Chapter 8: The Ghost of Lutz

For once, Charles did not greet the morning with a sharp kick from Magnus. He was allowed to stir naturally, rolling over several times in a vain attempt to get more comfortable.

Another few minutes, he told himself. That was all he needed.

But when the fourth roll still didn’t sit quite right, he gave up and yawned, running a hand through his mess of blonde hair. It was tangled and overgrown as a bed of blackberry vines. He would need to trim it back before it really became a nuisance.

He rubbed the tired from his eyes and made an effort to pull himself together. The Galley was no place for cooks who lazed about in bed. Breakfast could be as demanding as lunch and dinner combined, and Magnus' recette wasn’t about to prepare itself. If he was lucky, the stove would already be hot and roaring by the time his boots were tied.

Another yawn. He tried to focus, but his thoughts were half-everywhere and half-nowhere. What needed attention first? Last he checked, their stores were a touch low on coriander, but if need be he could probably find a substitute. Cumin, maybe? He frowned. Not perfect, but it would have to do. Who here would really notice at the end of the day? It wasn’t as though crude men like the Spears knew any...

Knew any...umm...

He scratched the stubble at his chin. Where had he been going with that?

The thoughts grew sluggish. A flash of green came to mind, and the angry face of a brown-haired man shoving him to the ground.

Luet…

Ah, Charles thought. That’s right.

Luet would need to be roused, too. There was no point in waiting for the pastretta to get up on his own. Not unless you wanted to wait till midday. That man slept in one of two extremes: tossing and turning in a frenzy or still as the dead.

Still shaking off the aches of a night in the rough, Charles blindly grabbed for the flap of the tent’s opening so he could let a bit of moonlight in. He touched only air. When he grasped for the tent’s roof so he could figure out where the door was, the result was the same; he stretched high and wide without brushing anything.

Charles was not inside his tent. He was not in any tent. He glanced down. The ground at his feet was no grassy field of cairns, but a cracked stone floor that felt dead cold against his toes. No canvas lay overhead. Instead, he was met with a thatched roof, old and rotted with mold, and bearing cracks severe enough to allow the wind to whistle through. Four tattered brown-grey walls formed the insides of a building even the poorest men would call humble. Two straw piles bundled into bedding—one larger, one far smaller—sat nestled in the corner, closest to the fireplace and furthest from the open door. There was no decor to speak of. Aside from bedding, a plain table straddled with a pair of wooden chairs and a lightly-stocked shelf housing an armful of weathered books were the closest thing to furniture to be found.

A cottage. He was standing in a cottage. A cottage built of a single cramped room. A cottage, he noted, that had grown so old and fallen so close to the verge of crumbling apart even ‘shack’ might be giving it more credit than deserved. A cottage all but empty and eerily quiet. The only sound was the slight creak of the oak door as it slowly swung open on rusted hinges, then slammed into place again.

Open and shut. Over and over.

It was an ugly creak that stabbed the ears and made concentrating all but impossible. Charles hated it instantly. Before he did anything else, that sound needed to stop.

Where...where am I? What am...I doing?

This was not right. This wasn’t right at all. He wasn’t supposed to be in a place like this. He was supposed to be...elsewhere. Of that, he felt sure enough. But where was elsewhere?

Charles focused again. He tried to remember. But with every step towards the swinging door, the images in his mind seemed to grow more and more distorted. It was like a painting that had been left out in the rain; the paint smudged and ran until shapes, colors, places, people, past, and present blended together in an unrecognizable mess.

His name. That much he knew. He was Charles, named for his mother’s father. Through the other half of his blood he was a Boulier, part of an important lineage stretching back to the very founding of the Age of Law. The pride in his name was something he could never lose sight of.

He took another step.

Food, kitchens, and the art of cooking. He remembered the smoothness of a knife in his grip, the gentle handwork of wrapping pie crusts tightly over tin, and the hiss of sauteed meats and vegetables as they fried against oil and hot steel. Charles Boulier was a chef, like his father and grandfather before him. That much he could never forget.

The door wasn’t far now. Another few feet and he would cross the threshold.

The most recent event Charles remembered was his fifteenth birthday. There had been a gala at the Boulier manor in Lutz, with the whole of his family and half the Emerald District in attendance. He had been happy that day, he thought. Life had been well.

Beyond that, he recalled little. Only disjointed bits and pieces, and those too were growing smaller and fainter the harder he tried to hold onto them. Even thoughts from a minute earlier already felt murky. Though he was certain they had been important, that did not make it any easier to remember. It was all slipping into the darkness. Something about...spices. Breakfast? That he needed to wake someone? Who was it? He was pretty sure their name started with ‘L’.

“Lu…”

Lu...Luen? His older brother? Was that who he had been thinking of?

It was futile. The more he reached for the painting, the more it rotted apart and dissolved. Events were falling away like grains of sand through his hands, until only strange and random flashes were left.

Sprinting through the dead of a fiery night with a stockpot strapped to his back.

A fierce wind. The icy grip of shackles closing around his wrists.

An arrogant scoundrel with a mane of fire and a sea serpent for an arm.

The pendant of an acorn, emerald green, twisting and untwisting before him.

Charles grimaced. Not only was none of this helpful, it was starting to make his head ache. But he could not shake the creeping feeling there was somewhere important he needed to be. Something for him to be doing. But what was it?

This is the lifework of many. My father. His father before him.

Many visions came in quick succession: a blood-red cloak, an aged book of recipes, a strip of yellow fluttering from the tip of a sunlit spearhead, and the stare of a masked grey eye.

Charles gasped and clutched at his chest. It was a fear that pierced straight through his core. He nearly collapsed, and had to take several strained breaths before his fingers would stop trembling. Even then he still felt the strange instinct to run and hide, like a deer fleeing the jaws of a great beast.

What in the world had that been?

He did not understand what he had just felt. Only that he did not care to feel it again. Not one bit. His eyes instinctively flitted to each corner of the cottage. There was no movement. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He was alone.

To be cautious, he waited for the door to swing open and glanced outside as well, but found no sign of anyone there, either. Only a calm snowfall against a wooded wilderness.

Charles let go of a small sigh of relief...then felt a dark chill.

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He turned, ever so slowly, to find a stranger standing in the center of the room. Right in a spot he had just checked. In a single room with nothing that could have obscured another person. The chill grew much worse.

They were very small, whoever they were. No higher than Charles’ waist, and he stood shorter than most boys his age. They hunched with their back to the door, a hooded shawl of faded green and gold shielding their head from the cold. Charles could not see their face. They were poised attentively, hovering over a strange object. An object that glowed with a soft red hue, lit up the dark corners of the room, and bubbled like a sorcerer’s cauldron. The glow, he quickly realized, was the familiar warmth of a stewpot simmering on an open fire, resting carefully over a concave pit dipped into the floor. This someone wasn’t crafting spells. They were cooking.

Charles approached.

“Pardon me,” he said softly. “I-I never meant to intrude. I would gladly take my leave and give your peace, but could you please tell me where I am? I seem to be a bit lost.”

The hood did not acknowledge him. They did not do anything other than tend to the pot of stew in front of them. Charles tried again. Perhaps they simply had not heard. But he received no reply when he rapped his knuckles against the door frame. Snapping his fingers proved no better. Finally he cleared his throat, audibly but not so loud as to be rude. This was still another’s home, after all.

Nothing.

Charles couldn’t help but feel unnerved. At this point, it might have been wise to simply leave the cottage behind and try to figure out where he was by his own means. If this person did not want to speak, it would be poor manners (and unwise) to keep pestering them. He departed...then stopped. His fingers gripped the lining of the door, not quite willing to take the plunge and let go. What exactly would he do after leaving? What could he do? Make a blind dash and hope for the best? The plain truth of the situation was that he had no earthly idea where he was, how he had come to be here, and could barely remember himself. He had no food. No resources. Practically nothing to manage alone.

But more than any of that, he wanted answers. He would not get them by running away.

A more direct approach, then. No more half-measures. He stood tall, marched up to the figure and grabbed their shoulder. That way he could be sure he had their attention.

Or, more accurately, that was what he thought he had done.

In reality, he nearly lost his footing, sank to one knee, and had to catch himself to escape a nasty introduction between his face and the floor. He blinked in surprise at the many faded scars in his palm, then at the green shoulder, then back at his palm again.

His mind was telling him two things at once. One half told him that just now, right at the pivotal moment, his hand had phased into solid cloth and flesh as though they were not there at all. The other half scoffed and scorned. ‘That could not possibly be’, it said. ‘You are mistaken. Or do you mean to suggest two bodies can occupy the same space in the same breath?’

Such strange things belonged in the pages of fairy stories. Childish tales of ghouls and vengeful spirits. But Charles knew. It was no mistake. He had not imagined. I could not touch them. It was like a wall of mist. No...less than that. Mist would at least feel cold. I didn’t feel a thing.

He gaped at the hooded figure’s back.

“W-who are you?” he asked. “Tell me your name.”

Again, there was only silence.

“What are you!?”

The figure turned. Charles nearly shrieked. He moved before he could think, primal instinct balling his fingers to a fist and launching it forward. This time he saw the point of contact clearly. Or rather, the lack of one. He saw all of it play out in surreal slowness. There should have been a blunt slam of impact. He should have seen their shocked expression as he entered their left eye, sunk all the way to his elbow, then passed unabated clean out the back of their skull. Realization should have turned to panic, then panic to horror.

There was none of that.

The figure merely crouched to pick up a turnip that had fallen to the floor—leaving only Charles’ outstretched arm in the open air—then began casually slicing the turnip to the stew, completely unbothered and unharmed, as though they had not just had a human limb thrust inside their head. They began to hum and smile as they worked.

Charles shrank back.

“Who are you?” he repeated, even less composed than before. But the little hooded figure had already gone back to stirring their pot. Sage with a touch of bay and rosemary fell. They were adding herbs now, which meant they were nearly finished. However, Charles could not help but note, to his horror, that the herbs being added were wrong for this dish. Beyond wrong. Completely incompatible. If there was anything that could make Charles Boulier forget sense and speak openly in spite of fear, it was bad cooking.

“Those are hard herbs!” he yelled. “You’re supposed to add those at the beginning! You need soft herbs when you’re done! And wash that turnip! This floor is filthy!”

But no matter how he protested—warnings, waving his arms, even stomping his foot against the floor—he went ignored. Not so much as a ‘shush’ or a ‘please be quiet’. This...whoever or whatever they were refused to acknowledge him. They wouldn’t even look his way.

Or perhaps, a small voice whispered, it was not that they refused to look.

Could it be...that you truly cannot see me?

The idea was ludicrous. To have another person right in front of you, almost uncomfortably close, yet not be able to see, hear, or touch them? Logic assured him it was obviously not possible. His senses calmly confirmed otherwise.

Their face…

His exchange with the figure had ended so quickly, Charles hadn’t caught much of what they looked like. But a few details stuck. Blonde hair, hopelessly unkempt with a number of dead leaves caught between curled locks. If the figure knew about the leaves, they did not seem to care. Their cheeks were unnaturally thin. Hardly a scrap of fat clinging to bone. Where there was face uncovered by the blonde hair, it was covered by dirt or dust instead. There had been a tiny gap from a missing tooth at the left row of their grin, and another two from the right.

Charles calmly walked to the other side of the stockpot. He knew now that it would not make him more noticeable, but that did not matter. He needed to confirm a hunch. He needed a second glimpse at those features. A clear one. He crouched and stared.

Emerald eyes met emerald eyes. Beneath the tattered hood was the face of a boy who could not have been older than seven, or perhaps eight at most. He had not eaten much recently, and the gods only knew when last he’d been washed. The boy grinned his crooked grin, and when he strained his arms to reach the far side of the pot, a locket engraved with the image of a golden dandelion swiveled gently round his neck.

Mother’s necklace...

“Impossible,” Charles whispered.

“Bon vierre,” the boy said. His stew was complete. Charles caught its aroma wafting on the air.

One breath. That was all it took. An instant and overwhelming flood of distant memories came roaring back like a hurricane crashing against the shore. There was a rush of sights and sound. Moments and places, faces and feelings, happiness and sorrows long misplaced, all but lost but never truly forgotten, struck him in a single unrelenting wave. Pieces of the ruined painting were rising up and reforming, their shapes and colors rearranging to a new whole. One distinctly different than before, yet every bit as vividly clear.

The fog was lifting.

He saw his own small hands grasping for bollywog frogs in the shallow ponds that formed when the rains flooded the nearby wood. Heard the subtle creaks of the broken roof when the winter snows piled high and heavy. Recalled the names of heroes and long-lost lands from tattered books of adventure Mother had read to him by the evening firelight. Tasted the honeysuckle flavor of golden dandelions under the summer sun, and shivered in discomfort at the rusty swing of the misshapen oak door that, in all its years, had never quite fit properly.

The flood just kept coming. Days. Months. Entire years returning. It was almost too much to process. By the time it slowed to a trickle, it was a struggle to stay on his feet. He felt drained, as if he needed to lie down and rest off a week of labor.

He remembered. He remembered everything.

This cottage...

This run-down stranger’s home. No...it was no stranger’s home. It had once been his, so many years ago, almost before memory began. Before he’d been called Charles Boulier. Before he had known Master Erickson, Kristoph, Joanna, or any of Father’s masters. Before kitchens, cooking, apprenticeships, and before dreams of fame, travel, prestige in the culinary world or adventure across the wide and open world.

Before he was anyone, he was this boy shivering and stirring in the cold.

I lived here with Mother. She made that shawl for me. It was no mere resemblance; the patches mending old holes matched perfectly. The heat of the stewpot warmed his frozen hands.

I made this stew. I...I wanted it to be special.

It had seemed special then. After all, if a dish looks like stew and smells vaguely like stew, then a great stew it must be. Or so a child thinks.

Charles winced. Now that he thought about it, this ‘stew’ had probably been his first serious attempt at cooking. Revisiting it now made that fact so plain it was almost painful to look at. No recipe. No guidance or experience or sense. Only blind enthusiasm and, at best, a few scraps of knowledge overheard from others. There had been precious little in the cottage to work with. He must have scraped ingredients from the forest.

He did not know how or why he was experiencing these things, but it was clear that this was the past—his past—replaying like echoes in the long song of time. Somehow he was here, hearing them sound once more.

The younger Charles smiled bright and full. He handled the stew like liquid gold, exceedingly careful not to spill a single drop. Gingerly dishing a bowl three-quarters to the brim, he suddenly rushed toward the door and flashed from sight before his older self could scarcely react.

So quick.

Charles Boulier had been a gifted runner, once. Now...less so. He thought of trying to catch up. Then he thought better of it. Might as well chase a rabbit in open plains.

It was fine. He had lost sight of himself, but that did not worry him. He had a strong feeling he knew where the boy would be. And not only him. If Charles had the day right, if this truly was his past, two others would be waiting as well.

He let the old door creak open, and was gone before it had shut.