The Temple of Heart and Bone (11 page)

“I cannot speak,” she read aloud,
“but you are safe. You were injured, but you should be okay.” She looked at the
figure working the fire and noticed the color of the robes.

“My God,” she said, “you’re a
priest! You wouldn’t
believe
the dreams I was having.” She paused for a
moment. “You are a priest aren’t you?”

Drothspar cocked his head and
thought about how to answer. He considered her health and welfare, realizing
she would probably be more relaxed if he agreed that he was. He also considered
his past and his present condition, and decided he couldn’t lie. He shook his
head negatively.

He could sense her nervousness
immediately. Keeping his face turned toward the growing fire, he leaned
slightly toward her and wrote with his sleeve covering his hand and his
writing.

“It’s okay,” she read. He put a
few larger sticks into the fire, careful not to smother it. The woman touched
her hand to her cloak, searching.

“Where’s my dagger?” she asked
nervously.

Drothspar pointed to the kitchen,
a part of the cottage that was equally distant from the both of them.

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. She
reached for her pack, frantically for a moment, until she found she had been
laying on it. She rifled around in her bag, trying to see if anything was
missing. Everything must have been in order because she stopped searching and
pulled out a flask. Taking a drink, she extended her hand to the figure by the
fire.

“I have some spirits here, would
you care for a drink,” she offered.

Drothspar jerked slightly at the
word “spirits,” then relaxed when he understood. He shook his head negatively,
continuing to stare into the fire.

“What happened to me?” she asked
him.

“You fell,” she read what he
wrote.

“I fell,” she repeated. “I was
pulled, I was pulled off balance. You did that, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she read.

“Why?” she asked.

Drothspar paused for a moment to
think about it. Adding a bit more wood to the now stable fire, he turned and
answered on the stone floor.

“You surprised me,” she read.

“I didn’t expect anyone to be here,”
she replied to his writing. “The old man who told me about this place said it
had been abandoned for years.” Drothspar’s head rose at her words, but remained
facing the fire.

“How many?” he wrote.

“How many what?” she asked. “Oh,”
she said understanding, “years. Let me see, six or seven, I think he said.” She
watched as the hood by the fire slumped low toward its chest. “Hey,” she asked,
“are you okay?”

“Not really,” she read the
written reply. “What is your name?” he wrote.

“Chance,” she answered. “It’s not
my ‘given’ name, but I don’t really care for my given name.”

“Chants,” he wrote, followed by a
big question mark.

“No, no,” she said, “‘Chance,’ as
in ‘taking a chance.’” She watched as his head nodded slowly. “What’s your
name?” she asked.

“Droth…,” she read, following his
letters, “…spar. Drothspar,” she said finally. “Drothspar? That was the name of
the man who lived in this cottage.”

Slowly he nodded his head.

“You’re
that
Drothspar?”
she asked intently.

He nodded again.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Petreus
is going to be amazed! Do you know,” she began, “he thinks you’re dead!”

“He’s right,” she read the
written reply, her heart thumping suddenly in her chest. Her breaths came
faster and her spine grew cold. She watched as the sleeve-shrouded arm wrote
once more. “I am dead,” it wrote, “at least, I think I am.”

“You
think
you are?” she
questioned him, her voice going up several notes.

“Please,” the writing asked,
“please try to be calm. I will not hurt you. I
promise
.” He held his
hand over the floor, indicating that he wished to write more. After a moment,
she understood his pausing inquiry.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try.”

Slowly, as if afraid to startle
her, he pulled back the sleeve of his left arm with his right hand. She saw,
clearly, the bones holding the charcoal stick. She gasped quickly and let out a
brief, startled scream. He flexed the fingers of his hand, begging her
patience.

“Please,” he wrote, “I do not
understand how this can be either. I
promise
that I do not intend to
hurt you.”

She stared at the writing on the
floor and the hand that held the charcoal stick. She glanced quickly at the
dagger across the room, and thought seriously about dashing for it. Drothspar
didn’t move, knowing there was nothing more he could say or do. He thought he
could feel the fear burning inside of her. Although he wasn’t sure how, he
could somehow
feel
her attention focus on her dagger. Tension filled the
little room. Then, suddenly, she relaxed slightly.

“I don’t suppose it would do much
good,” she said, “my dagger, I mean.”

“Not really,” he wrote. “Too
late,” he added afterwards. He felt her tense up again after he wrote that. He
cursed himself for his grisly little joke. After a moment, however, she let a
nervous laugh escape.

“I’m sorry,” she quickly
apologized, “I didn’t mean to mock you or anything.”

“It’s okay,” he wrote, “I was
trying to make a joke.” He turned slowly to face her and looked about the
floor. Selecting another part of the ground to write on, he wrote her another
message. “I’m running out of space over there.”

Drothspar could feel the eyes of
the young woman soaking up the secrets of his form. Death was a common
companion, brought on by disease, starvation, war, even old age. The inner
visage of the body’s structure, however, remained hidden, in most cases, for
years after the ending of the life. To see a complete skeleton, he thought,
would be uncommon enough. To see a completely animate skeleton was, even to
him, somewhere between a miracle and a tragedy. The young woman appeared to be
deep in thought before she caught herself staring and looked away.

“I’m sorry—again,” she said. “I
didn’t mean to stare… Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I did mean to
stare. I just hope I didn’t make you too uncomfortable.” She grimaced, and
looked about the room as if trying to find some way to explain.

“I understand,” he wrote in
reply. He scratched it out quickly. “At least I try to,” he charcoaled in its
place.” She looked at him and nodded her head slightly.

“Do you know how it happened?”
she asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Do you know how you died?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago did you,” she
paused, searching for a term, “how long ago did you wake up?” She raised her
eyebrows and spread her hands, “Is that what you did?”

“Time,” he wrote and considered
her question. He still did not seem to have a feeling of the passage of time.
He thought back over the occurrences since he “woke up.” He tried to remember
the passage of day and night. “Two, maybe three days,” he estimated. “Woke up,”
he added, “maybe, not sure.”

“Do you remember anything at
all?” she pressed.

“A voice,” he wrote. He couldn’t
remember the voice clearly, or even if it had really existed. It seemed like
the tattered remains of an almost forgotten dream. He focused, not on the
voice, but on the feeling of the experience. He couldn’t remember the words or
the sounds, but he could remember feeling called. “Calling,” he added after
voice.

“You heard a voice calling you?”

“Maybe,” he etched. The floor again
became cluttered with writing. He shifted slightly and chose another spot of
floor to write on. “I remember a calling,” he wrote, “then gone.”

“Something called out to you,”
she encouraged him, “and then it stopped?”

He thought about the moment again,
focusing on the feelings before he rose to some form of consciousness. The
voice had stopped, but he felt like it hadn’t ended, it had just gone. He
considered how best to express the thought in charcoal and floor. “Not
finished,” he wrote finally, “just gone.”

“I think I understand what you
mean. It’s like when someone is telling you a story, and then they leave before
they finish it. Even if you don’t know the end, you still know that something
is missing.”

Drothspar nodded. “Yes.”

“This is an awkward conversation,
isn’t it?” she asked in a wry and frightened voice.

“In many ways,” he wrote,
twisting to find a space on the floor. A moment later he added, “Joke.”

She smiled at him. He tried to
smile back at her, but there was no change in her expression. Mentally he
slapped himself again. He had no expression. It was so strange. He could feel
his phantom muscles. He could feel the smile on his face. He could read in her
eyes, more clearly than any mirror, that the smile he made was not really
there. Hollow eyes and pale bone were his only face to the world.

“You can hear me,” she said
aloud, as much to herself as to him, “but you can’t speak.” She looked at him
more closely, searching his face and head. “I don’t mean to pry, but, um, do
you have ears?”

Drothspar had been sitting
leaning slightly forward. He sat up quickly, his back becoming erect. Her
question surprised him.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,”
she said quickly in a mollifying tone. “I was just curious, please forgive me,”
her voice trailed off on a pleading note.

Drothspar looked at her and
noticed the worried look on her face. He realized how much of their
communication was based on expression and posture. He had straightened in
surprise at her insight, and she had interpreted it as something like
indignation. He waved his hand at her in what he thought was a calming
fashion—hoping she wouldn’t faint.

“Not offended,” he wrote, “just
surprised. I have no ears. I do hear.” Slowly, to avoid startling her, he
pushed back the hood of his cloak. Chance hissed slightly, sucking in her
breath through her teeth as if she were looking at a serious wound. “I could
hear your breath,” he wrote.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I
guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought.” She searched for words to express
herself to the writing skeleton before her. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“You did not,” he wrote. He could
see, however, that her mind was working on something else as she read his
words.

“Still,” she said, again more to
herself that to him, “you certainly can hear.”

He nodded his agreement.

“Can you see? Well, I guess
that’s a foolish question, or is it? You know I’m here, you caught my foot…”
Drothspar was grateful she couldn’t see the phantom blush he felt in his
nonexistent cheeks. “Can you see?” she repeated her question.

“Yes,” he wrote. “Hazy at first,
getting better.”

“So, you can see without,” she
paused taking a breath of air, “eyes. You can hear without ears. Can you smell
things?”

He nodded again.

“Can you feel things?” she asked,
curiosity beginning to overtake the fear.

He nodded his assent.

 “Can you tell the
difference between soft and rough?”

“I can feel,” he wrote, “but
different.” He searched for a way to express the difference to her. “Like hands
wrapped in wool.”

She frowned slightly, trying to
imagine feeling something with her hands wrapped in wool. She cocked her head
slightly as another thought occurred to her. “What about the difference between
hot and cold, can you feel that?”

He remembered feeling slightly
cool in the night at the farm. He hadn’t thought too much about heat, even
though he’d been sitting right next to the fire. He turned toward the flames
and stuck his hand into them. He could tell that it was warm, but there was no
sense of pain for him. His sleeve, being ragged, dry, and old, began to smolder
quickly. He pulled his hand from the flames, and patted his sleeve against the
floor.

Looking up at Chance, he noticed
she had a startled expression on her face. He felt a little sheepish about
thrusting his hand into the fire. He was considering how he might explain
himself to her when she spoke.

“It’s okay,” she said, “I’d
probably have done the same thing. Actually, I’m kind of known for doing
impulsive things.”

“How did you know?” he wrote.
“What I was thinking,” he added quickly.

“You were so intent on your hand
and your smoking sleeve, and then you just looked up at me and stopped,” she
shrugged at him. “I guess I do sort of the same thing when I realize someone’s
been watching one of my, um, adventures.” She smiled at him tentatively. “Did
you feel it?” she asked.

“Yes, but no pain. Only heat.”

“Well,” she said, “that covers
sight, sound, smell, and touch. What about taste?”

Drothspar looked at her steadily.
If nothing else, she certainly was thorough. He hadn’t really thought about it,
but without a tongue, he was pretty sure it was pointless. All the other senses
were related to things he no longer possessed, why should taste be any
different. “How?” he wrote.