Chapter Thirteen - Learning Truths

Nathan placed the freshly washed spring greens down and raised his eyes to see the long black hair of the man who called himself Ren Zexian drifting in the light breeze as he disappeared through the cottage garden gate. Nathan had never seen such long hair, not even worn by the maids that came and went over the time. His fingers felt almost itchy in want to touch it. He rubbed the tips of them together before returning his attention to his vegetables.

His ability to cook had not changed, he was still learning, but he knew enough not to boil the new potatoes, spinach and asparagus for. At first, he'd cooked such things in the same pot, but learned that cooking the spinach too long made them mushy and tasteless and the potatoes cooked too short were hard to bite into. He dished up his meal upon a plate and paused. Should he placed a little on a second plate for Ren Zexian? But there probably wasn't enough for those friends he spoke of. In fact, was there really enough here for Ren Zexian to share in the first place? His stomach rumbled as he was torn by indecision.

Just as he pulled down a second plate, having decided to place what he did not want to eat upon it and let the man decide for himself whether he chose to eat or not, there was a loud bang coming from the vicinity of the house. Nathan immediately sank into a crouch and covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. What was that? Was it dangerous? Did something happen to that man? The sound repeated, causing Nathan to whimper as his hands failed to stop the noise reaching his ears. He didn't like that sound, it was too loud, too unknown. It echoed through his mind as if the sounds were still blasting away from wherever they came from.

Silence descended, but Nathan did not move from his position, even when his legs began to cramp beneath him, did not open his eyes even though the loud noises had stopped. He counted his breaths in his mind. This was something that was suggested to him once, by his nanny. Whenever he was feeling overwhelmed, she had said. He felt his heartbeat gradually slow and a calmness fill him. And then a warmth gently brushed against his hand.

He leapt up, but his legs had numbed and he fell back. "Sorry, I startled you," Ren Zexian said as he crouched lightly down before Nathan. His voice was deep and calm. His tone and volume were level and rhythmic, it made Nathan feel oddly at ease.

"I don't like to be touched," Nathan blurted out, but then as he considered the memory of warmth upon his hand, wondered why he was not actually as bothered as usual.

"My apologies," Ren Zexian replied. "My people often felt the same and I did not think. I have seen my new friends hug and participate in strange touching gestures with hand and fist… I assumed all men were like that here." He shook his head and then looked directly into Nathan's eyes. They were as black as his long hair, but Nathan almost immediately found his own eyes falling. He did not like looking into people's eyes. People's eyes often expressed their feelings, even if their faces remained stoic, but as Nathan could not read them and did not like feeling the stares of others, looking directly at them just made him uncomfortable.

"Nathan, I need your help, please," Ren Zexian said. "But I need you to understand something as well." There was a slight pause and Nathan lifted himself from the ground in that time and moved over to the sink in order to wash his hands with his own water. He wished that he had not run out of soap.

"Did you go to the main house?" Nathan asked, suddenly. "There should be soap at the main house."

"I haven't had the chance to see if there is, as yet," Ren Zexian advised him. Nathan inwardly sighed. It would be nice to be able to clean his hand thoroughly again. Not that he minded when he was out in the garden and they were covered in dirt from his labours in raising his plants and flowers, but he would like to remove the mud from his hands more easily when in his home. And the germs as well. Germs could make you sick and being sick meant spending time away from his garden while recovering. He had thought about going into the main house yesterday, but the silly vines on the house kept covering the door, so he couldn't get in. Speaking of which...

"Loud noises came from the main house, did you hear them?" Nathan asked him.

"Yes," came the reply. "That is part of that which I spoke to you about. Who were the people in the large property? Were they your relatives?"

"No, they were hired by my parents to look after the house," Nathan replied. He did not know the most recent ones at all and did not like the new maid. She had tried to follow him a few times to the cottage until the current butler had told her to stop.

Ren Zexian considered what had been explained within the house by Harry. "Loads of people just kept falling sick," he had said. "If you phone the hospital, they all said the same thing; the wards were full of people suffering the same illness. It was best to stay at home in bed. But then most of the people who were sick just died, dropping like flies. You'd approach them, thinking to cover their bodies until they could be dealt with and they just got up and started attacking people and if you were bit, you would die and rise up like the rest. Looks like something similar went on in here."

"Those people fell ill at some point in the past," Ren Zexian tried to explain. "But they did not make it."

"Oh," Nathan assumed Ren Zexian meant that they had all died. He would have to tell his parents when he next spoke to them, so they could hire new people.

"The illness is strange, it kills people," Ren Zexian continued, carefully. "But those people died without laying to rest their mortal affairs and their bodies continue to move about seeking what they have lost."

"I don't understand," Nathan frowned, then recalled what Ren Zexian had spoken of earlier, about walking corpses and undead. "Did they not all die? Then how can they move about if they are dead."

"We do not understand how it is possible either," Ren Zexian told him. "We can only make sure that they can be put to rest." Nathan thought over his words quickly and deduced them as truth. He usually preferred facts over word of mouth, but perhaps it was the way Ren Zexian did not shy away from speaking to him and the way he spoke to him without exasperation or contempt. He could also not deny the fact that his plants could move about without the stroke of the wind, so why not corpses? "The sounds you heard earlier were… gunshots," Ren Zexian continued. "One of the Living corpses appeared from behind my comrade and he would have died if that weapon had not been used. However, your plants have decided we are a threat and have trapped my comrades within the house. I wonder if you could speak with them?"

"Oh, alright," Nathan agreed. He glanced up as far as Ren Zexian's lips to find them curved into a gentle smile and his face felt suddenly warm, though he could not fathom why, as he watched the man turn around and lead them to the main house.