The tight, forested shore, except for below the embankment the boy sat upon, was fairly shallow and pebble lined. Away in the narrow valley, the creek cascaded in several small waterfalls before bouncing farther down the wooded hillside. There was not a single sound in the woods today, save the voice of the icy stream. The boy could hear, very clearly, his own heartbeat in his ears.
As he sat, contemplating his dangling feet in the limited light of the evening’s winter day, it somehow seemed familiar, as though he’d been here before. He hadn’t, of course, but he believed very firmly that he had dreamed it, down to the very last detail.
The pool itself was nearly five meters across, not too large but deep enough, the boy thought, that he could likely not stand up in the middle. He was long-legged and awkward, his knees and feet still too big for him, and his thin frame was not yet filled in. His shoulders, however, were wide and his torso long, a sign of the man he would one day become.
He took another deep breath, tried to slow the heartbeat that drummed in his ears. His throat felt thicker than he thought it ordinarily should. Peering at the water, he studied it closely, as though he must be supremely familiar with it, and murmured to himself again, “Hold breath, count, control, breathe out, face above water, shallows, crawl, strip, fire, survive.”
It was an odd string of mumblings, and just when a bystander might wonder at the sanity of the boy, he leapt from the snow covered ledge. Down, down he fell, dropping nearly three meters before landing in a deeper part of the pool. Into the water he crashed, and under he went with a cascade of snow, frozen pebbles, and dirt. The smooth sheet of ice was no more, instantly destroyed. Jagged, frozen blades of what remained of it danced on the surface of the water as the boy remained submerged.
When he thrashed to the surface, his eyes were as large as they’d ever been. He was stricken, unable to breath, and his fists beat the surface of the water as though he would sink straightaway. For the greatest span of time it appeared he would not breathe.
Finally, he gasped and cried out hoarsely, “Aaahhgghh!” his cry echoing down the frozen forest valley and off the timbered hillsides. His breathing caught again, and his eyes widened even more, his face turning purple with his effort to draw a breath. But he could not. His lungs refused to obey, for the water had been too cold.
Swimming frantically, he struggled to the edge of the pool but remained in the water, not attempting to crawl out. Instead, he remained squatting only a few feet from the shore. When a gasping, agonizing breath squeaked out past his vocal cords, he cautiously drew yet another painful, pinched breath in. Again, he exhaled only with great effort. It grated from him in an agonizing way, but he drew in another and another, repeating the process several times before he was finally breathing again.
His eyes watered as he counted with a husky voice, “…four, five, six—sweet mother, this hurts—seven, eight…”
When the count approached fifty, the boy crawled from the water, on hands and knees, and scrambled awkwardly to solid ground. Straightaway, he struggled to stand and strip from his clothes. Now, entirely naked, he dropped to the snowy forest floor and counted aloud again as he executed ten push-ups. Then, clawing at the snow at the base of a nearby tree, he exposed and snatched up a few twigs and small branches.
Trembling and unsteady, the boy staggered to his supply sack and pulled from it tinder chips, a handful of dried grass, a small square of char cloth, and his flint and steel. He quickly picked a spot, patting and smoothing the snow flat before forcing his fingers to mold the elements into a small bowl. Then he tucked the char cloth within the bowl and knelt directly on the frozen forest floor. Steam rose from his body, but very soon his skin would be too cold to evaporate the water, and ice would form.
“Short, fast…” the boy’s teeth chattered as he blinked hard, trying to maintain focus on his task.
He clutched the steel in his left hand, gripped the flint in his right…and struck. Nothing. He struck it two more times before a spark flew wide, disappearing into the snow.
“Steeper,” his teeth rattled as he urgently coached himself, and he desperately struck the steel again. The flint flew from his fingers into a small berm of snow, and he dropped his head, panic threatening. “I…can’t! I can’t do this!”
He thought he might cry but didn’t. Slowing his breathing, he tried to focus, scanning furtively to where the tool had disappeared. Plunging his hands into the snow berm, he searched for the flint. Water dripped from his dark hair and froze in tiny icicles as he scuffed at the snow, his fingers finally wrapping around the prize. His fingertips were pallid when he held the flint up, and steam no longer rose from his freezing body.
He knelt again at the edge of the tinder bowl, eyes closed, barely whispering from between blueing lips to himself, “I am Risen. I will overcome. I can do this.” His breathing slowed further, and his hands steadied. He struck the flint once more.
Into the tinder bowl went the spark of steel. It glowed from its perch on the char cloth. Risen’s eyes flew wide, and he leaned near enough to enclose the spark with the puff grass. Breathing softly onto it, his hands trembled terribly as he cupped them around the all of it. Willing his hands to steady, he blew another soft breath across the gently glowing fleck of burning steel.
Smoke curled in a delicate wisp and was swept away in the cold air so fast Risen hardly believed he’d seen it. Another soft breath. In seconds a small flame lapped at the dried grass and tinder—a tiny blaze of life as the spark took hold.
“YES!” the boy cried aloud, and cried again, “Yes!”
He swiftly stacked, criss-cross and in a small peak, the twigs and small branches, being very careful to allow enough air to support the tiny fire. When he was sure it would stay lit, he scavenged briefly for a few larger branches to feed it further. Now, thoroughly numb, he danced in place next to the growing flame as it roared to life. Grasping handfuls of snow, he scrubbed hard his numb arms, belly, thighs, shedding the fine sheet of frozen ice from them as he willed circulation back into his skin.
The numbness was swiftly replaced with pain—a good sign, he knew—and he continued to dance, one foot to the other, next to the fire. When he was steady enough, he went for a nearby log. Brushing the snow from it, he dragged it with some effort close to the fire. Then he went for his clothes and boots. Sitting on the log, he pulled his feet for the first time up and off the ground. With his feet finally out of the snow, he perched naked on the log and went to work. His toes were still a faint blue, and he rubbed one foot and then the next between the palms of his hands, forcing the circulation back into them.
He let the fire scorch his skin as he strung his jacket up on several branches behind himself to create a small canopy of sorts, to trap the warmth from the fire and feed it back onto him as well as break the soft breeze. Next, he trussed his clothes, socks, and boots up close enough to the fire to dry without burning.
Fueling the flames to an angry roar, Risen started to get feeling back in his lips and hands first. Careful not to burn his feet, he rubbed them further until the prickly, tingling feeling showed up. At last, the sensation of warmth returned.
* * *
“Good,” Ravan said, and the mercenary sat down next to his naked and thawing son. Draping a blanket around the shoulders of the boy, he asked, “What did you feel first?”
“Panic. I couldn’t breathe. It closed my throat when I hit the water. I thought I was going to suffocate.”
Risen pulled the blanket beneath his buttocks and tucked his legs up so that he was enshrouded in it, holding the edges of it up at the sides so the front of him was exposed to the warmth of the blaze. The firelight danced across his young features in a beautiful way, and his pale skin turned from an ashen pink back to the amber that it normally was.
Ravan was taken by how much his son resembled someone he once knew, someone who visited him on a lonely night, sat with him in his darkest hour. He tried to focus on the lesson. “That is the greatest ri
sk, my son. You must not panic, must not try to breathe in when this happens.” He gestured with a rolling motion of his hand.” Blow the air out. If you suck your breath in too hard when you cannot breathe, when your throat is closed, it will hurt your chest, and your lungs will suffer. I have seen this happen. Then, it is like drowning all over again, only this time you would not survive.”
“I tried to think about that—breathe out first—tried to remember, and it helped. My throat finally opened, and then I could take the air in. But it hurt. I had to really concentrate. I just wanted to draw the air in so badly!”
“Yes, and then?”
“Pain. It was so painful in the cold! How fast that passed, though, and then I couldn’t feel anything. It made my thoughts…slow, almost sleepy. I was worried, crawling out, that when I stood my feet would just break off. I couldn’t tell if my ankles were working.”
“So you were careful getting out.”
“Yes, very.”
“And if it’d been an ice shelf? If you’d fallen through a lake and had a ways to go before you reached the shore?”
“I would have belly crawled, kept my weight spread across the surface so I wouldn’t break through. Then I would crawl back the direction from which I’d come because I would know that it had already held me once.”
“Excellent.” Ravan stoked the fire for his son. “What did you do next?”
“I tried to get my heart working more, get the blood coursing better, but it was so cold I thought I would fail with the fire.” He met his father’s glance. “I was afraid, Father. I thought I would die.”
“How did you succeed?” Ravan urged his son to recount every step of the harrowing experience.
“I wanted to just give up…thought I would cry,” the boy admitted, glancing at his thawing feet as he rubbed at them again. Then he looked straight at his father. “But then I thought I could…knew I could. I’ve built fire before. I just needed to believe that I could succeed; then just focus and do it.”
“Yes! That is it. You have already overcome in your mind, just make it happen, make it come from your hands.”
Risen beamed. “That is exactly it! I’ve done this so many times before—the fire, I mean—so there was no reason I could not make it real this time!”
“Yes! And the risk is that you are distracted by other things—pain, cold, fear—things that try to thwart your success. Good. Very good.” Ravan pulled from his stores some dried meat and fruits and passed them to his son. “Here, to replace what you’ve spent. Are you warmer now?”
“Oh, very much so. I feel safe now. Even without the blanket, I would be all right until my clothes dried. I know I would. I would just keep my feet out of the snow and turn round and around to stay warm.” Risen reached for the food and grinned, settling in for dinner.
“Yes, and you would be safe from predators. Then you could eventually sleep, build your bed upon the coals and recover, then concentrate on food in the morning.”
There was a quiet span of time when they both just studied the fire, watched the leaping life of warmth and light. It was mesmerizing to the boy. In a while, he asked, “Father?”
“Yes?”
“What if I failed? What if I couldn’t breathe, or couldn’t get out of the pool or start the fire in time?”
“I would have breathed life into you, carried you from the pool, and started the fire.”
“And if you were not here?” Risen wondered aloud what they were both thinking.
“If I were not here, you would have done just as you did today…or not. You might have died.” Ravan could not, would not, lie to his son.
Risen recalled his father saying once, “An ugly truth was always better than a beautiful lie.”
Ravan’s face was lit with a rare smile. “But that is why we do this, so that you will know what to do, how to survive. And you did!”
“Thank you, Father. I am so fortunate to have you as my teacher!”
“A good lesson and an apt student.” Ravan tousled the damp hair of his son, and together they enjoyed the blaze and a good camp before returning home in the morning with grand tales of success for Risen’s mother.
CHAPTER SEVEN
†
It was scarcely light when Risen’s eyes flitted open. It was cold, and the near sleeping boy pulled the blanket more over his ankles. He’d kicked it off in his sleep as he battled St. George’s great dragon again. Moira had warned him that reading the stories would give him dreams such as these.
“Good,” he replied. “Much better than just reading about it!”
Sleep tugged at the boy, coaxing him, begging he turn from the cold of the morning and step back into the sweet warmth of dreams. However, it was not to be. Risen’s eyes shot open, and he bolted upright in bed. It was early, still mostly dark, and the servants had yet to attend the fires. The coals were long dead in the fireplace, and a chill was in his room, but this didn’t matter at all. Nothing could chill the excitement that would burn through his mind this early spring morning.
He blinked again as the fancy of dreams was replaced with the reality of life. The dragon faded, and recollection of what could be filtered into his head. He glanced about his room, allowing his eyes to adjust. Dark shadows danced around him as he flung himself from beneath his blankets. In seconds, the boy was out the room and running half naked down the hall.
Risen barely paused at his sister’s door, squinting to glimpse Niveus as she slept soundly, likely wrapped in dreams of quite another sort. He wondered if he should awaken her, take her with him this morning, and then decided he would not. Instead, he sprinted for the stairs. Down he went, running carelessly, spiraling toward the ground floor of the north tower of the castle. He dressed as he ran and almost toppled from the edge of one stone step, miscalculating it in the near darkness.
The close call slowed him down not one bit. Neither would there be any stopping for morning prayer. Truthfully, he didn’t ascribe completely to the notion of such a thing. His mother had encouraged him to find prayer in the tide of the universe, and so he breathed a thank you to the first glimpse of light as it peaked invitingly, a purple-gold sliver on the horizon through the window slits of the castle tower. Then he crossed himself and thanked a Christian God as he ran on.
Stepping onto the landing and through the heavy door of the tower that would lead to the outdoors, he pulled the icy chill across his teeth, tasting the newness of the morning. It was a magnificent feeling, and he believed it would be an equally magnificent day.
Squinting, he could make out the stables that lay far across the way and on a small rise. The stars were fading against the outline of the peaks of the buildings and castle walls. Pulling his overcoat on as he ran, he headed straight for the barn, running fearlessly across what remained of the winter’s slick, dead grass.
Trees stood here and there in clusters around the castle grounds, their blackened images stark against the bare dawn, fingers yet without spring foliage. The dark haired boy stabbed toward them with his imaginary sword as he ran.
“Get back!” he warned as he bolted beneath their beckoning arms.
The stables were a good stretch across the courtyard; onward he ran. Snow clung desperately to the shadowy recesses beneath shrubs, against walls, and around tree thickets, refusing to give up its final grasp on winter. Risen snatched for a handful of it from a barberry hedge as he ran and swore at the insult the thorns returned him, slapping his hand against his coat to ease the sting after he tossed the snow into his mouth.
The boy could not know for sure but strongly suspected it had happened last night. The stable-master, Leon, told him it likely would. And he was right—it had! A brand new foal had dropped this morning. It was from the mare—one of her last breedings as she was now sixteen years old—and he would soon discover that it was a beauty, a colt as black as the stallion that had sired it but with the mare’s kind eye. And, it was his! Father had promised him!
Yes, Ravan had promised h
im the foal. It would be his to start and bring along, and his mind already raced with the battles the steed would carry him through. It was almost too much for him to bear, and he slipped on the frosty paving stone as he slid unceremoniously into the mouth of the stables entryway in grand style.
“Leon! Leon, where is she?” he called, meaning the mare.
“Whoa! Hold up there, boy!” the stable-master laughed, grasping Risen by the collar as the boy flew by. “It will be of no good to stir up the mare with your antics.” The strong man slowed the boy and swept him up by the waist, carrying him on his hip to the foaling stall.
“It happened! Didn’t it? It’s here! Isn’t it?” Risen could barely contain himself, for he had great plans for this particular horse. No one knew yet—knew what his true intentions were. It was the greatest of secrets, for after he trained it, after it matured and became the most perfect horse ever, he planned on giving it as a gift…to her.
* * *
Ravan looked up from where he’d been leaning, dark head resting on his crossed arms as he watched the newborn foal. A smile creased his lips as he watched Leon release his son. Risen slid in on the light of barely breaking day right up to him—come to see the foal for himself. The boy was so full of life, exuding excitement at every turn. His father nearly laughed outright.
The mercenary’s childhood had not been so kind, had not had the luxury of such a thing as unopposed optimism. His was marred with cruelty and solitude, without the resources Risen had. Bleak survival and death had been familiar to Ravan for as long as he could remember. The only time he’d experienced such freedom as Risen displayed was when he took to the woods, discovered beauty and joy in those rare moments by himself. Even now, he required those short quests to the forest to reset the balance of his soul. It was still a part of who he was. But Nicolette had been a beautiful salve for him, had quieted his tortured heart in a wondrous way.