He Who Cannot Die Read online

  Sem was an honorable and good man. Money didn’t yet exist, but long before I arrived, he had become wealthy in stockpiles of food, alcohol, and goods valuable for trading. He gave generously to any person, man or woman, who was willing to work for him. He invited friends and strangers alike to feast with him when times were fat. Because of that, he thought nothing of it when a new and well-clothed man named Dishon showed up in Itzbi one day. Sem invited the man to his home where they would eat of his fatlings and discuss how they might benefit one another in their trades.

  The first time I laid eyes upon Dishon, I was taken back by his appearance, and with the way he held himself so high in the air for such a short man. He was clean, and he walked as if he owned the city already. Dishon was draped in colorful skins which were all soft and thick. His black hair was flattened back against his head. Jewelry made from colorful stones and the teeth of extremely large fish decorated his neck and chest. When he first looked at me, he smiled, and I immediately liked him. Something about Dishon just made me want to know him, and to be friends with him. He had that rare natural sparkle in his eyes, and that uncommon way about him that drew people to him, like insects to a fire’s warm glow.

  Neither Sem, nor I, nor anyone else ever saw Dishon for the true hustler that he was until it was too late.

  His hustle started with grandiose stories, which he told during that first feast he shared with Sem. He recounted amazing first-hand accounts of a bountiful and hidden land to the west, just beyond the hills which overlooked the river. He told of fat colorful stones sticking freely from the ground; one must only go and pluck them out. He told of fat lazy prey, as large as moose, but with fur like that of winter bear. A group of fat and lonely native women could be found there, he told Sem, and they were anxious for men to discover them and freely put their seed into them. He told of fish longer than the trunks of trees, which jumped straight onto the shore if one but stood and whistled the proper tune. Dishon shared many details concerning this wondrous and wealthy land and offered to point Sem to it.

  The price he wanted was high. He wanted control of Sem’s stockpiles while he was away. He wanted control of Sem’s storehouse. He wanted control of Sem’s staff. And he wanted access to Sem’s harem. In exchange for the management of everything Sem owned, Dishon would point him to this land from which he was guaranteed to return with ten times his current wealth. When asked why he so badly wanted to manage Sem’s wealth but receive none of it, his response was that he desired only to help Itzbi flourish so that more beneficial trading could be done in the future between them. As silly as it his deal sounds to me now, he was very convincing and seemed so sincere and honest.

  Sem didn’t fall for the ruse. At first, anyway. “If wealth is pouring from this hidden land,” he told Dishon, “then go forth with nothing and return with some of the very riches of which you speak.”

  Dishon accepted the challenge and was stripped of everything except a simple animal skin around his loins. He returned to Itzbi nine days later with an armful of pelts and several more of the large colorful stones. I would later find out, from Dishon himself, that he had stored the pelts and stones outside the city before initially arriving in Itzbi and simply camped out until enough time had passed for him to return and offer it all up as undeniable proof.

  Upon Dishon’s fruitful return, Sem became blinded by the prospect of easier prosperity, and obsessed with leaving immediately for this land. Dishon mapped the journey out for an overly eager Sem, who asked that I accompany him on the journey. He wanted me there for my skills at building my useful tools, knowing I would find creative ways to carry back more than any two men could carry on their own. We came to an agreement, and we began our journey West. Dishon, in the meantime, was left to manage Sem’s affairs and free to enjoy Sem’s harem.

  We traveled many days and never found the great river of which Dishon spoke. We backtracked and took different paths in different directions, certain we must have taken a wrong turn or misread Dishon’s map. Many weeks later we were forced to admit that there was no land filled with fat stones, fat prey, and fat easily-aroused women. There was only more of what I had walked through for more than a century already… Horizons beyond the next horizon, and mountains beyond the next mountains. We gave up the search, and we journeyed back to Itzbi empty-handed.

  Of course, Dishon was long gone when we arrived, and so was nearly all that Sem owned. The stockpiles had been cleared out, the alcohol drained, his goods all but gone. Dishon had even made off with the entire harem of women. Sem, one of the richest men in the village, was suddenly destitute.

  Rumor in the village was that Dishon brought others in the night to clean out the storehouses. I would learn from Dishon, some lifetimes later, that he forced Sem’s harem to transport everything, a little at a time, night after night, into the woods where he concealed it and then journeyed back to collect it when enough time had passed that nobody would still be looking for him.

  With winter approaching, the timing couldn’t have been worse for Dishon’s hustle, and for the village of Itzbi. I did what I could, along with many others from the village who depended on Sem, to build up enough supply to somehow survive the leanness of winter. We did what we could, knowing it tough times were coming for everyone.

  I knew already that I wasn’t able to die from starvation, but I certainly could suffer from it, and I had no desire to see Sem struggle. We labored many hard and difficult hours together to build up the storehouses which belonged to the man who had been good to me and to so many others. Sem put in more hours and labor than any of us, and believed it was his personal responsibility to see that we all were fed until spring.

  It was a half-moon after Dishon disappeared that the village began rumbling with sudden and excited whispers of his inglorious return.

  My adrenaline nearly burst a hole through my throat when I overheard a passing woman tell her friend of “the great witch” who had just made an entrance into the city.

  My thoughts immediately went to Tashibag. Could it be her? I knew of no other witch. Was she really there in Itzbi? Was this village perhaps even somehow near my original home, and I hadn’t ever known it? Was it possible that Flor had borne children? Could I somehow find the children of my child’s children? Would they have answers of what happened so long ago to my Flor the night I was displaced? My thoughts ran rampant with a dozen different colliding possibilities, and I didn’t even know yet if it was Tashibag who had caused this sudden stir at all.

  “I heard she rode into the city on the back of a great brown bear! Do you think it is true?” the woman’s friend eagerly blurted.

  “It must be true! My father said the beast was tied to a giant trap, which it dragged behind it. I could not believe when my father swore to me it is Dishon she brought with her, caught in the trap like a wild rabbit.”

  “Come on. Let’s go see it for ourselves.” The two friends half-ran out of sight, unaware that I had fervently eavesdropped on their conversation.

  The witch. Tashibag. Surely, it must be her. Please be her. Riding upon the back of a bear to make her entrance? It certainly sounded like my witch.

  I reached up and placed my fingers against the mark she had given me so long before, and I searched for some deep driving anger which I thought should exist, but I found little. It was then that I realized I never actually blamed Tashibag for Racheele’s death, so how could I suddenly be angry with her?

  My curse was her doing, absolutely, but the death of the woman I loved was my culpability. It felt disgraceful to the memory of Racheele to somehow shift that blame to another. Anger seemed like such a useless emotion to have with the one woman who might somehow free me of this great burden I had been carrying.

  If anything, I was angry with her for losing my Flor, but even that emotion was difficult to find. Perhaps so much time had passed, and such a need to find internal peace throughout my wanderings had developed, that I had already coped and found closure for it. I suppos
e I had eventually accepted my reality for what it had become.

  At that moment, as I stood a bit panicked near the far end of the village of Itzbi, I had only one desire. I wanted to see the witch for myself, see if she was Tashibag, and beg to be released of this curse if it happened to be one and the same. In the two times I had met the woman, she seemed to have a caring soul and a comforting demeanor. Perhaps she would agree that my time had been served, and my losses had been sufficient enough.

  If Dishon was indeed back in Itzbi, Sem needed to know. A sad young girl, whom I knew to live in the house of Sem, sat against a nearby wall scratching doodles in the dirt. I was mostly certain the girl’s mother was among those taken by Dishon. I instructed her to not stop running until she found Sem, and to share the news with him. She became excited with her new chore, and disappeared to do as instructed.

  I passed a large abandoned cage of wood when I arrived at the other end of the village and neared the excited throng. A major part of me hoped Dishon indeed had been caught and trapped within that cage. The other part of me pitied any soul, no matter how terrible a person, who got caught in the justice-giving crosshairs of the witch.

  The crowd surrounding the spectacle was so dense that I couldn’t find a gap of light through it. A collective gasp from the bystanders in reaction to something happening within encouraged me to elbow my way through, despite getting plenty of protests, dirty glances, and a bounty of elbows jabbed at me in return. The scene I encountered was one that shall forever be among the most bizarre I have witnessed in my very long life.

  A goliath of a brown bear, bigger than even the Kodiaks of today, sat firmly on her rear end with no ropes or harnesses of any kind to control her. She carried an intense calmness in her eyes, which remained fixated on Burdo, the old white-haired man I recognized all too well. I had no idea he also could not age, or apparently die. The bear’s fur was thick and mostly brown, except for the large blonde patch which covered her chest and abdomen. A few large scars, likely where hunters had attempted to take her down, added to her greatness.

  A terrified version of Dishon, so contrastingly different than the perfectly confident and poised hustler we had come to know, lay naked upon the ground, pinned down by the weight of the bear’s massive front paw against his chest. The tips of the bears claws pressed between Dishon’s ribs, as if she was awaiting the command to lean forward and puncture through to his lungs. Dishon was finding breathing difficult, and for the briefest of moments his wet eyes met mine, though I was the least of his worries.

  Burdo stood with arms stretched in front of the bear, whispering words to the beast in a language I did not recognize. Dishon’s eyes began to separate and narrow, indicating that he would soon lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Burdo whispered to the bear, and she immediately lifted her paw just enough for Dishon to breathe in a large and panicked lungful of air. His eyes became alert once more, and the bear pressed the air from him again, as if to torture the man.

  I was both elated and terrified to see that on the other side of the circle stood Tashibag herself, seemingly unaware of my presence. She was wearing the same type of loose and shiny robe draped around her, only this time fabricated from a breathtaking crimson material. A white serpent, which might have been the same serpent as the last, loosely hung around her neck. Its tail pressed against Tashibag’s mostly exposed breasts, while its head nestled itself into the opening of her ear.

  She had once again used her staff to draw something in the sand. I was too far away to make out anything more than the same two snakes creating a circle around the rest. Whatever images she created were elaborate, just as they had been with mine. What looked like dozens of the same rare and colorful stones Dishon had brought to Itzbi with him were stacked into a neat pile in the center of Tashibag’s work.

  Half of the crowd couldn’t take their eyes off of the bear. The other half couldn’t take their eyes off of the witch and whatever it was she was doing.

  Tashibag kept working, never once taking her gaze from the ground, even as the audience gasped in stressed excitement over what Burdo was commanding the bear to do.

  Adrenaline pushed my mouth to cry out, and my legs to move me toward the witch. Memories of Racheele’s final extreme suffering and sudden death swiftly consumed me, while fear of Tashibag’s unexplainable powers simultaneously flooded me. I had been waiting and wandering for so long to find this woman. She was the only person in whom I could place faith for a free and less painful future. I needed answers from her. I needed information. I needed to be released from whatever she had placed upon me. But right now, while all this was going on, was not the time, and so I stopped. I would wait to accost the necromancer until the crowd had dispersed and this entire current ordeal had passed.

  “Cain.” Sem’s voice came from behind me, as he broke through the horde and stood at my side. A concoction of hurt, confusion, anger, sadness, and pleasure all seemed to spread across his face simultaneously. “What is happening here?” he asked, as he attempted to somehow make sense of the scene before him.

  I turned my troubled concentration back to Dishon and forgot about both Tashibag and my own curse for a brief moment. “The witch has brought this thief back and is delivering justice to him for his crimes.”

  As I gazed upon Sem, and then at the desperate man being pinned by the bear, I suddenly wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to pay for what he had done to my friend. I wanted him to experience every bit of pain and hurt that was coming his way. As if his suffering could somehow make me feel better about my own, I wanted him to have as much of it as possible. Once again, the bear lifted its paw enough for Dishon to gasp in a great breath. Once again, the bear pressed the air back out of him. Sem gasped in horror. I smiled.

  “You are the great man they call Sem?” Tashibag’s unexpected and familiar voice penetrated every part of me when she said it. I hadn’t noticed the witch make her way to where we stood. She didn’t look at me and seemed to talk around me as if she had no idea who I was.

  “Tashibag, it is I, Cain. More than a lifetime ago you came to my…” I said, suddenly so desperate. The witch still didn’t look at me, but instead held up her fingers and quietly snapped them in my face. My vocal cords temporarily gave out, and no further words could escape my lips.

  “You are Sem, are you not?” she again said to my friend.

  Sem’s countenance shrunk, and his chin lowered. “I know who you are, Tashibag. Yes, I am that man.”

  “Do you know this man I brought back with me?” Sem didn’t immediately answered, but instead gazed for some time on Dishon. The crowd was silent. The only sounds to be heard were the hard breaths of the bear and the occasional wheeze from Dishon.

  “I do know him. This is the man who took everything from us.”

  Tashibag stepped in front of me and lifted a hand to Sem’s face. She tenderly ran her nails up and down his bearded cheek. “You are a man unlike most others. Your heart is good. Your eyes show kindness. Dishonesty has never become a part of your trade.”

  Sem stood a little taller. “Your words are too much for this humble man.”

  “I am certain of it,” Tashibag said, as she pulled away and walked toward Dishon and the bear. She rested her bare foot on Dishon’s forehead. “Sem, this man’s fate lay with you. I know already of his crimes which have been proved to me upon the whispers of the winds themselves. So, tell me, has this man suffered enough? Or should he suffer further to pay for what he has done?” She pressed Dishon’s head into the dirt with her foot and pushed her biggest toe firmly against his eye. “Tell me what you now want for him, Sem.”

  Being the kind man that he was, Sem didn’t hesitate. He boldly stepped into the open. “Dishon has suffered enough. Possessions are just possessions, which I can always replace. Surely, I can work with this man to retrieve the women and perhaps some of the possessions he has stolen. My desire is for you to release him.”

  Tashibag lifted her foot from Dishon’s fac
e. For the first time, I saw a hint of hope enter the swindler’s eyes. “This is evidence of your sincere nature, Sem. Tell me. Are you aware this man has used his same trickery in many villages, and has become incredibly rich while many good people have suffered?”

  Sem paused. “I was not aware his crimes reached beyond what he took from all of us.”

  The witch lifted her foot and again pressed it against Dishon’s face. “And are you aware, dearest Sem, that this man has taken many women and harems, which he has forced into servitude? He requires much from them all by way of labor and physical burden, yet each of them faces ongoing starvation.” She moved her foot over Dishon’s mouth to prevent what little air he was getting to be cut off completely. “Did you know any of this, Sem?”

  “I did not. And this truth grieves me.”

  “And your desire for this man is the same?”