Red's CD Project Story 2: Part 10 – Need

Note: I was lost in this part for awhile. I knew I needed more interaction between Oan and Nestor to further their relationship, but wasn't sure where to get it. I am having hard time with the Oan character right now, because I think I've made him a little bland and I am having hard time caring about him. Plus, I've started to think up a couple different wrinkles and storylines to run with this that are occupying my mind.

Disc 1
Track 10: Lonely Day – System of a Down

“It’s a day that I’ll never miss”

They wasted another day letting Nestor recover from his fever. Oan felt a one day lost now was better than ten days lost later if the man did not properly rest. Oan ventured out into the Garden of Manta, scavenging anything that could be useful. He caught two Tanta that they ate at midday and in the afternoon he went back to the creek and speared five Anni.

Nestor was awake most of the time, but still terribly pale and at least twice he crawled away to vomit. Oan was anxious to leave even though the thought of returning to the witch made his own stomach turn.

She was a vile, clingy woman with cold hands and toes. He had lived with her for five years after she pulled him from the Belnor and those were days he seldom allowed his memory to dwell on. Madra had a way with him, a cruel, controlling way that confused him as a child and angers him as a man.

Yet part of him loved her. She had saved his young life from certain death. When his lungs were full of water, she pumped them out. When his heart forgot how to beat, she pressed his small chest against her bosom and used hers as a guide. And when life refused to return to his body, she forced a concoction made of things she only knew down his throat as she chanted in the old language a spell lost everywhere else in time.

The price? Only his childhood, his mother, his father, his tribe, all of it paid in full to her for a life burdened with responsibility beyond his wildest dreams. It was her duty to raise him, to teach him, to prepare him for his ultimate fate – the great battle in the fires of the underworld.

She did it all as they roamed across the lands east of the Belnor. She had roamed west of the mighty river, but where and how she crossed she did not show him. He believed there was some magic to it, she certainly possessed or controlled or conjured more than her fair share. How she did magic, he did not know. He asked many times, but she’d giggle and say “how do you talk,” or “how do you know when to sleep,” or his favorite “how do you know when to squat behind a tree.”

The day crept by as his thoughts dwelled on the witch that had sent him to the Aldroubi at ten years old to learn hunting and fighting and other such things that she did not know or, more likely, did not want to teach. She had brought him into the tribe camped along the banks of the Belnor one day. The women fled from her, the men grabbed spears, but she only lifted a hand high above her head in greeting. The men guided her to a tent where the elders held council. She went inside, moments later she came out, kissed him on the forehead and without a word left him. He liked to think it hurt her like a mother losing a son, like how his own mother must have felt when he fell into the Belnor and never returned, but she never glanced back, never visited him. For the second time in his life, he was orphaned and, for the second time, adopted by complete strangers.

In the years that followed, he had nightmares of her. Memories long repressed of her ways of teaching like killing birds and painting their blood upon trees. Once he remembered her leading him into the middle of a thick, wild forest in the deep dark of the night and then vanishing. He had been with her less than a year, but she left him there for several days, alone and scared of every sound, every shadowy movement. He survived, eating what he could find and huddling under a downed tree at night. When she returned, he ran to her and clung to her bosom. She whispered into his ear then, “See now, you need no one,” then even softer, “no one, except me.”

Now as a grown man sitting in front of a fire cooking Anni with a spear, he could almost hear her whispering in his ear again. He felt just as alone then even though Nestor was alert and sitting across from him. Once again, he needed her. This time, he needed her for answers. Who was he? He remembered little from his life before the witch. His mother’s face was a blur that only amounted to the clear memory of the brown curls of her long hair. His had no memory of his father. The swordbearer had said that the witch might know. He did not doubt that. Everything he knew of the witch was that things did not happen to her by chance. He doubted very much that she just happened to be near the day he fell into the Belnor.

“I don’t know where your mind is, but I do know those fish won’t get anymore cooked,” Nestor said.

The Anni were smoking at the end of his spear, their outer skin completely black. He pulled the spear out, the burned fish nearly falling off. He poked at them twice, the outer skin was nearly ash and the insides felt dry and hard.

“These two will be mine,” Oan said.

“Don’t fret on it boy,” Nestor grinned. “When one’s raised in the Sorna, one gets used to everything being dry.”

“Sorry.” Oan handed one of the Anni across before crunching his teeth into the other. They munched as quietly as possible for the next few minutes. When both were done, Oan started to cook the other Anni.

“I’ll be ready to move tomorrow boy,” Nestor said.

“Aye.”

Nestor gauged Oan before continuing.

“What of this witch?”

“We will see.”

“Well, where do we find her? Where does she hail?”

Oan could not help, but grin.

“She hails from no where you and I know. As far as finding her, she has always roamed across this world never staying in one place for very long.”

“Then how do we find her?”

This had occurred to Oan also. There was no way to be sure which direction to head, but something in his head said north. He would not be surprised to find that it was the witch calling him toward her.

“When I was with her, we stopped twice at a cave at the foothills of the mountains. It was the only place that we visited more than once. Inside, there was nothing but bats, but deep inside where light shouldn’t reach there was a door, a wooden door.”

“A door?”

“That’s all I know. She’d tell me nothing of it, but she was drawn to its presence. I can’t deny that there was something about it that even as a child I could not resist. I wanted to open it. I wanted to find a way to peer through the three diamond shaped windows. It was a sacred place.”

“So you think she is there.”

“I know she is. Remember the swordbearer mentioned it. I believe with Salama’s return that the door is some sort of key to this all. I will make her tell us.”

“Can you do that? Make her do something.”

“I can try. I don’t believe she’ll resist, but she will tell what she wants us to know, but her answers will likely be riddles that raise more questions than we had before.”

“Then why go to her?”

Without a thought, Oan answered. He was not one to feel cold, but he shivered remembering that lonely day in the woods as the witch held him. Her whispered words echoed in his ears.

“Because we need her.”