A Most Spectacular Rift

Chapter 8

Huncho shivered as Nadia told him what the villagers were saying.

"A group of soldiers came back lugging a cart, a cart full ... of " she pinched her forehead. "Limbs."

"They didn't tarp it well enough because it filled the cart all the way up."

Huncho clasped his hands around the hot mug of cacao, which was brewed finely by a kettle close to the still-crackling stove. His sweat was sliding down his back like when he dossed in his hard bed, sheets spun around him like web, and no way to get out of the humid trap, only to feel leather and cloth pull tightly towards skin and abrasively rub against sweat and grime vertiginously.

"I've heard of it as well," Mr. Hans' half-lit face was cold as stone.

"What's a - Diskrali?"

Huncho mouthed the word out but it tinged fuzzily on his tongue. "Diskrali?"

"Oh, that," Nadia sipped her mug then put it down carelessly. She was pacing this too carefree and with a childish laxity that juxtaposed her father's terse and conforming soldier's discipline.

"A Diskrali is one of those shifters. The beasts that come at night, sing opposite a serenade, their shadows behind flowing curtains, and they enter subtly through the house and steal a baby the least expected, to leave no trace behind except for the child's eyes."

Huncho gulped. "Those are from tales right? When I caught snakes, there were none of those in the woods. There were only squirrels, and of course, lots and lots of snakes. They couldn't have done it right?"

"Then what else could it be?" Nadia leaned in. "They came with carts teeming with limbs -"

"Nadia, stop."

Mr. Hans silenced her. "Huncho's brothers just died out there, and the mercurial rumours have just swayed to an almost chimerical notion! Don't dwell on it with an affected person right here and now with us!"

"Sorry," Nadia whispered, then looked at Huncho. "Just saying, the Arbitrators are going to avenge your friends, no matter what or who attacked them. After all, the aphorism goes: Arbitrators stand for justice. And Justice never expires."

Huncho nodded, cupping his mug, and supping bit by bit the sweet and redolent drink out of it. He looked at the bookshelf near him, the light feeding into the precocious symbol of nascent excellence, of literacy, of why Nadia and Mr. Hans had an array of complex, and eloquent words at disposal, which Huncho didn't, and which he also disliked, partly because it was a skill he himself lacked, and partly because it made those literate, fluent people prone to excessive pleonasms.

Huncho kept staring at his drink, unable to lift his eyes up. Whenever he thought of something, it always shifted, like Diskrali, into something negative. Brooding, so maybe he should just observe? It was always easier to observe than to think. So just focus on the drink.

The cacao inside swirled like brown agate with a bit of cream like foamy cirrus. The drink was pretty. It was hazel, like his own eyes.

Why would they do it? Why snake catchers? Why would the Sammels do it? They can't be that stupid right? They invoked the wrath of Arbitrators!

It can't be, Diskrali?! It can't be!

Huncho would ask all of that to Enzo.

A silence ensued, with Nadia apologizing a bit to Huncho, for mentioning his dead friends. Their conversation led them later to what the snake catchers were like and how close Huncho was to them.

Huncho did not explain how Enzo culled people for his snake catcher cabin.

Huncho did not explain their daily duties. He did not reveal that he was an orphan. He did not mention that Enzo insinuated him into his snake catching family, nor did he explain other things...