by catch » Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:02 pm
Renea's tales of knights, princesses, and far-gone deeds, calmed him. Like clinging mud it dribbled through his scar, his brains, held between his ruined fingers as tangible and real. It kept him quiet, kept him satisfied, like a thick, good meal. It let him forget about the strange baby that had appeared, unbidden, unsought, but not unwelcome. Being locked in here wore at his nerves, frayed them, and only Renea's presence could remind him of Himself, what he was, even if the bars crept closer, the stones crowded in. Sometimes he thought he could look forever into the ceiling, and he wanted to scream into it, claw at the solid, wooden door of the Room.
Deep, deep in the night, because of soothing tales and soothing words, and countless days between true, human rest, Catch could fall into exhausted sleep. His dreams were not the typical dreams of farmers or Councilors. They were reflections of when he was awake. Catch did not think he dreamed, the way he understands the term. There were, simply, other places he could go, places in his mind that were just as real as the distant creak of ice-caked forest outside.
Catch carefully undid the locks on his door, and he slipped away, feeling the oppressive, shrinking cell shed itself from him, a heavy coat taken from his shoulders. He climbed out of the gaol, very careful not to stir or wake anyone. They worked so hard to keep him happy, even if they did put him away. As he emerged, blinking, into the moonlight, he was surprised to see the massive, thick form of Rowsdower Cattails before him, the massive, drooping-fleshed dog looking uncharacteristically nervous, shuffling so much that the rolls of skin rippled along his neck and jowls, the cat tails strung about his neck jerking and twitching, obscenely alive, their blood-crusted stumps throbbing. One still bled, and Catch saw that the tail was crooked.
"Don't belong in there," the giant dog rumbles uneasily, his voice shaking the swirling ground. The night was familiar, but it was a mad-man's night, full of strange light and luminescent turmoil. The snow and ice glittered like all the stars in the spotless sky. "Come."
With no further words, no explaining why Catch shouldn't be where he belonged, being twice-thief and terrible and Bad, the massive dog lumbered away, casting a last look over his broad, rolling shoulder. Catch followed him, but it was not his choice. His feet drew him onward, bare, and Catch had a fleeting thought that he should have put his shoes on, or put on a heavier coat. But he didn't feel cold. He never did.
"Killed my cat," a voice came, muttering high in the branches, and when Catch craned his head to look, there was a wizened, crooked man, dressed like the monkey from the Gypsy Camp. He was familiar, but that familiarity was buried under Lamai's tender shields, and it brought only a sense of unease. "You damn dog! You murdered her!" His screams followed them, but though Catch hesitated, Rowsdower did not, and the addled man was drawn further into the forest.
It was not long, but perversely, it was not short, either, when they came to the clearing. Rowsdower stopped, and the fear and regret in his rheumy eyes told Catch that he could go no further. That frightened him, because there were shapes in the woods, shapes that quivered with fat, made wet noises with their mouths. And the silhouette of a Wolf. Catch felt his own sadness clutch in his throat, and he put his arms around the giant dog's terrible neck, ignoring the feel of cat's tails on his arms.
"We can't follow," the old beast said, though he turned to press his vast cheek against Catch's own. Then he turned, and rambled into the woods, where the wet noises of the Fat Man grew in pleasure. Catch turned and ran blindly to the place he had been taken, a clearing of shafted moonbeams and sunbeams, of stars hung in the branches that glittered like ice.
Catch had a vague idea that he was running, but he was suspended, his feet flying over ground. Though he ran, he did not feel tired, only a cold, confused terror, a sadness that blinded his eyes. But he could still see. Before him were three people, strange people. There was a broad man with fire-red hair, a tall man with deadly pale eyes, a wolf's skin around his shoulders, bare of anything else. And a shadowed, uncertain woman, flickering between the beams. For a wild moment, Catch thought he was Matron Faeryl, but there were differences. Subtle differences.
"Who are you?" They asked him, but though Catch wanted to ask them the same thing, he could do nothing but run. And run. There was the sound of barking behind him, the sound of cat-tails and pounding hooves. He felt the sweat begin to stream from him, soaking him, working to a lather all over his body, but still they stayed before him.
"Who are you?" the Wolf Man demanded, stepping forward, his pale hair tossed in a wild mane behind him. His strong fingers tangled themselves in Catch's beard, jerking his face down cruelly to look into his eyes. Catch saw no mercy or kindness in those eyes, but he saw the sadness, the despair that infected them.
The shadow woman's hand passed through his hair, flickering into place next to the cruel man, her thin, spider-like fingers finding all the gentle places, the good places to touch. Yet she, too, asked him that baffling, insistent question, her voice deep as a pool, black as the Pit.
The Red Man with one horn lifted his hand, beyond man of pain and woman of pleasure, and his fingers slowly crooked until a single one was extended to the sky. Catch could not help but look, follow that gesture, though the Wolf man still gripped him tightly. This was not a good dream, he knew. This was not a happy dream. But was this a dream at all? It must be, for in the sky, past the barren, icy branches, a Golden City flickered across a younger moon.
"Who are you?" the Red Man asked, his voice resigned, and saddened. But it was the voice of the Crooked Man that croaked from behind Catch, a hissing, cheated howl.
"ASMUDAS!"
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The body of Catch paced the confines to the cell, unaware that he moved at all. He was unaware of everything except what went on in his mind, sleeping-not-sleeping, a restless companion to Renea's wish for silence and rest. But there was a newcomer, a fellow occupant, a grotesque, giant spider that crouched on Catch's cot, black as Sin, with eyes that glittered blindly from it's head. It watched. It waited. And when Catch stopped his pacing, when he turned to face his spider, she lifted her pronged front legs, keening a barely-heard cry of triumph.
Catch titled his head back, his mouth opening to a wordless, cryless scream, nothing emerging but a dull swirl of silver fog, of oppressive pressure.
It began as a rumble, a belching deep within the earth, those who dwell there finding an upheaval, a roiling destruction that only intensified as it trembled to the surface. Earth cracked. It heaved, bucking like an animal that cannot be tamed. Glass cracked, china was flung from the walls, and a scream of the wind shattered frozen trees together until they splintered from the force of it.
The man, the Thing, was no less confused as he normally was. But there was a bell sounding inside him, something breaking free, something that allowed him to run somewhere than in infinite loops in his mind. He lifted his arms, and like the gentle peeling of a flower's petals, the walls of his little prison-room split their stone foundation and fell, one at a time, out from the sheer force of his presence. Catch did not even afford a look back. He lept over stone and rubble, graceful, full. His hands came down on he earth that wept burning tears to welcome him, that heaved under his body in a lover's ecstasy. He ran as he was supposed to run, free, wonderfully free, his hair churning behind him, tendrils kissing the ground under his hooves, too brilliant to look at with a liquid light that was All Lights.
He laughed to his earth, and his voice was the sound of bells.