1acebound

Choso carefully knotted the twine around the legs of the two hares and fowl he had hunted. The woods seemed hushed in anticipation all morning, the usual song of morning birds absent from the branches above. Even the wind didn’t dare to move a hair from Choso’s face as he began his walk back to the house. The hunters his mother sometimes bargained with had mentioned the unnatural quiet several mornings ago, “Watch yourself out there. Never know what kind of mutt’s runnin’ round out there lookin’ for its next kill.”

The man hadn’t even been addressing them. Choso had lingered by the stall to eavesdrop, pretending to count the few copper coins in his pouch. He had been in conversation with one of the other hunters. When he and his mother had returned home, she had told him not to return to the woods. Not until whatever was keeping everything so quiet moved out of the area. She had never wanted Choso out in the woods to begin with. Not so young.

With winter’s approach the usual lively green of the forest had begun to wither into shades of brown and grey.  The more time he spent in the woods, the more he began to liken it to a second home. Without a father to help provide, he had always wanted to find some way to be useful. After Yuji was born, Choso followed some of the hunters out to observe. When he returned his mother was hysterical. Convinced he had been taken right out of his bed. So furious she grabbed him hard enough to bruise his small arms. “What were you thinking? What if someone had seen you? What if you had been caught?”

Caught. For a moment, all the warmth he had known to exist within the home fled with his mother’s words. His eyes fell to the wooden planks of the floor as she huffed out an exasperated sigh. Choso was a half-blood. Born forsaken by his gods. His mother had always warned him against giving into his curse. Begged him to keep it hidden. She had sewn a face covering for him to wear into town, concealing the thick black band across his face. Half-blood children were to be maintained by the crown. Either through servitude or execution.

He could not control his curse. He could not control the way it shifted and changed with his emotions. He could not control the thrum of it under his skin. In his bones. In his mind. Clawing at him from the inside out. He needed to hunt. Needed a way to express the energy building within him.

Choso came to a stop and turned back to the woods. The silence remained unbroken, everything left unmoved. Still every hair on his body stood. A wolf? A bear would surely be easier to see. A curse? Choso had never seen a pure-bred curse. He had only ever known himself, a half-breed. Even his brother Yuji was pure-blooded human. An unseen weight seemed to settle heavily on Choso’s shoulders as he turned, his steps hastening back towards the village.

When Choso had finally admitted that he needed an outlet for his curse, his mother had wept. She continued to all through the night. Choso held Yuji close, stroking his short pink hair. “I will not hurt you.” He whispered, and he had meant it. With every forsaken cell in his body he knew he would never let any harm come to them. Especially not by his own hand. He was given permission to hunt after that. Only small animals and near the edge of the woods. And always with his covering.

Choso often left even earlier than the hunters to avoid having to worry about being seen. He practiced for weeks. His first killings were violent and messy. So horribly mangled the animals were left entirely unusable. Though he had no real guide to his curse technique, he often felt instinctual urges that would show him in what to do. As the months crawled by, Choso slowly became more and more proficient in his hunting.

The trees thinned out until he could see the small wooden fence and laundry line of his home. He bounded forward, bursting through the gate and dodging past freshly washed dresses and tunics. “Mom!” He stepped in through the back door, kicking his muddied boots off.

Typically, the house would be livelier by now. With his mother in the kitchen preparing food or at the table working on some new garment for someone. Sunlight dancing across the floor where Yuji would be left to play. She would give the same pained, relieved smile and Choso would show her what he’d brought. Today the house seemed as haunted as the woods. A kind of silence that put him on edge immediately. “Mom?” Choso breathed, hot pants getting caught by the covering. As he rounded the corner the bundle of game fell from his hand.

Two men draped in pristine white stood in the living room with his mother and Yuji. Their faces concealed entirely by reflective white and gold masks. “Ah.” One of them clasped his hands behind his back. “Your boy returns.” Every shadow in the room seemed to grow as to swallow him whole in that moment. Gripping his feet, holding him in place when all he wanted to do was run.

“Please, he’s just a boy. He’s a good boy. You must give him a chance.” Yuji whined on her hip, gripping the sleeve of her dress for attention. She had told him of the cullings. Of what happens to half-bloods when they are found out. “Remove your mask.” One of the Inquisitor’s stepped towards Choso. The robe fell just centimeters from the floor, protecting it from any dirt or grime.

For a long moment, Choso hesitated. He waited for any feeling to come. The fear he had seen so many times in his family. The racing heartbeat he could sense. The panicked breathing. When nothing came, he reached up and untied the covering, pulling it from his face. His cursed marking was a marring of his otherwise normal body. A permanent reminder of what he truly was.

With one look at him, the second Inquisitor placed a hand firmly between his mother’s shoulder blades and led her out of the room. She began to weep and beg for mercy. Beg for his life. As the man closed in on Choso the world began to shrink around them. The woods, so massive and endless, now seemed entirely too small a space for the two of them. His house, his town, his entire world had been reduced to them in this moment. And he knew there was nowhere he could go that they wouldn’t find him.

“What evils possess you, boy?” The Inquisitor towered over Choso. Tall even for a grown man. Choso hated that he had to crane his neck to look up at him. And even then, he could not truly meet his eyes. Only the two black slits in the shining mask. “I have a blood curse.” Choso answered, remembering how his mother had insisted his compliance was the only option he had should he be culled.

“A blood curse? Those are quite rare. Did you know that?” Choso shook his head, dark tendrils falling free from their usual ties. He let the hair fall into his eyes and kept his hands resting at his sides. Yuji began crying in the other room, sending a shock through Choso. Like an animal responding to a scent. The Inquisitor noticed this and cocked his head to the side.

“Answer me.” Choso snapped back to the current moment and shook his head. “I do not know anything of other half-bloods. I only know myself. So, I could not know what is or is not common.” He wondered if the silence had been in anticipation of this moment. A warning. A sign. Had everything leading up to him coming through that door warned him of what would lie ahead?

The Inquisitor nudged the game with his foot, rolling them to see the small holes pierced through the head. “You did this?” Choso nodded immediately this time. “This is precise. It must’ve taken you quite some time to garner such skill… Do you enjoy killing?” The question was so shocking Choso opened his mouth once to answer then shut it. When he tried again the words seemed to abandon him. Did he? His eyes fell to the hare lying on the floor now, staining the grain with its blood. What a terrible stain to leave for his mother.  

“I do not know.” He finally answered. He wondered if somewhere the gods were disgusted by him. Appalled by such admission. Surely something terrible would come of this. He would be put into an iron pen with all the other mutts and sent to burn. The room began to tilt around him as he considered that. Leaving his mother and Yuji with nothing. No one to protect them.

“I could serve the crown.” The towering man remained so still for a moment Choso was unsure if he was even paying attention anymore. Anger bloomed deep within his ribs, curling up the base of his neck to his face. He knew the markings of his face were shifting, exposing how he was feeling. He sucked in a breath and looked away to control it. He could not do this now. “What makes you think you are deserving of such a mercy?”

What made him deserving? Choso’s eyes fell onto the dead animals on the ground. To his hands hanging limply at his side. And for the first time, a cruel truth dawned on him. The reality of the world he lived in. One he had never had to consider because he had no reason to look past the warmth of the world his mother had built around him.

“I am not.”

He forced himself to look up, straightening to his full height. There was nothing he could say to make himself deserving. There was no god waiting. There was no mercy to be shown to a mutt.

With a hum of approval, the Inquisitor clasped his hands behind his back. The house groaned in protest with each step he took back towards the bedroom, a final warning to his mother. As the door down the hall creaked open, Choso stood in anticipation. He could hear the murmurs of hushed conversation and then the renewed sobs of his mother.

His body was moving before he had time to consider it. His palm landed flat against the wall as he steadied himself in the hall. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to shake off the sudden distortion of the world. “Mom.” The words tumbled from his lips more like a plea than a call. A sea of white closed in on him, taking him by the arms and lifting him. “Mom.” Choso regained some of his composure as they began dragging him back towards the front door.

“Choso!” Choso pulled against the Inquisitors, blinking furiously to fully regain his composure. “Choso. Be good. It’s going to be ok-”

“Mom.” All he could do was repeat himself as the door slammed open and the morning sun tried to warm his chilled body. Yuji screamed in her arms, one hand reaching for Choso. “It’s going to be ok. You’re ok.” Her fingers whispered across his cheek for a moment before his feet were raised off the ground. Choso twisted in the grasp and fell to the ground with a hard thud. A rock jabbed its way between his lower ribs.

Everyone was staring now. Not only at an official official wagon of the crown but at the half-bred gasping for air in the dirt. “Choso!” He pushed himself up onto shaky legs and lurched forward to embrace her. To know her warmth one last time. To have this goodbye.

A strong arm hooked around his stomach and Choso gasped. “Let’s go, mutt.” He could hear his mother’s frantic screams for some decency or humanity as he was shoved into the wagon. The two Inquisitors settled in, sliding the iron latch to shut the door. Choso’s fingers shoved the velvet curtains aside and watched as the hunter from the market held his mother from chasing them as they departed.

“Your gods have already abandoned you, child. Do not waste your life fighting against the only power in this world willing to save you.”