Like a Barrel Full of Murder
Soartahn fished a fresh cigarette from his pocket, the crumpled box rustling like old comfort. The cigarette was halfway to his lips when he heard the sound of a match striking. Looking down and to his right, he saw his daughter, Ljúnipt holding up a match. He raised an eyebrow. She gave him a smirk. Grinning, he held the cigarette out. The warmth of fire licked at his fingertips and the smell of Nico and Mari coiled up to his nostrils.
Lifting the cigarette to his lips, Soartahn took a long drag on the years of his life blown away on the thin kiss of the reaper's vólr. Hot, acrid tasting smoke coiled around his tongue, coated his throat in sandpaper and grease, and filled his lungs with six decades of reasons to quit. If but for his old and haggard nerves and the army of excuses he kept in his back pocket beside his little box of death, Soartahn may have done just that. By the passing seasons it looked more and more like Nico and Mari would steal his breath as it had generations of ranchers before him.
It wasn’t natural, this poison. If there ever was something natural it came from, it must have died off some time around when the archives of the Old Sapiens were lost. Would that man was a wiser monkey than ever he was. He might just have taken that as a lesson from Ole Mamma. Let the devils and their chemicals die the hard death like what they deserved.
Seems if one thing was truer than true, it was even when Ole Mamma was right there a-shouting in his ear, man wouldn’t pay her no mind. Defiant little creatures, man was. Ole Mamma gave him a big ole noggin and since the first one had half a minute to scratch his bum and contemplate the big wide sky, he realised having thoughts in his head wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Wanted to put a stop to all that nonsense, he did. Like Soartahn’s pappie would tell him, thinking too much does the soul ill.
‘Course his pappie drank himself to death. Liver quit on the old bastard long afore the smoke ever could turn his lungs blacker than the tar pits up north in the Queenslands. Went to his grave cursing and spitting at the devils dancing on every pinhead pricking him night and day. Sawbones said his pappie’s nerves were eating themselves and if his liver hadn’t given out on him, his brain would’ve turned to mush and run out his ears.
Smoking and drinking was about the only thing made the poor old bastard’s life one tenth of a half-measure tolerable. Would’ve killed himself if he didn’t think it spitting in the eyes of the gods. Take what they give you, pappie would say, good and bad. Serves the soul good.
Pain like that, Soartahn figured, did the soul a lot worse than thinking did. Then again, it was all the thinking about his pappie going down harder than starships knocked from the big wide sky what got Soartahn smoking in the first place.
Crutches and crazy glue. All it all was. All it ever was. Pills for every ill. Twig splints and bubblegum bandages. Men and women alike patching their broken pieces back together with smoke. Light up a cancer stick. Make all your pain fade long enough to meet the day. Paper tubes of shredded biomass soaked in essential oils, sold by your corporate overlords in packs of twenty four. Matches? Compliments of the house.
It was stupid. Everyone knew it, but no self respecting rancher aback his mærkah would be caught dead lacking a pack of Nico and Mari. Check their boots and you’d find to a man something harder tucked in a secret pocket for a nightcap.
Pride there was in it too, the smoking, but mostly the secret pockets. Could tell an Outlander from a Duilhìnn by the stitching. Not a soul out in the pastures worth their chuck would fumble their needlework. Neither would they pass it off. Stitching clothes and stitching wounds were two sides of the same coin. Buy you another glimpse of daylight breaking over the Western Spine.
Looking down at his daughter, his only child—only one he was going to get since her mamma’s womb fell out squeezing her into the world—he thought about that sun. Twwiluss was a big bright light in the sky, but she couldn’t hold a candle to his Ljúnipt—his little moon.
First time in a winter or two, Soartahn thought about what kind of example he was setting. Thought hard like his pappie warned him not to. But how could he not? There she was, his only child, all of twelve and barely tall enough to look him in the belt buckle. Those big green eyes were looking up at him wide. Book of matches in her hand, gaze was saying like he must have been the great Greenstalker. Planted the gardens of the Fiegganfyhelk too.
Soartahn couldn’t help but grin looking back at her. All the things he’d done in his life, this was the one thing he knew in his heart of hearts was good. The rest was debatable, but not her. Not his little Ljúnni. He knew her. Knew her inside and out and she was going to take after him like grand larceny. Already had in at least one respect.
The grin faded from his face when he realised the whole turkey of what that was going to wind up entailing. Tarred up lungs, cancer, bad teeth, and worse breath. A whole mess of bad choices would follow from there. Scowling, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it away.
“Things'll kill ya, y’know,” Soartahn said, as the flickering cigarette tumbled into the void. “Make your jowls sag, but only half as bad as your tits.”
“Yeah,” Ljúnitp said, watching the cigarette plummet.
Sighing heavily, Soartahn looked down at his daughter again. In her eyes was that look Maytah liked to give him at least a hundred times a day. Wasn’t old enough to have her mother’s resigned disappointment, he reckoned. Wasn’t long enough in the world for him to have let her down so hard as to look at him that way.
Took after her mamma too much, Soartahn thought. Got all the best parts of Maytah, and that was just about all of them by Saorathn’s liking.
Like no other gal in the universe, Maytah was. She was something else, something he didn’t deserve a bit of. Too smart for her own good. Too perceptive to let him get away with nothing. Wit like a whipcrack and a soft side like honey spread over bread fresh from the oven. Brains, brawn, and more mamma bear than range full of grizzlies. Heart of something more precious than life itself. Seemed only right her daughter would be every bit the same. Ljúnni even got her mamma’s fighting spirit.
Much as Maytah liked to blame him for that one, the only thing Soartahn liked to think he gave Ljúnipt was his reckless streak. Something Maytah liked to remind him every time their daughter got sent home from school for getting into fights. And she was always getting into fights, Ljúnni was. If playground scuffles were a sport, she had the stuff of professionals.
Soartahn had half a mind to think his daughter was half bully herself the way she got into it. Scrapped more than a guard dog with something to prove.
Bitter to take was growing up way out here in the back country was hard. Always had been. Worst thing to be was different. If you were, everybody would know about it. Kids, well they didn’t have the same sense as grownfolk. By the time the better half of them would come around, it would be too late to mend fences. Blood feuds burned fierce as they burned long. Generations would pass before the memory of the outcasts calmed.
Would that man was a wiser monkey. He would have figured some part of the mess of growing up out already. Might have learned from the cruel world and tried his hand to fix some small piece of it. But man, he couldn’t pay the least pittance to mend the generational pains he seemed intent to cause himself. Man never paid no attention. Man never listened. So villages burned.
Oh, how they burned.
“What?” Ljúnipt asked, snapping Soartahn out of his thoughts.
“Sorry,” he grumbled, glancing away.
“You’s a-wandering again,” Ljúnipt announced.
“Seems so,” Soartahn said, scratching his chin.
“You and mamma always wandering off,” Ljúnipt grumbled.
Folding her arms over her chest, she slumped against the side of the Maerkah trailer. The pout on her face was cuter than puppies. Soartahn reached out a hand and brushed a lock of hair out of Ljúnipt’s face. She shied away like Maytah always would. Soartahn chuckled. She was her mother’s daughter.
“Tell you what,” he said, lightly tapping her on the shoulder with his fist, “now I just had me a thought. If a fighting ‘s your fancy, seems best I taught you how. Seeing’s you ain’t fixing to quit, might as well take Ole Miss Blackboard’s licks the winner.”
“Mamma ain’t gonna like that none,” Ljúnipt said.
“Don’t you worry none about that,” Soartahn dismissed, “she’ll come ‘round. If not, well, guess the Mærs gonna have company for a minute.”
“You’re not kicking mamma out the house, are you!?” Ljúnipt exclaimed.
Soartahn chuckled lightly.
“Nah,” he answered, pinching Ljúnipt’s cheek, “ain’t no man never chased the queen out her castle. Leastwise none what lived to tell of it.”
“No! You can’t stay in the barn!” Ljúnipt exclaimed. “That just ain’t right!”
“Pfft! Wouldn’t be the first time she done had me think on what I did all up in the hay loft! Wasn’t like I didn’t earn it neither!”
“Stop it, pappa!” Ljúnipt pouted. “I don’t like it! It ain’t fair! It ain’t right! You ain’t staying in the barn!”
Soartahn grinned.
“Well, then, best you stop scrapping with the other girls at school,” Soartahn said, fishing another cigarette out of his back pocket.
“You gonna stop smoking?” Ljúnipt challenged.
The cigarette stopped halfway to his lips. He glanced down at Ljúnipt. She glowered up at him.
Soartahn knew that look. Knew it like a stag of ten winters knew headlights roaring up the road. It was about the same one Maytah would send his way afore she grabbed a wooden spoon.
He slowly lowered his hand and returned the cigarette to its packet. Gods themselves could strike no fear in mortal man, nor wield such almighty power, like a Duilhìnn woman with a wooden spoon. Legends spoke of how old Wwostloch pierced the Apex by crippling Admiral Xaítámè’s flagship with a devastating barrage of battlespoons thrown by the angriest of Toril women—and Wwostloch had all the angriest Toril women. The Gods themselves must have quaked with fear witnessing such a thing.
“That a deal?” Ljúnipt asked.
“Tell you what,” Soartahn grinned, kneeling down. “That don’t sound like a half-bad proposition. Thinking I might just take you up on it.”
“You stop smoking,” Ljúnipt said, firmly.
She thrust out her hand. Young as she was, she knew this gesture. Ain’t no going back on words sealed sacred on a handshake. Man would take the hemlock afore he took the name oathbreaker.
“You stop fighting,” Soartahn said, grabbing her hand.
“Deal,” she said.
“Deal,” Soartahn repeated, and they shook on it.
Rising back to his feet, he glanced again at the mærkah trailer. The old beasts were still looking like frogs what spotted an old tomcat out the corner of their eyes. Smart creatures, Soartahn reckoned. Knew where home was if nothing else. Where food, shelter, fresh water, and a strange looking mær with repeating rifle for the wolves was too.
Looking back to the reason for their nerves drawn taut as cross stitching, he felt something in his bones he’d just near forgotten. Twenty some spins it had been since his skelly last hummed with this kind of knowing. He could feel it all the same as back when. Something was coming. Wasn’t mortars, half-tracks, or honed edges of trenching shovels, but fire. Fire was coming from the mountains. Burning. Raging. Gods on a warpath. Wildburn was on its way.
When it came, it would sweep away all what lay on the land it crossed. It would swallow up this void opened up on the edge of his land just the same as everything else around it. He knew that like he knew the rising sun come up each day in the west.
Ground beneath didn’t open like this. All this big black empty, mud and bedrock lost in space like the gods’ great eraser came down like a big ole delete key, it gave him a bad feeling. A big ole gap where something was yesterday, but nothing today, well...it couldn’t stand as anything but omens of strange things afoot. Whispers on south wind spoke of smoke and ghosts disappearing like vapour when strange things were afoot. Whispers like that were the ones his bones learned to listen for.
Soartahn turned to face uproad toward town. Then he looked back down south, toward the pass connecting Seoill A Drún to the rest of civilisation.
A fresh scowl formed on his face. He knew his bones too well. That ache in his shoulder, it was dead reckoning for hell letting loose on the range. He could feel those old, cold bullet fragments humming beneath his skin. Grinding and churning and gnawing at his scars and scapula. Seemed his past had come calling back to him. An echo he always felt would return one day too soon.
“Ljúnipt,” he barked, startling both his daughter and the mærkahs.
“Pappa?” Ljúnipt said, quietly.
“Take Deoinnahc and run on back home, now,” Soartahn said, grabbing his rifle.
“But, daddy!” Ljúnipt whined, as he handed her the weapon and racked the bolt.
“Ain't gonna tell you twice,” Soartahn barked, heading for the back of the trailer. “You get up on Deoinnahc and you get back on home.”
“Did I do something?” Ljúnipt asked.
“Ain’t nothing what you did,” Soartahn answered, “You just get home now. Tell your mamma she’d best prepare for long and her old man ain’t coming home for supper. And if’n’s you see a soul you don’t know like me, mamma, and the better half of town, you take that rifle and you shoot em deader than pheasants for hunting! You hear!?”
“Daddy, I'm scared,” Ljúnipt whimpered, as Soartahn led one of the Mærkahs out of the trailer.
“Ain't no reason for it,” he said, lifting his daughter into the saddle, “your pappa gonna be back afore you know he was gone.”
Before his daughter could wriggle her way back down off Deoinnahc’s back, Soartahn led the mærakh by the reins to the gate of his ranch. Throwing it wide, he patted the mær three times on the shoulder. Like the smart beast she was, Deoinnahc bounded off, taking Ljúnipt away from whatever mess had just opened up on on the edge of their land like a barrel full of murder cooking in lye.