For days on end Ald experimented with his daggers and the materials Unkindness brought him. At first, he had expected she would return with twigs, branches at most; not unearthed stumps, or even whole trees. She had also brought him several Felsian artifacts that, in her words, she hadn’t stolen according to Felsian law. Ald knew that was true, but only technically: Felsian law specified that no Felsian could take another’s property by force, deception, coercion, threats, or in any other way that circumvented consent from the other part. The exception to this, of course, was inheritance — from a caretaker to their wards — if no will were to be found for the deceased. The “No Felsian” statement precluded Unkindness from being a criminal — assuming she was taking the goods from the city, and not creating those items ex nihilo. Useless items, most of them. Clocks, stamps, quills, a solid gold statuette depicting a sage of times past. And Ald knew that she realized how much of a burden those items would be for his journey: Ald believed, with very good reasons, that she enjoyed making him suffer and groan just a little. But he couldn’t deny that, while behaving like that, the guise of a flock of ravens fit her like a glove.
Once more the edge of the dagger slid over the surface of the wood, peeling a thin, curling layer of the material. Ald Wondered about what had killed the tree whose bough he was carving. It didn’t look like a freshly cut log, and despite that the wood had been well-preserved. There were no traces of aquatic organisms on it, and no visible bug burrows or fungal infections. It had not been struck by lightning, for no part of it was carbonized. Ald doubted, for the first time in his adult life, if a particular piece of wood had ever been alive. And if Unkindness could create cadavers of trees, what stopped her from making the cadaver of a Felsian? Even further, if she could create autonomous living beings as she had admitted with the bat conversation, how was he to know that every Felsian he had met was a son or daughter of Mother? They never saw the births, they just assumed that every Felsian that fell from the clouds descended from the progenitor gods. And how would they not, if they ignored the existence of Masterworks? The world was bigger than the city and its forest, its plains. Its seemingly endless river.
In the loneliness of the cave, He spoke, knowing that she would listen. “Have you ever made a Felsian? One like me, that breathed this very air?” He received no answer, and kept carving the piece of wood, slowly, trying to keep a comfortable sitting position despite his lack of a leg. “I expect an answer, Unkindness.”
Her voice bloomed inside his head, and he instinctively looked around before closing his eyes and exhaling. No point in admonishing her.
“A few, and none of them has drawn a breath at the same time as you ever did, Ald,” her voice drilled into his thoughts.
He talked alone, like a mad one would. “I take you mean they were already dead before I was even born.”
“Correct. It has been a few centuries since the last time I created a counterfeit Felsian. An exercise in futility, it was, for their blood was dead: the connection with Mother so diluted that they needed my aid to perform magic.”
“Magic a Felsian does not make.”
“Oh, but it makes Felsia. The clocks, the lights, the ovens. All of your little world is like a tick on a dog: feeding on blood, engorging itself until it falls by its own weight.”
“No dog is fond of its ticks. And no Felsian minds bleeding for Felsia.”
“Want me …”There was a pause in the words insid eAld’s mind, yet he knew what she would propose.
“No, don’t find the one Felsian that does mind.”
“Or the dog fond of her ticks. Noted.”
Ald kept on pushing the dagger along the bough, rhythmical movements meant to thin the material down. He could use better tools. And if she was stealing things from Felsia, even his tools. “Could you bring me a few of my hammers and chisels?”
“No. But I could bring you the ones in Kali’s farmstead.”
Ald’s eyes opened and his back straightened. “Am I dead for them?”
“Legally speaking, I am not stealing,” Unkindness repeated, in a playful tone unbecoming of the dark and humid cave Ald hid in.
“And legally speaking, I am dead and Kali has inherited my belongings.”
Ald Imagined a nodding raven. Whether the image had been carved by his conditioned brain or seeded by the Masterwork, he didn’t know.
“Then bring me Kali’s tools, so I may honor the primordial god by carving myself a mere imitation of his work. And… does Kali know what she owns now?”
The bird inside Ald’s mind shook its black, feathery, glossy head. “Gleur is in charge of arranging the handling of what used to be your property until Kali comes of age. And he knows you are alive.”
“And Elvisat?” Ald Asking, raising his pleading eyes from the wood,
“She considers you are a moron, but doesn’t lose the hope that her little ward will return one day.”
“And what is your opinion on her hope?”
There was a pause, a silence inside Ald’s mind. “Does it even make sense to ask for your opinions, Unkindness?”
“Depends entirely on the subject at wing.”
In silent acceptance Ald cracked a grin. There was no use pursuing this line of conversation. He would just wait until she deigned to bring him the tools.
And wait he did. And in the cave, where shadows from a little fire danced and begot demons inside his mind, in the cage of little rivulets that ran across the smooth and dark stone and gathered on little depressions, where a family of scarabs climbed up the nearby scree and towards fading sunlight, he felt assailed by his own thoughts. Thankfulness, he found thankfulness towards Unkindness, and realized he had never felt one so serene and genuine towards Mother. Mother asked for blood, and she was extremely capricious in how she granted her children’s petitions. If your runic carving exploded and killed you, it was not Mother’s problem. Unkindness, on the other hand, seemed to care about Felsians and misshapen alike. Despite her stern behavior, despite her mocking attitude at times, she had preserved both him and the variegated misshapen he had been a guest of. And in return the only thing she had asked for was… betrayal. To forsake Mother and cry out her name instead. Mother promised an eternal afterlife without suffering nor pain, and Unkindness only uncertainty. Present aid, or future rewards? He pondered. Albeit, if Unkindness never lied, he didn’t need to doubt for long, did he?
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He began in a tone denoting defeat, “Unkindness, is it true that after a Felsian dies, our souls go to where Mother lives, and we are forever delivered of all suffering?”
Ald gasped and recoiled when a vision of the walls slowly flaking off into feathers black as petrol assailed him. Then, Unkindness answered. “In a way. There’s a brief moment of suffering unmatched. Pain and anguish beyond the ones you have ever felt. And then the heavens grow quiet once more. This much I can tell you.”
“Thank you. Would you mind if I dared to name you? To grant you a name different from the one Father used, and that designates no flock of birds?” Ald asked, his countenance serious, unflinching as the stone in the ground.
Unkindness spoke clear, but quick words. “It is unnecessary.”
“I didn’t ask if it is necessary. I asked if it would offend you.”
“To offend me is no small feat.”
Ald almost tried to stand out of annoyance, but the pain traveling up his wounded leg and through his trunk quickly subdued such impulses. “Stop dodging the main question.”
“Did Felsians ask chalk if it wanted to be chalk before naming it? Do Felsians even ask their brothers and sisters if they like the names they are given? Did you get asked for your opinion when Elvisat decided you would be called Ald?”
Ald couldn’t help but laugh and hope that Unkindness wouldn’t take it as a sign of rudeness. “I was a baby, of course she wouldn’t ask.”
“You pretend to miss the point.”
“And you pretend to not want a name.”
Silence spread between them once more, washed both minds apart for as long as it lasted. Unilateral silence, because, Ald knew, Unkindness could hear his thoughts no matter what.
The conversation died there, as the Felsian returned to his mindless woodcarving, and Unkindness to the thousand tasks she was performing at once. One congregation of doves helped Nails comfort a crying Telesa. A lone black bird peeked through Gleur’s window, not to spy on him, but to remind him that, even during his bittersweet training sessions with Kali, he couldn’t ignore reality. Three little flames drove Wildfire away from trouble. The only peacock on the abyssal depths pestered a crinoid, piqued the curiosity of an octopus. And a lady dressed in feathers of every color intruded Kali’s farm, aiming to return some tools to their still-rightful owner.
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Ald’s days passed slowly, dripped like tar down an hourglass. Hidden in the cave, feeding himself with aural lilies and some fruit the birds brought for him, he waited for his wound to close enough to be able to wear a prosthetic. He wasn’t mad enough to load his weight over the wounded flesh, not yet. So he used his arm and a branch to bear the duties of a leg, the straightest one he had found among Unkindness’s loot, destined to become a makeshift crutch or cane, depending on the situation. He had cut the near end of the thing, sanded the rough edges away with a stone. Even then, when he placed it under his shoulder to take a step, it pushed into the soft flesh of his armpit. The prodding made his skin sore, but, with time, it became calloused, and the feeling numb. Compared to losing a leg, a bit of wood trying to dig into your armpit should have been nothing. But every bit of pain was additive, the suffering of the leg conspired with the one of the arms, of the back. Once again, Ald feared he would forget how it felt to live in the absence of bodily pain.
Groaning and cursing the uneven terrain he hobbled from corner to corner of the cave, sometimes with the lone aim of easing the muscular stiffness sleeping upon the mafic rock caused. To trade one pain for another, because if he stopped moving, if he let his body grow weak, he would never complete his quest.
Had any other Felsian took their life due to the lack of rains? He had already run out of time. Even if he succeeded, the consequences of taking so long would never be undone. First — first?— had been Mirn. And yet he couldn’t rush. Getting himself killed due to disrespecting his wound would mean the doom of every last Felsian.
He cursed, spat off the cliff at the entrance of the cave and stood still a few seconds, looking at the cloudcryforest from whence he had escaped. The trial of destruction LEclerglossa had left in its arrival and departure couldn’t be more clear. It was like a giant snail had grazed all over the land, leaving a trail of shattered trees and uprooted brushes behind, the splinters of wood pointed at the sky as if they were stakes drowning in the debris of the Masterwork’s passing. Every day he contemplated it, at first it had been with hatred, then with sadness, and now, only weariness remained.
More than to heal, more than to save Felsia, and even if he needed to deny it for his own sanity, what Ald wished for most fervently was to rest.
Overtaken by frustration, he sat to pick up a nearby rock and cast it off the cliff, the pebble ruffling the leaves of a still-standing tree as it got out of sight. “I shouldn’t be the one doing this. An army, they could send an Army!” he let out a frustrated shout for the wind to carry away. “An army to save our city, an army in which I would gladly march along brothers and sisters!”
“And send it where?” Came the question of Unkindness, as if she were present behind him. Ald didn’t turn. He knew her voice would keep coming from behind, no matter where behind was. He was more than used to her quirks by now. “Felsia’s powerful army, sent blind into the fray. How many brothers and sisters do you want to feed to my equals, Ald? Masterworks are eternal: not even gods can decry otherwise. Want to know something I cannot do? Die, Ald. I can melt down to a sorry mass while every pain receptor icreated for myself screams into my psyche, I can cast my form into the sun or defy Father and get engulfed by him—which, for the record, is not a pleasurable experience. But my soul refuses to stop being. All I am will always be, Ald. All Wildfire is will persist even after the planet perishes. The hatred of Wintertoll will burn longer than the last star in the firmament. Which army can beat an immortal? Armies —of Felsians, of ants, of animals that were, of animals that will be— often fall to that which no weapon can kill. Can a swarm of wasps stab cold to death? Can any amount of Felsians present a trouble to the one who took your leg?”
“And you send me alone!”
“A loner has an easier time running away from trouble. No one you care about to witness acts of bravery, or to be defended from great evil. I need a Felsian. A Felsian with a faithful hand, a deft foot or at least a rather firm jaw and good bite. Father is tied up with rope braided out of Mother’s fallen hair. It is something only a very specific blade can cut. A blade I cannot wield.”
Ald stared at his hands. “A blade I can wield? But why? Does it require to kill its wielder? Is it a masterwork shaped like a sword?”
The laugh that reached Alds mind was genuine, even joyful.
“No, it burns Masterworks. It burns Felsians, even. The difference is that you, at most, are going to get some blisters, and that will be if you clown around with it instead of being swift with your task. I touch it, and my flesh falls apart instantly. I used a dog to retrieve it: holding the blade does nothing to sons and daughters of nature.”
“What you are saying is… it burns depending on how many teeth the ratched moved from the initial, divine position. It burns children of Mother and Father.”
“It burns children of Mother, indeed.”
Ald spat off the cliff and clumsily crawled away from the cave’s entrance. Sometimes, when he tried to stand, he happened to lose balance, and to die by an avoidable fall was not among his plans for the day.
What was, though, was too keep practicing his carving skills. Bit by bit he familiarized himself with the local varieties of wood, with their hardness and flexibility, with the feeling of the chisels sliding among it. To think making Fingermarch had resulted easier to him than fabricating a simple bowl with a stick on the base. Ah, but Fingermarch had been rushed. Fingermarch had been fabricated while he was coddled in hospitality, protected and comfortable—or at least as comfortable as one can be on a wet and warm environment.
Every swing of the hammer had more purpose, higher precision. Every piece revealed some other weakness of his technique, and he spent hours refining it, correcting the angle, or the length of the slices he peeled off with his dagger. He had carved wood before, of course, but a handle is a little job of precision. The planks are often cut beforehand, and the tools he had at disposition at home were far more than the scant chisels, flat or round, that Unkindness had brought him. And anything he didn’t have in his workshop, he could borrow or buy. Any issue he hadn’t tackled before, he could walk to the home of the carpenter that lived down the street and ask to be taught a solution. Here he was alone, and asking unkindness for carving advice had proven fruitless. But that didn’t matter, for a blacksmith without wits was indistinguishable from a fraud.
And no fraud would come out from the cave a week later, struggling towards the upper exit with great difficulty, climbing the treacherous, loose surface. No, no fraud would… And no one alive would confuse Ald with a fraud.