Ashes and Dust

Chapter three - The Risky Endeavour

The unexpected friend did not wake with a start. It felt like an anvil had taken up residence in his head, so that every time he tried to move it, the anvil complained. Loudly... and painfully. Sunlight filtered through the curtains covering the small window, so when he tried to open his eyes, the light, no matter how little of it there was, burned his retinas and he was forced to shut his eyes tight again. He let out a groan and turned over as a buzzing started in his ears.

Damn bees, he thought sourly, as he covered his head with the warm covers.

He was almost certain that it was time to get up, but he was damned if he was moving out of his warm refuge under the covers. He could almost hear the crotchety old woman down the hall cursing him silently. This whole mess was her fault. Her and her damned meals. God knew what she put into those concoctions of hers. So every morning was the same: he lay in bed in pain wondering why he had ever listened to her and ate the meal to begin with.

Because you were hungry, fool!

Would he ever learn from his mistakes? She never openly complained about his presence in the house, but he could always tell when he wasn't completely welcome. He was sure that if he hadn't nearly been killed, she would never have let him set foot in her precious sanctuary.

Things weren't helped by the slight complication of difference of species. Well, not by all that much anymore.

The door to his small bedroom opened and he sighed. Here it comes.

"You planning to get out of your little nest today?" said a familiar voice, but it was not the sound of the healer. The voice was younger, with an English accent mixed in with one that was very similar to the healer's.

He tried to move to see who this new voice belonged to, but the blankets were woven to tight around his body now that it was impossible to even think about moving. He struggled and worked while the person at the door laughed at him silently, and finally the chains came loose. He threw the blankets off his half naked body with a jerk and instantly regretted it. The anvil retaliated, making his brain hurt. With a loud moan, he lay back on his pillow and shut his eyes tight, swallowing what was left of last night's "supper".

The young woman crossed over to him and laid a gentle hand on his bare chest. He caught his breath; her hands were like ice.

"When did you die?!" he managed through clenched teeth.

The hand was instantly removed.

"Sorry."

The young woman walked silently to the window and flung back the curtains. More light poured unobstructed into the small room, causing him more pain. He covered his eyes with his arm, the hand of the other arm clutching his stomach. A sudden wave of nausea ran through him and he suppressed a retch and half succeeded. He gagged and curled into a ball.

So much for being a healer! The old witch is trying to kill me!

The young woman grimaced and called out for the old healer in the kitchen. Their patient was in pain. Sirius heard mild swearing from the healer as she marched down the hall toward his little room. The old woman bustled into the room carrying a phial of liquid that greatly resembled tomato juice (or what Sirius was seriously hoping to be tomato juice). She put the rim of the phial to her patient's lips, but he kept his mouth shut and shook his head stubbornly. If she thought he was going to open his mouth and swallow whatever was in that phial like a good little boy after the meal he had suffered through the night before, she had something else coming.

The healer sighed and rolled her eyes, muttering to herself in a language Sirius didn't understand.

"Guiys hy bòtò påhi!" she spat at the young woman, the irritation evident in her voice.

He heard a badly suppressed snort of laughter and carefully opened his eyes a crack.

"Just drink the damn potion."

Reluctantly, not wanting to argue with this woman, he opened his mouth and felt the warm potion slide down his throat without warning. He swallowed and coughed. The pain in his head instantly diminished and he was able to open his eyes fully.

The healer was exiting the room and Sirius was able to hear her cursing him not-so-silently as she went down the hall. The young woman was standing by the window and in the bright light her face was obscured. From him position on his back, all he could make out of her features was the heavy black make-up on her eyes.

"Well?" she demanded, turning to the man on the bed.

"Well what?"

She hung her head in exasperation and moved away from the window.

"The potion, you fool. Did it work?"

"Oh."

"Well?!"

"Yeah, I guess..." He paused, getting to his feet.

Away from the window, the woman's features became clear. She was attractive, around his age. The hair that framed the pale face was ebony to match the eyeliner around her eyes, eyes that were a piercing silver-blue. When one looked into those eyes, one got the feeling that they were looking into one's very soul. Though she was shorter that he was, he got the impression that she was taller than she was. She emitted an aura that screamed confidence. Just by looking at her, one could tell that she was a born leader. She was rather curvy, he noticed, with slender hips... At the moment, however, she had her hands on those hips and she didn't look very happy, to say the least.

"What the hell are you staring at?" she snapped, giving him the eye.

A little startled, he just shook his head quickly and stretched, reaching for his shirt. The woman shook her head in impatience while he dressed, eyeing him out of the corner of her eye.

Why is she watching me?

Her gaze was starting to make him uncomfortable.

"Do you remem- uh - realize what time it is?" asked the woman, never turning from her position at the window.

He noticed the sudden change of idea, though she had tried to cover it. She obviously hadn't meant to say what she had almost let slip, but what harm could it do?

"Do I remember what?" he asked slyly, giving her a half grin.

She glared at him and turned away to look out the window again. With her back to him, he gave her a closer look, but this time he wasn't looking at her appearance, not that way he had before anyway. Something gnawed at his subconscious, but he just couldn't grasp it. Maybe it had something to do with the past he couldn't remember... yes, that was it. She must have been part of his past. Why else would she talk to him as if she knew him? She certainly wasn't shy with him, that was true. Another minute's thought, and he was sure he had seen her before, that she had been part of his past somehow. Somehow...

"You don't remember me do you?" The question slipped into the silence of the room and was lost to time.

So she had known him, and from the pain in her voice, had known him well. However, no matter how hard he tried to remember her, a name would not come to him. He frowned and walked up to her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he suddenly froze. Her touch was familiar...

I remember.

"Raven..."

She turned to him suddenly. She looked shocked. From the look on her face, she hadn't actually thought that he would remember her. He had a vague idea that it had been years since he had seen her... or had it? A sudden image came to him. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling through scarcely open eyes. Everything was blurred and everything seemed to spin around him. Suddenly a voice cut through the daze. He couldn't understand it, but then a face appeared above his. It was the woman's. Raven's.

"You remember?" she studied his face intently, as if searching for a sign that he was lying. "Nana said you wouldn't remember yet... NANA!"

With that, she ran from the room down the hall to the kitchen.

Perturbed, he stood stock-still and listened to the excited exchange of words in a tongue he vaguely understood. Shaking his head, he followed the woman from his past into the hall were he heard the sounds of other patients in the other room for the first time that morning. He shivered. The sounds of human suffering kept him up most nights until pure exhaustion made him pass out. He would have figured that he would be used to it by now, seeing he had been there a year now, but no matter how hard he tried to ignore the moans and groans of the "sick ward", they still haunted his dreams... nightmares filled with masked people and bright flashes of light... and veils. Large, flowing, black veils. He shivered again. It was these black veils that disturbed him the most. He guessed they represented his inability to remember his past, or some bull like that...

Shaking his head, he entered the small kitchen and looked around. To his knowledge, which wasn't all that extensive at that point in time, he was the only patient allowed into this part of the house, which, in his opinion, wasn't all that surprising. All the other patients he had seen so far had either been gravely ill, fatally wounded, or brutally disfigured, almost beyond recognition... not pleasant sights, to say the least.

"You hungry?" It was the young woman again, no longer with a calculation look on her face. She now looked at him with what almost look to him like... affection. Almost.

Thrown off completely, he didn't answer. He just blinked at her. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Téh!" The old healer woman gave him a smart smack on the back of the head.

Shaken out of his muteness, he finally answered.

"Er... yeah. Thanks." He rubbed the back of his head where the old woman had smacked him and gave her a dirty look. To his surprise, the old healer stuck her tongue out at him and returned the look. The young woman snorted.

"Nana, you're just as bad as he is! Anyway, why are you thanking me?" She gave him a wry smile. "If you can remember my name, you can remember how to cook." She sat to the table. "So start cooking."

"Pùr moyrah?!" demanded the healer woman.

"Yes, Nana, for us, too." The young crossed her long legs, drawing his attention. But thankfully, nobody noticed.

"Euk!" The old woman cried in disgust, throwing up her hands, and sat and the table next to her granddaughter, giving him a look that plainly said that he had better not mess up her breakfast.

Taking a deep breath, he turned toward the stove and gulped. He couldn't remember how to cook... Had he ever known how to cook? Or was this woman just trying to test him in some way? Suddenly, someone's voice inside his head said, "Woman like men who can cook."

While he tried to remember who had told him this, he subconsciously reached for the frying pan hanging just above the old-fashioned wood stove. Placing it on the iron cook top, he opened a cupboard and took out flour, sugar, an egg, baking powder, olive oil, and salt. From the jug on the counter, he poured a cup of milk. Not really noticing what he was doing, his mind still on the mysterious speaker, he started measuring out the ingredients. A cup of and a quarter of flour, three table spoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of sugar, one quarter of a teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of baking powder. He beat the egg in a glass bowl and mixed in the cup of milk and the three tablespoons of olive oil. He mixed the dry ingredients together in a large wooden bowl and put a drop of olive oil in the cast iron frying pan. He poured the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mixed it all together with a wooden spoon. Finally, seeing that the olive oil the in pan was fizzing from the heat, he scooped the concoction into the pan he started searching the drawers for a spatula. Ten minutes later, he stood back to admire his handy work. Turning with a grin on his face to the two astonished women, he felt very proud of himself. Raven was beaming at him. He couldn't help smiling back as he handed them both plates heaped with pancakes. He found some maple syrup (or what he thought was close enough to maple syrup) and poured it over both plates. To finish it all off, he cut off two small chunks of butter and placed them on the top of both piles of pancakes.

Raven - yes, that was her name - dug into hers right away, but the old woman was still too busy staring at him to bother to eat hers. So he took his own plate and started eating, full of pride that he had done something he didn't think he could do. Even though he hadn't been able to remember who had told him that women like men who can cook, he had pleased Raven and that to him was much better.

Ah, he thought to himself, progress at last.

And the pancakes weren't too bad either.

Raven left that evening after enjoying a supper that he cooked himself (he had demanded to cook again that evening, the thought of sleeping without pain that night hanging over his head). She only said that Jonis would miss her and as she quickly slipped on her long black jacket, laced up her boots and opened the door to leave, she mumbled that she had stayed far too long.

He sat still in his chair by the fire and watched the healer walk to the window and peer out with a worried look on her face. He himself was worried. Why had Raven looked so scared? He shook his head. Damned if he knew what went on in that woman's life. This time, at least, he was on the healer's side, though she had much more right to be worried than he did. Raven was, after all, the old woman's granddaughter. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that something strange was going to happen...

Turning back into the room, the healer noticed him looking at her. The worried look instantly disappeared into the past, and she snapped at him in her own tongue, pointing down the hall to the room where he slept at night... and toward the sick ward. He shivered, but nodded and got up to go to bed.

It took him a long time to get to sleep that night. It wasn't because of the moans and delirious muttering from across the hall that night - for once. He couldn't stop thinking about the young woman named Raven who had left so swiftly and with such urgency. He wondered endlessly about this Jonis she had mentioned. Was he her father? A boyfriend? A husband? A friend? He just couldn't manage to shut his brain off...

He woke from a troubled sleep with a start. He had been having nightmares about veils and... screams of... something. He couldn't quite remember Wiping the cold sweat off his forehead, he was certain that no matter how disturbing the dream had been, it had not been the thing that woke him. For once, too, the sounds of human suffering weren't wafting from opposite the passage. What had it been?

He strained his ears, hoping to hear again what had wakened him from his own sleeping hell... then he heard it. Someone was stumbling around the living room. Who the hell is in the living room at this hour in the morning? The healer...?

Feeling that under no circumstances could he go to sleep again with an "intruder" in the house (though he thought that it might be some deformed half-human from the sick ward trying to escape into the night), he made up his mind.

Throwing back the covers and not bothering to put on a shirt (which probably wasn't the best of ideas because he was certain that if it was a patient, he's need all the protection he could get), he got to his feet and ventured into the hall. There was no light at the end of the passage, making it a dark tunnel waiting to swallow him whole. Fighting down his foreboding of danger, he set off carefully down the hall, one hand on the wall to steady him, one foot in front of the other. At night, the relatively short hallway seemed to span an eternity. About halfway down the passage, he felt himself pass the healer's room and paused for a moment, conflicted about waking the old woman.

Don't, a voice in the back of his brain told him, she needs her beauty sleep.

As nasty as this was, Sirius felt that it was true, so continued his trek to the living room. The person, whoever it was, was still stumbling around, Sirius guessed, trying to find a candle and match. He felt the wall end and without a sound, he reached down to find the candle and match that sat near the base of the wall just where the old woman had placed them earlier in the evening. He struck the match on the rough floor and lit the wick of the candle. The stumbling stopped.

Rising to his full height, he held the candle out in front of him to better illuminate the room in front of him. The darkly coloured walls and rug blended into the shadows. The dark furniture resembled evil creatures in the gloom. The windows were covered by black curtains, just like the ones in his bedroom, so no light from the moon and stars outside could penetrate into the cramped space. The empty grate of the fireplace was no help to throw light into the dark corners of the room where the meagre light from his candle couldn't touch. The only thing out of place in the room "stood" not five feet from him.

A figure was caught in the candlelight, kneeling on the floor, leaning over a stool. The long black curtain of hair covered most of the face, but he recognized the intruder at once.