Unchained - 1. Chapter 1

Dashel looked back at where his master stood next to their big horse-drawn wagon talking to a local farmer. They were now close to the city of Rochester in the state of New York. In another hour or two, they would be making camp in an actual city unless the farmer had a job for them. Dashel was anticipating their upcoming stay in the city because it would mean for him a break from the daily chores. As an apprentice, Dashel was expected to do the menial and manual work like tending the horses that pulled their big wagon. For six years he had been traveling with old Tom, growing from a twelve-year-old child to a young man of eighteen years.

Tom, like Dashel, was gifted with special powers. How and why, they did not know. In his long travels, Tom had never found anybody with any reliable knowledge about the source of the gifts. He had gathered enough hearsay that it was difficult to distinguish genuine lore from scary tales. But Tom knew how to channel his powers and how to train Dashel to do the same. The gift seemed malleable, and Tom never taught anything with offensive capabilities, only ever protection and healing. Nevertheless, their gifts were very rare and often misunderstood, requiring their powers to be kept a closely guarded secret. They were constantly traveling across the continent, never visiting the same place twice.

Young Dashel with his naturally gray hair, very pale complexion and piercing, pale blue eyes was standing out from the crowds. Adding to that their healing work, most often mundane but also sometimes secretly enhancing the process by use of their powers, they would many times become the victims of local preachers or other superstitious folk, resulting in them being hunted out of town. And that was exactly what had happened in the last county. Therefore, Dashel was constantly checking their surroundings, looking for riders on the road but also for good old highwaymen. But apart from the farmer’s young farm hand or son who stood at the other side of the road, equally looking nervously around, the area seemed deserted.

It was unusual that they were stopped on the road, and Dashel mused that the farmer must have seen their wagon with the announcement of their medical’s services and had waved them down because he needed of some sort of aid. Tom had told Dashel to take the opportunity to feed the horses while Tom himself had started talking to the farmer. Whenever they did not know the disposition of the locals it was only Tom who spoke. Dashel with his clearly Louisiana accent often got negative reactions from Northerners, even nearly a decade after the end of the Civil War. Tom who was an experienced traveler, able to adapt his accent as the situation required, had much fewer problems.

Dashel mustered the farm hand who was about his own age. He did not want to stare, but he liked what he saw and ended up staring anyway. And when his gaze returned to the other boy’s face, Dashel was happy to note that the other boy was staring at him in return and not in anger. He smiled, waved, and finished feeding the horses. After packing up, Dashel climbed back onto their wagon waiting for the talk to be over.

“Dash, go and help young Samuel onto the wagon, will you?” Tom said finally as he moved to the side to make space for the farmer who started to climb up, “We are going to help Isaiah’s wife.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dashel replied and stepped over several obstacles formed by their stapled belongings to the back of their wagon. He leaned over and stretched his hand out to the young farmhand who grabbed it firmly. Dashel was of a slight build and struggled to stay on the wagon when the tall and heavily built young man pulled himself up using Dashel’s outstretched hand for support.

“Sorry,” Samuel said when he noticed that he had nearly pulled his helper down from the wagon, “I’m heavier than I look.”

He smiled, and Dashel had to grin. Tom started up the team and talked to the farmer while Dashel and Samuel talked sitting in the back of the wagon. Careful about his accent, Dashel replied as little as barely polite. Nevertheless, he smiled furtively at Samuel.

“You’re not a talker, are ya?” Samuel asked after a while of rather one-sided communication.

Dashel sighed and replied in his Louisiana drawl, “I’m from down south, and people usually do not like my accent. So, I rather keep quiet.”

“What a shame,” Samuel said, “I think you sound interesting. Tell me where you are from.”

Dashel saw no falsehood in Samuel who smiled at him openly. Taking a leap of faith, Dashel started talking. He told about hot Louisiana and French-speaking New Orleans, and Samuel could barely believe that Dashel’s mother tongue was French rather than English. Samuel encouraged Dashel to tell of his travels and in between Dashel learned that Samuel was an orphan who worked on Isaiah’s farm.

They had taken an immediate liking to each other, if not even more. Dashel was quite sure, the long eye contact and the smiles made him think that Samuel was attracted to him.

“This is my farm,” Isaiah the farmer said loudly, interrupting the boys who had not noticed how quickly time had passed.

According to Samuel’s descriptions of how Isaiah’s wife had come down with fever and heavy coughing about a week ago, Dashel assumed her to suffer from pneumonia. Furthermore, the woman seemed close to the end. Having passed the long road to the buildings, the wagon entered Isaiah’s farmyard.

“Dash, Sam, prepare the team for the night,” Tom ordered and jumped off the wagon.

Tom followed Isaiah into the farmhouse. The two youths took the two horses into the barn, cleaned them and fed them. Dashel was impressed by Samuel’s horsemanship. Together they finished their tasks relatively quickly.

Back in the yard, Dashel climbed the wagon and checked that their obvious valuables were secured. While the true valuables were carefully hidden, he did not want to lose anything else either. Samuel stood next to the wagon waiting for Dashel.

“Ready?” Samuel asked.

“Yes, give me a moment,” Dashel replied checking his revolver.

He would never be parted from that weapon, although it was unfriendly bringing it into a house into which they had been invited. Dashel climbed down from the wagon right into Samuel’s arms who grabbed Dashel from behind. At first, Dashel was surprised, but he knew exactly what that meant and leaned into the stronger and taller man, enjoying the cuddle.

Samuel whispered into Dashel’s right ear, “I knew you feel as I do.”

“Yes,” Dashel replied, “but not now, later. When everybody is asleep.”

“I can barely wait.”

Dashel could feel the truth of that statement as Samuel’s erection pressed against his backside. He turned around looking into Samuel’s deep brown eyes. Seductively, he closed his eyes leaning slightly forward, waiting for Samuel to kiss him. But he waited in vain and irritated opened his eyes, just to look into Samuel’s smiling face.

“I need to get it down, not up, you tease,” Samuel said and let go of Dashel.

“True,” Dashel conceded, “Lead on, then.”

They took a moment to calm down and then entered the farmhouse. The mood seemed to be playful. Three children were running around in celebration, and Isaiah beamed.

“Come in,” he said to the two young men.

He poured some whiskey into glasses and handed these to them.

“Your master has rescued my wife! Drink!”

Samuel took the offered glass, but Dashel said, “Thank you, sir, but we do not drink or gamble. Please do not offer any to my master.”

Dashel knew far too well that Tom would partake far too much if allowed. So he thought it best to make Isaiah not even offer any.

“Sensible boy!” Isaiah exclaimed, put the glass away and took back the one he had given to Samuel, “Take an example.”

While Samuel looked unsure at the farmer, Dashel excused himself to join his master in the main bedroom. The woman was still drenched from the fever she had been in just moments ago and looked exhausted, but otherwise rather well. She laid in the bed, and Tom was sitting on a chair at the bedside. Dashel could see that he had poured a lot of energy into that healing. Her gaze fell on Dashel.

“Who are you?”

Tom turned around and said, “This is my apprentice Dashel.” Tom waived him to come closer.

“Stay away, devil’s child!” she exclaimed and taken aback, Dashel stopped in his track.

Calmly Tom said, “You better wait outside.”

Dashel knew this tone. This was another place where people like them were not welcome, regardless of what they would do for the locals. The fact that Tom had just rescued her from certain death did not count for that woman. She had felt inexplicable healing on herself, and now, she saw the outward signs of magical gifts in Dashel’s appearance, and she despised him. Dashel left. He did not hear the rest of the conversation between her and Tom.

In the main room, Isaiah was happily playing with his children. Samuel offered Dashel something to eat with an inviting and honest smile. Dashel wondered whether that handsome man would still like him if he knew. Putting these thoughts out of his mind Dashel sat down next to him at the kitchen table to eat some stew. With some jokes, Samuel was able to get Dashel out of his bad mood, and just after they had finished their meal, Tom entered the main room.

“You should talk to your wife, Isaiah,” Tom said.

Taken out of his celebratory mood by Tom’s earnest tone, the man went to his bed chamber. Samuel dished Tom some stew, and he had barely eaten a couple of spoonfuls when Isaiah returned. Clearly uncomfortable, he sat down in the last remaining chair.

“My wife”, he began.

Tom interrupted him calmly, “I know. I think it is best when we sleep in the wagon and leave at first light.”

“So much for gratitude,” Dashel murmured while he got up.

Tom also rose, and they left the farmhouse under the half-hearted apologies of Isaiah. Needing to choose between his guests and his wife, it was clear which choice he had made. Tom inspected the horses while Dashel prepared their sleeping gear. Not long and they had gathered in their wagon. Dashel had been relatively quiet while he conducted his tasks, a fact that Tom had very well noticed.

“You must understand them,” he said to his young charge, well knowing the angry thoughts Dashel was harboring.

“<I don’t need to do that at all,>” the young man replied defiantly in Creole French, “<I’m not allowed to open my mouth, because some Northerner might get offended, so I’m still. I’m to cover my hair because someone might recognize that I might be able to do what they can’t, so I constantly wear a hat or scarf. I’m to help people and then take that they spit at me when I’ve cured them, so I have to smile. I have to be silent when I like a boy because someone declared it a deadly sin, so I’m cursed to be alone. It seems to me that always I’m the one who has to suffer because somebody else seems offended by my very being for which I can’t do anything!>”

“It’s difficult for all of us”, Tom said soothingly.

Tom was worried. So far, he had always been able to calm Dashel down. Yes, life was unfair, but the best he could do was to suffer it with his head held high. Over the last couple of months, Dashel had been less inclined to practice the calming exercises that Tom had taught him. The young man seemed to take more offense to the obvious injustices they had to endure nowadays than he had before.

“Love thy neighbor like thyself,” quoted Tom.

“<It seems to me that everyone forgets that not only they are my neighbors but that I’m their neighbor, too,>” Dashel countered defiantly.

“<Please play something,>” said Tom changing the language as a concession and changing the subject asking to end the debate.

Dashel looked at him angrily and as if he was about to decline but then seemed to think of something better and took out his fiddle. He sighed and began playing a tune, not happy, but not melancholic either. After a while, they turned in to sleep. But Dashel lay awake in the night thinking about the injustices they had to endure. Later, a figure in the moonlight approached their wagon. Dashel enhanced his vision and recognized Samuel.

“Dash?” Samuel whispered.

Instead of answering, Dash got up silently and joined Samuel outside the wagon.

“How is it going?” Dashel asked in a whisper.

“Chastity has severely berated Isaiah for bringing you here,” he said, “She is convinced that you are agents of the devil and that he had made a pact with dark forces, selling her soul.”

Dashel looked down.

“I do not believe that,” Samuel said and lifted Dashel’s head carefully before kissing him gently.

He took Dashel by the hand and pulled him towards the barn.

“Found them!” a man shouted.

Dashel and Samuel woke up to the faces of four angry men in torchlight.

“Sodomites!” exclaimed one of them while they pulled the two naked boys up.

“I thought you were a god-fearing Christian, Samuel!”

The man lifted his musket and hit Samuel hard on the head, the crack of the skull clearly audible. The young man fell back into the straw that was now soaking up his blood and brains.

“Sam!” Dashel shouted in angry surprise.

Another man shoved the butt of his musket into Dashel’s stomach causing Dashel to bend over in pain. Two of the assailants grabbed the naked young man and pulled him out of the barn where a mob was waiting, cliched as expected with forks, torches, and guns.

“That is him!” Chastity, the farm woman who Tom had healed earlier, shouted.

Led by a man who was obviously a preacher, the preacher’s wife, dutifully at her husband’s side, and the preacher’s acolyte, the mobsters had already seized Tom. Dashel was dragged by his captors next to his master.

“Devil’s child,” she shouted, “Look at him!”

“And a sodomite!” one of Dashel’s captors claimed.

“As it is written in the holy Bible: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” cried the preacher.

The crowd incanted, “Kill the witches! Kill the witches!”

The old man Tom was held by two strong men with stern expressions. The priest’s acolyte approached him with a knife brandished in his hands. Dashel was staring in horror, himself being held by two of the congregation. His master and friend looked at him calmly with peace in his eyes, and Dashel felt the magical communication in his head.

“Forgive them, because they don’t know what they do,” the mental voice of his master quoted in Dashel’s head.

Just at that moment, the acolyte ran the knife deep into the old man’s guts, ripping them open and slicing the main artery. Still connected, Dashel howled in the pain that was flowing down the mental link and then suddenly stopped. In contrast, his master had just given a short yelp and was silent afterward. Dashel only stayed conscious by sheer force of will.

“May the Lord judge him and condemn the wizard to hell,” the preacher intoned as the two mobsters let the lifeless body of the old man fall to the ground.

The acolyte approached Dashel with the knife from which Tom’s blood was still dripping.

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them,” the priest quoted. Turning to the crowd, he continued, “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers!”

The crowd screamed, “Justice! Justice!”

Loudest among them was the farm woman who was edging on her children and even her husband.

Dashel had just experienced his old friend and mentor dying as if he had been the old man himself. The pain confused his body which was as yet unharmed, but full of pain signals in the brain. Dashel vomited on the acolyte as he approached. Whether he had consciously aimed, Dashel was unable to tell, but it had hit the mark. The acolyte exclaimed in disgust and stepped away from Dashel. But only a short while later after having regained his wits, the acolyte lifted his bloody knife and was about to step up. Dashel looked into the young man’s green eyes. His own pale blue eyes radiated the intense hatred that Dashel felt, and the recognition let the acolyte hesitate.

His master had always been a calming influence on him. Tom had taught Dashel mind techniques to focus his thoughts and to control his emotions. He had taught him understanding and compassion for those that were either uneducated or of simple mind or afraid of the unknown. But now, Dashel looked into those green eyes, and he felt pure, intense, and raw hate. He focused on his powerful hate for those people who had murdered the man that had been like a father to him. Whether it was because of the connection he had with Tom when he died Dashel could not say, but he felt that the hate he felt charged him. He felt the power surging through his veins. The feeling was exhilarating.

Suddenly, the last remnants of Dashel’s self control were gone, his master’s teachings brushed aside, as all mental abilities usually used to suppress were now employed to channel as Dashel gathered the power inherent within him. As the acolyte lifted his arm to strike, Dashel let his hate manifest.

The firestorm emanating from Dashel caught everyone in the crowd that had gathered in the farm courtyard. It even set the farmhouse ablaze. The cries of agony that the now burning spectators uttered were music to Dashel’s ears. The smell of their burnt flesh was the perfume of his revenge. Dashel reveled in the feeling of pain his righteous defense caused his assailants. He concentrated to take in their screams of fear and pain, the sounds they made as they crackled like living torches and finally, the thuds with which their charred bodies fell to the ground, their religious hate and fervor silenced forever.

Dashel and his master had done nothing wrong. They had rescued a woman from death of pneumonia. His master and he had never so far hurt anybody. And yet, these people had lynched his master and innocent Samuel in cold blood and were about to slaughter him for what he was and what he could do that they did not understand.

Finally, the firestorm ended as suddenly as it had begun. Dashel stood naked and unscathed in the carnage he had caused. The two men who had held him were burned shells on the ground to either side of him. The acolyte’s face was burnt from the earth, the green eyes eviscerated from their sockets.

Dashel looked around. There were some survivors, most of them badly injured and crying in agony. He could see the treacherous farm woman sobbing over the bodies of her now-dead four children and husband, her hair burnt away. The preacher was still moving and trying to get up from the ground when Dashel approached him.

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil,” croaked the man holding up a charred cross.

Dashel grabbed him by the rest of his hair, yanking him upright but preventing him from getting up. The cross fell to the ground.

“Look at what you have done, priest,” said Dashel in a calm tone. “Look at your beloved wife!” ordered Dashel as he turned the man’s head to the still-smoldering body next to him. “Look at the result of the hate that you teach!” challenged Dashel as he turned the man’s head slowly to let him take in the carnage.

“Oh Lord in heaven, have mercy with your servant”, said the priest.

“Oh, I shall be merciful,” said Dashel calmly as he cupped the priest’s face, “I will show you the same mercy that you were showing to one of the most caring men I have ever known. I will show you the mercy you have shown Samuel. I will show you the same mercy you wanted to show me.”

Again, he focused his innate power, changing the energies that heal into a form of destruction flowing from his hands into the priest’s head. Dashel enjoyed the priest’s screams of agony and despair, so he did not kill him outright, but reduced the flow of energy to prolong the man’s suffering, feeling him wiggle in his grip. But far too soon, the priest’s final scream had left his mouth. Dashel let the corpse fall to the ground, spat on it and stomped the cross deep into the mud. He then went to dispatch the other surviving mobsters with equal enthusiasm.

He began to see why Tom had always tried to restrain him, because Dashel had to admit that the righteous dispatching of these murderers felt good, very good indeed. Finally, he went over to the last survivor, the farm woman.

“You’re a monster,” she said between tears, holding the burnt corpse of her youngest child.

“I’ve been called that before,” he replied calmly, “And other things. I’ve been degraded, I’ve been threatened, and I’ve been hunted by the likes of him and you. I’ve always taken it. All the time, again and again. I’m just a human being like you.”

“The Devil is in you!” she exclaimed.

“I’m but what you have made me,” Dashel said, “You people have killed my best friend, teacher and father in all but fact. And you would have killed me if I’d permitted it.”

“You’re an abomination in the eyes of the Lord,” she stated resolutely, “You’re a murderer!”

“I’m defending myself,“ he explained, “You are the murderers. And you have bitten off more than you can chew. Now you choke on it.”

He looked up and around counting the fallen. Twenty-six bodies now covered the blackened farm yard, and two of the farm buildings were on fire.

“Your husband took us in under your roof as guests. You betrayed your guests who had brought you back from the brink of death. You went and called the priest to exorcise us. In the same way I’m now exorcising you from this world. I hope that you’ll meet your shit priest in your superstitious hell, you filthy bitch!”

Dashel closed his hands around her throat and pressed. She gargled, her hands were on his wrists, but she had no strength left to resist him. As with the priest, he made it slow, relaxing his grip ever so often, allowing the panicking body some relief just to take it away again. All the while he stared into her eyes with the hate he felt, enjoying her fear and panic.

After she had joined the rest of her congregation in death, Dashel let her body go and looked around as if he saw the carnage for the first time. Interestingly, he now just felt tiredness but nothing else, no joy, no remorse and no sadness either. The deed was done. He went over to Tom’s body and knelt next to it. He wanted to cry, but he could not. Nevertheless, he felt calm.

“<I’m sorry, old man,>” he whispered, “<but I’ll never again suffer the hate preachers. I’ll hunt them and burn them.>”

After gathering anything useful, Dashel went and checked on Samuel’s corpse. He realized that while the two men had dragged him to the mob, the two others had bashed Samuel’s head in before they followed. Like with Tom, Dashel could not cry. He knelt by the handsome body that he had caressed just hours before and whispered, “<Your murderers have been brought to justice. May you rest in peace.>”

Dashel put on his clothes and weapon that lay where he had discarded them earlier. He turned to the horses, readied them and fastened them to the wagon. With his last reserves of power, he gave the horses and himself the ability to see in the dark and let the team out of the burning farm into the night northwards. He guessed that in about two hours it would be dawn and that he would be in Rochester by then. He planned to sell everything and to cross into Canada. Dashel was well aware that there would be an investigation and that a hard time would be upon all those not local to New England. But that he could not change.