2702-2710
Soot District, Vienda
Soot District, Vienda
Consider this a memoir of sorts, but it's nothing I really want to remember. Much. I just can't forget. It haunts me in my sleep. I see pieces of it when I'm awake. It's still who I was, even if it's no longer who I am.
I had a happy childhood, for the most part.
I didn't know at the time I should commit such luxury afforded to the son of two galdori professors to memory before it was too late. If someone had told me how it would be torn away from me at such a young age, I might've tried harder to hang onto it in my mind, but now, years later, the faces and details are faded, fuzzy, gone.
Looking back, I'd have to say my parents were always suspicious I was born a passive. Especially my mum. There was something ... something she held back from me. I felt it, more so in the way she favored my sister than in how she treated me. I was still loved, but I caught on quickly that it was a different sort of emotion than I should've received.
My parents must've paid no small sum of pride and coin to test me early, at eight years old, just as my sister passed her entrance into Brunnhold with flying colors.
I remember their faces when I failed.
I will never, ever forget when the word "passive" was first used in my presence. I didn't understand then, but it's been forever branded into my mind with fire instead of the mere ink on my arm.
She was crying.
I think she was angry, though. At me, perhaps. At herself, more likely. At the gods. At Alioe. Maybe even the mona, too. Those mixed up emotions heavy and oppressive in her field—I remember how it felt, washing against me, against a boy who would never know his own.
She didn't let me say goodbye to anyone, even though part of me knew what she was doing.
I'd never been able to leave the gates of our home, let alone wander out into the streets of Muffey without her or my da. But that's where she left me, confused in some dark alley on the seedier part of town, far from the prying eyes of her peers who had already started whispering about our family name. She never spoke a word about what happened. She just told me to wait on the curb as she closed the carriage door without waving and disappeared.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She never came back.
I cried.
One street corner wasn't any different from another until the Soot District became my home.
The recruiting warden for Onthian Mill of Textiles and Metal Workings was a burly hulk of a human with less hair than teeth, if that was possible. Everyone just called him Ox, but that really was too much of a compliment to his brains. His hands were as big as my head, I remember, and he could swing a stick to shatter kneecaps if he wanted to get the attention of the laborers under his care.
He terrified me.
As I stood trembling in my small, half-starved frame before him, I promised myself that I would learn to teach men like that to be afraid of me some day.
We all stood in a line on the street, pathetic orphaned boys and girls of varying ages and races. Ox and his henchmen poked and prodded us, peered in our hungry mouths to check our teeth, and made sure we weren't diseased. It was not a pleasant experience, but by the time it was my turn to stand in that lineup, I really didn't care. It was a promise of food, even if I'd heard what happened to those not quick enough on their feet in those factories.
We were carted off, sullen and afraid. We were washed in cold water, shoved into uniforms, shown bunks in a crowded labor house, fed something runny and gross, given rules to live or die by, and eventually assigned our places in the industrial hierarchy of a busy textile factory with very little training or guidance.
We belonged to the factory now. We weren't our own. There was no one to protect us—who would've cared, anyway? Our time now belonged to someone else, as did our hands and feet. But not our minds or our spirits. No one could take that, no matter how hard they tried.
Those of us discovered as passives were branded and watched, reminded that we were dangerous and a curse, yet put to work. The other workers, mostly humans and a few wicks, reserved a special kind of loathing for us. So did the wardens. We were painful reminders of those in power, despite our magical powerlessness.
It wasn't really a living, but neither were the streets. The days were long, the beatings regular, and the food terrible.
I dreamt of getting out. I lived and breathed it when no one was looking. I knew there had to be more than soot and sweat and textiles and blood. I just didn't know it was for me. I was afraid to think it was possible, but I was determined to find out.
Erich was a good kid. Freckled, red-headed, and obviously born a galdor. He was dainty, vain, and like myself was still unwilling to give up his hold on his heritage, no matter how hard Ox and his croonies tried to beat and sweat it out of us. One day, after a week or so of fighting some mysteriously dangerous illness, Erich just couldn't work anymore. He was exhausted. He was practically a walking corpse as it was, emaciated and pale. Whatever he'd caught, no one cared to make him better as long as he could run the threads. Sure, they'd heal us if they felt the need, but otherwise, pain was a better motivator than mercy.
Well, he finally gave in to his tiredness. I tried my best to keep him awake that day, but I was busy. We all were. He fell asleep on his line and the weaving machine found that to be the most offensive event since it was built, snagging the whole set and stopping production with the loudest steamy squeal.
Ox was furious.
The whole factory was.
Lord Onthian was going to have everyone's head on a platter for sure.
I wanted to take the beating that ensued, to take the blame, for I knew what it meant for Erich. Well, I thought I knew. I didn't speak up in time, however. I was too afraid.
He was made an example, there amongst the hissing, angry machines. With the line stopped, everyone stood and watched the burly human mash the pathetic passive boy like he was so much raw meat. Erich didn't even make a sound, though he knew this beating would kill him. He didn't protest. It was a different kind of freedom, no matter how much it hurt.
Then it happened.
We all felt it, a tingling along the back of our necks, a burning in our chests. All the sudden, that broken boy had a field. It filled the room like smoke filling our nostrils, angry and heavy and building. That was what the mona felt like. It was as hauntingly beautiful as it was terrifying.
Ox screamed. His bloodied fists began twisting and curling along with his face and body as he began to grow old before my eyes. He didn't just age a little, he was practically mummified and wasted to dust in front of the entire factory of on-lookers. It was horrible, but no one could look away. The screaming. The smell. The disgusting sound of rapidly rotting flesh.
I'm pretty sure I lost a year or two of my own life that day. I felt time slip through my very pores.
In the chaos that ensued, I ran. No one noticed, really.
In the labor house lawn, I had buried everything I could even pretend I owned. Coins, that watch, and a knife. Above the screams, I dug it all up and scrambled over the fence and into the dirty streets of the Dives, uniform and all.
Once I was far enough away from everything, I stopped and pulled out the pocket watch I had managed to keep safe all these years. It was a vestige of hope, something I held onto to remember where I came from and where I thought I wanted to get back to, regardless of the cost. My family's spectrograph was still in there, unfazed in clarity even if it was in my memory. They all stared back at me, and I hardly recognized the innocent, smiling boy I once was.
That was it for me. It was too much.
I quit.
I smashed that watch face with the hilt of my knife until it stopped ticking.
There was no more past for me if what Ox did to Erich and Erich did to Ox were my only future. Surely, I was cursed indeed if that terrible uncontrollable magic was my fate.
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I don't really remember how I got to Vienda, exactly, all those years ago. Most of my life before my sister's tenth birthday is kind of a blur, really. We were just kids, having fun. We played Seventen together, Nia and I. She held my hand when we walked to the candy store in Muffey. We tracked mud into the house from the garden and giggled when the nursemaid apologized for yelling at us so harshly. We had pretend sword fights and imaginary magic duels in the chill air of Intas, pretending our breath was fire. We promised each other than one day, when we'd proudly graduated Brunnhold, we'd join the Seventen together and keep all of Anaxas safe. Little did I know that I was the dangerous one.I had a happy childhood, for the most part.
I didn't know at the time I should commit such luxury afforded to the son of two galdori professors to memory before it was too late. If someone had told me how it would be torn away from me at such a young age, I might've tried harder to hang onto it in my mind, but now, years later, the faces and details are faded, fuzzy, gone.
Looking back, I'd have to say my parents were always suspicious I was born a passive. Especially my mum. There was something ... something she held back from me. I felt it, more so in the way she favored my sister than in how she treated me. I was still loved, but I caught on quickly that it was a different sort of emotion than I should've received.
My parents must've paid no small sum of pride and coin to test me early, at eight years old, just as my sister passed her entrance into Brunnhold with flying colors.
I remember their faces when I failed.
I will never, ever forget when the word "passive" was first used in my presence. I didn't understand then, but it's been forever branded into my mind with fire instead of the mere ink on my arm.
text
Mum woke me in the dark that night without warning. She dressed me warmer than I thought she needed to with extra clothes in layers, shoved some things in my pockets, like her watch—a gift from my father, with our Greymoore family crest engraved beautifully on the outside and a spectrograph taken on my sister's tenth birthday carefully tucked inside—some snacks, and some coins. More coins than I'd held in my grubby little hands my whole short life.She was crying.
I think she was angry, though. At me, perhaps. At herself, more likely. At the gods. At Alioe. Maybe even the mona, too. Those mixed up emotions heavy and oppressive in her field—I remember how it felt, washing against me, against a boy who would never know his own.
She didn't let me say goodbye to anyone, even though part of me knew what she was doing.
I'd never been able to leave the gates of our home, let alone wander out into the streets of Muffey without her or my da. But that's where she left me, confused in some dark alley on the seedier part of town, far from the prying eyes of her peers who had already started whispering about our family name. She never spoke a word about what happened. She just told me to wait on the curb as she closed the carriage door without waving and disappeared.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She never came back.
I cried.
text
Somehow, I found myself in Vienda sometime after my ninth birthday, if I was keeping time correctly. I might not have been. Everything felt like forever back then. I hardly had clothes to my name, but I still had that watch. I'd been stolen from, I'd stolen, I'd begged, I'd fought, I'd been beaten. I'd hitched a ride with a farmer who'd found me eating whatever I could find in his field. He knew what I was and he knew just where to leave my wild, sad, scrawny self.One street corner wasn't any different from another until the Soot District became my home.
text
The factory wardens kept a good eye on the street for fresh labor. Once a week, they'd round up the urchins they could pull out from alleys and drains and abandoned homes. Just days before my tenth birthday, I finally got caught. Part of me wanted to by then. The streets were a hard place when you were the scrawny son of a galdor, when that tattoo on your bicep marked you as a field-less wimp from a broken, wealthy home of oppressors and racists.The recruiting warden for Onthian Mill of Textiles and Metal Workings was a burly hulk of a human with less hair than teeth, if that was possible. Everyone just called him Ox, but that really was too much of a compliment to his brains. His hands were as big as my head, I remember, and he could swing a stick to shatter kneecaps if he wanted to get the attention of the laborers under his care.
He terrified me.
As I stood trembling in my small, half-starved frame before him, I promised myself that I would learn to teach men like that to be afraid of me some day.
We all stood in a line on the street, pathetic orphaned boys and girls of varying ages and races. Ox and his henchmen poked and prodded us, peered in our hungry mouths to check our teeth, and made sure we weren't diseased. It was not a pleasant experience, but by the time it was my turn to stand in that lineup, I really didn't care. It was a promise of food, even if I'd heard what happened to those not quick enough on their feet in those factories.
We were carted off, sullen and afraid. We were washed in cold water, shoved into uniforms, shown bunks in a crowded labor house, fed something runny and gross, given rules to live or die by, and eventually assigned our places in the industrial hierarchy of a busy textile factory with very little training or guidance.
We belonged to the factory now. We weren't our own. There was no one to protect us—who would've cared, anyway? Our time now belonged to someone else, as did our hands and feet. But not our minds or our spirits. No one could take that, no matter how hard they tried.
Those of us discovered as passives were branded and watched, reminded that we were dangerous and a curse, yet put to work. The other workers, mostly humans and a few wicks, reserved a special kind of loathing for us. So did the wardens. We were painful reminders of those in power, despite our magical powerlessness.
It wasn't really a living, but neither were the streets. The days were long, the beatings regular, and the food terrible.
text
I managed to keep my wits, my limbs, and my life for a good handful of years. I can't say I kept much else – certainly not my pride – but by the time I was fifteen, I'd managed to work my way up to earning a very meager wage. It was nothing, but I hid what I could. I'd also managed to earn my fair share of stripes and scars. I wasn't exactly the best listener, even if I worked harder than most. I had nothing else to do: I had to prove myself to someone. Anyone. Even if they didn't care. Even if they beat me for it.text
Eventually, I suppose I made friends. We pretended to be family. We looked out for each other, tended each other's wounds, kept each other awake or warm or fed. We hardly saw each other outside of working or sleeping or washing, except for the few hours we had to ourselves in a week. There was no such thing as a holiday, unless something broke or someone was maimed or killed or you were beaten so soundly you couldn't move for a day. Not all of my friends stayed whole as I did, and one or two of them died from the regular discipline we were subjected to, if not the dangerous machines we worked along side of.I dreamt of getting out. I lived and breathed it when no one was looking. I knew there had to be more than soot and sweat and textiles and blood. I just didn't know it was for me. I was afraid to think it was possible, but I was determined to find out.
text
It was as my plans to escape were falling into place that I gave up on time.text
I remember it clearly. It was the first time I ever saw a diablerie, and the third time I lost a close friend. It was a few days before my 16th birthday. Erich was a good kid. Freckled, red-headed, and obviously born a galdor. He was dainty, vain, and like myself was still unwilling to give up his hold on his heritage, no matter how hard Ox and his croonies tried to beat and sweat it out of us. One day, after a week or so of fighting some mysteriously dangerous illness, Erich just couldn't work anymore. He was exhausted. He was practically a walking corpse as it was, emaciated and pale. Whatever he'd caught, no one cared to make him better as long as he could run the threads. Sure, they'd heal us if they felt the need, but otherwise, pain was a better motivator than mercy.
Well, he finally gave in to his tiredness. I tried my best to keep him awake that day, but I was busy. We all were. He fell asleep on his line and the weaving machine found that to be the most offensive event since it was built, snagging the whole set and stopping production with the loudest steamy squeal.
Ox was furious.
The whole factory was.
Lord Onthian was going to have everyone's head on a platter for sure.
I wanted to take the beating that ensued, to take the blame, for I knew what it meant for Erich. Well, I thought I knew. I didn't speak up in time, however. I was too afraid.
He was made an example, there amongst the hissing, angry machines. With the line stopped, everyone stood and watched the burly human mash the pathetic passive boy like he was so much raw meat. Erich didn't even make a sound, though he knew this beating would kill him. He didn't protest. It was a different kind of freedom, no matter how much it hurt.
Then it happened.
We all felt it, a tingling along the back of our necks, a burning in our chests. All the sudden, that broken boy had a field. It filled the room like smoke filling our nostrils, angry and heavy and building. That was what the mona felt like. It was as hauntingly beautiful as it was terrifying.
Ox screamed. His bloodied fists began twisting and curling along with his face and body as he began to grow old before my eyes. He didn't just age a little, he was practically mummified and wasted to dust in front of the entire factory of on-lookers. It was horrible, but no one could look away. The screaming. The smell. The disgusting sound of rapidly rotting flesh.
I'm pretty sure I lost a year or two of my own life that day. I felt time slip through my very pores.
In the chaos that ensued, I ran. No one noticed, really.
In the labor house lawn, I had buried everything I could even pretend I owned. Coins, that watch, and a knife. Above the screams, I dug it all up and scrambled over the fence and into the dirty streets of the Dives, uniform and all.
Once I was far enough away from everything, I stopped and pulled out the pocket watch I had managed to keep safe all these years. It was a vestige of hope, something I held onto to remember where I came from and where I thought I wanted to get back to, regardless of the cost. My family's spectrograph was still in there, unfazed in clarity even if it was in my memory. They all stared back at me, and I hardly recognized the innocent, smiling boy I once was.
That was it for me. It was too much.
I quit.
I smashed that watch face with the hilt of my knife until it stopped ticking.
There was no more past for me if what Ox did to Erich and Erich did to Ox were my only future. Surely, I was cursed indeed if that terrible uncontrollable magic was my fate.
text
I stopped time that day.text
I've been running ever since.
