Jonis by Rowan Erlking (free children's online books txt) 📖

Chapter One: From the Tent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To make sealing spells, all that is required is red paper, black ink, and a steady hand.

 

 

 

He remembered the day his mother killed herself.

He saw her tears as she walked to the kitchen, carrying him and setting him on the ground. Jonis could barely hold his head up—but then he was only a day old. Her brown eyes were red from constant crying. She had not stopped crying since the moment the doctor put him in her arms, murmuring in dismay, “Your child has blue eyes.”

Back then, he did not know the significance of those words. And how could he? All he knew was that when his mother held him, he felt her despair. Both of them wept all night until his father came home from the fields.

Trading arms to lie in, Jonis had stopped crying the moment his father had touched him. All the despair he felt was replaced by an overwhelming joy. His father had looked down on him, his blue eyes shining, and he had sighed with relief. “At last…a boy.”

They had no other children. Jonis was the first.

His father had walked with infant Jonis in his arms for a while until Jonis got hungry. Yet, as soon as he returned to his mother’s arms he was enveloped in her despair again, and he cried.

The moment after his father had gone off in the morning for some cooked food, and to hire a woman to care for his wife while he worked in the fields, Jonis’s mother climbed out of bed. Still sore and tired, she made her way to the kitchen.

 

Jonis closed his eyes. He didn’t want to remember it, though the memory often forced itself back to his forethoughts.

Clenching his teeth, the thirteen-year-old boy continued on his way to his father’s tent, carrying the firewood that he had gathered on the village skirts. It was all he or his father was allowed to use in that area. They were not welcome in town much. They were not welcome in most places—if most especially in Pringsley, the village where Jonis was born. They had not returned since the day his mother died. The village Harsall only tolerated his father and him because his father was a skilled hunter and provided excellent choices of wild meat—except not lately. Lately his father had been sick, and Jonis had to stay home from school to take care of him.

“I’m back,” Jonis said. Parting the tent curtain, he set the wood next to their camp stove.

“Come here, son,” his father wheezed out. He then coughed, choking with his hand over his mouth.

Jonis dropped to his knees and grabbed the cloth that lay next to his bedroll on the teakettle which was warming next to the small cook stove. “Come on, you’ll be fine. Just take a slow breath.”

His father shook his head, but his coughing subsided. “No, I won’t be fine, son. I’m dying.”

Chills rippled through the boy, but he already knew what his father told him was true. One touch, and he knew his father was not as young as he looked. All his life his father looked like all the other fathers, young and inexperienced, weathered only by the elements. Besides his unusual blue eyes, which no other man Jonis ever met had, his father walked with an aged step. His outward appearance was deceptive. Though physically he looked like a man who would have a thirteen-year-old son, he felt more like he should have great-grand children.

Jonis peered at him, picking the damp rag off his father’s head. He dipped it into the basin of cool water nearby and replaced it. “Don’t say that.”

Wheezing, his father waved Jonis closer. “I have something to tell you, Jonis.”

His father reached up, grasping Jonis’s arm. Jonis felt the shock of rebound—a protective jolt that kept skin-sensitive creatures such as themselves from harming one another. He looked down on his father’s sweaty brow.

“It is time I shared with you the truth,” his father whispered.

Jonis blinked.

His father reached up towards Jonis’s forehead.

Jonis pulled back.

“What are you going to do?”

“Give you a memory,” his father weakly answered. “Now don’t move.”

He watched as his father’s hand reached over his eyes, placing his fingertips against Jonis’s forehead. The touch electrified against his skin. But instead of feeling rebound, which was as painful as swallowing glass, Jonis felt an opposite sensation. Jonis’s mind opened, and he saw into his father’s thoughts. It was the same sensation he had when he was a child in the times when his father wanted to teach him something but did not have time to use words. Just a touch, and he knew what his father knew. This time, a flood of information flowed into his brain. At first it came like a mild pour, filling his thoughts as quickly as he could take it—but then it flooded in as a deluge.

Jonis tried to pull back, but his skin shocked him, refusing to break the link. More, more, and more information dumped into his brain. It overflowed the spaces in his thoughts, pressing against his ears. His head started to throb. Clamping his hands on the sides of his skull, Jonis shook violently. Inundated, swimming in thousands of years of thoughts and memories—images reeled before his eyes in a whirlpool with nowhere to go. He crouched in himself, rocking. 

“I know it will take time to absorb.” His father’s voice inexplicably sounded different. “But you must keep the memory alive and pass it on to your children, if you ever are lucky to have any.”

Jonis’s head felt heavy, clogged with memory. Churning around like a storm, the information fought for space in his brain. In the distance, he heard his father continue to gasp for air. Panting hard and sweating, Jonis managed to open one eye.

Lying in the bed where his father had been was an entirely different man. Same clothes though. His skin was white and thin; no longer rough brown. But that explained why Jonis had been so pale and not tan like his parents. The man that lay before him was also ancient—nearly in his hundreds, if just that. His skin clung to his bones, sunken, wrinkled and pale, with white wispy hair, like clouds over his splotchy scalp. The only things that were the same about him were his blue eyes. They remained as bright as ever, though now watery and tired. The man stroked Jonis’s hand, gazing tenderly on him.

“I may have committed many crimes in my lifetime,” the man who was his real father, wheezed out, “But you were the best thing I ever did.”

Jonis closed his eyes. Tears forced their way through the cracks. “Come on, Papa. You can’t die. You are Cordril. You said so yourself. The people in the village say Cordrils can live forever.”

“People don’t know much about Cordrils, son,” the old man whispered. “We die of old age just like everyone else. Now is my time.”

But Jonis sobbed, clutching his father’s shrunken, bony hand. “You can’t die. You can’t leave me alone. What will I do? They hate me in town.”

The old man patted his hand. “I have given you all the knowledge of our ancestors. You can use it to survive. Just remember.”

“Remember what?” Jonis asked. His face was damp with tears, staring at the poor shriveled man. His head was still swimming with information. The only memories he could discern were his own—the death of his mother at the forefront. That pierced him deep, knowing what he remembered from her as she stabbed herself in the heart, giving her child one last goodbye kiss. From her thoughts, Jonis learned that his father whom he had known his entire life was not the man she had chosen to marry, but a demon that had possessed her husband’s body. Her blue-eyed child was proof, and Jonis could feel her despair even now.

His father started to choke, drawing in a breath of air. It brought Jonis out of his thoughts.

“Remember—everything when you need it,” the old man said. His father closed his eyes, laboring for air. “Search the memories I gave you, and learn who you are.”

Jonis shook, staring as he watched his father attempted to breathe one more time. The old man drew in long and with effort. There was no exhale. His father stared up at the tent ceiling, his mouth open. His shining blue eyes dulled to black.

 

Jonis sat for some time, staring at his knees, unable to stand. He was alone. His father was gone.

He did not know how long he remained like this, but when the cold wind blew the tent flap open, Jonis looked up and blinked. He glanced back down again. His father was still there in the same state, desperately looking at the tent ceiling as if begging to be taken to the stars above it.

Though his head still swam with thoughts from thousands of years back, Jonis hopped to his feet and quickly rushed out of the tent. He stood outside on the top of the hill that overlooked the village in the valley, gathering his breath, shaking and crying.

“No. Why did you leave me?”

But the memories so new to his head answered him. His father had long been dying. It was a miracle that he had lasted that long. His father was already ancient when he had stumbled upon his mother and had replaced the man she was in love with—a painful regret his father held. Now Jonis knew the entire story. Taken from the memories his father had given him he learned that his father was desperate, hoping to leave posterity but never able to coax a woman to be his wife. All were afraid of him—a Cordril, or more commonly known as a demon that stole lives to live longer. But it was a myth, as his father had said on his deathbed. Not that they couldn’t steal lives by the touch of their hands, but that they did not live any longer by it. They could take on the forms of their victims— but those were mere shells. The face of his father he had grown up with was just a shell. The old man was the real thing.

Jonis stared down the hill at the village. The law said he had to report his father’s death and turn himself in to the village magistrates. Up till then, as long as he and his father kept to the law, they were left alone. He had been lucky enough to be allowed to study with the students in the village school. His schooling had taught him the basics, focusing a great deal on the laws of their nation, Brein Amon. Jonis trembled, looking down at the newly installed electric street lamps and the bright windows of the villagers, lit by more traditional gas lamps. What would they do with a Cordril’s body? Everyone believed they were demons, or half-demon, which was just as bad. His head full of memories shouted that demons were to be cremated, by Brein Amon law, to prevent any kind of infestation. So many demons spread their seed through the corpses they inhabited or infected.

Another thought jumped to the forefront of his mind: would they send a hunter to kill him after cremating his father’s body? 

Jonis shook his head. The new information his father had given him handed him other options. The Cordrils had their own traditions of burial. If he followed them quickly, leaving the grave unmarked, he might be able to satisfy both the laws of the land and the demands of his people. Then, of course, he had to sneak off. Though he knew how to hunt, he was no match for a demon hunter.

He drew in a breath and turned, going back into the tent.

 

“I found