PodCastle 869: Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – PART TWO
* Author : S.B. Divya * Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Uncanny Content warnings for fire, violence (including domestic violence), references to rape, and parental deaths. Rated PG-13 Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part Two by S. B. Divya Walter and his small gang visited as promised. Taking my mother’s advice, I told them I had failed. They delivered a beating, which I accepted while curled into a ball on the ground beside my mother, my hands tucked into my armpits to protect the cloth wrapping. Some of them stood apart and watched. I gathered from their words that they had come mostly for sport, including Konrad stewards-son. Walter had debts to the elder Konrad. He’d allowed too many of his pigs to sicken, and he hadn’t given the vassal his due share of ham. “Do better by next week,” Walter said as they left. They came back again and again, and I gave the same excuse and earned us the same beating, but over time their numbers dwindled. “We should leave this place,” I told my mother as we tended each other’s wounds. “I’m nearly a man now. We can travel again, buy a wagon and a horse once we get far enough from here.” “You might be close to a man’s age, but you don’t yet have a man’s body. Your father faced worse men than Walter during our travels, and with your hands . . . you can’t fight them off.” “I could turn Walter into gold and sink him to the bottom of the Salzach,” I grumbled. “Don’t you dare!” My mother grabbed me by the chin and forced me to meet her gaze. “Never use your blessing to commit murder . . . or any other crime. You are better than that.” I nodded, but there are days when I regret resisting that impulse. The next afternoon, two days early, as the setting sun cast long shadows over the field, Walter stumbled into our hut alone and very drunk. “I’ve had enough of you both,” he roared. He pointed a trembling finger at my mother. “This is all your doing, witch! You cursed my swine, I know it, and now you’ll pay.” He wrapped one hand in her hair and yanked her off her feet. Without thinking, I launched myself at him. “No,” my mother cried. “Ram, run away!” But I didn’t heed her. Walter swatted away my pathetic attempts to strike him, then thrust a fist into my gut. I fell to the ground. As I gasped like a fish out of water, he stomped his booted foot once on my right arm, once on the left, and, over my mother’s screams, once on each leg. “Be still,” he roared and flung her next to me. He grabbed a piece of firewood and struck my mother’s head as I watched, helpless, unable to move or cry out. She slumped, unconscious, and began to bleed. Taking a flint, Walter dumped our entire supply of cooking tinder next to the straw hut’s walls and set it on fire. He waited until the flames caught well and smoke started to fill the small space. As he ducked outside, he muttered, “Those who do the devil’s work must burn.” I remember getting my wind back along with a lungful of smoke. I crawled to my mother and tried to grab her, to pull her out of our hut, which was now our pyre. I couldn’t work any of my limbs in a useful fashion. The sharp pain from my broken bones overwhelmed the sensation of searing heat, but the fear is what I can never forget. A terror not only of dying but of living with hands...