The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 72:

The Breath of a House

Nightfell, and everyone in the house of Poor Loom went to their beds.

Larris and Kulti slept on the stovebed, Nehem on the couch, Feldar and Lt. Grotte in her room.

Moth dragged herself to bed – day by day, Quin’s old room felt less welcoming, everything from the paintings on the red rafters, to the old marbles wedged in the planks, told her this was not her space.

In the daylight it was like any bedroom, but by night it grew hostile.

Moth kept glancing towards the center of the room, expecting to find a ring of helra.

She lay down on the bed, closing her eyes – she was weary from the day and expected to fall asleep at once, but every creak and groan of the house made her jerk up and glare wildly around the room, wondering if the floorboards had finally peeled to show what was hidden below.

Her heart on edge, Moth could find no peace in the room.

Tiredly, she checked the cabinet and made sure the skin was still there, then she sat on a chair by the tile fireplace and irritably watched the flames.

She puzzled over why Quin didn’t sneak into the house when they were all working. If she was truly a powerful shaman, why couldn’t she march in and take what belonged to her – in her old room, in her own house.

Moth understood nothing of shamanism and could only speculate in complete darkness.

She snapped her head up.

The books.

She opened the cabinet and pulled down the four books on shamanism, stacked them by her chair at the fire, and stared down at the cover of the book she held.

Tools and Pacts of Shamanism.

Moth reluctantly opened the cover and began reading. If she wasn’t going to sleep, she might as well make use of her time.

The book itself was not too stomach-churning. It was not written by or for shamans – rather, by a scholar who recorded the actions of shamans with a scientific interest, with neither admiration nor disgust expressed for the practices.

The writer categorized the shamans in three different levels:

‘A lay shaman – they have little power and rely on spectacle and manipulation.

A rine shaman – a shaman who had made sufficient sacrifices and pacts and had spent or acquired helra.

A ferry shaman – a shaman who macerated their own soul enough to now be incapable of producing helra. Had conceived within themselves a kirose and formed a pact with it. These are the shamans qualified to be in the King’s Court.’

Moth was certain, during her life in Hiren, every shaman she had met or heard of had fallen into the first category. Until she met Quin.

She believed Quin was a rine shaman, but it was only a matter of practice before she would become a ferry shaman.

Though she wasn’t sure how you could grow from one level to the other – so she read on.

She discovered just how much shamanism was dependent on sacrifice.

Of course animal sacrifice – Moth knew that much – but personal sacrifice was astutely important to grow in power. Immature shamans would torture animals, the witnessing of it produced helra within their own souls – but quickly they would grow dull to this.

Eventually, to produce even a droplet of helra, they had to sacrifice themselves.

Some began self-mutilation to the point of amputation, others sought to find even something small they remained connected to – anything that made them balk at the thought of its sacrifice had to be the next target, it was all that was left to finalize the violence they committed against their own soul. A process shamans called ‘petrification.’

And when they could no longer produce it, they sought it from others.

They would torture and torment humans. The more innocent the human, the easier to macerate their soul.

Moth leaned back in her chair and stared into the low-burning fire, wearied by the words she was forcing her own eyes to read.

Her mind kept drifting to Quin, and she wondered how someone ended up choosing such an undead life, how anyone could endure to flagellate their soul their entire life until they could feel nothing anymore – until there was neither hot nor cold or love or hate. All that remained was an unending, gnawing hunger.

It struck Moth that shamans became less like humans – less like animals at all – and became more like the creatures of the marches, unable to be satisfied by anything less than helra.

She wondered how far you could go before it was too late to turn back.

She wondered how far Quin had gone yet.

Closing her eyes, she scoured her memory for any talk in her home – from her parents or Clement – of the Barrowly family and how they lived. The only thing she remembered about the Barrowly’s – mentioned by Mrs. Tunhofe – was that there were a lot of stillbirths in the family. Of Mrs. Barrowly’s seven pregnancies, Quin was the only one who lived.

Moth’s mind prickled, and she glanced behind her at the cupboard bed. Painted on it were six star-headed children.

Sighing, Moth rubbed her eyes – she was not going to be able to sleep much at all, so she kept reading.

She flipped through pages of diagrams of tools used in ritualistic torture – mainly the ones discussed were for animals, large or small – and she recognized many of them, hung on the walls of Poor Loom.

Moth’s eyes drooped and she was half asleep as she read, her mind dull from disgust, pouring over pages of scratchy ink illustrations depicting the ritual of gutting an animal and arranging its organs while it was still alive, magpies being a common choice.

The words blurred into each other. Kirose, pacts, incubation. Sacred places, authority, dreamwalking. Items of power, places of power.

Some of the language used was so confusing, full of obfuscating terminology, that Moth found herself almost lulled to sleep.

Until a sentence woke her up.

‘Dalmedes. The breath – or life – of a house.’

Stirring herself, Moth sat up and read.

‘Any place built by a human becomes inhabited, either for the intended occupants, or unintended occupants.

A house is the most common example.

A man cuts down trees, lays the logs, and creates a place to be inhabited. In so doing, he creates something created – he has made something alive. This place has become more than a domain – but something the shamans, as well as the ferriers, call a dalmede. A living location.

It is old magic, as common as birth.

Where does the ‘breath’ of the house come from? It comes from its maker – so the builder of the house has imparted life into the structure. Any inhabitants of the place continue to feed and grow the breath of the dalmede, the ‘home’, and once the original maker dies, it is given to the inheritor, and so the house remains fed, and its breath alters and grows with the new inhabitants.

An abandoned house remains breathing, but faintly. The old inhabitants remain, not merely in the details of the construction of the house, but its atmosphere. Note, this should not be confused with haunting, or an unferried soul lingering, for the soul of the dead has fully moved on but its influence over a location remains.

In cases of a particularly violent occupant who shed blood, the breath of the house has become violent – new occupants might find themselves prone to accidents, violent thoughts and dreams. Particularly weak-minded or susceptible people might act violently under the influence. This is often what is called a cursed, or haunted, place.

A new occupant’s spirit might find themselves at war with the old occupants lingering breath.

This is where it becomes an issue of ownership – who is stronger?

A new owner can, with proper authority and knowledge, overthrow the lingering breath and take the dalmede over.

If there is an issue of inheritance, or disputed owners, then the house has not settled. If a theft or debt is present, it may be that the humans are ignorant, but the house will know and will oppose its unrightful owner.

In extreme cases, a house can be made ‘sacred’ by its founder. If subsequent inheritors fail to meet the standards, or violate precepts, set by its founder, the house can reject its inhabitants.

The building will burn to the touch of those it rejected. They will not be able to enter. Approaching the perimeter of the house can cause intense fear and vomiting. lesions, temporary blindness, and in one case recounted to this author by a shaman, skin growths resembling branches and bark.

The final few paragraphs had been marked with ink, and a name was written below. ‘Tarja’.