Questions of Faith

[Losden]

(The following series of events began on March 30, 2007.)

In the back courtyard of the Nausikaa hotel, Losden and Olin were sparring, blades fully out and sharp, a polished glistening in the afternoon sun. Both men well experienced with the sword, each had full faith that one would not inadvertently wound the other; neither wore anymore armor than a chest plate. In the distance, waves crashed against the cliffs of Seaside, and trees leaned, ravished by the wisping sea breeze.

Both men stood in similar, wide-heeled stances, left-feet forward, brandishing spathas. Initiated by Losden's movement, they clashed in low strikes, and immediately met high. Without hesitation, Losden spun on the ball of his lead foot, and pivoted to bring his spatha around in a horizontal slice: a daring move to say the least. Olin was ready; he set his blade at an angle, and Losden's attack hit it as if it were a ramp, launching into the air without destination.

Olin shifted the foible edge of the blade to Losden's throat, half an inch shy, where he held it for a lingering fraction of a second: just long enough to allow the imagination a chance to see what might have been if this were an actual battle. As a finality to the series, he shoved Losden’s shoulder to force him back. Losden stumbled and--although the push was not bullish--fell to his knee, freeing his hands to catch himself. His spatha clattered to a rest on the cobblestones.

Olin eyed Losden curiously as he returned his own weapon to his hip scabbard. "Are you all right, Colonel Fagan?" It was rare for him to best him in this way, or for Losden to attempt such an unorthodox move that would leave him so vulnerable.

Olin Brak was Losden's lieutenant, despite being twenty years his senior, to which he was assigned when Losden was granted the position of overseeing Nausikaa operations in Rhydin over a year ago. He was loyal to Nausikaa, almost to a fault. Arane Ganderfald had felt Olin’s age and experience would be of great assistance to the youthful colonel, most importantly as a grounding influence. For the most part, she was correct.

Losden remained on his knee a moment. He straightened his back, quietly smoothed the dirt from his hands. "How would you describe your faith, Olin?"

"I don’t know if I could. Faith is not something that is easily described. That is why we teach it through stories and questions." Olin stepped over to offer him a hand up.

Losden accepted the help with one hand, scooping up his sword with the other as he elevated. "Would you say you have a close relationship with God?"

"I believe I do. I understand my life has a purpose, and I believe that He is always there to show me the way to that purpose."

"And you believe your purpose is as my lieutenant?" Losden sheathed his sword at his left hip, although his eyes remained on Olin.

There was a hesitation to Olin’s response that confessed that the answer should be obvious. "Yes, Colonel."

Losden's gaze grew pensive and lowered, just briefly, before he lifted his left hand and slapped it down on Olin's shoulder in a congratulatory manner. "I plan to leave in the early dawn to visit Fermoy for a couple of days, and I will return on Wednesday evening at the latest. Keep your usual eye on things for me."

The shock of the news, and specifically the short notice of it, brought a momentary stiffness to Olin's countenance, but it dissipated as quickly as it came, and he nodded. "Godspeed, Colonel."

[Losden]

Losden departed from the Nausikaa hotel hours before dawn, while the night was still black. He was by himself. Having grown up in Fermoy, under the stranglehold of the Burvendi family, he found it much more comfortable to travel at nighttime alone than with a handful of comrades during the day. It was safer; there was less chance of drawing attention.

He headed up the road to the array of docks situated on the northern, less jagged coast of Seaside, where his boat was prepped to escort him to Talsiny. As he strode the road edging, he came upon a gathering of four individuals standing around something on the ground. Losden slowed his pace a moment to behold the scene, and then hastened forth. The something on the ground was a person.

"What's going on here?" Losden asked as he approached them. Though he did not recognize any of them, they all appeared to be some of the local fishermen that populated the area. They turned their heads and took a small step back to make room.

The woman on the ground was on her back, her right hand shifted and lying just below a large gash in her abdomen. Most of her garb had been stripped off her and was nowhere to be seen, leaving her in just her undergarments. Her head was turned aside, eyes closed. Losden guessed she was in her early thirties, a victim of theft that went horribly wrong.

He knelt down beside her, checked her jugular for a pulse. He could not feel one, but he was never sure about that sort of thing. "Who did this?" All of a sudden he shot a glare to the fishermen. "Who did this to her?!"

"Bandits ... "

"... mmm ..."

"... yes, from Badside ..."

"... poor Annabelle ..." was muttered among them.

Losden slid both his arms beneath the woman, one against her upper back, the other behind her knees, and scooped her up into his arms; her body was still limp, which he knew to be a reason to hope that she might still be alive. With one final, scrutinous gaze of the fishermen, he hurried to wake the local doctor.

[Losden]

The doctor confirmed her name: Annabelle. She was a patient of his. She had been dead a couple of hours, before Losden or even the fishermen had found her.

"You must not seek blame in those fishermen, Colonel. They knew her, and already knew it was too late. They had already begun their mourning," the doctor advised as he drew a sheet over Annabelle's body.

As he did so, Losden stole one final look: Annabelle's skin was fair, her face serene; her hair was dirty-blonde and shoulder-length. In many ways she reminded him of Shelli the day of her attack, and how she might look ten years from now, if she were still alive.

"There's been a small string of crimes around here lately, mostly thievery. Some say they’re sneaking up the coast from the city docks at night, and heading back before dawn. This is the first time there's been an assault." The doctor escorted Losden outside his front door, where he lit a pipe with a match and pulled a few puffs. He was a wise, elderly gent; and while he moved with the grogginess of someone who had just awoken--as was the case, attested to by Losden's yelling and kicking at the door some moments prior--his eyes held a well of sympathy under his curly crop of gray-black hair. "You get on to where you were going. I will handle the arrangements."

Losden had not mentioned anything about his trip; he must have revealed something in the way he had been carrying himself. "Thank you, Doctor," he replied with a nod.

The rest of the night was uneventful. Even the sea was calm, as it lay out in a crystal sheet before him, beneath a cloudless sky and a half-moon, with every star unveiled. As the wind began to pick up and build momentum behind the sail, Losden sat with his head tilted back. He was reminded of so many nights in Fermoy that he spent as an adolescent. This was the sort of night in which he would pray, back when he used to pray.

[Losden]

When Losden arrived in Fermoy early the following afternoon, the town center was a bustle. The farmers had rolled in their first crops of the season, and the market was filled with smiling and curious faces as they inspected and bagged collards, lettuce and plump, green onions, perused the selection of sweet-smelling flowers, and conversed. The ease and tranquility with which they went about their business was something Losden still had trouble getting used to. Ever since the Burvendi family was all but extinguished, the people of Fermoy had learned to accept and enjoy their newfound psychological freedom. Losden had been away all that time; he never had that chance to accept it, and, in some unsettling way, it caused a rift between the town and him: Fermoy ceased to feel familiar.

Although, many still recognized Losden, waved at him, asked him how he was, how the big city was treating him, had he learned any new tricks making or handling weapons, was he still playing fieldball. Truly, he felt joy for them; lives without despair were something his fellow townsfolk had deserved. But the joy was bittersweet: He could not experience it with them, and he was suspicious. This cannot last, he thought. Somewhere, the remnants of the Burvendi family were rebuilding. Somewhere, a new family was plotting a seizure of power. Somewhere, someone had lost faith and was being misguided.

The tacitness had struck the Hennessee family as well. Most of his brothers had turned their focus to their own personal families or trades. Everything had happened so quickly--first the hit on Hennessee, then the destruction of the Burvendis, and then Losden's inclusion in Nausikaa and move to Rhydin--that the family was left without a centralizing force. And with Nausikaa's rise to power in Talsiny and Losden's close ties therein, all, they must have figured, was well. Their irresolution displeased Losden, not that he could blame them, but he just wished they showed the same drive as when Hennessee was around, the same level of preparedness and forward thinking.

Losden planned to give the family one purpose this afternoon: a game of fieldball. He arrived at a house and thumped the thick edge of his fist against the wooden door with a relentless, rhythmic pounding; he then shifted back as he heard approaching footsteps and the heavy click of the latch. "Have you learned how to use a fieldstick yet?" he said smugly as Kristan opened the door.

"I just hope you’ve forgotten,” Kristan joked back as the two gave each other a quick, firm hug. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise."

Kristan was only two years older than Losden, and one of his best friends growing up. He was gangly, as he had always been, although Losden had for the most part caught up with him in height; his dirty blond hair fell down past his ears and draped over his neck. He rarely groomed it. He had lived his entire life in Fermoy, and thus was always curious to hear about Losden's experiences in Rhydin. After Losden greeted Kristan's wife and little boy, the two set off down the dirt road to find more fieldball players; along the way, Losden described to Kristan his encounter earlier that morning, his tone laced with discontent. Kristan sought a different subject.

"Have you had any chances to sample the dueling competition in Rhydin? I imagine you would see all kinds of folks and weapons there."

"Some, and, yes, the level of competition is much more fierce. I have seen many weapon types I had never seen before, and the variety of peoples there is unfathomable. A large sparring tournament will be starting as soon as I return; I plan to participate. In a month’s time, I should have a good assessment of the level of skill the city holds."

"Planning to dominate the competition in Rhydin as you were able to in Fermoy, yeah?" Kristan asked with a chuckle, but Losden’s face maintained the soberness it had assumed when he had described his encounter in Seaside.

"I think it’s time I start establishing myself there."

[Losden]

"Let us pray."

The following morning, Losden joined the family for Sunday mass in the Catholic church. It was the only church in Fermoy; nearly the entire town was there to attend. It had always been this way, and, during the prominence of the Burvendi family, it had bordered on theatric. The entire Burvendi family would be there, looking clean and neat, as if they were the only ones there enlightened as to the meaning of sin, and were there to judge the priest on his homily and the inflection of his voice as he read passages from the Bible. Even the Sunday following the hit on Hennessee, which was the very next day, they were there, paying his family no mind, as if they knew nothing of what happened or of the family itself; as if they were invisible.

Losden bowed his head with the congregation, but, unlike those around him, his eyes were open. He saw through prayer. It was a hopeless affair, he thought. His faith now lay in action alone.

As the mass let out, he ventured alone toward the town cemetery down the road. Along the way, he knelt down to pluck a daisy on the edge of an adjacent field. Toward the back of the cemetery were the Hennessee burial plots. The larger, family tombstone was situated in the center, stating simply "HENNESSEE" in heavy lettering across the middle, and in the upper left-hand corner, the image of a partially unrolled parchment was chiseled, with the words "Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light". Buried in front of the tombstone was Hennessee himself: "Marion Hennessee", although no one referred to him by his first name.

The tombstone to the left read, "Shelli Hennessee, Loving and Devout Daughter". It was in front of her tombstone that Losden lowered onto his left knee and left the daisy at its foot. He then leaned back to sit, legs folded. Every day, from the day she was buried until the day her father was buried, almost five years, Losden would come to visit her grave, even in the worst blizzard or downpour. Sometimes he would attempt to have a conversation with her, but most of the time, and especially in the later years, he would just sit and gaze, keeping his mind clear. It became his place to meditate.

More than anything else, he would reflect, as he did today, on this:

Losden was sixteen. Shelli was fifteen. They were hanging out on a dirt road passing a fieldball back and forth. They had begun spending a lot of time together by that time, and while their relationship had not bloomed beyond platonic, a curiosity had begun budding within him, although he never spoke of it.

Four boys from the Burvendi family headed down the road, all of them a few years older than Losden. They had no real intentions when they came upon the two. Hennessee's reputation was only beginning to grow, and they knew that she was his daughter. They wanted to put her in her place; they shoved Losden away so that he fell onto his back, and surrounded Shelli. The largest one of them tugged away her fieldball stick, while the others heckled her, insulted her father, shoved her shoulders. Losden was paralyzed with fear, and did nothing to stop them. One of the smaller ones snidely said that her mother hadn't really died, but was driven away because her father preferred little boys. Shelli had had enough, and drove a foot up into the boy's crotch. As he bent over, she cocked her right fist and slammed into the chin of the boy next to him. But that was as far as she got. Her own fieldstick had crashed into the back of her head.

The Burvendi boys lingered a moment snickering, until they realized she wasn't conscious. The snide one then led them all away in a hurry. Losden ran off for help.

She was in a coma for three months following the incident. Her body fed off itself, and her muscles atrophied. The doctors did what they could to provide her nourishment and fluids as her body continued to deteriorate. Losden spent hours every day at her bedside, praying, praying to God to wake her up, to bring her back. He prayed relentlessly; he prayed even when he was elsewhere, while he ate breakfast, while he lugged bags of metal scraps from the market, while he forged weapons, while he lay in bed at night. Until one day, God answered his prayer.

The day she woke up, Losden and Hennessee were both present. It all happened very quickly. Losden glanced to her and saw her eyes open. So did Hennessee. The eyes were looking around in rapid, jerky movements, but the rest of her body remained still. They both leaned forward in their seats and called to her, open-mouth smiles forming on their faces. And then began the horrific, marbled howling. Shelli was trying to scream, but her mouth did not open. Her chest rose and fell in seismic waves, and nearly arced her body right out of the bed. A doctor present in the other room appeared almost immediately, and ushered them out of the room.

As it turned out, she had lost her memory: She recognized no one. She had forgotten how to eat and drink. None of the water or crushed up food would go down. Within a week, she had died of a combination of dehydration and starvation.

And so Losden reminded himself why he no longer prayed. He lifted his eyes to her tombstone and rose to his feet.

"I have learned my lesson, Shelli. I can rely on myself now. I cannot wait for the right things to happen. It is up to me to make them happen. Faith lies in oneself."

As he turned to walk away, his thoughts shifted to a memory from his early youth, a time from which few memories are held. He had fallen and scraped his knee, and was crying. He sat, turning his knee up to see it bleeding, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. Across the street, an old kook in a rocking chair, with a gray beard down to his lap, was watching him, rocking his chair back and forth excitedly, and laughing. This was now how he understood God.