Hatred Day

by T S Pettibone

  One day, after a hot run, he showed me his second favorite snake—an eyelash pit-viper named Aušra. He even let me hold her, but she was cranky, so she bit me. Lucian picked me up and ran me to an emergency hospital room at the back of the club, where the doctor gave me antivenin, morphine and penicillin. Luckily, Lucian had to leave for a deal, so he didn’t see me heal. I was left alone with the doctor. When she went to check on another patient, I snuck from the club and ran back home. Lucian found me the next day, demanding to know why I’d left the hospital. I told him that he had a good doctor and that I was all healed. He didn’t believe that I felt as good as I let on, so he stayed by my side all day to make sure. Lycidius, who was always watching me from far off, didn’t like this at all.

  On June 24th, the Lithuanian Dew Holiday, Lucian let me go with the Swangunners’ daughters, girlfriends and wives into the woods to find magic dew. He told me that the morning dew became magic on the shortest night of the year and that if I washed my face with it, I’d look younger and prettier and be cured of sickness. I wanted to be pretty so I washed my face longer than the other girls. Then I gathered a bouquet of magic herbs and made a head wreath. I was invited to go to a bonfire to greet the sun, but couldn’t because I had to go to school the next day.

  I was always happy about the presents Lucian gave me, but Lycidius hated it. Whenever I’d come home with a new gift from him, Lycidius would immediately try to make me a better gift (the best of these was a tower he’d built in the forest, out of logs, twigs and branches). Parisa and I would go to the tower where it was quiet when we wanted to talk. I’d grown used to the sounds of the slum, except for the crying that came from the field of exile—a field above the slum where all diseased people were abandoned, left to die and lie unburied.

  Ryuki was the first to be brave enough to go on the field and bury the bodies. After a while, Parisa and I went too. We felt sad for the sick toddlers, so we carried them off the field and hid them in my tower in the woods. Even though we fed the toddlers fruit and bits of rice, they all died within a few days or weeks. It made me wonder if I’d die too: I always healed from sicknesses and injuries, so I couldn’t know. If I never died, I knew I’d be unhappy because everyone I loved would leave me. One night in the spring, Desya and I both couldn’t sleep, so we stayed awake talking. He told me that he had a secret. But before he could tell me what it was, he made me promise that I would keep quiet until he’d figured out the right words to tell Ryuki. I was curious to know the secret so I made the promise.

  He smiled the brightest smile I’d ever seen and said, “Parisa and I got married last night. It was an Inborn ceremony, but Parisa still wanted to use rings. Lycidius stood in as the witness.”

  I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say at first. When I realized he wasn’t joking, I felt hurt and asked him why he hadn’t let me go to the wedding. He looked embarrassed, and said, “If the Swangunners find out we’re married, they’ll tax us. I don’t have the stacks to pay all the fees so I didn’t want anyone to know.” He held up a chain around his neck, showing me a metal ring. “Lycidius saw me making the rings, so I had to tell him.”

  I thought I understood better after this, even though I still felt hurt. But in all, I was happy about the news because Parisa was my best friend. Since she and Desya were married, we’d always be family, no matter what bad things happened. I told Ghost the news after Desya fell asleep beside Parisa.

  I could only know when new seasons were coming by snow, rain and sunshine. It was in the summer of my fourteenth year that I first realized how much Lycidius liked me.

  A terrible storm hit Hollowstone so we had to go into the underground part of the slum until it passed. After four days, it was safe to go above ground and the first thing I did was run to the river to swim. A foot of rain had fallen during the storm so the water was high and the current strong, but I went swimming in a shallow part of the river while Lycidius watched me from the bank. It happened so fast: I slipped and couldn’t grab onto anything. The current pounded my head. I choked and swallowed so much water. The current threw me against rocks; I broke bones and got cut. I thought I was going to die, but then I saw Lycidius sprinting along the shoreline. I thought that he wouldn’t help me because he hadn’t touched more than two inches of water in a bucket since we’d met. I was so grateful to be wrong.

  He got ahead of me on the shore and then jumped in. He was powerful—the current couldn’t suck him under—but I’d never seen him afraid until that day. He reacted as if the water were fire. He was white-faced with wild eyes and his whole body shook. With one hand, he grabbed my arm and yanked me from the water. Then he dragged me to shore and fell down in the mud, panting so hard I thought he might faint. I held onto him, thanking him, and by the time my bones had healed, he was hugging me back. It was the first time he broke his rule about Shadows not touching the body they protect, and afterwards, he broke the rule almost every day.

  He’d stand close to me while we walked. He’d touch my braid when he thought I didn’t notice and sometimes, at night, he’d touch my fingers. I was nervous at first, because he looked at me differently, like he was thinking something he wouldn’t say. But after a few months, I started to miss his hand while I was running. He’d held my hand so often that it felt strange when it was empty. We did things together: went to bonfires, street festivals, cage fights. He helped me gather herbs in the forest and didn’t get angry when I asked him to hold my basket. He helped me do laundry, carve a chair for Ryuki, and kill an Elder-Ridge Back beast. I made him a necklace with one of the claws, which he put around his neck and didn’t take off.

  We still argued a lot, but I was grateful that he’d stopped doing mind games on me. Usually, he’d grunt and walk away before turning around and coming back. He’d never tell me he was sorry and I knew it was because he was too proud. Instead, he’d make me a gift to show that he wanted to be friends again. Sometimes I’d accept the gifts and other times I’d try to make him say sorry. One of these times he stared at me for a half-hour, chewing his tongue barbell, but he didn’t say the words—it was against his soldier-code to apologize for anything. I tried ignoring him for a few days to help him change his mind. He hated being ignored. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he followed me around, grunting to let me know he was there. I ignored him for a few more days before I spoke to him. He treated me nicely, so I knew he was really trying to be a good friend, and I never asked him to say sorry again.

  But Desya always said sorry to Parisa. Often, I’d hear them fighting in the woods, or inside the hut, or by the lake, or in the back alley. It never lasted more than one day because Desya had a sensitive conscience. He’d find Parisa and make her forgive him by doing whatever she asked, then he’d invoke the Promethia Flower and ask forgiveness for what he’d done. One time, Parisa made him kill a beast, skin it, tan the hide, and then put the hide on her shoulders before she forgave him.

  Lycidius heard about it, and told him, “I’d starve to death before letting a girl turn me into a wimp.”

  I felt bad for Desya, so I reminded Lycidius about what Ryuki told us about love: “Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.”

  Lycidius didn’t reply. He just sat there in silence, looking confused, like I’d just told him the opposite of what he thought. He was the most hard-nosed person I knew, but I still wanted to be near him.

  Our lives changed in the winter of my fifteenth year when Ryuki didn’t come home for two days. It was the longest he’d been away, so we knew something was wrong. We spent hours searching the huts; we even asked Neko to help us and rounded up a huge search party. Since all the neighbors liked Ryuki, over five-hundred people joined. We combed all nine levels of the slums, searched the forest, the river and even the waste pits. With each second, I became more afraid of finding him hurt.

  We finally found him in a back alley near the loading docks.

  He was lying in the sand, still wearing his work g
loves. As soon as I saw the vultures eating him, I picked up a stick and hit the birds as hard as I could. I protected his body with Neko and Desya. Lycidius asked the loaders what had happened. Most ignored him, but one eventually told him that Ryuki had collapsed and didn’t get up. I cried so hard that a man kicked me to make me be quiet. I barely noticed when Lycidius struck the man, sending him sprawling, and picked me up.

  Desya brought Ryuki to the woods and we buried him in a glade of redwood trees under a rock that we carved with flowers and wings. I planted the beryl barb flowers from our hut pot over his grave, knowing they would always bloom. For the first time in years, I prayed my own prayer. I’d always believed in the one power of the Promethia Flower—a source of pure healing on Armador—and I prayed it would make sure Ryuki was never hurt or hungry again and that he’d find my mother, Lorna, in the afterlife. Parisa laid her beast hide on the grave. I had never seen Desya cry so hard.

  Neko left two days later because he had to do a surgery. After four days, Parisa, and Desya went back to their jobs, but Lycidius and I stayed with Ryuki. Since I hadn’t stopped crying long enough to eat, Lycidius got worried. He said, “The people you love never really die. They’ll stay with you as long as you remember them. All you need to do is remember Ryuki and he’ll be happy.”

  I knew he’d lost his family too, and it made me trust his words. A day later, I ate a piece of bread so he would stop worrying.

  We stayed at the grave for a week, sleeping under a birch tree at night and planting flowers around Ryuki’s grave during the day. Even though Lucian needed me for deliveries, I couldn’t make myself leave because I knew I’d lost the only father I’d ever have.

  Age 15

  Gehenna Slums

  I wasn’t afraid of Gehenna anymore. I didn’t cry when I was hungry and I tried not to complain when I had to eat insects or drink puddle water. Each night before I fell asleep, I asked the Promethia Flower, the pure healing, to free me from everything that hurt.

  I talked to Ryuki instead of Ghost now.

  Each day after running, I visited his grave and told him all of the things I thought and felt. I told him that Lucian hired me to be the nanny of his three nieces—Drasa, Svajonė and Erelis— and that each week, he paid me with new clothes, rice and ten coppers; I told him that Parisa was pregnant and that Desya had become a Street Soldier for Kapa to keep the three of them safe; I told him that I was 5’6” now; I told him that I missed him and that I thought of him every day; and I told him that I loved Lycidius and that even though I knew he loved me too, he said nothing.

  One night, I knew for certain that he wanted to be more than my friend. It was a hot night, too hot to sleep. Lycidius was so big now, he didn’t fit on our mat at night and had to bend down to walk outside the door. As he rolled over, I opened my eyes and saw him staring at me. He was not frowning. I didn’t know what he was thinking at first. Then, when he looked at the veil over my lips, I knew. We didn’t talk and I was afraid to. As he pulled the veil off my face, his dark eye turned violent-looking, so I only stared in his bright eye. He put his mouth on mine slowly and touched my face for the first time. When I started kissing him back, my heart beat faster and he held me even closer. That moment something changed between us. Lycidius changed. He became gentler than he’d ever been in his life.

  For months, he followed me around in the same way that Desya followed Parisa—not because he had to, because he wanted to. He kept his eyes on me whenever I took off my veil, so he could see my face before I covered it again.

  The first time I ever heard him laugh was when I let him read my favorite book, I am a Cat. He stayed up all night reading, smiling at almost every page. I didn’t sleep that night, but I didn’t want to. I just listened to him, covering my face with my blankets so he wouldn’t catch me spying. I was glad that he could really have fun like other people.

  My favorite times were when he smiled at me. It made me feel things I’d never felt before—things Parisa talked about, but that I’d never understood. Each day, Lycidius and I grew closer and even told each other our secret thoughts. During most of the nights since our kiss, he held me, so that it was hard to sleep on the nights he didn’t. He told me he could only be happy if I was. If I had a bad day of running, he always tried to make it better. One of these times, he traded his extra shirt for a new pot of beryl barb flowers, because he knew they were my favorite. The gift reminded me of Ryuki, so I kept it in the safest place in our hut. I was still afraid of the dark parts of Lycidius, but I started to believe that the thing behind his dark eye wouldn’t hurt me unless he told it to.

  My fear left almost completely when he began to confide more deeply in me. We sat in the forest alone together from sunrise to sunset on days when I had no work or school, just talking. He always turned a little shy when he spoke of his past, like he was afraid I might get scared of him again and decide not to love him anymore. But by now, I loved him too much to let his dark eye scare me away. Some of the things he told me I already knew and other things surprised me. I learned that he’d respected Ryuki despite being human, and that he thought Parisa was greedy. He told me that the woman with the white hair, who he used to talk about in his sleep, was his adopted brother’s mother. Lycidius told me she was the only woman he’d ever liked until he’d met me.

  Sometimes, he closed up, though. I knew he felt uncomfortable at giving away all his secrets, so I started paying more attention to things he did. I discovered signs that showed what mood he was in. Over time, I asked him private questions and found out that he played the harmonica, that he had an eidetic memory, that he was taught to be ambidextrous, and that his favorite weather was cold wind. He even taught me a song on the harmonica called Beyond the Sky and I played it for Ryuki each time I visited his grave.

  I never told anyone about our kiss. Mostly because Lycidius didn’t kiss me again, even though I knew he wanted to. Each time I thought he might, he looked guilty and stopped suddenly. This was usually when we climbed the abandoned tower and sat together under the stars. One night, I was feeling confused about it and asked him to explain. He again looked guilty and said, “It’s against the law for highborns and their Shadows to be lovers. My job is to protect you, Snofrid. We can be friends, but that’s all.”

  My heart hurt badly at this. I knew the law but had always thought he didn’t care about it. The law didn’t apply to me because I was a halfbreed. I asked him, “But don’t you love me?”

  He said, “Snofrid, I love you more than everyone I ever loved.”

  I frowned, feeling more confused, and asked, “Then why can’t we be together?”

  “Because I made an oath to your uncle to keep Shadow Law. So if we want to be lovers, then you have to release me as your Shadow.”

  I hated this idea. He was property of the Inborn Army, so they could do whatever they wanted with him if I let him go. I said, “If I release you, you’ll get deployed and we’ll never see each other.”

  “I know, Snofrid. But we have to make a decision.”

  It was the hardest decision I ever had to make. I didn’t want to give up Lycidius. I’d already given up Ryuki and Ghost. If I said goodbye to him, I thought I’d die. I hugged him tightly and said, “I don’t want you to leave me, Lycidius.”

  At this choice, he seemed relieved, though not much happier. He thought about the problem for a long time, talking to his invisible friend, before he finally said, “I won’t leave you, Snofrid. But it’ll be easier for me if we spend less time together.”

  I nodded and tried not to cry in front of him.

  After we climbed down from the tower, I went to Ryuki’s grave and cried there. I wanted to be with Lycidius in the way Desya was with Parisa. I wanted it to be happy, but, from the way Lycidius acted after that night, I knew my dream would never happen. He grew distant, just like he’d been when we’d first met. I knew he was angry—not at me—at himself, at Shadow Law and at the Inborn Army. Even though he hardly ever spoke to me, I gave
my love to him through looks, as if they could be touches. I think it made things harder for him, because sometimes after these looks, he’d grew even more distant. He never touched me again.

  Once a week we would spend time together and talk about what we’d do when we finally left Gehenna. I wanted to go to university and Lycidius wanted to design machines. When I asked about the project he was working on, he told me, “It’s something that will save you and Desya.”

  I wanted this so much that I told Lycidius again, “If you get us out of here, I’ll love you forever.” Instead of looking suspicious, he glanced at my mouth. He didn’t kiss me as I hoped he would. He just rubbed his temples, as if they hurt, and turned away. When he stayed quiet, I asked him if the ‘something’ would save Parisa and Roshani, too.

  He told me, “If you ask me, I’ll save them, too.”

  It was one week after this that our darkest days in Gehenna came.

  They began when Roshani was caught lifting coppers from one of her Swangunner clients. Parisa and I heard about it and ran to the platform where she was being held. A large crowd had gathered because the Swangunner wanted to make an example of her. He beat her with a crowbar. Parisa fought to reach her, but she was struck by a Swangunner with the butt of a rifle. Her head was bleeding and I was terrified she might die. Before I dragged her off the platform, I saw the Swangunner put a hose down Roshani’s throat. I’d seen this kind of execution before so I knew he’d make her drink the water until her stomach burst. Just as I left the platform, I heard the Swangunner yell, “This is what will happen if a whore starts thinking she’s worth more than the maggots that will eat her corpse!”