Insignia, page 9
“What in the world could that have been?” he says, his chair scooting back from his desk as he stands up.
He steps around his desk covered in papers and scrolls as an urgent knocking shakes his front door. Quickening his pace, he opens the front door cautiously, not knowing who it could be and why.
Stirling wheezes heavily as he tries to catch his breath. Each word is exaggerated and deliberate as he forces them out. “My mother...She’s unconscious. Needs...Help.”
The apothecary examines the young boy standing at his doorstep in an attempt to make sense of the situation. “Is she ill?” he asks.
Stirling regains himself enough to answer. “I don’t know, she’s thin, bluish tint and cold, but she’s breathing. She just fell over, and we couldn’t wake her up.”
“All right, boy, I will come and take a look at her,” he says calmly. “Let me grab my bag.” He straightens his houppelande, an outer garment with flaring sleeves, and shuffles back to his desk.
Stirling watches in a daze as the apothecary, a stocky man with a potbelly, gathers up items from various parts of the room seeming random and unnecessary. It is taking up precious time. The man hobbles around as if someone isn’t in dire need of his help. The sound of snapping metal fills Stirling’s ears as the apothecary finally clasps the bulky leather bag.
Eighteen
Stirling doesn’t remember how he got back home or how long he has been back. His blurred vision slowly comes to focus as his mind returns to his body. He finds himself sitting on the floor of his parents’ room, the scene before coming together.
He watches numbly as the apothecary hovers over his mother. His father is observing protectively from the corner of the room, his face set. If any of the emotions Stirling had witnessed earlier still lingered, he had locked them away. Forced away from the surface to the confines of his mind leaving behind a stoic expression firmly in place.
When Stirling felt ill, his mother would tend to him. She would place her hand on his forehead, tell him to rest up, and give him herbal concoctions she learned from the flower lady—Faerydae. He squeezes his eyes shut at the painful memory.
It’s been almost four years but he can still see her body hanging from the noose. She was his mother’s best friend who used to live outside of the city with a magnificent garden she let him play in. All until this kingdom took her away from his mother. Took away the second genuinely kind human being he has ever met. The one person who could have prevented this from happening with a skip through her garden. Instead, he was oblivious, caught up in his own life. Now he is dreading he is about to lose the one person he loves in Wyverna.
Stirling opens his eyes, releasing a new wave of tears. He can barely see the apothecary performing different acts; pulling open her eyes lids to check her eyes, taking an inspection of inside her ears and down her throat. He pokes and prods at her skin, seeming to have lost its elasticity. Her hands and feet are evaluated for any type of sign only he seems to know how to read. He interrogates Giles with questions about if she had been recently vomiting or having diarrhea.
How any of this would help his mother, Stirling will never understand. Why can’t the apothecary pull one of his many miracles out of his bag and cure her?
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” Giles impatiently asks, hiding the undertone of his concern.
The apothecary stands up straight and turns to him. “Illnesses are tricky, are you familiar with the four humours or humourism?”
Giles shakes his head.
The apothecary continues, “It’s the working of the human body, liquids produced by the person. When these are out of balance, either excess or a deficiency in one, the person becomes sick. Your wife is a bit tricky; she seems to have produced too much yellow bile, one of the humours, but she shows the qualities of the phlegm humour since her skin is cold and clammy. The state she’s in, she must have been dealing with the actual symptoms for several days now. She’s extremely dehydrated. I’m surprised she was still up and walking until today. It does a person no good to hide illness. Will only make things worse in the long run.”
“Will she get better? Do you have any remedies for this?” Giles inquiries, his voice straining to remain calm.
The apothecary takes a moment before answering. “I have a few in mind, but they aren’t miracle cures. They are designed to be ingested when symptoms first begin. I’m sorry, but with how long it was left untreated, the chances of recovery are low. I can give you some stuff that will help her rehydrate. I can’t make any promises though. Rebalancing the humours can be tricky enough on their own and it appears that there is something sucking the life right out of her on top of it.”
Giles glances down at Stirling out of the corner of his eye and says in a hushed tone, “Maybe, maybe we should talk about this in the other room.”
Giles and the apothecary exit the bedroom into the main part of the home, leaving Stirling alone with his thoughts and his mother who lays in an unconscious slumber, her breaths shallow under the covers. The room begins to rock as his body sways, emotions pulsing through his veins. He leans his head back against the wall behind him to steady his body and hopefully his mind.
The pathway between him and Ignis creaks open enough to peak an eye through. Ignis accepts the invitation and opens the door, letting the pressure building up in Stirling’s head barge in and consume him. The burden weighs down on him, but if the two of them carry it together, maybe just maybe, they will be able to lift it.
“I won’t be able to hang out for a while, Ignis,” Stirling says to him in their shared thoughts.
“Be where you feel is right, be with your mother. I can wait,” Ignis replies, trying his best to comfort him from his cave in the depths of the mountains.
I can wait.
Ignis’ words bring back a memory from almost a year ago. Where he had brushed off his mother’s invite to sit and eat gingerbread with her. He had been so focused on getting to Ignis that he didn’t even think of how she felt. He was growing up in the forest, growing up away from her.
His mother, the only one he will ever have, is the very person who had taken the time to hold his hand and teach him to walk. She stood alone, watching as he took off running without bothering to look back.
At the time, the moment was simple and insignificant, but the shadow of it is greater. It has grown larger as the light shifts from his new angle. Why couldn’t he have just given it to her? Why couldn’t he sit down with her and share a smile? All she had wanted was some time with her son. Ignis would have understood, but he only thought of himself. Stirling brings his knees in tight.
She had always been there when he needed her, but he couldn’t give her that small moment.
With his throat constricting, he buries his face to hide the tears lining his reddened cheeks.
Nineteen
Over the next week, Stirling spent as much time as he could with his mother. The only time he left her side was to assist with the bakery when his father asked for quick favors trying not to keep him away from watching over her.
Stirling had pulled his stool away from the window over to his mother’s bedside, but not before he had taken notice of the accidental embedded dips in the wooden floor, carved from the years the chair had sat in the same location. The spot Stirling escaped through the window and dreamt of a life away from the bakery. The memory of Stirling spending so many nights paying attention to the stars and the mountain’s dark shadow cutting jagged lines into the twinkling sky. While his mother stood behind him as no more than an afterthought, tugs at his heart.
Maybe, if I had just paid attention to her, I would have noticed she was sick. Or, if I helped around the bakery when I was asked, she wouldn’t have felt the need to work herself to... Stirling couldn’t get himself to think the final word. He doesn’t want to admit what he knows is inevitable.
He sits on his familiar stool in an unfamiliar spot as he watches his mother sleep.
He reaches his thoughts out to Ignis. “Ignis, you said you don’t remember your mother, right?”
“Correct.”
“I wonder what’s worse; to have loved and lost, or to have never loved at all.” His eyes fall to his mother. Her hair pulled free from the knot on the back of her head, letting the curls fall around her sunken features as he listens to Ignis.
“To have loved and lost. I’m thinking that even though losing someone dear hurts, it hurts because you got to spend time in this world loving them. The time you got to spend with them makes it worth it though.”
Salted liquid clouds Stirling’s vision as he lowers his head to rest on the mattress.
His father steps through the open door to the room to ask Stirling if he would like any supper. He stops himself before he speaks as he sees Stirling sound asleep with his head cradled in his arms on the mattress beside his mother. He decides not to disturb him, slowly backing out of the room. He retrieves the wool blanket off Stirling’s bed in the corner of the room and carries it back into the bedroom.
Draping the blanket over Stirling, his voice no more than a whisper, he says, “I know it’s going to hurt. But you’re a strong-hearted boy, you’ll get past this. We’ll get past this.”
He lays his hand on the top of Stirling’s head. He pulls it back awkwardly and shuffles out of the room, silently closing the door behind him.
The next morning, Stirling scratches at a parchment sprawled out on the bed beside his mother, her upper body propped up by layering full flour sacks beneath her straw-filled pillow. The charcoal leaves behind black lines forming the shape of a dragon.
The remedies the apothecary had given her helped her regain consciousness, but it is not curing her. She can’t retain any liquids that Stirling has to help her drink.
She is too weak to lift her arms. Her body is failing her; dimming like a fire left unattended, consuming its support, slowly growing weaker until it finally fades out.
“Oh, Stirling, dear, dragons don’t have four legs,” she weakly tells him. Her voice is just a small breeze of the once strong wind it used to be. Stirling lays the charcoal down.
His eyes focused on the drawing, “You know how I never told you how I got this wound on my arm?”
His mother, leaning back on the pillow, tilts her head raising an eyebrow quizzically.
Stirling, still staring at the drawing, takes a deep breath. His fingertips begin to tap his thumb. Index, middle, ring, pinky, ring, middle, index.
He slowly raises his gaze till their eyes lock, “I’ve lied to you all these years. I don’t have any farmer friends. In fact, I don’t have any friends except—except for Ignis. Although no one will ever believe me. But, Mother, Ignis is the dragon who gave this to me.” He holds out his arm as if she had never seen his scars before.
Stirling feels as if he has cut himself open, revealing all the mechanics that make him tick.
He is vulnerable. His body shakes, but she needs to know the truth. He runs his fingers down the length of his arm, leaving behind black lines of charcoal.
The memory of the day he decided to walk off the trail his life was supposed to be on, is something he will never forget.
She eyes him skeptically. “Stirling, a dragon?”
He lifts the drawing letting the charcoal roll off and fall to the ground. “Yes, Mum, he’s real and I’m teaching myself how to ride him. I go up to the mountains to train with him almost every day. You don’t need a special insignia. You just have to not give up.” Stirling’s eyes are full of sincerity as he pleads, “He’s real, I swear. Please believe me.”
Jannell’s lips quiver as she smiles softly. “I believe you.”
Stirling feels the tension in his body drop with relief. Jannell’s fragile hand trembles as she musters the strength to raise her hand up to touch his cheek. He cups his hand over hers, holding it tight against him, her fingers cold against his skin.
She speaks up again, her voice faint, “I know you will be a great man one day. You’re going to make me so proud. Stirling, promise me, don’t you ever give up.”
“I promise,” he manages to choke back the onslaught of tears.
He can feel his mother’s hand become limp under his own as it almost slides from his grasp before he tightens his grip. He watches her through clouded vision as she falls back asleep with a faint smile still remaining on her face. Except she isn’t asleep and he knows this.
His heart feels as if it had plummeted into his stomach, pulling his throat down with it. He can’t speak, not a word. He can barely breathe, his chest constricting, suffocating him as he chokes on his tears.
He sits there holding his mother’s hand, refusing to let it go. He lowers their hands to rest on his lap. Feeling as if letting go of her hand, she will disappear right in front of him, even though she is already gone. So, he remains there, on his stool, tears rolling down his face following his jawline to his chin where they drip one at a time onto his and his mother’s intertwined fingers.
Twenty
“Father?” Stirling runs his thumb across the leaves of the rosemary sprigs clamped in his hand. He steps into the threshold of the bedroom door.
His mother lays still on the bed, her body wrapped in a shroud with her face exposed. The smell of rosemary is strong in Stirling’s nose. For the past day, each of his neighbors have set sprigs upon her sleeping body as they said their words of prayer.
“Father?” Stirling’s throat is thick from the tears he hasn’t stopped shedding. The husk of what was once his strong father sits hunched beside the bed. “Father, they’re here.”
Giles’ lifeless eyes don’t leave his slumbering wife’s face. With creaking bones, he reaches up, running the back of his index down her cool cheek. A gasping sob escapes his chapped lips, his red-stained face sunken with grief. He shifts, standing up from the stool. He leans over the woman he vowed to hold in sickness and in health. The woman he wanted to spend forever with, to grow old in this bakery with, to laugh with while their hair turns the shade of flour.
“I love you,” he whispers to her, pressing his lips to her forehead. “I’m so sorry.” Breathing a heavy sigh, he pulls the shroud down over her face and lays his hand on top of her head.
A man lays his hand on Stirling’s shoulder. Stirling’s red-rimmed eyes drag away from his mourning father and rise up to the older man. Dipping his chin, Stirling lets the man and his compatriot step into the bedroom. Unable to provide Jannell with the funeral she deserves, Giles hired men from the monastery to transport her back to her home village. Her family will be able to view her one last time and say their goodbyes before burying her on the church’s grounds.
Stirling’s back slides down the wall until he’s sitting with his knees to his face. He throws his head back, letting it thump against the hard daub. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to hold back, composing himself in the presence of the monastery men. The rosemary crumbles in his crushing grip. His wet eyes open as the men step out of the room with his mother’s wrapped body cradled in one of their arms. Choking on his tears, he slaps his hands over his mouth. The rosemary leaves rain down on his tunic as his body convulses with emotion. Whimpers escape through his fingers as the only person he has loved is carried out of his life.
Wiping the snot running from his nose with his sleeve, Stirling peeks around the door frame into the bedroom. His father lays on the bed with his back to the door curled up, the shaking of his shoulders being the only evidence he is weeping.
Twenty-One
The sun pierces through the treetops raining down on Stirling and Ignis in scattered storms. Stirling’s light-colored eyelashes rest on his cheekbones while he lies with his back against Ignis’, letting the dragon’s stride null his mind. It had been a few weeks since his mother’s passing. She had missed his fourteenth birthday by only a few days.
That last day surges in his mind flooding his thoughts like water invading the boat that is meant to keep the sailors afloat through a crack in its walls. It is a constant reminder every time he closes his eyes. The image of her smile while she slips into her never-ending sleep. The last words she had said to him, the promise he had made.
He remembers sitting there until his father finally walked into the room to offer him lunch. He remembers seeing the tears his father shed; he had never seen his father cry over anything. His father always came off as the type of man who could shrug off any emotion.
He had seen what true love was that day. The way his father broke before his mother was as if half of his soul was tearing from his body. The way he stroked her hair before losing his composure. Stirling agonizingly let his mother’s hand go as his father took his place on the stool. He didn’t know how to comfort his father, so he had left. He left his father alone in his most vulnerable time to wallow in his own sorrows. With tired and tear-burned eyes, he fell asleep curled up in a ball on his mattress in the corner of the room.
Ignis strolls through the forest to their usual hiding spot on the bluff overlooking the class by the canyon. There, already lining up along the edge of the canyon was the group of students they have been watching for years. Their dragons waiting patiently behind each of them.
He cautiously lies on the ground trying to not stir Stirling who had fallen asleep upon his back. With a sudden jolt to the right, Ignis throws Stirling to the ground. He hits the patchy grass hard, waking him up in a panic.
“What! What’s going on?!” He spins around in urgency trying to get a sense of his whereabouts.
“SHHH! You’re too loud. Now, take a look at that,” Ignis says, motioning over at the class lined up. Stirling crawls his way across the ground pulling aside the leaves to peek through the field maple.
What he sees on each dragon is a saddle. Wyvern saddles are different from horse saddles. There are straps looped around the neck and tail attached to the seat resting between the wings starting at the base of the neck. The saddles’ cantle is also more extreme; it cups the lower back, helping keep the rider from sliding or falling backward. The horn of the saddle is less defined though, just a small bump for support but low enough it is out of the way when the rider needs to lean close to his or her dragon while diving or for other quick maneuvers.
