Chapter Six
Theo
A few years later, my whole life had changed completely. Matilda grew tired and began to do less. I started to go to the mountain ranges with the rest of the village’s youth, continuing to work for the king. The meat had suddenly become less cooked, but there was more of it, because Matilda ate so much less than before. The only thing that she started doing more of was reading. She never told me where she got her books from, and I knew it was because she feared I would try to get books.
I learned how to read, a little from her and a little from Bernard. The fact that Bernard was the only other person in the village who knew how to read made me wonder and eventually helped me put the pieces together.
Bernard knew my mother very well, and for some time, I had thought he was my long-lost father. But when I asked Matilda, she told me that he wasn’t and that it was nearly impossible for a man with dark skin to be the father of someone who had my light skin.
It seemed to make sense, but it meant that Bernard gave my mother the books. One day, both talked to me about the same thing they had read in a book. It was about power.
Bernard explained that even though the world had been destroyed, it was like pressing the reset button and that the hunger for power never died, even when it had nearly led to the world’s death. My mother said it in a slightly different way. She said that people don’t change and that it was innate in us to want to be powerful, to want to be like gods.
It all made me think of King Harold and how the villagers thought of him as some divine god. We couldn’t speak of him unless it was to praise him. The Hawks made sure no one had his name nor mentioned it.
I always avoided the Hawks. Bernard told me that it wasn’t a bad kind of fear but a healthy one.
“If the fear protects you, it’s rational. If it harms you, it’s irrational and you should use your anger to fight it,” he would say.
His words always remained in the back of my mind. They made more sense through the years and even more sense when I began to change.
Bernard helped me through my changes. One day I was sitting by the willow tree, thinking of Elise. My memory of her was vague. I was older, and even though her image was carved into the core of my memories, there was a blur where her eyes were.
I began shouting her name, and it echoed through the range of the mountains. I knew that if I had continued, the Hawks would find me and would have their fun with me. Anger rose, and I took out the rage on the willow tree. I punched the tree until my knuckles started bleeding.
That was the thing with anger. It had another effect on me—I turned. The first thing that happened to my body as I punched the tree over and over was the protruding of my spine. It hurt at first, but then it was almost like a necessary itch.
I had never fully turned, but I did get much taller, and the skin on my body grew red and scaly. Bernard told me that the anger inside of me was not enough for me to ever fully turn.
That day, he came running to the willow tree upon hearing my screams. He had powerful arms, so he could pin me down even when I was not able to control my own body.
“Theo, you’re a dragon shifter. If you’re going to keep letting your anger seep out of you, at least go down to the valleys where no one can see you,” he whispered.
“OK,” I said as my body began returning to its human form. “Why am I like this?”
“It won’t help you to know why you are like this, but I can tell you how much responsibility you hold for being you,” Bernard told me.
“I never asked for this,” I shouted and turned away, hiding my face in the bark of the willow.
“None of us ask for our fate, Theo, but it’s the fool who turns away from his.”
Sometimes, it would take me days of contemplating Bernard’s words to comprehend them. He constantly threw phrases of wisdom to me that went hand-in-hand with what Matilda used to tell me. I tried to make him have dinner with Matilda and me, but he always had somewhere else to be.
Bernard was the king’s blacksmith. He was the one who managed the making of King Harold’s army’s weapons. I learned that he was working with other people in the castle to create something they called the Tank. Because of that, many of the village’s youth and I had to go every morning to the mountains and dig for a certain kind of rock.
“Why doesn’t Bernard want to come for dinner?” I asked my mother as we started to eat.
“Because Bernard and I aren’t on the best terms, Theo,” she told me dismissively, seeming like she didn’t want that specific conversation to linger.
“I thought he gave you your books,” I said and instantly wished I could take my words back.
“Did he tell you that?” Matilda shouted and slammed her hands against the table.
“No, I figured it out. You both talk about the same things, so I thought maybe you read the same books.”
“Keep that to yourself, Theo. If anyone knew that Bernard steals the books from the king’s castle, death will be his one and only hope,” she said in a calmer tone.
I knew that my mother cared for Bernard, and it wasn’t so hard to figure out why they were on bad terms when I compared their speeches.
When Matilda spoke of war, she spoke of it condescendingly, hating its purpose and the essence of it. However, Bernard thought that war was a necessary evil. He still was ashamed of his indulgence in making weapons for war, but he kept his pride in control when he talked about it to my mother.
Still, I wished that my mother and Bernard had talked about it before the dreadful day came. Things could had been different, and something could have probably saved us from the suffering that came our way. I never saw Matilda cry more than that day.
It was like any other morning, except that the skies were more gray than usual. A hint of redness strayed around the rays of the sun, giving it the feel of gloominess.
I found Matilda sitting in a corner with a book in her hand. She was immersed in her reading, and I didn’t want to disturb her. I kissed her on her forehead and left the house to go meet with the villagers and head for the mountains.
The moment I left the house, the stench of the decaying animal skin flew into my nostrils. My whole body shivered as it did every morning when that smell engulfed my atmosphere.
There was something eerie besides the deadness of the skies. The streets, too, were dead.
Bernard had a wooden stand where he did handy work for the villagers in the morning before heading to the king’s castle. I went there to find him but he wasn’t there. A broken cart sat on his stand, as if he was in the middle of fixing it.
I heard whips cutting through the air and licking someone’s skin. I looked at the ahead and saw that a large number of the villagers were gathered around something. The king’s Hawks were there, taller than everyone else, and I could see the thorns leaping out of their masks and lurking over the crowd.
I ran, hearing the whip, thinking Bernard was being whipped and feeling the beating on my skin. I pushed through the crowd and squeezed myself in between them until I could see what was happening.
“You think it’s funny playing king?” one of the Hawks said as he looked down on what seemed to be a child.
The boy was crying and helpless. The whip fell on the child’s back again as he curled on the ground and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t Bernard, but at least Bernard wouldn’t have been as helpless as that child. Two little girls stood a couple of steps away from the boy and cried.
“Stop whining. You two are next,” a Hawk told the little girls.
I couldn’t hold myself back when one of the Hawks went to grab the little girls and pull them into the circle.
“Hey!” I shouted at the Hawk. “You think it’s funny beating children?”
The Hawk was startled by my words, and his eyes scanned the crowd looking for the source. I stepped forward to show myself. My eyes pierced through the eyes of the one Hawk who was pulling the girls. Suddenly, I felt Bernard’s strong arms pull me behind.
“Sh, this isn’t wise, kiddo,” he said and put his hands on my lips. “Take care of Matilda for me, and always remember to use both your fears and your anger wisely.”
These were his last words.
“Who the hell said that?” the Hawk shouted, still scanning the crowd.
“It’s me, you idiot,” Bernard said and faced the Hawks.
“Stay out of this, Bernard,” the Hawk demanded.
Bernard ignored the Hawk and picked up the crying boy. His mother was standing in the crowd and she took him in her arms.
“Leave the little girls,” Bernard shouted his command.
“Or else?” The Hawk smirked and lifted his axe from the ground.
Bernard’s hands were behind his back. My eyes were fixed on him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands as they grabbed something in his pants. He raised what looked like a bow fixed on a wooden arch. He pointed it at the Hawk and something shot out of it. Two small arrows sank into the Hawk’s eyes, and he fell to the ground.
Bernard fought no more. When the two girls ran into the crowd and the other two Hawks attacked Bernard’s, the pain in my back began. My rage seeped out of every bone in my body.
I saw Bernard turn toward me, and his lips told me something. He asked me to run, to go hide. I don’t know why I listened to him. I could have saved him, but I ran to the valley. I ran fast, forgetting the pain shooting through every bone in my body.
My head felt like it was exploding. My jaw moved forward, and my teeth grew sharp. I grew taller with every step. My whole body was larger, my skin scaly and blood red. I reached the edge of the cliff, and my whole body was turned.
“The wings will take you places,” I remembered Bernard’s words, and so I jumped. But I never flew.
I hit the bottom of the valley, and all I saw was complete and utter blackness.