Brothers

At the table two young men sat together, one in his late teens, the other two or three cycles younger: grimy, shirtless, and scarred with all the imagery of hard labor about them. They were eating a perfunctory food paste with simplistic wooden spoons.

Despite their rough presentation, they were gentle natured and calm. The shared time was a respite from the world around them, so they would often pass time this way. Fawn walked in and joined the two boys, sitting on the floor at the feet of the eldest.

He looked down at her and smiled a soft smile, her presence a great source of joy for him. As evening approached, he played a soothing piece of music on his primitive, yet wonderfully resonus stringed instrument.

Crescent shaped and hollow, with the strings running from one tip to the other, the instrument produced constant reverberations, each note lasting slightly longer than the previous one, the tones overlapping into each other, like colors mixing on canvas.

Listening to their brother’s serenade helped the younger boy forget the toils of the day, and gently lulled into sleep the baby sister they both loved so much.

Waking up on the floor the following morning, Fawn saw her brothers were still sleeping on their stools. Moving silently, she decided to go upstairs to her small attic-like room and make preparations to leave the home early, to allow herself time to play before her daily duties.

The extreme and intensely specific rules of the Village she lived in meant she would often find herself at odds with the controlling Cast, owing to her defiant or perhaps just free-spirited nature.

The trouble was that for such a young girl, she had a very strong and well-evolved dislike for the constricting nature of the world in which she was forced to reside. After some time, this rebellious nature started to take a more specific form and she decided to take a chance with the clothing she so hated.

Every few days for a week or two, before going out into the Village, she would take a small but micron-sharp razor knife made from a local crystalline formation, and slice a narrow portion of length from her horridly drab dress.

Fawn would cut around the circumference of the garment, taking great care to follow the weave, making it just a fraction shorter than the previous adjustment, then along the neckline to add shape. This morning was to be no different, so she collected her knife to change it yet again.

Now having made her protestant dress alteration for the day, she placed the knife on her bedroll and looked down at her feet with curious fascination. Crouching down, she dragged the top of the third finger of her right hand across her right foot.

Her skin felt soft and responsive as she moved her hand over her ankle to her shin. This made her smile and she stood up. Now with her clothing fitting her design, she made her way out to join the recreation, as she had done so many times before.

The other Village children were already at play, but in this place expectations and regulations had combined to make an environment of extreme authoritarian oversight, which meant all their actions were strictly monitored.

Fawn joined the others and truly did very little that would make her stand out, but her differences became evident when contrasted to anyone, whether she intended it or not.

All of the children had short, blackened hair, while hers was long and fair. The hair color they exhibit is not naturally occurring: it was the result of it being coated with a partially translucent greasy substance that conceals its actual hue.

Even the naturally dark-haired children have had the same treatment–– individuality was to be muted. All the youth were controlled the same way, and although the boys had less constriction regarding hair length, they were subject to all the same parameters otherwise.

The reason is not truly known, but it has been true for so many generations that the inclination to question it never occurred. Fawn felt as though she was born opposing the control. She had no memory of ever being anything but frustrated by it.

She loved the way her hair brushed across her shoulders and filtered glistening light when she watched the sun set through it. She had simply never sat still when her mother tried to cut it or coat it.

Any adults watching were disgusted by her organic appearance as well as her joyful nature.

Among the children, Fawn stood out quite significantly, simply because she was happy in herself.

She did not wear a hood nor hat like so many did, and did not shy from sight. No one really knew why she was like this, why she was willing to be defiant in a place where there would be so little tolerance, but for some reason she was truly and fundamentally ... distinct.

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Two disheveled looking Village women standing at the edge of the field were clearly disapproving of her: to them she was the very pinnacle of distasteful behavior. As they watched her, they could not let it go.

Eventually their aggravation directed the attention of a Cast patrol to the happy, spry girl. The child continued to play, oblivious to the disaster she had wrought.

Such a lovely, friendly, gentle and smiling creature, she brightened the whole field. The other children relished her company and were drawn to her constantly.

She was not precocious, assuming or flirtatious. She was simply unreserved and enjoyed as much of her life as she could. But envy is a dangerous and long-reaching devastator.

Having had a satisfactory if uninspiring breakfast, her brothers remained at the house enjoying a moment’s peace before starting back at their work. Clad in their dusty rags and a sheer, partially reflective hood and cowl worn to survive long periods working in the sunlight, they sat like surrealistic art from ancient times.

A sharp knock at the door shattered the calm like a thunderclap from a stormless sky. A woman came running down from her room upstairs, her eyes fixed on the door.

Knocking at one’s door was a behavior almost entirely reserved for the militant Cast. Friends or visitors would simply announce their arrival verbally, so the sound brought immediate fear and panic to the whole family. Before she could gather herself to react properly to the harsh sound, the door was swiftly thrown open to reveal two Cast Soldiers.

The Soldier standing on her daughter’s left had his right hand firmly around the side of her throat and his thumb positioned in the middle of the back of her head.

The distraught mother’s expression turned to terror, having heard nothing yet, but expecting the worst.

With callous accuracy, the Soldier on Fawn’s right draws his fine-bladed weapon and forces the point of it slowly into the childʼs right foot, piercing the space between her Achilles tendon and the bones of her ankle. He leaves it there as a cruel shackle pinning her to the ground.

The pain-stricken child screams as her eyes well instantly with tears, her foot crippled. She drops from the Soldier’s grip and falls on her left knee, clutching at her wounded ankle, wanting to collapse to the ground in pain, but desperately trying not to move her skewered foot.

In a single moment, both of her elder brothers stood up from the table and immediately took the attention of the Soldiers.

Their mother understood the full impact of what the boys were thinking, and with a look of horrified despair, she fell forward, her hands shaking.

Both brothers, now standing proud, raised their left hands and spoke up.

“For our beloved and her crime.”

Fawn’s face dropped and her mouth opened slowly, her expression nothing but sadness, but she made no sound.

The Soldier removed his weapon from the childʼs ankle. He had intentionally inflicted a wound upon the girl that would, by design, leave her with permanent pain. She crumpled prone from the trauma. He then turned his attention to the boys.

“Then we will take you both, to pay for the defiant Girl Child.”

Her brothers had both volunteered to take the punishment in her stead, and so they would both suffer for it. The Cast were not inclined towards any sense of fairness.

Following their decision to bear their sister’s punishment, the two boys were taken from their home immediately by the Cast and sent up the hill.

They traversed the incline slowly but steadily. Having no specific knowledge regarding their fate, they felt their legs quake as they walked, a mass of tension gathering in their stomachs from trying to imagine what was coming, while hoping it was less severe than they had witnessed during their observations of other law breakers over time.

The twisting fear and weight of raw curiosity present in almost equal measure.

The Cast continued to remain on their heels, ready to influence the boys’ movements by force at any moment, but there was no need. They marched to their punishment entirely voluntarily.

Either one of the boys could turn and refuse the punishment at any time, but their beloved baby sister would then have to undergo hers in their stead.

After a seemingly endless walk, they arrived at the sun-drenched tower overlooking the Village. Villagers were gathered around the tower in expectation: watching people being marched ahead of Cast Soldiers in this manner had meant the same thing for generations. The large, bolted doors at its base swung open as the boys approached.

They entered slowly, heads heavy.

The building itself was occupied predominantly by Cast Soldiers, with the exception of the unfortunate souls placed atop, or hanging from the outrigged platforms protruding the tower’s circumference. Everything in this place was dedicated to the continuation of the influence of the Cast, as well as the containment and punishment of the people living in the Village.

All those that resided in the Village itself were so reduced in spirit, that they could be made to commit voluntarily to savage and cruel punitive measures, imposed by what were essentially opportunistic authority figures. This was the way it had always been.

Inside the tower chamber itself, the boys were forced into a hardened wooden corral in the center of the tower, made narrow, with a ceiling lower than adult head height. Consequently, the brothers were painfully stooped over at the shoulders as they made their way up the enclosed spiral staircase. The effect was that of crushing them: body and spirit.

Everything about this building was designed to distress the punished at the least and cause immense suffering before death at the worst.

The Cast, however, proceeded up a separate staircase built against the interior wall which was made wide and comfortable for their exclusive use.

After significant ascension, the boys arrived in the middle of the uppermost floor which opened out to a modest space: however, the ceiling was just as constricting as before.

To their left were two coffin-shaped wooden boxes, bearing metal shackles inside with no lids. The unpleasant containers sat on a mobile wooden runner that led to an opening in the wall designed specifically for them to pass through.

The boys waited against the right-hand wall and stood motionless for a moment, staring at the caskets. The younger lifted his hand, looking at the stripe of sunlight across his palm, regarding a simple ray of mid-morning light with a mournful, and fearful, gaze.

Gradually the boys climbed into position and lay on their backs as one of the Cast Soldiers ducked down and crossed the room from the outer staircase. He reached into each box, fastening the metal straps over their wrists and ankles, staring blankly into their eyes as he did.

Once restrained, he carelessly slit their protective clothing, tossing them outward like the hides of captured animals, then slid the two of them out into the sunlight.

–Garrick M Lynch–