"Your father didn't make it back," The healer, who had thus far remained silent, seemed to take pity on his mother and answer the question in her stead. Greg froze. He felt like he had been dunked in a vat of icy cold water. His brain could understand the words that the healer spoke. And yet, for some reason, he just couldn't process them. "The hunters who brought you back said that he gave his life to save you from the snow bear," The healer continued. "Do you not remember any of this?" She asked with a slight frown. She had spent all this time tending to Greg's external wounds. It was only now that it occurred to the healer that she hadn't considered the boy's state of mind. Not that anyone could exactly blame her for this. Up until yesterday, all her healing wasn't making any major difference in the boy's condition. It was still up in the air whether he'd make it or not.
Greg had known all this time that his injuries were because of a hunt that had gone wrong. Try as he would, however, he hadn't been able to drag up any memories of the circumstances around this accident. He knew that people in this remote town often made hunting parties to help each other brave the dangers of the forest around them. He, however, couldn't remember even one face out of all the people that he'd been out on the hunt with. He didn't even know how many there had been. A part of him wanted to shake his head. To refuse what the healer had just told him. To argue that this wasn't what had happened. His memory, however, was blank. Try as he would to shake something loose from his memories, he kept on coming up empty. What Greg couldn't explain was the fact that his denial wasn't an emotional one. He was in shock at the fact that his father was dead. That much he couldn't deny. But for some reason, Greg's refusal to accept the given explanation of the circumstances around his death, wasn't because he didn't want to believe it. Instead, it was as if on some level, he knew that this wasn't what had happened. The memory of what had really happened was somewhere in his head, he just simply couldn't get to it, no matter how he tried.
It wasn't until he felt a shaking hand wiping at his face that Greg became aware of the tears that had been flowing down his face. Tears were flowing down his mother's face even as she comforted him. "You have to be strong Roka," She spoke. "It will be hard," She straightforwardly admitted. "But if we hold together as a family, we'll get through this," she said with a forced smile. "Here, have some of this broth that I prepared for you," She said reaching down for the bowl. Picking it up from the tray on her lap, the woman gently blew on the still-steaming bowl of broth before gently holding it out to him.
Still reeling from the shock of what he'd just learned, Greg unconsciously leaned forward and sipped at the bowl presented to him. Soon as the broth in the bowl touched his tongue, however, a look of confusion crossed Greg's features. "This is from the three tusk boar," He spoke up, when the meaty taste of the broth spread across his tongue. Even though Greg was completely new to this world, the body that he inhabited wasn't. His tongue immediately recognized what he'd been served. It was the most commonly hunted animal in this town, as such it wasn't that amazing a feat that Greg could immediately identify it. The reason why it caught Greg's attention was because, in this town, women didn't hunt. As a widow, his mother shouldn't have had any way of obtaining meat.
This wasn't some fairytale world of unicorns and rainbows. This was a remote town in the mountains trying to eke out a living from a harsh and unforgiving environment. Most of the time, people didn't have enough for themselves, let alone others. As a widow, his mother would have received some help from the women that were her neighbors for the first week. And by help, it was just a share of what they'd cooked. No one would give her food to store for the future. They needed it just as much as she did.. After the week was passed, his mother was expected to rely on herself. Harsh as it sounded, this was just the simple reality of how life was in this remote corner of the world. Greg had been in the infirmary for eleven days thus far. With no man in the house to hunt and no food stores to draw from, her mother shouldn't have had the meat needed for this broth. As such, the question naturally formed in Greg's mind. "Where did you get it from?" He asked his mother.
There was a chill in his voice that hadn't been there in Greg's voice a moment before. The reason for this was simple, in this town, when a woman was widowed, it was customary to mourn for a month in respect of the spouse that they had lost. While women couldn't hunt, there were nuts, fruits, and grains in the forest that they could gather and subsist on for the month. This month came to be known as the month of grain in the town. If a woman accepted meat from another man during the month of grain, it was considered just as bad as if she was cuckolding the lost husband. It was a great dishonor to the dead man. Other than the memories he'd inherited from this body, Greg had never met or known the man that was Roka's father. By extension, he shouldn't have cared what this woman did. But just as he felt a strong bond with this woman who, up until a few minutes ago, was a complete stranger to him, Greg felt equally attached to the unknown man that was supposed to be his father. The thought of his memory being dishonored, caused a flame of rage to burn hotly within him.
"I haven't accepted or eaten meat from any man since your father died Roka," The woman answered calmly, her tone betraying no offense at Greg's accusatory tone. "Your sister and I have eaten nothing other than what we can gather in the forest," She went on to say in a flat tone. "When the healer came to me and told me that you needed food to regain your strength, I went to the wife of your father's brother and begged for some little meat to prepare for you," His mother calmly explained.
While women weren't allowed to take meat from any man during their month of grain, getting meat from another woman that was willing to share, wasn't wrong in any way. With the added layer that his mother had gotten the meat from a relative and not from a household that they weren't related to, the issue should have been resolved at that. This situation, however, only seemed to grow even more and more absurd as far as Greg was concerned.
Up until a few seconds before, Greg only had memories of his uncle. Soon as he heard his mother mention his father's brother, however, rage and hatred so pure that it almost took form in the real world, filled Greg. His mother had actually been referencing his uncle's wife as she explained where she got the meat. To Greg, however, as soon as he'd heard his father's brother mentioned, all thoughts had dispersed from his mind. All that had remained was a deep, cold, and unwavering desire to kill. If someone were to ask Greg why he wanted his uncle dead, he'd have no logical answer to offer. Even looking back through what memories he still had of the man, Greg couldn't find anything that would provoke the kind of vitriolic hatred that he presently felt. What he did know, however, was that given the chance, he wouldn't hesitate to slit the man's throat!
Greg didn't know if something else had gone wrong with him other than the amnesia. What he did know was that he needed to be careful. Right now, Greg had crucial chunks of his memories missing. According to what he'd been told, his father had died trying to save him. And yet, Greg found himself disagreeing with this account of events. Not out of guilt, shame, or some other emotional reaction, but an unexplainable certainty that this wasn't what had happened. It's almost like on some level, he knew what had actually happened, he just couldn't access the memories. At the same time, Greg had this homicidal rage and hatred against his uncle, something that he also couldn't justify or explain. Something had happened on that hunting trip and right now, these two strong emotions were the only thing he had to go on.
Greg wasn't stupid. He knew that the emotions of an amnesiac weren't strong evidence, no matter how one looked at it. Even he himself was barely convinced that he wasn't just being delusional. For better or for worse, however, Greg just simply couldn't shake the conviction that there was more to the story than what he'd so far been told. How he'd get to that truth, Greg didn't know. He, however, had every intention of getting right to the bottom of everything...
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