Peculiar Soul

It is seductively pleasant to deride Saf as a nation of fools, rife with raving demagogues and mad priests - but remember that they had been winning their war on the continent until we intervened. Only a timely Ardan effort and Mendian’s watchful eye have kept the entire region from falling under their rule.

And yes, they do behave as fools. The quicksilvered gibberings of their leaders reveal the disrepair of their state, and only their propaganda claims otherwise. But do not judge Saf solely by the rhetoric flowing from Khem. Let us instead contemplate their armies.

Gentlemen, those armies are not in Saf. They are not at home where the softheaded ramblings of their elders might dull their minds. They are abroad, conquering, and both of the Eight that march with them are canny zealots. They speak not of revenge upon the descendants of Ghar, but instead of economics and trade, of inequity and justice.

The men who started this war were fools, and so perhaps were their children. But we now fight their grandchildren, conceived in war and birthed into its crucible. They know very well that war does not suffer fools.

- Uwe Schmenzin, address to the Assembly, 41 Fracture 691.

Vincent called a halt to their travel just after sundown, letting Annabel take her rest and rubbing her down while Michael pulled branches and deadfall over the cart tracks leading from the road to the small clearing they had chosen for their camp.

There was no fire that night. Vincent was not precisely nervous, but there was a definite alertness to his manner as he finished attending to Annabel and broke into the small stash of food and water hidden under the driver’s bench.

“We made good time,” he noted. His words were muffled by a generous mouthful of hardtack. “We should be on track to arrive tomorrow afternoon.”

Michael nodded, taking a bite of his own bread - with some difficulty, as the twice-baked biscuit only softened enough to chew once he had chased it with a swig of water. “Where exactly are we headed?” he asked. “Isolde didn’t really get into details.”

“She tends not to,” Vincent chuckled, looking up at the sky. “What about it? How much can I tell him?”

The wind blew, and gave no answer. Michael looked around warily. “Can - ah, Sibyl hear you?” he asked. “Can you hear her?”

Vincent shrugged. “She can hear me, of course. It doesn’t work the other way. I just like talking to her sometimes.” He stretched, wincing as the motion pulled at his wound. “I’m sure I’ll get an earful about whatever I tell you later, since everything is secrets-within-secrets. You’re not the only one Spark is searching for, and the work of denying him his prey began long before we were involved.”

He paused, then coughed. “What I can tell you is that we’re headed to a small farm, south along the bay. Quiet, out-of-the-way, and as safe as anywhere can be within Ardan borders.” Vincent took a drink of water, slow and deliberate as if to stall for time. Finally, he looked towards Michael once more. “Sofia told you she’d visited there before.”

“She did,” Michael said. “She said it was quiet.”

“For her, perhaps,” Vincent chuckled. “Quiet is what she needed.” He shook his head, and his face sobered. “It was… hard, for her. You understand?”

The oversharp memory of Sofia sobbing into her pillows flitted through Michael’s mind, the desolate sound of her voice when she had spoken. He nodded once.

Vincent grunted and leaned back, tilting his head up to the sky. “Some souls are hard to bear,” he said. “But if it’s important that they be borne nevertheless, this place can sometimes help.”

“You think my soul is important somehow?” Michael asked.

“Spark does, for whatever that’s worth - so for the time being we’re assuming he’s right.” Vincent stretched out on the hay in the back of the cart, gingerly repositioning himself to take pressure off of the seared line on his stomach.

“You should get some rest,” he said. “We’ll be traveling most of tomorrow.”

Michael made a faint noise of assent and laid down on the other side of the haycart. The scratchy ends of the hay poked into his shirt however much he turned. The stars peeked through the boughs overhead, and the gentle breath of the wind sighed between them in an irregular chant.

He despaired of getting any sleep, staring up at the twinkling stars with his thoughts racing madly back and forth, but time slipped from his focus. When he next opened his eyes the sky had grown rosy-pink.

Vincent was already up, cursing softly and rubbing at his back while he prepared Annabel for their journey. They did not linger at the clearing. Michael took the driver’s seat once more and ate a sparing breakfast while the sun rose over the hills.

It was a far cry from waking at home, with Ricard fussing at his bedside. For the moment he felt the loss of those moments keenly, his stomach seeming to clench into knots - but then he saw his father’s face, and Peter’s once more. Peter’s eyes were now precisely the same shade as his own whenever his face hung vacant and grinning in Michael’s mind.

He shuddered and took another bite of hardtack. It was dry and overly salty, and the water left in the canteen had an unpleasant metallic tang. Still, it seemed to fit easily with the other elements of the morning. The chill of the air and the sparkling of the sunlight against the dew lent a spice to the horrible food that Helene had never stocked in her expansive pantry, and it was flavor enough for the moment.

Vincent said little as the day’s heat swelled around them. They passed the occasional farm or hut, and once a village that huddled around the crown of a hill in the distance. The road swerved toward it, but at Vincent’s sleepily-issued direction Michael steered the cart down a smaller track that disappeared off to the side.

It was a narrower road - not overgrown or in disrepair, but with the quietly-indignant manner of a path not accustomed to being so disturbed. The brush around it curved up and inward in a silent detente with the road.

The trees were taller with every mile that Annabel walked, calmly pulling them deep into a woodland that grew cool and dark even as the sun climbed somewhere high above the canopy. Each tree grew tall, stately and lush, the undergrowth a verdant array of ferns and broad-leafed shrubs. It was a quiet forest - not silent, for birdsong and the rustle of small animals still disturbed the air, but Michael felt like any noise they dared to make was quickly swallowed up by the encroaching wall of green.

“We’re close,” Vincent said, sitting up and looking around with an anticipatory grin. “Haven’t been back here in years, but it’s the sort of place that’s hard to forget.”

Michael nodded absently, looking around at the moss-covered trunks rising around them. One had fallen across the path some time ago, its trunk so thick that it rose nearly to eye-level even from his perch on the cart. A gap in the wood permitted the road through - not a sharp gap, as from the touch of a saw, but a gently sloping valley where the wood had rotted to dust under the brims of leathery, palmate mushrooms. He looked as they passed, wondering, but Vincent only smiled and gazed back up at the trees overhead.

At once, sunlight lanced through the cool greenery to assault Michael’s eyes. He blinked and held up his hand, peering through tears to look at the changed landscape ahead. The forest had simply stopped. There were no stumps or logs from a clear-cut, just a smooth transition to low, rolling fields that stretched down ahead of them and back up the other side of a shallow dell.

This was not to say that the clearing was bare; rows of tilled soil sat hunched and gleaming with moisture, tender shoots barely protruding at their crest. Beyond those lay neat trellises of grapevines, and all around the edges of the cleared space grew orchards bristling with flowers. The scent of it hit them immediately, pushing the cool earthiness of the forest away with its warm, heady bouquet.

Even Annabel seemed to perk up at the change in scenery, her step quickening a bit as the road turned to run up the center of the dell. On the far side, nestled amid the white and pink flowering trees, there was a small farmer’s hut with a few outbuildings clustering near. It was humble, and certainly not large, but the subtle curve of the land and trees surrounding it gave Michael the impression of a boulder wedged deep into the soil, one that would be worn down to sand before it would concede to move an inch.

Michael guided Annabel gently to a stop in front of the house - or, at least, he happened to tug on the reins a bit when she decided they were done walking. Either way, he hopped down and helped Vincent to do the same.

“Relax here for a bit,” Vincent said. “Have some water.”

Michael frowned, but did as he recommended. Travel had done nothing for the taste of the water. “Aren’t we meant to meet someone here?” he asked.

The question earned him a chuckle from Vincent. “Yes, but perhaps not right away,” Vincent said. “Things here happen on their own time.”

The non-answer did little to settle Michael’s mood, but he leaned back against the cart and took another sip from his canteen. There were worse places to take a rest, he supposed - now that they were closer he could see that the house was ringed with flowerbeds and small garden plots. These weren’t the well-kept and candlelit labyrinths of Raven House, but rather a riot of mismatched blooms and bulbs that sprang up together with little regard for order. The paths between them were dusted with a pale carpet of flower petals from a particularly large tree that loomed over the house.

Michael craned his neck to look up at the gently-waving branches - and when he lowered his eyes once more there was a man standing in front of them. He managed to avoid flinching openly at his sudden appearance - long years with his father had schooled his reflex to freeze instead, and he looked wide-eyed at the new arrival.

He was an older man, his hair a thick grey swatch that poked out haphazardly from beneath a cap. His face was deeply tanned, craggy and worn, and his eyes lurked within it like a pair of birds peeking out from a gnarled stump.

The man returned Michael’s scrutiny for a moment, then turned his gaze to Vincent. “You’re hurt,” he grunted, stepping close to peer at the bloodstains barely-visible against the fabric of his shirt. “Sloppy.”

Vincent ducked his head and grimaced, looking surprisingly abashed. “Old Karl was faster than I thought,” he said. “Or he was in a rare mood that morning. It’s possible something might have fed his temper a bit, before our meeting.” He forced a grin at Michael, who was too uneasy to muster a smile in response.

“Hunh,” the man grunted, returning his attention to Michael. “You’re Karl and Liesl’s boy?”

The question left Michael dumbstruck - it had been years since he had heard anyone mention his mother’s name, an unspoken taboo at the Baumgart household. After a second he recovered enough to nod and stammer an affirmative.

The man looked at him again, moving slightly to the side and tilting his head. “Take after your father,” he said eventually. “Pity, he’s an idiot.”

His attention turned to Vincent. “There was fighting. Karl?”

Vincent flushed again, then set his jaw and made eye contact with the man. “I may have lit his coat on fire. And his carriage, and - I probably shot him. A bit.”

The man’s glare sharpened. “Bad?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Vincent said, glancing at Michael. “We had to leave in a hurry.”

“Sloppy,” the man repeated again.

Vincent winced and scratched his head. “Not my best morning,” he admitted.

The man snorted and returned his attention to Michael. “Name?” he asked.

“Michael,” he replied, holding out his hand by reflex. The man studied it, but made no move to take it. Michael felt immediately ridiculous, but kept his arm extended.

The man looked at his hand for a moment more, then extended his own to shake it. His skin felt like the sun-warmed leather of Annabel’s reins.

“Jeorg,” he said, locking his eyes on Michael’s. “Welcome to my home.”

Vincent asked Michael to care for Annabel while he and Jeorg talked quietly under the eaves of the house. Michael had given his dubious assent and now stood tentatively rubbing down the horse’s coat where the traces had lain. He strained to pick up traces of the conversation, at least until his inattention earned him a reproachful snort from Annabel.

With a sigh, he redoubled his efforts to tend to her, finishing just before Vincent walked over to stand in front of him. The other man gave him an odd look, almost appraising, then smiled and extended his hand. Michael took it.

“This is it, at least for a while,” Vincent said. “You’re in good hands here.” He darted a glance back at Jeorg, who was wholly absorbed in contemplation of a vine bearing violently-purple flowers. “Just - trust him, as best you can. Whatever he does, it’s meant to help you.”

He flashed another grin at a mildly-unsettled Michael, and motioned for him to help with getting Annabel hitched back up for his departure. Minutes later, he had gingerly climbed to the driver’s seat and taken the reins.

The cart rolled forward, Vincent twisted with a wince for one last wave farewell - and then he was gone.

“Stupid boy,” Jeorg said, his voice coming from just beside Michael - who managed to turn calmly rather than jumping, even as the sudden presence set his heart pounding. The old man was incredibly hard to keep track of, moving soundlessly and evading whatever peripheral senses usually kept Michael aware of others’ presence near him. He looked and saw Jeorg staring after the cart, an odd expression on his face.

Michael cleared his throat. “Did Vincent stay here too?” he asked. “You two seem to know each other well.”

“Well enough,” Jeorg said, turning to look in the other direction, toward a path winding through the orchards. “Walk with me.”

Protesting the half-answer did not seem as though it would be productive, so Michael fell into step beside Jeorg as the older man walked forward at a surprisingly brisk clip. His strides were long and sure, his feet never falling on the roots that occasionally protruded into the path.

They walked. Jeorg led them down one row and up another without speaking, occasionally stopping to look at a bit of bark or a spray of flowers hanging low over the path. Sometimes he would touch them, murmuring something that did not carry far past his lips. They had worked their way through bright and shadowed paths nearly to the other side of the clearing before Jeorg stopped and turned to Michael.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

The question had the flavor of a test, so Michael paused before answering. “Because Spark wants my soul,” he replied.

“Hngh,” Jeorg grunted. “That’s why you’re not at home. Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, failing to keep some of the bitter exasperation he felt from creeping into his voice. At once, Jeorg’s eyes came up to fix on him. Michael froze. He was suddenly very aware that he was alone in the middle of the woods with this man, this stranger that Vincent shied away from - and that he knew next to nothing about him. The air seemed to thicken around them.

Then Jeorg’s eyes narrowed, and he turned away to resume their walk. “You don’t know,” he said. “Then why are you here?”

Exasperation turned into frustration, although the thrill of fear still running amok in Michael’s belly kept it from rearing its head. “You have an answer you’re looking for,” he said, “but I don’t know it. I’m just - here. Sibyl sent me. Vincent brought me.” He took a few more steps, hurrying to keep pace with Jeorg. “I don’t have anywhere else that’s safe.”

“Hm,” Jeorg grunted. “If safe is what you want, there are farms. Mines, docks. Hide under the work, be just another dirty face.” Finally, he stopped and turned to look at Michael. “But you’re not there.”

“I have a soul,” Michael protested.

Jeorg raised an eyebrow. “Farms and mines not good enough, then?”

Michael’s fists clenched for a moment before he could force them to relax - he was sure that Jeorg was baiting him, trying to provoke a reaction. His father had done the same, and he knew how that game ended. The sudden thought of his father brought an answer, though, and did not quite keep the irony of the situation from coloring his reply.

“I have potential,” he said, his tone twisting the word into near-profanity. “And the power to go with it, or so everyone keeps telling me. I don’t want to waste it.”

Jeorg looked at him for a long, quiet moment. “No you don’t,” he said. His voice was low and melodic, an odd change from his previous gruff and fragmentary speech. “You don’t have anything. You have no potential, you have no power.” He leaned close, his eyes boring into Michael’s. “The will and effort of others brought you here, not your own. You have been a child, Michael Baumgart.”

Anger and fear clashed in Michael’s chest. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he snapped. “Sibyl offered to help, Vincent shot my father-”

Jeorg’s eyes glinted, and Michael realized that he had been shouting. He forced himself to loosen his clenched fists. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t have anything, and maybe I never did. But I do have a soul, now.” He paused, considering his words.

“I didn’t even get to choose that,” he said, morose. “I mean, I did - I tried for years to get a soul. But when the moment came and it was there in front of me, I just - it felt pointless.”

Jeorg’s face was impassive as he listened, but he took a step closer to Michael. “You saw the river,” he said. “You saw the souls.”

Michael nodded. “Is that normal? I never asked.”

A wry grin split Jeorg’s face. “No normal, with souls,” he said. “But not unheard of. I saw it.” His expression turned serious once more, and he rubbed his chin. “You didn’t choose yours?”

“There was one that came to me,” Michael said. “It felt like it might have been Form, sort of a medium-bright soul. I almost took it, but it felt like it wouldn’t change anything.” His face flushed red, remembering, and he wavered on the edge of speech for a long moment; Jeorg waited without comment or expression until he spoke.

“It felt like I would just take a bit longer to die if I accepted. Just - pointless. So I said no. Told it to let me go if there wasn’t anything better.” He shrugged. “And then I woke up, and I had a soul anyway.”

For a moment it seemed like Jeorg wouldn’t say anything in response, but then the corners of his mouth twitched - and he laughed, a deep belly laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes and sent a tear down his craggy cheek.

“Ah,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “Michael Baumgart. I was wrong. Not a child - a fool.”

Michael scowled. “I don’t know why I bothered saying anything,” he grumbled. “You’ve obviously made up your mind about me.”

“Ah,” Jeorg chuckled, his voice taking on its melodic tone once more, “No insult. The fool speaks truth to kings and emperors, teaches humility to the powerful. The fool stands outside, and laughs within. The fool is free, more than most.”

Annoyingly, Michael felt his ire slipping away at the dubious compliment. “I don’t feel particularly free,” he muttered.

Jeorg gave him a sly look. “That’s because you aren’t,” he said, quirking one shaggy eyebrow and pointing a finger at him. “Not yet, anyway. Roots clutch and hold a fledgling ensouled. You must break free.”

“What?” Michael replied, confused. “I don’t-”

He tried to take a step back, but found that he couldn’t move his legs. The tree roots that twined over the path had joined together, writhing like snakes to wrap around his legs in a loose but utterly-inflexible grip.

“You’re an augmens,” he said, realizing, craning his head to look around the clearing. “You made all of this?”

“Of course not,” Jeorg said, tapping a low-hanging blossom with his finger and watching as it opened wide. “Was going to happen without me. I provide timing, and direction.”

He looked at Michael, and his eyes twinkled. “For all the little seeds.”

Michael looked around with the benefit of context, seeing all of the oddities about the forest and the orchard in a new light. He had heard of men like Jeorg before, but only in the midst of his father grumbling about the cost of their services.

“It’s very impressive,” he said. “You’ve done a-” He broke off as he looked back towards Jeorg, who had vanished.

Michael blinked and looked around. “Jeorg?” he called out. No reply came from the trees, except that they continued to hold their roots fast around his leg.

“Wonderful,” he muttered, bending to get a closer look at the rough wood that held him. It was not over-tight, but the fit was rigid enough that his foot was hopelessly trapped. Pulling at it only hurt his knee and ankle, and Michael quickly decided that he would not be able to break loose through simple force.

Groaning, he tilted his head back towards the sky, feeling the shifting warmth as sunlight dappled down through the trees onto his face. He closed his eyes for a moment and simply stood there, listening to the wind and the distant birdsong.

After a few minutes, he exhaled and opened his eyes. “Well, Sofia,” he said. “Not sure if you’re listening to me, but this is working out just fine. Day one of my new life with Jeorg. You’ve given me to an augmens and he has planted me. Spark will never see through my cunning disguise as a-”

He squinted. “-as whatever sort of trees these are.” He sighed and fell silent, looking around. It was obviously some manner of test, one that he was currently failing. Schemes ran through his mind - to wedge a stick into the gap, perhaps, or to bash a rock against the outside.

Those plans failed against the utter (and likely purposeful) lack of any such implements within reach. He tried to slowly pull his foot out, to slip it from his shoe - but for all that the roots did not squeeze him, they were too tight for such maneuvers.

Eventually he tired of his struggles and simply stood. The sunlight had shifted in the hours of his confinement, now coming low and golden from the west. It lit the trees in shades of bronze and brandy, the petals flaring bright around him.

The air cooled, and he breathed it in. “It’s not so bad, being a tree,” he said, feeling a bit delirious. His leg hurt. Annoying, but not so horrible that he couldn’t push it from his mind. He had felt worse pain before, after all. There was no real danger here, no looming figure of Karl Baumgart about to flay him alive.

Jeorg might leave him to die, of course. The thought did occur to him, as he had read one or two travelogues talking about Bulu boys stranded in the desert and left to fend for themselves. Only those who proved their manhood against the desert lived to return.

But this didn’t strike Michael as that sort of test. Besides, Vincent had as good as warned him that Jeorg’s instruction would be odd but harmless. This was either a test of creativity, which would do him no good to obsess over, or a test of desperation - and he was not quite ready to gnaw his leg off at the knee.

So he stood and watched the sun slip behind the towering forest that grew up around them. The fire faded from the treetops, replaced by glimpses of a sky that shaded itself in enticing berry and plum. Lights sprang up in the darker parts of the orchard - not candlelight, but fireflies that danced their crude impression of the river of souls.

He had surrendered, there. Given himself up only to be rejected back into painful mortality once more. Was that what Jeorg meant to evoke, with this imprisonment? Should he simply surrender?

There were no obvious answers, and hours of effort had yielded neither solution nor lesson. Either something new would occur to him, or he would still be thinking when Jeorg returned. All that was left was to stand and enjoy the fireflies and the night, and the smell of the flowers on the breeze.

Was it really surrender? Surrender implied a conflict, an adversary, and there was no sense of that here. The longer he stood, the more he came to think of his immobility as an invitation - to think, to pause, to be still. In fact, Michael found that there was little more he would rather do. For once in his life he had nowhere in particular to be.

So he chose to be where he was.

Some time later, when the stars had crowded thick above him and the last of the fireflies had given up their dance, Michael found Jeorg standing quietly amid the trees. The old man studied him, then gave a smile that was just barely visible in the dark.

“A fool is free,” Jeorg said. “Even in chains.”

Michael laughed, and when his dry throat caught on the laughter Jeorg passed him a waterskin. Michael took it gratefully. The water was cool and sweet, and tasted better in the moment than any wine.

“Free to do anything but move,” Michael said, after swallowing. “I think I take your point, but it will be poor consolation if I find myself trapped in a less-pleasant place than this.”

Jeorg took the waterskin back and drank. “True,” he said. “Mind can only do so much, on its own. Mind frees the soul, soul frees the body.”

“But I can’t use my soul,” Michael pointed out.

Jeorg chuckled and tossed the waterskin - short, so that it landed at his feet. As Michael bent down to retrieve it he saw that the roots trapping him had receded back into the soil. He stretched out his foot gratefully, then gave Jeorg a questioning look.

“One day at a time,” Jeorg said.