Stonefather

Runnel wasn’t especially good at anything, and he wasn’t especially bad at anything. He learned the work of a hardscrabble mountain-country farming village as quickly as most, but no quicker; he played the games of children as vigorously as any and enjoyed them as much, but no more. He was too ordinary for anyone to notice him, except that his brothers and sisters could not help but pick up Father’s disdain for him, so that he had to fight a bit harder to keep his place when they lined up for food from the stewpot that Mother kept simmering by the fire.

Mother liked him well enough — she liked all her children — but she called them all by each other’s names and didn’t know enough numbers to take a census and notice when one or two were missing.

Runnel took all these things as his lot in life — he knew nothing else. He flung himself out the door and into whatever day the world presented to him, and came home stinking of sweat from whatever work or play had taken up his hours.

His only distinction, if one could call it that, was that he was a fearless climber of rocks. There was no shortage of cliffs and crags in the vicinity. The children grew up knowing all the grassy paths and steps that allowed them to climb wherever they wanted, with no unusual effort and danger.

But Runnel was impatient with circuitous, gentle routes, and when they all went to play king of the hill or just to look out from one of the lesser crags that overlooked their whole valley, Runnel would go straight up the cliff face, his fingers probing for creases and cracks and ledges and ridges in the stone. He always found them, sooner rather than later — though what was the point, since he rarely reached the pinnacle before anyone else?

His older siblings called him stupid and warned him that they’d refuse to pick up his broken body when it fell. “We’ll just leave you for the vultures and the rats to eat.” But since he never fell from the cliff, they had no chance to take out their spite on his corpse.

It could have gone on like this forever.

When he reached the age that might have been twelve, if anyone bothered counting, Runnel began to get his man-height, and his face took on the shape it would bear throughout his life. Not that he ever saw it — no water in that sloping land held still long enough to see reflections, and he wouldn’t have bothered anyway.

Two things happened.

Runnel began to take notice of the village girls, and realized that they took no notice of him, though they had eyes for all the other boys of his height. They neither flirted with Runnel nor taunted him. He simply didn’t exist to them.

And Father began to be more brutal in his beatings. Perhaps Father thought he finally recognized who Runnel’s real sire must have been. Or perhaps he simply recognized that mere cuffings were nothing to Runnel now and it would take more serious effort to explain to him just how despised he was. Whatever the motive, Runnel continued to bear it, though now there were always bruises, and sometimes there was blood.

He could bear the disdain of the village girls — many a man had found his bride in another village. He could bear the pain of his father’s blows.

What he could not bear and did not understand was the way his brothers and sisters began to avoid him. Father’s constant seething rage against him had apparently marked him in their eyes as someone different and shameful. Their father could not be unjust; therefore, Runnel must deserve the mistreatment. The other children did not strike him — it would have been redundant — but they began excluding him from things and playing mean pranks on him.

On a certain day in early spring, when it was still cold, and old snow lay in all northern shadows, the children took it into their minds to run like a flock of geese for the steepest of the crags they were wont to climb, and as Runnel began his own separate ascent, he somehow knew that this was a joke, that when he got to the top he would be all alone, while the others were off somewhere else.

Yet he continued to climb, thinking: I’m too old to play these games, anyway. I should spend my time like the older boys, lounging around or wrestling near the stream, where the girls came to fetch water, and gape and jape and try to draw their smiles or, failing that, their disdain or mockery.

But if he tried, then it would shame him and hurt him if they still paid him no attention. Besides, he didn’t think any of the village girls were interesting. He didn’t care if they noticed him. And he didn’t care that when he got to the top of the crag he was all alone.

The world spread out before him. Mountains were all around, but so high was their valley that this crag was merely one among many, and he could see far and wide over the shoulders of the neighboring peaks.