Murder

Heart pounding.
Seamus hid behind a small boulder.
He felt their presence before he heard them.
Humans.

He could vaguely hear what they were saying over the babbling sound of a nearby creek. The autumnal wind wished through the forest leaves. The normally emerald forest was steeped in amber with the setting sun. The air felt heavy, as if displaced by the distinct weight human souls. Two souls. Approaching.
Approaching!

Seamus gripped the gold dagger at his hip. Panic began to creep in as he searched his own memory for some appropriate spell. The humans were so close! He could see through the darkness of his mind’s eye their two souls nebulous and indistinct at first, but increasingly defined the more they approached. A brother and sister. Eight and nine years old.

Seamus slowly pulled the gold and silver dagger out from its sheath. I will not be discovered, he thought, There will be no witnesses. Seamus eyed the fine metal-working that went into his dagger. The hilt was composed of two serpents intertwined in a spiral, their heads pointed one at the other, emeralds for eyes staring into eachother. The nine inch, silver blade began amid the serpents’ mutual gaze. The children.

Seamus tightened his grip on his dagger. The children were almost upon him. Legs tensed and mind reeling, Seamus focused his mind’s eye on the two young souls. Via obscuratim. Seamus reiterated the phrase in his mind, Via obscuratim!

“Via obscuratim”, Seamus whispered.

They stopped. The children were so close. He saw their souls clearly, pure and transparent. He saw their thoughts, and beneath them, their memories. Flynn and Aaden were their names.

Via o’scuro, Vade retro, he thought. “Vade retro”, he whispered.

“It’s getting dark,” Aaden said, “Let’s go home”.

Seamus breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the disembodied souls leaving. The air was light again. Seamus peaked his head over the boulder to see the backs of the children as they walked away. The path they walked lead to a nearby hamlet. Seamus would avoid this part of the forest tomorrow, as the children would likely return for whatever adventure, once their vision was cleared of his spell.

What little sky that could be seen between the tops of the trees was a vibrant gold in some areas, a fiery crimson in others. Seamus could see only a single raven perched over the dirt path that the children took. While only one bird could be seen, Seamus could feel the simple little minds of a whole murder of ravens. One hundred twenty eight ravens. Seamus knew that the one raven was on lookout for the others, and had been waiting for the children to leave.

The raven let out a series of low, guttural calls, and the one twenty eight other birdy minds relished the sound. A mob of black descended from the trees and lighted upon some unseen thing in the forest undergrowth. Seamus sheathed his dagger. If the forest was private enough for the ravens, it was private enough for him.

Seamus set out along the path in the opposite direction that Flynn and Aaden took. The murder of ravens not far from the trail, Seamus could hear their feasting. Two of the large, black birds began squabbling over the same strip of red and white flesh. Whatever they were eating, the body must be large. It was probably a deer, judging by the size shape and behavior of the obsidian mob that covered it among the ferns.

Seamus left the murder of ravens behind as darkness began to creep into the forest. He had to check his stash before returning to his hovel to sleep. Much of the gold that Seamus owned was wrought and worked by the same goldsmith who had made his prized Serpentis dagger, Dirk of Hibernia. The Legendary Dirk of Hibernia. Seamus could see something in Dirk’s goldsmithing, a value beyond the gold itself, and even beyond the incredible skill that Dirk employed. There was a felt but unseen energy in his work, almost the same way Seamus could feel a soul without seeing the person, some magic was hidden in the pieces that Dirk produced.

The night was growing dark and cold. Hundreds of stars could be seen amidst the tree tops. Thousands could be seen if Seamus had been out in the open. Seamus’s foot kicked at something hard as he tripped and fell to the ground. Laying on the path, he spat the dirt out of his mouth, rolled over and put the buckled shoe back onto his foot.

“Fraggin root or stone…” he muttered. Rising to his feet, Seamus saw a dark shape on the trail. It was difficult to discern what the shape was. Seamus approached the shape with caution. As he neared, he saw it wasn’t one shape, but two –no- three. A small wooden chest was set next to a similarly small wooden cask. Atop the cask was a metallic cup, probably made of gold. He smelled beer. A dark beer.

Seamus picked up the cup. It was a goblet, and Seamus instinctively knew it was made of gold. He couldn’t feel anything special about the gold, but the beer inside smelled so good. He took a sip. The beer tasted rich and heady. Spice of paradise, anise, cloves were all mingled with the dark malt. Seamus smacked his lips and thought appraisingly of the brew. If it were light out, he reasoned, the beer would still probably look as dark as night. The beer tasted as dark as night.

A lust for the beer came upon him, and Seamus greedily gulped down the rest of the goblet. Tipping the bottom up, he drained the rest of the beer’s foam into his mouth. Empty goblet in hand, Seamus wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve and bent down to inspect the chest. The iron hasp wasn’t locked, so it opened with little effort. Inside the chest Seamus beheld perhaps thirty pounds of gold coins. His heart raced. The chest was full of gold, and the cask next to it was very likely full of the same beer he drank. He thought of adding it to his stash, but then thought better of putting it in the same location as the rest of what he was hoarding. The treasure obviously belonged to someone else, and they might be successful in finding it again. Seamus thought of the children. They clearly didn’t leave beer and gold in the forest, and Seamus couldn’t remember feeling any other souls in the forest that day; just the children and the murder of ravens.

Seamus thought back on the ravens feasting on the corpse and the greedy guttural noises they made when they fought each other over contested scraps when suddenly a cold, hard, bony hand grabbed his neck.

Seamus grasped at the hand around his neck, it felt as cold and as hard as iron. A pale moon of a face leered at him as he was lifted up off the ground. Two sharp fangs pierced deep into his neck. Seamus tried to cry out, but couldn’t utter a sound. He felt his blood flowing into the man’s mouth. Man? There couldn’t have been any man. Seamus stared up into the stars above the trees. There couldn’t be any man. There weren’t any souls in the forest. Just me and the children and the murder. The murder. It’s not fair. No soul! The man stopped sucking on Seamus’s neck and looked into his eyes.  His mouth was slathered in blood, and his face was no longer so pale.

“You’re right, little one”, the foreign man said. “No soul.”

And all the stars went dark, and all went black for Seamus.