Discover Top Posts Tagged with #pohocounty

memories of a god

@pohocounty count: 5,362 tw: death, gore, rape mention, genocide mention, torture mention, abuse mention, racial slur(s), insanity, there was a lot of bad shit going on during this time but nothing’s super over the top part 1 / ?

under a cut for length & potential triggers

There was a lot of stories out in the forests and plains, a lot of legends and tall tales. There was the Bear Man of Black Mountain, a man of mythical importance who was said to speak to the grizzlies. In reality it was a muttering, smelly old hermit in a bear skin cloak, moth eaten and greasy, yelling at passerby in a shrill voice to stay away before he 'choots 'em'. There was the 'Sweetwater Healer', a woman the color of dusk in the old forests. Her face was full of youth, her hands full of age, and even Tumbleweed calmed when she spoke to the mistrustful mare and applied her magic poultice to the mare's hoof and drew out the splinter, making her whole again. She asked to be paid in stories, and Charley obliged. When he left with his two mares he couldn't remember what stories he had told, but was smiling, full of warmth.

In his slow meandering, always going someplace and no place at all, he had gathered more tales than he ever could have imagined. Some he sought out in curiosity, if his mares were willing, and others he avoided. He never went looking for outlaws and gunslingers, his horses too precious, his small cargo too important. Charley didn't carry much, nothing he couldn't carry himself (and sometimes, he did). Things for survival – a small tin pot, a flint, a knife, a water skin, a thin wool blanket, and mix of dried meat, roots, and berries. His small horse bow, a quiver of arrows. Things for trade – some coffee and tobacco, money for those rare times he ventured into towns. And things he did not need, but hoped he would never have to leave behind – a little bag of gifts he had been given in his travels, and his mother's fiddle.

And of course, the stories.

Charley told them to his mares on nights when he didn't play the fiddle for them. He told them how that old Osage native had laughed when he asked about the 'two colts' grazing away from the rest of the herd, and how he had decided to trade for him when they had chased him, in tandem, straight up a tree. Sage and Tumbleweed hadn’t been given names then, that came later, after their trust had been gained. He told his girls about the Bear Man, the Sweetwater Woman, about great Chieftains with eyes centuries old. He told them about the Gods of the Earth he had learned about from the tribes that had allowed him to visit for a while. He never told them the frightening stories, like the one about the ‘Injun Devil’, also known as ‘Beast of Hell’, a supposed creature that rode a fire-breathing stallion black as night who’s wings could block out the sun. Charley talked to his horses, sometimes pulled music from the fiddle, sometimes sang, and sometimes he felt a faint apprehension if there was some strange legend out there about him too. About a young man with long hair like a woman (like a redskin, those whiskey-pickled saloon men would say with a sneer) who talked to his horses as if they could understand. Deep in his heart, Charley thought they could.

Charley had been wandering in a vague, westernly direction when he stumbled across a man he had no tale to reference to. Gibbering, half crazed, his bare feet blackened and blistered, his hair matted and wild. What tattered rags were left of his clothes hung off a skeletal frame. Charley asked Sage to stop and she did, Tumbleweed coming up beside her with the light cargo. On any other day he would have given such a lunatic a wide berth, as wide as he could hope to give, and carry on elsewhere before one of his ladies got it into her head to stop that lunatic into the dirt. But their heads were up, ears forward, intensely focused. Sage nickered, and Tumbleweed gave her answer.

Charley slid from the back of Sage – he had learned, and quick, that it was bareback or not at all, though the lightweight pack gear was accepted a saddle most certainly was not – giving his horses another glance, motioning for them to stay. They seemed to understand, as he approached he heard no soft hoot beats behind him. The Loon was pacing a circle around a metal box with just about the biggest padlock Charley had ever seen gracing the lid. Pacing a rut in the dirt and occasionally throwing dirt at the box. Pace, toss dirt, mutter, pace some more, dart forward and brush the dirt away before repeating. It was almost hypnotizing, until the sheer stink of the man hit him and snapped him out of whatever trance he was helplessly falling into watching this bizarre dance. There was odor, and then there was this. Charley stopped, hailed the man. He wondered, briefly, if perhaps he should have brought his little skinning knife along with him, just in case. “Afternoon, stranger-” “Wings, wings, big wings black wings snatch you up and eat you, eat you! Never die can't die don't matter, no! No! Don't matter no no eat you up fast, fast.” The loon tossed more dirt, cackled, darted forward and brushed it away. Charley dared to cast a glance back at his transfixed mares. They didn't even twitch to swat at a fly. His attention returned to the crazy man, he was still talking, babbling in a rapid, cracked voice. “Horse! Death rides – no, not pale, dark, black-night, crows, pale eyes. Eat your soul! Breath'n fire! Fire breath'n horse! Gobble you up!” Seemed like even the crazies listened to the tall tales too.

“What's-” Was he really doing this? Doubt begins to nag, the desire to survive fighting with his own curiosity. There's a soft snort behind him, followed by a light bump at the small of his back. Charley hadn’t even heard the horse approach. Better than the rough shove or all out bite he was more accustomed to feeling when his mares wanted something.

“What's in the box, stranger?” Charley asks, finally. Tumbleweed's head appears over his shoulder, he reaches up and curls his hand around her soft muzzle, stroking lightly. Horse noses always reminded him of a fine velvet.

“DAMNATION AND SOULS!” The Loon turns, his muttered nonsense raising to an abrupt scream. Charley startles, yet Tumbleweed remains unphased. A key is thrown into the dirt and the man with no mind left in his head gallops into the fading light of the day. “You hear that, girls? Damnation and souls, I didn't figure you two for being interested in those.” Charley chuckles, feeling a bit foolish for letting the Loon’s sudden shriek get the better of him. He pets along his horse's long nose before stepping forward, gathering the key between two fingers. The lunatic's stench is still lingering like something that had died and soaked into the earth. No, not lingering, hovering, like a thick blanket draped over something sturdy. He crouches, careful not to touch more than he has to as he unlocks the padlock and pulls it away. His horses shift, nicker with soft excitement. Charley eases open the lid and peers inside. One day his curiosity might be the death of him, he hopes today is not that one in particular.

It seems to glow, even in this fading light. A bone knife, unlike anything he had ever seen before. It wasn't the sort of thing that belonged to a white man, it certainly didn’t belong to the jabbering Loon. Charley reaches in and takes it as his horses crowd closer, necks stretching so that they might give a sniff. The still-lingering hellish stench doesn’t seem to bother them anymore than the shriek had. The knife seems to vibrate in his hand, a deep thrum. For a moment, he forgets about the stink, the strangeness of the man who had run off into the woods. There's carvings on the handle but it's hard to see in the rapidly falling darkness. He brushes his fingertips over them anyways, tracing the fine, detailed edges. Charley stands, turning away from the metal box and the rutted dirt.

“Doesn't belong to him.” Charley mumbles to the horses, glancing up. It doesn't belong to him either – but he couldn't just leave it here, locked away in the dark, being screamed at by a crazy man. He takes his own skinning knife from the sheath on his belt and slips the bone knife in there instead. The vibration increases to nearly a hum, then falls silent. Charley tucks his skinning knife, careful, away in one of the skin bags that Tumbleweed is carrying, taking two plugs of tobacco out in return. His hand falls to the hilt of the bone knife again (it's almost comforting, yet he's not even sure if it's sharp). He puts the tobacco in the box and hikes himself up on Sage's back again. It’s not really stealing if you give something in return, he tells himself. The mares snort, nicker, and head off in the opposite direction he had intended on going. Charley knew better than to argue with what his girls wanted, and they were clearly just wanting to get away from the lingering stink of unwashed Loon. They'd keep heading back west before long, meandering north and south but always heading west, far from the place of his birth and the wanted posters emblazoned with his name and a laundry list of crimes. He had changed since he fled at the end of the war, but he didn't fancy being 'hung from the neck till dead' either. He used his father's name when he went into towns, sometimes his brother's. The only people he ever told his real name was the natives he broke bread with – only people he felt he could really trust with it. His hair was longer, too, hanging down his back in a braid. Last he checked his posters still showed him short-cropped, wearing a mean sneer and looking like just the sort of person they accused him of being. A murderer, a thief, an arsonist, and one poster - much to his cold horror and burning offense - accused him of even being a rapist.

He lets his mares walk a while, he can feel a spring in Sage's step, an urgency that makes her move a little faster, prance a little higher. Maybe it's because of the bone knife they had shown so much interest in, calling and snorting. Later it's half because of the old weapon, half because of the sheer darkness that he gives the reins a gentle pull, changing the angle of Sage's bosal and asking her to stop. She does, but there's reluctance there. Another hour passes before Charley has a little fire built, judging by the shift of the crescent moon overhead. He unpacked Tumbleweed, rubbed both mares down with a soft cloth and checked their hooves. When he's finally settled down next to his little fire chewing on a bit of jerky, his horses resting down close to the flickering light, he takes the bone knife from it's sheath again, turning it over in his hands.

The edge is sharp – sharp as shit – Charley doesn't need to touch it to know, he can see the fine edge gleaming in the light of the fire. It's the hilt that interests him, staining a creamy yellow with age. What he had felt with his fingertips before was a carving, so full of details he was straining his eyes in the firelight trying to see it all. A man with massive wings, the sun cupping his head in a halo as people reach and grasp at his feet. The expression on their faces is awe, devotion and worship. There’s dirt caked into it, and Charley rubs it clean with a soft scrap of buckskin before tucking it away again, eyes aching from the dim fire light. Had the knife hummed again in his hands? He doesn't think so, but it almost seems to wiggle and twitch as he trudges over to his horses to bed down for what remains of the night. Surely he was just tired, it had been a hard day of riding. Knives didn't hum, and they didn't twitch on their own either. Much like the Bear Man who did not, in fact, speak to bears, knives simply didn't move, or hum, or even whistle tunes. “Just tired is all.” Charley mumbles to himself, spreading out that thin wool blanket on the ground next to Tumbleweed who was already sacked out on the ground, looking dead as a doornail. It was her favorite way to sleep for reasons he couldn't fathom, it certainly scared the hell out of him the first time he had woken up and there was his mare looking like she was ready for the deep six. Sage had not yet bedded down, preferring to stand and doze, one hind hoof cocked and her weight sacked out over the other three. Charley laid his head down on the mare, closing his eyes as he listens to the soft sounds of the horse breathing. For the first time in a while he thinks about Momma Bell, the sweet woman who had raised him, who had saved his life, all those years ago. She had taught him how to make a fire from wet wood, taught him to leave a little of every kill behind, because the gods needed to eat too. Taught him nearly all the things that had allowed him to survive, out here, alone with his horses. As he drifted off to sleep he found himself wondering if he had ever heard her mention bone knives and a man carried by a great outstretch of wings.

The dreams came, invading his sleep with slow and ponderous steps.

Nevada, half past noon and he's in a bar. The man is there, the man from the knife. Charley doesn’t know his name, he’s a Stranger to him. Those vast wings are tucked, almost hidden and all the eyes are on him. Charley can smell the cheap whiskey and tobacco stink of their breath, feel the harsh cruelty of their thoughts. The words they're thinking as they size the stranger up. This isn't a white man, so he must be a lesser man. Beneath them, an object of scorn and mocking.

It happens in a second that lasts an eternity. Blood spraying from still pumping hearts as the bodies fold and crash to the floor. Heads rolling, the axe in the Stranger's hand flashing, cutting, slicing. It parts bones like soft butter. One man is shot by another and the hand gripping the gun drops to the floor a moment later, parted from it's arm. The mouth opens to scream and is silenced with a flash of pointed teeth. Charley watches, an unseen bystander. He feels no fear, only sadness, anger. The horrors of each soul oozing out as death swoops down to take them. Rape, scalping, genocide, theft, torture, hatred, murder. Fear and blood color the air in a sour perfume mingling with spilled whiskey and harsh brown beer. The boy in the cupboard has done nothing and is left to live, left to repeat what happened here to others. To warn them of their ways. In the end there is silence, save the thudding footsteps of the Stranger who had brought his judgments. Charley follows the man from the bar and when he looks back he sees his own footsteps have left no tracks in the blood. A black horse waits outside, coat so black it looks as if it the world has been cut out in it's shape. It's eyes are white as pure, fresh fallen snow. Blind, and yet when it turns it's gaze to him, Charley feels as if he has been seen. Seen and judged by the black horse with snow-white eyes.

Tumbleweed nudges him awake at dawn

Charley does not talk to his horses in the days and weeks that follow, riding every further south, he does not sing or smile or point out the birds and plants and flowers that he sees as they pass. He is silent and eats little, each night another chapter in a story without end. Each night he follows the Stranger whom he can barely see and witnesses the death he brings to those deserving of it. Men who have torn babies from their mother's arms as they pleaded and screamed, torn them away and impaled them on sharpened stakes. Men who have burned families alive in their homes just for the color of their skin. Who hurt children. Who hurt people just for the sake of hurting them. Women, too, each of their own sins just as dark and horrifying. The dreams seem to take a slow march back in time, to places he had never seen, to people speaking languages he could not decipher. Each night before he lays down to sleep, tucked up against one of his mares (they had been kinder to him, too) he looks over the bone knife with it's ivory handle and the intricate carving it displayed. He thought over the dreams, what he felt – anger, sadness, fright when the stranger was injured, wonder for his midnight black horse and it's blind eyes.

“-help you?”

Charley stirs, blinks, expression tired and confused. His gaze finally settles, focuses on the young man petting Tumbleweed's velvet muzzle. Not a white man, but a native man. There’s a sense of relief, at this, but it’s far down and muddied. Charley stares at him like an idiot for what feels like an eternity before nodding, managing a slow- “uh huh.” Another long silence until he finally feels that soft hum at his side again. He no longer tells himself it’s just because he’s tired.

“This...” Charley still feels slow, sluggish. He rubs his eyes, as if trying to clear the memories away. No, the dreams. Trying to clear the dreams away, but calling them dreams feels like a lie. He clears his throat and tries again.

“This knife. Do you...do you know who this knife belongs to?” Pulling it from the sheath and it slips in his tired, clumsy fingers. Charley catches it, but barely, and he's staring again in confusion. Not holding the hilt but the blade. Yet there's no blood seeping through his fingers. A faint recollection: sharp as shit. He adjusts his grip and holds it out to the young native still petting Tumbleweed's nose.

Yet the man doesn't take it. He only looks, nods. “My father will speak to you.”

The mares seem to know, they need no coaxing along. They follow the nameless man with sure and steady steps. Any other day Charley would have introduced himself, his horses, explained himself, but concept of manners never so much as touches the surface. For the first time now Charley notices the humidity, how the horses' hooves squelch softly in a muddy-wet ground, then thump over logs laid in a snaking and hidden path. It’s a odd, detached realization. Strange birds call in the canopy of the green jungle that encases them now. There's a soft splash as an ancient lizard slips back into the water, first in silence and then announcing it's presence with a kick of it's scaled tail. Charley falls back into his doze, if a doze is what it could be called. A thought makes itself known before he's pulled under again: a god's memories aren't meant for a mortal mind.

There's a wooden bowl being pressed against his lips, his nose filling with an earthy, herbal smell. Charley drinks readily, his belly taunt and empty. He chokes a bit, coughs, sputters, and drinks again. His head clears, like a fine silk curtain being pulled away from a window to let the summer sunlight in again. Charley blinks, looking around, finally – he's in a tepee, cool and richly decorated. Across from him old men sit in a crescent moon, faces lined with age, their eyes dark and kind. The young man sits just outside of this – Charley remembers him, and realizes that he's beautiful. His own pale cheeks flush pink and he looks back to the silent gathering of elders. The one in the middle holds his hand out in a gesture that needn't be explained. The knife is unsheathed again, this time with more grace, and passed over into waiting hands.

He remembers how the blade was sharp and how it did not cut him when it should've. It's one of the few things he remembers of these past weeks since the Loon and his nonsensical babble. He understands that now too, understands a lot of things he didn't before. He knows the Loon's name, he knows how his violent little troop died, what they did, and how the Loon himself got away. Got away, but not before taking that knife with him. The only reason he managed was a stray cannonball that had taken off the Stranger's wing after blowing a hole through his belly – Charley had screamed at that, screamed and woken up shaking, shocked tears wetting his cheeks and blurring his vision. The first time he had cried since his father had tied him up in the yard – in the slave stocks his father had called them – and nearly whipped him to death. The Loon's name had been Dennis Archibald Thorn, and the memories had driven him insane not long after Charley watches now as the old men pass the knife between each other, each of them leaning closer, their time-worn voices voices low. They handle it carefully, with reverence, he sees, handle it like the holy object that it is. He sips the wooden bowl dry and remains quiet, all too aware of the younger man's eyes on him. Probably thinks he's insane, Charley can only imagine how he looks after all these weeks of hard riding, little sleep. Barely eating or even stopping to drink from the cool water of a stream. How his horses look – there's a sharp pang of guilt in the pit of his gut at that. He always prided himself in how good his mare's looked, well fed with bright, glossy coats and neatly kept hooves. Charley doesn't speak, only looks down at the wooden bowl he's holding in his lap, rubbing his thumb over the smooth, rounded edge. It's easy to call back on the memories – memories are what they are, not dreams, they never really had been dreams – but they don't swim and weigh down his mind anymore. He feels clear headed, refreshed now. Charley doesn't speak the Arapaho's language, his languages come more from the north and the west where he had slowly meandered until his horses turned him around and made a beeline all the way back south. Even if he did, he would know better than to interrupt a discussion between men such as this.

Instead he mulls in silence, this wasn't Louisiana, the place where he had been born and raised and carefully, deliberately, lost it’s manner of speech. This was someplace deeper. Older. More ancient. Charley stares into that bowl, feeling more and more guilty with each passing moment. Worrying about his horses, worrying about all the dirt and stink he was tracking in here with not so much as of a hint of a bath in weeks. Downpours of rain hardly counted. It's a moment before he realizes the low murmur between the men had stopped and he looks up, feeling small and ashamed to be meeting these people in such an unkempt state.

The man in the middle, the eldest, holds the blade out to him again. Charley takes it again, slow, in a spark of confusion. It belonged to them more than it belonged to him. He had carried it all these miles, but it was no more his than he owned the sun or the sky. “If he asks for it, give it back.” Charley blinks, the translation from the young man so seamless with the elder, it gives the impression that it’s not English he’s hearing, but their old and musical tongue. “Give it back and he will be courteous to you. The horses know the way.” The knife is thrumming again, it feels hot and alive in his hands. Twitching, impatient. Almost home, it seems to say, we're almost home again.

“Thank you.” Charley speaks up, softly, sets the emptied bowl aside and tucks the knife away in the sheath he carried in before he follows the young man out. His mares are waiting, dozing on their feet in the humid air. They're a little thinner than before, not so rounded, but they had been groomed and brushed. Tumbleweed is carrying the packs again, and Charley's eyes widen when he sees his waterskins filled, food pouches heavy again with cargo. “I can't-” He starts but the young man is propelling him forward, not quite pushing but now allowing him to stop. A warm, insistent hand between his shoulder blades. “Give it back.” Is all the young man says. Charley notices his eyes – a deep, dark brown, flecks of gold around the iris – and then he's being hoisted onto Sage's back, the reins pressed into his hands. His mares set off at an urgent pace, as if they had never been dozing at all, before he can even hope to put in another word of protest.

It's another two days of riding. The first nearly frays his nerves, the ride through the swampy woods where great lizards lay basking in patches of sunshine or laying, log-like, in the fetid water. Tumbleweed made a brief stop to stomp the hell out what has to be the biggest snake Charley has seen in a good long while, squealing and snorting and squashing it into a smear of dirty red before setting off again, snorting and flicking her tail in agitation. There are no stops otherwise, not that he would ask them to, not in this place where he wouldn't sleep a wink for fear that something might come out of the woods and carry him off for dinner. He doesn't feel tired, either, not even as the moon rises overhead and then slowly slips down again to make way for the dawn. Charley does ask for them to stop around noon the second day – they had broken through the woods and into vast, quiet fields just past dawn that morning. It’s a timid and nervous question, yet Tumbleweed's head comes around so fast Charley almost thought it was a hallucination after the moment; the mare's ears pinned, her teeth bared and gleaming, an expression so vicious the only intent could be on taking the tip off his boot and a good number of toes with it. He jerks his foot back just in time to avoid the bite. He doesn't ask a second time.

Fields, dotted with woods. They cross a few rutted dirt roads, slip along the edge of planted corn, green leaves turning yellow as they near harvest. Charley can see a town in the distance, voices carry across the open spaces, faint but alive. His hand falls to the hilt of the knife again, thumb brushing along it. The action brings him comfort, though he can feel the effects of the Arapaho's medicine slipping away, slow and steady. Sage's pace speeds into a trot, then a canter, soon they are racing, the wind pulling tears from his eyes. Charley releases the reins, fingers curled into Sage's thick mane, head down as they fly through scattered patches of forest, rolling hills of wild grasses and fragrant flowers.

The stop nearly unseats him. The knife is nearly writhing in the oiled leather sheath it sits in, producing a hum that echoes down his leg.

They have arrived at...a hole. A hole in the dirt, as if the world's largest muskrat had burrowed down there. Charley stares at it for a moment before sliding from Sage's back, giving a brief glance around as he slips the bosal from Sage, moves to Tumbleweed to untack her so the girls can stretch and roll and graze properly. To his right: A hole in the dirt in the middle of nothing else. A tree shades it, silent and pondering. To his left: A horse, a stallion, his coat blacker than coal and his eyes white as milk. Now looking at him, chewing idly on a mouthful of sweet grass. Charley had never seen a horse with a mane so long and thick, drifting down to his shoulder in a lush fall. Tumbleweed and Sage nicker to him, Sage already strolling off in an airy way Charley had never seen either of his girls do. He realizes he's staring and quickly stops, going to the tree to set his tack down and pretend like he hadn’t been gawking like a fool. The knife is insistent, he will have to rub his mares down later, after he investigates the strange hole in the earth they had brought him to.

Give it back. The words echo in his mind. Give it back, but to who? A horse had no need for a knife, even one as beautiful as him. Charley goes to the hole – burrow? - and leans down, hands on his knees, peering inside. Was he supposed to toss the knife in there? That hardly seemed right. It had fallen silent, he noticed absently. If some sort of enormous bear came barreling out of there and bit his head off he swore he would come back and haunt those mares until-

Tumbleweed came up behind him and bit him solidly on his undefended ass. Charley found himself falling.

He lands soft. The realization that his eyes had been screwed shut tight dawns on him as a small, shocked squeak leaves his throat. His heart is racing as fast as his horses had been, pounding against his rib cage in outraged shock. At his side the blade is not just thrumming, but singing, alive and nearly thrashing to be free. There's a dark and ancient aroma around him, a deep heat below him. He did not land soft, he was caught. Charley opens his eyes and looks up, seeing the Stranger for the first time. His face is rough hewed, as if carved by a skilled but angry hand. His eyes are bright, even in the dim light that filters down from above. Eyes that aren't his own but have been replaced a thousand, a hundred thousand times over. Charley thinks, in his awe, that his first ones might have been like that Arapaho man's eyes, a deep, rich brown, flecked with gold. The Stranger isn't smiling, only staring at him as Charley stares back. The Stranger had caught him with his wings, instead of letting him tumble to his death. Charley can't help but feel a familiar pang of guilt at that – what if he hurt him? He was just a wanderer with a bounty on his head from a hundred angry plantation owners. He wasn't hardly anything worth saving. Yet there's no comment about it, hurt or otherwise. The tall, ancient God raises a hand the size of a dinner plate and holds it out, palm up. Waiting. His patience is not infinite.

Give it back. Charley takes the knife from the sheath for the last time and lays it, gently, carefully, in that upturned palm. He doesn't feel afraid, not of him, his heart has calmed from the abrupt fall. Instead he curls his fingers around one of the Stranger's hot, thick ones and gives it a good old fashioned, but light shake, followed by a polite: “I'm Charley Harris, it’s nice to meet you, sir.” At least this time he remembered the manners Momma Bell taught him.

#pohocounty

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#pohocounty