Chapter 2, The light fingered man.

CHAPTER TWO: REBORN.

THE WIND HAD no beginning and no ending. At one point, It sighed with a gentleman's marvel and curiosity through valleys stippled with all manner of wildflowers - foxglove and marigold; daisy and cornflower; lilac and mallow; harebell and yarrow. At another, it stirred up the withered red sand of Northern deserts undisturbed by neither the feet of men, nor the cloven hoofs of even the most unfaltering camels.

At yet another, it curled and flew with the graceful lust of a bloodied whip, lashing and tearing through the old, stooped trees of an Eastern wood. It slammed and ruptured into them in an almost artistic fashion, very much like the bald, gleaming arc of a Woodsman favoured axe. The wind struck with a ferocity only a force of nature can ever hope to understand - let alone, manage.

On an abandoned battlefield, it stood still and tranquil as death. And there was indeed death here. No living breaths stirred the quiet, inexorable wind; no gasps of surprised air came or went; no man moved or shuffled the air as he passed by. Here the wind was calm as death, But it was here. It was calm, did not stir or rage, but it was here.

In a house , seated as assuredly as a heavy stone in a river bed , within a small town - known mostly as Doll Town - of twisting alleyways, and dark corners filled with the somewhat bitter, and surely rancid smell of stale bread, blood and horse sweat, something that was nearly human sat by a dead fireplace.

He rocked in a chair that rocked all by itself, and his hands rested upon the bare, wooden arms after a weary manner. The chair was turned towards the hearth and, save a small portion of his hand, nothing could be seen of his features.

"Scuttle," he coughed and rasped suddenly, in the way an old dying lord might call for a servant. His voice might have held some beauty once, but it was terrible music now. Rough as charred silk, skittering along the insides of your skull like a spider with knives for legs until you split your head open to let the sound out. When he rasped and drew breath, the wind did not shift.

A creature moved into the light. He was hunched over as if he carried some heavy load on his shoulders. The creature was mostly bare and had the torso and lanky arms of a frail man. Except, he had four lanky arms.

He wore no clothing save a brown rag, crusted with dried blood, which was bound around the thing's waistline where his legs joined, unseen, with his body. His legs were those of a giant spider, all eight. They were smooth and white as bones stripped clean by a Songbird, elegantly sinking into the considerable quantity of dirt coating the rug.

The thing's face contained eight eyes in all, two at the rise of his forehead, and the others spread about randomly. When he opened his mouth and spoke, a pair of pincers clicked with every word. The man-spider scuttled forward eagerly.

"Yes, Master?" Scuttle said, pincers clicking.

"Need I remind you of the portion, Scuttle?" Inquired the scratchy rasp of the Master in the chair.

"Certainly not . . . Certainly not. It is done. I had it prepared since the first sign of the blood light."

"Certainly not, Scuttle?" Came a soft, cold voice. It was soft and high and secernate from the former rasp, but came from the direction of the Master seated in the rocking chair.

Scuttle's pincers clicked more times than regular, clearly nettled, but he kept his eyes down. Most of them were pointed downward, at least. The two on his forehead which were almost the same color as twin obsidian stones still peered with a contemplating intensity at the back of the chair. Burning curiously into them, almost as if he could see through to the thing seated on it. "Certainly not . . . Master." Scuttle said with a slightly forced hiss.

"You have made no mistakes?" The grating rasp was back now, but the Master managed to keep it cold.

Scuttle's eyes lost their focus, and he shifted uneasily, legs stabbing the dirt. "None, Master."

"Speak the words, so I may hear them. There may be no mistakes, Scuttle."

So scuttled spoke words that had been written by the Master himself.

The raised pitch of Scuttle's voice did not crack, nor did his clicking pincers waver as he began in a singsong voice, chanting:

"Three ounces of Red Clover and Winterbloom

Picked beneath the weeping sister moon

Five ounces of Witch's Hazel and Borage Fruit

Plucked and squeezed while the moon is full

A crooked piece of the servant's bone

Cut and sliced with a blade while he is lone

Why, he must be without light or glow

Then the portion may be brewed by him alone"

After he finished chanting, Scuttle glanced almost longingly at his lower-right hand where a digit was, inevitably, missing.

"Very good, Scuttle. Very good. Bring it here." The Master's rasp was satisfied this time and, though it was carefully hidden, excited.

Scuttle scuttled forward. The fingers of his upper-left hand were clasped around a tiny, stoppered vial which contents seemed to dance about with the cautious, cold grace of mercury. Its color shifted with the light that fell upon it, from pale silver in darkness to a deep burning gold in the blood-red light of dawn. It was cold as a lonely icicle in the left hand and hotter than a candle flame in the right. Hot enough to burn.

He got to the left side of the Master's chair and handed over the vial, making sure to keep it away from his right hand, then scurried back almost as if he were frightened of being too long in the sight of whatever he had found seating in the chair.

Nothing but the arms could be seen of the Master still, almost as if the light that slowly crept in through the only window to the right was too scared to touch or reveal whatever he was. And his arms . . . The Master's arms were the same color as the whitest clouds of heaven, pale as the very core of the moon.

"You've done well, Scuttle. Very well indeed . . ."

Gulp, gulp, gulp, came the sudden sound of the Master's drinking in the hurried way a drunkard might drink - with barely veiled craving - his first cup of ale after a long, hard day. Then he stopped, and he screamed.

It was an earth shattering and stone cleaving sound, like a sick combination of the scratching sound of claws on stone and the heightened sound of bad music and murmured gossip, raised in volume a thousand times over. It was silenced as soon as it came, and anyone who might have heard it in the small town pretended like they hadn't, Besides, it had been for so short, they might have imagined it! Folk didn't want to think of the other opinion, that some sort of demon was upon them, perhaps. That'd be harder to deal with than simply pretending.

All this while, Scuttle stood, too stunned to move, but now he regained his legs - which were quite a lot to regain, it must be said - and hurried forward as the thing in the chair fell off it and onto the ground with a thump muffled by dirt. There was no cry of pain.

The Master had fallen out of the shadows and a little more could be seen of him. He was bundled up in a black cloak too large to have belonged to any man, and his face was now uncovered to join the antecedently visible hand. The rest of him was well hidden within the cloak, wrapped about him in a way that suggested it had been done by someone else . . . Or something else.

His face was different shades of sea blue, swollen and bloated over - like he had drowned upside down but still, somehow, managed to survive - and not a single strand of hair grew upon his head.

Scuttle hurried over to his side, face twisting slightly in repulsion as he neared the Master.

He bent over the body and moved no further, either too scared or too disgusted to prod it, he said, almost choking with apprehension, "Master . . . Master, are you well?"

The Master stared at him with eyes that seemed to change color each time you finally decided what color they were. It was either bottle-gree - No. That was clear sea-green, or . . . Was it gold-green? Definitely not gold-green, not that. It was certainly the color of Sea foam, yes, most certainly it was. Except, it wasn't.

Then the Master spoke, and this time, the wind moved and shifted when he drew breath.

"I'm alright, Scuttle. I think . . . It worked. Complete the ritual, Scuttle. Complete it. Take me to the light, let me feel it." The Master said in a voice that roiled smooth and sleek as dark honey. It was nothing like the rasp and was a bit in likeness to the soft cold voice. Just a bit. Scuttle suddenly wanted to do whatever the Master wanted, he wanted to please him, he'd beg and grovel, and crawl to be opportuned to serve the Master, ten times over. It made no sense, in the very least. The feeling had come so suddenly he was starting to doubt if it hadn't always been there.

"To the light, Master." Scuttle said, gathering his Master up without any sign of repulsion. A smile graced the Master's lips and - although it was as fleeting as a shadow in the wind, for the first time in a long while, he felt joy.

"To the light, Scuttle!" The Master cried as Scuttle kicked open the front door holding him carefully, almost like a loving mother, within the crook of his arms and stepped, most peculiarly, into the waiting light of the red-golden dawn.

An hour and two breaths later, a man and his companion stepped into the room. The companion - A Man-spider - had a reverent smile on his face as he stared at the cold-faced Man whom he called Master.

The Man was beautiful and cold as only death is, and his hair was a tumble of such curious dark-gold. His skin, pale as snow, was unmarked by neither blade nor time and he moved like a shadow on the sea.

He walked into the room proper, with a grace not unlike the autumn dance of withered leaves or the gentle glide of swans in a lake. It wasn't the stiff, back-necked grace with which nobles strut about, it was something wilder and, somehow, more careful. Like dancing in an Elven revel. The color of his eyes was nameless.

He seemed excited, and stretched out a bit, then walked over to where the Man-spider still stared in awe. He put a hand on the creature's shoulder, and it shivered under his touch.

His eyes might have been the green-yellow of a purring cat or the proud blue of the Common Kingfisher's plumage, but they certainly twinkled like they never had before. "It is done, Scuttle." Cindel said, with a child-like wonder. "Done," He repeated. "I am reborn."