The Promise of No Words

Chapter 8

“Wake up, mute boy. You should listen to this.”

Bunny’s voice broke through my sleepy state, sounding sharp and sudden, just like the snap of glass when you step on it. I didn’t hear the words right away—just the sense of urgency and the way they pulled me from the dark.

My eyes took a moment to adjust as I blinked hard. My breath fogged up in the morning air and when I sat up, the moss on the ground stuck to my back. The cold had worked its way into my joints and spine overnight, so my bones hurt and my jaw was locked from fighting all night.

The fire had returned. It has always done so.

However, this time, I didn’t dream about Windmere going up in flames.

It was I.

The flames on my skin feel as if they are starving. Heat pressing in from all sides, curling through my ribs, devouring everything I couldn't outrun. I could taste the smoke in my throat as I looked at the misted trees, my hands shaking in the darkness, trying to believe I wasn’t on fire.

“What’s going on?”

He didn’t say anything right away. Just tossed something at my feet.

A narrow piece of cloth. Torn. Burnt around the edges. The crest of Windmere is still present—a blue and gold design. The wheat stalk and the riverbend are both symbols.

Bunny was not wearing his usual smirk. Just a dull, angry feeling.

They referred to it as a cleansing.

I looked at the cloth. “Who did?”

People travelling together in a hurry. A caravan went by them two days ago. Every survivor has chains around them. Branded wrists. They took nothing but people. They claimed… they claimed the soldiers weren’t soldiers.

I felt my mouth was very dry. “Bandits again?”

It’s not that. It’s something even worse. They put on white cords and copper masks. Talked in short sentences. Orders. They seemed to be following a script.

Mara walked out of the trees, holding her journal. She showed me the page she was reading.

‘Cult? Military? Magickers?’

“None of those options,” Bunny said quietly. “They’re oath-bound. Every one of them. However, not in the same manner as before. There should be no symbols tattooed on the skin. No one was singing the same words back and forth. There is nothing inside these ones. Hollow. Like the oaths took their souls away.”

Velk was there, as usual, without saying a word. He played a three-chord tune in the air which made my stomach feel uneasy. Since the last vision, his music had taken on a darker tone. It felt like he understood things before we did.

I got down beside Thomir and the wet ground soaked my trousers as the smell of moss and blood filled the air. He was curled up under his old cloak which had once been a rich green but was now pale and torn from being used so much. It did little to keep out the cold coming up from the ground beneath him.

His chest moved up and down in a jerky way and each breath sounded like wind blowing through damaged reeds. His skin was pale and covered with bruises and sweat was still visible on his forehead, even though it was cold. I took his hand and it was so light and unmoving.

His eyelids moved and his lashes twitched as if they were being pushed by a breeze. When he opened his eyes, they looked beyond me, his pupils were wide and glossy. Unfocused. Searching.

I wasn’t certain he recognised me.

Or if he realised I was still alive.

“Uncle…?”

He blinked a second time. His grip on my hand was so strong it began to hurt.

“Evin,” he managed to say. It’s happening once more.

“What is?”

They’re trying to hold the land together. Not only people are affected. It’s not limited to contracts. Everything.”

He coughed and it was both wet and painful. He had blood around his mouth.

They are looking for a world where everything follows the rules. Even the trees are affected. Even the wind is a force to be reckoned with.

“Who would ever want that?”

He didn’t say anything in response. He was looking past me. In a distant place. I believed he was losing it, but then he turned and looked right at me.

“There’s a storey that’s been told for a long time,” he said quietly. “A boy who was born without the ability to speak. Not through his voice, but through the way magic touches him. Oaths are important to everyone. But not that man.”

I didn’t make any movement. My heart was beating so loudly that I thought everyone could hear it.

There were those who thought he would liberate the land. Others claimed he would break it apart.

His hand was shaking. You can sense it, right? How easily words seem to slip off your tongue. How promises become quiet.”

I was unable to say anything. I didn’t want to.

Thomir gave a small smile and his eyes closed. Being silent doesn’t make you weak. It’s resistance.”

After Mara had kept watch and Velk played a strange tune by the fire, I took out the scroll from my pack.

One of the ones I picked up near the oath-marked trail, under a pine tree. The ink was rotting and the text remained readable, but it felt wrong. It seemed as if the paper itself was trying to forget its earlier promise.

I felt the crackling in my hand. Not parchment. Not entirely.

Bunny came up beside me.

Are you absolutely sure about what you’re planning?

“No.”

“Good. Helps you avoid being an idiot.

I pulled the scroll out. As soon as the air brushed the runes, they seemed to want to speak and bind, but nothing stuck. Just static. Then silence.

I stood by the fire with the corner of the cloth.

It spread quickly.

A green flame quickly ran along the edge of the scroll. However, it didn’t make any noise. No crackle. No sizzle. Just a light—and then nothing else. Just as the scroll had disappeared from existence. Just as if it had never happened before.

Bunny moved away from the cat. “Shit. That wasn’t how things usually were.

Velk stood. He held his harp’s strings with one hand and kept the other hand clenched by his side.

Mara herself seemed shaken and her ink bottle moved as she turned to a new page.

I looked at the ashes. They remained intact. They turned upward and began to move backward. Floating around like moths.

Then, something started to happen. Deep. It could be found beneath the roots. Or within me.

A voice that is barely there. A feeling of pressure in the eyes.

The air around us changed.

Bunny snarled. “What woke you up this morning?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

I wasn’t sure which part of me had been damaged by the fire.

Or what had not survived the fire. Watching. Waiting.