12 - Shrine of the Hair Eater
The sour stench of vomit greeted him first, and when the curtain closed behind them Syatt was enveloped in an oppressive heat that made his head swim. The light was dim in the foul-smelling enclosure. It came from the tiny flame of an odd-looking lantern that sat on a table next to sets of shears that gleaned dull in its soft light. Every surface was layered in stray hair. In the expansive dark corner he saw half-illuminated forms, on sitting, one standing, tall..
The smell sickened him, and his stomach began to roil furiously as he stepped further into the space. Syatt felt his gorge rise, afraid that he may vomit or worse, and looked down at the cobblestone of the alley with his hands on his knees to steady himself. When his stomach never settled but continued to churn, his eyes widened and he looked to one of the two robed cultists at his side- the thin, gaunt woman who’d brought him in placed her hand on his back as he was suddenly racked with a series of dry heaves. "What-?" he gasped between them.
A string of saliva dropped from his yawning mouth and she gently patted his back. “It is only an effect of the magic, young one. It will pass," she said, her voice calm.
She lent him her arm and he took it weakly. They walked a few steps. She sat him down in a lone chair that faced the corner and the figures there, blurry in his vision from tears of strain as he looked down at a stretch of vomit in the cobblestones at his feet. He heard the other acolyte take the shears from the table, and when he raised his head he saw clearly the old man before him, and startled. "Oh gods," he said. "What the-? What-?"
The man who Alma Bryde had called “Varn” lay on an assortment of cushions strewn about. His back was to the bricks of the alleyway. His arms were bound to his sides with rope. He was cross-legged and naked, but a huge, misshapen stomach covered where his privates would be. It wasn't fat- it was as if he were pregnant with something. Something shaped strange, crooked, and moving.
The hair of the old man’s head was still intact and had receded to the crown of his sweaty head, but what was left of it was gray and to his shoulders, skeletal, covered in stretched, mottled skin. The arms from beneath the ropes at his sides like slender, veined branches. Beneath the huge stomach the knees and shins which protruded were also impossibly thin. His throat and face, however, were swollen, and his mouth- toothless from the looks of it, also looked sore, raw, and was clung to by dangling stray hairs.
Terror gripped Syatt, frozen as he listened to the shears work and watched pieces of his own hair fall in front of his eyes, and they went to the tall man standing next to the bound monstrosity. He was cast in shadow. When he stepped forward Syatt could see that his face was young but harrowed, and his lack of even eyebrows gave the face an unnatural quality, somehow like an oversized infant. The brown robes swallowed his tall, thin frame. He gave Syatt a cursory acknowledgment, a small nod and a smile that did not touch his eyes. “Thank you, child, for your gift to the great wizard of Earth.” His voice was shrill and strange. “He will remember. Hyne knows the footsteps of all who walk Gaia and Magaia.”
"Be still," came the woman's voice from behind him, the same one who'd escorted him in, and he realized he’d been trying to get up. A hand on his shoulder from the other male acolyte on his left sat him back down in the chair while hers grabbed another handful of Syatt’s hair, not ungently. The shears went back to work.
“You are sick, yes?” the tall infant asked Syatt, smiling. He held a silver coin in front of Syatt’s face. He barely registered it, nor did he hear the odd man’s words as it was placed into his own upturned palm, and his hand clasped briefly by long, bony fingers, cold to the touch in the stifling heat.
Suddenly the enclosure was filled with light as the curtain that led to Meander Street opened, and another of the acolytes came in, out of breath and stinking of sweat. Syatt came to his senses and quickly pocketed the silver coin. He made to stand again but this time was returned to his seat, harder, and after a moment, the cutting of his hair resumed.
“Brother Byron,” the out-of-breath man exclaimed. “She got away. She’s gone,” he said, wiping at rivulets of sweat running his bald head.
As Syatt’s eyes adjusted in the resuming gloom, he watched Brother Byron’s face contort and twist as if it were fighting back some coming possession of rage. His face reddened, and he stood fully erect with his arms stretched at his sides, fingers moving rapidly, breathing deeply before he turned to face the man. He spoke in a calm voice obviously forced, seething with underlying contempt. “That is not true, Trenton,” he said. “She is not gone. She is somewhere very close. Unless the drunken hag can teleport, you are wasting precious time by telling lies to me. Go get her, please, and do not report back to me until you have.”
The tired-looking acolyte nodded, passed a glance at the other cultists and left again, still catching his breath. A flash of light and he was gone. Were they talking about the woman in line? Alma? Syatt wondered.
His head felt physically lighter. The woman who cut it had been taking the handfuls before they fell to the floor or in his lap, and she’d placed most of it in a wicker offering plate. The old man on the cushions made a sort of moaning noise as Syatt's stomach continued to gurgle and groan. He is Alma’s friend. Or was. Perhaps she tried to do something about him.
When he started to wonder what the floating rocks the patrons at The River Sister had been talking about, it began. First it was the natural dust of the place making weird patterns in the lantern light, mini-tornadoes and spirals. Then he saw strands of his cut hair rise into view and slowly toward the ceiling. His heart beat uncontrollably in his chest. Am I dreaming? He reached a hand out, tentatively, and the debris scattered in a way similar to sediment under water. He thought someone might grab his hand but no one did. He forgot about the foul smell in the enclosure and the strange people- about everything. Most of his hair remained in the plate as the woman had gathered it, but long strands of it twisted and danced in the air around him along with the dust and small pebbles. It was astonishing, and with it came a feeling of weightlessness, like floating in a warm pool. He felt the man's hand run across his newly sheared scalp as the woman gathered a few last strands and handed the offering plate over to Byron, who received it with long hands. Syatt was surprised at how much of it was there in the offering plate. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to be surprised about at the moment.
Everything moved slowly, and it felt as if he had been in there for a long time, convinced that he must have dozed off in the chair and that he was now dreaming. He looked at the light hairs on his forearm as if to test this theory and saw them standing on end with spectacular detail that he didn't believe could be conjured in a dream. For a moment he’d known an indescribable feeling of calm and contentment, then he doubled over and dry heaved again, and heard the acolytes doing the same. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
The acolyte who'd cut his hair left for the exit, and the shrine was again filled with light from the opened curtain before it fell back to darkness in one disorienting moment. He looked up at the old man to see him with his face in the offering bowl, eating as the one called Brother Byron held it to his toothless, chewing mouth. When Byron lowered the bowl Syatt saw the mouth, with strands of his hair- completely white on the inside, and tongueless.
Byron began to feed him handfuls. One after another, the old man’s jaws worked incessantly, and Syatt could hear a muffled sound like frying bacon somewhere. The old man’s eyes stared straight ahead, hardly ever blinking. Stray hairs stuck to his swollen red lips as he gummed at the mouthful, gulped with little effort, and went quickly for another handful from Byron. When his mouth opened again there was the unmuffled sizzling noise and the overpowering scent of burnt hair. How? Syatt stared dumbly at him, and then the remaining acolyte was lifting him up from under his arms, and he was escorted out through the curtain and the alley that led to Meander Street.
***
Yartha’s legend of the elemental gods was not a legend to most, but taken and passed on as history and fact to its people. The city was founded by magic, or so it was said and believed by the large majority of its citizens. Syatt and Pox had no reason to think otherwise.
A revolution in scientific thought had swept first the academy and later the uneducated masses which included the boys, although the two of them had received a simple education at the orphanage and Syatt believed that both of them were naturally rather bright, comparatively. The common people had eventually come to take these new ways of thinking as fact. Although there were still those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth, or that consciousness emanated from the organ of the heart, they still went by calendars developed around the earth's rotation and were healed by surgical clerics and chemists with new and groundbreaking knowledge of the human body. Since then, the forces of black and white magic had become only subjects of rumor and speculation. Here and there a strange tale would make its rounds throughout the city, often in clusters followed by dry spells of years or more, but nothing that was without a doubt magical had occurred in the boys' lifetimes- until just moments ago.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
What Syatt had just witnessed was undoubtedly magic, but he hadn’t a clue as to whether or not it had been good or bad. Already the experience seemed strangely distant. He looked up at white clouds against the blue sky and tried to piece together what had just happened as he waited for Pox to emerge from the alleyway. All the while he fought an insane urge to go back- to experience whatever it was that he had felt again. He couldn't articulate it, but the thought of living the rest of his life with magic as nothing but a fleeting memory panicked him, and he had to settle himself to keep from making a mad dash back to the shrine. He paced instead, and when Pox finally appeared from around the corner, pale and stunned and with his hair cut short, they immediately convened with wide eyes.
They walked along aimlessly, their still dawning awe turning to excitement as they spoke over one another about the wondrous thing which had just been witnessed. They were well-aware that anyone who believed in magic also believed that it was incredibly rare to experience a magical event firsthand.
Pox confirmed that he had also felt nauseous, anxious and dizzy, and had seen the same floating debris and felt the same sort of weightlessness. He looked behind him at the far-away crowd and the line as they walked, and he shivered as he spoke of it. When each had relayed to the other the full detail of their experiences, the differences were stark.
"A feeling of peacefulness?" Pox asked him as they climbed a winding set of stone stairs that led back uptown. "Are you kidding me?"
"Well, maybe not peacefulness." Syatt only half lied as he trailed behind. In truth, he wasn’t sure, but knew that it hadn't been entirely unpleasant. "It was as if," he began, tentatively. "When I was in there, it was as if I knew the answers to all the questions, or, more like the questions didn't matter anymore."
Pox stopped on the stairs and turned around to study him. "You feeling alright? The only question I had when I was there was whether I should puke in my lap or shit my breeches. My stomach was doing somersaults by the time I got halfway down the alley. If you noticed, the cultists was taking turns being in there, too. They couldn't stand it either. What was that?" He shook his head. "I thought it would never be over. I mean, I saw the stuff hanging there, floating in the air, but honestly I was too sick to be as amazed as I should have been. I just wanted some fresh air, and by the time I was a distance away the feeling had passed as quick as it'd come."
"I felt sick, too," Syatt said as they walked. It was a feeble attempt to relate in any way, but he was clueless as to how they could have had such different reactions.
They continued on in silence, and finally he asked Pox, "Was there a weird man in there?"
“Yeah, a real weird one.”
“I think he’s after that lady, Alma, for something,” Syatt told him. “It sounded serious. I guess I’ll let her know when we see her.”
"Maybe it's just different for everyone, Sy," Pox said, and Syatt realized he hadn’t been listening. He looked deep in thought. "You don't think I might be allergic to magic, do you?"
"If you are, I am too, and we aren't alone,” Syatt told him. I bet a hundred people barfed in there."
"What does that say about you, then? You enjoyed yourself," Pox asked, not looking at him.
"I didn't enjoy myself, Pox. I don't know how to say it."
"Maybe you're a wizard," Pox said.
"Maybe you're a wise-ass."
"Ain't no maybe about it."
At the top of the steps was Current Street, and they followed it south. "I think that was the nuttiest damn thing we'll ever see, Syatt. Ever." Pox said. His eyes were still big. "Unless magic starts popping up like in olden times.” He felt his short head of hair. “He must've eaten my beads, too. Must've. I forgot to tell them to leave those parts."
Syatt laughed. “I don’t think they would have listened to you.” He looked long at his friend with his newly cropped hair, smiled, and said, "It's going to take some getting used to looking at you like that,” Syatt told him. “You look strange with short hair."
It was true. The last time he'd seen Pox without his wild mane of hair, they had been small children. There was a lice epidemic at the orphanage and everyone's heads had been shaved.
"Well, that’s alright,” Pox said, “You look strange no matter what."
"That's funny, because I heard that you look strange no matter what and when."
Pox skipped backwards. "You also look strange no matter where!" he erupted, pointing at Syatt as he collided with a young couple who had been holding hands and walking across the street. There had been no time for Syatt to warn him.
The man spat, and glared at Pox, who in return hissed at the couple, like a cat. They were visibly startled. The man’s anger turned to embarrassment and then back to anger. He began to shout. Syatt was in tears of laughter, and the suddenly incensed man only made it worse. "Come on, come on,” Syatt urged him. He tugged at Pox’s arm. “Let's go."
They ran away, laughing. It was late afternoon, and their stomachs were empty, but they still took their time. The sun baked the mostly empty streets as they walked. Everyone not headed somewhere else had sought shade. It was just another summer's day, and for a moment the whole experience in the alley off of Glass Avenue seemed like a strange and fading dream.
***
Cass gawked at her image in a tall mirror that stood outside a merchant’s stall in the outdoor markets of Glass Avenue, her mouth hung open. She burst into laughter at the person reflected back. She couldn’t help it. Aunt Millie was going to strangle her, and that was not considering her mother, who would do the same when she returned to the farm at the end of summer. She’d already been apprehensive about her daughter’s trip in the city.
Where just minutes ago her reflection would have shown long black hair that reached past her shoulder blades, it now reflected a head of short, crooked patches. It was butchered. It reminded her of a dog with mange that she had once nursed back to health on the farm, and she laughed again, but this time nervously. She ran her hands through it. "Oh, shit," she said. “What have I done?"
She hadn't entirely meant for the outcome, but it had been the only way to see what the others had been talking about. To witness the genuine magic everyone in The River Sister had been talking about. She would not not have been able to sit there idly with everyone in such a commotion. After having heard enough of their tales from behind the bar, she'd given Marigold, a fellow barmaid, two silver coins to finish the rest of her afternoon shift and had made her way to Glass Avenue to make one of those silvers back, leaving a note for Aunt Millie that read, 'I had to see. Will be back. Will be safe. Marigold is covering. Please don't be angry. Love, Cass.' Then she had slipped into the alleyway from the door in the kitchen, traveling south on Locust Street through Tabby Square and the district of Fiddlewood down to Glass Avenue in the blazing heat which was by then just starting to wane as she stared at herself in the mirror, and realized that her note would probably not be enough. Aunt Millie was always fawning over her hair.
The bizarre transaction in the cult’s makeshift shrine had been far more bizarre than she ever could have anticipated. The experience already seemed to her like recalling a dream the following day- fragmentary, more a feeling than a memory. She could picture the absurd image of the old man, her long locks of hair dangling from his mouth as small pops and cracks sounded from somewhere within him. She had felt the magic. Somewhere beyond the stomach cramps and dizziness had been a gentle feeling- a sort of peaceful enlightenment. By the time she'd left the shrine, the Yarthanguard had been in the process of breaking up the gathering. They’d taken aside a number of the bald, robed cultists, and had lined them up against the wall where they were being questioned, harshly. From the sound of the arguments that rose up as she left, she had made it there just in time.
She had thrown up. The old man had frightened and shocked her, and the one called Brother Byron, who had placed the silver coin in her hand, was repulsive to her in a way she could not fully articulate. Still, it had been worth it, she thought. She'd witnessed something miraculous and unexplainable. The day would go down in the histories of the city, and she had been a part of it. She smiled, left the mirror and her ridiculous reflection behind. Nothing bad had happened.
She thought about her parents and siblings back on the farm. The news would not reach them for weeks at the earliest, but she feared that her mother would want her to come home once she did find out. They were worshipers of Slybbon, all of her family were, but their faith was a passive one. None believed in modern-day magic, and her mother would see it as trouble. Any excuse for Cass to come back to the farm would be a fine one for her, she thought. Lena Bryngarten had faith in neither the Towers of Yartha, nor its citizenry. Menfolk especially.
Do not trust any of them, she’d told Cass before she left. She straightened the sleeves of Cass’ tunic as they said their goodbyes there as the pilgrimage had assembled and packs were checked.Unless your aunt does as well, and even then be wary. Millie can have questionable judgment. You can’t put your trust in the men of that city. Not the lowborn, and especially not the highborn. They will say the age of the tyrant kings is over, but their words mean nothing. They rule and ruin in a foolish, endless cycle. They will take interest in you, Cass. Words of honey, and though they say we are too sensitive, their hurt feelings always end in destruction. Be careful, and know that you don’t have to take over that inn if you don’t want to. City life is not for everyone.
As she made her way back to The River Sister to face her aunt, she kept pace with the busy foot-traffic through the markets of Glass Avenue. There at the intersection of Fox Street she and others tiptoed around a merchant's cart full of melons that had been overturned by a crowd of customers. A group of people stood around it with exasperated and angry looks on their faces as a merchant yelled himself hoarse at them and they all began to shout before a fight began.
Cass ran to the other side of the street and watched in panic as a group of customers restrained the merchants, and the crowd scattered with their stock, slipping and sliding in the busted fruit. Other sellers on Glass Avenue and some civilians had come to his aid and it turned into a full-blown melee right there in the street. Cass fled further down the avenue with others to escape it. They watched the growing fight from a distance. There was screaming, and moments later, much to her horror, she watched as the Yarthanguard pulled their scimitars and stepped into the melee on the side of the merchants, slashing people down indiscriminately. Cass hadn't needed to see any more, and pushed her way through the sweating bodies around her to leave the growing crowd.
She found out moments later from a man running past her that two people had been killed- one had been a cobbler, and the other apparently a well-known fur trader on Current Street. Further down the way she heard news of another, then another. Four people in all. Shaken, full of adrenaline, she hurried back to Tabby Square.