†
The Orphanage
Ravan, twelve years before…
The orphanage sat nestled between two hills so that the dirt road into it popped abruptly over the crest of the eastern ridge, giving little notice of an impending visitor. Most of the country was intermittently wooded, but the two hills were bare. Today, their greenness was strangely brilliant against the gloomy, rain sodden sky.
The great house, as it was called, was really just a cottage with a sod and clay roof. It did, however, have an enormous kitchen that the children spent much time in, especially on the coldest of days.
Sometimes, if a child was ill, he or she would spend the entire day snuggled next to the big cook stove because it was always burning. There was a small bed next to the kindling box reserved for sick ones. Sometimes two or three nestled together in the sick bed. When a child left the sick bed, it was not always back into their own bed. Consequently, a small cemetery lay just over the hill, next to the forest, with a smattering of tiny crosses adorned with handmade treasures.
The kitchen had a warmth to it beyond the heat, a warmth from the eternal presence of the small ones. It was here the children gathered for nourishment, for their bodies somewhat but more so for their souls.
Behind the house was the barracks, a sort of dormitory fashioned from an old fowl barn. There were no windows in the barracks; glass was much too expensive. Neither was there any heat source beyond the simple fire chamber at one end. As it seemed the winters were colder lately, the children pressed more clay between the cracks of the building to windproof the little structure.
The modest building had a low roof, and inside there were rows of little beds, each with its own wool or feather blanket. The children gathered the feathers from the fowl houses to make new pillows or blankets. In the summer, they collected thistle down from along the river for the mattresses. When there was a feather shortage, they stuffed the blankets with straw.
The beds were littered with tokens that identified each child—a particularly lovely stone, a piece of sealing wax, a bird’s tail feather. These were taken special care of, in the fashion that only a child can, and proudly displayed, giving the appearance of rows of blessed shrines. Should a child die, the treasures accompanied the child to the gravesite, buried carefully with them or left dangling upon the cross.
Recently, the orphanage was full as the plague had left many young ones. A good third of the population between India and Iceland had succumbed to the Black Death, and the plague recurred at heartless intervals.
Making it to the orphanage did not guarantee a child’s survival. Illness was frequently present and not always survived. However, at the orphanage, dying was accepted as part of the ritual of life, and illness was treated with love and dignity until death arrived or mercifully passed by.
Ravan was aware that his days at the orphanage were numbered. He knew older children were not easily adopted. In truth, no child was easily adopted, but as he was approaching thirteen, his choices were limited. It was possible he would be chosen as an apprentice if he was fortunate or a laborer if he was not. No options were ignored. Change was in the wind, and room must be made.
Times had not been easy in France. With the plague, many were left without sons. Families shifted, died, were restructured. Children were shuffled, abandoned, forgotten—frequently the least of adult concern, it seemed to Ravan. He had seen his fair share of such disregard, and so he was naturally skeptical of the motivation that grownups sometimes had. This was exactly his mindset as he watched closely the stranger and the big woman as they argued with the orphanage’s caretaker, the Old One.
Life at the orphanage had always been meager, but the Old One and his granddaughter had been kind. They’d taught the children how to garden and to keep a small lot of pigs, a flock of chickens, a dairy cow, and a few sheep.
The children quickly fit into the treadmill of survival. Few townspeople interrupted or even noticed the daily comings and goings at the orphanage. It was an island, and few would care or even notice if it were swallowed up altogether.
The children, however, grew to recognize the orphanage as the salvation it was, and each inarguably did their part to survive. The smallest ones tended the few chickens, geese, and guinea fowl and helped with the laundry. The older boys cut wood, repaired fences and roofs, hunted, and fished. The older girls helped cook and tended the larger animals.
They traded milk, when they had it, and pork on rare occasion for other necessities. The smaller orphans clambered after the older ones, eager to learn, eager to help in any way they could, looking up to and admiring their new, older “brothers and sisters.”
All of them worked the rocky soil, growing twisted little turnips and carrots, woefully small cabbages, and onions. They toiled hard to sustain a small oat field and ground the grain for bread and porridge. They would mix the porridge with the dried and ground bone of any and every slaughter.
There was an apple tree, but because apples were a luxury, servants from the nearby town harvested the fruit for the elite. The children collected what few and partially rotted fruit was left behind on the ground and pulped them into sauce. “Why do we have to take the rotted ones,” a small one had once asked. Ravan said nothing, but listened intently.
“Because we must. It is a lot of work to feed the mouths of all of us,” Avon, the Old One’s granddaughter had explained.
Ravan stared at the rotted piece of fruit in his own hand and dropped it to the ground, stepping on it as he left the orchard. It was the first time Ravan was aware they struggled.
There was plenty of work for all, and they led a meager but sustaining life. No scholars, artists, or national diplomats would come from this lot, but love grew in abundance.
In the evenings, especially in winter when the daylight was scarce, the Old One, his granddaughter, and the children would huddle together in the kitchen to tell stories. None of them could read; there was no time for that, and there was no one to teach such things anyway, but stories could be told and retold, and a ritual developed.
Each child was allowed to spin whatever fantastic tale they wished. Sometimes one child would leave off and another would carry on. These moments allowed each one, in his or her way, to escape from the harsh reality of life and flee to wherever they chose.
Ravan did not speak—he only listened. In his mind, however, he spun fabulous stories which placed him in wonderful worlds, far away. He was content and, in his silent way, almost happy.
The older children would naturally help to keep up with the smaller ones. It was family born of casualty; there was no fighting. All had come to the orphanage by tragic means. Each had an unspoken, woeful story, and life had blanketed these young souls with maturity beyond their tender years—maturity born of pain and loss. If one looked deeply enough, it showed sadly in the eyes of each child. However, their circumstances served to bring them together. There occurred an uncommon symbiosis, and to watch it on a daily basis, one might realize the symphony of it.
Ravan lost his mother at the age of five. His four sisters had been taken elsewhere to work, or so he now told himself. He'd never seen them again and knew by the expression in the Old One’s eyes that he mustn’t ask, for they were not to be found.
He had been the youngest, with no father, at least none that he knew of. His mother struggled to sustain her remaining children, turning to that oldest of professions when there was no other choice. Ravan’s last memory of his family was of an old man lifting him from his mother’s breast with him to weak to grasp for her, to frail to deny her death. She had taken on the Black Death, the horrid wounds appearing around her armpits, throat and groin. Finally, she lost her life’s blood as it flowed oily and black from her.
When she died, Ravan lapsed into the deepest of despairs, and the few who noticed were certain he would also die, but no one cared. There was no plan for the misbegotten pup of the dead whore.
Subconsciously, he'd resigned himself to his fate as well and weakened as the days went by. His frail young body, with its ancient soul, waiting for the moment when he would leave the wretched earth. Then he would finally be reunited with his beautiful mother, surely the fairest and most loving creature who’d ever walked upon the earth.
His sisters were gone, and he didn’t even know where. They had simply disappeared.
Ravan was, for the first time in his life, alone.
Seven Years Earlier…
The Old One made his way along the small village in a tiny, two wheel ox cart. Harnessed to the cart was an aged, swaybacked gelding—short but stocky, a plain, flea-bitten gray. It hobbled along with a limping, shuffling gait, a lameness left over from the time it had foundered after getting into the barley crib. It was obedient and stepped carefully, winding its way along in and out of the carnage.
Bodies were stacked outside of homes, along the muddy gutters, and in alleyways. The plague had swept through with particular madness this time, and there were not enough living to tend to those who were not.
The Old One encouraged the gelding along, clucking softly as they snaked their way deeper into the village. There was nearly no wind today, and smoke settled thick across the town giving the entire landscape an otherworldly appearance. It also reeked, and the Old One lifted his shift to cover his nose. “There’s a good fellow,” he murmured to his horse again, because he felt bad for the little animal that his keen sense of smell should be so assaulted with the rotting town.
Glancing at each building, he studied the doors, looked for the marks. There were the black crosses, etched in charcoal, but all had a swath of red paint across them. Onward they trudged, and no one noticed. Twelve small hovels in the Old One saw it, the charcoal mark that identified those within. There was no red slash yet. Someone lived…but not for long.
He pulled the pony up and struggled to extricate himself from the cart. Slipping the bit from the animal’s mouth, he secured a small bag of grain. “For you, old friend. I can’t say how long I might be.” He patted his horse and tied the halter lead to a torch post. Then the Old One went in.
It was dark, the candle within had expired long ago, and even though it was midday, there were few windows to allow much light into the shanty home. He could hear the labored breathing of someone who suffered. Pulling from his pocket a candle and tinder box, he held the wick to the dying ash until it lit. The single flame was a beacon in the darkness.
Lifting the candle, he could make out the low bed in the corner of a nearly bare room. The scarcely living remains of a woman opened her eyes, struggled to focus on the Old One. Across her chest lay a dark haired child, perhaps five years old, his head turned away. The mother breathed with great difficulty, only able to move her eyes, but she was finally able to focus on the orphanage keeper.
Moving closer, the old man took a seat on the only chair in the room, sliding the rickety piece of furniture closer so that he was right next to the bed. It was awful, as it always. The wounds were significant by now, the black purulence running from them onto the mat of the bed and dripping through and onto the floor.
He took her hand in both his, and in this way sat, saying nothing, allowed the quiet drama to unfold as it would. Her gaze held his eyes for a moment, seemed finally at peace as though she knew—knew the Old One would care for her son when she was gone.
The minutes bled into hours, and still the candle burned. Never once did the child move, so intent on his grasp of his mother. Finally, the shallow rise and fall of her chest began to diminish, and her eyes had been closed a long time when they suddenly opened. Her lips mouthed a word the Old One could not hear.
He leaned closer, concentrated very hard on what she meant to say. Finally, a whisper met his ears and a singular word escaped—a name. “Ravan,” she whispered so quiet that it might have been the voice of a ghost. The boy turned his head, still resting it on her chest, and with his hand reached up to touch the cheek of his mother. Then, she breathed no more.
There was no sound. There was no wailing risen from the child, no renting of hair, no pounding of fists. The boy simply went limp as though with her she’d taken the last of his strength. The Old One pushed back the chair, gently extricated the child from where he lay, and lifted the frail body of the child called Ravan from his death bed. It was like lifting a skeleton, the child had been without for so long. Cradling him almost as one would a baby, he carried him, wrapped in a worn fleece, to the small ox cart.
Laying the child across the driver boards, he bridled the horse and took up the reins. The gelding nickered softly as the old man rubbed his hand along the animal’s back and withers, checking that the harness lay proper before their long trek home. Stepping onto the cart, the Old One lifted the child, resting Ravan across his lap. The boy’s head flopped back weakly across the elbow of his arm, eyes staring unseeing at the sodden sky.
Back through the town they went, back between the stacks of corpses, out of the smoky hovel of death. The pony plodded instinctively along the rutted, muddy roads, reins dangling loosely in the harness guides, heading for home. There a happy shelter and the loving hands of the orphans would again care for him as though he was a fine steed.
The Old One continued to hold the orphan gently in his arms, cushioning him from the bumps in the road and shielding him from the intermittent rain with his own body. Sometimes he whispered to the boy, sometimes he spoke gently to the horse, and then he would hum softly to both of them.
The miles faded slowly away, and the three were unnoticed by anyone who might pass. Past the Two Fish Inn they went and still didn’t stop. Across the expanse of forested countryside they wound, and when it was dark, the Old One slept in the cart, hugging the child tightly to his chest as he did.
Two days later, they arrived back at the orphanage. The child was an emaciated skeleton, a victim of terminal despair. The Old One knew, however, that if God existed it was in the souls of small ones such as this. Over the years he’d seen society ignore the importance of the orphans, for they were expendable. Not to him, however. To him, this child was as important as any king.
The Old One sat with Ravan for three days, cradling him in his arms and singing softly to him. He stroked the dark, unruly locks, brushed his lips against the forehead of the child to make certain the fever was not excessive, and sponged his frail body when it was.
At intervals, he eased broth and carrot mush sweetened with wild honey between the boy’s lips, encouraging his wasted body to live. Avon, his granddaughter, spelled her grandfather, and the hours turned into days.
Ravan lived, nourished from the broth a small bit but nourished from the love of the Old One a great deal. Ultimately, his soul could not find the freedom to flee from earth when another cared so deeply for him. Slowly returned from death’s beckoning call, he slipped back to the world of the living.
As time went by, the Old One worried for this mysterious child, for he remained silent almost four years. In his silence, the boy was an enigma, answering only to the old man that hobbled about the orphanage. The child was obedient to Avon, for she were always kind to him, but he would seek only the Old One when he needed the companionship of another—which was seldom.
The other children of the orphanage, in their merciful ways, accepted the silent one, never urging a change or invading his private, unspoken realm.
All of God’s creatures have their demons; some were more apparent than others. At the orphanage, all were granted a special gift in that no one judged another. Simone ate next to nothing, even when there was plenty. Edgard chewed his nails to the bloody quick. Radouin pulled tufts of his own hair out by the roots, and Ravan…did not speak.
During the unraveling eternity of summer days, when there were rare moments of abandon, the children cavorted. Ravan preferred to tend to his chores, instinctively knowing what was expected, what was to be done, never having to be asked to do it. Afterwards, though, he would inevitably seek his own solace.
Sometimes, when the work was done and the afternoon quiet, he could be found down in the meadow floating twigs in the stream. Lying on his side on the mossy bank, he would watch as, one by one, the ripples lapped their silvery tongues over the little brown stems, bobbing them off to somewhere fantastic and far away. When the others came upon him, they left him alone, and Ravan preferred it this way.
One spring, the Old One taught him to fish, and Ravan became an unexpected and excellent provider, even in the winter months. This was a gift very warmly welcomed at the tables and in their bellies.
Once, Ravan accidentally slipped from a snowy bank and landed in the creek. It was a treacherous jog home that night; Ravan kept running so that he wouldn’t freeze. When he finally crashed into the kitchen, icicles hung from his frozen clothing, but he smiled broadly with hands outstretched and a small stringer of fish to show for it all. Ravan was ill for a short span as a result of the chill. It was afterwards that he learned how to build fire with a bow drill and always had his precious bow string with him.
Eventually, he learned to hunt, but it was not the addled tripping after a doe or wild boar, perhaps taking it with the luck of hounds. Ravan was a predator. No creature was safe once the boy caught its trail, determined to catch his prey. It was uncanny, and the Old One watched as the predacious instincts of the child matured—an unnatural, wild, and frightening gift.
With an uneasy apprehension, the Old One marveled as Ravan became a consummate killer. He also carefully guarded the skills of the boy lest the sportsmen of the town become curious of his unusual gift. Few men hunted with the flawless fatality of this silent child. There was seldom a morning when he left the orphanage, bow and arrows in hand, that he did not return with game.
Sometimes it was rabbit, sometimes pheasant, but it was always a source of amazement and unsettled mystery to the Old One. He would watch, some wintry evenings, from the cracked doorway to see the small form of the child struggling to drag the body of a great stag from the edge of the woods toward the cottage, killed by a single arrow to the heart.
Ravan never killed more than the orphanage required, taking careful stock of their supply and demand. They cured salt hams, smoked roasts and sausage links, and dried jerky from everything he brought back. Meat became abundant, and the children were, for the most part, robustly well fed. In the summer, Avon and some of the older children took extra sausages to town to sell at the market. It was a blessed time of plenty, even in the long winters.
When the dark child finally spoke, it was quietly and infrequently, and now, at twelve years of age, the Old One knew that Ravan should soon make his own way in the world.
These were his thoughts as he stood arguing with the Innkeeper and the Fat Wife. They were offering a warm hearth and apprenticeship for the boy. Ravan would learn the ways of the Inn and would be well kept, the big man promised, his Fat Wife nodding in assurance. They had no children of their own and were in need of a young, strong arm around the Inn.
The Old One knew of the Inn, had passed it that cold, rainy afternoon long ago when he’d cradled the dying child in his arms. He knew it to be a fine establishment, much better than most lodgings in most small towns. Elite travelers preferred the dwelling, and it made a decent coin. Even so, he must be assured that Ravan would be well cared for, never hungry, and given ample opportunity to steal away to the forest that was so important to him. The Innkeeper nodded that he would.
Clasping and unclasping his gnarled hands, the Old One struggled. He knew that this would be an opportunity for the child to learn a fair trade, perhaps even to learn how to read and write. It was a bold step into the world. The Old One realized how important this was. He believed that each child deserved such an opportunity; after all, maybe one day the boy would grow into a man who would help the orphanage because of the wondrous things he'd learned.
Nevertheless, the Old One found it hard to part with the boy. Ravan’s brooding silence and dark eyes had worked their way into his heart, and when that quiet, rare smile crept across the child’s face, it was a thing of great beauty.
The Old One knew the mischief and joy that was hidden somewhere underneath the lonely shell and held a warm kinship for the lanky child. He was fond of Ravan and didn’t realize how much he'd come to depend upon the quiet presence of this particular orphan. Just having him close by as he tended the orphanage was a great comfort to the Old One.
He worried for the boy as well. There was one cold November evening when the boar pig attacked one of the children. The girl slipped from the fence into the reach of the tremendous, tusked beast. The monster pig seriously mangled the child’s leg and ripped an ear from the side of her head before Ravan was able to pull her from between the slats of the pen.
Bludgeoning the snout of the boar with his bare fists, he finally caused it to release its teeth from the girl’s limb. She’d bled so much that for a fortnight it was dubious whether she would survive at all.
After the boar’s attack, Ravan went mysteriously missing, though no one noticed his absence with all the commotion surrounding the injured girl. The Old One eventually left the crippled child’s bed, hopeful that she would survive. He was mortified when he found the boy crouched in the corner of the pigsty, a blood drenched plowshare fragment clutched in his hands. The boar, three times the size of the boy, was unrecognizable, a butchered mass in the boggy muck.
It disturbed the old man that the act of killing had gone beyond death, for there remained no recognizable shred of evidence of the animal’s species—the act had been so violent. All Ravan could whisper was, “It shouldn’t have hurt her,” and then, for a good long while, he again ceased to speak.
This was the one and only manifestation of this kind the Old One ever witnessed. This was not hunting, and it went beyond fundamental protection. This was the first and only time he’d seen Ravan kill.
He told no one but coaxed Ravan from the sty and washed him off in the butcher shack, away from the house. Wrapping the boy in a blanket, he went for clean clothes and burned the bloodied ones. No one else ever knew—it remained their secret—and the Old One wondered if the boy recognized the gravity of what he had done.
There were also those other rare moments when he looked into the shadowy eyes of the boy and did not see a child, but a man, dark and brooding. As the mystery of ages seemed to be gazing back at him, he wondered at the depths of the child’s thoughts—wondered where his mind went when the child looked so lost and far away.
Most of the time, however, he was overwhelmed with the innocence of the boy. He would watch Ravan scamper up the hill with his bow in hand, his quiver of arrows clattering against his thin frame, pausing to wave at him before disappearing into the woods. As of late, his treks into the woods had become longer, and the child might even be gone for several days at a time before returning.
Now the Old One frowned as the Innkeeper pitched his sale. The big man was determined to have his way.
Ravan had always been quiet, gentle, and fiercely protective of the other children at the orphanage. It was his sanctuary—his safe haven—and to let him go was to free a dove into a hurricane. He sighed and glanced at the mangers where he knew the boy sneakily spied out at them and saw the dark head disappear, darting out of sight.
The boy peered again from behind the wooden slats, squatting comically back on his heels to shrink his frame as though this would prevent him from being seen. His charcoal eyes glistened hungrily from beneath a smudged and disheveled face. He chewed straw, sucking from it the sweetness and spitting the fiber out only when it became so fine as to cut the side of his tongue.
The Old One smiled inwardly. To him, the children were the one pure thing, the one goodness in a bleak world. Ravan had worked his way secretly and profoundly into a special corner of his heart.
This made the decision difficult. He knew the boy found a purpose and, more critically, acceptance amongst the other orphans, surely identifying his own worth with how much he helped to provide for them all.
A decision must be made, however, and he was convinced that each child should be given the chance to fly, to venture into the majesty of the world, good or bad. This was Ravan’s chance. For this reason, he ultimately acquiesced to the wishes of the Innkeeper and the Fat Wife.
A mere half an hour later, the Old One wiped a tear from his eye, his hand raised in goodbye—but the child never looked back. He watched until the carriage bobbed, eventually vanishing from sight. Standing for a lost amount of time, he finally turned and hobbled away to tend those who remained.
* * *
Ravan left the orphanage that chilly afternoon with two sets of clothes, his bow and quiver of arrows, his fire cord, and a copper ring, the one the Old One had fashioned for him one bygone Christmas. He quietly twisted the ring round and around on his finger as was his habit when he was unhappy.
In his boot leggings another treasure lay hidden, one which no one knew about. It was the knife he’d fashioned long ago from the broken plowshare he used on the killer boar. Ravan had taken the plowshare to the woods and hammered the steel into a blade with a river-hardened stone. He’d built a fire by the river, and after heating and reheating the metal repeatedly for many hours, over several days, he created the courage of the blade. It glowed red and angry with life, and Ravan stared into the beauty of it for a good long while.
Later, he took the blade to the mill wheel in the barn, ground it coarse, and carefully honed it to a smooth edge with the chalkstone he'd found along the cliffs. Then, using an old leather harness strap, he meticulously buffed the blade to razor sharpness.
Finally, the boy seated the blade by hammering its shaft into the burned out marrow of a magnificent antler tine. The antler smoked and burned, a sweet glue smell, as Ravan heated the poker and seared out the core.
In his hand, when his task was complete, he held a thing of elegant and deadly beauty. It was a weapon which would cleave a cloth laid across it simply by the weight of the fabric—it was that sharp.
Little did Ravan know that metal smiths in Asia had suffered years to craft such a weapon. It was a gift to be able to create such a work of art. Born of him, it was fashioned from his soul, and now it lay carefully wrapped in oilcloth. He felt the familiar heaviness against his calf as he sat swaying in the carriage, little boy with his bow between his knees.
Ravan did not look back but went in submissive silence as the carriage ascended from the small valley and slowly disappeared along the crest of the eastern hills. His dark head was bowed as he turned the copper ring round and around upon his finger.