Ander - Chapter 5, Subchapter 42
#208 of Ander
42
It was cold. Much too cold. This wasn't normal. It wasn't supposed to be this cold. Maybe it was just naturally colder this side of the mountain, but Banno didn't think so. His presence alone should have been enough to keep it at bay. That proved that this cold was not normal. Not natural. Unnatural.
He took another length of wood from the pile and tossed it into the hearth, not trying to be particularly quiet. If the Foxes woke up, he'd just say he couldn't sleep, so he decided to warm up by the fire. He wouldn't even be lying. No big deal. He was just sitting here. Not bothering anybody. Just sitting. And thinking.
He took the blanket around his shoulders and pulled it tighter around his body, trying to make a tight seal to trap the heat. He even had a make-shift little hood covering his head. There. All snug as a bug in a rug, as little Valery would say. Heat stay in, cold stay out.
It wasn't enough. The blanket wasn't enough. The fire wasn't enough. It needed to be bigger. He needed to be closer. Yes, that would be better. That would be much better.
Banno carefully got off the extra-big chair James had made for him, slithering down to the floor like a snake so that his little bubble of trapped warmth wouldn't escape. He scootched closer to the fire until he was sitting cross-legged on the bare half-circle of flagstones around the flames. It was warmer here, but not enough.
He cast a wary eye towards the windows. It was snowing again, and he could see the white specks falling down like little pieces of unreality in the dark. The way it drifted onto the sills and piled up against the glass, sucking out all the warmth... it was almost perverted.
Banno grabbed a long, iron poker from the floor and stabbed at the crumbling logs with the sharp spear at the end, sending flurries of sparks up the chimney. The coals brightened and the fire flared up, filling the room with blessed warmth. How the flames danced, bending with the currents of its own creation...
Banno stared at those flames for a long, long time, a deep frown creasing his face. He had long suspected that fire might be alive. It breathed, it ate, it grew, and eventually it died. How was that not living? But there was a question that kept gnawing at him like a splinter, driving him mad.
If fire was alive, shouldn't he be able to take it into himself?
The flames crackled and the logs slowly crumbled into glowing coals, and Banno watched it all with his solitary eye. He watched the flames spread from one side to the other, he watched the twigs and pieces of bark that had previously been out of reach first sizzle and smoke and finally ignite, curling around in agony before turning to ash, their lives consumed by a form of life more powerful, more worthy.
Banno smiled. He had consumed the lives of hundreds of deer and countless critters - rabbits, owls, lizards, sometimes swallowing their babies whole and wriggling. If fire was alive, how was it any different from those lowly creatures? If fire was alive...
What would its death taste like?
Banno licked his lips, but there was a problem. Fire didn't have flesh to bite into. So how would he...?
He looked down at the iron poker in his hands. The handle was made of wood, and the shaft was a square, twisted around and around to make a spiral pattern. The head was like that of a spear, but there was a second spike growing out of its neck, short and sharp, curving like a claw, good for scraping through the coals.
I wonder...
He placed the iron claw over the palm of his left hand and pressed down, driving the tip into his soft pads. Blood seeped out and flowed through his fingers, dripping onto the flagstones.
If he couldn't take the life of the fire inside himself through his mouth, he'd just...
Banno stuck his arm into the hearth, just a few inches above the reaching flames. His blood dripped onto the burning coals and hissed like snakes in pain.
He could feel the heat rise up and accumulate against his palm, slipping between his open fingers. He liked fire. It was so real. More real than most things.
He slowly lowered his arm, just a tiny bit, just enough for the tallest flames to lick at his hand. He could see his fur curl up and sizzle, puffing grey tendrils of smoke up the chimney. It smelled a lot like the old Wolves they'd occasionally burn on the funeral pyres back home. Burnt fur. Very bitter. It almost felt like the smell didn't so much waft into you with the wind, but slammed into your face with the full force of an angry punch.
Eventually the fur on his palm singed away completely, exposing the bare skin. It was slowly turning red.
And still there was that smell. That bitter, acrid, cloying stench. Why did his burnt fur smell the same as the burnt fur of a dead Wolf? He wasn't dead. His fur shouldn't smell the same. Unless...
Unless his fur was already dead?
A dawning sense of horror started to build in the pit of his stomach, making him feel sick. Just the idea of being covered in millions and millions of tiny dead threads, dead threads poking into his skin, invading the parts of him that were alive and real, was almost more than he could bear.
It was because he'd gone too long without taking new life into himself. That was why he felt this way. That was why he was beginning to feel like parts of him were not real. It started with Ander, when he lost his foot and his eye. Surely they were no longer real. And now, stuck inside this house, surrounded by dead snow, he could feel the cold working its way through his skin, trying to make him just as fake as the rest of the world.
But he wouldn't let it.
The hole in his palm had cauterized, but the rest was starting to swell, forming shiny blisters like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Two... three... four... and then they fused together, forming one big giant blister, ready to burst open at any moment.
At least that was real. It was a part of him. He could feel the heat going inside, making it grow. It wasn't like the hair on his arm. If he cut them, he wouldn't feel a thing because they were all dead. And being dead was the same thing as not being real.
The blister burst open and a black torrent of blood dripped from his open wound and landed amidst the glowing coals, bubbling and hissing. The smoke rose up and wound its way around his arm like a creeping vine, and Banno sat and watched the flames go inside his body, flowing into his flesh.
Banno pulled back his hand and inspected his palm. There was no fur there. Only a bald patch, completely black and charred in the middle, with a ring of red going around the outside, wet and dripping.
But it was warm. There was that to be thankful for.
Blessedly warm...
Banno licked his lips, stuck his other arm in the fire, and listened to the dead fur sizzle.