The Hare

Hi Guys,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted any stuff, I’ve been really struggling with finding the motivation for it to tell the truth. In an effort to get me back on track, I’ve found one of my older pieces and blown out it’s cobwebs. It’s a relatively short story, following on directly from another old piece, “The Dark Twisting Road to Port Havendish”.

As always, I appreciate any thoughts or feedback you might have on the tale.

I hope you and your families are well during this troubling time, and I hope you enjoy.

Cheers,

Jevan

None of the others had uttered a word to him.

After they had watched him take the essence from the corpses, Revan made himself absent, retiring a good walk from the camp to his black mare. Although his wounds had healed, his cuts closed, the weariness of the fight still hung heavy on his mind. It was like heavy chains had been draped all over him, slowing his movements, making every muscle in his body ache with a dull, ceaseless throbbing.

He lay one of his hands on the old horse and sighed heavily. His head followed his voice, sinking into the horse’s flanks and the horse gave a small whinny, nuzzling its nose into his body affectionately. He leaned against the horse for a few moments before he reached into one of the saddlebags and produced a dried piece of apple. 

The horse grunted in approval and joyfully demolished the treat, while Revan stroked her mane softly. It was clumped and wiry, but that didn’t stop it from soothing his thoughts. Strange. He thought. That I prefer the company of animals over that of men.

He spent the next hour preparing his tent, replacing his torn clothes, drinking and eating from his rations, the kind of tasks he didn’t particularly want to do, but knew he needed to do. His mind kept wandering to the bedroll that was bundled up in his tent, but he knew he had one task left still to finish before he could retreat.

His blades.

Even though every fibre of his being wanted to sink into the welcoming arms of sleep, the dull knives seemed to scold him for leaving them untouched. Reluctantly, he slumped to the ground and began the monotonous sharpening of all four of his weapons. The ring of the steel on the whetstone was strangely comforting to him, that sound, meant he would be ready for the next fight. 

Ready, for anything.

“Revan?” A voice asked cautiously from the shadows.

He was so engrossed in the sharpening, he barely registered that someone had spoken. His eyes reluctantly left the weapons at his feet and met the concerned features of Marks. It was peculiar, seeing Marks anxious. In the short time that Revan had known him, he had only seen the man looking firmly in control and maybe a touch irritated, usually at the cause of the Lord’s whining. 

“Yes?” He replied back, putting the knife down back on the rag gently.

Marks looked at the blades and then shuffled round uncomfortably. It was clear he was trying to find the right words to say, but every time he seemed to find them, his eyes met with Revan’s and he was stumbling for words once more. Revan left him suffering for a few more seconds, then finally put the man out of his misery.

“First time seeing a siphon?” He asked, his voice stained with exhaustion.

Marks nodded slowly, still hesitant to meet his gaze.

Revan brushed his long hair backwards with his hands. “It has this effect on people.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years…” Marks muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, one man against so many of the beasts. That was shocking enough, but when I watched you suck the life out of those things…and your skin cover itself in their damned thorns… ” He shook his head again. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

The uncomfortable silence descended again, as it was Revan who could not find the words this time. His extent of conversation between the old guardsman over the last few days had always been entirely professional. He wasn’t good at personal questions.

“Are you a demon?” Marks asked firmly, splitting the silence like an axe through firewood.

“No.” 

“Are you some sort of spirit? A ghost?”

“No.”

“Then what are you?” Marks questioned desperately, finally meeting Revan’s cold, emotionless eyes.

Revan picked up his last knife and started scraping it on the stone methodically, letting the ring of the action stave off his eventual answer to the direct question. That sound of the blade on the stone was the only noise to be heard in that quiet spot far from the campfire. Marks was still tensed, his body coiled, eagerly awaiting an answer.

“Like everyone knows, I’m a siphon.” Revan eventually answered softly.

“But they’re not real! They are stories for mischievous children who need to be scared into bed!” The words burst out of his mouth, his lips unable to contain his emotions, moving a few steps forward with his arms outstretched in disbelief. He breathed out in a confused sigh, his worn head shaking once again.

All the while, Revan still carefully sharpened his blade.

“What do you want me to say?” He eventually said, putting his blade down pointedly.

Marks was once again lost for words. He walked over to Revan and sat down across from him, crossed his legs with a tired grunt.

“Just tell me what you are. I’ve seen plenty of things in my life, some I wish I hadn’t, but…by the pit Revan, I’ve not even had nightmares like that. Watching that…creature’s soul, being ripped from its body…its…It’s just not right!” He confessed, holding his head in his hands.

“You know how I knew I was a siphon?”

Revan took the silence as an answer. He massaged his neck and took a drink from a waterskin before he began.

“When I was a boy, I had no idea what I was. My mother was normal, my father was ordinary and the farmstead was one like any other. I would play along with the other children, as careless and free as children do. There was one day that started exactly the same as all of them started and I had no idea what I was about to find. Me and other younglings had found the corpse of a hare, which had seemingly died all by itself. No torn throat. No missing flesh. No signs of being killed by any predator.”

He scratched his stubbly chin before he spoke again.

“We were all fascinated by the dead animal. I hadn’t seen anything dead before, so to see this hare which had been, up till a few hours before, bounding around full of life, was a shock to me. One of the boys began poking and prodding it with a stick, as if he could wake it up from it’s slumber, but alas, despite all his efforts, the creature remained utterly dead. It was only when I got closer to it, tentatively reaching out to inspect the poor animal, the light came.”

“That’s when it’s essence began to leak out of its eyes and flow into mine. The other children were terrified. I was terrified, but I couldn’t stop it from happening. It was like I was a prisoner in my own body, like I was a puppet in a show and I was watching my own performance from the crowd.”

His head was bent down, his long hair covering his face and eyes.

“But the light wasn’t the worst part. It was the fur. Without knowing how or why, fur began to cover my body, coiling and twisting around me as I stood helplessly screaming. That was when I knew I wasn’t like everyone else. I found out there was a name for it later on in my life.”

Revan raised his head and looked Marks in the eyes.

“A Siphon.” He hissed bitterly.