Steel Melody

Chapter 16

In a memory of the past it was the warm spring of the North. Heartrik was only ten. His name wasn't Heartrik then, not the false boy then, but Tytekk. That's what he was named by his mother, his mother who worked the farms as a hand, blistering and calicing her own with ploughs handels and rough hided crops and beasts in the light of a harsh summer sun.. He was one of many workers there, a legion almost. They called it a ranch but it was more a factory without a roof. You had a job which you worked at like a cog in a machine. His mother was higher up in the system, her uncle being the owner. Nonetheless she did her share. In those days his only friend was Atten, the son of a tanner. Atten wanted to sit and read whilst Heartrik wanted to explore. The organic wooding of old paddock fences contrasted against the machine hide of tractors the size of houses, ploughs large enough to rip down trees, and cages of steel strong enough to withstand explosives. All of it was so unnatural and volatile, a cesspit of churning machinery waiting to snap.

There were thousands of animals. It was a production line, the exact same as an industrial factory. Meat was moved and slaughtered in record time under the watchful eye of farmhands. Meat which would soon be in the stomachs of thousands. Rarely did he ever think about all the people he fed. Even if he was just a small part, a single piston in an engine, a single spring in the trigger of a gun, he did more for the world by guiding cows than he could ever dream of. If you counted animals then Tytekk had been raised around death. He had seen the eyes of thousands of animals lead to slaughter. When he finally did see his own species die the same way, he couldn't help but think that all that blood from his childhood lightened the grief. At the end of the day workers would return home, sore and beaten. It was the same day everyday, even if a number on a calendar moved. He got to sleep in his great uncle's manor with his mother. Even before meeting his father he was privileged. In those days he wished to escape out into the world and into something far bigger. Something far beyond the pallid smell and dry faces of thousands of cows. He wanted to taste something other than steak and milk, and the occasional treat of fresh strawberries his mother would share with him. He had only travelled to a city once, and his mother considered that to be a vacation. It was only for a day, and he explored it eagerly with Atten. All Atten's research worked in his favour, as he guided the two to a toy store where they explored and gazed for hours. They always had to return to the farm in the end. Soon he couldn't tell a man 's face apart from the cows, they were just as abundant and they treated him the same. That is to say, they ignored him. His mother however was always sweet and kind. She was benevolent and just. Not just from how she would treat him, but how she could set him straight when she knew he could do better. Few knew how to read, but he did, even though it took his mother hours to teach him. So great was his admiration for her that no matter what he always liked to imagine he took after his mother more than his father, whoever he was.

But then in the tenth year of his life the farms festered with a disease. Crops died. Workers were sacked as the farm ran dry of income, and those that stayed found the disease burdening them as well. In the first week of the outbreak they were rushed to nearby hospitals. But they only found more horror, as the hospitals were full with patients of a similar affliction. The factory grew quiet. For a while the cattle lived without slaughter, until they too began to die from the plague. People began to die, boils suffocating their throat. A lot of people began to die. Tytekk couldn't understand why at the time but most were killed by their colleagues out of pity. He didn't understand that ending a life early could be called mercy. Soon he would learn. Emerald fever spread like wildfire in a drought. The farm began to starve as the money dried out. The few farmhands which remained left, trying to find some work to survive.

Atten and his father left right as the food stores lacked the ability to support more than five. Atten took his books with him. Their goodbye was hollow, the father forsaking their friendship for a chance to escape. He left Tytekk a book behind to remember him by. "It's my favourite." Atten said sadly, clutching it to his chest. "It's about a man and a portrait. I hope you like it, Tytekk." Atten had said as he placed it gently into Tytekk's hands before he left for good. Two weeks later, Tytekk's mother would use the book as fuel for the fireplace. Tytekk had only read two chapters in between his work when it was burnt.