I collapse under a tree. Not being sick now. Just sobbing like a child in trouble. Big lump of a man, all tears. What a sight. No wee fellow popping out to help me this time. No Blackthorn making a brew, then sitting down to drink it with me, and not saying a thing until I’m ready to hear it. Nobody but the big man and the woods and, not so far away, the bell that’s stopped ringing. And the monster; it’s always there. That creature’s even sorrier and sadder than me. Stuck in there, it can’t do what I’m doing, which is not a lot when you think about it. Go to St. Olcan’s, fix a roof, do the brothers a good turn. Folk in these parts could do with a bit of help. Should be easy. Would be easy, if the past wasn’t on my shoulders, weighing me down. Would be easy if I wasn’t near shitting myself in terror.

They’re singing now. Wonder if the monster can hear it? My bet is, all it can hear is its own wretched voice. Morrigan’s curse, what a life!

I try to hear words in that noise. Keep thinking maybe it can talk, or could, but something’s getting in the way. There was a fellow like that in Mathuin’s hellhole for a while. A short while. They burned him, trying to get something out of him. Burned his face half off. Stupid way to try to make someone talk. After they did it, all that came out was a horrible sort of gargling noise. Crazy thing was, he’d have wanted to talk then. He’d have told them whatever it was just to make the pain stop. But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Died the next day. They never got a healer for him. Blackthorn—Lady, she was back then—begged them to let her out for a bit so she could tend to him, ease the pain. Guards just laughed at her. We listened to him dying, all that night and into the morning. Said a few prayers, this and that, though none of us was godly folk. Blackthorn told a story. We sang for a while, until the guards shut us up with buckets of water. Thing is, this monster’s voice sounds a bit like that dying man’s did. Like its mouth’s injured, or its throat. Not burned, like him, or it’d be dead. But damaged, or odd-shaped, or covered up with something. Teeth knocked out, tongue sliced off. Doesn’t bear thinking about. But I do. Think about it, I mean. Wondering, like I did before, if the groans and howls and wails and sobs add up to, Save me! Or, Make it stop! Or even, Kill me! That’s what the fellow with the burned face was trying to say. We all thought the same. That’s how it goes when they torture you. First you’re quiet. You’re strong. You keep your promises to yourself: I will be a man. I will not scream. I will not tell my secrets. Then the pain gets too much, and you can’t keep quiet anymore, so you scream and curse and shout. But you still don’t tell them what they want to know, so they throw you back in your cell to wait for next time. So it goes on. When they’re done, when you’re lying there with smashed knees and broken fingers and bruises all over or worse, there’s one thing you want. For the pain to stop. After the second time or the third, it hurts so much you want to die. Once you’re dead the pain stops and never comes back. No words, but we all knew the burned man was calling out, Kill me! For god’s sake kill me! Would have, if I could have. Poor bastard.