Rose was walking back to the pen with a chicken under each arm. The little shits had gotten loose and of course Sage had insisted it be her job to retrieve them. She didn’t build the shitty pen. He was like that. “Why should it matter who built it?” Nothing mattered to that asshole. Nothing but Rose mastering her talent and forgetting about everything and everyone else. She hated him sometimes, almost as much as she hated her mother. Who she was definitely not supposed to be thinking about, because dwelling on people gave them power over you. Whatever that meant.
She tossed the chickens back into the repaired pen with the other five (she’d done that, too with her talent before he let her go). When she entered the hut it was dark, as usual. Sometimes she had to use the lights from her eyes just to get around. She’d never managed to dim that light, despite Sage insisting it was possible.
He was there, of course. His skin was dark and hung off him like a robe. His hair was long and matted, hanging around him in ropes that reminded Rose of orcs. Why? She’d never seen an orc. He wore coarse woven fabric made from the hair of the goats they kept for milk. She glared at him, but he didn’t say anything. He was in contemplation, it seemed. He was wearing the ring. The metal was black, even though Sage insisted it was gold. His had dark blue gems inset into it. She had one, too, but rarely put it on. It let him contact other people with their talent, sometimes. When they wanted. They were not a chatty group. Sometimes, if he had a question or a lesson he’d sit in meditation wearing the thing for hours till someone else did the same. The ring created a channel but it couldn’t seek anyone out. Other Talents were too secretive for that. Rose only knew of one other Talent that Sage spoke to often, though. She was called Lavender. She lived far to the south. She was a scholar and a historian and sometimes Sage had questions for her, but more often than not their communion ended in a disagreement and it spoiled his mood for the night.
Today it seemed as if nobody was listening. Or maybe he wasn’t really using the thing. She wasn’t quite skilled enough to tell yet. Without using his mouth, Sage said, kill a chicken for dinner. Rose thought she imagined it for a moment.
“A chicken? Like the ones I just brought back?”
Sage cracked one black eye to look at her. We have other kinds of chickens?
“I thought they were just for eggs. I have never seen you eat a chicken, not once!” She was starting to wonder if he was opposed to the idea. She only ever saw him eat cheese and milk and vegetables they grew and sometimes the disgusting bread he made from wild grains.
Sage didn’t answer. She gave him time. Then she felt offended that he didn’t answer and so she left in a huff to choose a bird. But of course when she opened the door to the hut she found herself in the chicken pen. And there were no birds, were there? Just seven very small girls that all looked like her sister.
She sat and cried. It wasn’t a fair trick. He knew it was cruel. Did he hate her? Making all the chickens look like her sister? When she looked up, finally, he stood in the open with her. He seemed taller. More like the orcs now, even though she only remembered him as frail. You know that this isn’t what happened, Rose.
“Isn’t it?! She yelled at the man, though his expression didn’t change and it pissed her off because he was so insufferably calm and sure of himself.
Of course not. For one you’re walking. You were already in the chair when you came to me. She sulked, because he was right. And for another, I can’t create these sorts of illusions. You know that. My powers are more martial. Lavender could have done this, but Lavender was not here.
“You did kill Hester, though!” Sage cocked his head, his ropes of hair swinging on one side.
The chicken, not your sister. It’s not my fault you named a chicken after your sister, Rose.
“But that is why you chose her!”
That is true.
“Because I was too attached to her!”
Your sister or the chicken?
“Fuck you!”
It was both, of course. He looked sad now, for some reason.
“She’s my sister! I don’t care what you say, I’m never going to just forget about her!” Rose planted herself firmly on that hill. No matter how old and wise he seemed, she’d never back down from it.
The old man was still for a while and then he spoke with his voice. Thick and dry from disuse. “When did I suggest you should?”
Rose prepared to yell at him, but when she looked up he was so …. sad. “All the fucking time! ‘The things you love can control you.’ Remember that one?”
“We remember it differently.”
“How the shit can we remember it differently? I am very clearly dreaming here, dumb ass!”
“But that isn’t what I said.”
Rose glared at him. He was right, of course. “The thing you said doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why?” The question was dry again. When was the last time he’d had water? Rose wasn’t sure she remembered ever seeing it. She only really saw him eat that once. The chicken. Raw. Bones and all. She’d assumed it was meant to hurt her.
“Because there’s no such thing as loving someone too much.” The things we love too much control us. That’s what he’d said. It meant nothing.
“And what did I say before you left?”
“You told me to leave the ring, prick! So I couldn’t be traced back to you when I died!” The look he gave was entirely blank now, which seemed appropriate since he was a figment of her imagination, but ….. Shit, now that she’d gotten started telling the truth she couldn’t stop. With a sigh, she leaned back in the chair – when had she gone back to it? – and said, “You told me to come back for it.”
He grinned. “Yes. Because I care for you. Just not so much that it controls me.”
Rose thought about it. “Shit. Because if I got into trouble and I had the ring, you’d have come to bail me out, wouldn’t you?”
“Like you were doing for your mother?”
Rose folded into herself a bit. “But it’s not my mother.”
“No.”
“I will save her.”
“If needs be, yes.”
Rose wanted to wake up, but stopped it, somehow. “I was right about the hair, though. You never were a man.”
The scrawny old orc looked at her with mild surprise. “No, but it wouldn’t have done to let you leave remembering what I really was. Not so close to where my people are from.”
Rose chose to wake, then.
Leave a Reply