Chapter 9 - The Family Plot
9
The Family Plot
After being gone for what seemed to Daniel like hours, Master Samuel returned to find the small boy sitting quietly on the bank. He did not speak to him, but instead sat next to him and pulled out his small knife. He sharpened it with great care, and Daniel watched. After sharpening the blade, Samuel reached behind his neck and took hold of his braid. With two slashes, he cut off the leather-wrapped braid of grayish hair and placed it on the ground beside him. Then, he used the knife to shave off the rest of his hair down to the scalp, and then even his eyebrows. Daniel thought his face looked strangely blank without them.
The one-winged man threw the loose chunks of hair into the stream, where they drifted slowly away. He kept the braid, though, and left it on the ground when he stood up. He cleaned the knife in the cool creek water, and after mixing a thin paste from several herbs he had collected nearby, he coated it in them. Then he went to a tree and wedged the knife firmly in a place where the trunk split at about waist height.
He stood with his shoulder to the tree. Picking up his dead wing with a hand, he maneuvered himself into a position where the knife was in the space between his back and his wingtips, just below the large feathery joint that held his wing to his back. Then, with his hands on the tree trunk for balance, he slowly knelt until the knife touched the wing, and then further. Slowly, and with a tortured expression on his face, Samuel allowed the knife to cut the wing from his back. It was slow work, and the knife was pulled from the tree several times, and the man had to replace it and start work again. It didn’t seem to bleed very much, and the blood coming from it was a dark, unnatural color.
There were a few tendons through which the knife could not slice, and Samuel would then pull the knife from the tree and saw away at the little white cords until they snapped. When he came to the actual bone, the knife was useless, and he reached behind his head with the opposite hand, grabbed the bone, and pulled it upward with a wet crack that resounded through the forest with Samuel’s yell of pain. It was pulled loose from the joint, however, and after about ten minute’s more work, the wing lay on the ground. Breathing heavily, Samuel stood and looked at it for a while.
Finally, he spoke, and his voice was hoarse and exhausted. “Come with me, Daniel.” He picked up the heavy white wing under one arm, grabbed the rope of hair that lay on the bank, and started walking.
Daniel followed as Master Samuel led the way back to the cottage, and the boy tried very hard to stare at the two wounds on the man’s naked back - one scabbed and healing, and the other dark, slick, and slightly twitching. He tried very hard not to notice the other half of the visible joint, and how it moved with the man’s shoulder as he walked.
Daniel did not want to see the dead woman again. However, as they approached the cottage, he noticed that the door had been closed and that there were now four pits in the dirt at the side of the little house - one big enough for a grown woman, and each one thereafter a bit smaller. He shuddered a little, remembering the way the flies had crawled into the dead woman’s mouth, but his curiosity got the better of them, and he cautiously peeked into the largest grave.
Resting at the bottom was a faded length of cloth, under which Daniel could make out the shape of the woman. Her head seemed to be in the right place, though; Master Samuel must have set it back on her shoulders so she could rest in death the way she would have in sleep. Daniel looked at the faceless shape a moment longer. It looked like a large, clumsy doll, and seemed fake all bundled up in the blanket. And, feeling a little guilty, Daniel thought to himself that he rather liked it that way. It hurt a little more to think of it as a dead person rather than a big doll.
The next grave was empty, and it rather confused Daniel. He stood back quietly and watched, and the question of the second-largest grave was answered as Samuel walked up to it and held the stiff white wing over it. It looked such a pitiful, ravaged thing, all covered in dark blood with the remaining feathers sticking out at funny angles. Samuel held it there for a moment as if he did not want to let go of it, then with what seemed to be a great force of will, let it fall into the pit. It landed with a whump on the hard soil at the bottom.
The next grave was smaller, but Danny could have laid down in it with some room to spare. In this one, Samuel had already placed three items. The first was a white wooden rocking horse that had been inside the house. It was a beautifully carved thing with a real horsehair mane and tail and a silver star on its forehead. It was easily the most expensive thing that had come from the cottage, and was very fine even by Daniel’s rather wealth-influenced standards for toys. Next to it, Samuel had dropped two small leather boots with untied laces. With a jolt in his chest, Daniel remembered what Master Samuel had told him about a boy his own age. Was he dead too? And if he was, where was his body?
The smallest grave was the biggest mystery to little Daniel. It was empty when he looked into it, but Master Samuel knelt down to it and tenderly placed the braid of his own hair into the tiny hole.
Then, Samuel, still crouched next to Daniel, spoke to him gently. Daniel watched his face intently, and it seemed like he could feel the pain that was in the aging man’s eyes. “Daniel, there was once a family here. They are all gone now. I couldn’t find the…” here, his face looked even more pained than ever, “…children…but we must lay them to rest even though their bodies have been moved.”
Daniel thought of wild beasts dragging children’s bodies through the forest, and he quickly pushed the thought away, hoping his face hadn’t betrayed it.
“With the death of the future, we must seek an alternate future,” he said solemnly, and stood up in one swift motion. He picked up a rough spade that had been leaning against the side of the cottage and began moving loose brown dirt from a large, soft heap into the smallest grave. After he had watched the bundle of silver-streaked hair disappear under the dirt, Daniel went to the pile of dirt and started to pick it up in his hands and drop it into the tiny grave along with Samuel’s big shovelfuls. Many grown-ups would have seen this as a silly and ineffective gesture, but Samuel said nothing. The act of kindness and reverence from the little boy started to heal his heart immediately, from the first little handful of earth that fell into the grave.
In no time the grave was full, and Daniel helped Samuel pat the earth smooth. He thought about the hair inside, and about what Master Samuel had said. I once had a very different future, he thought. I was a prince, and I would have been a king. But after what I have done, I will never be king. And I will have a new future, because Master Samuel will teach me about dreams. And he felt that man’s simple prayer was his own. With the death of the future, he thought to himself, over and over, we must seek an alternate future.
Next, Samuel moved to the second smallest grave, where the rocking horse and the shoes rested awkwardly at the bottom. He stood and looked into it for a moment, then said, “With the death of innocence, we must replace innocence with wisdom.” Then, he once again started shoveling soft, dark earth into the hole. Daniel hurried to help, his small soft hands dirtier than they’d ever been. Once again, he thought about the little boy he had never gotten to meet. Dirt fell upon the back of the little white rocking horse and clung to its snowy hair.
This grave took a little bit longer to fill, and Daniel found himself again repeating Master Samuel’s words. Yesterday, I only knew a world of stories and toys, he thought. Everything was given to me. Since then, I have seen dead people and pain. I have slept on the hard ground instead of my soft bed. I am not as innocent as I was yesterday, but think I am wiser. I must not stop learning. And so, with Master Samuel’s words as his mantra, Daniel picked up whole armfuls of the soft dirt and let it fall with a pleasant sound into the grave, like a miniscule, muffled clap of thunder. Soon the horse’s back was covered, and then even the tips of its ears could not be seen.
Daniel didn’t know just how much wiser he was than he had been a mere day ago. His thoughts were deeper and he felt their meanings more passionately. His pale cheeks were flushed, and he was moving the dirt faster than he had been for the first grave. When it was full, he once again helped Master Samuel smooth it over, and then waited expectantly for permission to continue with the second-largest grave.
Once again, Master Samuel stood and looked into the grave, an unreadable expression on his face. Daniel stood next to him and stared down at the wing. Unlike the wing he had found in the garden labyrinth, this rumpled thing didn’t really look like it was something that could have ever really lived and moved. It was so stiff and visibly not alive, like a big lump of wax with feathers stuck in it.
Samuel’s voice brought the little boy quickly out of his own thoughts. “With the death of the self, we will become selfless.” And once again, he set to work filling the hole with dirt, covering his own detached appendage in the ground. Daniel set to work too, thinking the wing must be lonely down there. With a surge of pity, he wished they could have buried its mate in the ground with it. When wings were alive and attached to their owner, one was fairly useless without the other. And then, he felt a great longing he had never before felt. He wanted to belong to someone or something else. He wanted to be part of a set, rather than the odd, lonely little boy that he was.
Although he didn’t really know how to explain it, what he wanted was a friend to which he could belong, and who would belong to him. If you’ve ever had a best friend, you know what this is like. Even when you argue, and even when you dislike each other so much that you don’t speak for ages, you still belong to each other. Even if you part ways, there is a part of your heart that will always belong to the other, and a part of his or her heart will always belong to you. This, although he didn’t fully understand it, is what Daniel wanted.
When I find him, he told himself, he will be more to me than I am to myself. And suddenly the meaning of Master Samuel’s statement was clear as day. I will become selfless. I will give up everything I have if I can only belong to someone else. I will live for him, and I will die for him if I must. And so, he repeated Master Samuel’s prayer to himself again, thinking fervently of the other wing, and of his own other half. With the death of the self, we will become selfless. And he carried the dirt from the pile to the grave so determinedly that his muscles began to ache, and sweat shimmered on his skin.
Finally, the wing was buried and the dirt patted down, and Samuel stood before the dead woman in the largest pit. Daniel stood beside him, breathing more deeply than usual, his hands and white clothes covered in dirt. And he waited, silently and patiently, for the wingless Angelis to speak. The silence was the longest, but Daniel did not speak, nor did his thoughts wander. He simply looked with reverence at the bundle at the bottom of the pit that had once been a woman, and so much more, a mother.
When Samuel spoke, it was in a voice barely above a whisper. “With the death of love, love does not die. It grows, strengthens, and multiplies. And it is with this love that we must persevere.” Samuel hefted the shovel and started shifting the dirt from the pile to the grave, but he kept talking, even as the first few mounds of dirt hit the bundle of faded sheets. Daniel hastened to help him. “It is this love that we must show our friends and with the same love that we must pity our enemies. It is this love that we must bestow upon strangers. It is this love that will keep the dead alive in our hearts…” Samuel staggered and the shovel slipped a little in his hand. Daniel stopped and looked at him. “This love…” Then he fell to his knees at the side of the grave and began to weep. The shovel fell to the ground with a soft thunk.
Daniel looked at him for a moment, not sure what to do. He didn’t really understand love. He didn’t really think that he’d ever loved anyone, not even his father. So, Samuel’s speech didn’t make much sense to him. But he saw the same, intense sadness that he had seen earlier in Master Samuel’s face, and he knew that he needed to do something. So, went to where the shovel had fallen, picked it up, and walked to the pile of dirt. He scooped some up in the shovel with some difficulty. Firstly, the shovel was far too big for such a small boy to use. Secondly, Daniel had never used a shovel - not even a little gardening spade.
He learned quickly, though, and found if he held the shovel close to the spade end, he could balance it more easily. So, as Master Samuel sobbed at the edge of the grave, Daniel kept working, as fast as he could, to fill up the grave. It was a very big grave. After what had seemed like hours, it was only a quarter of the way full, and that was the quarter which had already had something in it. But he did not stop, even when his little arms burned. He did not speak or sigh. He simply kept working until Master Samuel seemed to have no more tears to cry. His body still shook with rough, dry sobs, but soon he got to his feet and took the shovel from Daniel’s hands. He did not say anything, but his eyes were grateful. He finished filling the grave while Daniel helped with slow little armfuls, and when it was complete, Samuel took the little boy’s hand and they looked hard at the four smooth mounds of dirt, each one smaller than the one to its left.
Then, they washed up in the stream, and Samuel taught Daniel how to use a needle and thread, and he helped sew up the open wound in the man’s back with only a few mistakes. Samuel brought a rough suit of clothes, a small cream-colored shirt and brown trousers, from inside the little cottage, and gave them to Daniel. “I’m sorry your old clothes are ruined,” he said, “but it is just as well, for you must no longer look like a prince if we are to proceed safely through this country.” And Daniel pulled on the clothes, thinking about the dead boy. The trousers were the right fit around his waist, but they were a little too long. The shirt was a little too tight, but it had a lace-up collar, so by leaving it loose, the shirt remained comfortable. The only thing he kept was his own pair of leather boots, which he tucked the overlong pant legs into. Master Samuel filled a bag from inside the house with a few other things - some more clothes, blankets, and cookware - and then hammered some small wedges of wood into the crack between the cottage door and its frame. Thus, the door remained impossible to open, and with one last look, the wingless Angelis and the runaway prince left the place.