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Upon a lonesome field, a grim stage of death bathes in moonlight beneath the open night sky. Far out in the distance it looms, waiting, calling. Tonight the gallows call two sinners to their deaths, like a shepherd calling for two lost lambs to return to the flock. The sinners obey the call with each step they take. The rope that twists their hands behind their backs is only a formality to this march of death. Already they have tried desperately to change their fate. The bold red X upon their stark white execution garb marks their failures, as does every cut, bruise, and burn, new and old, upon their bodies.
Now the ink begins to dry on the pages that tell the brief story of their lives. They accept that this was the only way a story could end for those who dare disobey the church's order of the world. It places a damper on the truth they have uncovered. However, as the Earth will forever orbit the sun, the truth shall remain when they no longer do. They leave behind an ember, that if the right people can stoke it, the truth will ignite into a great flame once more.
It is that ember that keeps Badeni moving without fail. As he finds that his mind is unnaturally devoid of fear or anger, it has all been spent during this wretched week. He wonders if Oczy feels the same. There has not been a noise from him for minutes now. Not that now would be the time to talk, given the space between them. Badeni cannot turn around to check, the inquisitor that leads them will surely protest to that. Surprisingly, Jolenta's father must still be trailing so far behind them, leaving this sole inquisitor as their guard. One can assume Nowak's work is done, he can remove himself from what happens next. With the heretical text from the stone chest burnt down to nothing and Badeni's denial of her involvement, Jolenta is safe from any further influence damning her soul. He needs only to see the bodies in the end.
Behind him there is a sharp thud of a boot catching on earth, numerous fumbling footsteps follow. It alerts the inquisitor, over an arms-length beside Badeni, who looks over his shoulder, eyes passing over Badeni and onto wherever Oczy has ended up.
"Don't try anything stupid." He warns, dark eyes trailing a path upwards from the ground.
"Sorry, I tripped." Oczy's voice sounds so very close that Badeni swears he is now directly behind him.
The inquisitor does not voice another reply. He merely frowns, then turns away, seemingly not seeing any threat within Oczy's clumsiness.
There are a few more steps taken, then the silence breaks with a timid, "Badeni?" Oczy's voice barely floats above a whisper.
Badeni almost finds the willpower to joke and say, are you trying to get us killed? Instead he curtly asks, "what?"
"I-I've written more, something -"
"Quiet!" Badeni chastises Oczy's wagging tongue, afraid it will alert the inquisition to the letter he has written to Grabowski. It is his last gambit, his ember, after having been outmaneuvered completely by Nowak's keen, brutal mind.
"No," Oczy urges him to listen. "It's something about you."
There was no point in hiding what he knew and had also wanted to assume. Through his earlier confession in their shared cell, Oczy knew that Badeni read his journal and had taken it upon himself to preserve his life's work. It would be an affront even to Oczy's intelligence for Badeni to pretend that he did not read every other scrap of writing stuffed even briefly between the journal's pages. "One of your poems?"
"How did- ah! That day you must have found them," a light chuckle follows a sigh, "you are far too cunning for me."
"There was one missing." Badeni says without confirming the correct guess, adding, "the poem about winter."
What Badeni refrains from divulging is that he has also copied Oczy's three surviving poems, marking them unceremoniously, though not without reason as, "Anonymous Poet" and the year. Often he considered hiding them within the textbooks on his personal bookshelf, yet the worry that those books may be borrowed forced him to hide them in his desk drawer. There they were supposed to stay as simple curiosities, pieces of an incomplete collection, never to see the light of day. At times, after he had paced his room when sleep eluded him or his work became a burden, he would pull them out and search once again for subtle clues that may reveal the details of the missing work.
It was not supposed to clutter his mind, as Badeni noticed often as he snapped out of daydreams to find that he had marred his other research papers apart from his heliocentric work and future sermons with fragments of poems in the empty corners and margins of the text. Worry tugged at him again, what if he or Grabowski had read those ruinous words aloud to the laypeople of their church? Made his secret known to those who barely tolerated his presence in the first place. Such a silly little thing had a hold on him. Something he was still not even sure was about him. Irritated by how distracted it made him, he finally took out a clean page and rearranged the fragments into a poem of its own.
Winter?
He is the lonely unyielding gale
that sweeps through the desolate land
and brushes past
all the insignificant feelings
that pile up like snow.
Upon the snow
one man stands alone
with head and hands
held high to
the heavens above.
And so the gale
sweeps by
but never touches
only listens
to an echo of his soul.
"Tuck me tenderly
in your thoughts
my lonely unyielding Winter gale.
Carry me with you
so that
one day
when your winds calm,
you will look upwards
and see
that the light of
the Morning Star
and Evening Star
have embraced
once more.
Know I am watching it
with you."
Before the gale can touch
and scatter those words
they are devoured whole
keeping a lonesome desire
further within.
In return, Winter is
cold, sharp against
the only one
who wishes to hold find
know him.
Will he wait for Winter?
Who desires wishes for warm hands
to lend a safe place to land
before the gale
picks up again.
Badeni had understood why Oczy had eaten his poem. Who would want another soul reading this? Badeni wished to tear these words apart with his teeth just from looking at them. Why did he include O- someone else in the poem about his own complicated feelings? Even with the words written down, the urge to know the real work plagued his mind so strongly that it was as if a witch's hex had been placed upon him. Curiosity was becoming borderline obsession. He wanted to uncover the secrets of the Earth and stars, not the inner workings of some lowborn man. He would endure, overcome. Now that the words were captured in the paper, he could rid himself of it completely. He brought the guesswork poem to the flame of a candle, let it burn from one corner to the one he held, and blew away the charred remains with a firm breath.
One tiny piece fluttered atop the desk, flashing the sole surviving phrase
Will he wait
Badeni crushed it with his thumb until the char and fibers were embedded in the grains of his wooden desk. It left a blackened mark upon his thumb. In a worse mood, Badeni removed himself from his seat, then left his room in search of a way to wash away that shameful stain.
"Right." Oczy says lightly. "I told myself it was nothing, just words. Tried to convince myself I forgot those words after I destroyed it. They always remained, muddled, and quieter most days. I now understand what I was feeling, what I wanted. If you wou-"
"It's now or never." Badeni eyes the gallows, gaining in size with each step. There is no need, nor time, to temper his eagerness.
Oczy takes in a breath and speaks through the pain that surely stings against his facial wounds. "I had compared you to winter and the cold winds and snow that comes with it. I never liked winter much." In a panic he adds, "Not that I disliked you, I respect you! It just felt fitting. I thought that was all there was to you, a cold voice with bright words that shared the hidden truth of the world to me. I was okay with that, little scraps of information and insight as I watched the night sky for you." Oczy pauses.
When Badeni swallows, it sounds too loud over the breath he has been holding in to hear the words. The inquisitor that guides them has made no attempt to stop them from chatting. Certainly he can hear their whispers among the distant chirp of insects in the otherwise silent night. Then again, as long as they meet their end at the gallows, what are a few parting words before the great fall?
"It would have been fine the way it was, doing work for you until the day we finally went our separate ways." Oczy continues. "Still, more often than not, I found myself looking at you walking in front of me the same way I observed and took in the radiancy of the night sky. Waiting and watching and hoping, maybe one day you would turn around and call out to me. You would tell me you were tired of feeling so cold and alone. And because I was there, I could reach out and hold you in my arms. A-And then," Oczy's words falter. Was he, too, realizing that they were halfway to the gallows?
The break gives Badeni a moment to consider how he is walking in front of Oczy now, a reenactment of their usual dynamic. Always a few steps ahead, a distant view, rarely beside when he talked. Each time Oczy waited for him to turn around, to truly acknowledge him. The gap had been shrinking in size, he thought. If there had been time, the copious amount of time Badeni thought still remained, then maybe they would be beside each other and...
"Then I would place my hands on your face, share my warmth, and you would finally look up at me and say..." Oczy stops speaking entirely.
"Say what?" Badeni asks breathlessly, finally breaking his silence.
Only the sound of the ground and grass shifting beneath their feet fills the silence. "It doesn't matter. My hands are too stained with blood, anyway. Besides, I think what I saw and heard as I sat in that chair within that dungeon was better than anything I had imagined. What you did for me and Jolenta, I, I'm glad I finally saw the side of you that eluded me for so long. You are - I really do-" Oczy let out a penitent groan. "Sorry, I should have kept quiet. I know you can't, rather don't feel that way about me. I'm - and you're - Please, if I can ask for anything, it's that you don't hate me."
It is no wonder Oczy was so resilient to the harshness the world placed upon him; yearning was its own bittersweet torture that a person could impart on themselves. Badeni's heart tightens in his chest as he tries to fight away the feelings that wish to intrude on the emptiness he felt. It would only make it easier for everything to remain that way in the end. At least, for himself.
Still, he has to say something, right? The man behind him, so poor at the art of speechcraft managed to spill his heart out so earnestly, even as the pain of rejection hung thick in the air. He has to find the right words to respond to something so foreign to him. Thank you or be at peace? As everything he has done this week, it comes too late.
What had felt like an eternal walk abruptly ends as Badeni's feet stop at the stairs to the gallows. A noose sways with the breeze, a cruel hand beckoning him forward. In the end, Badeni has failed once again to keep all his secrets to himself. Though he has not heard the exact words that make up the poem, he has learned Oczy's secret and has made it theirs. At least he will die with a single secret intact; a true piece of himself will remain hidden away underneath that frozen exterior. Badeni ascends the stairs without so much as a backwards glance.
The gate creaks when he places his full weight upon it. The rope of the closest noose wraps and tightens around Badeni's neck. It is rough and coarse, a tether to reality. The tight hold gives an inescapable finality to everything that Badeni tries to ignore, as doubts begin to pour in. He needs an escape, something to reassure him that this hold will briefly cradle him into the afterlife. Oh, how tragic it was that this noose will cradle him rather than Oczy's hands.
The realization hits rather hard as the truth breaks through Badeni's defenses so effortlessly in that lone thought. Now that it has named itself, he can no longer deny the words that reverberate in his head. For months they had begged for his ear. When he copied every word from Oczy's journal, wondering why he cared so much for it, did they try to explain. The poems and their secrets, dangling like a single, gleaming red apple from a tree. The voices whispered how that knowledge would taste so sweet, only for the apple to be left to rot on the ground.
They even intruded during the rare times the two shared their meals. When Oczy's prayers before meals included his utter joy of the days that accumulated where he did not need to pick up a sword and see the fear in another man's face as the light left his eyes. How Badeni began to nourish that joy and scholarly pacifism with whatever information of the world Oczy timidly asked to know. Their conversations became varied and Oczy grew articulate as ever. The voices would brush against Badeni's skin and whisper into his ear, "you enjoy lifting him up from the bottom of the universe and shedding light upon his ignorant soul, don't you?" The voices were pushed away with a prayer of his own.
How the voices would question the reason why he walked ahead in the first place. What was so important and shocking in his emotions and expressions that he had to hide them from the man behind him? Was it because they did not match the tone of his voice, they sneered?
Now, when only minutes remain, did he finally listen and understand that it was his very own voice trying to reach him.
Oczy's footsteps join the inquisitor's up the stairs. There was his escape about to pass him by. No time, no time, no time. As Oczy is led to the noose past him, Badeni extends his bound hands back as far as he can stretch out his arms. Hopefully the man who sees everything can see him now, can understand, can find -
Rope brushes against rope, as fingers collide and hook. So quickly found, so quickly lost, as the fingers drag away as Oczy is guided along to his place on the gallows. Without the pull, Badeni's hands slump against his back. Badeni squeezes his hands, pressing his fingers together, as if it would imprint the touch into his palm. There is one thing that is undeniable.
Each step the inquisitor takes down the stairs to leave the gallows, feels slower than the last. They must be alone for this, or at least as alone as they possibly can be.
"Oczy." Badeni calls out, turning his head, ignoring the curtain of blond hair whipping against his face.
"Yes?" Oczy looks over to him, strands of his dark hair whip against his battered face.
It is not dramatic by any means, and it certainly does not contain the sweetness of a poem, however Badeni hopes it is enough to convey what he has finally felt for himself. "Your hands are very warm."
There is pain in the smile Badeni sees, as Oczy pushes it to the limits of the stitches. There is so much genuine feeling overflowing within it that it takes Badeni's breath away. The final piece of himself, his final secret, flays itself open and shatters like the truth of the Evening Star freeing itself from the geocentric model. He cannot help but share a meek smile in return. It pushes out the emptiness within himself and replaces it with something he cannot exactly describe. A pleasant pain? The eye that Badeni spared, catches the light of the stars against the velvet blue of the night as Oczy turns upwards to face them without fear.
It will be the last time they look into each other's eyes. The nameless inquisitor unfurls a parchment ready to commit them to Heaven or Hell. Far behind him, Nowak watches, a silent, haunting guest to their end. However, Badeni does not think of any of them. Instead, as he looks down at the gate beneath his feet, he wonders, was it so terrible if it is the weight of such a love that follows them down to Hell?
He voices his concern of Hell, so sure that Oczy of all people, whom Hell followed closely in his shadow, will substantiate his claims. He is proven wrong as Oczy assures him Heaven is all that awaits them.
How can he be so certain?
Did they not accomplish so much that it would be impossible to deny the glimpse of what God has in store for them? Would he not rejoice that they had uncovered the mystery of his grand creation and weep for those who refuse to celebrate this truth? The grandeur of Earth as it is in Heaven has always been there. Even now, within an echo of a page from their story, Oczy boldly states, there is a definite beauty within the starry sky that surrounds them during this night they share.
And so Oczy's words slip beneath the coarse fibers of the noose and cradle Badeni's face. They gently lift him from the depths of despair so that they, at last, may bear witness to the same beauty, together, at each other's side.