Chapter 3: Chapter Three - Silence
It was all at once that life sprung forth. Alder struggled to open his eyes as his mind raced to recover.
He lay on the ground for a minute just staring at a large stone in the distance. He was unbelievably sleepy and groggy, and a throbbing pain emanated from his head. It pulsated down his body then back up again in a rhythmic agony.
He remembered then, "the goblins" he said to himself. Fear crept in like a plague and he "shot" to his feet. Meaning he struggled to stand and fell to one knee. "Greta... Harold... oh god" he looked back over his shoulder and saw nothing. No small green beasts, only the steady crashing sound of the waterfall.
He looked up and took note of the time, the sun close to setting. "I've been out for hours.. my friends.." he looked all around again, trying to find any sign of them. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. There was no sign they had ever been there, the spray of water on the riverbank having covered most of the tracks. Then the thought crossed his small mind, "help... I need to get help..."
He shivered as he stood to move, the heat of mid-day having long since passed. Night was coming and he needed his clothes. He felt for his head and was surprised to find that the injury from the club was not as bad as he thought.
Alder waded into the river and crossed with all the speed of an injured stag being chased by a cougar. He was certain that the goblins would be back and he didn't want to be there when they did.
He felt guilty about his friends but his parents always said to get an adult's help if there was a true emergency. He tried to remember where his clothes were as he jogged down the riverbank, taking looks over his shoulder and into the dark wood to make sure they weren't sneaking up on him. His clothes were where he had left them, and he threw on his pants and boots as quick as he could, before taking off through the wood towards the village.
The air was cool and every shadow in the dim lit forest send a shiver down his spine. He was certain he would be killed at any moment, dashing with all the fervor and fear that an 8 year old could muster.
The image of his parents rang through his mind and a tear formed in the corner of his eye. He just wanted to be home and be safe. To eat his mother's delicious baked potato and sit by the evening fire while he and his father read from the one book they had: "The tale of Berdram, The Adventurer".
His pace was slow to say the least. His legs short and worse off from his injuries. It took him a half hour to cover the half mile or so to reach the outer edge of the clearing.
Alder's heart lifted as he broke through the tree line and took in the familiar sight of his village. He paused to catch his breath and began to make his way down the road to the left, towards his house. He didn't get far before he noticed it.
The eery quiet.
It wasn't late then, the sun having not quite set as he looked all around. No one. Not a soul wandering around or making a peep.
Old man Crawford wasn't playing his pan pipe on the porch, and the grating sound of Aunt Merilda's washing board was gone. He was close to both their houses too so he was certain he would have heard.
The sight of it all came next. His young brain having missed the burning of several houses in the distance. The disheveled nature of the fields and the household goods strewn everywhere in the road ahead.
Then the smell. That god awful smell that hit him like a kick from a mule. The putrid mix of smoke and blood. He didn't know at that time what it was. He only knew it was foul.
Alder pinched his nose and walked forward, peering off to the right at the rising pillows of smoke coming from Greta's parent's house.
"Oh no.." he thought to himself. He tripped then, falling forward as he looked down and saw he stumbled over a broken spear. He recognized it immediately. The vision scarred in his memory from when he was being chased by the goblins.
The fear rose and rose, and his heart beat faster and faster as he looked up, really taking a look for the first time at the road ahead. He spotted something crumpled on the ground ahead fifty feet or so In the distance.
Cautiously he moved, unable to process then the scene. Unable to put together what his village had gone through. He just focused on figuring out what it was that lay ahead. Forty feet, then thirty, and every step closer he knew... he could see more clearly what it was.
But he moved anyway. He had to know, he had to be sure. He stopped just shy of the body and the crying came in full force. The wet tears falling on the limp corpse below.
"Dad.." he said weakly as he dropped to his knees, reaching out a small hand to touch the face of his father. His old man had no life in his eyes, and his head had been caved in by a heavy club. In his back a large bloodstain where he was probably stabbed.
Alder could see the anger his father had died with, and turned to see what his father had been looking at before he died and saw another body twenty feet away. More bloody than his dad's. He tried to make out who it was but could only see it was a woman by the long hair. Their corpse disfigured and soaked in dirt and wounds.
He vomited then, shuffling away from the bodies. He couldn't bare to see his father like that. Couldn't imagine the strong figure having been killed.
The image of the goblin's face flashed in his mind. The cold ruthless stare, the high pitched warcry. The beast-like way they chased him down. He had been lucky. His dad had not been.
Time seemed to standstill as he wept there. The pain increased twofold as somewhere in the midst of it all he discovered the other body was his mother. All hope that she had survived was crushed in an instant.
He forgot entirely about his friends, about getting help. The villagers were the help.
His whole life had been taken away. Nothing mattered but the pain, the sorrow. The destructive mix of negative emotions. At one point he just held his mother's hand. Trying hard not to look at her face, which had been mutilated beyond recognition.
As time went on though the tears subsided, and a strange new feeling crept in. Just as powerful as the sadness. Just as raw as the shock. Anger. Unadulterated rage. He screamed and smashed his tiny fists in the dirt, he imagined killing over and over the goblins that had done this to his parents.
Standing he took a step away from the two, and tried to think with his tiny brain of what to do. He wasn't sure. He wanted his parents back and wanted the pain to stop. That was the extent of his capacity to reason.
The sun was beginning to set, and the last ray of sunshine fell over the bodies of his mom and his dad. He turned then and made his way towards the nearest house. A small part of him hoping to find someone to help but something telling him he wouldn't find anyone.
Sure enough he found the body of Aunt Merilda just inside the small hut. He reeled in shock and felt like crying, but no tears came. He had used them all up. Instead he made his way out back and looked around, spotting what he was looking for and grabbing it before making his way back to where his parents where.
Clumsily he carried the spade. It was made for adults and was very much taller than he. In his young mind he was going to bury his parents. To give them their final rest. It was all he could think of to do. He didn't think about how he was going to move them, or where he was going to bury the hole. He tried though.
He tried to move his father first, grabbing both his big cold hands and pulling hard. He didn't budge. The 8 year old seeing that they weren't going to move.
Alder thought for a moment and settled on the idea of just digging a hole in the street. So he set about trying to dig with the massive spade. Getting a few inches in the ground as the sweat began to fall. It didn't help he was crashing hard from the adrenaline.
Something inside kicked in though. A strange sensation as a rush of energy filled his body. He wasn't sure what the feeling was, or why he felt the way he did. It felt relaxing and warm, and filled him with the same rejuvenation that a good nap does.
He kept pushing on with his newfound energy and a few hours of pained digging later he had two shallow graves.
All the while he kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to find some goblin or monster wander in and kill him.
"Mother..." he cried as he rolled her into the grave. He held her hand one final time, her large gentle hand that had so many times caressed his head while he slept. The hand that had brought him food and always protected him.
He stood and picked up the shovel again. He picked up a heap of dirt and plopped it over her grave. The brown soil slowly covered her body as stray tears fell from his face. It wasn't just sadness then but confusion, rage, exhaustion, anger and so many other emotions that mixed in the developing not that pushed him onward.
Death wasn't foreign to him even as an 8 year old. He had been to his grandparent's funerals and watched the bodies being buried. Alder just never imagined it would be his own parents that would die.
Eventually he finished, the last shovel of dirt falling over his mother as he finished her gravea. He sat down and wiped the sweat and dirt from his brow. The air was shockingly peaceful then. The coolness of the air in the dim night touched his skin. Bringing a chilling comfort that he didn't even notice. The world felt empty.
Alder felt lost.
He set himself out to finish his father's grave too, and worked well into the night. The dim evening faded into a near pitch black by the time he finished. He threw down the shovel off the side of the road and sat down exhaustedly.
The familiar humming of the locusts echoed all around. Their cries the only sound penetrating the stillness of death in the village.
He peered in with reddened eyes at the two mounds of dirt before him. Somehow Alder forgot about the goblins then. Forgot that there were other corpses in the village. Of his friends and people he knew. That he had nowhere to go. No family, no friends. No home.
He simply looked at the graves of his parents and sank into the warm embrace of grief and shock. Sleep came for him then. The kind of sleep one experiences after a truly traumatic experience. A dreamless slumber. Where one's body takes over and forced you to shut down. Makes you rest whether you want to or not.
So his eyelids dropped and he keeled over, curling up in the soft, dewy grass of the roadside as he fell asleep...
...
"Thump.." "Thump..Thump.."
something stirred Alder. He didn't even realize he had fallen asleep. "Thump, thump.." it came again, a hard nudge in his leg. Fear crept in and he shot up. He expected to see a Goblin but instead there was a woman standing over him. She was looking down at him with a cold, hard stare. Her face riddled with scars. "Oh.. I knew you were alive.. lucky bastard huh.."
Alder got up and wasn't sure what to say. Everything about her intimidated him. She wore a large sword at her waist, and had leather and chain mail armor on her legs, chest, and arms. But it was her posture.. a domineering, powerful stance that spoke to the confidence she had. It was a person that wasn't afraid of anything.
His eyes adjusted to the morning light and he remembered the day before. The horror. The lifeless stare in his father's eyes. The cold of his mother's dead hand. He shivered and nearly burst into tears, peering past the tall figure to look at the two mounds in the middle of the small dirt road.
She turned then too and saw what he was looking at and said, "Aah.. did you bury your parents?"
He nodded in response, shying away from her gaze.
The woman half smiled then and said, "good lad... I'm not sure how you survived.." she paused, glancing at the closed wounds on Alder's skin suspiciously, "but you managed to give your folks some final rest. They'd be proud I'm sure.."
She turned then and began to walk down the road, towards the center of the village.
"Wa-wait.." Alder called out.
"What?" She replied, her golden hair swaying in the wind as she turned. Her cold eyes speaking to her impatience.
"Can I come with you? I don't..." he said, pausing to look at his parents for a moment before continuing, "I don't have anywhere to go.."
She seemed to think for a second before she said curtly, "no.. I'm no babysitter. I'm not going to take care of you."
Without another word she continued her slow pace.
Alder wasn't sure who she was or why she was there. She looked like an adventurer.. or a bandit..
"She wasn't mean to me.. I'm sure she's not a bad person.." he said to himself, blocking the sun with an outstretched hand to watch the person walk away. The further away she got the more lost he felt in the world. So he followed her.
He trailed behind her for five minutes or so, not getting too close but making sure to be close enough. The idea of goblins scared him to death. He felt for his head, and found the bump where he had been hit. It was very faint, as if the wound had been healing for months, not a single day.
He shrugged and kept on.
The path the woman was making was clearly towards the village center, where the tavern and blacksmith were. They passed houses and farms where bloody corpses and burnt houses could be seen. Alder had to avert his eyes several times to avoid seeing dismembered bodies or butchered cattle. He felt bad for them. Felt guilty that he alone survived.
"Wait.." he thought, remembering his friends from yesterday. A wave of worry swept through him and he yelled at the top of his lungs, "wait! Lady! Please!"
His weak voice carried poorly but she stopped and turned, a look of disdain on her face. "What is it now?"
He paused in fear of the intimidating woman but found the courage to ask, "My friends.. yesterday in the woods they were chased by goblins.. I came to the village to find help. Please can you help me?"
She seemed to think for a moment before walking up to him. She stood over him and pulled a large knapsack from her shoulder. She rummaged in it for a second and pulled out a small dagger and tossed it at his feet. "This is a fine blade.. it cuts well.. If you really want to help your friends take it and go help them. I don't have time to deal with your problems and I promise you no one else in the world does. This is my kindness to you, because I do feel bad for you.. If you can't pick it up and go help them yourself I don't blame you. You are young and probably a farm boy with no skill. I wouldn't bother if I were you, it was just be getting yourself killed. But that choice is up to you."
She turned and began to walk away again. He stood in shock for a moment. He then looked down at the small blade, a brown leather hilt in a similar leather sheathe. "What.. how.." he remembered being chased by the goblins. "How can I kill that.."
The very idea of Alder facing a goblin made him shudder. The woman made it clear though. That she wouldn't help.
He bent down and picked up the small dagger and pulled it from it's sheathe. The morning sun reflected off the steel. He marveled in how beautiful it was. The blacksmith made weapons but never anything as fine as what he held then.
His hand shook as he stood there. "What do I do.." he thought to himself, "what do I do.."
He wanted nothing more than to flee. He wanted nothing more than to get out of the village and away from the goblins as fast as possible. "But... where..."
He truly had nothing. Even if he left who would he live with? Where would he go?
All of the hard choices melted in the inability of his feeble 8 year old mind, and he settled on, "I have to save my friends... I made a promise..."
So he turned then and stared at the woods he came out of. Stared into the dark shadows under the tree's Canopies. Yesterday the sight would have filled him with wonder. That day it filled him with fear and anxiety. He made himself move. Forced himself down the path. As he kept telling himself, "I made a promise.. I can't let them down now.." A strange resolve mixing with his other emotions. Overriding the fear, the pain, the sorrow.
Some selfish part of himself wanted them to be okay just so he wouldn't be alone. His small feet fell on the path in a gentle 'pitter patter'. Alder held the sword awkwardly in his hand and fought back the urge to turn and run. "Please be okay.. Harold.. Greta.."
"I made a promise.. I'll help you both.."
Alder always kept his promises.
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