Another nightmare.

I cannot sleep.  For the third time this month, I have awoken in the dead of night, shaking uncontrollably, the bed linens damp with sweat and clinging uncomfortably to my body.  In my dreams, I see Father Matheer’s face before me, a mass of melted, pus-ridden flesh.  The room stinks of death and decay, and the stench alone is enough to make me want to flee, but somehow, I stand fast.  Matheer’s one good eye, the eye that wasn’t seared away in the fire, slowly opens and looks at me.  Is that disappointment I see there, or is it only despair?  Does he know what I have done?  Oh, Lord…  Why now, after all these years?  I thought I had put the past behind me…

He is too weak to speak, but he continues to stare at me, with his one good brown eye, until his last ragged breath has been exhaled, and his chest moves no more.  I hear my mother’s voice somewhere behind me, sobbing a prayer, and in my periphery, Brother Antoni makes the sign of the Chalice before closing Father Matheer’s motionless eye.  It is the end of Februarius, and I am not yet fourteen years old.  Until this moment, I have never stood so close to the corpse of someone I have known.  The Father’s bowels release their contents as he expires, and suddenly the odor becomes unbearable.

As if by their own command, my legs turn and take me from that room, that horrible stench, and I find my way to the back door through the vestry.  I am barely two feet from the church when I lean over and wretch, emptying my breakfast over the shrubbery that lines the back wall.  My stomach heaves again, and with it, I feel a wave of gut-wrenching guilt.  I stand there for fully five minutes, swallowing my shame and holding back the tears that threaten to come.

When I return to the corpse, I find my father’s gaze from across the room.  His hand is resting on mother’s shoulder calmly, his face a practiced mask of composure.  But I can read the thoughts behind it… the disappointment and the disgust.  I have failed him once again, and this time would be the last.  Two weeks later, he would send me off to my uncle at Abbas Hall.

I would never see him again.

Eight years ago.

I will never forget the snarl on Theo ab Kasmith’s weathered face as he stood over me that dawn in Southern Lithmore.  My father’s decision to remove me from the Roldan household before my 15th birthday was a wound still fresh, and though I had only been at Abbas Hall for two days, I already wanted desperately to flee what I viewed as an appalling and grossly undeserved punishment.  To that end, I had decided to surreptitiously “borrow” one of Theo’s horses and ride south, to Talfore and my sister.

I was still fumbling with the saddle when old Theo found me in the stables and kicked my feet right out from under me, quick as any lightning.  A bright, sharp pain stole away my vision, and the breath was knocked clean out of my chest.  “Boy,” I heard him growl, “You had best not try that again.  You’re as useless and stupid as a newborn pup still attached to its mother’s teat.”  Naturally, I disagreed with his analysis at the time, but his words stuck with me ever since.  And eventually, after two more poorly-planned escape attempts, a cracked rib, a black eye, and a swollen lip, he made me see myself for what I really was:  spoiled, arrogant, and yes, stupid.

But not useless.  Well, not after a few months of hard labor, at any rate.  Old Theo put me to work every Arien day.  One week it was gardening, the next logging, and the week after, he’d have me helping in the fields, butchering meat in the kitchens, or cleaning out the kennels and stalls.  Every week it was something new and different and horrifying to my senses.  The manure and feces, the innards, the blood, the weevils and grubs, lice, fleas… I met them all.  Theo said it was to build character, of course, but to me, it was a masterfully-contrived, never-ending form of abuse.  His staff even started a lottery, betting on who would be stuck babysitting me next.  Oh, how I hated that first year in his employ.

It never became easy, but Theo ab Kasmith was, as always, right.  Every task he set me to made me stronger in body and spirit.  Eventually, I stopped gagging when it came time to slaughter and dress the livestock, I learned to endure the awful odors, and to work through the pain until it melted away into strength.  I knew that something in me had changed when the lottery gave way to earnest requests for my assistance.  Not long after, Theo and I loaded the wagons to bursting and set off for Vavard.

I never thought I’d miss Abbas Hall.