Chapter 2: Mom
My mom is the most beautiful and loving mom in the world. The village of Cloomb where everyone else in the world I knew as I was growing up was where all the people lived. Then there was mom, and me. Mom was not like the women in the village, they were all full of snarls and hatred. They would hurt you every chance they got. Mom never hated anyone. She loved the world, and was loved by it. I always thought that people were not really a part of the world, as people didn’t love mom. Well, women and children didn’t love mom. Men all said they loved her, but she didn’t want any of them, and that made them all pretty angry. Mom says it is because they were not baked long enough.
Mom is not tall, shorter than the really big men, but taller than the short ones. She has hips and boobs that the other mothers have, if maybe a bit more and way prettier. Her hair is like corn silk, her skin never really darkens much, staying lighter than the lightest clay pot. She is always singing, or humming, and when the storms rage, she runs outside naked to dance in them. Life is a dance, she told me, and once you find your dance, you will be happy. Mom found her dance in the storm. It was when the storm was raging that she met my father.
He was, she tells me, the tallest man she had ever seen. His body was muscled like a king stag, and he smelled of the green fields, of clover. He danced with her in the rain, and when the dance was done, they made love in a ring of flowers he grew just for her. The ring comes back every time the storm rages and she dances in it. She never asked his name, nor gave hers. I never knew if she had one. She gave me one, she called me Clover because I had his eyes, and smelled of him, so she gave me that name to remember him by. I have always called her mom, and when I asked her what her name was, she simply told me that she had named me Clover, and I had named her Mom and that was good enough, wasn’t it? She was very wise that way.
When we would go into the village to sell honey, the men would all gather to look at her, and the women would whisper. They would say such hateful things, as I got older and understood more words, I learned what they called her, and what they called me. Words like whore and bastard. No one raised a hand to her though. Those that tried had bad things happen to them. Animals attacked. Lightning struck. Feet stepped forward into ground that suddenly developed enough of a sink hole to shatter legs. After a while, they dared not throw anything more than words, and Mom didn’t care. I loved her. She didn’t blame them. They were unbaked bread. They didn’t bake long enough in their mommies belly, so they didn’t rise full of love, but mom baked me right, so I didn’t hate. She baked me for twenty seven moons, that is more than all your fingers and all your toes. The village children were only baked for nine moons, not even all your fingers! No wonder they didn’t have much love.
I wasn’t that old when the village found out that whatever protected Mom didn’t protect me. I was going into the village because a crow had brought me a copper piece, and I was going to the village to buy a pastry. Mom was a good cook, but she never made pastry because with only two of us, and the small clay oven, it was too much work. I was going to get one for myself, and one for mom.
The crowd of children was playing outside the village, some game involving trying to hit a thrown rock with a stick. When they saw me, they started calling me bastard, and my mother a whore. I don’t know why they called her that. There were women in the village who would have sex with you for a copper coin like the one I was holding. That was one of the reasons the caravans stopped in this village and not the one farther down the road. No one called those women by that name, only my mother who would never sleep with any of the men in the village. For her there had only been my father. I ignored them. They were just unbaked bread. They had only been in their mothers womb for nine months, and had no love in them.
The didn’t like being ignored, and they threw stones at me, as their parents feared to throw stones at my mother and me. The stones hurt. When they saw that the stones hurt, and nothing bad happened to them, they started to throw more. There were a dozen boys, and perhaps eight girls. Soon they were all throwing them. I tried to turn to run back to mom, but they chased me the other way, towards the cliffs. The rocks kept coming, they struck my head, my arms, my chest. I was bleeding and each of the stones hurt. The children looked more like rabid dogs, their faces twisted and almost unrecognizable. I was afraid.
I tried to cut into the brambles short of the cliffs, for rocks would be hard to throw there, but the rocks that were there were hard sharp edged things with iron in them. When the largest boy picked one up and hurled it, it hit my temple and knocked me backward. I fell into a hole and down into the unseen cave below. I fell and impaled myself upon the rib of a giant. He had been clad in armour of bronze, but pale green flakes were all that was left. His helm had been made of boar tusks, but the metal and leather under it had long rotted. His skull grinned at me as I lay back impaled on his rib, staring into his eyeless skull.
My blood started to drip down the rib, and into the darkness beyond. I guess I was dying. I felt sad for Mom. She would be alone. I hoped she still danced in the rain, I would hate to think those boys and their stones could stop her dance. I would have liked to find my own dance, but I hadn’t lived long enough. I had lived well though, and happily, so this was fine.
At the edges of the cave, the darkness around the dead giant stirred, and reached out towards the blood, but drew back, unable to touch it. It looked like one of the field mice, darting towards one of our crumbs and not daring to take it. Those mice were my friends. This tentacle of darkness looked the same, cute, harmless, and hungry. I smiled.
“It’s okay tentacle friend. Friends share. I am not using that blood anymore, so you can have it.” I was dying, and the first thing you do with a dead animal is bleed it so the meat doesn’t go bad. That was just common sense. From the darkness all around the dead giant, tentacles of darkness slithered, and drank the blood that ran down its bones onto the floor. They seemed to grow darker, deeper, more coherent with every blood drop. I closed my eyes and dreamed.
I dreamed of the giant. His name had been Ajax, and his spear was made of ash and bronze. His race had been called Titans, and even among them he loomed as a giant and champion. Against him were arrayed an army of frog men with razor edged shell tipped spears, and wicker armour and shields. His shield was bronze rimmed and ox hide layered over oak, his armour was bronze, and his spear plunged through their wicker armour and flesh like Mom’s paring knife through a peach. His shield was always moving, not just blocking spears, but sweeping them aside, to make an opening for his ever hungry spear to strike. He was in the middle of the clash of two armies, but he was alone. This war was a storm about him. No. The war was HIS storm, and this was HIS dance.
I felt my heart beat faster, speeding my own death I guess, but this was it. The dance Mom told me to seek. My dance. She danced in the storm and the world answered her. She danced in the storm and the world loved her, and she loved the whole world. This was MY storm. This titan upon whose ribs I bled out my last had lived it. He had danced in the storm of war, and it had loved him, as he loved it. He danced, and as he danced, he lived. I felt my limbs twitch as they learned the moves of this dance, and my broken voice croaked out a pathetic echo of the song he went to war with. I suddenly didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die until I had danced like this, danced like him.
I saw him win his way through the last of the frogs, into the cavern they guarded. Inside was a darkness made whole, an absolute annihilation, this was the ending of reason, and ending of order, an unmaking of reality itself. Its tentacles reached out to seek Ajax, and he danced to meet them with a song on his lips and a spear in his hand. He danced and the tentacles danced with him. In the end, the thing died, but Ajax died in the doing. He fell, with no one living from either side to bury him, or sing his glory song. The horror from before the universe was made had died first, but some of its severed tentacles clung to life, sustained by the blood of the fallen titan. Just clinging to existence, unable to do more than huddle in the shadows and wait until time at last ended and returned them to the abyss of before existence.
I reached out when the dance stopped, I reached out with something inside me I could still move, unlike my failing body, I reached out for that last perfect moment of the dance and I PULLED.
The titan’s spirit stirred. He felt my hunger for the dance, tasted my joy, my admiration for the purity of his dance. Saw the worship of a child for his glory and perfection as a warrior and he was satisfied. It was not enough to be a champion, you had to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be worshipped. A hero was not a hero if no one remembered his glory. The power of that filled Ajax, and he prepared to move on to the Elysium Fields where heroes dwelled, but before he passed on, he would grant this child who felt the call of the dance of war a boon.
“Will you let me heal you? I can make you as before. Make it as if you were never hurt.” Ajax offered, for he knew lesser titans, and all the base races feared pain more even than death. He tried not to judge them for it, but in his heart he had to sneer at such weakness.
“No sir. It happened. I don’t want to be like I was before. That isn’t enough. I would rather grow strong in the broken places. That way next time I won’t get hurt.” Mom always taught me that pain was a lesson. If you didn’t learn it the first time, the second lesson would only be harder. Mom loved me, and she didn’t want me to need a second lesson.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The spirit of the titan thought, then laughed. “It will probably kill you. Quick and easy is the normal answer on the edge of death, but it isn’t the one I chose, so I will leave you to it. Live or die on your own strength then, little champion. Become strong in the broken places.” Ajax passed his blessing along his rib and into my blood.
As Ajax spirit moved on, the shadows crawled up his bones and wrapped around me.
“Not alone. Not alone ever again.” They whispered. They drank my blood where it fell, and inside me I felt the magic of the titan begin to work into the shattered bone, remaking it stronger than it had been. Sinews were rewoven, but stronger, and as it remade me, I felt myself growing thin, as the reforging ate away at all that I had left. I grinned. Ajax was right. It would kill me, but I would listen to my friends, and dream of the dance as I died.
They came for me. Buzzards always came for the dead. How could they know? I guess they have really good eyes. They came to pick away at me as I lay impaled and still dying on the titan’s rib. They came again and again. Life is funny like that, when you have friends like mine.
The buzzard landed, he reached out and plucked out my eye, and I groaned in agony. I liked that eye. Half the light of the world went away, but the other half showed me something very strange.
Black tentacles wrapped around the great bird, its neck, leg, and both wings were pulled apart, until it was held over my mouth. A tentacle grew teeth, and ripped out its throat above my mouth.
“It’s okay tentacle friend. Friends share.” The voices whispered. I drank and drank, sinking into the dream. I dreamed of the dance of battle, I dreamed of my mother dancing in the storm. I dreamed of eating pastries that tasted of the sweetest red fruit I had ever eaten, burning with life. I dreamed and I healed.
I woke up beside the skeleton of a dead Titan, surrounded by a ring of tentacles. They were using the skulls of a dozen buzzards to have little play fights. I watched for a while and then laughed. My voice was cracked from my throat being filled with congealed blood. Vulture blood. It reminded me of my dream of pastries. I thought I should go get them from the village. I had been gone for days, and Mom would be worried. It was better to have a pastry for her, so she wouldn’t cry. I hated when she cried. I hated it more when it was my fault.
It was nearly dusk as I approached the village, the children saw me, and looked at me like I was something even stranger than before. The largest boy again took up a stone and hurled it at me. My right eye that had grown back after the vulture tore it out tracked the rock almost lazily. It moved so slowly. What was that game the children were playing before they attacked me? Ah yes, to strike the hurled stone with a stick and try to get it past the other children. I remembered how Ajax had danced among those frogs, how the tip of his never missing spear tracked the target of a frog champion’s throat sack as it danced behind its own shield and thrusting spear. How Ajax would track the motion of that throat, how his heavy great spear would not thrust at where it was, but how it would move with the rhythm of the dance to be where it would be. The dance was everything. I was the dance, and I gave myself to it. My fist lashed out, striking the rock as it sailed to me. The arch to me had been broad and slow, almost a half circle, the return was straight as a sunbeam. I felt the bones of my hand break under the force, but I was in the dance, and the dance was in me. The stone flew true. As the boy flinched away, turning his head away from the incoming stone, raising his hands to protect his face, the stone passed between his wrists to hit his throat.
The children gathered around the fallen one. His body arched and writhed soundlessly as he made noises like a chicken as he fought for breath. I felt the bones in my hand begin to knit together. It would be painful, and not swift, but my hand would heal the stronger for it. I went to the village matron who sold the pastries. I offered her a copper coin with my unbroken hand. She was staring at the bloodied tunic I wore, soaked in my blood, the blood of many buzzards, and something like a fox or coyote that had come to chew on my corpse, and been fed to me by my tentacle friends while I healed, and she looked a bit frightened.
“What, what, happened to you. How are you still alive?” She stammered. That was funny. Mrs Lee always had lots to say. Lots to say about mom especially. Now she could barely talk. I wonder if she had been drinking? People in the village did that I hear.
“I came for pastries, but some of the children threw stones at me. I made some tentacle friends, and now I need the pastries or Mom will be sad.” I said, summing up my last day, days? I don’t really know. I was out of it for most of the time. About a dozen buzzards, a crow, and some sort of fox/coyote thing doesn’t make much sense as a unit of time, but it is what I had.
With a word she simply shoved the whole basket of pastries she had at me and backed away. That was good. I could share some with my tentacle friends too. Mom first though. She would be scared, and maybe sad. She baked me with love for twenty seven moons, so she understands that sometimes doing something with love takes more time. She would understand that I needed to come back healthy, and that took longer.
It began to rain as I walked back home. My tentacle friends wrapped around the pastries, keeping them safe and dry. It is good to have friends. They grew firmer when the sun went down, and at night they could keep even the storm from touching the pastries. Mom was standing in the field, not dancing. Tears and rain ran down her face, as for the first time in my life, I saw her stand in the storm and not dance.
I dropped the pastries, hoping some of my tentacle friends would keep them safe, but I ran to mom shouting.
“Mom, mom! It’s okay. I’m all right! I found my dance, and I made some friends! Please mom. Please dance!” I could not bear to see her in the storm, not dancing, and know it was because of me.
She saw me and her smile was like lightning, for it split the night and caused every raindrop in the storm to shine like diamonds in its reflection. She threw back her head and screamed as she gave herself to the dance. She danced wildly and the storm whipped around her. Lightning struck the ground as she danced her fear, her rage, and through it all, her love. She danced and the sky answered. Rain lashed the world, lightning flayed it, as she dance the rage and fear out of herself.
I was different now. I had my dance, and I was not alone. I felt the memory of Ajax. The memory of the dancing priesthood of the war god, a god worshipped before the race of man existed, before iron had been forged, but whose ritual dance was a celebration of the hunt, of war, of manhood, and of life. A dance the world had not felt in thousands of years, but a dance whose steps burned in my blood. I threw myself into the storm beside my mother, and for the first time, I stood in the shadow of her dance and showed her my own.
As I danced, my tentacle friends, the darkness that had fallen to the spear of Ajax when the world was young drank those memories, and they joined me in the dance. Tentacles flowed down my left arm and a heavy shield formed on my left. Oval in shape, and between a dozen and twenty pounds. In my right, a long heavy spear formed, about four pounds and eight feet long. Other shadows writhed about me, until a heavy black helm with a tall bobbing crest of tentacles formed above me. Heavy greaves of darkness formed on my legs, and about my chest, a dark heavy weight of breastplate settled, moulded as if my chest was rendered naked in obsidian metal.
Mom danced in the storm, and a ring of flowers sprang from the ground around her, dancing in the winds as she danced life and joy, screaming her ecstasy to the sky that she was alive, and I was alive, and the world was alive.
I danced in the storm, my steps heavier than hers, my pace slower, each step a thrust of the spear, or of the shield. I danced the hunt, I danced war, I danced the edge between life and death, I danced hope and rage, I danced pride and folly, I danced despair and death. I danced without reservation or thought. I gave myself to the dance, and the dance gave itself to me. My body was not strong enough, the shield was too heavy, I thrust the spear to fast, stopped it too suddenly. I could feel bits of me being torn, but I did not care. The storm raged, the song of the world called, and we danced. For the first time, my mom danced her dance, and I danced mine in her eyes.
Tentacles rose up in a circle around me as I danced, tentacles of shadow, of the howling abyss of nothing that preceded the existence of the cosmos and howled with a need to unmake the thing that was torn from it unwilling. They moved in time with my dance, and soon the dance of my tentacles and mothers flower vines moved to bridge the gap between her faster dance and my slower one. I began to see how my killing dance fit in the beats between her wild dance of light, now my darkness fit beneath every leaf and flower, under every footfall of her dance. Our dances became one, and the storm sang for us in wind and lightning. Our laugher echoed back as the sky split in thunder.
When the storm faded, and we stood spent, my tentacle friends slipped back into the darkness around and under me, and the flowers about Mom stilled to more classical plant like topor.
“I thought I had lost you.” Mom said as she grabbed me tight enough that I found bits of me that had not yet been broken actually hurt, but I cherished the hurt the more for knowing how much she loved me.
“I’m sorry Mom. Some boys threw rocks at me, and I fell down a hole and got hurt. But that is alright. In that hole, I found my dance, and I made my tentacle friends.” Tentacles of darkness flowed out from under my clothes and waved about me. She nodded to them, and pet them, whispering words of thanks for keeping her Clover safe.
Mom turned to me, and her eyes turned fierce. “Who threw rocks at you?” she asked, and the tentacles ducked back under my clothes in the first fear I had seen from them, even in the memory of their defeat by Ajax.
I didn’t want to see her mad, she wasn’t made for anger, and it would hurt her, so I tried to stop it. “It is okay Mom. I hit one of the stones back at them, and it hurt him badly.” I thought about that. “Maybe killed him.” I remembered the dance, the dance of the hunt, the dance of war. You should not start the dance unless you intended to finish it. It was not a dance unless blood flowed. The dance existed to be completed. Mom danced life, and in that dance she had met my father, and had made me. Her dance brought life, and mine ended it. That was the true dance. Life, and death. My dance with the stone felt right, felt complete. I am pretty sure the boy was dead. My tentacle friends all chuckled, then filled my head with visions.
“The pastries! Mom I bought pastries!” I ran to the basket, still wrapped in tentacles of darkness, and brought it inside our hut, where the tentacles fell away to release the warm fresh scent of sweets. Mom spooned stew from the cook pot into bowls, and didn’t bat an eyelash as my tentacle friends snuck bites from by bowl as we ate. I was home where I belonged, and all was right in the world.
The world disagreed, but that would be a problem for later.