Until Then

Trips up the mountain with the old trapper grew rarer. She was frailer than she used to be, no longer able to rely on her legs to carry her down the steep paths or carry hefty game to the butchery. It fell to the butcher’s first son to meet her at her cabin – more of a shed than a house – and carry the deliveries to and fro.

She smoked often for her pains and complained the smell kept game away.

“At least I won’t get eaten by a bear before I’m ready,” she cackled, tapping her pipe on the worn boulder she used for a chair. A cough interrupted her before she craned her neck to look at him again. “You got yourself a name, yet?”

“No. Parents forgot.”

“And they don’t call you anything?”

“My stepfather calls me ‘Son.’”

The old trapper squinted at him as though the sun were in her eyes. Her thin lip curled up at one corner. “Don’t you have a little brother running around, these days? What do they call him?”

“Small one. Our mother just says ‘him.’ We know who she means.”

The old trapper shook her head. “That’s different, alright, compared to where I’m from. Did I tell you I was born on the eastern side of this mountain?”

Once or twice. “I think so.”

She nodded to herself and took a long drag on the pipe before letting the smoke spill from her nose. “Over there, it’s almost criminal, not having a name of your own. Family’s supposed to give you one at birth and a second one once you survive your fifth year.”

He couldn’t remember the old trapper introducing herself by name, or hearing anyone refer to her as anything other than ‘that old owl up the hill.’

“I don’t know your name,” he told her, fixing a snare at her table to busy himself. “So they can’t be all that important.”

She clicked her teeth. “You don’t have to walk the world over, telling it to everyone you meet. It’s so when you go out and do things, people know who it was what did them. I know some around here call me an owl. That works, too. It’s not a handsome name, maybe, but at least I earned it. And they’ll go on, talking about the old owl who lived up here and kept on feeding them mountain beasts well past her prime. I don’t mind being remembered that way.”

Was that what it was all about? Being remembered?

The old trapper nodded to him. “You’re like to be big as an elk, I’d wager,” she told him. “And you certainly do make yourself at home in the woods. Think I’ll start mentioning that big elk at the butchery to friends who come through here, get you situated with a name. Got to be something better than ‘the butchers’ boy;’ especially now that they’ve got two of them.”

A warm feeling spread over his face as he finished mending the rope. “I won’t be Elk forever, will I?” he asked, for the first time thinking about what sort of reputation he wanted. The idea of only being known for his height didn’t appeal to him.

A teasing snort from the old trapper brought a scowl to his face.

“You might get yourself another one when you’re older,” she said. “Up there in the sky are those champions who earned a place in the stars. You might turn out like Lugovalos; it’s said he started in life alone. Remember his story?”

Elk glanced skyward even though the Sun shined bright overhead. There was nothing to see but a handful of reddening clouds.

Lugovalos’ story was Elk’s favorite, but he wouldn’t admit it. “Not much.”

“West of here, out in the black cliffs you hear about from travelers, there was a man who lived in the same age as the giants – well before my grandparents’ time and then some. People did wild things then. The stars were still changing then.”

This part of the tale had never made much sense. Travelers who happened near Elk’s butchery spoke only of places around the mountain. Nobody except the old trapper talked about places farther than that, and by her words, she had only seen the Eastern half.

She went on without explaining, as she had every time she recounted an old tale. “Lugovalos came into the world at a time when plague and blight meant children who wandered from their family’s side weren’t looked for. They just let those little things wander and hoped wherever they ended up had more food for them.”

Until recently, whenever Elk came home late, he’d been greeted with the words, “If you weren’t going to bring the firewood when we need it, you might as well have stayed gone.”

It wasn’t until his brother was old enough to talk, until the blood staining the front hall had all been sanded away and his mother brought a quiet man from town to live with them that Elk’s late returns earned him not a beating, but concern.

It was the thought of that blood that made Elk put down the snare he had long finished mending. “I’m supposed to get back, soon,” he said, retrieving the bag of small game the old trapper had strung up on a tree nearby.

“Finally had enough of my stories? Well, I’ll let you go. But I’ve got to pass along some news I heard on the wind last quarter moon. Something you and that family of yours could do with hearing.”

It wasn’t like the old trapper to gossip. The only times she had told him things like this were ahead of the worst snowstorms. Elk stood dutifully still to listen.

“Word is there’s been trouble on the Eastern side of this mountain, back where I came from. Raids on big towns, outlying folks like you and I going missing. A rogue king’s been dragging his forces here and there the past ten-odd years or so. I figure it’s his doing."

Elk heard the words, but he didn’t know what to think about them. “Isn’t there trouble in the towns, sometimes?”

The old trapper’s bushy eyebrows lifted in a look he couldn’t read. “You just let the others know. Think about what you lot’ll do if that trouble makes its way here.”

He hefted the sack of game over his back. “What’ll you do?”

“Oh, I’ll disappear, most likely. I’m decent enough at making myself scarce.” She pointed at him with the end of her pipe. “These woods can hide anyone, if that anyone knows how to go unseen.”

Elk descended the slope quickly, quietly, practicing the soft-heeled gait the old trapper had taught him on their earliest hunting trips. It was easier to feel the lay of the ground that way, easier not to trip or make much sound. He had practiced that step both on the steep paths cut through the undergrowth and the creaky floors of his home.

It served him well, moving unheard. Since perfecting it, he’d earned only half the ire from his mother that he used to.

How she had convinced anyone of sense to come and live with them, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know what a decent man like their stepfather saw in the iron gaze and harsh grip of the butcher’s widow - a woman whose sharp laugh made her oldest son flinch waiting for her to throw something afterwards.

With their stepfather, that rage had subsided. She was less impatient. Focused mostly on her work.

That was the most anyone could say of her. She still spent a quarter of their earnings on her trips to the distillery, still scowled at both sons as though they were thieves waiting to pilfer whatever treasure she had.

Elk still raced home from chores sometimes, certain he would once again open the door and find a bloody mess on the floor. That his stepfather or younger brother would disappear like the first husband.

Not that he missed his mother’s first husband.

But what had happened before could happen again. She grew angry enough. Bitter enough.

If Elk had any true merit, it was that he was strong. He could be an obstacle for his mother’s rage. He was used to it; he could weather it.

Even so, he couldn’t help bracing when his hand found the cold rope handle of the front door. The lack of sound from inside wasn’t comforting. It never was.

He stood on the steps outside as dusk fell deep over the clearing, unable to move even as the last amber rays faded from the mountainside.

What would they do if that rogue king brought his trouble to the butchery? He wondered the same thing every night when he returned home and had to question if – when he opened the door – if he would find all he had left was the butchery and a mother who despised him.

It bothered him the answer in his head was always so simple: He’d go up the mountain and never look at that clearing again.

He wouldn’t trade like the old trapper; he didn’t think he could stand to be near people again. He would just live in the woods, empty-hearted and alone, waiting to become something else.

Winter stole most of the sounds that usually snapped Elk from getting lost in his thoughts. It wasn’t until the leaves snapped at the edge of the trail leading from town that he turned from the door to see a lantern bobbing in the dark.

“Well, what are you doing, standing up there in the cold?” asked his stepfather when the light grew closer. “You’re like to fall ill at the worst time of year. Go on in, I’ve got something to show you all.”

-

Away on a trip to the tannery down the road, Elk’s mother did not join them. His younger brother, having been left to his own devices most of the day, bounded into the front hall with question after question, most of them about where the others had been and what they had brought back.

He watched with face aglow as their stepfather revealed a small box from a parcel. At five years, he scarcely had occasion to marvel at anything. “What's that?”

“It's a rare sight these days,” said their stepfather, a quick witted man with a large stomach and gentle eyes. Gray bristles caught the light in his copper beard when he smiled. “It came all the way from the Lost Continent. It must be a hundred years old, at least.”

He lowered the box in his reddened, weathered hand so the boys could get a better look at it.

Tarnished brass trim and faded paint decorated the lid. The box itself was shaped like the branch of a tree Elk had never seen; it was covered in blunt thorns and odd perforations. It must have been made by an expert craftsperson.

He frowned. “Why did you buy something like this? How can we afford it?”

Their stepfather laughed. “It’s been in my family since my granddame's time. I traded a couple of furs for it to my cousin in town. I would’ve traded more had he asked; he was going to sell it to a stranger, and you can’t put a price on treasures like this.”

“Why? Is there something inside?”

Their stepfather lifted the lid of the box with his fingertips as if afraid it would crumble. Inside was only a small key stuck on a spike. “Would you like to turn it?”

This was only the second key Elk had seen in his life, and he’d never had occasion to operate one. The other opened a chest that guarded his family’s savings, few though those may have been.

His mother had long ago forbade him from so much as touching that chest, much less unlocking it.

He cleared his throat. “Turn it?” he asked, afraid of bending the worn metal.

All his life, he’d had a habit of breaking things on accident. The old trapper often said he was just too big for his age, and he’d grow into his strength over time. He wanted to believe that, but every year, he grew taller and stronger, and he’d stopped trusting himself around fragile things. He didn’t even pick up his brother to carry him around anymore.

His stepfather wound the box for him, demonstrating the technique. Rather than remove the key, he continued turning it until it would turn no further.

When he released it, the key began to spin on its own, and a voice eked from somewhere deep within the box.

Music.