Shadows of Self
Hello, it's August, and it's a new month for brigits_flame! It's week 1, and this week's topic was:
Shadows of Sant Pere
Sara grimaced as the stinging sweat slid into her eyes like backwards tears. Her shoulders ached. She had been carrying her backpack - which must have weighed eight kilos or more - for twelve hours straight now, and although she was far from short of water, the beating Spanish sun was slowly sapping her strength. Her back was tired from lugging her heavy life from town to town; her feet were aching from walking across the rocky Catalonian landscape all day, even though she was wearing her sturdiest boots. She would need to stop soon - and not least of all because the sun was going down.
After another hour of uncomfortable trudging along the dusty track she'd been following west from Aiguafreda, she saw a small blue speck on the horizon at the edge of a mountain, though she had learned by now not to take anything the sun showed you for reality. However, as she advanced, the speck grew larger, firmer, more distinct, until finally, at half a mile away, she could see that it was a village of probably no more than twenty buildings, all cobalt blue in the dimness as the failing sun sank behind the mountain.
Her approach was from the east, which brought her first to the broad side of a large church. She had learned to be careful with taking her backpack off after pulling a muscle in her lower back on the first night of her trip after flinging the heavy burden off, effectively sacrificing relief for agony, so she slowly slid it off her back and held it under her arm. She moved around the side of the church, feeling the ambient heat it gave off as she rounded the corner, and as she passed into what seemed to be the village square, the twilit evening burst into light and noise like a surprise party. Dusty, multicoloured electric lights slung between the roofs of the buildings sputtered into life, casting a candy-pink glow across the ground. A group of people she hadn't seen on her approach to the town approached her from the other side of the plaza, smiling and laughing, greeting her in a peculiar and heavily-accented dialect of Catalan she found nearly impenetrable. She might have turned on her heel and run, had they not looked quite so happy to see her, and so she stood there, dumbfounded, by the door of the Church as they reached her.
They were a tatterdemalion lot, however cheerful. They all looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox. The men were tall and dandy, wearing suits which were once smart, but were now aged and dusty. The women all wore dresses of so many colours faded by time, frayed at the hem, their grinning faces caked with greasy makeup. The children wore rags, dark hollows around the eyes in their gaunt faces, clinging to their mothers' garments. A hush came over them as they looked over the sweaty and bedraggled Sara, who looked wearily back.
"Um. Good evening," she mumbled, in shaky Catalan. The assembled rabble gave a unified gasp, looked thrilled, started murmuring amongst themselves. After a moment, a rather squat woman with a wide, painted face stepped forward from the rest and gave an awkward curtsy, exposing yellowed teeth in a leer. She smelled like kumquats.
"Good evening!" she crowed in a high, hoarse rasp, opening her arms as if to embrace Sara, "and who might you be, and why have you come here, and what would you like?"
The woman's Catalan was so accented and nuanced, Sara had to take a minute to properly compute what the woman had said. Attempting her most neutral Catalan accent, in the hopes that the woman would do the same in her reply, she cleared her throat and shakily spoke.
"My name is Sara, I...I'm a student from England...backpacking from Barcelona. It's late now, erm...is there a hostel nearby?"
Again, this seemed to cause much interest, and there were assorted rumblings from the crowd. Once that had died, the woman was still standing there, unblinking, her arms still spread, that painted-on smile like some grotesque porcelain doll. Sara realised she was waiting because she had not answered all of her questions.
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand, what did you mean by asking what I would like?"
At last, the illusion of the doll was gone and the woman moved again, letting her arms fall.
"Ah, my dear. Thank you for coming. My name is Aitor. This village is called Sant Pere de Jussà."
Sara frowned and pulled her map from her jeans pocket, damp with sweat. Aitor must have seen this, for:
"Oh, you won't find it on any map, my dear, we're far too small for that. As for a hostel, and as for what you would like, please come this way."
She approached Sara and pulled the reluctant girl through the parting crowd. The people on either side were pale-faced in the grim light from the petty decorations, and stared at her as she passed. Sara was escorted to the opposite side of the square, Aitor practically pushing her through the door of a low building. Inside Sara found it was extremely dark, with no electricity. There was a lonely candle on a stool next to a straw bed, the only furnishings in the otherwise bare room. Sara was bemused.
"Sorry, um, thank you, but is there not a-"
"Not for miles, my darling," said Aitor, her eyes trained on the candle in the gloom. "I'm sure you will be quite comfortable here for the evening. My son Antoni will bring you food shortly. Sleep well." Without a backwards look, and now curiously missing her wide leer, Aitor swept out, her moth-eaten dress sighing on the ground as she closed the door. Sara was quite taken aback. What an odd place, and what a peculiar offer of hospitality. Against her better judgement, however, she was grateful for it, and no sooner had she dumped her bag by the door, removed her cap and lain down on the musty, itchy bed, she had fallen into a deep sleep.
Sara didn't know how long she had been asleep when she heard the tapping at the door. The candle by the bed was very nearly at its end, wax melted all over the stool. She sat up a little, sneezed twice due to the dust in the hideously uncomfortable mattress, and looked to the open door. There stood one of the small boys from earlier, his face a pale ghost in the shadows of the room. Dark eyes stared out from the hollows of his skull. He looked emaciated, and was holding up a plate upon which seemed to be assembled various hams and sausage slices. Sara sat up on the bed.
"Antoni?"
In answer, the boy shuffled forward and gave her the plate. Confused, but famished, she took it from him and set about the meats with gusto. In minutes she was down to two slices of ham and three of fuet, and aware of Antoni staring at her and the plate, rapt. Sara swallowed a mouthful of beef sausage, and then held out the plate to him. Antoni practically snatched it back out of her hands, and gobbled down the bits of meat. Sara was surprised, and laughed a little, but Antoni caught her with fierce glare, and the laugh caught in Sara's throat. There was a raw, bald sadness in that angry little look, and it shook her profoundly.
"Don't they," she stumbled with her Catalan, "don't they feed you?" The boy didn't move, made no gesture or sound. He just stared at her with his fierce, dark eyes. Sara opened her mouth to question her further, when suddenly Antoni spoke, in accented English.
"You must to leave," he said, "as quickly as you possible can." Sara frowned in confusion.
"I have to...what do you mean?"
"I mean you," he looked like he struggled for a moment, "you are...dangerous?" He wrinkled his nose, he knew that wasn't how to say what he wanted to say." Bad things. Um. Bad things." He started to shake his head, denying, saying no, no to the bad things. He looked horrified. "You gived to me food. I gived to you words about the bad things. You must to go." His voice faltered to a whisper. "You must to go now." Sara's head spun. The boy's words were grave and frightened.
"Antoni, I don't understand..."
"Sant Pere de Jussà not on map?" He leaned over and nimbly plucked it from the pocket of her shirt. He unfolded it and stabbed a finger to where the town should be, several miles west of Aiguafreda. "Not there," he growled. "For good. Bad things want everyone to forget. They were...here we made...in English you say...cloths, and wools and strings and leathers. For clothes." Antoni plucked at his own threadbare garments for effect. "We made them to all different colours with...water, um...chemicals. There was...an event, an...accident. It made the bad things."
Horrified, Sara noticed during this story that Antoni was picking nervously at a thick, dirty bandage around his left, thin forearm. Her heart was thundering in her chest. This child was deadly serious. She needed to leave now. She leaned forward.
"How can I get away?"
***
Some time later, with the girl running blindly into the dark with her pack and halfway to Sant Pau by now, Antoni pushed the door of the church open with a shaking hand. His left arm hurt so terribly he had to use his right to turn the handle and push. As the door opened, the air rushing out stank of incense and iodine and something terribly rotten. He slunk in and shut the door behind himself. The stink of the disinfectants and myrrh permeated his clothes and hair. He walked slowly down the aisle towards the three dark figures sitting on the altar. His legs shook as he finally reached the end of the pews, where the lights from multifarious candles on the floor lit his masters' wrecked faces from below.
To Antoni's left, sat Lloll. She was once beautiful, the favourite maiden of the town, but now her skin was dyed a sickly midnight blue; her eyes were pure, white cataracts; where her nose and mouth used to be was nothing but a hole wreathed in needle-sharp teeth, like a bat. To Antoni's right, crouched in the murk, was Josep, his skin again that horrible blue, but not possessing of the unearthly smoothness of Lloll - his skin was cracked and broken all over his face and bare chest, marred by weals and sores. His eyelids had been melted shut, but with his own fingernails he had clawed them open once more, and stared furiously at him through the shreds. His nose and mouth and been hideously warped, resulting in a stubby, almost trunk-like stump through which his breathing snorted horribly. Finally, standing so tall in front of the diminutive Antoni, was Empar, the eldest of them all, shockingly old, with white hair which touched the floor behind her, her black-blue skin sagged dreadfully, with deep wrinkles that made her face almost unrecognisable as such. Her eye sockets hung empty in her face, void of anything but impenetrable blackness. The town elders loomed above the small boy, true shadows of their former selves.
"She is gone. The girl is g-gone," stammered Antoni, staring right up into the holes in Empar's haggard face, "I have bid her to go." In the darkness, Josep snuffled malevolently. Empar raised her head into the light, as if doing such a thing would remedy her sightlessness.
"Antoni, Antoni," she intoned in a whispering voice with all the charm of death. "We have spoken of this before."
"It's not fair, mother," Antoni whimpered, "it's not the fault of the people. It's our fault. We deserved this."
"That is not for you to decide!" Empar suddenly shrieked. Antoni grew quiet. "Come forward, my child, and make your penance."
Antoni crept slowly up the stairs to the altar and knelt in front of Empar. Reluctantly, he raised his left arm, and Lloll supported it at the wrist. Her eyes were smiling and she was breathing hard and fast as she unwound the long bandage to reveal the limb scoured nearly to the bone. Agile, Josep was creeping soundlessly towards the boy, spindle-limbed, feet over hands. Antoni grimaced as he felt the sting of Lloll's sharp teeth rending his flesh; felt the sick softness of Josep's trunk sliding over his cheek leaving a trail of thin saliva; felt the bittersweetness of Empar's benediction as she laid both hands on top of his head. He could feel those hands through his hair, the black skin so cold and thin as paper, her long nails digging into his scalp.
© Jerrard Doran, 2008
Shadows of Sant Pere
Sara grimaced as the stinging sweat slid into her eyes like backwards tears. Her shoulders ached. She had been carrying her backpack - which must have weighed eight kilos or more - for twelve hours straight now, and although she was far from short of water, the beating Spanish sun was slowly sapping her strength. Her back was tired from lugging her heavy life from town to town; her feet were aching from walking across the rocky Catalonian landscape all day, even though she was wearing her sturdiest boots. She would need to stop soon - and not least of all because the sun was going down.
After another hour of uncomfortable trudging along the dusty track she'd been following west from Aiguafreda, she saw a small blue speck on the horizon at the edge of a mountain, though she had learned by now not to take anything the sun showed you for reality. However, as she advanced, the speck grew larger, firmer, more distinct, until finally, at half a mile away, she could see that it was a village of probably no more than twenty buildings, all cobalt blue in the dimness as the failing sun sank behind the mountain.
Her approach was from the east, which brought her first to the broad side of a large church. She had learned to be careful with taking her backpack off after pulling a muscle in her lower back on the first night of her trip after flinging the heavy burden off, effectively sacrificing relief for agony, so she slowly slid it off her back and held it under her arm. She moved around the side of the church, feeling the ambient heat it gave off as she rounded the corner, and as she passed into what seemed to be the village square, the twilit evening burst into light and noise like a surprise party. Dusty, multicoloured electric lights slung between the roofs of the buildings sputtered into life, casting a candy-pink glow across the ground. A group of people she hadn't seen on her approach to the town approached her from the other side of the plaza, smiling and laughing, greeting her in a peculiar and heavily-accented dialect of Catalan she found nearly impenetrable. She might have turned on her heel and run, had they not looked quite so happy to see her, and so she stood there, dumbfounded, by the door of the Church as they reached her.
They were a tatterdemalion lot, however cheerful. They all looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox. The men were tall and dandy, wearing suits which were once smart, but were now aged and dusty. The women all wore dresses of so many colours faded by time, frayed at the hem, their grinning faces caked with greasy makeup. The children wore rags, dark hollows around the eyes in their gaunt faces, clinging to their mothers' garments. A hush came over them as they looked over the sweaty and bedraggled Sara, who looked wearily back.
"Um. Good evening," she mumbled, in shaky Catalan. The assembled rabble gave a unified gasp, looked thrilled, started murmuring amongst themselves. After a moment, a rather squat woman with a wide, painted face stepped forward from the rest and gave an awkward curtsy, exposing yellowed teeth in a leer. She smelled like kumquats.
"Good evening!" she crowed in a high, hoarse rasp, opening her arms as if to embrace Sara, "and who might you be, and why have you come here, and what would you like?"
The woman's Catalan was so accented and nuanced, Sara had to take a minute to properly compute what the woman had said. Attempting her most neutral Catalan accent, in the hopes that the woman would do the same in her reply, she cleared her throat and shakily spoke.
"My name is Sara, I...I'm a student from England...backpacking from Barcelona. It's late now, erm...is there a hostel nearby?"
Again, this seemed to cause much interest, and there were assorted rumblings from the crowd. Once that had died, the woman was still standing there, unblinking, her arms still spread, that painted-on smile like some grotesque porcelain doll. Sara realised she was waiting because she had not answered all of her questions.
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand, what did you mean by asking what I would like?"
At last, the illusion of the doll was gone and the woman moved again, letting her arms fall.
"Ah, my dear. Thank you for coming. My name is Aitor. This village is called Sant Pere de Jussà."
Sara frowned and pulled her map from her jeans pocket, damp with sweat. Aitor must have seen this, for:
"Oh, you won't find it on any map, my dear, we're far too small for that. As for a hostel, and as for what you would like, please come this way."
She approached Sara and pulled the reluctant girl through the parting crowd. The people on either side were pale-faced in the grim light from the petty decorations, and stared at her as she passed. Sara was escorted to the opposite side of the square, Aitor practically pushing her through the door of a low building. Inside Sara found it was extremely dark, with no electricity. There was a lonely candle on a stool next to a straw bed, the only furnishings in the otherwise bare room. Sara was bemused.
"Sorry, um, thank you, but is there not a-"
"Not for miles, my darling," said Aitor, her eyes trained on the candle in the gloom. "I'm sure you will be quite comfortable here for the evening. My son Antoni will bring you food shortly. Sleep well." Without a backwards look, and now curiously missing her wide leer, Aitor swept out, her moth-eaten dress sighing on the ground as she closed the door. Sara was quite taken aback. What an odd place, and what a peculiar offer of hospitality. Against her better judgement, however, she was grateful for it, and no sooner had she dumped her bag by the door, removed her cap and lain down on the musty, itchy bed, she had fallen into a deep sleep.
Sara didn't know how long she had been asleep when she heard the tapping at the door. The candle by the bed was very nearly at its end, wax melted all over the stool. She sat up a little, sneezed twice due to the dust in the hideously uncomfortable mattress, and looked to the open door. There stood one of the small boys from earlier, his face a pale ghost in the shadows of the room. Dark eyes stared out from the hollows of his skull. He looked emaciated, and was holding up a plate upon which seemed to be assembled various hams and sausage slices. Sara sat up on the bed.
"Antoni?"
In answer, the boy shuffled forward and gave her the plate. Confused, but famished, she took it from him and set about the meats with gusto. In minutes she was down to two slices of ham and three of fuet, and aware of Antoni staring at her and the plate, rapt. Sara swallowed a mouthful of beef sausage, and then held out the plate to him. Antoni practically snatched it back out of her hands, and gobbled down the bits of meat. Sara was surprised, and laughed a little, but Antoni caught her with fierce glare, and the laugh caught in Sara's throat. There was a raw, bald sadness in that angry little look, and it shook her profoundly.
"Don't they," she stumbled with her Catalan, "don't they feed you?" The boy didn't move, made no gesture or sound. He just stared at her with his fierce, dark eyes. Sara opened her mouth to question her further, when suddenly Antoni spoke, in accented English.
"You must to leave," he said, "as quickly as you possible can." Sara frowned in confusion.
"I have to...what do you mean?"
"I mean you," he looked like he struggled for a moment, "you are...dangerous?" He wrinkled his nose, he knew that wasn't how to say what he wanted to say." Bad things. Um. Bad things." He started to shake his head, denying, saying no, no to the bad things. He looked horrified. "You gived to me food. I gived to you words about the bad things. You must to go." His voice faltered to a whisper. "You must to go now." Sara's head spun. The boy's words were grave and frightened.
"Antoni, I don't understand..."
"Sant Pere de Jussà not on map?" He leaned over and nimbly plucked it from the pocket of her shirt. He unfolded it and stabbed a finger to where the town should be, several miles west of Aiguafreda. "Not there," he growled. "For good. Bad things want everyone to forget. They were...here we made...in English you say...cloths, and wools and strings and leathers. For clothes." Antoni plucked at his own threadbare garments for effect. "We made them to all different colours with...water, um...chemicals. There was...an event, an...accident. It made the bad things."
Horrified, Sara noticed during this story that Antoni was picking nervously at a thick, dirty bandage around his left, thin forearm. Her heart was thundering in her chest. This child was deadly serious. She needed to leave now. She leaned forward.
"How can I get away?"
***
Some time later, with the girl running blindly into the dark with her pack and halfway to Sant Pau by now, Antoni pushed the door of the church open with a shaking hand. His left arm hurt so terribly he had to use his right to turn the handle and push. As the door opened, the air rushing out stank of incense and iodine and something terribly rotten. He slunk in and shut the door behind himself. The stink of the disinfectants and myrrh permeated his clothes and hair. He walked slowly down the aisle towards the three dark figures sitting on the altar. His legs shook as he finally reached the end of the pews, where the lights from multifarious candles on the floor lit his masters' wrecked faces from below.
To Antoni's left, sat Lloll. She was once beautiful, the favourite maiden of the town, but now her skin was dyed a sickly midnight blue; her eyes were pure, white cataracts; where her nose and mouth used to be was nothing but a hole wreathed in needle-sharp teeth, like a bat. To Antoni's right, crouched in the murk, was Josep, his skin again that horrible blue, but not possessing of the unearthly smoothness of Lloll - his skin was cracked and broken all over his face and bare chest, marred by weals and sores. His eyelids had been melted shut, but with his own fingernails he had clawed them open once more, and stared furiously at him through the shreds. His nose and mouth and been hideously warped, resulting in a stubby, almost trunk-like stump through which his breathing snorted horribly. Finally, standing so tall in front of the diminutive Antoni, was Empar, the eldest of them all, shockingly old, with white hair which touched the floor behind her, her black-blue skin sagged dreadfully, with deep wrinkles that made her face almost unrecognisable as such. Her eye sockets hung empty in her face, void of anything but impenetrable blackness. The town elders loomed above the small boy, true shadows of their former selves.
"She is gone. The girl is g-gone," stammered Antoni, staring right up into the holes in Empar's haggard face, "I have bid her to go." In the darkness, Josep snuffled malevolently. Empar raised her head into the light, as if doing such a thing would remedy her sightlessness.
"Antoni, Antoni," she intoned in a whispering voice with all the charm of death. "We have spoken of this before."
"It's not fair, mother," Antoni whimpered, "it's not the fault of the people. It's our fault. We deserved this."
"That is not for you to decide!" Empar suddenly shrieked. Antoni grew quiet. "Come forward, my child, and make your penance."
Antoni crept slowly up the stairs to the altar and knelt in front of Empar. Reluctantly, he raised his left arm, and Lloll supported it at the wrist. Her eyes were smiling and she was breathing hard and fast as she unwound the long bandage to reveal the limb scoured nearly to the bone. Agile, Josep was creeping soundlessly towards the boy, spindle-limbed, feet over hands. Antoni grimaced as he felt the sting of Lloll's sharp teeth rending his flesh; felt the sick softness of Josep's trunk sliding over his cheek leaving a trail of thin saliva; felt the bittersweetness of Empar's benediction as she laid both hands on top of his head. He could feel those hands through his hair, the black skin so cold and thin as paper, her long nails digging into his scalp.
© Jerrard Doran, 2008