No Fear of the Owl
Part V: Hearts of Flint and Clay
Around the corner Ghofin froze, heart humming. He could hear that- that rat, talking to some litterlings (he couldn’t make out whose, had never liked children too much) about… some frog? Reeds? Whatever he meant by it Ghofin didn’t like it. You could hide all sorts of nasty meanings in a metaphor. Trick people into believing things they’d never hear out if you told them straight.
He scowled and glanced down the tunnel uncertainly, unable to see past the gentle bend. Was the rat hurting them? There were other ways to hurt people than just flint and bronze, he knew, and if there was something he could do- well he wasn’t going to stand around, that was for sure.
He tensed his ears and listened.
“…do not worry yourselves about the predator. It will be dealt with. And…”
Ghofin’s veins ran with ice. “The fool,” he whispered. “He’s going to bring the beast right to-”
Images of the palisade torn down, some fell creature cracking the earth as it forced its way deeper inside the burrow, all teeth and saliva and briar-thorn fur, filled his mind. Or even risking drawing back to prey on anyone who dared to leave, driven by revenge- they did that, and that was no fairy tale. He’d heard it from Houfa from Splincaff burrow, no chain of unreliable whispers exaggerating a tale. A fox had spent two months, two summer months stalking the burrow after its eye was taken out by a spear. Houfa had been the one that had suggested the pit that had trapped its foot, downward-facing spikes trapping the beast’s leg further the more it thrashed, but as they waited for the one lucky footfall they had watched their thinning larders and prayed to the gravekeep not to join the already dead.
He shook his head, heat and bile rising in his throat. “That-” he snarled. “That sanctimonious scabtail.”
“Ghofin?”
He turned. It was Hertip, Efishti’s widowed. For a second he was half-ashamed of his state in what should be a time of mourning before the knowledge of what he had overheard came crashing back and overwhelmed it. “He’s trying to kill the monster,” he said, urgency and incredulity battling in his tone. “He’s going to set it on us with a grudge.” He let that last word fall hard, every syllable shivering with rage.
“He-” Hertip seemed to not know what to say. “H- I mean, how do you know?”
“I heard him talking just now,” whispered Ghofin, gesturing furtively, “talking to- he’s gone off now, I think, but he was talking to two litterlings- I heard them, you know- and he wants to kill it, thinks he can kill it.”
“Oh,” said Hertip. Then, “Oh my.” Then, “We need to tell the others.”
But Ghofin was already storming off, down the wide side-passage that led to his workshop. “Hurry,” he said. “Tell everyone you can. And keep you away from that rat.”
Hertip hurried downward, towards where the two litterlings had supposedly spoken to the rat. For the first time since she had heard the news the immense, restrained emptiness in her heart was pushed back by the first spark of something bigger, hotter, and hungrier than her grief.
Fensht had said his nail was hidden under a blanket in a storage room that had been phased out of usage for anything but the burrow’s accumulated odds and ends after the proper storage rooms lower down had been built. Orpek could see why. The door was too small for him to fit through without crawling and without the Elder’s directions he wouldn’t have known it was even at the back of the side-tunnel.
After squeezing his way in, sides pressing against the prodding mass of a slowly dissolving wicker basket on one side and a large and (in his opinion) rather ugly earthenware vessel on the other, he stood, in a half-crouch, only having to glance around the room for a moment before finding what he was looking for.
A very clearly his-nail-shaped parcel sat on top of a chest right at the back of the tiny room. Orpek stretched, trying not to either lean on anything crushable or to fall over, and grabbed it, hefting it towards him. He tossed the blanket it had been wrapped in back and examined the nail. It was clean and sharp. No rust. He’d give it some care, as ever, but the nail had been safe for the day he’d been absent from it.
The hilt was familiar to his callouses as he pulled it back through the entrance way, the metal dragging over the old wood of the flooring.
He dusted himself off, working away at the knot forming in his stomach as he plotted the path events would take. The watchtower, first- according to the few questions he had asked of Fensht none of the night watchkeeps had seen anything moving in the long grass surrounding the hill and no mysterious lights, so the creature was either concealed in a burrow at night- problematic, for if it had arrived with the intent of staying there would be no negotiation- or hiding in the twisted mass of briar on the east side of the hill, where the sunset darkness fell first. Where he had found Efishti. He didn’t like the thought of that. Not a lot of space to swing a nail and thorns long enough to pierce something important.
The morning. If it was nocturnal- which the timing of his finding of poor Efishti’s body suggested- he would do best to find it in the morning, tired from its nights’ mischief. Too late for that now, he gauged, and he would need the time to find out everything he could about the land around the burrow and any help he might expect, though, of course, Fensht had promised none.
In the hours until supper Hilldown was, even based on Orpek’s sliver of experience with the burrow, strangely quiet, and the few mice he met declined his offers of help with their duties. If he had been, perhaps, a little more aware, a little more perceptive, he could have seen what later transpired coming. But as it was the wanderer remained only vaguely aware of the cold, sharp thing brewing in the bellies of the mice of Hilldown burrow.
After the supper, roasted hunks of turnip and potato on a soft, earthy flatbreads, had been served to all, Fensht tapped his staff on the ground, the jingling of its charms settling the stilted murmur of conversation. “Today has been sad for all of us,” he announced, jaw working a little as he sought out the words to follow, “but we are still here, and there is food, and shelter, and a fire, and the dead would not want us to live with sadness forever. Let us eat.” There was a low chorus of No Fear from the mice, Orpek joining in a touch after them. A few mice shot him odd looks from the corners of their eyes. He had positioned himself against the wall, where he had sat in the morning. Distracted as he was, however, he took only a vague note of the fact that there were no mice sitting directly in front of him, noticing only that he had been given a proper view of the table.
He wrapped a paw around his bowl, tearing off a piece of bread and delicately folding it around a lump of potato. It was delicious, the potato lightly flavoured with thyme and rosemary and softer than the bread, which was a little coarser than some he’d had. But then again his baking experience ended at carrying bags of flour about, and besides even if…
A raised voice choked his rambling thoughts.
“So,” said the mouse sitting directly across from him, “The rat’s got his nail back. How’d that happen.”
Ghofin. In a flash Orpek remembered the mouse’s suspicion from the morning, his hard eyes watching him from the crowd when he entered the burrow last night.
He mentally stilled the sudden panicked rush in his blood as the options flashed through his mind. How did Ghofin know? The nail was in the room he had been lent, wrapped up beside his pack. No matter, for now. Speak, or wait for Elder Fensht to back him up? The latter. Relax- he was in the right here, and he needed to show that.
The pause was too long. Orpek swallowed his mouthful of food, gave the room a pleasant look, and announced, genially, “Elder Fensht kindly returned it to me.”
Every eye in the room shifted to the Elder.
“Our guest speaks the truth,” said Fensht, reluctantly. “I will say more on this after we have finished eating.” The matter apparently concluded for him he returned to studiously chewing.
Another raised voice stoppered all hope for the matter being resolved that neatly.
“Is he leaving tonight, then?”
“-No, no,” said Fensht, awkwardly swallowing his mouthful and addressing the mouse who had spoken, who Orpek recognised as Efishti’s widowed, Hertip. “But the time for talking is not…”
Ghofin spoke again. “Why’s he got the nail back, then? And what’s he planning on doing with it?”
Orpek decided to step in. “I leave early in the morning,” he said. “I will be waking, eating and leaving in short succession, and among other things-”
“What are you going to do with that nail, rat?”
Orpek glanced Fensht’s way and tried to meet his eyes. The Elder offered nothing in return.
“The venerable Elder Fensht has agreed-” Orpek started, but before he could get anywhere Ghofin slammed his fists down on the table and cut him off.
“Let’s make it simple, rat,” he said. “What’s the nail for?”
“It is the unfortunate tool of a wanderer,” said Orpek, defaulting to his usual non-committal response.
Hertip cut in again. “Say it straight, rat. It’s for killing things.”
“Yes,” said Orpek. “An ugly purp-”
Ghofin raised his voice higher, a stir rising in the other mice. “What are you planning on doing with it, rat?”
They knew. Orpek didn’t know how, and he was surprised that the Elder had not already told all who would hear, the way he had spoken of secrets, but apparently he wanted to tell them after dinner- perhaps out of custom, perhaps for neatness- and now the very festering he had spoken of had progressed into rot. Orpek, for once, felt something in the air that others did not. Fensht’s mild protests and gestures for quiet would not be enough to quell this fire. It was up to him.
And Orpek was worse at diffusing situations than he was at baking. His words were a cleaver; useful, sometimes, but right now cutting things into dichotomies would not help.
Orpek took a breath to clear his lungs before responding. “I would like it known that I do not take pleasure in violence, and I do not enjoy others thinking I do. No glory in stopping hearts.”
“So why that nail, then?” Ghofin’s paws flexed on the edge of the table, teeth setting.
“Defence,” replied Orpek, trying to meet as many eyes as possible. “My defence. Defence of others.”
Elder Fensht finally stepped in, tapping his staff against the ground, the charms jangling. “Peace, peace,” he called. “Leave our visitor to his food.”
Ghofin raised a paw to ward off Fensht’s plea, as if asking him to drop an act. “Defence against what?” he said, voice raising. “Because you keep dodging the question, rat, because you’re hiding something.”
“Predators,” growled Orpek, upper lip twitching as he forced himself into a calmer tone. “Plenty out there. Plenty who haven’t seen nailmetal in generations. Plenty who need someone with a sharp edge and a sharper point. But few enough like me. So I do what I can. To help people like you.”
“Help?” exclaimed Hertip. “Help? You come here, eat our food, enjoy our hearth, and you talk of help?”
Orpek decided to stop padding around the issue. “I am going to kill the predator that killed Efishti,” he said.
It was around two seconds into the screaming outburst that followed that Orpek realised his phrasing may have been at odds with the situation.
“Keep her name out of your mouth!” yelled Hertip. “Out of your filthy rat mouth!”
Ghofin stood, revealing a woodsrodent’s axe hanging at his waist. “We don’t want your help,” he said, whiskers arching as the mice raised a roar of No! around him. “We didn’t ask for your help. No.” His gaze swept the crowd, jaw clenching, before levelling a finger at Orpek. “You come here with one of us dead in a sack and claim you’re here to save us. The fuck do you think we are? People like us? Some silky-furred city dwellers, brain-sick on fermented apple? No.” His lips bared teeth, sharp and yellow. “You don’t know who we are.”
Orpek’s reply was flat, seeming to flex from his jaw before he could stop it. “Educate me, then.” He stood, setting his bowl down on the table before him with a clack. He stood twice Ghofin’s height but the mouse’s eyes glazed over with something hot and hard.
“Enough,” yelled Fensht, slamming his staff down and rising to his full height. But in doing so he seemed to grow smaller, showing for the first time the true weight of his age. The calm of his authority broken he was just another mouse, small and bent-backed, fur thin and eyes cloudy.
“Educate?” Ghofin spat in the dirt as the mice banged their fists and made raw their throats in agreement, words raising from it like bubbles in the mire. No, and Out, and Rat. “No, I can’t educate you, wanderer. This is the story we learn when the dirt smears into our eyes ‘til we can’t cry no more. When we lock the gates and starve to keep the fox out. When our children die from wasting fever. And one day we learn that it’s always been here, written into the secret places in our bones, and we keep those secrets tight when the earth takes us back. No. I can’t educate you.”
“A hard life,” said Orpek. “Indeed.” He pressed his eyes shut for a moment that was not long enough to think of a way out, the scar on his snout creasing.
“This is Hilldown,” snarled Ghofin. “We don’t want your saving. We don’t belong to you to save.”
He took a step forward onto the table, Fensht’s protests and the slamming and jangling of his staff now just another part of the cacophony that was resolving itself into a chant, a phrase shaking Orpek’s bones and heart.
“NOT OUR BURROW! NOT OUR BURROW! NOT OUR BURROW!”
“You’re not the hero,” mouthed Ghofin. “This en’t your story, rat.”
Ghofin’s hand gripped the shaft of his axe and Orpek stumbled back over the bench, staggered and ran.
The chant continued long after Orpek was gone, Ghofin leading a pack of mice to find the wanderer and see to it that he was escorted far, far away from Hilldown with no chance to fight the predator.
Anhol hid under the table. Etkin had joined her voice to the others.
Hertip’s face loomed in the gap between the table and the bench, brown fur creased in an expression Anhol did not know the name of.
“Anhol,” she said, voice lost somewhere between chiding, soothing, and angry. “What are you-”
“This isn’t right,” Anhol said, panicking. “This isn’t right- it’s not right!”
“What do you mean, not- Come out from under there at once. Where is your mother?”
“Asleep,” said Anhol, back against the smooth wood of the central tableleg. “Leave her alone.”
“Anhol-” Hertip said, her jaw tightening.
“You’re angry because you’re scared!” he exclaimed with all the truth of an unheeded child. “You’re scared of dying! But Orpek is scared as well! We’re all scared! You need to stop this!”
Hertip seemed, for a split second, to understand, but then it was buried under a fresh surge of that sharp hardness in her eyes.
“Your mother will hear about this,” she said. “Mark my…”
Her voice faded to nothing in Anhol’s ears as she left him where he sat.
He knew, somehow, that there should be something to learn from this, but all he felt in his heart of hearts was sick.