The Wanderings
No matter how hard he tried, Cal couldn't wake up his mother. And she was so cold that her hands were completely icy.
The boy cried and called for her to wake up, but there was only stubborn silence in response. All he had to do was run out of the house and knock on the neighbors' doors.
Making quite a ruckus, he gradually got the attention of the whole village.
Curious onlookers and indifferent acquaintances ran to his shout. A few brave women entered the house and soon left with stony faces.
Their experience told them there was a man involved, but no one asked them and, oddly enough, the Shaman was already rushing toward the house, as if he had learned of the trouble beforehand.
Behind him, Ling was surprised to see the same man who had been in Cal's house the night before. He had a pale, frightened face.
«What on earth have you done?» Ling asked mentally.
Meanwhile, the Shaman began his show: beating a drum, rolling his eyes, and finally reaching the culmination of his performance.
«Stand back, save yourselves,» he shouted, «evil spirits have been here! They have torn the poor woman to pieces!»
The crowd gasped and parted. Voices and whispers could be heard everywhere: «where did the evil spirits come from?», «We regularly sacrifice our best offerings to them,» «the Shaman prays to the protecting spirits every day.»
Hearing this talk, the Shaman played his favorite card again and pointed to the guilty party. The dice fell beside Cal. The tear-stained, scruffy boy stood, not daring to move. Like all the children in the village, he feared the Shaman more than anything else in the world.
The frightening old man raised his bony hand with nightmarish hooked fingernails and said, pointing at the child, «you have summoned evil spirits, you have cursed your mother.
It was akin to a bomb going off. The women screamed and hid their children in their skirts; the men clutched their daggers in their hands and tried to tear Cal apart.
Instantly the whole village hated the strange child. Ling covered himself with Cal, but it was only an illusion and everything that happened a long time ago.
He had heard the Shaman order, Cal, to get out of the village before sundown and could do nothing to help him.
Without letting him see his mother, without letting him return to the house even for a moment, the child was banished from the village. The children's dogs ran after him for a long time, grabbing his skinny legs, growling, and barking.
He stopped only when he could no longer breathe. His insides seemed to burst with pain. He rested for a while, huddled in the dense thicket, and walked on, not knowing the way.
Cal was about eight years old at the time.
«Forgive me mother; forgive me for not coming home for a long time!
As he wandered, not knowing where he called out for his mother and could not accept what had happened.
Finally, he fell down and could not get up. Ling's hair stood on end, «can a man endure so much grief and injustice at such a tender age?»
At dawn, Cal came to his senses and found the strength to walk forward. Suddenly he looked around and, shuddering, uttered: «the path of painful death.»
After standing for a while, he continued forward despite his superstitious fear.
From little Cal's memories, Ling learned that this was a forbidden place. Every child was compelled from birth never to walk this way.
Adults called this place «the path of painful death» and frightened children that on this road one might encounter one who used to be human.
Now he eats people, especially prefers children. «Boils chowder from their tender eyes dries their ears, and then crunches them by the fireplace on winter evenings.»
These eerie tales were enough to sow a chilling fear in the souls of the children. But little Cal was striding bravely forward so that grown-up Ling had to run after him.
After overcoming the steep ascent, the boy walked on and on. When the sun was already high up he finally saw the log house at the end of the path. Dense smoke was billowing from the hole in the roof.
«Well, I'm off to meet my mother,» Cal strode boldly toward death. Around the shack was a ghastly graveyard of bones. Even an adult in his right mind would not go to this hellish house.
The boy bravely knocked on the door, and when it opened, he did not back down. A handsome young man looked down on him.
Cal even blinked, trying to chase away the beautiful vision and hoping to see someone who looked like the village Shaman. But the handsome man did not disappear.
Instead, he looked intently at Cal and then looked around the neighborhood with an attentive eye, looking for adults.
«Did you come alone?» The man asked in a surprisingly melodious and pleasant voice.
«Yes, I came alone to accept death at your hands and to meet my mother and father in Valhalla.»
The man suddenly softened and, smiling, crouched down in front of the boy to look him in the eyes.
«Don't you know that Valhalla is only for brave warriors who have fallen in battle?»
Cal grimaced but did not give up.
«Eat me anyway, so I can follow my mother down the river, I will surely find her and ask her forgiveness for not coming home for so, so long. And that I am such a weak, useless son, I have attracted evil spirits and cursed my father. I wish I hadn't been born,» Cal cried.
The man looked at him slightly confused, and Ling began to doubt that he was able to maintain such a flowery appearance by eating people. Something wasn't adding up, though the graveyard of assorted bones still inspired awe.
The man waited for the boy to cry out his grief and spoke to him again.
«I'm sorry, but I wasn't planning on eating any more children this year. If that's what you came for, then go away.»
Cal stared at the man incredulously, sniffing his nose.
«But if you want to stay here and help me with my business, I'll feed you and teach you how to punish the bad people who hurt you and your family. Let me see if you have the strength to do that,» the man took Cal's hand and closed his eyes.
For a few seconds, he studied the flow of his energy and suddenly pulled his hands away.
«Very, very strong,» the man whispered.
Cal entered the shabby hut and lived in it for many winters. Ling watched as in the evenings the boy diligently repeated lines from the scrolls after the man or told him what he had seen while he went for firewood.
The man cared for the boy and raised him as his son. But there was something strange about the whole story, and Ling could not shake off the uneasy feeling.
When Cal turned seventeen, he was a tall, handsome young man.
«If he was in the same class as me, no girl would look in my direction,» Ling thought.
The full moon was shining that night when the man handed Cal a bowl of herbal broth when he finished class. The young man obediently accepted it, but just pretended to drink it.
Ling tensed, noticing the strange behavior of the two of them. Cal fell asleep and the man pulled out ropes and tied his hands and feet tightly together.
Cal was suspended in the center of the cabin. His body staggered languidly on the hook. Ling's palms were sweating. He remembered all the horror stories about the trail of agonizing death and was beginning to believe a little.
Meanwhile, the man drew a long dagger from his canvas bag and stroked its lethal blade lovingly. Saying some ghastly words, he swung and would surely have killed Cal if he had not secretly freed himself from the ropes on his arms and jumped off the hook.
«What for?» he shouted to the stunned man.
«For life!» The man lunged at Cal with his knife again, but the man pushed him away with his feet, and he thundered against the wall.
«Did you raise me like a pig for slaughter?» The young man shouted.
«Your energy will last me for decades, and I won't get sick or old, is that not enough?» The man moved toward Cal again with an expression of murderous determination.
Cal used a massive stool to deflect his attacks. They fought on equal footing for a while, but gradually the young man weakened.
Then he noticed incense on the window. He put them out, but they had already done their work.
Slowly he settled to the floor, losing control of his body. Ling couldn't remember seeing the man light them, but it didn't matter. Right now Cal was in mortal danger and Ling had no idea how he would escape.
After ascertaining that the young man was unconscious, the killer hung him on the hook again and brought the knife up to stab him. Ling covered his eyes with his hands, and suddenly he was blinded by a scarlet flash of light.
The man struck Cal, but he was unable to hurt him. Instead, he was thrown to the corner of the shack, hit his neck on the table, and let his breath go. Cal glowed for a while with a beautiful scarlet light that made his eyes water.
The glow lasted a few minutes and then faded, and little by little the young man came to his senses. He swayed on the hook until he was able to get his feet caught in a roughly chipped bollard.
As he pushed off, he collapsed noisily to the floor. With much effort, he freed himself from the ropes and only then looked at his false benefactor.
Armed with a shovel, he went out into the yard and dug a hole before sunrise. Burying the dead man in it, he washed his hands, gathered his belongings, and left to seek shelter elsewhere.
Ling sailed with him on the small boat, battling the storm, selling fish, delivering packages, helping the baker, and even being a circus performer.
Of course, a lot could happen in such a long life, but what Ling certainly didn't see was a close friend or loved one.
Cal was constantly moving from place to place. Forever holding his family's tragic history in his mind, he didn't trust people and didn't stay anywhere for long. One day he had to spend the winter in the countryside. Breaking his principle of not staying somewhere repeatedly, he brought trouble upon himself.
At first, this settlement seemed to him better than the others, and he decided to stay there once more. He paid the headman generously for a wind-blown shack and went away peacefully for the winter without disturbing anyone. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the villagers surrounded his house.
Everyone was holding a torch, and they were angry. Cal went out to the people and heard the most absurd accusation of his life:
«A stranger seduced our woman, and she gave birth to a white-haired child. And her husband is a redhead, and she is red!»
All blame was superstitiously placed on the strange stranger.
The crowd was making an angry noise, and Cal looked at the woman and couldn't remember if he had ever seen her before. The child was indeed born albino and, unlike Cal, his eyebrows were blond too, but you couldn't prove it to people.
Finally, the headman stepped forward and, feeling a little remorse for the rich guest, tried to reassure the villagers.
He appealed to people and said that if the guest was guilty, then it was necessary to leave the woman and the child to him and let him answer.
The husband was the first to support this idea and he threw his torch into the snow and left. After him, the others also began to go home.
When they were gone, the dazed woman noticed that the baby hadn't cried for a long time, and a new nightmare began. Cal tried to help her, but it was clear that the baby was dead.
Then he was wounded by his distraught mother, and his house was burned down. He fled to the rocks and there he was met by the Teacher.
From that moment on, Ling was especially attentive, but one thing did not fit the picture.