I awoke in squalor. Dank, mouldy walls wrapped tight around me, permitting just enough space to stand or lie down, but nothing else. Through the bars in front of me I could see a dark corridor, lit slightly by faint torchlight. I was too exhausted to try shaking the bars. My stomach was hollow, and my throat dry like sand.
I lay there until the torch died out. Someone re-lit it, then walked over to my cell.
“You… is that you..?” My throat, frozen by the winter chill, croaked barely loud enough for him to hear.
The bartender turned towards me, his colossal body eclipsing the torchlight. There was nothing written on his face. Neither sympathy nor mockery. No shock, nor revulsion. His laugh, full of unassuming joy and soul, would never rattle my eardrums again.
“I didn’t think you’d end up here, in the bowels of the city. This isn’t the place for someone like you.” He kneeled and slid a tray of food through a flap in the bars. I pounced upon it and scarfed it down, desperate for sustenance as he looked down at me in silence.
“I’m just here because the inn’s nearby, so they told me to bring you something every now and then. Don’t want you starving to death in here. Besides, I’m the one who convinced you to lodge up at the chapel, so they figure it’s best I feed you. Nobody else wants to get close.
“There’s not much I can do for ya. Business has been bad lately, what with people calling us the ‘Witch’s Inn’ and whatnot. I’m sorry. I put ya up to this, and look at where it’s gotten you. If there’s anything in particular you’d like, I can bring it over. I’d rather it go to use than rot in the cellar.”
I found the strength to look up at his silhouette. “What’s next? What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’ll… be burned at the stake, perhaps. The city’s out for blood, and they’re rejoicing now that you’re here. I’m the last person that should be saying this, but if I were you, I’d stop eating. Rather die of starvation than fire.”
I said nothing.
“Well… I imagine you’re not in the mood to talk. God… this is so condescending, but it breaks my heart to see you in there. I’ll be off, then.”
Light filtered into the cell once more, and his footsteps trailed off into silence. This is it. The end. Maybe they’ll let me live a few more days before killing me. What day is it today? I don’t remember. Executions were… every Friday, I think? I never saw one… not like they’d hold them near the chapel.
I should have smuggled my sword in somehow instead of leaving it at the cottage. I did not think I would have to use it in this era. I understood then that I was merely a function. The cloak I wore: that of the Child of God, was all anyone saw. Nobody would lift it to see what lay below. In the closet, I had lost her respect, and in her eyes, lost the right to wear that cloak. Without it, I was nothing but a fraud. It never had to be me. Anyone would have sufficed, anyone who could fit the cloak.
Let it end here. It’s simple. All I have to do is starve and die, like he said. I don’t need to lift my hands anymore, or even open my eyes. I just have to lie here like a corpse; to play the role of one, until I turn into one myself. A natural process.
It was then that I remembered my curse. Eternal life… but surely that doesn’t make me invincible? I have always felt the fear of death just like any mortal; all that separates me from the others is that death never comes for me. Were I to be decapitated or drowned, surely that would snuff the life out of me. If it did not, that would be a truly abominable curse.
I did not heed his suggestion. I ate the next meal he brought me, and the next. He shook his head in pity each time. It was not the fear of my curse that drove me to eat; after all, I would be burned alive either way. Eating did nothing to save me from that fate. No, it was a more primal, basal instinct: the urge to live. A simple, unassailable force of nature. I saw food, and my body ate. I could think of nothing beyond the rumbling of my stomach.
Weeks passed—as far as I could tell. Time passes differently in a cell. I lay curled up against the wall as a frailer than usual set of footsteps echoed down the hallway.
“H—hello… please, wake up.”
I rolled over and stared at him. I recognised him as well.
“Hello… How is your sister doing?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He sunk his face into his palms and sobbed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. “Ah… I’m shocked you remember.” he said, peering through his fingers at me.
I forced a reassuring smile. “The love you held for her was clear as day. I could never forget your joy after your battalion returned unscathed.”
“She’s, well, she’s dead. Watching over us, I hope.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. She lived so much longer than anyone thought she would. We spent that time bringing her around, as far as her body would permit, to see all she hadn’t had a chance to. She only died because of the rationing, and as one of the soldiers lying in bed guzzling sphia, I had no right to complain.
“I know what the town says about you. But believe me when I say this”—the torchlight glinted in his eyes—“the magic you wrought that day was true. What happened afterwards doesn’t disprove that. I should have died that day, but you weaved a miracle. Not magic—a miracle. And that’s a fact. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be standing here today.
“Ever since then, I’ve resolved to stand on my own feet. Perhaps that was why I could never bring myself to go to the chapel. The idea of pushing my troubles, my pains and burdens and complaints onto someone else never sat well with me. That didn’t change the fact that I was—and still am—in your debt. You saved me, but I never thanked you properly for it.”
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“...No, you did… the next day, didn’t you? It’s okay… you’ve thanked me enough.”
“Anyone can flap their tongues a little in your name. No. I will repay my debt in full. I’m sure you know, but I’ve been sent here to take you to the stake.” He held a large sack in his hands. “They don’t trust witches with chains and shackles. No, it’s gotta be a sack. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“So, are you going to put me in that?”
“Heavens no. There’s only room for one.”
“What… surely you aren’t proposing burning someone else in my stead? I’d rather die!”
“No, she’s already dead. Of natural causes, mind you.”
I said nothing, looking at the sack. It was full.
“What happens at the stake—that’s anybody’s guess, but they’d have to be blind not to tell the difference. Maybe they’ll believe it was witchcraft. I’ll deal with it somehow.” He fiddled with his keys and unlocked the gate. “Take the stairs to the right. Don’t worry, I know this place well. Cripples like me can’t find work anywhere else. Go two floors down, then lift the grate. Crawl till you hear water, then feel for the fork going left. Go down it till you see light. After that, you’re on your own.”
My feet were too numb from disuse to move, so he lifted me by the arms and held me till I could stand upright. I was in disbelief. I was already resigned to death, so to be lifted out of my grave and made to walk was a shock. I did not—could not—perceive mercy in what he was doing. It dawned on me that this was perhaps the only time the world had offered me salvation—a tug away from the brink of death. The world never conspired to help me out of any genuine desire to see me happy. That the world could even conceive of such a plan was suspect. No, this was something more like homeostasis. People exist on a ladder—they sit on those below and strive to climb over those above. To live alone is to divorce oneself from this hierarchy completely and to them is no better than lying dead in the ground. And so they pull me back into the grinder. The only place I had genuinely been happy in—the chapel—had been a castle of mirrors onto which I projected my own ugly self. The happiness I sought there was fundamentally incompatible with its habitants who scurried behind the mirrors, assuming I could see through them, leaving me to flounder in the delusion I was not alone.
“No… I’m sorry. I won’t leave.”
“Huh… The hell are you saying? You’re to be burned alive on the morrow!”
“Perhaps that is what I deserve. I will not put you at risk for a chance at life—something I do not deserve to reach for.”
“Rubbish. You’re lucky to be alive, you realise that?”
“I never once asked for—”
“No!” He heaved, his once gentle eyes now lit with fury as though a pendulum had swung within him. “You don’t realise… perhaps because you’re not mortal, though you look nothing but in my eyes, starving like a rat; but death is not something you welcome with both arms. It’s ugly and despicable and pure agony till the very end. I’ve lost count of how many soldiers I’ve seen turn to corpses in my arms, some with their bodies in parts.”
I don’t care. I didn’t ask to hear your story. Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with me? I won’t weep for you. My tears dried a long time ago. To begin with, you aren’t here out of compassion for me.
“My sister didn’t have an easy time of it either. Watching her vomit the soup I fed her is something I’d never like to see again. I could see the pain she was in plastered across her face till her last breath. I don’t understand. Is it necessary for one man to witness so much death?”
Leave your sister out of this. In your eyes, you’re a saviour. And that’s all that matters to you.
“I suppose even an angel has questions they can’t answer. Either way, I won’t let yet another life slip through my fingers.”
And why does that have to be mine?
“You can stand, right? Go. Leave. Trust me. Clear your mind and run and don’t look back.”
Why? Answer me.
“This is… the least I can do for you in return. A final act of penance from my sister and I. Go!”
He shoved me. I stumbled forward and broke into the frenzied run of an animal learning to walk on two legs. Debt. That’s all that brought you here. You’ve repaid your debt, and now your mind is clear. I nearly tumbled down the stairs. Was I ever anything else in your eyes? I pounced on the grate sticky with grease and wrenched it out with what little strength I had. A transaction of mercy, one that only I am entitled to, it seems. The foul stench of faeces and vomit choked my lungs and seared my eyes as I crawled through the near pitch-black tunnel. Repayment for a blessing borne from blind luck. I crawled through the sewage teetering on the brink of consciousness until I heard water; and just as predicted, the tunnel forked shortly after. I squeezed into the fork and continued, my tattered rags soaked in brown. This is the cloak I wear now—that of the desperate prisoner. That was what you sought, no? Did I play my role well?
The time I spent in that septic tunnel stained my mind and body whole. I shut my eyes so the putrid taint would not sting my eyes with its vapour, but my lungs could not be spared. I trudged onwards, counting every shallow breath I made, holding each one till my head spun before daring to inhale again. After a thousand gasps, the black of my eyelids gradually began to glow with warmth. I opened my eyes and saw blinding light. I fell out of the tunnel, laying keeled in exhaustion on all fours as the world merged into focus around me.
I had been spat out into a shallow creek—and immediately the biting cold of winter turned my veins to ice, sending my body into feverish spasms. The water that soaked my skin rendered me bare to the elements, and for a moment I considered crawling back into the tunnel. A curtain of snow, pure and virgin white, fell endlessly from a blank sky, bleaching the grey forest around me. A monochrome forest, devoid of life, save for mine. The perfect antithesis of the chapel, its warmth, and its kaleidoscopic window.
I turned around, but beyond the tunnel I came from lay an impenetrable fog. It swirled around me, as though a crowd of faceless figures lurked within, eager to feast upon my corpse. I clambered to my feet and rushed into the trees like fleeing prey, but the fog chased me. I felt eyes drill into my back from the trees and the gaps in between them, judging my pathetic form as I threw myself forward one step at a time. The gale whipped around me, howling in blind fury. And yet, neither the trees nor the wind nor the snow swung the gavel. Nor did they hold it above my head. Nature does not discriminate. Both nun and sinner alike would succumb and die to the elements.
I ran and I ran, and just as my lungs were about to frost over, shadowy peaks formed in the distance. I wanted to see them before I died. Part of me had always felt drawn to mountains; perhaps because they were the first thing I saw when I was born and dropped onto that field of grass. Like a moth drawn to flame, I would approach it, then lay down and succumb to the snow. I thought nothing of how ideal a death that would be for someone like myself. I was simply exhausted, both body and soul. That’s the finish line. If there’s nothing there, I’ll lie down and die. If there is, it could be nothing but a miracle.
The trees listened to my hoarse, irregular gasps for breath. They watched my limbs thrash like those of a child struck by lightning. And finally, as my intestines began to tear from the pain, I reached a cave, yawning wide.
From it stretched the invisible strings of fate. Perhaps my life till now had been an opening performance, my limbs shackled by fate’s thread and forced to dance. A puppet may only be manipulated when its strings are taut—but once in the palms of its master its strings slacken, permitting it to move unbound; to live free. Only at the source—my source—could such a miracle occur.
I stepped beyond the threshold and into the darkness. Within, I found a miracle. Not a false promise the likes of which I had peddled for so long, but a true, divine miracle. One wrought in the very image of God.