CatTale
by Kristopher Gibbons
Copyright 1996, 2008
This story is a work of fiction. It often contains references to both sexual and violent behaviour, along with expressions of physical affection and compassion. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental and uncanny.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without the specific written consent of the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the provisions of their submission guidelines but it may not be copied or archived onto any other site without the direct consent of the author.
I can be contacted at Bookwyrm6@yahoo.com
How I pronounce the names: Pwerid - (p-where-id) Shaleton - (Shall-et-tun) Tuenn - (Tiu-en) Krilwkut - (Krill-e-cut) Ferikgroeln - (fair-ic-gruln) _________________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER TWO
The late-autumn sun had set when Pwerid had the chance to step outside. By the time he cleansed the supper service and aspersed the kitchen, the distant Temple bells had tolled-in the first hour of evening. Earlier, Tuenn had left to clean up the dining hall and see to the Master's comfort. Shalleton had been clinging like the Master's shadow all through the meal, so Pwerid doubted Tuenn would have much to do.
The kitchener moved away from the manor-building and sniffed the night. The air smelled sweet to him, free of any trace of food or leavings. Chill, brusque winds whipped at him, making his skin prickle, but Pwerid refused to retreat, enjoying his illusion of freedom and moment of quiet solitude. Stolidly, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dusk, then looked up.
Twinkling and taunting, stars only lightly peppered the bowl above; distant, individual predators, stalking the heavens. Later, Pwerid knew, the skies would look like a field does, when moisture speckling the grasses glitters with sunlight. Still, looking up at the distant, unchanging expanse brought neither comfort nor awe. Quietly, to himself, he repeated the worn lament which each day evoked, murmuring the very mold and texture of his despair.
"Am I going to die Nikraan property?"
Long ago, watching his fellow slaves and the ever-present Nikraan, he learned without instruction or reprimand what slavery truly meant: the liberties he had, by grace of Nikraan laziness or indifference, and the sweeter ones denied him. More, he saw the psychic barter, that which slavery must have devolved into at some point in the past. The fear of losing the food, clothing and roofing - which the Hramal now looked to Nikraan for - had replaced the once universal threat of torture and horrible dying.
Torture and death remained a very real threat for Hramal. But only occasionally, as the whim of some Nikraan dilettante might dictate out of boredom. Quicksilver savagery and impassible cruelty, which had been universal and which had frozen the heart of any Hramal disobedience or rebellion, had diluted with the passing of two generations. Now, the kitchener thought bitterly, with the conqueror lulled, Nikraan saw no Hramal disobedience or rebelliousness.
At first, Pwerid supposed he and his people had merely become inured to the Nikraan, a numb endurance of necessary evil. Until the day he joined Master Ferikgroeln's retinue on a condolence visit to another manor, at the death of its Master. There he had seen Hramal garbed in threadbare linens and hemp weave. Many, undernourished, suffered from rickets, from bone breaks and fractures which healed too slowly. He had seen a manor weighted down in futile splendour; gaudy funereal cerements draped over tastelessly expensive ornamentation. Eating utensils which the lord had displayed every day, either of poisonous metals or useless with costly gilding and exotic damascene. A rich land and manor, with servants constantly being replenished. During the visit a number of slaves proudly displayed, in front of mates and lovers, their spavined children gotten of the late Master. A few cried from anxiety about their future Master.
And all of them, all the fellow Hramal Pwerid saw, wept and genuinely mourned their Nikraan Master's demise.
Standing outside his kitchen, head still tilted to the evening skies, Pwerid grimaced at the memory - the shock and indignation he had felt then. His surprise had long faded with time. Indignation remained.
Trying to be fair, Pwerid acknowledged that as Nikraan Masters stood, Master Ferikgroeln treated his Hramal well. The Master roused for only two concerns: His horses and his comfort. This meant that he had no interest in mutilating, torturing, raping, or gelding. It also meant that he gave his slaves whatever kept them healthy and productive, to spare himself any extra effort or unnecessary bother. To most slaves, the kitchener thought sourly, this manor must look like a haven, where a Hramal might almost forget being a slave.
Pwerid could never forget.
On clear nights such as this, his grandmother would sit him down to tell him all she remembered of the old days. "Before the Nikraan," she would say, "a Hramal prospered or starved on her own merit." He wondered, as he often did, how he might have fared in such a world. A world where 'Hramal' did not mean 'slave', where every month he didn't hear of someone he knew being brutalized to relieve some Nikraan's moment of ennui, where a Hramal had a chance to make choices other than obedience or death.
'No,' Pwerid concluded in disgust. 'All the Nikraan could disappear tomorrow and I would not shed a tear.'
He shook his head at his own meanderings and walked back through the kitchen, into the corridor. Turning left would bring him to the dining-hall and, eventually, Master Ferikgroeln's apartments. Pwerid turned right, and strode past his helpers' rooms to where the passageway ended. Two apartments stood at this end of the corridor, the one for himself and Tuenn, and the other for their Nikraan overseer Hultten.
Ever soft-spoken, Hultten made an even-handed overseer, gregarious and charming at all times. Unlike most Nikraan supervisors, Hultten treated his Hramal with leniency, humour, and an imperturbable disposition. Whatever the moment or mood, the overseer's face always bore a cat-like expression of private amusement, self-satisfied and secretive. A hulking, straw-haired giant, Hultten liked the younger servants. He preferred girls before they bled and boys before they whiskered. Since shocky and panic-ridden servants created countless hassles and crises for him, Master Ferikgroeln ousted any Nikraan even suspected of damaging his property - his slaves. So Hultten got their trust and affection before anything else, to ensure their silence.
Before Master Ferikgroeln's ascension, a child's willingness or silence did not matter. So Pwerid kept himself unmolested by rubbing the leaves and sap of certain weeds along his skin, causing lesions and wens that repulsed the Nikraan. When his body developed a resistance to the plants, and Hultten became unavoidable, Pwerid peppered his groin with moistened and ground-up dried white corn, and loaded his meals with salt and heavy spicing. The night Hultten claimed the boy, Pwerid's mouth and lips looked like one huge, festering sore, and his genitals seemed infested. Pwerid left Hultten's den untouched, and branded 'cursed.'
Pwerid became cook when Ferikgroeln became Master, and Hultten had to deal with a Hramal who could not be charmed into ignorant complaisance nor cowed into mute complicity. The kitchener and the overseer both knew which of them would lose if Pwerid had cause to complain to the Master. So Pwerid and his workers laboured in comparative safety, and Hultten, unwillingly, played the gentleman.
Pwerid entered his room to find a fire burning in the hearth and Tuenn already abed and asleep. Master Ferikgroeln had grudgingly granted them the one room in their wing with a fireplace, for he could not endure a sick cook and an infectious steward. Pwerid added more faggots to the fire, then gratefully removed his overtunic and boots. When the kitchener pulled the bed cloths about himself, Tuenn roused from his sleep to slide an arm and a leg around Pwerid before relaxing back into slumber.
The Temple bell tolled the second hour of darkness, and Pwerid lay awake and alert, Tuenn's arm still slung over his abdomen. He had known nights of insomnia before, and had taught himself to rest quietly so as not to arise already worn and exhausted. Yet tonight, simple rest eluded him. His ears seemed to amplify every sound, his night-adjusted vision had him starting at phantoms, and his very body seemed to tremble with nervous energy.
Cricket-chirrup accompanied the slow passage of time, as Pwerid strove to divert himself. His mind turned to the morning's encounter with Shalleton. The woman saw him as a double-threat - a man who would not acknowledge her appeal, incapable of responding to it, and a man-lover, a man encroaching on her territory. For all her giggling and exagerrated posturing, Shalleton worked like a destitute merchant to seem intriguing. Being exotic and desirable ruled her life, informed all she did, said, or thought. And so - except on the one occasion when she had cornered Tuenn in the storage room, when Pwerid had wanted to drown the minx - Pwerid could not take Shalleton seriously. She didn't seem a living person, more like some stock character in a ballad. Even this morning she had acted in typical, predictably offensive fashion; like warding against Tuenn giving her ill-luck!
Tuenn stirred, briefly restless in his sleep. Pwerid gazed at the pale profile, quiet still in its communion with the unknown, and recalled that same face smaller, gaunt and haunted with shadows of pain and memory. He thought back to when Master Ferikgroeln had bought Tuenn, as one of a group, and Hultten had gleefully assigned the young Nikraan under Pwerid.
The second week of Tuenn's tenancy, shouts awoke the cook, night-noises coming from the kitchen. He arose and investigated, a dinner-knife in hand, to find the Nikraan lad asleep near the ovens, weeping and tossing about in some nightmare's ride. Beside the young slave's head lay a damp rag which, Pwerid then supposed, the Nikraan had been stuffing in his mouth so as not to arouse others. Even in the dim moonlight, blood clearly stained the wadding. The kitchener recalled his first serious, and appalled, look at the Nikraan who had been forced upon him. At that time Tuenn had fifteen or sixteen years, but weighed maybe eighty pounds at most.
Keeping a distance, Pwerid prodded him with the kitchen wood-stoker. The Nikraan snapped his eyes open, saw the stick and screamed. When the slave realized that his dream-antagonist was not who faced him, and that he had roused the master of the kitchen, he curled up into a ball and trembled and sobbed with relief and shame.
Pwerid had ordered the Nikraan wipe the soot and tears from his face, then bade the lad to follow. In the relative privacy of his own room, through question and mimickry, the kitchener learned a sliver of the tongueless slave's history.
With no little amusement, Pwerid recalled how, throughout Tuenn's anguished tale, he would find himself holding his blue-veined hand or offering a linen - and then belatedly realize he comforted a Nikraan. Soon enough Tuenn could convey no more, but sat on the floor numb with fatigue, shying at every sound, anticipating abuse. And had the ghostly pale youth been the very Nikraan who had axed his ancestor, Pwerid wordlessly decided that night, he himself could not leave Tuenn to suffer alone in the kitchen. He had cradle-lifted the startled slave and set the lad on his own bed, despite Tuenn's protests. Then he had feigned slumber until his frightened but exhausted bedmate succumbed. When the thrashing and shouts began, as Pwerid had expected they would, he murmured lullabies to Tuenn and lightly stroked his head. Slowly, the nightmare ebbed. Foul dreams returned a couple of times that night, and Pwerid awakened each time to dispel them.
The next day, Pwerid the cook told Tuenn the kitchen drudge that his sleeping place would no longer be in the kitchen but beside the cook. When Tuenn saw how protest changed nothing, he voiced his acceptance by kissing the cook's hand, tears rolling down his cheeks. But where others assumed gratitude, Pwerid read despair, and a fearful acquiescence. So he had pledged to the Nikraan, there before his bemused helpers, that Tuenn's body would remain his own at this manor, inviolable. It took many weeks to reassure the nervy, hag-ridden youth. Throughout those weeks, and through many more, Pwerid kept the night-terrors at bay as best he could until, gradually, they diminished.
Caught up in his round of remembrance, Pwerid paid no attention to the tolling of another hour.
Months passed, and the dreams faded. Tuenn stopped flinching at sudden movements, or when someone inadvertently touched him. Under Pwerid's fostering, Tuenn began to regain his natural weight. Confidence emerged slowly, aided along as many Hramal around him came to trust and rely on his willing helpfulness, and as the kitchener continued to encourage him. Even those who would not see beyond his lightning-bolt tattoo, and all that it signified, often chose indifference over malice in his presence. But over two years passed before Tuenn glimpsed the depth in Pwerid's staunchly inoffensive regard.
One night, after Hultten had approached him with poorly veiled intentions, Tuenn awoke out of a nightmare to catch Pwerid trying to sooth it away.
Pwerid remembered staring, frozen with surprise, as Tuenn calmed from the dreams. When he finally thought to remove his hand from Tuenn's forehead, the youth had clasped it briefly in his own before letting it go. Shaken, the kitchener had tried to explain what he had meant to do, what he had been doing every time the memories threatened. Tuenn did not respond immediately, and his face told the apprehensive cook nothing about his state of mind. Pwerid had sought to apologize for any felt trespass, but the Nikraan motioned him to silence. Tuenn then lit and ensconced a torch, sat back beside the kitchener and looking into Pwerid's face, had laboured to speak lucidly. The precise words had blurred with time, but Pwerid would never forget the moment itself.
"Thank you. You help me when you should hate me for a Nikraan. I know how you feel about this," He had slapped his forehead, and its indelible smudge. "You have been like a father to me. I don't mean to repulse you. But when I saw you just now...looking down on me in bed. I realized that I did not want you to be like a father. I love you, Pwerid. Master. Not like a son. I have felt this strongly ever since I could feel anything other than anger or fear. If this disgusts you, or makes you uncomfortable, just say so. I would rather sleep in the kitchen than worry you..."
He recalled pleading for silence himself, then. His mind had deserted him completely, leaving him in a fog of anxiety. The first reservation he had had, that Tuenn merely sought some assurance of his manhood or desirability from a safe person, had toppled unspoken. Tuenn had spent nights, with Pwerid's uneasy foreknowledge, enjoying the company of other young manor-slaves. His second reservation, that the ordeals Tuenn had endured might have marred his ability to separate sexual from filial love, met with no certain answer, only the resolve that he must trust Tuenn to know his own feelings.
Pwerid's panic - his most vivid memory of that night - stemmed from the fact that Tuenn's confession mirrored his own feelings. Smiling at the man now sleeping beside him, Pwerid could not recall exactly how he had replied to the younger Tuenn. He felt sure that he had babbled quite a bit before finally admitting how Tuenn had been his heart for some time. He told Tuenn that he had chosen to keep silent, rather than lose the affection they had, or cause Tuenn to doubt his own safety around the kitchener. Pwerid vaguely remembered confessing jealousy and anxiety during those nights Tuenn had spent with fellow slaves. He had been afraid a callous bedmate might deeply wound Tuenn - evoke foul or dread memories in him. And he had seen every single one as either too flighty or too shallow for his gentle, intense helper.
He remembered they had held each other a lot, both shaky with nervous release. Then, careful in their mutual uncertainties, they had kissed.
Face ever impassive, but with eyes damp, Tuenn had tried to pledge his fidelity. Pwerid, seeing a youth set on denying himself what he might later crave or rue the lack of, had sought to temper his beloved's fervor.
"Hush, Tuenn. You have only nineteen or twenty years to you, and only this year felt whole enough to seek out love. Do not shackle yourself so quickly."
Tuenn would not be deterred. "And you have but twenty-nine years. Old man!" He flashed a smile. "What better pleasure could I find but where my heart is housed. I will never give you reason to doubt me, nor give you cause to be jealous. I pledge this to you."
Five years had passed since that night of intimacies, and the memory of Tuenn's words still humbled the kitchener, the delight they gave him made his heart ache sweetly, as did the daily confirmation of them in Tuenn's steadfast affection. Gently, as of old, Pwerid stroked the Nikraan's sigil-scarred forehead.
The Temple bell tolled the fourth hour of dark.