South of Winter, Two Singulars

       They made camp by a stream, on a rise beneath an ancient olive, its limbs twisted by centuries of wind. Before them stretched the endless fields of lavender. In a few months it would be a fragrant, purple sea, but now the dry, grey-green shrubs rattled in the wind like old bones, their empty seed-heads a percussive whisper. Snufkin was contemplating how to capture that desiccated rhythm on his harmonica when the Gunman drew a long bundle of oiled cloth and leather from his pack. With quick, precise movements, he assembled the pieces of wood and steel into a rifle. He packed a flask, hardtack, and what looked to be a cartridge box into a light haversack, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and started toward the low, rolling hills without a glance back. He left his guitar and main pack in the tent. “Business. Five days,” he said to the air. Snufkin made a sound of acknowledgement. The business of a bounty hunter needed no explanation. And that the younger brother would be a hindrance, not a help, was clear. And the Gunman seemed just fine during all their trip, not troubled by his wounds. Still, a cold unease stirred in his gut. For the next days, Snufkin lay in the lavender, fished the nearby stream, experimented with lavender melodies for the harmonica, walked to the sea to breathe its salt and vastness. And against his will, half of his mind kept listening for the distant thunder of gunshots from the hills. Once, in the afternoon, he heard a boom. He was on his feet in an instant, turned toward the mountains. The farthest peaks had vanished into a dense, black bruise of cloud. Something flickered within it. Just a thunderstorm. He could breathe. Though, no. Water from even these symbolic hills could gather into a no-nonsense torrent. He hurried to inspect the stream bed, searching for scour marks above the waterline, the tell-tale clay and lime residue on trunks and bushes from past flash floods. There were marks. Watching the swollen cloud advance, Snufkin hastily struck the tent and dragged his own and his brother’s belongings to a higher hill. But first, with his knife, he carved an arrow and symbols into the olive’s gnarled trunk, showing the new direction. Just in case the brother returned early… At the new site, he pitched the tent as the first lashing drops of the deluge began to fall, the wind rising to a gale. It was nothing. He managed. He was used to it. The real storm, he knew, was the one his brother walked into, and the waiting was just another kind of weather he had to endure. The storm had spent itself in a couple of hours, but the clinging mud persisted into the next day. Snufkin spent his time scouring the sodden countryside for firewood that was less than sopping, or a stream that did not wholly resemble boiling cocoa. Even then, the water needed filtering. For a respite, he climbed the olive tree—its branches still damp, but at least clean. From that perch, he saw an ochre blot moving in the distant fields, bright as a wound in the yellow sunset light. He squinted. The Gunman was trudging along the washed-out path toward their old camp. He walked unevenly, hunched more than his usual lean. Snufkin dropped to the ground and waved his hat from the clearing. The Gunman raised an arm in reply and seemed to straighten a little. Good. He had seen. Now, to get a fire going, water on. The brother emerged into the firelight with a deliberate rustle of grass. Snufkin noted at once the fresh scrapes on his knees, daubed with iodine, the way both the haversack and rifle were slung on one shoulder, the stiff care with which he bent to stow the gun in the tent. “Catch some trouble?” Snufkin asked, as neutral as he could. “A bit,” the Gunman admitted, lowering himself onto a stone by the fire with a slow, heavy movement, a thick bundle of half-dried lavender serving as a cushion. “Took a bad step off a rock.” His hat was pulled lower than usual. Snufkin had done the same himself, after a scrape, when he didn’t want to worry Moomintroll with his sorry state. So with a quiet sigh, he ducked into the tent to rummage in his own pack. The world outside was washed clean and sharp, the lavender fields releasing a faint, bruised scent under the evening chill. Inside the tent, the air was close, smelling of canvas and the cold, metallic scent of the rifle. “And in general?” he continued his interrogation, returning to the fire with his brother’s mug and a small sachet of dried herbs. “The exorcism contract is fulfilled and paid,” the Gunman said, his gaze flat and watchful on this presumption with his belongings. After his answer, it was Snufkin’s turn to stare. “Exorcism meaning what?” “Well… Sometimes, besides criminals, I take commissions for… what villagers call demons. Evil spirits. The terms don’t fit, but there are no others. Non-standard entities.” “Like grokes?” “Sort of. Only grokes can be tame. And these… they are predators. They hunt only sentient things. The police oafs often don’t believe in them. Won’t take the villagers’ statements. So they come to someone like me. Who’s picked up a thing or two about dealing with such critters.” “Like salt? Or silver?” While asking, Snufkin kept measuring the steeping time for the herbs with a practised eye. “Yeah. Garlic. Mustard. A mirror… This time, a pouch of sesame seeds and one shot into the air was enough. The thing just… popped. With a bang. Actually, it started the storm the other day.” “Well I’d never guess,” Snufkin murmured, marvelling at the sheer peculiarity the world contained. Then he got to business. “Moominmamma warned me you’d ignore the regimen and find yourself adventures. So here. Drink it down.” He pushed the steaming mug into the Gunman’s hands. The Gunman started to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat, transforming into a sharp hiss. He went very still. “Don’t make me laugh for a couple of days, alright?” he complained, his voice tight. When he’d caught his breath, he added, “But Moominmamma… she’s something. Imagine. She gave me the same instructions regarding you.” “I believe it, very much,” Snufkin agreed, an involuntary smile touching his own lips. It was funny. And so like her, to predict how mumriks would behave, to devise a way to make them tend to their companion’s health, if not their own. “Almost like compensating for the lack of care in other mothers, like mymbles and such. My biological mother remembers I’m her son perhaps once a year, and only because someone else reminds her.” “Yeah, I’ve seen her,” the Gunman replied, and his tone seemed to grow sombre. “I was surprised myself that she recalled you. That’s the biggest love a mymble is capable of. It’s their nature. To forget the grown children, to focus on the young ones. And your elder sister is quite fond of you. Though she’s hardly a typical mymble.” “Too right. Little My is… another kind of something,” Snufkin said, feeling a flush of confusion. Was it from the memory of Little My’s sharp, abrasive kindness, or the new outlook of the Mymble Sr.’s carelessness? To shift from it, he declared, “And we’re staying put a few more days. These places are too pretty to rush through.” The Gunman looked from the bitter, medicinal steam to his brother’s resolute face. He took the mug, his expression unreadable. “Pretty places,” he repeated, as if the words were foreign. “Yep. The lavender needs watching. And you need sitting.” Snufkin tried to sound final; not a suggestion, but a decree from a smaller but immovable authority. The Gunman drank without arguing, scrunched his nose at the evident bitterness, then leaned to his haversack, still standing by his feet and looking quite more stuffed than in the beginning of his side quest. “Got something better for the late tea,” he mumbled producing a colourful tin can and a carton box, and leaned to the fire, but Snufkin went to help with putting the tin contents into the boiling water. It was cocoa powder. Stirring the mix, so similar to post-storm torrents, he dashed to get his own mug and spoon. Back by the fire, the Gunman held out the carton to him, with soft-looking and vanilla-smelling little white stubs. “Marshmallow!” Snufkin exclaimed, instantly hit by the memories of late tea parties at Moomins’ veranda during rains, marshmallow with hot cocoa, Little My cackling that it was exactly like eating a drowned moomin, Moomintroll pouting, Sniff stuffing his muzzle… “The safest source of energy,” the Gunman declared with an air of a hemulen lecturer, “is to buy it in a store.” “Don’t tell me,” Snufkin said incredulously, “that you took up that, er, commission just to buy these?” Still he bit one marshmallow dry and grabbed a dozen more to drown them in the brown abyss properly. “No, don’t you worry,” the Gunman chuckled, refilling his mug. The marshmallow sweetness was melting on Snufkin’s tongue, amplified by bitter cocoa. Reaching for a refill, softened by the cosy dusk, the safety, the fragrant lavender dust in the air, he ventured: “And your mother? Did you know her?” He caught himself at once, fearing he’d overstepped. But no, the Gunman remained pensive. “Yeah, I knew her. Though just as a distant aunt at first. Well. She loved me too—in her fashion. Like, leaving an infant on the doorstep of inlaws at a more prosperous farm. With more people, other children.” He took a slow sip, his eyes on the middle distance, seeing not the lavender fields but some other, stern ochre landscape of memory. Snufkin shuddered in compassion. A bunch of other kids around was probably the worst thing to happen to a mumrik child. He knew it firsthand from his early years by the Mymble and in the orphanage. But of course, the Gunman sounded perfectly neutral about it. “Practical as that, to be fed by many hands, not just hers, which were often empty. Proved quite wrong, though. Bandits fancy raiding richer farms, too.” Then he fell silent. So, the subject was not totally comfortable for him. Snufkin stood up to go wash the dishes in the night that crawled up on the little camp site.