My father stares hard at my mother, assessing the sincerity of her words. “We will leave, but I will not take our child to the Pith. On that decision, dear wife, my mind is made up.”
“Our bags are packed. I will tell our daughter. She’ll be upset that we’re leaving on her birthday. But if leaving tomorrow allows her to see even one more year, it is worth the sadness she’ll face today.”
Then, as subtly as a gentle breeze, I watch my mother turn her body toward the door. As she twirls, the leaves and dust in our front yard rise up and spin at the exact same speed. She turns back, drawing her hand in a slow motion from the left of her waist to the right. The vortex forming in our driveway stills at her command.
“No! She couldn’t have been a Windwalker!” I cry as the vision fades. The weight of my suspicions about my mother falls around my neck like a noose. How had I never noticed it before? “I watched her die that very next day. Surely if she was a Windwalker, she would have been spared!”
“Did you see her die?” Echoes the voice of the Carreglas around me. I want to affirm it, but doubts creep into my mind. “What did you see that day really, Iris?”
Dread almost stops my tongue as I wheeze. “Show me.” The fateful day appears in translucent images. It is sunny, and for a moment the brightness blinds my sight. We stand near an open netting where colorful birds from all over the land squawk and flutter. My seven-year-old form presses against the net, nose peeking through the mesh. The stiff breeze toys with my hair as the dust on the path begins to twist behind me, but I am too entranced by the birds to care. From this outside perspective, I can see my parents tense and face the opposite direction of the birds, hands linking as they wait for the attack.
The Windwalkers materialize as though they are a creation of the breeze. My father pushes my mother aside, and she spins as a tornado envelops her body. That’s when my child self faces the scene, witnessing my father’s disintegration. Every detail is painstakingly accurate, right down to the moment when his hair crumbles like dust.
“Run!” he shouts his last words to me, and obediently, I scamper into the shadows. Yet reviewing the events of this day, I wonder if he hadn’t been talking to my mother, who twirls helplessly not six feet away, very much alive.
“Where is she now?” I wail, a thousand thoughts and curses in my mind. How could she abandon me? Why did she leave me behind to suffer everything that has occurred since then? Did she ever care for me at all? Why did she allow my father to die like that? Why didn’t she step in to save him?
“She did what she must to keep you safe. You are the child of the Ddraig blood and Windwalkers—a blending of bloodlines never before seen in our realms. It makes you a dangerous commodity. You are of both worlds, but ultimately you belong to neither.” The ghostly figure stalks over to stand beside me, putting her hollow hand over my shoulder as though to comfort me. “Your mother returned to Déchets after the attack so no one would look for you. I doubt the Windwalkers even realized that you were her daughter that day.”
“If I have Windwalker blood too, then why do I not control the breezes like they do?”
The reply is so simple that I feel a little stupid for asking. “You’ve never tried it, have you?” The light pulses with mocking laughter as I shake my head. “So how do you know that you cannot use these powers?”
“What about Cane and Cyrus? Why did Cane attack his brother? Was Hawk really behind it all?”
“Are you sure you wish to see this?” warns the Carreglas hovering before me. “Your feelings over all three of these people run extremely strong—even more so than for your own parents. What you learn may not be what you wish.”
What is known can never become unknown, I tell myself even as I answer. Siri’s beautiful form appears in my imagination, all her urgings about Cyrus right behind her. Then my mind floods with the mysteries that shroud Wolf: is he to be trusted? What about Hawk? I’ll never be free of these questions if I don’t find out what’s real. “I need this truth too.” So much depends on it.
The light shifts to green and yellow as the background changes; the male I knew as Hawk standing at the mouth of a cave. Seeing his unmasked face, clear of any suffering or wound, fills my heart with joy. “Let’s go!” he shouts over his shoulder as two small boys appear beside him. As they scuttle to the entrance, one boy slips on the sharp stones. His brother catches him, steadying him with a quick embrace before Hawk slaps his hand away. “Let him fall next time. Then he’ll learn to keep himself upright. Now get out there and hunt!” Hawk demands as he shoves them both roughly down the hill to the forest floor.
He’s harsher than I remember. I regard Hawk’s strictness in disbelief. He never reacted in such a manner to me. Was it because I was a girl?
“It was the nature of the forest dwellers to be strong, tough, and almost brutal. Even before Cassé fell, the forests have always been dangerous places. In many ways, Hawk was living by the rules of the Major Houses long before he ever wore a mask,” the Carreglas specter explains before continuing the vision. “Don’t judge him harshly, Iris. He does love his children, as you will see.”
We follow them into the woods, the boys running silently up to the river’s shores. They fish with little success. One brother is focused on his goal of finding food. His eyes never leave the rushing current; I recognize this steady focus as Cane. The other boy scampers impatiently along the water, more interested in the bits of shells and rocks there than in hunting for food.
“Father won’t like it if he sees you playing around, brother,” Cane chides as he tosses his line out into the current.
“I can’t help it—fishing bores me! You just stand with a pole and wait. That’s not fun,” the other boy, Cyrus, whines as he tosses rocks into the river.
“You don’t like to go hunting at all. Why, you’d be content to live on algae and walnuts for the rest of your life,” Cane answers with a smirk. “No wonder Dad thinks you are weak.”
“I’m not! I just don’t like fish,” Cyrus answers. He rubs his wrist along its bony protrusions, bruises evident around his thumb. How did he get those? I wonder, feeling a knot building in my stomach. They almost look like they have fingerprints. Did someone try to break his finger?
“You just don’t like killing,” Cane accuses sharply, pulling the fishing line out of the water.
“Is that why you don’t like me?” Cyrus asks, his search through the debris along the shore stopping abruptly. He eyes Cane warily.
Cane huffs as his feet crunch in the sand and stones along the shore, inching closer to Cyrus’s still form. “No. I just don’t like you at all. No reason necessary, brother.” He suddenly smacks Cyrus with the fishing pole, over and over, until it cracks in half. Cyrus bleeds along his collarbone and eyebrow, tears pouring down his cheeks.
“Stop it, brother! Please…,” Cyrus wails, raising his hands to shield his face.
“Father says you are a nuisance! A waste of food and air. He says there’s not much reason to keep you alive. And I agree.” Cane raises both pieces of the fishing pole, the jagged ends aiming at Cyrus’s chest. Get away from him, I long to cry, urging the child to move with my own willpower.
Cyrus bolts down the waterline, shimmying up a tall sycamore tree. Hiding amongst the tall, high branches, he waits until his brother hurries by before he allows himself to grieve.
“It’s not true,” Cyrus tells himself as he wipes blood and tears from his face. “Father doesn’t hate me.” His chin wavers as he sobs over his stained fingers.
The Carreglas shows me many more incidents of this brutal sibling abuse, and I struggle to close my mind to them. Cane, my kind, gentle Cane—how could he hurt Cyrus so? How could he hate his own brother that much? And Cyrus—my gods, what horrors that child endured!
Hawk, for all his tough love and lessons, does not show as much loathing for Cyrus as Cane believes. If anything, he seems to have a soft spot for Cyrus, caring for his wounds as Cane explains them away as clumsin
ess. Hawk tucks the sniffling boy into his bed at night, even leaving a candle lit by his side in the cave. It only infuriates Cane more, and the beatings continue, each more hurtful than the last.
Yet the jealousy that finally pushes Cane over the edge, I soon learn, has nothing to do with Hawk’s attentions at all. It does, however, have everything to do with mine. I see myself sitting at my cracked upstairs window, teary eyed after another fight with Mom about going outside to play.
“Wonder what’s wrong with her,” Cyrus ponders as he notices me. I remember watching them cut across the field on their way back into the forest.
“Leave her alone! She’s not like us,” Cane demands, scurrying off into the forest without Cyrus.
Hearing my forlorn wailing in the vision, I see how Cyrus pities me. Instead of following his brother back to their home, he runs closer to my house. Climbing carefully up the tree, he sits outside my window. Oh, how I loved talking to him! I remember fondly those days. That boy truly listened to me. I could have chatted with him for ages! How strange to know that Cyrus and I become so antagonistic towards one another in the years to come.
After our conversation, Cyrus carefully scurries down the tree that night, scampering off to his home as the stars appear in the sky. “Where’ve you been, boy?” Hawk questions when Cyrus returns to their cave dwelling late that night.
“I saw the most beautiful girl! She was crying at her window—”
Hawk interrupts Cyrus’s explanation with a laugh. “Oh ho! So, you’ve found a house dweller that you like! The forest girls aren’t good enough for you? Well, sit down and tell me about this girl, son! I want to know what’s catching your eye.”
They talk long into the night, sitting by the fire at the cave’s edge. Cane stays in the shadows, watching their banter from a distance. Even in the dimness of the surroundings, anyone could see the hatred building in Cane’s countenance. Cyrus had done nothing wrong! He was just being kind to me.
As the weeks and our meetings continue, Cane’s beatings on Cyrus become even more frequent and cruel. “I cannot bear to watch this,” I admit, turning away as Cane beats Cyrus until his nose breaks. “Please, no more!”
“You asked for the truth, Iris. This is it. There is one more thing you must see, then it is over. Remember, I did warn you that you might not like what you learn,” the figure reminds me as the vision changes once more.
I see the last conversation I’d ever have with the child Cyrus. We speak of menial things: the colors of the fall leaves, our favorite folktales about the gods, the different sounds of the various types of birds living in the forest. We are innocent in that moment, and I would later come to cherish our times together. How did I never notice the bruises around Cyrus’s eyes? How did I never see the painful grimaces as he climbed the tree, or the way he limped away after we’d spoken? How much anguish did he endure just for the crime of meeting with me? I had been so absorbed in my own problems that I never noticed his pain, I condemn myself as I drink in the sight of the child’s face before me.
“I have to go,” Cyrus sighs wistfully as he prepares to leave. “My father will worry if I’m not home when the sun sets completely. He knows where I am, but he still expects me home before full dark.”
“I wish…I wish I could come with you,” the child version of myself exclaims, touching Cyrus’s hand on my windowsill.
Impulsively, Cyrus leans down and hesitantly kisses my knuckles. When he sits up, there is a blush in his cheeks, but he does not meet my gaze. “I wish you could too, Child of the Moon.” Then he slips down the tree before I’m able to respond.
“Why did he never tell me what he was enduring?” I ask the Carreglas, a sob building in my throat. “I would have done something! I would have pleaded with my family to take him away from his brother. I would have—”
“The past is unchangeable, Iris. This is the cruelest lesson you will learn as a Gwen. It is easy to see into the future, knowing that it can change at a moment’s notice. It is far more difficult to endure memories. They can drive you mad if you allow it.” The Carreglas’s image looks at me in sympathy, her ethereal hand hovering over my shoulder. “Do not dwell on past regrets. Do not imagine all the ways you would have changed his life. Do not even allow yourself to say, ‘if I had only said this or done that.’ You must accept that what has happened cannot be rewritten. Then you must move on.”
The vision shifts as though it is formed in smoke, and I see Cane waiting in the field with murder in his eyes. “What did she say to you?” Cane demands, shoving Cyrus hard against the ground.
“We just talked about the land and what you and I do every day. She is so sad—she’s never allowed to play in the forest like us.”
“And you cheered her up? Made her think that everything’s all right in this stink hole of a world, hmm?” Cane sneers as he kicks his brother hard in the ribs. “There is no room for hope in this land, brother. How can I make you see that?” Cane backs away from Cyrus, heading toward my house.
“What are you going to do?” Cyrus shouts even as he holds his middle. There is blood in his mouth, and I hear a rattling noise when he breathes.
“I’m going to teach that girl a lesson—to help her see what it’s really like out here.” The idea of Cane, not only this brutal, but also coming after me in hate, turns my heart cold.
“No, please!” Cyrus pleads, crawling after his brother in an effort to protect me. Tears pour down my cheeks as he screams. “Do not hurt her! Please, Brother Mine. I’ll do anything. Just leave her alone!”
“Oh, I see!” Cane growls, crouching over his brother’s body. “You like her! I saw you kiss her hand! You think that one day she’ll be your girl? Little Brother, always getting everything he wants. Always dreaming. You are weak! You are even softer than I realized. No wonder our father hates you so much! The girl will too, especially after she has to survive on her own out here.” Cane stands on Cyrus’s arm, grinding the heel of his shoe against his brother’s skin until I am sure the bone will give way. “Do you really think that a girl who’s spent her entire life indoors will be able to survive even a day out here? Or are you hoping that she will take you into her house? You think that you’ll become her little housecat? You’re pathetic!”
Cyrus’s face bunches up in disgust as he struggles to push Cane aside. “You’re wrong! Father doesn’t hate me, and neither does she! You’re wrong about everything!”
“We’ll see,” Cane mumbles as he slowly draws his knife from its sheath. I cannot tear my eyes away as that knife rips through Cyrus’s face. Part of me watches in detached fascination as the skin over his eyebrow splits. How did that blade miss his eye? Only by the grace of the gods! Blood oozes sluggishly down his cheek, his hands moving in slow motion to push feebly against Cane’s chest. The unrelenting blade continues down the opposite cheek, stopping just before the major artery in Cyrus’s neck.
A wild part of me screams and throws my hands into the image, temporarily distorting the view. It does nothing to stop Cane’s voice as he mocks his broken brother. “Will she care for you now with your ugly face? Best to just let go, brother. Just die! It will be better for us all.”
Cyrus’s body convulses as the shock and blood loss take their toll. He thrashes on the ground at Cane’s feet.
“I am truly sorry, Iris,” whispers the voice of the Carreglas.
“I cannot believe it.” Cyrus had not always been the hateful creature I’ve believed him to be. And Cane…my mind cannot handle his brutality and jealousy.
“That’s a lie!” the Carreglas howls, her ethereal hands reaching over to my chest. Though her fingers slide right through my body, I can feel their presence in between my ribs like splinters. Every inhale rakes her fingers across my bones, and it feels like glass claws ripping me apart from the inside out. “Speak only truth to me, girl!”
“I….” Blood and spit dribble down my chin as I tremble. “Cyrus was telling the truth. I cannot believe he was the little boy
from my past.” Gentle, kind, considerate; in these memories he is everything good in this world. And Cane…my Cane is a monster.
“Better,” the Carreglas visage whispers, slowly extricating her fingers from my body. “You wonder, I think, why I should be so stern in my reaction to your words. However, for someone who claims to desire truth, you seem determined to blind your eyes.”
I slowly sink to the ground, waiting for my heart to stop its thundering pace in my chest. “I will not apologize for my opinion of Cyrus. As a man, surely you must see that he acted abhorrently; surely you agree on this.”
“There is still much for you to see, Iris. And I do not take sides of judgment,” the Carreglas mutters, swirling around me like a wisp of smoke.
“I do pity Cyrus the boy. He did not deserve what he endured. But why did he grow up to hate Hawk? And when did Hawk hurt him? I remember Cyrus showing a belly wound that he claimed had been done by his father.”
“He didn’t hate Hawk at first. The mind is a funny thing. The head wound or the shock caused Cyrus to forget much of that day’s events like they were. His mind twisted his father into an accomplice,” the Carreglas explains, her words fill with unspoken sorrow and pity for the boy. “He lived alone in the forest, hiding from his brother and father until Cassé fell apart in the attack. You know what it is like to live alone out there, remember?”
“Yes,” I whisper bitterly, recalling the days that I had spent hungry by the River Sangre. So many meals of nothing but grass and a few berries if I was lucky. So many nights spent staring up at the trees, listening to the nocturnal creatures, terrified that they were planning to attack me. So many nights spent covering myself with moss and leaves for warmth, only to be plagued by creepy-crawlers wandering across my skin. It’s a wonder I didn’t lose my mind.
The Carreglas visage nods, as if it had heard my every thought. “For one so young, that kind of life changes you. His memories focused less on happier times and more on how to survive, until he forgot that his father was ever a good man.”
House of Vultures Page 23
