Chapter Text
The first time Klarion ran away from home, he was six years old.
In all fairness, his grand escape was not terribly desperate or an act of premeditation. He’d been crying at the time—“Klarion cries at everything,” his older sister Beulah would smugly insist to others—and thereafter had quickly rushed out of the Bleak household wearing nothing but his pale smock and his latchet shoes, scrabbling over mud and rocks in the cold morning fog.
“Klarion!” his mother yelled after him, chasing him just past the doorway. “Do not test my patience today, Klarion. Return at once!”
But the little witch-boy didn’t return. He huffed and puffed down the steep hill of their house, not stopping until he’d reached the old, dead, twisting tree where he liked to hide.
“This will be my new home,” Klarion whispered to himself sternly, dirtying his smock with mud and muck as he curled within the tree’s hollowed insides. He didn’t know why he felt the need to whisper such a promise to himself, or even why he needed a new home suddenly. All Klarion knew was that Father was never coming back–a detail that had not fully sunk in for the last two years until Beulah had brought it up earlier that morning.
Beulah wasn’t like other older sisters, thought Klarion. She wasn’t even like a younger sister, or a brother, or a friendly cousin, or any of the other types of nice family members that Klarion knew of from observing other families in town. Beulah was just… glum. And cranky! And whenever Klarion tried to distract her from such a mood or pull her into a game, Beulah seemed to want to make Klarion glum and cranky too.
Beulah had been in one such dark mood earlier. She had entered inside just after feeding the newly birthed larvae pups–“It seems we have a good litter this year,” their mother had commented with relief weeks before–only to sink down onto a wobbly stool by the hearth, sullenly staring into the embers. Klarion had watched her from his position on the dirt floor. He’d been scrubbing a pot clean while their mother went into the next room, preparing a gift for Widow Downing, the old woman who Beulah visited with other girls for her daily lessons.
Slowly, eyeing the doorway and then Beulah herself, Klarion set down his pot. He crept over to his sister with the utmost care, an idea for how to rouse her already nestled in his mind.
“Ow!” Beulah turned to her brother with a glare, rubbing her neck where he’d scraped her with his cleaning brush. “Klarion!”
He jumped back, hoping she’d indulge in a good game of chase. “Yes?” he sing-songed, batting his eyelashes.
Beulah puckered her lips, squinting furiously. “You are insufferable” she declared. Pointedly, she planted her feet and made no other effort to move.
Klarion deflated. “Why must you be such a dulbert?” He pouted, crossing his arms. “You should ask Widow Downing to make you less dull, if she can.”
“I am not dull!” Beulah’s face flooded with color. “You should learn to be less of a pestilence. If that is not simply your birthright.” Expression turning haughty, “This is why, you know.”
“Why? Why what?”
“Why mother says she can’t send you to the schoolhouse yet. You are a pest. And you leave your work undone to go and play!” Beulah said this with all the judgment housed in her eight-year old body, pointing at Klarion’s pot, abandoned damningly on the floor.
Klarion’s lip wobbled, threatening tears. Had mother really said that about him? It was true he hadn’t gone to school yet like other boys his age, but… “I-I do not believe you!” he insisted.
“Tis true.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“No!”
Yes!”
“I-I don’t…” Klarion didn’t know what to say. Beulah was staring back at him smugly, crossing her arms now, both of the siblings aware that Klarion was nearing tears. He truly hated crying, hated when snot and tears slithered down his face, hated getting worked up into a state that everyone seemed to find embarrassing and distasteful. But he couldn’t help it! Desperately, Klarion tried to think of something, anything, that would make Beulah stop talking. He wanted to scare her, make her less smug and assured.
“I’m telling Father!” he exclaimed boldly. Then, to clarify, “When he gets back, I mean.”
Beulah blinked at him.
Feeling as if he was gaining ground, “You’ll be sorry! You know Father doesn’t like it when you say unkind things like that.” Solemnly, as if he was quoting the words of a wise sage, “It’s very unbecoming.”
Beulah’s face twisted into a sneer. With a huff, she turned away from Klarion and towards the hearth. “You’re such a stupid boy, Klarion.”
“I am not! You’re stupid!” He crossed his arms. Then, curious, “Why?”
“Because dear Father isn’t coming back.” Beulah, looking more glum and cranky than ever, hugged herself. “It’s all anyone in town can talk about, you know. He ran away to Blue Rafters, and…” she didn’t finish, seeming to run out of words.
For his part, Klarion didn’t know what to do with such information, or what to do with the sight of his sister becoming genuinely sad. Beulah was glum, but she never verged on weepy. It disturbed the little boy greatly. “That’s…” Klarion twisted the fabric of his smock. “That can’t be true. You’re playing a trick on me.”
Beulah wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Tis true. Mother says it takes several months to travel to Blue Rafters and back; a year if the journey is difficult… Father has been gone two years now.” Directing a chiding glance at Klarion, “Why do you think Brother Ezekiel has been coming around so often?”
Klarion hesitated. “Well… Brother Ezekial is friends with Father, is he not?”
Beulah shook her head. “They were friends, but that doesn’t matter now. I heard them–Mother and Ezekial. They were talking by the old Grim Tree, and didn’t know I was hanging in the branches. They plan to get married, once the Elders say Father has been gone long enough.” A pause. Beulah picked at a loose thread from her dress. “I hope it will be soon.”
Klarion, normally gratified at being let in on a secret, only grew more upset. “Don’t– don’t say that!”
Beulah glared at him. “Why not? If Father did not want Mother to marry again, he should have considered that before running away.”
“But… but he…” Klarion clenched his hands by his sides, color rushing to his face. “He did not run! And… and… how would you know if he did?”
“Brother. Ezekiel,” Beulah answered, enunciating her words slowly. “He was the one who went with father on the trade trip, after all. Brother Ezekial came back and… he said that Father ran. There was a search, and he ran away into the dark.” Turning aside, staring deeply into the embers of the hearth, “He ran away from us.”
Once again, Klarion found himself fighting against a swell of tears. Father’s absence had been impossible to miss–but it was a familiar lack, a routine, a normal sort of annoyance like a missing meal or the leaking of the roof, something that Klarion and Beulah were expected to endure without tears or a fuss. Father was an ore-farmer, the same as most respectable witch-men in Limbo Town. He took long trips to Blue Rafters where he exchanged his ore for the mysterious goods of outsiders. Father always left; Father always came back. It had not occurred to Klarion until that moment that Father’s current trip seemed longer than previous ones, or that it did not make sense for Brother Ezekial to arrive home early, accompanied by a wagon of foreign goods and other witch-men, but no sign of Father himself. No one had discussed these strange comings and goings outright–but then, the adults rarely discussed such things openly at all, much less in front of Klarion. At six, he was well-accustomed to being left in a state of ignorance.
“Children!”
With a start, Klarion and Beulah whirled around to face their mother, Charity Bleak, who had chosen that moment to re-enter the room. She regarded them with an unamused expression, wiping her nimble fingers off on a corner of her apron.
“I find it peculiar,” she began, “to see the both of you in here, no doubt speaking of idle things, when there are still several chores to be done before the next bell. You know this! Or have you forgotten that the Book of Shadows commands obedience to your parents? Shall I go fetch the rod this fine morning?”
“I have finished my chores,” Beulah was quick to defend. Naturally, this shifted their mother’s attention to her brother.
Charity approached the young witch-boy who was, unknown to her, still reeling from his unfortunate revelation. She took in the sight of various unwashed dishes left behind him, read his expression as guilt, and then let a sharp exhale out her nose. In truth, Charity did not enjoy punishing her children. Harsh reprimands and physical beatings did not come easily to her–she recalled the pain of such lessons from her own childhood–but they were the only tools Charity knew of, and reverting to them as-needed seemed the only way to keep her household in order. She was, at heart, concerned for the future of her children. Especially for Klarion to begin with, but doubly-so now that Mordecai was gone–witch-men did have such an unfortunate habit of falling into sin and heresy, she knew.
Which was to say, Charity went to go fetch the rod.
Klarion knew better than to run. He stood in place, quaking, biting his lip as tears finally began to flow freely. It seemed pointless to hold them back anymore. The phantom sting of past punishments rang out across his backside and over his hands, a frightening recollection soon-to-be repeated. Beulah was looking at him smugly, pleased to see him in trouble, and it made Klarion wonder why he still bothered talking to her. She was his sister, yes, but Father had been their father, and look how easily that relationship was cast aside. In that moment, as his mother’s footsteps signalled her search in the other room, Klarion felt alone. He wondered what family was good for, if his family members only seemed to hurt him.
Eventually, Charity returned with the rod–a collection of small, flexible twigs tied together, good for giving painful smacks. She regarded Klarion with nonchalant stoicism, taking a seat on the other stool by the hearth, nodding to her lap with clear invitation.
The door, slightly cracked open from where Beulah had entered, on the opposite side of where his mother was, called to Klarion. He didn’t think about it for long; he ran.
Charity yelled after Klarion, but the words echoed unclearly and ignored over the hill. A part of the witch-boy knew he’d be in even bigger trouble later, but he didn’t look back. He found his spot in the tree, his new temporary “home” where he sat for hours, even when the weather turned cold, and his limbs started to cramp, and his belly started to ache from emptiness. It was his choice to be there. Even if Klarion was alone, at least it was an alone-ness that he could handle.