Chapter 4
The Cursed One

 

He was seven years old when he had been sent to the mansion of the Lordship. He was too small and skinny to do physical work, he couldn't steal or run fast, he was good for nothing but ministering.

Trond was a tall, broad-shouldered Mongrel who commanded the entire service. Darren remembered the feeling of helpless terror as the man had been standing over him and judging his suitability for the job as judging a young piglet before sending it to fatten.

"What is this? I've asked for a strong, healthy boy, not some starving rat. He can't even lift a bucket of water."

Samuel - who lived in the same orphanage as Darren and had been working in the manor for three years already - shrugged. "Father Theosius told me to bring him."

"He probably wasn't good for anything else," the man snorted, grabbing Darren by the hair and lifting his face to get a better look at him. "Why does he have such eyes? What trick is that?"

"He's just a freak of nature. He's harmless, sir. Please accept him. Father Theosius is going to beat me if I come back with him. Nobody wants to hire him because of those eyes," Samuel replied.

"I'm not surprised. This is the mark of the Evil One. Why didn't they drown him after he was born?"

Samuel shrugged again. "I don't know, sir"

"What do you need these gloves for, huh?" growled Trond, pointing to the dark cloth wrapping the boy's tiny hands. "Maybe you're hiding some nasty sickness underneath them, huh? Show me your hands, now!"

Darren instinctively hid his hands behind the back.

"I'm not allowed to take them off," he moaned softly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the angry gaze of the man returned to Samuel.

"He's been wearing them for as long as I can remember. Father Theosius commanded to convey that he must not take them off under any circumstances, but other than that, he's fine. Please give him a chance. If he won't be good at work, you will throw him out, but then Father Theosius will not punish me but him instead."

Darren felt like an eternity before the man's thick fingers finally let go of his hair, and a thunderous voice announced that he was being accepted for a week on probation.

His main task was to light fireplaces and remove soot from them. The mansion turned out to be the largest building Darren had ever seen and been into. Before he could finally learn the arrangement of the corridors and passages, he got lost several times and wandered into places where he was not allowed to be, which he was beaten with a twig for.

The Lordships didn't want any contact with the servants, so Darren had to learn the exact schedule of the day and move around the mansion in such a way that no one would see him. It was not particularly difficult. He was usually all black with soot anyway, so it was enough that he hid in some dark corner whenever he noticed even a shadow of a satin gown or heard the clack of the leather hunting boots.

Though the children's curiosity was stronger than the prohibition. One day he wandered into a room he had never been in before. The room was huge and instead of walls, it had endless shelves with strange rectangular things full of incomprehensible characters.

Darren put down the bucket of soot on the floor and slowly moved between the shelves. He wiped his gloves on his torn pants, leaving an even thicker layer of soot on them, and reached for one of those weird things. It consisted of paper, marked with patterns and characters, but as he flipped through a few pages, something wonderful appeared to his eyes - a colorful picture of a beautiful girl in a blue-green, airy dress, filled with green and saturated colors of the flowers.

Darren didn't know who the girl in the picture was, but that's how he imagined the water fairies one of the boys in the asylum was telling about. A few pages further was another picture that looked very much like a black fiend that lurks behind the travelers and attacks them when they turn into the wrong road fork.

Darren was staring at the pictures with unbridled delight. He's never seen anything like this.

"Who are you?"

The question was so unexpected that Darren flinched, dropping the thing to the floor and staring in horror at the boy who was standing behind him. The boy had lush blond curls, eyes like a cloudless blue sky, and he might've been a very similar age to Darren.

"I-I--" Darren stuttered, too surprised and scared to give a consistent answer.

"I know," the boy said suddenly, smiling wildly. "You're an elf! Mom says that the elves are working in our house and that we cannot see them because they might run away... but you're not running away. Are you an elf?"

"Er..." Darren swallowed, completely taken aback by this theory. "I don't know. Am I?"

"You don't look like an elf," the boy said, tilting his head slightly to look at Darren critically. "In the pictures in the books, the elves have pointed ears and red caps. Look!" The boy pulled a huge thing he called book from under his arm, put it down on the floor, and showed Darren the picture.

"How pretty," Darren said softly, reaching out and running the tips of his gloves over the colored page.

"Why do you wear the gloves?" the boy asked, looking at Darren with a frown. "I've never heard of the elves wearing gloves."

"I don't know," Darren replied softly. "I've been wearing them for as long as I can remember."

"Why do you have such strange eyes?"

Darren pursed his lips. He was already tired of these questions. "I have to go. They're gonna be looking for me."

"What's your name? I'm Aiden."

Darren looked at the small hand reached out in his direction. This boy was a Hyacinthe. Darren shouldn't be talking to him, he shouldn't even be looking at him, but... he was the first person who was so kind to him.

"I'm Darren," he replied softly, shaking the boy's hand.

"Aiden, where are you? Come here!" He heard a high-pitched female voice.

"I'm coming!" the boy shouted back. "That's Madame Trissin. She's my governess. Mom says I shouldn't treat her in a worse way, just because she's an Emeralde, but she has such terrible carrot hair!" Aiden started chuckling as if this woman's hair color was something very funny. "I'll be here at the same time tomorrow. Will you come to visit me? We can play together."

Darren was staring at the boy as if he was speaking a completely foreign language.

Play? With a Hyacinthe? How? The only play he knew was catching frogs in the wetlands. Nobody ever wanted to play with him because of his eyes. Unless throwing stones at him could be considered as having fun. Well, it was definitely fun for them.

He agreed to Hyacinthe's offer. He couldn't refuse. He wanted to know this new world. He wanted to understand what the characters filling the pages of the books mean and what stories are behind these pictures, and how Aiden could read such wonderful things from these strange lines.

He knew when the boy had lessons, so whenever he found time and opportunity, he sneaked into the library - it was the name of this wonderful place - and in the deepest corner of the enormous room he filled his senses with the scent of books and stories hidden in them, which Aiden read aloud. When the governess was busy preparing the next lesson and little Hyacinthe could play between the bookshelves and read more books, he was sneaking into the appointed corner and bringing Darren new sensations.

"Look, this is an A. It looks like a house. A for Aiden," the blue eyes smiled. "It's very simple. And this is a B. It looks like a very fat man. Our caretaker is also thaaaaaat fat, he looks like he's got two bellies!"

Darren was staring into these smiling eyes and absorbing their childish affection, feeding himself with it like a flower withering in a desert. He wanted to know more, to get to know this new, unknown, exciting world even more. He asked the little Hyacinthe to explain him the meaning of each letter, then he began to discover connections between them, put individual letters into words and then into sentences.

He was fulfilling all his duties perfectly and quickly, thanks to which Trond accepted him permanently. Though he had to be extremely careful. If anyone finds out that he's spending time in the library with the son of the Lordship, he couldn't even imagine what they could do to him. Fortunately, Aiden still considered him as an elf and kept their relationship a secret, considering it an extremely exciting adventure.

"Do something elfish!" the little Hyacinthe was pleading while Darren painstakingly was practicing drawing letters in the dust.

"I can't."

"Hmmm, I think you must be a house elf. Mum says that they make a fire in the fireplaces, and the bedding is always fresh and fragrant because of them."

"Those are elfish tricks too," Darren replied, smiling as he came out with an almost perfect Y - like a slingshot, but without the band.

Reading was easier than writing. Reading let him know all these wonderful stories. Like the one about Luciss and Tenebrae and their descendant Ballie who started the war; about the born of the Cursed Ones and the White Crows; about how they fought each other until the Cursed Ones extinct and the White Crows started ruling the world - but it all happened so long ago that Darren would've had to live a hundred times to see it all with his own eyes. He could only look at the pictures in the books, and absorb them with delight into his crystal eyes.

"I know some tricks too. Look!" Darren was watching Aiden trying to do a handstands and somersaults, laughing when he went wrong. He was listening when the boy was reading to him stories of the other worlds Darren had never been to, stories about the land of volcanoes beyond the ocean, vast seas of sand far beyond the tops of the Helonian Mountains. He was smiling when Aiden was speaking to him like no one else before in his short seven-year-old life.

"I'm glad you're here. I'd be very sad if you weren't here. My mom just keeps telling me to study, and Madame Trissin is so terribly boring that sometimes I imagine her head turning into a carrot and the leaves growing out of it, and I am about to laugh at her so much."

When Darren thought the gods had finally decided to give him a little favor, soon he found them much crueler than he could've ever imagined.

He was sitting on the library floor, waiting for Aiden to finish lessons and reading the story about the three brothers who found the magic bow, when he heard footsteps on the other side of the bookshelf.

He jerked his head up, listening carefully and preparing to run away immediately, but the steps stopped. Darren closed the book carefully and crouched down, staring intently at the space between the bookshelves. He hadn't seen anyone between them yet, but he was sure someone was there. He had had to run away from the library several times before, when one of the householders had come to pick up a book.

After a moment, the footsteps began to shuffle again, heading to the left side of the bookcase. Darren left the book on the floor and tiptoed to the right, then turned left and ran behind another bookcase. He stopped to listen, staring at the left end of the bookcase like a falcon. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He hoped that the person to whom the steps belonged would go between the shelves and wouldn't continue walking along them, because then Darren would be noticed for sure. He withdrew to the fork, glancing cautiously in both directions when suddenly he heard a joyful voice behind him.

"Oh! Here you are! I couldn't find you!"

Darren turned sharply toward Aiden, his heart sinking to his stomach. He put a finger to his lips, trying to silence him, but in the depths of his fluttering pitiful heart, he knew it was too late. The person following him had already heard it. Darren looked around desperately and saw Trond emerging from behind the bookcase.

The expression on the man's face when he saw Darren standing right next to the son of the Lordship instantly changed from shocked to murderous.

"What are you doing here?" the big Mongrel roared, moving toward the boys like an angry bull. "Get away from the master immediately!"

Darren had the terrible feeling as if the floor was shedding beneath his feet, and all the bookshelves and books he hadn't read yet, worlds he had yet to discover was falling into a widening gap in the ground.

"So that's where you've been hiding when you weren't where I told you to be. Do you think I haven't noticed that you keep disappearing somewhere? Do you think your idleness would've escape my attention?" the approaching man growled.

Darren backed away, trying to run, but terror glued his feet to the floor. He was unable to move. He was unable to utter his voice when he was watching the massive man relentlessly approaching him, hands of the size of a shovel reaching out for him.

Everything happened so fast. A huge hand grabbed his shirt and began to pull him toward the exit. He was hearing the thunderous voice of a man drilling into his mind the visions of a merciless birch that would turn his back to a bloody mush and never let him set foot in this mansion again, he was seeing Aiden's blue eyes opened with terror, while Darren was struggling in the man's grip and trying to free himself. With a fierce scream, he lunged forward hearing his shirt tear apart, freeing him and he tried to run away, but a firm grip on his hand held him in place. He yanked out his hand, leaving the glove in the man's fingers, but he did it too abruptly, he lost his balance, and fell to the floor. He tried to get up, kicking with his legs and running away on all fours, but at the same moment, he felt a powerful grip on his waist that lifted him off the ground and began to pull him back. He was screaming, jerking, and kicking, but the man was too strong.

"What's going on here?" Behind shocked Aiden, his governess appeared. "Oh, by the gods, what is the meaning of this? What is this little Mongrel doing here? How could you let him in? Get him out of here immediately!"

"But he's my friend," Aiden groaned, staring at the woman with a stern gaze. "Tell this man to let him go. I don't want him to take him away."

"Honey, it's only a Mongrel. They can't come in here. They spread lice and other diseases. We should get rid of him as soon as possible."

"But I don't want to! He was playing with me!"

"Playing?" The governess made a face as if she suddenly felt a terrible stench under her nose. The woman shifted her angry gaze to jerking Darren and to Trond who was gripping him hard and waiting for the orders. "Get him out of here immediately! And get rid of him as soon as possible!"

"No!!!" Darren screamed and struggled even more, trying in vain to free himself from the crushing grip of the powerful man. He saw Aiden start to running toward him.

"No! Let him go! I order you! I'll tell my dad about everything and they'll throw you out of here!"

Darren held out his bare hand to him. Aiden gripped his hand tightly, and at the same moment, Darren felt as if his skin had suddenly heated up to the temperature of a burning coal stove. The paralyzing heat streamed down his arm and exploded in his hand that gripped tightly the tiny hand of Aiden who was trying to help him. A red light flickered in Darren's eyes, and the air filled with the fire, smoke, and the scream of suffering that was crushing all senses. Huge arms released the grip and Darren fell to the floor, blinking in surprise and watching with horror as Aiden's hand turned black and his body burst into flames. The screams of the governess and Trond mingled with the childish scream of the boy who was tossing, trying to escape from the flames devouring his blond curls and pale skin. He crashed into one of the bookshelves, setting the books on fire, and Darren was watching in disbelief as the entire bookcase took fire.

He couldn't remember anything anymore. Only his heavy harsh breathing as he backed off on all fours, while the two adults were trying to save the boy from burning alive by throwing their clothes over him. Thick, acrid smoke filled the room like storm clouds, seeping up into the throat and obstructing breathing. The fire grew ever more powerful, engulfing bookshelf after bookshelf and sending the rain of burning paper into the air - the black rain which was slowly falling on Darren's shoulders.
He didn't know how he'd managed to get away from there. When he regained his senses, he was running as fast as he could through the corridors of the manor, past the guards and servants alarmed by the fire. He ran into one of the storage rooms where the buckets and brushes he used to clean the fireplaces were been kept, and collapsed to the floor, looking at his trembling, sooty hands with teary eyes.

How did he do it? How could such a thing happen? His hand... his own hand...

He pursed his lips, trembling like he was in a fever, and felt hot tears streaming down his cheeks. His throat was so tight and searing as if he had swallowed a hot lump of coal that made him breathless and burned his esophagus with bitter guilt.

How it could have happened? How is it possible that his skin reacted that way? How could his hand hurt in such a terrible way the only person who was nice to him? Why had no one warned him? Why had no one ever told him why he had to wear those damn gloves? After all, he had touched Mongrels many times before and nothing like that had happened! So many times, they had grabbed him and had taken his gloves off, and he'd never burned anyone, even though at that moment he'd been hating them the most in the world!

He didn't... He didn't want to do it... Why did it happen? Why?

At one point, shouts in the corridor broke into his maddeningly spinning world of thoughts.

"Look for him! It's skinny little Mongrel! He can be identified by his eyes! He's the one who did it! We have to find him as soon as possible! That's an order!"

The patter of the feet of the guards running down the corridor faded away. Darren was sitting on the floor of the dark cupboard for a moment, feeling as if he was in some kind of dream.

They're looking for him, and when they find him... An icy shiver ran through his body.

He needs get out of here. As soon as possible!

Cautiously he opened the cupboard door and looked around the corridor. The smoke of the burning library penetrated all the way here, floating in the air like ribbons of the dead books' souls.

During these three months of work here, he learned about all the secret passages and hidden stairs throughout the manor. No one noticed the tiny dark silhouette sliding between the dark corners of the corridors. He left the manor through a small doorway for servants and, hiding in tall bushes of raspberries and blackberries, he made his way to the fence, and then outside the estate.

When he was sure that he was far enough from the manor and that he was protected by a birch grove, he began to run. He was running as fast as he could, ignoring the weeds clinging to his clothes and the tall grasses, trying to escape from the relentless recollection of the terrible scream of Aiden burning alive and from the image of a small hand charred up to the elbow - the hand that only tried to help him.

After a few miles, he fell breathless into the grass, pressing his hands to the ears to stop hearing that scream, only for a moment. Let the scream disappear and the memories stop penetrating beneath his eyelids like a light too bright to stand it. Let the flames stop consuming the blond curls and the pages filled with letters, so he can finally wake up! Even if he had to live another day of climbing inside the chimney and inhaling soot into his lungs, even if Trond would be pushing him again and calling him slack, even if he had to carry buckets of wet wood and tar-black coal to the top floor all day long, feeling his bones creak with exertion and the knees buckle under him. Even if he would never see Aiden or read a book again. He just wanted to wake up, nothing more.

Although when he opened his eyes, the sky was still gray with clouds, and he was still lying in the tall grass, wearing shreds of a tattered, dirty shirt, one glove, and with his hand scorched by the flames.

He was seven then, and for the first time in his life, he felt the true power of the gods. The gods who could've destroyed his whole world with one blink. The gods who on a whim let him kill the only person who didn't consider him a monster.

He had nowhere to go. He had nowhere to hide. After two days of wandering through the forests, he decided to return to the asylum of Father Theosius, several miles away, having the remnants of the childhood hope that the people who had raised him throughout his life would not let him simply die of hunger.

Though the reality turned out to be much more brutal than he could have imagined. As soon as he appeared on the threshold of the asylum under the cover of an extremely cold, rainy night, knocking uncertainly on the shabby wood, and the door swung open to reveal Father Theosius' overgrown, bloated face, the events took place at lightning speed.

"It's you!" the man hissed the words as if they were cutting his tongue. His thick fingers grabbed Darren's arm and pulled him inside with such violence that the boy stumbled on the threshold and almost fell over. In the bedroom door, he noticed stepmother Octavia, who was quickly putting on an old robe, and after a while, he was dragged down the stairs to the basement which was plunged into the stinking darkness.

"Close the door, Octavia!" Father Theosius ordered, and Darren felt his throat clog with fear. He heard the sound of a latch that hadn't been opened for a long time, and a stench of rot and the rat droppings penetrated his nostrils. "How could you do this to us, you ungrateful little brat?!" the man roared, pushing Darren into the darkness. The boy hit the uneven stones with his back and fell to the damp, muddy ground. "How dared you reveal your illness? Do you know what we've been through because of you? The guards were here! They were looking for you! Now everyone knows that we raised a monster!"

Darren groaned and opened his eyes, staring bewildered at the huge, broad figure of Father Theosius, which was obscuring the light coming from the oil lamp held by Mother Octavia who was standing in the doorway.

"So you knew about this?" he asked weakly, holding out his ungloved hand to the man. "And you didn't tell me? If I only knew..."

"You would've use your defect to blackmail us and ruin our life's wealth!" Mother Octavia exclaimed in a shrill voice. "You can't even imagine how our neighbors are looking at us now! Everyone knows what you did! Everyone already knows that you're one of them!"

"What do you mean by one of them?" Darren asked, feeling a cold chill running down his spine.

The woman took a step toward him. Her long face looked like the shell of a venom-spitting lizard. Her eyes widened and her skin turned green.

"You're a Cursed One!"

Darren felt as if his heart suddenly turned into a piece of a coal that fell to his stomach, piercing all the organs on its way.

No, It's impossible. The Cursed Ones don't exist anymore. They've been murdered a long time ago. He can't be... It's a mistake. He's certainly not--

"Is this how you repay us our effort of raising you for all these years?" Father Theosius hissed, pulling his favorite leather discipline from the pocket. "Do you think anyone's going to hire you now? Not only did we give you shelter, home and food, after your mother had abandoned you like a dog, but now you can't even earn your living and pay us back for our kindness?!" Darren cringed as Father Theosius swung with his arm and the first blow fell on the boy's back, piercing it with a painful hot impulse. "You've brought only shame and disappointment to us! You don't deserve the kindness we gave you when we decided not to drown you!"

Another lash was even more painful! As if Darren's skin has been burned with a red-hot poker. The boy groaned and covered his head, pushing himself into the corner of the room and trying to escape from Father Theosius' discipline.

"You are a disgrace to our shelter!" Mother Octavia screamed. "We could beat you to death and no one would cry for you! Nobody cares about you! You'll be locked here until the whole issue is over, and I don't care if you starve to death in here or not! You'll pay for what we have to go through because of you!"

Another blow made Darren arch and scream in pain, pressing his warm cheek against the icy stone. Then another blow fell, and another one.

He was no longer listening to their shouts and screams. Only Aiden's childish scream was echoing in his ears. Only the flames were blooming under his eyelids. The flames that consumed his current world, turning it to ashes. The scraps of burning paper were falling over his face, covering it with his charred dreams, plunging him into ever deeper, more and more chimney-like darkness.