Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five Hours

     *

     One hundred hours.

     Meekel doesn’t know why he starts counting again. He hasn’t counted the days since some time into his fifth year in Darigan Citadel’s dungeons as a prisoner of a war that ended almost as soon as it began. Now that he’s free, now that he’s back home on the farm with Ma and Pa and Edie, he’s counting hours. Maybe it’s because lately, each minute feels more precarious than the last.

     One hundred hours. Four days. That’s how long he’s been home. It doesn’t feel real. Inexplicably, after twenty years of stasis, four days doesn’t feel sufficient to describe how long he feels he’s been free.

     So, one hundred hours will do.

     *

     Three hundred and thirty-six hours.

     He’s been home for two weeks. A fortnight. He counts the hours meticulously.

     Farm life is quiet, but it’s louder and busier than prison. The crowing of the Wibreths always wakes him at daybreak—a far cry from Haskol’s boisterous morning taunts but equally annoying. Beyond the walls of the old farmhouse, Springabees hum and Beekadoodles sing in a strange chorus that never seems to cease, only changing form as the sun sets and Moaches and Crokabeks take the stage instead. Then the sun rises, and the cycle repeats.

     Such is life—a series of cycles, of deaths and rebirths.

     Meekel rises with the sun. He’s accustomed to rigidity in his schedule—wake, eat, pace, recreate, pace, eat, shower, pace, sleep—and the mundanity of farm life brings him some measure of comfort. The work is methodical. Rewarding. He particularly enjoys the Petpets. The Whinnies in the corral chuff and snort when he feeds them at dawn and dusk, burying their warm, wet muzzles into his hands and the empty feed bucket to check for crumbs. The sensation is not entirely dissimilar to that of the moss that would grow on dripping dungeon walls. He’s embarrassed to admit now that he cultivated it out of a sheer lack of anything better to do.

     He spends his days attending to whatever tasks need doing—repairing fences, watering crops, pruning rose bushes, mucking out the stables, cleaning the hearth. Though he has never been strong, he’s dismayed to find that after years of idle confinement, his body has grown frail. He must break for rest often, and though he knows they do not hold it against him, he is ashamed that even his elderly parents can keep up with the work better than he can.

     For her part, Edie keeps a close watch on him, playing the role of concerned big sister even though he’s the oldest. She encourages his rest and oftentimes tries to commandeer his work from him when she sees him struggling. The Red Kacheek is a force to be reckoned with in her own right, just as headstrong and unflappable as he remembers, but he wishes she would allow him the dignity of failure. He won’t be able to reestablish himself if she’s always underfoot to clean up his messes.

     Once, when he finally brings this up as they share a lunch of leftover soup and meat-and-cheese sandwiches at the kitchen table, she furrows her brow for a long while before sighing.

     “Fine. If it’s life skills you’re after, then let’s get you doing something less physically demanding.” She rises from her chair and lifts a cast iron pan from the sink. “Tonight’s lesson is cooking.”

     Meekel used to cook before he enlisted. He would make dinner for the family whenever Ma was too tired from baby Aiden and Pa was too busy out in the fields. The feeling of the cookware in his hands is distantly familiar, and muscle memory doesn’t fail him when he recalls where all the spices are kept. Even after twenty years, that hasn’t changed. But he knows better than anyone that habits are hard to break.

     Edie is impressed by the stir-fry she walks him through. She lifts a wooden spoon to her lips to try it, and her eyes close as she slowly chews.

     “Yes,” she says once she swallows. “I remember your cooking.”

     He thinks he should feel proud from receiving her praise, but he’s a little bit melancholy instead.

     *

     Five hundred and eighty-three hours.

     Meekel doesn’t talk like Ma and Pa and Edie anymore.

     During his squire training, the highborn boys made fun of his simple speech and country accent. When he tried to emulate them, they only mocked him further.

     After his capture, he didn’t speak for a long time. The Yellow Knight was the first to approach him, soft-spoken but eloquent in his words of comfort and encouragement. Meekel had taken to him like a baby Mallard. Even after the Yellow Knight’s escape, his speech patterns remained indelible in Meekel’s psyche. Talking like the Yellow Knight garnered him more respect than talking like a farm boy ever did, and so the mannerisms stuck.

     Now, though, it feels alienating to be the “other” amidst his own kin. Sometimes, he’ll use words that his ma and pa don’t understand. An unfamiliar turn of phrase will bring a crease to even Edie’s brow. None of them are unintelligent like Meekel had once been led to believe. They just speak their own way. Once, it had been his way, too. Now, though, he speaks like an outsider.

     If there’s any benefit to it, it’s that Junior likes to hear new words. Edie’s son is an understated presence at the farmhouse, a sprig of youth with a wide-eyed innocence that Meekel can’t help but want to nurture. He still isn’t used to the little Blue Kacheek who bears his name, but as more hours tick by, Junior himself becomes more and more curious about his heretofore long-lost uncle.

     Once, while Meekel is cutting vegetables and simmering a broth to prepare a stew, Junior wanders into the kitchen.

     “Uncle,” he says shyly, gripping a rag doll Aisha in his small hands, “what’s that word you said again?”

     Meekel, a little perplexed by the sudden inquiry, lays a carrot across the cutting board and chops off the stem. “Which word?”

     From the corner of his eye, he sees Junior twist the doll between his fingers, fidgeting. “That word,” the boy repeats. “The one you said to Mama ‘bout how you came home.”

     Meekel sets the knife down, thinking. “Pardoned?” he says at last.

     Junior’s face lights up. “Yeah! That means you got to come home, right?”

     Meekel considers his words, thinking of how he ought to phrase it for a child to understand. “Well, yes… Being pardoned means that Darigan Citadel said I didn’t do anything wrong. That’s why I got to come home.”

     “Oh,” Junior says, nodding. Then he grins. “I’m real happy you got ‘being pardoned,’ Uncle!”

     With that, he bolts from the room. Meekel stands still for several moments longer, then lifts his wrist to his eyes and scrubs away tears.

     “Me, too,” he whispers.

     *

     Six hundred and twelve hours.

     Meekel has another nightmare.

     He wakes not on his straw pallet with his ankle weighed down by its ball and chain but rather under the cotton sheets and woollen quilt of his boyhood bed. Since returning home, his fears that his family has forgotten him have been dispelled. Now, he dreams that he’s back in his cell—five paces by seven—and that freedom is a fleeting illusion. In these new dreams, he is Darigan Citadel’s sole prisoner, tossed into an oubliette—a forgotten casualty of a war long since settled.

     He doesn’t tell his parents or Edie about the nightmares. They would worry. That’s the last thing he wants.

     On nights he can’t sleep, he opens his window no matter the cold and sits on the sill, watching the moon or clouds or whatever else he can see beyond the confinement of fours walls.

     He counts the hours obsessively.

     *

     Eight hundred and forty-five hours.

     It’s been over a month since he returned home, but he hasn’t left the farm. The last time he did, he didn’t come back for twenty years. He knows in his head that it’s foolish to think he’ll be beaten and dragged off to the Citadel again. The war has been over for nearly twenty years. There are no rogue agents of a possessed Darigan lying in wait to carry him off now.

     He knows[i/] that.

     But the fear lingers in his body like a corrosive poison. It’s primal and more than he can will away. It lives in his bones, his joints, his brain itself. And it flares the day Junior suddenly takes his hand and declares that they must go into the city for the Meridell Harvest Festival in five days’ time.

     “No,” Meekel says at once, jerking his hand away on instinct. He regrets it as soon as he does it, watching in dismay as Junior’s face crumples before he dashes away.

     Now the guilt waltzes with the fear—a most deadly duo.

     When Edie approaches him in the Whinny corral at the end of the day, he can’t bear to look at her.

     “It’s okay if you aren’t ready,” she says to his back as he lets out his hand to feed corn to the Petpets. “Junior may not understand yet, but he will, in time.”

     Meekel shudders at the coarseness of a Whinny’s tongue on his palm. “It isn’t that I don’t want to go,” he says at length. “In fact, I—I’m happy that he wants to go with me. He’s only known me for a month, and yet…”

     He trails off, the guilt gnawing at his throat.

     Edie lets herself into the corral. Instantly, the smallest Whinny trots to her, bumping its head against her knees and whickering. She reaches down to scratch behind its ears.

     “It’s alright, Brother. There’ll be other festivals. You don’t got to push yourself to do something you’re uncomfortable with.”

     Meekel lets out a long, low breath, leaning back against the fence. “It feels like I’m in stasis—like nothing is moving. Like time stopped twenty years ago and never started again. Then Junior tried to make me take the first step forward, and I—I just couldn’t.”

     He’s ashamed of his own cowardice. Even now, even after everything, that is something that hasn’t changed—the cowardly Squire Meekel, too scared to move forward yet unable to go back.

     Edie grabs a fistful of corn from the feed bucket and holds it up to her Whinny’s muzzle. The two of them watch as it scarfs down the food and then licks her hand clean.

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     “There’s no time limit for all this,” she say softly. “You were locked up for twenty years, and now, all of a sudden, you’re back. It’s a big shock, and you gotta let your mind and body work through that. But it’s not a race—it’s a process. Y’know?”

     A process. Meekel hasn’t thought of it like that before. He’s counted the hours, waiting for some switch to go off, for everything to be normal again. But what is normal? Is it the ordinary, the expected? For him, what feels “normal” is sitting in a darkened cell waiting for some nebulous “end” to come. For twenty years, that was his reality. But that normalcy was shattered the day he was released.

     It wasn’t a bad thing.

     Edie brushes off her hands and hops over the fence. “I’m gonna take Junior to the festival. Ma and Pa are too old to make the trip this year, so it’ll just be the two of us. Of course, you’re more than welcome to join us. But if it’s not the time, it’s not the time.” She smiles, squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll wait as long as you need us to, Brother. We’re all just glad to have you home.”

     He watches her go as she returns to the house. Home. Yes—this is his new normal now.

     *

     Nine hundred and seventy hours.

     Wind and rain lash the farmhouse. Meekel sleeps tumultuously and dreams of an open cell door. He has had this dream before, too. The door is open for him. But though there are no guards, and though the light from the outside pours in, his ball and chain keep him anchored, and he does not move.

     He hears the pitter-patter of little feet. Junior stands at the threshold, haloed in blinding white light. Then he enters the cell and takes Meekel’s hand in his.

     “You are being pardoned,” he says cheerfully. “Now come on!”

     He has a lot of strength in him for such a tiny Neopet. With one tug, he pulls Meekel to his feet. Instantly, the ball and chain drop away. And Meekel, enchanted by that wide-eyed innocence, steps over the threshold.

     *

     Nine hundred and seventy-five hours.

     The morning of the festival dawns bright and warm after last night’s storm. Edie and Junior wear their mud boots and rain ponchos. With their chores completed, they head toward the gate.

     Meekel rushes to meet them there. Edie looks shocked to see him. Junior is astonished, then overjoyed.

     “Uncle Meekel is coming to the festival!” he cries, splashing mud as he hops through puddles.

     Edie hesitates. “Are you sure?” she asks.

     Meekel shakes his head. “Of course not.” In truth, he’s terrified. “But the Meridell Harvest Festival only comes once a year. It would be a shame to miss it after so long.”

     Edie sighs, perhaps in relief. “Stay close to me, Brother. You, too, Junior,” she adds sharply to the frolicking Blue Kacheek. “I’ll keep you both safe, like I couldn’t do for you all those years ago. This time, I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear it.”

     Edie, too, Meekel realizes, carries her own burdens silently. She’s carried them for all of twenty years, same as him.

     Nine hundred and seventy-five hours. Forty days. A month and some change. He’s free now. He’s making a new normal for himself. He needn’t track the hours so fastidiously anymore.

     So he sets down his counting and picks up Junior’s hand instead.

     The End.