Chapter Text
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
— W.B Yeats
At noon, Phainon watches a man be hanged.
It is a man he knows, though not well; a lad younger than he, twenty or perhaps twenty-one years of age, broad and handsome like an ox. A Kremnoan foreigner with a queer shade of hair, blond in some lights and ginger in others, Mydeimos came to their little village of Aedes Elysiae with three women in tow, his two sisters and their mother. He is a man of few words and, when he spoke, he spoke with a strange accent—though that never stopped him from being kind to Phainon. They plowed and labored and tended to the Boyar's lands together, bare-backed and sweaty under the blistering, hot sun. He shared the last few drops of his water with Phainon once, when he'd seen him collapse under the weight of the exertion. He stood over him then, haloed by the rays of sunlight; in the throes of his fever and delirium, Phainon thought him an angel.
He is no angel now.
He is dirty and soiled and beaten purple and blue, wearing rags stained by blood and old piss. If his limp is anything to go by, his leg might have been broken; two strong men have to hold him up and drag him to the gallows. Some of his fingers stick at an awkward angle; those, too, were broken. Old, dried blood is caked into his hair, a black sort of cruor tangled against those oddly-colored strands. Phainon knows where these wounds come from, he was there; after he was accused, he tried to flee, but the men of the village were stronger and emboldened by righteous justice, and they cracked his head open with hoes when they found him. Phainon did not stop them. A criminal must be punished, certainly, and yet… He shivers with the memory of it. He had never heard a man scream in agony as this man did when he was beaten. He did not know men could make that sound, too; the sound of a pig struggling after its throat has been cut.
Despite the filth and the wounds, Mydeimos is not wholly undignified. He carries himself rather nobly, raised head and elegant brow. He takes to the depravity of his crimes like a horse takes to hay, like it is natural. Phainon clenches his fist. Not even in his last moments can this crook show a bit of humility and repentance. Aedes Elysiae is a quiet, peaceful village. These sort of things don't happen around here—well, of course crimes happen, horse theft and stealing chickens, but they… they get sorted out, or something, Phainon is not sure. He only knows that a man has never been hanged in Aedes Elysiae before, so crimes like these must have never happened before.
The man rises the steps to the gallows; somebody has to help him up. Aedes Elysiae did not have gallows until this day. It was built a few days ago, for this one man's use, and it remains unlikely to ever be used again. He stands thus: with his wrists bound in front of him and his head held high, and he looks upon all of the villagers of Aedes Elysiae. There is a strange glint in his eyes; defiance, perhaps, and cold sort of pride. Cruel satisfaction.
"Mydeimos, you stand accused of the murder of Hephaestion Georgiou, the young son of our good Boyar here. You have captured him and beat him to death! You broke ten bones in his body!" The Judge—hardly a Judge at all, simply the only man who knows how to write and read well, and the Boyar's younger brother—reads off his crimes from a list. The crowd gasps and starts to whisper among themselves. "How do you plead?"
Mydeimos' mouth twists, corners pulling downward, his eyebrows furrow. He opens his mouth and a weak, shrill sound comes out. He closes it. Clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and tries again.
"Innocent."
He spits some blood as he speaks, the remnants of it staying to stain his mouth. He looks fearsome and tragic all the same. He reminds Phainon a bit of those butterflies Cyrene used to pin with needles.
That stumps the Judge well enough. He looks around, seemingly for support, and he carries himself clumsily. "Well… Um. The court, ahem, the court has found you guilty of the murder." the Judge says. The "court" is made up of the Boyar, the Judge and the Oldest Man in the Village. It hardly resembles the courts of bigger cities. "Any last words?"
Mydeimos casts a sweeping look across the crowd. He does not scrutinize, and there is no hate to be found within those eyes. It is a neutral look; serene even. It lacks the fright becoming of a man in his position. Phainon could even describe it as smug, like he knows something everyone else does not.
Their eyes lock briefly for one moment, a passing second. There is a small, nearly imperceptible change in his expression; a recognition of sort, an 'Ah, I know you', then surprise, then strange sadness. Phainon cannot tell where this sadness comes from; they were not friends, they were barely more than strangers who exchanged polite pleasantries at most. Still, Phainon looks away in shame.
Mydeimos must have seen somebody in the crowd, because his breath hitches and his shoulders tense. He opens his mouth, closes it, gaps like a dying fish; then he says something, in a language Phainon does not recognize.
—Mommy, don't cry.
A cry such as Phainon has never heard before erupts from the crowd, a horrible, loud thing. He startles upon hearing it, firstly thinking that the sky might have broken and snapped in two and that divine retribution was about to fall on them all. Yet when the crowd parts, Phainon sees that it is not the Hand of Nikador come to wrought vengeance, rather it is an older woman with bright red hair tied under a headscarf. Her face is soft and wrinkled, her features fine, her hands calloused from a lifetime of work. She's on her knees, grabbing fistfuls of gravel. Her mouth is split open so wide that it looks nearly unhinged at the jaw, yellow crooked teeth glimmering like pearls in the sun. Two younger women hold her and rub her back on each side; these must be the women Mydeimos brought with him, his sisters and his mother.
It is an awful, guttural sound, something that can only be created by a heart utterly broken. She rocks back and forth and screams in her language, and though Phainon cannot understand it, he knows it must be something incoherent.
—No, no, my boy, my boy, no, Nikador, this is too much, it's too much, I can't—MY BOY!
"Please, you have to understand, he—Mydeimos wouldn't do such a thing!" one of the younger girls says in their language. Her hair is set in two long braids, her face pretty and freckled and streaked with bitter tears. "Please, no!"
The girl next to her, doubtlessly the older of the sisters, is both taller and broader, and dressed in pants. Her hair is cut short to her jawline, and her expression is one less woeful; she looks stoic, simmering with quiet fury, her jaw set in tension where it is clenched. "He did not even get a proper trial," she spits, "This is unlawful!"
"Quiet!" the Judge yells, stomping his foot, "There is evidence aplenty against him and he has motive too. We all know how you people move around these parts, bringing strife and ruin wherever you go. It has been decided."
He turns to Mydeimos, his eyes cold and dark with fury. "Nothing like this would ever happen in Aedes Elysiae were it not for you. That boy was loved, well-loved. You've taken him from us. From his father. You'll burn in hell."
To that, this Mydeimos gives a curt and stoic nod. His lips press into a thin line and he only makes a short 'hmm" in response. Phainon thinks it almost sounds like he's agreeing. He also thinks Mydeimos looks quite noble when he is about to die.
Phainon shakes away the thought from his head, reminds himself that this is a violent criminal who murdered a young, innocent man. He should feel wrathful in this moment, yet he finds himself unable to. He feels… guilty. He is also scared; Phainon has never seen a man die violently before, just old age and sickness. He has seen animals die, of course, and he's killed most of them too. Phainon tells himself this is not any different. Meat is meat, and this is a criminal, so it cannot be any different from shooting a fox that got into the chicken coop.
The Judge moves awkwardly—something from Mydeimos' response has rattled him, Phainon can tell. He steps back and swallows thickly. "Well, then… You shall die! That is all! Somebody come—" and he gestures wildly, "Somebody come kick that thing from under him! Or do you expect me—"
"I'll do it," one of the burly men that dragged Mydeimos all the way here answers, stepping forth. He checks the rope first, sees that it is plenty trusty, then winds it around his neck. His throat bobs around the noose.
Without a warning and without ceremony, the man kicks the box he's been standing on from under him. The crowd gasps and screams with surprise, and many turn their faces away; Phainon is one of them. The peak of all the boiling emotions, of the bloody murder of a noble boy, comes in the form of a loud, gurgling choke; an awful sound, like someone trying to breathe around a mouthful of wet, rotten mud. Instinctively, the crowd, as though they were an interconnected hive of ants, steps back. A child starts screaming. Phainon thinks the worst of it is done, so he cracks his eyes open just in time to see that Mydeimos has not died as he was supposed to, quickly and painlessly with a broken neck, but rather that he has survived and is being strangled.
His body thrashes and his legs kick, though they do not kick with much vigor; one is broken and the other, tired. There is froth about his mouth, and his lips are swollen and bruised. An angry red wound begins to bleed about his throat, where the rope chafed his neck. The sounds he makes are inhuman, small, and wet. He has been beaten thoroughly this morning, Phainon knows it. Each struggling, choked breath indents his chest strangely. Some ribs must be broken now too, not just his leg, and certainly he got a few more shovels to the head, if the way he slurred his words earlier is anything to go by. Phainon does not want to think of how he screamed when the other men jumped him. It was not a sound any human could—or should—make. Phainon counts himself fortunate for not knowing true pain.
'This can't be right,' he thinks, and he tells himself, this is a criminal, he has killed a man, but he cannot shake it off; this cannot be right. In this moment, under the Judge's and the Boyar's burning gaze, Mydeimos is just meat, vaguely sculpted into the shape of man. The crowd wavers in its ferocity. An odd sort of pity sets over them, and they must all be reminding themselves of the comely Boyar's son and how he would laugh at everyone's jokes. How white his teeth were when he smiled.
Phainon tries to remember too, but all he can think of is the sound of manflesh struggling around the noose.
As he chokes, Mydeimos' face goes red, then purple, and just when his eyes start to roll in the back of his head, the overhanging bracket shivers, the wood moans, and snaps in two under Mydeimos' weight.
He falls down heavily as though he were weighted down with stones; he hits the ground with a loud thud and a yell of pain. His broken leg twists uncomfortably under him. His shoulders shake. Phainon has never seen a man die before. He has also never seen a man suffer, not like this. Now, now, Mydei looks undignified. Small, twitching, perhaps even fearful. He takes big gulps of air in bouts of painful heaves. His chest trembles and expands with each breath. He is laying on his side, right on his broken ribs, as the Judge comes up to the gallows and gives them a kick, making the entire foundation shake, jostling Mydeimos further on his pained leg.
It is a hastily built thing, constructed of whatever wood the villagers could get their hands on. Why they couldn't just use a tree, Phainon cannot tell. Perhaps they felt like they had to have gallows. Like they had to do it the right way.
"Piece of shit!" the Judge bellows, "Fuck! Just… Just…" he looks around wildly. "Where's the carpenter?! Have him come and fix this at once!"
The elderly, scrawny carpenter steps forward from the crowd. His were the hands that build the gallows—half of Aedes Elysiae, really—though he does not have the physique to show it. A small wisp of an old man, that is all, and yet he has constructed a machine whose sole purpose is to kill. Phainon does not know how to contend with it, so he choses to look at Mydeimos instead.
As the Carpenter speaks with the Judge, the Burly man comes to Mydeimos' side again. He grabs the rope, unfurls it from the broken bracket, and gives it a mighty tug. Mydeimos does not budge. The Burly Man pulls harder; he does not move still. Mydeimos has planted himself well into the gallows, his fingers digging in between the wooden boards. He holds onto the wood with such force that he pushes splinters under his fingernails, yet he does not make a sound of pain.
Slowly, like a mountain erupting from an even plain, he rises. Gets enough leverage to stand by propping himself up on his bad leg. He falters, his knees buck, but he does not fall.
Instead, he walks towards the Burly Man. From where he is standing, Phainon can only see his strong back, the steady set of his shoulders. But the Burly Man sees his face, and there most be something truly fearsome written on Mydeimos' features, because the Burly Man's eyes widen and his breath falters. His grip on the rope tightens. Mydeimos' steps are unsure, trembling, but they do not lack conviction; a man that will not take it laying down.
"Resisting, you reckon?" an old man whispers behind Phainon.
"No, no... goin' out with his pride intact, maybe?" his son answers.
"What pride does a rat like him have?"
Mydeimos stops a few paces before the Burly Man.
"I can… walk myself," he says with some difficulty,
Phainon cannot tell if it is defiance or a desperate shot at preserving a sliver of humanity. It is a valiant effort though, noble even, but it does not last long. Mydeimos walks to the stairs, takes the first step, and tumbles down face first. He lands in the soft, muddy grass. The Burly Man takes this opportunity to pull at his noose hard. Phainon does not know what he is trying to achieve, but Mydeimos digs his heels in and rises again; this time, he topples over right away.
Two other men part from the crowd, tall and strong and impatient, and they each haul him up to his knees by an armpit. They drag him like so for a few meters, until they find a suitable place for him to be thrown. Mydeimos, refusing to obey but too weak to fight back, supports himself on his elbows and gets up enough to just simply sit. He sits, and he watches the three men in front of him, and then the yelling and bickering of men fighting comes. They scream at him, insult him and though Phainon does not quite make out what they are saying, he thinks he can intuit the gist of it; you are a criminal, you are a rat, you will go to hell. It's nothing Mydeimos has not heard before.
They go to hit him, but the Boyar, having heard the commotion, stops them. "None of that," he says, his voice quiet and rough, "I need him awake for the hangin'. I need him aware."
It is no mercy, but Phainon still catches Mydeimos sigh in relief. His eyes fall closed and, for a moment, he looks asleep. He looks dead.
The crowd welcomes the break. It will be an hour, maybe more, before the bracket is fixed, and so some of them leave with the promise that they will come back for the execution. Phainon, however, does not go. He watches Mydeimos' family instead as they come to crowd around him.
His mother falls sobbing to her knees, crying into her hands with her face resting on his lap. Weakly, Mydeimos rests his hand on the crown of her head. He stains her red hair with even redder blood. He mumbles something, far too grumbled to be understood. His sister, the younger one, combs his hair with her fingers, trying to get the caked dirt and dried blood out of it. The older sister approaches him with a waterskin. She grabs his chin like so, incredibly gentle, and tips the water into his mouth.
"Drink," she says, in their language, "You must be thirsty," and Mydeimos drinks as best as he can.
"Mom—mommy…" he groans out. He caresses her head, carding his fingers through her hair.
"O-oh!" the Mother suddenly gasps and goes searching through the pockets of her skirt. She pulls out two very small, rusted coins, and shoves them in Mydeimos' mouth. "For the… the ferryman…"
It takes the Carpenter two hours to fix the broken bracket. Only when he announces the work is done does Phainon look towards it; he sees that it has been reinforced with more wood and some steel. It looks proper sturdy now.
The Burly Man grabs Mydeimos by the noose again. He goes to drag him up to the gallows, but his mother digs her hands into him, hugging him by the arm, and refuses to let go. The Younger Sister steps back with a gasp, trying to pull her mother off, while the Older Sister steps towards the Burly Man and pushes him with much force. He tips off balance, only for a short moment, and her reward is as such; a fist to the mouth for her and a boot to the face for her mother.
"No, don't—don't hurt them," Mydeimos groans out, wincing in pain as he once again stands up.
The Burly Man and two other strong man carry Mydeimos to the gallows, not even allowing him the simple dignity of walking himself. They drag him up the steps and force Mydeimos up on the box. Rope is at his throat again. He is half-dead already. Maybe this time, it will be done the right away, and his neck will just snap and that will be all—Phainon has an odd feeling it won't go much better than the first time.
The Mother collapses half on top of the gallows' platform. Her shivering arms reach out for him, hands yearning to touch, to pull him into her bosom as she had when he was little and he scrapped his knee. Someone pushes her back. Mydeimos' gaze, his face filthy with mud and blood and his eyes nearly swollen shut, doesn't leave her.
"Mommy, mommy, it's alright, it's—I'm going to father, to Nikador's—Nikador's side."
He chokes as he speaks around the coins in his mouth. Phainon thinks he might be crying, but with how beaten his face is, he can't be sure.
"My boy… I can't… This… this trial is far too much, it's—more than I can take, my boy, my boy, my little boy… My only boy…"
"Don't look, mommy, Castorice, don't look—Cifera, take them, take th—hngg—them and go."
Phainon feels like he is in an entirely different place, watching himself watch this from the eyes of a bird. A spell of dizziness takes hold of him, and his vision swims and blurs.
The Burly Man jabs Mydeimos in the side to shut him up. He doubles over from the pain, though the blow did not look hard at all. A bit further away, the Judge grinds his jaw.
"Somebody get a fucking sack and cover his miserable face! I'm tired of this Kremnoan drivel, and—and—"
'And what? Cannot look the man you are about to kill in the eye?' Phainon finishes in his mind.
When nobody moves to procure a sack for him, he growls wildly. "You're telling me there is no sack in the entire village of Aedes Elysiae?! None of you peasants own a fucking burlap sack?"
In the edge of his sight, a man pushes his young girl aside and yells at her to run home and get the sack. When she returns, red-faced and breathing hard, she shyly hands it to the Burly Man.
The sack goes over Mydeimos' face; the window to this depravity closes. Now, now, he is truly meat. A bag of flesh to be slapped around. His mother starts screaming again.
Phainon decides this is an affair far too miserable for him, and he goes home.
As he walks back to his little hut, he hears the box kicked out from under Mydeimos. He hears the choking. He hears the mother's screams pitching higher and higher until they abruptly stop. He hears the sisters yell for a doctor.
He thinks it is done, and it is not his business anymore.
The men and women of Aedes Elysiae gather at the only inn in the village later that night—naturally, Phainon is there as well.
He sits at a long table, with some of the other men that work the Boyar's lands alongside him. These are men he's known since he was a boy. There are other men here tonight that he recognizes as well; the Stonemason, the Fisherman, the Cobbler, and the Judge. Most of them are making merry, except for the Judge, who sits by himself and mumbles into his drink.
Phainon is three beer mugs in and it's getting a little hard to think.
The talk of the entire night is, of course, the execution of Mydeimos. Peucesta is painting a vivid picture.
"And as he was strugglin' and such, the sack on his face just… How do I say this… From all the cryin' and snot and such, the burlap sack… stained? And it looked like it grew a face of its own… It was…" Peucesta drifts off, looking into the distance, "Every time he gasped for air, the sack would—" and he gestures vaguely around his mouth, "Tighten or somethin', you understand…"
Phainon can only imagine, though he is not keen to. He can imagine three wet spots widening on the burlap sack, the humors of tears, snot and drool, painting a caricature of a man's figures, and like to a young child one might point out; here are the eyes, here is the nose, here is the hungry, hungry mouth, and there yonder is the warm, beating heart.
Peucesta continues.
"And he struggled for a few minutes, maybe… Eight or ten, then he went still and stopped strugglin'… I think he fainted, but…" he breathes in, "He would still move every once in a while, sort of twitch or spasm, and then a bit later we all heard this… wet sort of crunch sound. I think… something broke, and the man gave this weak sort of gasp, and then—"
"And then he died?" Phainon pipes in, though he only asks with half a mind. He is not truly here and finds his mouth talking without asking him for permission first.
Peucesta's fist tightens. His lips press to a thin line as his jaw clenches. Phainon notices a strange shiver take him, like something has deeply and truly terrified him. His eyes grow big and his gaze casts itself very, very far away.
"Well, that's the thing…" he squeaks out, timid as a mouse, "He stopped moving at some point, not even spasmin', so an hour later they went to check him and… and he…"
Peucesta's voice drops to a severe whisper. "He was still warm."
Phainon immediately comes back to himself. He looks at Peucesta like he grew a second head. "That's bullshit, that's not possible. You're lying on a dead man."
"He isn't," Leonnius speaks up, "Word to Kephale, I've seen it myself. The Judge came with the Boyar to check. They touched his hand and screamed that he was still warm."
"Did you touch him?" Phainon cocks an eyebrow.
"Well, no, I was too scared…"
"You're a gloat of stupid peasants," Phainon speaks into his mug, going for another gulp, "You can't still be warm an hour after dying. The Boyar and the Judge are lying just to scare you into behaving."
Peucesta, always quick to heat up, goes red-faced with drunk fury and rises from his seat to yell at Phainon. His words do not get an opportunity to leave his mouth, because the door to the inn opens with a slam.
It is the Burly Man. His long, thick black hair is greasy and his mustache trembles in tandem with his lip. He looks pale, haunted, his eyes sunken in. A thin layer of sweat covers him. He passes by their table as he goes to the bar, orders 'the strongest piss froth they have.' Silence falls over the inn, so thick Phainon feels like he is drowning in it. The serving girl gives him his drink with shaky hands. On his way back, he stops next to them. He looks directly at Phainon. Phainon returns his stare, feels like he owes it to him.
"Something terrible happened here today," the Burly Man says, "And we have made a great mistake."
And he takes his mug and he goes to a table far to the back of the inn, as far away as possible. Phainon watches him drink in small, mousey mouthfuls. His gaze is distant, fixed at an exact point. He is looking out of the window, though if he sees anything, it is visible only to him. Phainon just glimpses the rose bushes decorating the inn's garden.
Whatever he sees, whatever could be there, frightens him. His hands start shaking and his eyes fill with tears.
Phainon sinks deeper into the corners of his own mind until everything is a nice, even blur. He sinks deeper into his cups, too. Really, he just spends most of the night trying to forget the sound Mydeimos made while choking. An awful, desperate, scared sound. He tries to forget his mother screaming.
He fails, and only leaves once he has deemed himself sufficiently drunk on bitter ale.
He starts to make his way back home, and all Phainon can think about is 'I hope Cyrene is asleep, else I'm going to get a real earful.' She doesn't like it when he drinks, and does not understand that he must lest the other men of the village look at him weird. The fact that the music at the inn is pleasant to the ear is a welcome addition, though.
And on that note, Phainon drunkenly realizes that they played no music tonight at the inn. The tone was somber. Everybody was scared or silent or angry. Nobody seemed to be satisfied by the justice that was just delivered. Phainon finds that very queer indeed, but is way too drunk to form a coherent opinion on it. What is done is done.
He is so sour on beer that he cannot walk a straight line. He ends up doubled over a bush, throwing up his bad mistakes. He thinks he deserves the taste of bile on his tongue; what a despicable man.
The wind howls strangely about him. The breeze is gentle, but shrill, high-pitched like a whistle. It twists around him dangerously, caresses down his bare forearms and entangles itself into his fingers. He feels pulled by a force stronger than him; curiosity, though he knows it is folly.
There is no way what Peucesta said is true, right? Men cannot be warm so long after death—animals certainly aren't, and a man is an animal just like a cow is.
The wind and his unsure legs carry him to the gallows in the center of Aedes Elysiae.
There he finds Mydeimos, soiled, filthy, crowned by tender moonlight. The burlap sack is as Peucesta had said, marred with bitter wet spots where he has cried, where he has drooled, where he has snot. A little icon of the face, scratching all that is necessary to make it recognizable. Phainon burps and feels its rancid taste.
He approaches. The beer has made him unfearing. Mydeimos is hanged so high that Phainon only comes up to his waist. Still, he is tall enough to grasp the corner of the sack by standing on the tips of his toes. He pulls it off and exposes his face.
Phainon thinks Mydeimos was beautiful, once. It was an odd, foreign sort of beauty. His hair was a brassy blonde, run through with streaks of pale ginger, his features were intense and well-defined, his nose hooked and crooked. He paled well in the winter but tanned in the summer. His canines were sharp and sticking out when he smiled, though he did not smile often. He had handsome shoulders, a good collarbone, a tapered waist and yes, a very pleasant face indeed.
He is disfigured now. Unrecognizable. He is disfigured in a way Phainon finds hard to parse, like he cannot believe this is truly the man that worked the Boyar's fields next to him. His face darkened in unnatural colors, purple-black in some places, blue-green in others. His eyes are wide and fearful and glassy; there are tracks down the dirt on his face from all the tears that he has shed. He looks waxy, small, like the figure Phainon once carved of Kephale bearing the world. He doesn't look like any dead men Phainon has ever seen; truth be told, though, he has only seen two. His grandfather wasting away of old age, back when Phainon was a boy, didn't look much different in death than he did in sleep. His father, struck down by a nasty fever three years ago, was much the same.
Undeniably though, even with Phainon's lack of mortuary experience, this is a dead man, unbreathing, and Peucesta is just a stupid peasant. Phainon lets himself feel a bit relieved, steps back to survey Mydeimos' body better. It sways gently with the breeze, stiff as a board. The overhanging bracket creaks with every movement.
Peucesta had said Mydeimos' hands were still warm an hour after death, and Phainon just wants to put that last nail in the coffin and show him what an idiot he is. Emboldened by the alcohol and his own relief, Phainon surges forward suddenly and grabs one of Mydeimos' hands.
He finds it as warm as a feverish man might be. Mydeimos is burning up, hot-blooded like a riled ox, veins coursing hellishly with life. It must have been ten, no, twelve hours since he died. He should have been as cold as flesh to butcher.
Phainon sobers up instantly. He looks up at Mydeimos' face through chattering teeth. The corpse is unmoving, unseeing, unbreathing. His eyes are cloudy. A blowfly crawls out of his mouth. The smell of him is rancid, sour and pungent. Yet, yet, the hand that Phainon is still holding is warm and soft and undeniably alive.
Like a blow to the head, whatever remains of his survival instincts kick in and tell him to go. To run. So Phainon wrenches his hand away from Mydeimos' and runs all the way home to the edge of the village. He barges past the creaky wooden door and lands right on the dinner table. He knocks his mother's nice bowl down, but it does not shatter. It survives the fall, just like, just like—
"Ph… Phainon?" his sister's voice rings out, and he sees her standing at the edge of the doorframe, eyes bleary. She's trying to blink away sleep. "What are you doing? What happened?"
"Go to bed," Phainon orders her, crazed like a spooked horse, "Go to your room and lock the door, and, and—shut the windows down tightly."
"Are you drunk again?" Cyrene frowns, "You miserable old fool, you always get in trouble when—"
He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her well. "Cyrene, shut the windows!" he yells, digging his nails into her flesh, "Do you understand me? You have to—"
"Oronyx almighty, alright! I will! Stop yelling, you'll wake mother up!" she squirms out of his hold.
Phainon refuses to budge until he sees Cyrene walk back into her room and lock the door. He checks on his mother then, who is sleeping soundly in her bed with the curtains drawn. Only then does he creep up into his own room, the old storage.
In the darkness, he feels blindly with his hands until he finds the straw-filled mattress. He sets one knee down on it, is about to put the other too, when movement past the shutters catches his attention. He looks out of the window.
Pale as milk with beautiful curly wool, outside his window is Georios' prettiest, most perfect little lamb. His breath hitches. The moonlight shining on that white hair makes it dance with an ethereal shadow, beating into an iridescent hue, like the mother-of-pearl comb a rich man once gifted Cyrene. Its head is bowed in the long grass outside his house, grazing if the little movements of its neck are anything to go by. Perhaps one of the Boyar's lambs got out of its pen and went astray.
Phainon thinks he should bring it inside and handle the matter tomorrow with the Boyar. Just as he is about to move off the bed, the lamb raises its neck.
Phainon's mind fills in the blanks before it can catch up to the sight; a pair of cute black eyes, little floppy ears, a darling little pink nose. A positively adorable creature with a head about the size of a small melon.
There is no head. That slender neck ends in a rough stump, a rose-like swirl of ragged gore. It is red with bloody muscle, blue with veins weakly pulsing, its throat responding still to the separation. It flexes its legs, its chest rises with each breath, it is alive. Headless it lives. Dead it lives.
The neck cranes.
It is naught but a column of stained white wool, a terrible end, but Phainon knows. He knows in the dark recesses of his mind that he dares not dread, he knows in the small reptile's brain in the back of his enlightened ape's cranium, he knows in each instinct inscribed in every nerve of his body.
Phainon knows, in the most primal corners of his soul, that it has turned to him. That it knows he is there.
It is watching.
Him.
Darkness.
Phainon comes to hours later and thinks oh, what a weird dream. Really, he thinks back on it with a certain amount of humor. Headless living lamb, hah. Alcohol makes him stupid, and he should really stop trying to match Peucesta and Leonnius in their folly.
He firstly goes to the well to draw some water, just enough to freshen him up. He takes the long way, just to avoid the gallows Mydeimos is hanged on. The morning air is chilly against his heated skin, and the quick bath he takes once he's back home does wonders to cool off his throbbing head.
Him, his sister and their mother eat a silent breakfast together, some hard cheese and leftover ham from a few days ago. Across the table, Cyrene regards him strangely, an eyebrow crooked with an unspoken question, her glances obvious. He clenches his jaw and squints his eyes at her, to which she just tilts her head, purses her lips, and wildly waves the cheese in her hand. He glowers and kicks her shin under the table—
"What are you two doing?" Audata asks, slamming her hand down and rattling their meal.
"Nothing."
"Nothing."
They walk to the Boyar's house together for a new day of labour; while Phainon works the Boyar's lands, Cyrene goes house to house and washes the villagers' clothes. She usually starts with the Boyar himself, mostly because she enjoys walking Phainon to work.
"What was all of that about yesterday night?"
Phainon waves his hand dismissively. "I was drunk. Thought I saw something scary."
Cyrene scoffs. "You ought to stop drinking with Peucesta and Leonnius. You cannot handle your ale at all."
She laughs at him. Phainon joins her too. He really is a—
"Titans!" Cyrene gasps and stops walking with a startle. She covers her mouth with shaking hands. Her eyes are blown wide open and affixed at a specific point nearby. He already knows what she is seeing. He sighs and gazes over.
Five men have gathered around Mydeimos' hanging body. The Boyar is there, so is the Judge, the Burly Man, the Huntsman and the Oldest Man in the Village.
The early morning is cool and blue, moist from the brief shower over the night. Mist wafts about them, so thick that Phainon thinks he could pick it up and eat it. In this gentle, somber light, the silhouettes of the men look more like vultures come to hound a day old carcass.
"Don't look," Phainon tells Cyrene, stepping up in front of her to shield her vision. Still, she pushes him aside and scoffs.
"I am not a little girl, I… I want to see."
The Huntsman steps up first. He holds in his right hand a mighty hunting spear, a sleek black thing ending in a sharp, polished point. He lifts up Mydeimos' shirt and stabs him in the side.
A river of water and blood pour out of the wound, tainting his skin. So hot is the blood that it steams, pale wisps of smoke floating up into the air. The Huntsman runs his hand through it, then touches Mydeimos' chest.
"The blood is warm, but he is cold. His heart doesn't beat. He is dead."
"How can he be cold if the blood is warm?!" the Boyar shouts.
The Huntsman gives an uninterested shrug. "Can't answer that one, m'lord. It simply is so," he digs into his pocket and pulls out a small handful of tobacco. As he chews on it, he continues, "Perhaps he is both dead and undead. After all that humiliation, I wouldn't be surprised if he came back to haunt you. I reckon you should start barricading the door."
The Huntsman laughs as he talks, always having been quite the leisurely one. Phainon knows he is not making a joke, though; he seems quite serious in his assessment. He's laughing at the Boyar.
Laughing still, almost to the point of tears, he says, "Oronyx protect us all, we are doomed."
"A dead man coming to haunt us?" the Judge spits, "Peasant nonsense. He was a criminal, and a Kremnoan on top of it. Killing one of them is like killing a dog without a master. It's pest control."
The Huntsman gives a sardonic smile. "Course it is. You ever killed a stray dog, Judge? They're not keen on staying down. Me, though? I'm leaving before the storm reaches me," he throws his spear aside, "Fuck this village. You'll get what's comin' to you."
As he starts to walk away, the Huntsman turns back one more time and looks at the Boyar. "And, oh, m'lord?"
"What, Radu?"
"Have one of your boys count your lambs. Think one of them went astray."
And he starts laughing again, and he leaves them behind.
The rest of the men leave soon after, but Phainon and Cyrene stay. Cyrene looks at the swaying body of Mydeimos. The wound in his side keeps pouring blood.
"…I knew Hephaestion. I knew him well. We were… friends. We always talked when I came to pick up his laundry. He would not have wanted this. He was kind, intelligent, he—Nevermind. Nevermind. It's all in the dust now. Oronyx protect us all."
That comes as a surprise. His sister knew the Boyar's boy well? Phainon does not comment on it. He simply touches her shoulder; there is real grief she is feeling, but he does not know how to ease it. They start walking.
A while later, she speaks up again.
"Do you really think he did it?"
Phainon looks back. They are so far away now that he can barely see Mydeimos' corpse anymore.
He thinks. Mydeimos' eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, a shy pinching to his features. He had strong hands, but he was gentle with the animals. He was particularly fond of birds, and always had crumbs in his pocket for the crows that would gather in the Boyar's fields; much to Phainon's chagrin. No matter how much he tried to shoo them away, Mydeimos would stop him and say 'every bird of the sky is my brother.'
He was quite polite with the young master, too, but he kept a cautious distance. Hephaestion was friendly, down to earth. Though he was sickly, that never stopped him from running around barefoot while keeping company with stable boys and poor farmhands like Phainon and Mydeimos. Mydeimos, on the other hand, was courteous enough back, answered all of his inquiries, but always slinked away when Hephaestion pressed further.
"No," Phainon says, feeling his stomach twist tight. He does not know what exactly in him is deeming the man innocent.
Phainon looks back.
Mydeimos casts no shadow as he hangs.
In the midday, there is ruckus in the Boyar's house. Women screaming and crying. It's loud enough to be heard from the fields. Phainon has been working without break or a gulp of water for the past four or so hours. The sun shines hot on his straw hat now, up on its highest peak of the day. He's discarded his shirt some time ago. The sweat sticks to him like sap. This is a good a time for a break as any.
Stealing away like a sneaky cat, he creeps to the Boyar's house. Crouches down under a window and rises up enough to just peek.
Mydeimos' sisters are there. One of them, the pretty long-haired one, is on her knees, crying into her hands. The boyish one stands and screams.
"You've done it, m'lord! You've well and truly killed him, and you've made sure to humiliate him first. To… to beat him. Beat me," she cranes her neck to show a bruise on her cheek, "We have learned our lesson. We will leave. You have won, m'lord. We came begging on our knees. We just want to bury him, that is all, and you won't even grant us that?"
"Please," the girl on the ground sobs, "Please, our mother, our mother d—her heart gave out, so we… We buried her already. Please, just let us take his body down."
"No," the Boyar bellows, "No. He will hang for at least three more days."
"Three more days? The crows will eat him!" the Older Sister throws her hands out wildly, "You can't do this to us—this is cruel! This isn't—this isn't even about the murder anymore. You just want to humiliate him, even in death!"
The Younger Sister's voice is weak, timid, "Please, please, I don't want you to regret this!"
"Are you threatening me, witch?!"
"My lord, no!" she gasps and shakes her head, seemingly surprised by what she herself has said, "I meant… I meant… oh, what did I mean…?"
"Three days!" he spits out, "Three days and then you can bury him. Go, now, before I hang you two as well!"
The Older Sister picks the Younger Sister up from the ground, helping her stay up. "For what crime?" she scoffs, "You've any more sons that wound up dead? Why don't you make some more and kill them yourself, and then, and then—and then you can hang us all!"
The Burly Man keeps watch over there argument, arms crossed and empty, dead eyes. At that, he moves to throw both women out, but to Phainon it seems rather mechanical, like his soul isn't in it. He grabs the Older Sister by the hair and the Younger Sister by the arm, drags them to the steps of the manor and pushes them off the stairs onto the paved road. His movements are tired, drained of their usual strength. He looks half-awake and not entirely here. He, like Phainon, must not have gotten much sleep last night, if the dark circles under his eyes are anything to go by.
The Older Sister screams out her frustration and starts tearing clumps of her hair out.
"It's just three days, Cifera, and then—and then we'll be able to bury him. We can wait three more days," the Younger Sister soothes, grabbing the other's hands to stop her.
The Older Sister collapses into her arms, sobbing bitterly. The Younger Sister holds her tight and pets her hair with exceeding tenderness.
Phainon feels that this moment is far too intimate and vulnerable for him to witness, so he turns around and returns to his work.
The sun is setting on the horizon, painting the sky orange and pink, when Phainon is done.
The work is long, hard, arduous, and it never ends. Sowing, mowing, plowing, harvesting. He is more acquainted with the scythe than he is with his mother's face. The summer heat is unforgiving and water is sparse. There's a boy that works by their side, some seventeen year old, that they usually send to the well to draw water for all of them several times a day. They do it because they are thirsty and far too tired to make the journey, but they also do it to spare him some labour; he is too young to bear it, and the work he does is poor anyways.
Today, though, the boy staunchly refused to move from the Boyar's fields.
"Why?" one of the men asked him.
The boy answered, simply, "I am afraid of the Hanged Man."
They couldn't argue with that. From the Boyar's fields, one must pass by the gallows to get to the water well and they were all afraid, and so in their fright, they worked under the scorching sun for some seven or eight hours at the mercy of the Boyar's goodwill. They were brought water, eventually, but far too little and far too late. Phainon drank and felt parched still. There is a thirst in him that cannot be easily quenched, not after the events of the last few days. Phainon does not recognize the acrid taste on his tongue, nor the tightness in his chest.
The work has gotten so, so much harder without Mydeimos around. Mydeimos was sprightly, a young man in his prime, strong and disciplined. He worked and did not complain, even though he should have. He picked up after the other men, he was eager to help, and though he did not speak often, he was always friendly when he did. Why was Phainon not his friend? This thought hits him as he pats his brow down with his shirt. Doubtless they would have gotten along. Phainon swallows his shame and puts it aside.
He gets his coins from the Boyar's accountant at the end of the work day. He finds the Judge there. Him and the accountant seem to be talking. The Judge is oddly nervous when Phainon sees him. He asks him about it, asks if he's feeling well, and the Judge simply brushes him off and says "my son has come down with an illness, that's all." Oh well, the Judge's son has always been a very precious boy.
Phainon is standing at the edge of the forest when he realizes that his legs did not carry him home, as they always do. He blinks at the arch of trees giving way to a narrow beaten path. The sun hangs onto its last rays, but inside the woods there is darkness, damp and oppressive and oddly inviting. Phainon clutches his coin pouch closer to his chest.
The Huntsman, that's it. He wants to speak with the Huntsman about… about…
Phainon finds that lately, his thoughts are consumed by that. By Mydeimos. The dead man has crawled under his skin like a centipede, melting into his bloodstream and impaling himself over his heart. Mydeimos cast no shadow. Shame and guilt pangs him in pinpricks. Perhaps that missing shadow has lain claim over Phainon, and so his mind has been blurry and turbulent and filled to the brim with him. His warm hands, his boiling hot blood, the odd angle of his neck; how elegant his throat looked even while crushed. The disfigured remnants of handsomeness. The one time he heard him laugh, when he wrestled one of the Boyar's pigs into its pen. His calloused, rough hands as he dripped the last of his water past Phainon's dry lips. The mane of his hair, the handsome line of his nose, and the great set of his back.
Something just out of sight calls to him, calls sweetly. He does not want to acknowledge it.
The forest stretches on impossibly deep. The branches of the trees yield to him, bow to him, let their ripe, swollen fruit fall at his feet. He steps inside, and the sun is swallowed into darkness.
It's humid in the woods, and pleasantly cool. Everything is green and alive. A fox scurries by his feet as he walks, carrying in its mouth a large egg. Leaves crunch under his opanci. A small clearing opens to him. There stands a small cabin, built under the shade of a great, elderly tree.
The Huntsman's cabin. Phainon knocks.
It is a while before the Huntsman opens the door and when he does, it is only a crack. His dark eyes peek at Phainon.
"You… Hieronymus' son? What do you want?"
Phainon swallows thickly. His lips are dry. He only manages out a small, "Mydeimos…"
"Mydeim… What, the Hanged Man?"
The Huntsman slams the door in Phainon's face yet, dumbly, Phainon still stands in front of it like a dog waiting for scraps. He hears the soft sounds of clicking, and then the Huntsman swings the door open for him and invites him inside.
"Come. Sit."
A bearskin rug lays on the floor, its dark brown fur soft when Phainon steps on it. Its terrible maw hangs open, showing rows upon rows of shiny white fangs. The walls of the cabin are decorated with other hunt; stags, deer, wolves, all with shiny polished eyes, their mouths either snarling or obediently closed. They all look at him, Phainon knows. They fixate him with their beady gaze, they search into his soul, they scorch him clean.
"What about that Mydeimos?"
The Huntsman speaks and startles Phainon as he does. He gasps, comes back to himself, and sees that the Huntsman has sat on his old rocking chair. An old hound sleeps curled around his feet.
"His blood… you said his blood is hot," Phainon starts. His voice is thin when he speaks. Phainon does not recognize it. "Why… what could leave his body cold and his blood hot? It doesn't make any sense."
The Huntsman barks a short laugh. "Oh, you've slaughtered before, I take it? Pigs for the Boyar no doubt. Knowledgeable boy."
Phainon nods, shaky. He finds himself intimidated by the Huntsman's sheer presence. A handsome man he is, past his youth, forty or perhaps forty two years of age. His hair is inky black, long to the nape of his neck, and his skin is ruddy. His mustache is thick, curled, and stubble sprouts about his chin. His hands are nimble and well-worked. His eyes sharp, set on the kill.
"Tell you the truth, boy, I've no idea. Only stories. Tales made up by old men to explain that which lacks sense."
"I'll take stories."
"Then know this one has no happy ending."
He reaches over the side table on his right, to a bowl sitting perched on it. He takes a pinch of tobacco from it, brings it to his mouth, and starts chewing.
"'Tis the hate that keeps the blood hot, I s'pose. A hate experienced, a hate returned… Any sentiment that strong, love or grief or otherwise, cannot be sated by simply dying. A thirst for all your blood is yet slaked. What you have done is folly, and you shall meet a fool's end," he cocks an eyebrow, "I will have no more of this. I shall not be witness to whatever comes next."
Phainon shifts his weight from one foot to the other. A snake coils in his stomach, another about his throat. He chokes on the stale smell of carcasses in the cabin.
"Do you believe this truly?"
"I do."
"Do you think it's witchcraft? Magic?"
"Whatever this is, it is more than you or I. Simply an injustice, perhaps. The Boyar surely would not be the first to incur such venom, snake that he is."
"Injustice… You think he was innocent?"
"Do you think that fate was deserved?"
Phainon thinks back on Mydeimos' sisters. How they weeped at his feet. How they fought. How they had to bury their mother. He does not answer. He looks away.
The Huntsman smiles at his silence. "Then you know that it does not matter to the dead what the livin' think of them. Look at me, boy—"
As if devoid of choice, Phainon looks. He finds his hawklike eyes, dark like the eyes of the prey he hunted. "I have no more time for this or for your village. I suggest you leave, if you can. If you deserve it."
"You really are leaving," Phainon says like an idiot.
"Aye, I am. I am takin' my old girl and my rifle and getting as far away from Aedes Elysiae as I can," he pets the old hound between her ears, "I've already incurred the wrath of Georios, for all the children of theirs I've killed. I will not suffer the wrath of Mydeimos the Undying as well."
He gets up from the chair and opens the door for Phainon.
"Leave," the Huntsman orders, "And may Oronyx protect you, if they can."
Mydeimos hangs for three days and three nights.
His sisters only leave his side at night, when it is time to sleep. The rest of the day, they are there as if planted and rooted. Most of the time, they simply watch him, unblinking, sitting next to the gallows with their knees pulled to their chests like small children. Other times, they eat by his side, seemingly unbothered by the corpse of their brother. They speak to him too, softly and gently. They coo at him and climb the gallows to stroke his hair and wash his face with a wet cloth. When he went to the Boyar's fields one of those days, he saw the Younger Sister standing on the gallows and holding Mydeimos' hand, looking at him. When he returned, eight hours later, she was still holding his hand, unmoving, and still looking at him.
Phainon stands in front of him on the third night.
He had been disfigured once, swollen and bruised and broken—not anymore. He had smelled rancid once, like all the humors of the human body—not anymore.
Mydeimos casts no shadow—he also does not decompose. Quite the opposite, actually.
Time passes in reverse for the undead Mydeimos, bringing with it the slow rebirth of a corpse.
Mydeimos seems as beautiful and still as a marble statue. Pallid, still, but not dead-looking; not in a way that Phainon can understand. The body is both natural and unnatural, like the reflection of the man Phainon knew in life. He seems washed out, but he is not injured anymore. His flesh has knit itself together, healed itself, smoothed over every wound and blemish. He shines in the moonlight with moisture. He does not look peaceful, though; there is a knit in his eyebrows, a scowl in his mouth. He looks as though sleeping, fighting fits of nightmares.
He does smell, but not like a corpse in the throes of rot; rather, he smells faintly sweet, floral, like pomegranates perhaps. It is a pleasant smell, one that Phainon seeks out, one that has engraved itself into his nostrils. He smells the perfume of Mydeimos' body every waking moment, when he is breaking his fast and when he is labouring, and in his dreams he sees fields of pomegranate trees, and a naked man walking among them.
His hands are smooth and his fingers long and elegant. Phainon grabs one of them and finds them shockingly cold now, and still shockingly soft. Whatever this is, it has taken every callous and scar from him.
It has not managed to mend the wound in his side, however. That still blooms under his shirt, and drips blood anew in a steady, red flow. It pools underneath Mydeimos' floating feet, and Phainon hears the sound of it every night, the drip-drip-drip. He reaches up and runs two fingers through the puddle, thick and syrupy like honey, and feels that it is still boiling hot—it burns to touch like a pot of water forgotten on the stove, and yet Phainon feels compelled nonetheless. He brings his fingers to his nose and inhales; a scent so sweet it makes him gag. He goes to taste it, then thinks better.
Phainon climbs the steps of the gallows, stands in front of him. His eyelashes are so long, he notices, and his hair glows like red gold. It seems longer than it used to be, well past his shoulders. Phainon grabs a strand, rests it on his palm. Caresses it with his thumb. His gaze fixes Mydeimos' face. His lips are red, slightly parted, beautiful.
He goes to touch his face, just out of curiosity, just to see—
"This is Nikador's doing," a womanly voice says from behind him. Phainon startles and looks after the source of the voice.
The Older Sister stands at the foot of the gallows, looking up at him with a frown.
"What?" Phainon sputters.
"Nikador is going to welcome him into their halls, but he must have a new warrior's body to join their ranks. So Nikador is doing this to him," she gestures vaguely at Mydeimos, "Healing his wounds and changing his features."
"O-oh… That happens to Kremnoans?"
The Older Sister shrugs. "If the old wives' tales are to be believed, yes. I've never seen it happen myself, on account of the fact that we usually get to bury our dead immediately after they die."
She says it like an accusation—is right to say it as such—so Phainon looks away shamefully. "You have my apologies and my condolences, miss."
"Your condolences, how grand! Will they bring my brother back? My mother?"
Phainon flushes a deeper red. He does not step down from the gallows.
"And your apology is just as welcome; so sorry you must have felt for Mydei that you did not stand up for him. None of you did," she spits at the foot of the gallows. "No matter, what's done is done. What will you do about the real killer?"
"The real killer…?"
Phainon has not considered it. If Mydeimos is innocent, as they both seem to believe, then there must a murderer amok in Aedes Elysiae. He sucks in a sharp breath with the realization.
"I'll find him," he says without realizing, "I'll find him and I'll—I'll—"
"Kill him yourself, is that it? Bring him to justice?"
She barks out a mean laugh. Climbs the steps of the gallows with heavy footsteps and grabs Phainon's shoulder.
"Leave him alone. Leave us alone. I bury my brother tomorrow."
On the fourth day, in the early morning as he passes through the center of the village to get to the Boyar's manor, Phainon sees the procession. Mydeimos' sisters, the Burly Man, the Priestess, the Oldest Man in the Village, the Boyar, and the Judge.
The Priestess was called to check on his body; perhaps the Boyar has finally cast a glance to the man he killed, and noticed that he has rotted in reverse, from spoiled to new.
The Priestess is an old woman, respected, and one who has dedicated herself to Oronyx. She wears black robes that flutter in the morning wind, and on the inside they are lined with dark blue silk embroidered with little stars. When she sees Mydeimos, hanging fresh as spring flowers and bleeding warm blood, she falls to her knees and starts sobbing. "We are lost," she wails, "We are doomed." But the Boyar just rolls his eyes and has the Judge lead her away; and as he does, Phainon catches a passing glimpse of the Older Sister. The look in her eyes is proud, clever—the curl of her lips, delightfully cruel. "You are," she seems to think, and it brings her glee; Phainon supposes she has every right to feel gleeful.
Nobody but the Huntsman has left the village. They are sure Oronyx will protect them if there is anything to be protected from; most of them think the sisters have cast some sort of spell on Mydeimos' body to scare them. They laugh at the Kremnoan nonsense, at Nikador's revenge, and seem quite comfortable being blissfully—and willingly and arrogantly—ignorant of what is happening in front of them. They deny it and point at his miraculous corpse while jeering; there are flashes of it though, of primal fear, behind their eyes, but only sometimes. Something like a caged animal behind their brains fighting its way out.
Phainon ought to be scared, but he is not. At the very least, he is curious; at most, he is obsessed. Each day spent in the Boyar's fields is spent facing Mydeimos, the gallows; he can not truly see them, but he knows they are in that direction, eastward from where the sun rises, so he toils while facing him. Every night, he checks his window, hoping to see the headless lamb again; it does not come for him anymore. He had convinced himself it was a dream, at first, or perhaps his eyes playing tricks on him; now, after seeing Mydeimos be healed, he is sure it must have been real. He wonders if the lamb's gaze held tenderness in it. He doubts it.
The Burly Man takes Mydeimos down while the Judge leads the sobbing Priestess back to the Temple. The sisters receive their brother's body and, strangely, they start to take his clothes off.
"We've no need of the clothes he died in," the Older Sister says with a bite in her voice.
The Younger Sister completes for her, sounding a lot more gentle when she says, "We bury our dead naked. Nikador won't recognize him with clothes on."
They say these to the Burly Man, but he does not seem to care. In so few days, he seems a man completely changed. Withered, small. He has lost weight, his face looks gaunt, and does not sleep. His short trimmed beard has grown wild and long and wry, and every hair on it has turned white. He looks some twenty years older, and his skin has taken an ashen pallor; it seems almost that Mydeimos had rebuilt his body with strength sapped from the Burly Man.
The sisters load the bare Mydeimos into a cart with the Burly Man's help, then step in to sit besides him. The carter is a man dressed in black; his horse is tall, muscled, with shining black fur and a black mane so long the tips of it reach the ground. Hot steam blows out of its nostrils every time it neighs. A beautiful, but temperamental creature—its eye catches the glint of the sun, and it gleams red.
The Older Sister gives the carter two small coins, and he whips his horse and rides away.
Phainon watches them go. He thinks the carter a ferryman, the horse an infernal steed, and he is leading the small family to the sea of flowers. His eyes follow their lonely trail until they disappear into the horizon and he cannot see them anymore.
Phainon finds himself at his mother's little soirée that night.
It's something she does every few weeks. Audata cooks a great big dinner and hosts all of her friends and their husbands; the Midwife is there with the Butcher, the Seamstress with the Fisherman, the Housewife with the Stonemason, the Healer with the Blacksmith.
It is a lively thing, and not at all quiet. There is laughter, the clinking of plates, the greedy snarfing of the Stonemason devouring the food. Phainon hasn't seen his sister and mother sit down for at least two hours, as they run in and out of the house with plates of warm food. There is pork neck, minced meat rolled in pickled cabbage, polenta with cheese and sour cream, bean soup with smoked ham, and sponge cake.
Phainon has, shamefully, not helped them much besides carrying the long table out of their shed and finding a suitable place for it outside. He tells himself he toils the fields and brings home money, but her sister toils for payment too, so… He offers to help her carry some plates outside, but Cyrene slaps his hand away.
"Not with those clumsy paws of yours! Move!"
When he slinks into the kitchen and offers his mother to help with the cooking, she just laughs in his face and tells him to get the hell out.
He settles for entertaining the guests; it is one of his strengths, after all. He can make them laugh and make them feel like the most important people in the world. The company isn't overly interesting, just a load of people his mother's age, but he pretends they are.
His mother and sister finally sit down at the table, heavy like sacks of potatoes. Audata wipes the sweat from her brow and fans herself with her beautiful silk fan, one of father's old gifts to her.
The conversation goes around in circles for a few hours, town gossip and health issues and whatnot, until it, inevitably, lands on Hephaestion's murder and Mydeimos' fate.
Cyrene stands up sharply at the first mention of Hephaestion's name. Her hands ball into fists as they grasp her skirts—she leaves in a flurry of cotton. Phainon watches her go, then turns to his mother.
"Forgive her, she's been acting strangely since the boy died…" Audata says with a sigh.
"Well, they were friends…" Phainon pipes in.
His mother looks at him with a cocked eyebrow. "They… were? How? A girl like Cyrene, friends with a wealthy man's son? How do you know?"
"She—She said she knew him. She seemed to have known him well, so I assumed they must have been friends."
Audata lets out a small, unimpressed 'oh'. "Either way, what a dour tragedy. A good, strapping lad, killed by one of his father's workers no less…"
"I helped deliver him, you know… Held him when he was born." the Midwife says.
"I saw him at the market sometimes, and he was always so polite!" the Housewife pipes in.
"I built an garden fireplace for his father once, and the lad always waited on me, seeing if I am in need of anything," the Stonemason continues.
The Fisherman pushes his empty plate aside. "Do you really think it was that Mydeimos that killed him?"
The Tailor looks at him. "Well, of course it was. The Judge said so."
"Mmm…" the Fisherman strokes his beard, "Bogdan is not so sure anymore," he says with a laugh.
Phainon recognizes that name; Bogdan is the Burly Man.
"How come?" he asks, his curiosity suddenly peaked.
"Well, you see, I was comin' home from the inn the other night—" his wife, the Seamstress, sighs loudly and pointedly at that, making her displeasure known, "Oh shush, woman— So I was walkin' and I saw him wanderin' the streets, looking mighty drunk. Swayin' and everything. When he spotted me, he came up to me and grabbed my shirt like so," the Fisherman demonstrates on Phainon, who happens to be sitting next to him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and shaking him.
The Fisherman looks at him with crazed, fearful eyes. His breath hitches and gulps when he whimpers out, "Please, help me, save me, I'm going to die! Save me, save me, he's coming for my blood!"
The entire table erupts with riproarious laughter. The men slap their bellies and their thighs and the women snort with the force of their amusement. Phainon, on the other hand, feels a bid of cold sweat drip down from the nape of his neck to the small of his back. His breath tightens, then climaxes with a heavy sigh; it comes out more longing than he had meant it to be, as if she were a wife catching sight of her husband's sails returning home. He wrenches himself free of the Fisherman, then turns his plate with a newly dead appetite. His mouth is dry, parched.
"Has this ever happened before?"
The table falls silent. "In Aedes Elysiae," he continues, "Has this happened before? A murder."
Her mother sets her fork down with a harmonious clink against the porcelain plate. She intertwines her fingers.
"…Once," Audata says with a quiet voice, the tip of her words curving with sorrow. "Once, when I was a girl, a… My friend. Ioana. She was older than me, maybe… ten years old. A man killed her, a man—the old cobbler. The old cobbler killed her," her mouth presses into a thin, painful line. "They found her dead body a week later. Burned."
Phainon exhales softly around his mother's woe. "What did they do to the cobbler?"
She shrugs weakly. "They sent him to the next city over to be judged. He never came back. It is likely he was hanged."
His jaw clenches; Phainon feels his teeth grinding against each other. Something like this has happened before in Aedes Elysiae.
"Why was Mydeimos not sent to be judged in the city?"
"I…" his mother looks away, "I don't know."
Phainon leans back in the chair. The mood of the soirée shifts; shame charges the air. He sighs, squeezes his eyes tight. He goes to leave and join Cyrene in her pilgrimage when his mother pipes up again.
A sad smile is plastered on her beautiful, aged face. Tears shine in her blue eyes. "Phainon, sweet boy, dear boy, why don't you—why don't you go for a walk, oh," her eyes search the yard, "Water. Go draw some water from the well, we're out of water. Get some fresh air."
They are outside already, with fresh air all around them. The stars twinkle in twin pairs on the sky like wounded sisters. He looks at them, tries to count them, and fails. Nonetheless, he grabs the bucket and heeds his mother.
He exists the yard. Does not close the gate behind him. The well is far away from their house, but Phainon welcomes the break like a thirsty man welcomes mead.
The summer air is humid, but the occasional breeze makes it bearable. The wind howls and whistles as it blows through the poplar trees, their heavy branches bowing like servants as they line Phainon's way. Their pointy heads seem much like an accusatory finger, pointed at him, scrutiny in every leaf. Phainon wipes the sweat from his brow. Locks the guilt tight in his belly. He trudges on to the well.
Halfway through, he hears an incessant buzz in the back of his head. Something small lands on his arm, a fly, he thinks—Phainon goes to slap it dead, but catches himself and sees that it is a bee. Strange. He had always thought that bees were like men and thus toiled in the day and slept at night. He cannot bring himself to hurt a bee, because Cyrene is overly fond of them; dreams to keep them, one day. He waves his arm around and lets it fly free. It does not bother him anymore.
There is a small hill that dips into fertile flat lands, and the well is some two hundred meters past that. Phainon climbs the hill with some difficulty, though it is not steep, and feels his thighs burning with the effort. He rests, then, on the hill. The moon hangs round and fat behind him, glowing with a ring of iridescence like mother-of-pearl. Phainon catches his breath, and looks downhill towards the well.
A figure in the distance moves and shivers like a tendril next to the well, man-shaped and maggot-white. From here, Phainon cannot tell who, or what, it is. But he can tell it is alive and limbed, for it goes to the water well on long legs and takes drink from the bucket with cupped hands. It washes its face in drowsy, clumsy bouts, though Phainon finds it hard to discern whether it is intentional or not.
He figures it must be some drunk villager, so he disregards his quickening pulse to start a coltish tread down the hill.
He approaches with meddling certainty, too cowardly to be brave but too brave to be a coward, an awkward middle spot. The grass crunches underfoot with each step he takes, and each step brings him closer to the figure. It becomes more and more clear in his eyes, like a veil is being lifted from Phainon's face, and thus he sees; strong calves leading to shapely thighs, sharp hipbones caressing a tender, tapered waist, the swell of collarbones and a swan-like neck and, finally, a face he knows well.
Comely, with smooth cheeks and a bare chin, jawline strong, eyes golden like a barn cat framed by long, blond lashes, the curve of a hooked nose, and an exceedingly proud brow.
Phainon walks until he is face to face with Mydeimos.
He sucks in a sharp, painful breath.
His hair, which now touches his shoulder blades, is wet, hanging low and flat. It sticks to his face and his back and, despite having been washed, leaves and twigs still cling to it. The entirety of Mydeimos is slick with water like a man after a bath, glistening pallid and lovely where the moonlight touches his skin. Shadows dance on his face in hues of pale purple and sickly blue. His mouth, as beautiful as when Phainon last saw it, falls agape over a silent gasp when he sees him.
He is bare, nearly monochrome with the pallor of his hair and his skin, and yet there on his side a wound bleeds, like a blooming red star. Dark rivulets come down his skin like veins through marble, and in the dark blue night, the wound seems to nearly weep black.
Mydeimos looks at him, does not move. He stops with his hands in the bucket, and blinks his lashes. Phainon must be dreaming or must be half a fool, because that gesture tightens his chest like a girl holding his hand does; he finds it too lovely, too delicate, the kiss of lashes on that cold cheek. He is half frightened and half charmed, as if bewitched by a spell. He wants to run, but can't. And he wants to speak, but words are lost to him.
They stand there then, one looking at the other. Mydeimos makes no show to move, his hands still in the water bucket. Phainon opens and closes his mouth a few time, gaping, and he makes these small, pathetic sounds as he tries to form words.
He used to stutter when he was little—why must it come back now?
"M… Mm…" he tries, feeling his lips frozen, "Myd—Myde-deim-mos…"
Mydeimos' face perks up and though he does not smile, there is a quirk in his brows that shows he can hear. He is unbreathing, Phainon notices, but when he opens his mouth to talk, he still sucks in air.
"…Mydeimos…"
His voice is a hush and a whisper, weak like he has been untrained in speaking. It is a gentle sound, carried and nearly broken apart by the wind; nonetheless, it reaches Phainon's ears.
Phainon finds himself again with a loud gasp; a heavy haze clears from his head. He blinks and his knees buckle, but he does not step away. Instead, his voice rings out again.
"Mydeimos, you're not supposed to be here."
"…Mydeimos, you're not supposed to be here…"
Phainon blinks and cocks his head. Can he not truly speak, just repeat like an exotic parrot? He tries again.
"What are you doing here?"
"…What are you doing here?"
He says the same words Phainon has said, but the infliction is different; Phainon emphasized the 'here'. Mydeimos emphasizes the 'you'.
"I am… I am here to draw some water from the well," and he nods towards it, "That's all."
"…Water from the well…" Mydeimos turns his head towards the well. His movements aren't unsure, but they seem dizzy. He takes his hands out of the bucket and steps away, making space for Phainon. "…That's all…"
Phainon takes a cautious, shy step forward. He tests the water. Mydeimos does not react to his approach, but neither does he take his eyes off of Phainon. His gaze seems curious, not malicious but intense. The dead man's eyes are feline when they fix on him.
Phainon comes up next to him; the temperature immediately drops, like walking into the cold room the innkeeper keeps his meats in. His breaths comes out in puff of frigid steam; Mydeimos' sheer presence wraps the heat around him and destroys it, leaving behind only insatiable frost. Phainon's teeth immediately start to chatter, and as he empties the well's bucket onto the grass below, he wonders how the water Mydeimos touched hasn't frozen over.
Mydeimos has allowed him space, but not much. Phainon has to squeeze between him and the well; he feels the dead man's clammy skin cling to the side of his shirt, his bare shapely shoulder brushing against Phainon's. The red weeping wound stains him with thick, sweet-smelling blood. Phainon lets out a shaky breath, tries to control his equally shaky hands. Mydeimos' chin tips down and his pale forehead presses against Phainon's sweaty temple. That cold, unmoving gaze burns into Phainon's throat, rips through his esophagus and tangles itself in his stomach. Phainon is no better than a willow tree quivering at the edge of a wine-dark lake.
He fills the bucket, then his bucket, and only then does he turn to face the dead man. His body whips around, and so close they are that their noses graze each other. He breathes warm, living air into Mydeimos' slightly parted lips. His eyes glower with all the grace of a beautiful predator, and they catch the moonlight just so; pits of molten gold, fierce and stubborn and dead.
Phainon catches his breath, though it is hard.
"I am not afraid of you," he says, though his voice lacks confidence.
Mydeimos' face twists and changes; his brows rise up, his eyes squint nearly closed, and his lips bare sharp fangs. He smiles.
"…I am not afraid of you…"
A bead of water drips from his hair to his forehead, down the elegant line of his cheekbones, lower past the column of his throat, and it stops just in the dip of his clavicle. Phainon follows it with his gaze like a man that has never drank water before.
He takes a step backwards, then another one. The water sloshes in his bucket.
"I'm… I'm going to leave now."
"…Leave now…"
He walks with his face facing Mydeimos; Mydeimos watches him go too, still like a marble statue. Phainon walks backwards until he cannot anymore, and when he bares his back to Mydeimos, he hears a sound like metal scraping metal, or like the that of a dying animal; and he runs.
He bolts as fast as his legs will carry him, and then pushes past that limit too, until he stumbles into his yard and nearly crashes into the long table. The pomegranate smell of Mydeimos' blood sticks to him, the red remnants of his blood cling to his clothes.
"Phainon!" Audata exclaims, standing up. "What happened? What took you so long? Is that blood—"
"I—" Phainon feels drunk, tongue sitting heavy in his mouth, "T-the water."
He puts the bucket in her hands. "Phainon, this is nearly empty—"
"I'm tired," he says quickly, "I'm going to bed."
Soft sobbing fills the halls of their home. The source is his sister's bedroom. The door is ajar, and he peeks inside.
Cyrene is crying with her face muffled into the pillow. Her body shakes with every sob, and she says over and over again, "Hephaestion, Hephaestion, my boy, my poor boy…"
He cracks under the misery of it all. The death, the stench, the injustice. He steps inside. Sits down next to her at the edge of the bed. She curls unto him, and he cradles her head in his lap. She does not mention the blood on his shirt.
Cyrene cries until she exhausts herself, when the sun is starting to slowly peek from beyond the treeline. Phainon guards the window the entire night, looking—hoping—for a glimmer of soft white wool, stained red.