"Pull back tah string. Yup, jus' like t'at.' Donngall's steady hands braced Wulfstan's shoulders, adjusting his position only slightly. The bow was old, unused since Donngall had become a father, but it was sturdy and perfectly pliant in the hand. It was, however, almost comically small in Wulfstan's grasp, the large difference between Donngall's height as a young adult and Wulfstan's becoming painfully obvious. That didn't mean it couldn't be used. "Aim at the deer now. Go on, laddy."
Letting go of the bowstring, the arrow hissed in a delicate arc through the air. It danced by the gnarled trees, cutting apart the shrubs in its path. Barely a moment had passed since it had flown from the notch before it thudded with great force into the chest of an unsuspecting doe. She shuddered, her head flinging towards the direction of that fatal projectile before collapsing to the ground, her lungs and heart pierced in one fell swoop.
Donngall clapped Wulfstan's back and let out a triumphant whoop. "Woah, boyo, bagged a fine doe on your first try. Lord above, you're wasted on the farm!" He hurriedly scrambled out from their makeshift hide and plodded over across the sparse copse to collect the carcass before anything else got to the deer. No matter how quiet the beefy man tried to be, his steps echoed across the entire valley, every branch cracking like an explosion beneath his feet.
Perhaps the noise was exaggerated by Wulfstan's ears, but the roaming deer seemed to hold the same opinion of the old man's presence. Skittering every which way the moment he stepped foot in their vicinity, it had taken them hours to get any deer to stay in the area long enough for them to make a hide or to aim an arrow at them. Donngall was not a hunter in anycapacity, but Wulfstan was different. His father figure had noticed it through the years.
The boy, tall as he was, spoke in a hush every time he opened his mouth, and his presence went unnoticed until he was caught in someone's peripheral. Lurking about like a ghost was how Wulfstan spent his time when not talking to someone, though he wasn't half as scary as a ghoul. Donngall was mighty impressed by how quiet Wulfstan's breathing was, completely imperceptible even when standing right next to him, and decided that, after seeing him perfectly sneak up on escaped piglets through the years, he would be the perfect candidate to teach some rudimentary hunting skills to.
Leofric had never been in consideration. Not because he lacked the technical skills to learn to sneak or aim for the right spot on an animal but because Donngall's son was a soft lad. Every year when the piglets would be prepped for slaughter, Leofric would have to leave the farm for fear of breaking into tears. He couldn't bear to see the babes he'd farrowed be killed nor could bear the sight of any animal dying, even if he could comfortably eat their meat come the evening.
The farmer's two sons were opposites in that matter. Wulfstan had never been bothered by holding down a piglet to slit its throat and gut it on the rare occasions they didn't send it off to Brom Fisher, the butcher, his face not changing for a moment. He held no attachment to the pigs on the farm as he had long since accepted that they would be eaten. The only one Wulfstan cared for was the old sow, as she was too old to eat but still good for breeding. Wulfstan knew he could comfortably care for her because she would not be killed before her time.
Hunting had been along the same lines for him when Donngall had suggested it.
"Is she a good weight? Will she sell well?" Wulfstan called out to Donngall as he made his way over to the old farmer. He watched as the man huffed and puffed, struggling to hoist the doe over his shoulders to carry her back the few miles to the village. "Donngall, I'll do it."
"Alrighty, laddy." Donngall stopped trying to pick the deer up and squatted to the side, wheezing heavy breaths in an attempt to get his strength back. "Yup, Wulfstan, she'll sell well. Lord, I'm getting old."
Wulfstan foisted the limp carcass across his shoulders, the hooves tied together to keep the legs from flopping about. It was a smooth movement, and he barely hesitated in the action. Adjusting the body slightly to be less awkward, he turned back to Donngall and reached out his long-fingered hand to offer assistance to his father figure. "You aren't that old yet. Don't go giving up." He looked out at the horizon, the last rays of the day beginning to diminish behind the luscious hills. "Night's coming. We should head back, no?"
"Aye." Taking Wulfstan's hand, Donngall was promptly tugged up off the ground with no resistance. He stumbled slightly as he found his balance and looked at the young man quizzically, as he often did, before sighing and setting off in the direction of home. "Come on, then."
-
Ten summers had passed since the first time Wulfstan had opened his eyes. It had shot by quickly, like a fleeting spark shooting off from a burning fire. Yet it had not felt warm like one should when involved with fire – at least, Wulfstan knew a fire was hot from word of mouth.
In the five years since his excursion back to the woods he'd once lived in, Wulfstan had only deciphered a few of the more modern texts he'd found in the cave. There had been no clear answers in any of them beyond what he'd learnt from the first one he'd read. Holding out hope, Wulfstan continued to work to decode the earliest drawing-like writings on the stone tablets. Feasibly, they could have the most insight into what he was. Something was calling to him whenever he held the tablet that seemed to be the oldest but the writing on it, if it could even be called writing as it was more of a language of drawings, had no basis for him to translate it to English.
He was certainly beginning to feel the futility of the task.
While he had been wrapped up in his tablets and scrolls at night, he continued to toil in the fields with Leofric and Donngall in the day. It had been the same repetitive, menial life until the winter just gone when the old man had a nasty fall and scratched up his thigh on some old farm tools he hadn't seen.
Donngall had been in good health for the first week or so, the healing process heading in the desired direction when there had been a sudden turn for the worse. In the throes of a particularly violent snowstorm, he had been struck with an illness of the chest, phlegmy coughs and constant shivers leaving him bed bound. The slow healing of his injuries halted, leaving constantly yellow-weeping wounds festering in the frigid air. Humours stagnated and miasma abound, the healers and the clerics were at a loss.
Months passed in that state of limbo. Donngall's impossibly stubborn nature and unrivalled constitution kept him from dying when a weaker man would have.
One of the busiest times of the year had swiftly fallen upon them. March had come and Leofric and Wulfstan had to take on the jobs of sowing the fields, farrowing the sow and selling off the unneeded piglets. Ita was bound to the house more than before, only able to help Donngall get fed and watered – she could not accept the reality that his life was coming to a close. The slow warming of the weather was doing his perpetually open wound no
favours.
More grey hairs sprouted from her head every day. Her plump, rounded cheeks had become sallow from the stress and pre-emptive grief she was experiencing. Ita hardly spoke these days, her voice only coming out from her and Donngall's bedroom in hushed murmurs or mournful songs used to comfort her suffering husband. Neither of her boys had seen her eat in days.
Wulfstan did not know how to cope with the aching in his chest. He couldn't fathom how he would keep going when Donngall died. It was so painfully permanent that it baffled him.
Death was not something he could take in.