Historical Setting, unknown
This morning, the hides over the entrance are drawn aside for those I heard talking outside. Light spills in. Now I look up into the crossbeams and I see clearly what is hanging on the center support. Here is Greg’s familiar byrnie, rusted and rotted, clumped with soil. It has a distinctly more rusted and rotted ring where a repair was once done badly. My own grief is renewed for the generations left in another time. I can see this byrnie that was supposed to keep my son safe on earth in wars has been buried in the earth a very long time. There was no rescue.
I know it is far future because of the aging to the chains mail and now
here are two strangers, living in the likeness of human, as do I.
My senses aren’t yet dulled enough by life; the human stink of them fills this little space. And the heavy boot of the larger one steps back toward my arm. I draw it away — he doesn’t seem to notice me here.
He goes on and on shouting empty orders as though he commanded an army. I hear no army clacking and rattling armor or swords outside this hovel. There is only this one whimpering bundle of fear that seems as though it may be human. It is called Oos, or Us. But the larger one is a mad man shouting orders into a void.
“I’m asking you for the gold! Surely you found gold!”
The answer from Oos is mumbled.
The raging wild man—burly, russet, with trousers of leather, no shirt, howls, “the journal said there was gold with the three.”
Again, Us answers with a human whimper.
The hollow giant is taking a long look at the byrnie hanging in the middle here, admiring it, as though the filthy rusted metal were a treasure, and yet no one seems to notice me, a human person spread out nearly under his feet. He steps back. I draw my hand away from his foot.
Now he takes notice of me. “What is this?” He kicks back the pelt that warms me, so I shiver.
“Is this the third spy mentioned in the journal? Was this naked man in the pit with the deaths?”
No one answers.
He goes on. “Yes, I’ve heard of such a thing as this – it’s a bog body.”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 