Briar slowly got to his feet, not making any sudden moves. The wood demon watched him curiously.
Briar began to sway back and forth like a pendulum, and the demon began rocking in unison, moving like a tree swaying in a great wind, to keep eye contact. It began to step with him, and Briar held his breath as he moved two steps, then back, then three steps, then back, then, on the fourth step, he kept on walking. A moment later, the demon shook its head, and Briar broke into a run.
The demon shrieked and gave chase. At first Briar had a fair lead, but the wood demon closed the gap in just a few great strides.
Briar dodged left and right, but the demon kept pace, its growls drawing ever nearer. He scrambled over the woodpile, which was already beginning to smolder, but the demon scattered the logs with a single swipe of its powerful talons. He skidded to a stop by his father’s refuse cart, still loaded with some of the items Relan and his brothers had salvaged from the dump.
Briar dropped to his hands and knees, crawling under the cart. He held his breath as the demon’s clawed feet landed with a thump right in front of him.
The wood demon lowered its toothy snout to the ground, snuffling about. It moved to the hollow, sniffing the roots and dirt. Briar knew the demon could reach under and fish him out, or toss the cart aside easily, but perhaps that would give him enough time to run out the other side and get to the tree. He waited as the snout drew closer, coming just a few inches from him.
Just then, the demon gave a tremendous sneeze, its rows of sharp amber teeth mere inches from Briar as the mouth opened and snapped shut.
Briar bolted from hiding, but the demon, gagging and coughing, did not immediately give chase.
The hogroot, Briar realized.
A small flame demon, no bigger than a coon, challenged him as he drew close to the tree, but this time Briar didn’t try to run. He waited for the demon to draw close, then flapped his arms and clothes, creating a cloud of hogroot stink even in the acrid night. The demon heaved as if sick, and Briar kicked it, sending it sprawling as he ran on. He leapt to catch the first branch and swung himself up into the tree, hiding in the boughs, before the demon could recover.
Briar looked back and saw the windows of his house blazing like the hearth, flames licking out to climb their way up the walls.
The hearth.
Even from this distance, the heat could be felt, smoke and ash thick in the air, making every breath burn his lungs. But even so, Briar’s face went cold. His leg twitched, and he felt it warm as his bladder let go what little it had left. In his mind, he could hear his mother singing.
When laying morning fire, what do you do?
Open the flue, open the flue!
How many times had he laid that fire? His father always closed off the chimney flue after the evening fire burned down. In the morning, you had to open it…
“Or the house will fill with smoke,” he whispered.
A minute ago, Briar had been feeling quite brave, but that was over. Brave is when you’re scared, his mother said, but keep your wits about you.
Whatever Briar was, he wasn’t that.
He dug in the hollow where the branches met, finding his hidden trove of sugar candies, and let them fall to the ground as he began to weep.
I should have just shared.
I hate watching someone suffer. I hate the feeling of helplessness it evokes in me when there’s little I can do to help. Perhaps that’s why my story here got longish, when it was supposed to be shortish.
On many of Shawn’s chemotherapy days, I went and sat with him. Just to chat. Keep him company. Maybe take him a taco, if he thought he could stomach it. I know he appreciated it. But at the end of the day, my offering felt small. Because, I’d eventually head home after surreal conversation in which he spoke about his chances of beating cancer. Or not.
It reminds me of a dark novel I wrote once (a hard one to write, and one I’ve never tried to publish) that grew out of this idea: The pain and helplessness of watching someone you love die. I wrote a whole concept album around it, too—also unreleased. Maybe that’s why when Shawn shared the idea of Unfettered, and invited me to write for it, I went at it with reckless abandon. I needed to do something more. Needed to say something this time. (That whole this time reference is a long story for another day.)
So I poured myself into it. For weeks. Things that matter to me converged on the page: family, loyalty, friendship, authenticity…music. I began telling a story set in the universe of my series, The Vault of Heaven. It’s the story of two men, one old, one young, each putting his music-craft to use in very different ways.
I imagine you’ve heard the adage, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.” Well, the phrase was coined by William Congreve in his play The Mourning Bride:
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,