"Kren" : Part One

 

          It was a hot, blue sky. The few clouds there were looked like a white scrim on the horizon, determined neither to rain nor to interpose themselves as shade between those toiling in the bronzing fields and the beating sun. Kren paused to wipe his brow for a moment, dashed the sweat away, then swung the scythe again with a grunt. He began grumbling the Fiddle-dee-Fiddle-da song in his throat to give his stroke rhythm.

“Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,” he rumbled.

“Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

I had a fine house once.

Its rooms were a solace come winter or spring.

Fiddle-dee, Fiddle-da, fiddle-da-a-ah,

One day I was careless

while frying some fish up,

And now I am homeless and go wandering.

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

Nothing is certain;

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

All things fly away;

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

The world is a curtain

And what lies behind must await the reveal.”

It was an old song, the oldest song he knew, and it could be adapted a hundred ways depending on his mood: comic, philosophic, angry, or grim. The only thing that never changed was the chorus. He had learned the tune from his mother, one of the only things he had from her, and the chorus was the one truly true thing he knew. She had taught him that with her death.

Not that Kren was thinking about that now, not anyway any more than he usually thought about his life and situation. Right now, he was only thinking about getting the harvest in. He did not particularly care about the crop; he was only one of a dozen or so that the Hetman had hired to reap his fields. But the sooner he was done the sooner he would get paid and could retreat to his home at the edge of town. As a manner of honor, though, he meant to be faster, neater, and more industrious than any of his fellows. And that was because of them all he was the only Morg, the one Morg in a village of Men.

There were stories about Morgs, of course, about how the squat, hairy, muzzled folk had come from over the sea in their ships, lost and wandering, and settled plop in the middle of the richest lands in the south. They built cities bigger than the divided human peoples had ever made, ‘elbowing’ Men further to the East and Western Coasts. It was darkly murmured that it was the Morgs who had brought the wrath of Bharek upon the land, and that they, at least, somehow deserved it.

Kren had learned long ago that if he was even to have the tolerance of the village folk, if not their acceptance, he would have to be twice as good as the best of them, and humble about it to boot. The paradox of it, he knew, was that it made them begrudge him all the more, as it left no obvious hook to hang their resentment on. He swung his scythe with grim satisfaction as he drew ever more ahead of the other reapers.  His Stain glowed red in the sun under his exertions.

The Stain, a mottled cranberry blotch that covered half his face, was proof to the villagers that he, the Morg, lay under the wrath of Bharek. He and his mother had come to them with a batch of six or seven others, fleeing Bharek’s Breath, a plague from the North, before finally succumbing there in Far Reach. The Breath had also killed three of the villagers, which made them curse Morgs all the more. The fugitives were dropped hugger-mugger in a mass grave outside the burying ground, marked with a rough stone. Kren was the only survivor of the group, hardly old enough then to toddle but somehow tough enough to live, stamped with Bharek’s wrath by the Stain.

“Hey, Morg! Hey, you! You, Morg!”

Kren paused and turned blinking, sweat streaming down his head. It was Kegs, the next nearest reaper to him, a man with a body like a lumpy bag, his face contorted with anger and annoyance. For a brief second Kren imagined slicing through that solid body with a single swing, just a follow-up stroke from his work, as it were. He wiped away the image with the sweat from his eyes.

“What?” he panted.

“Didn’t you hear the Hetman? He’s called it a day. Time to turn in your scythe!” The man scowled. “I for one want to get to the inn and throw some ale in me.  But maybe you want to hang out with the ladies when they come to gather in the evening? The pay’s the same either way. Hah!” He turned and tramped off in the direction of the spreading oak tree where the workers were already collecting to put aside their tools and get their day’s pennies.

Kren said nothing, but sighing quietly so as not to be heard, shouldered his scythe, and headed in.