

The kids stopped in their tracks, looked at each other and made miserable

faces to the other. They stooped their heads and dodged down an alley.

“Tha‟s right! Cowards,” Yana shouted after them only to get jerked up into

a better standing position so hard she thought her wrist was going to break.

“Quit yer yabberin girl, or my pa‟s gonna give you somethin to really

whimper bout‟,” he laughed.

“Let me go! He‟s dead! My pa- he‟s-” the last word never came out of her

mouth, she fell onto the man‟s fist, which sank deep into her gut and launched the

breath from her mouth. She saw only blackness and heard only the young man‟s

nervous voice.

“I told you! Didn‟t I tell you, ya little bitch!”


48

- Old Problems -

Lady Eva, strong of soul, give me strength to keep me whole. If I should fail

and lose my light, grant me water to give me life.

“…she came, forming out of the crust of the ice, becoming whole. Alight,

she spoke enchanted words that no man nor woman could hear. But they did hear

them, and themselves spoke her words aloud. This would be the prayer of the water

goddess, Eva, lady of the oceans depths and guardian of life.”

“She’s my favorite! Aint she pretty momma, aint she?”

“Not prettier an’ you my little goddess. Hurry now it’s time for bed, can you

recite what I taught you?”

“Uh huh!”

“That’s my girl…”

“Ma?”

“I aint yo‟ momma child, but I bet you wish I was,” said a man who took

breath with a deep and profoundly guttural gurgling, emanating from somewhere in

his chest. It reminded Yana of her dream and she was scared immensely. He

bubbled and popped in his throat, like when she was young and used to blow

bubbles in her bath. The dichotomy left her even more scared.

Yana‟s eyes leapt open and stung her fiercely as she did. They focused, and

she saw only vague shapes cloaked in dust and shadow. She felt the straw beneath

her legs and noticed her jeans had slid up to her knees. She couldn‟t tell where she

was, whether it was a barn or not, she couldn‟t smell any animals but she could

smell the moistness and the rot. It smelt a lot like her own house.


49

“There ainta thang to see, why don‟t you be a good little bitch and keep yer

yammer shut, your pa oughta be curious fore‟ long.”

Yana had still been processing what was going on before the man spoke.

And now that he had she was even more enraged. She went to get up and found her

hands bound by some painful rope behind her back. Her feet too were tied together

and she was laying on her side. Pain pulsed from her stomach to the top of her head.

“Whadareyou doing to me? Lemme go! I already told you-“

Pain spread out quickly from a spot in her back, where the man‟s steel

tipped boot crashed into her spine. It sent a shiver of agony up and into her head,

making the entire room spin. She threw up her hard earned kebob.

“I aint taken no shit from you, child. Ya can lay in yer filth all night if yous

gotta, your pops is in fer a real treat when he comes for ya,” the man said, and while

Yana couldn‟t see, she heard something being smacked into his open palm,

something heavy it seemed.

She spat for a while, trying to get the awful taste out of her mouth and

attempted to steady her head long enough to keep from throwing up again. She tried

to speak as reasonably as she could.

“My pa‟s dead. He‟s in my house right now I‟m tellin‟ you! He aint comin',

he‟s dead!”

“Now why on Erf would you make up a thang like that? I could cares less if

you live or die bitch. Alls I wanna see is that sumbitch headless fore‟ the nights out.

Then ima poke you m‟self and put ya outta yer misery,” and he laughed and

breathed his awful gurgling breath. “Ol‟ Joe‟s sho a that!”


50

“Joe?” Yana said, and the memory of it, of him and what her father did to

him, jumped to the top of her head. “You‟re not-“

“So ya „member me, eh? Aye, ya „member me. Only been livin‟ in this here

town all m‟life. Had a good job too, that were till‟ yer bastard pa‟s bated ass done,”

he paused for breath, clutched at his chest and spat something dark near Yana‟s

face. It looked like blood. “Done smashed my chest in. Now I can‟t walk er even

talk rights no more. Can‟t work, can‟t fend fer m‟self. My chillin‟s the only thang

keepin‟ me kickin‟. Then you come skippin‟ inter town and I gots me this little

idear. And ima get „im if-“

“Pa!” Someone called from outside the room. Yana noticed a small rickety

door where light came through in small ribbons. “Pa, he‟s comin!”

“That can‟t be-“ another painful kick to the back shut her mouth and Yana

almost threw up again. She couldn‟t see the awful grin on Joey Clifton‟s face, but

she didn‟t need to. It was going to be over soon after all.


51

- The Truth -

Riley and Joey Junior were the oldest of seven Clifton kids. The youngest

were Annabel and Clete, they were the first to see Lode‟s girl. They ran back to tell

their pa when Riley overheard them. It all happened pretty quickly after that. Their

pa went to the shed to get the thing he had saved up for so long and brandished it

like the treasure he thought it was. He looked at his two oldest and told them to get

her and bring her back.

“What do I do, invite her over fer a snack,” Riley had asked and he got

kicked in the shin.

“I don‟t cares what you do! Get that bastards little pin cushion up „ere! I

wanna bait the hook an‟ catch me a Lode fish,” he hacked up laughter before it

turned into a dangerous coughing fit. When he reclaimed his breath he pointed to

the door,”what you waiter fer! Git her!”

So they left. Riley and J.J. weren‟t accustom to doing this type of thing.

They knew what they‟re father wanted to do to the man who broke his chest but

weren‟t strong enough to do anything about it themselves. It left their father

practically useless, so they worked for him. And he saved up a lot of money to buy

the thing their pa had in his hands now. They didn‟t even have a proper name for it.

So Riley sat at a bench up the road nursing his shin and chomped on tobacco

while J.J. went to find her, making Ann and Clete keep a close eye on her in case he

couldn‟t. He made it to Chester‟s roadside grill when he asked him where the girl

had gone. J.J.‟s luck paid off, and Lode‟s girl had taken a seat next to his brother.

Now, with the girl in the shed and the two of them keeping watch for Lode,


52

they knew what was about to happen.

“Think he‟d hurt us? I mean, we‟re just keepin‟ watch,” said Riley, more to

himself than to his brother.

“Oh he‟s gonna hurt us, I‟m jus‟ hopin‟ pa‟s little toy in there gets „im first,”

J.J. replied, and they laughed together. They had seen what Joey Clifton‟s little

„toy‟ could accomplish and had, rightly, nothing to fear. It was an import from

somewhere pretty far south. It was a wonder that such things could even find their

way up here. They even had to go two days travel to the city to find one.

“You reckon that‟s him up yonder,” Riley asked and pointed at a man

walking towards them from town.

“Looks like it Rile.” J.J. pounded on the door to the shed. “Pa! He‟s

comin‟!”

“Get your shit ready Rile,” J.J. said, and took out a terrible wooden club

with nails pounded into the head. The brother brought out a metal rod that he had

repurposed from the house next door.

The man approached them slowly and walked with a strong and pointed gait

that, it seemed to the two brothers, a little odd and even more so, a little worrying.

The man wore mostly black except for his faded blue jeans. He had on a black

leather vest and a black shirt beneath it. To his right side a sword hung low and to

the back. It smacked against his hip as he walked. His hair was long and rough, his

face hidden in shadow beneath it. He didn‟t look like the hulking behemoth that

Lode was and they almost put their weapons away.

The man approached them and it felt like the Earth itself trembled beneath


53

their feet. He rose up in front of them, wind rustling the loose tin roof that was

tacked on the shed behind them.

“And who the hell‟re you,” Riley asked.

“Watch where yer, uh, steppin. Pops?“ said J.J. meekly, he felt like the

strength was being drained out of him. The brothers looked at each other and both

were uneasy.

The man didn‟t speak. He stood still before them, impeccably still, and

looked at them.

“I-if yer lookin for trou-“ the word died in his throat. J.J., who had been

watching the man intently never saw him move a single muscle. Would have sworn

that no man could have moved that fast, but was helpless but to believe it. Joey

Junior had lain his eyes on the Stranger, who had unsheathed his sword and

smashed the handle into Riley‟s throat, having moved more than four feet in a mere

second and his brother clutched at his throat and spat up blood while he struggled

for breath. His repurposed metal pipe rested uselessly at the Strangers feet.

“N-now that was a mistake!” shouted J.J., and he took his club in his hands

and raised it high over his head. He ran at the Stranger and brought it down, but

would never actually hit him. The Stranger turned into him, caught his left arm and,

holding it, spun to his back and held his arm pinned behind him. His feet moved

fast, spreading J.J.‟s legs apart and making him fall off balance, his right hand let go

of the club and the Stranger kicked it several feet away. In the next instant his other

arm was pinned behind him in the same way.

“Pa! Pa, help!” he shouted before the Stranger twisted his arms inward,


54

making Joey Junior cry out in pain.

Yana couldn‟t see what was going on outside, all she saw were shadows

dancing across the small cracks in the wooden door. Joey Clifton‟s labored breath

pulsed in and out of his chest. It was awful.

“Yer gonna get that what yer due,” shouted a raspy Joey, and he took up

whatever it was in his hand and kicked the door open wide, flooding the shed in

light.

She heard and saw, from the corner of her eye, the thing in Joey‟s hand

explode next to her, and saw Joey get flung into the back wall of the shed. A few

metal tools dropped onto him, one slashed his forehead, which immediately gushed

hot blood into his eye. She didn‟t see Joey Junior‟s body explode when the Stranger

threw him at the shed door.

Yana flipped over to look at the metal contraption in Joey‟s hand, it was

long and looked like two metal tubes pushed together with some kind of handle at

the end.

“Gah! Who the fuck-“ Joey struggled as the Stranger ran at a speed he had

never seen before and, with his sword, slashed the thing in his hand which fell to

pieces at his feet. In a single fluid motion, he impaled him in the throat.

Yana had been confused when the boomstick went off, but understood,

probably before she even knew she did, what had happened.

Thank you, Lady Eva.

The Stranger looked into Yana for the second time in his impossible life, his

sword stuck fast in Joey‟s neck and removed it quickly. There was a silent second


55

that seemed to stretch on for hours, her ears still rang from the explosion, her face

and body now caked in mud. It was just like before. But the Stranger didn‟t turn

away this time, he took up his sword and held it parallel with their eyes.

Look into my eyes and see me.

So she did.

And then her hands were free. And then her legs.

“Come on then,” said the Stranger, stretching out his hand.

And so. She did.


56

- Afterword -

The work you have just read is the second chapter in my novel titled Truth

and Darkness. The original draft was handwritten over 350 pages and was

originally penned in 2004. This project has given me the opportunity to revisit and

expand upon this story. The original chapter was only ten pages long and didn't

convey nearly the same style nor content that I intended, mostly due to a lack of

experience. Now that I have gone back with the ability and practice that is

necessary to produce it, I feel this chapter exemplifies the culmination of

everything that I have learned at Western and hope to achieve as an author. I chose

to present this chapter specifically because of the content and characters introduced

therein, and the style with which I have chosen to write it.

The content bears specifically on the larger plot and is not influenced by the

chapter before it. The Stranger is a mysterious figure and the central plot revolves

around the understanding of him as a character, which unfolds throughout the book.

The reader will come to understand that he is one of the Fallen, a god-made-mortal,

as punishment for crimes that he committed as a god. When the story begins, not

even the Stranger himself knows of his past and his journey to understand himself

would begin at a mountain in the region known as Ramil. On his way he is pulled

onto a different road by a strange urge that he himself couldn't possibly explain. He

is drawn to the young girl Yana, who in fact is one of three parts that the Stranger

must obtain to regain his divinity. Called the Celestial Trinity, those that are Fallen

have had three necessary components of their divinity removed, making them

nearly mortal.


57

The Celestial Trinity is represented here by the three vignettes I included

before the chapter, excluding the initial quote. The first is control, represented by

the first vignette, which is embodied by a sword once owned by the god himself,

because I don't wish to confuse the reader I never actually mention the sword, but

rather attempt to convey the power of its control and the uneasiness in which it

rests. The second is light, represented by the second vignette, which is embodied in

Yana and inspires different aspects in the Stranger, most importantly the throws of

emotions to which he has been empty. I convey the conception of Yana here,

foreshadowing the fathers future failures and sickening habits, and attempt to

implement a style that should induce a few cringes. Lastly the third of the Trinity,

darkness, represented by the third vignette, embodied by the character Ellie which

was introduced in the first chapter, not present here. This one I styled to be

particularly chilling if only because I tried to implement a heavily disturbing time

for the young girl while placing the language clearly in the child's head. Because

Yana embodies the Strangers light, anytime he is even around the child he begins to

actually feel things, at first overwhelming and terrifying for him, but in time he

must learn to accept and utilize these feelings or reject them entirely.

The second reason I chose to write this chapter is because of the style that I

wish to use in writing this story. In the original script I take two perspectives which

alternate every chapter, those were between Ellie and the Stranger. I have since

elaborated on that concept and have decided to take up several different

perspectives within any one chapter and only those weaved around the Stranger and

Ellie. This chapter helped me exemplify this style because of the many changes in


58

perspective between Yana and the Stranger and take time to visualize events as they

happened for either of the characters.

The Strangers segments take a very cold, metaphysical style. I struggled

with this at first. How can you interestingly narrate a perspective when the

character is incapable of feeling emotion and barely knows how to live in the

world? I still feel like I fall off of this ideal at times but have rationalized this in the

third person approach that I take, allowing in some instances to step outside the

narrative that is placed very clearly in his head.

Yana‟s segments are emotionally charged and tend to be a little softer,

taking for granted her age and her limited knowledge of the world. Her mother was

also very spiritual, and I use this spirituality to begin to introduce the theology, a

major component in the story and universe, through Yana who only knows what

she‟s been taught. In this way I hope to gradually bring the reader into the belief

system of the worlds people so that I don‟t create a universe that becomes too based

in fantasy.

I take a few other perspectives for the mere purpose of interest and to

expand upon certain themes and reoccurring symbols. The storm, for instance, is

the embodiment of the god described in the chapter as “the king of man and god”

Terrisius, which draws inspiration from Greek mythology and can be likened to

Zeus, though I will attempt later in the book to separate him from this very obvious

influence. The storm in this case is also a unifying factor, allowing me to bring

together the three main protagonists up to this point, Ellie, Yana and the Stranger.

At the end I also go into the perspective of Joey Clifton‟s two sons where his oldest,


59

Joey Junior, lost his life by a clever move from the Stranger. It is in this way that I

hope to capture the reader, by forcing them to view different takes on the same

story and the same events.

The story of Truth and Darkness draws inspiration from a variety of places,

but the most prominent is that of Stephen King‟s The Dark Tower. In his Magnus

Opus King bridges the great divisions between fictional and even non-fictional

universes, all contained within a narrative that is part fantasy, part gritty realism

and another part spaghetti western. The series is that of a fantasy, but the style is

much less occlusive than traditional fantasy writing like that of Tolkien. King

seamlessly creates a culture that is comprised of the traditional and the fantastical,

something that I hope to achieve with my own book. While it is definitely fantasy

based, in so far that the universe is mine to tamper with and control, I hope to have

grounded it in reality. There is no magic in my book, no elves and no dwarves. It is

based around an era before the industrial revolution has taken hold of the entire

continent, leaving some places more advanced than others. The dialect I attempted

to create in this chapter is part southern and part something else, and is precisely

what I hope to do with dialogue outside of this particular region (northern

swampland in this chapter) and in doing so hope to draw the reader into my world,

instead of having them merely visitors.

A large aspect of this project itself was the revision process. It took me

nearly as long, if not longer, to revise my rough draft into the project you see.

Among the typical mistakes in spelling and grammar I noticed several things about

my writing as a whole that I struggled to overcome. I seem to have a particular


60

adoration with the comma, often using them too much and improperly. I have spent

the better part of a day going through the entire script to nab all of the many comma

abuses I had littered throughout the work. I‟m reticent to say that I‟ve caught them

all. Another problem I saw reoccurring throughout was a shift in tense, primarily in

my verbs. I began to notice that in a single sentence I would switch from a

decidedly past-tense narration to present tense. I have been warned of it many times

by my professors and can only hope that I‟ve fixed most if not every instance of it.

Lastly, the title that I have decided on, Truth and Darkness, deals heavily

with the overall themes of the book. I have described briefly this facet of the novel

in the opening quote. Truth in this book is something that most wouldn‟t want to

know, its more evil than it is illuminating and darkness (the idea of not knowing) is

profound and sought after. Indeed, the conclusion of the book values darkness over

truth, and ignorance over knowledge. In this way I have attempted to break from

scripted norms and craft a plot that lends itself an air of the familiar while twisting it

enough to make it stand out.

This chapter doesn‟t just represent the technical knowledge that I have

acquired while attending Western, it is also the culmination of several years

thinking about this book, its story and its characters. The characters are as much a

part of myself as the language that I use to write it. Being able to revisit this story as

my final project has been a unique pleasure that I didn‟t expect to have for many

years to come, perhaps never mustering up the desire to write it until now. Through

this I have discovered many aspects of my style as an author, many problems that I

face as a writer and the hardships that are involved in crafting a solid and concise


61

story.

truth and darkness

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