CHAPTER 2.11 – LEAVING THORNWOOD: ANUK

Anuk curses as another knot catches her foot, almost trips her.  As she recovers from the stumble she catches Thae’s eye.  The cleric seems troubled and immediately she wonders which exact expletive might have spilled out of her.  She knows she’s been subdued, distracted.  They all have since leaving the traders’ town.  She worries she might have spat out some grievous blasphemy, but that’s not really her style.  Not passively, anyway.  If she were actively seeking to offend some god-botherer, though?

She gives the blonde her best attempt at a smile, mild guilt at her uncharitable label for the faithful.  Immediately, she’s paranoid she’ll stumble again and wonders what new abomination that might invoke?  She shakes her head, tries to re-balance.  But there’ve been too many recent surprises for her comfort.  Too many times her thoughts have led her down paths she’d sooner avoid.  Fuck, even discovering Rian’s surprising depth had pushed her off kilter.  She glances briefly at the big man’s back, envying his ease negotiating the twisted mess of the forest.  Knows she’s risking a fall by doing so.

She could feel guilt that she so misinterpreted the woodsman’s sympathetic gesture at the inn.  Mostly about how heated her response would have been if she hadn’t swallowed it.  Then again, the instinct had proven itself well-founded barely an hour after.  At a fucking town council meeting, of all places.  But even before that, her nerves had been stretched to snapping.  Oh, to be as naïve as Rian or Thae, she thinks.  To be as certain of a place in the world.  To have such confidence in mistaken beliefs, as though existence has a plan.

That way madness lies.

Another bubble of anxiety bursts as she contemplates insanity, experiences sensory feedback as Mirry fills her mind.  That wasted frame imprisoning a teenager, long since lost.  She tries, like the rest of the world, to shake the girl off.  It’s nice for Rian that he gets to live in the ubiquity of his privilege.  That even as a solitary weirdo, he’s presumed to be the leader of their group.  Nice to have Thae’s certainty that the Goddess, fucking capital-S-she, has all this chaos in hand, mapped out.  Madness on a scale of Mirry’s, she thinks.  She hears the disposable girl’s breath an inch from her ear.  Mad Mirry.

Anuk’s world’s always felt impermanent, fragile.  Even before she discovered that the crust of reality was merely a skin, atom-thin.  Mirian Fletcher had fallen straight through, plunged into the lava beneath and been consumed, sanity burned out.  On one level, Anuk’s dragging herself through the forest, trying to focus on her footing.  On another, she’s flattened against the wall, the maddened girl’s rank breath prickling her nostrils.  On yet another, she’s floating inches from a planet-sized ball of lava.  Purple lava.  Yeah.  Poor, mad, Mirry.

She tries to pull away but her treacherous brain offers a restricted menu of alternatives.  ‘Want to avoid the crazed girl with the glowing eyes?  Here’s an elderly woman, violet eyes lit up only when they fall on you?  No?  How about the big man you count as stolid comrade?  That you immediately assumed hid similar intentions?  No?  Maybe…the little man you know looks at you with thirst in his eyes?’

‘None of those appeal?’  The fictional waiter, sarcastic in a manner that’d get him knifed in a cheaper establishment, feigns dismay.  ‘I’m afraid that’s the full range of choices.’  The voice in her head cracks, warps nightmarishly.  ‘Not like there’s anyone else who’s betrayed you with their lust, is there?’  Is that Mirry’s voice?  Or her own, but cracked and torn as though she’s been screaming?  Whatever the provenance, it seeks to spill her, to cause her pain.

The waiter’s a trap.  A fabrication to steer her further into quicksand.  It always cut against her grain when the meal for which she’d paid extravagantly was delivered with a side order of disrespect.  Disdain from some hoity toity arsehole being well paid to ‘serve’ you.  And even in recognising the peril, she’s steered right into it.  ‘For which YOU paid, dear?’  That ‘dear’ sickens her.  Panicked, she diverts away from the tug of the thoughts.

And delivers herself into the foundational betrayal of her life, the ultimate touchy subject to which she’s been driven.  Speak of madness and risk invoking its high priestess. 

Hello mum.

-x-

She’s in her cups.  Of course.  As ever.  Anuk’s too young to have fully mapped the vicissitudes of Aspatria’s moods, but knows enough to be tense, ready to flee.  She’s recently added ‘fun’ to her response set, having managed one time to divert her mother’s anger by reminding her of her own earlier joke.  But she knows it isn’t her strongest strategy.  

She’s way too serious to be ‘fun’.

The judgement’s in her mum’s voice, though less slurred than the original delivery.  But she has to do something, and fast.  Her neck’s starting to prickle as ‘fun mum’ falters but isn’t yet tipping towards sleep.  And flight’s not an option.  The night’s cold and this taproom’s warm.  Need to keep blending as long as possible, duck being thrown out.  ‘Fun’ isn’t the play; even if successful it could bring out ‘frantic mum’.  Singing, dancing on the table and…everything else.

‘Feign interest’, then.  Pat’s speaking, bleary but quiet.  So: lean in like a good girl.  Feed it.

“What’s that, mum?”  For a moment, beautiful blue eyes fix on her and the world feels alive.  Like they’re in a private room, Anuk the only person in her mum’s radiant spotlight.  The din seems to recede.  Then the illusion cracks as the woman hiccups her name.  “An-huk!  ‘S’like ah was say’n…”  But it’s enough.  They’re far from alone at the table, no cover that’d be, but the others are busy with their own drinks, their own struggles.

She still had a kid’s perceptions.  Her mum seemed old, unfeasibly so in the manner of anyone deemed ‘adult’.  Anuk must have been…5, 6 maybe?  Her abandonment to the Brewers not too far in the future.  If she’s that young, Pat must still have been in her 20s.  Adult Anuk’s better at reading the leaves, divining those entrails.  The woman’s still striking, but things are shifting.  The men around them are engrossed in their own lives, undiverted by the fading flower in their midst.

That’s a blade that cuts two ways.  Less attention meant less free drinks, less fuel for Aspatria’s chaos.  Less nights spent in some stranger’s home, usually left to her own devices.  Not forgotten usually meant a worse stay.  But Pat had a talent for capturing interest.  Staying over still meant time out in the cold: if Anuk could rouse her mum, a pre-dawn exit was perfect.  Their ‘host’ would waken later, minus any portable items of value from their home and person.  Morning chills were more tolerable following a night in front of an oven or fire, especially with food nearby.

But less interest meant more nights making do.  They’re usually able to find somewhere to camp out, some stable or hayloft, a more organic warmth.  Anuk was improving at relieving small valuables from unwary drinkers, but it was difficult for her to make up a liveable balance when the establishments allowing them entry were dipping in quality.

“…in the Gods’ laps, it is.  Just like we’re all…”  Child Anuk’s focus returns to her mum, alert that the woman’s voice has taken on an edge.  She calms as she realises she’s not in trouble.  Mummy’s just warming to her topic even as her blears become more pronounced.  There’s a half inch of yellow spirit remaining in her cup, fortunate as it represents the last of their coin.  By the arithmetic of these things, if she can keep Pat talking more than drinking, they’ll be free and clear.  At least up to the point the inkeep spots the mum sleeping on his bench, her child curled up under the table.

The topic, though.  At this age, Anuk hasn’t adopted the vocabulary to properly describe her feelings about the subject.  After all, she was the subject.  Not any real Anuk, though.  Certainly not the young girl sitting up late surrounded by strangers.  The one wishing her mum wouldn’t blow the hour or so they might get to remain in the warm.  Not that Anuk.

The promise of Anuk, instead. 

The pair of syllables has been used in the naming traditions of countless languages, as many simple sounds will.  They had any number of supposed meanings, together or apart.  With a human mother and pointed ears, Anuk’s research first focused on Elvish.  Womanly womanhood, it turned out.  The promise of a treasured daughter (to, presumably, be dropped off at the next hostel) or an obedient wife (no comment).  Nothing to satisfy her, then.  Further research uncovered more nonsense, lacking pattern or theme.

She’d found less than zero support for Aspatria’s rendition of its meaning.  But as a child hungry for significance, some place in the world, Anuk had been seduced by the implied promise of magic.  Of fate’s hand shaping her life.  And only belatedly realised that Pat used the same phrasing, the same structure any time she fell onto the topic.  As though this – lack of – wisdom had been received.  But on that night, the instinct to ‘feign’ had already taken the reins.

As her mother’s head dips, barely a sip left in her cup, Anuk picks up the thread her caretaker let drop.  “…beloved of the Shapers, the governors of truth.  Of all that is created, of sign, of sight, of sooth…”  She’s saying the words in a sing-song, trying to lull her mum into sleep.  Her own gaze is set to the middle distance.  She’s feeling her own exhaustion, some cloudy relief that the taproom’s floor is wood rather than stone.  Not too many clods of dirt where she figures she can curl up without being kicked by oblivious feet.

But her survival sense begins ringing like a bell.  In her peripheral vision Aspatria’s stiffened, fear written over features sharper than they’ve been in months.  Come to think of it, the Brewers weren’t too distant in her future.  Her mum’s decline had been shocking.  The woman’s hunched over, hands clasped protectively to her stomach.  She’s staring at Anuk, who wishes she could cry as her eyes read the horror flaring in her mum’s.

She intuited that the woman wasn’t seeing her, in that moment.  She was somewhere else, some other time.  Anuk, for all she didn’t much resemble her mum, was suddenly placeholder for her talking to herself.  Aspatria having a chat with Pat.  No.  Wrong.  This was Pat dragging Aspatria up to speed.

“We’ve got to go!  We have to go now!  Everything that’s been planned, everything that’s been said was to play us false.”  A pause, shock in the voice: “But they meant it all.”  Scorn again: “Yes!”  The word’s delivered as a hiss.  “But not the way you think, o Mother of the Vessel.”  This title dripping with venom and mockery.  Anuk, startled by the melodrama, recognises the peril.  The men around them are definitely paying attention now, faces puzzled at the one-woman argument.  “It’s okay, it’s okay!” she mutters, reaching to touch mum’s hand, anchor her back to reality.

But Pat’s baiting, and Aspatria’s rising to the fight.  “…can’t just walk away, it’s our...”  Her eyes flash anger, an abusive tone creeping over the urgency.  “Destiny?  Your destiny?  Don’t you mean HIS destiny?  You think this ends with you elevated, with her…”  It seems this is something so troubling that even the furious version of her mum can’t bear to say it.  “Sacrifice, for fuck’s sake!”  This is shouted, and yet her mother’s expression reads as cowed, seemingly as surprised by the outburst as everyone around them.

And as Anuk scans for danger, for attack, her frayed senses jangling, her mum bolts upright.  Hands still clasped to her abdomen.  “She’s a sacrifice, she’s meant to be the sacrifice!”  The woman’s addressing her knotted hands, oblivious that the ferocity of her standing had propelled the bench backwards.  The man on the floor, previously her neighbour, looks in disbelief at the slight woman.  But that won’t last, his face is dripping with his upturned beer, and it’s already reddening with anger.

“I’ve got to get Anuk out of here!”  It’s the last thing the girl hears before her mum sprints away from her, upsetting drinkers and their drinks, the speed of her flight eclipsing her ability to steer. 

Alone, surrounded by strangers, Anuk keenly feels the need to escape.