Hollow Chest

by Brita Sandstrom

  “‘Please,’ said the queen, ‘we don’t need a child of our own. Just let us keep her, please.’

  “The old lady looked quite shocked at this. ‘Don’t you know you already have a child of your own? Look, here comes the princess now!’ And the formerly wild little girl came down to see what all the fuss was about, and the king and queen scooped her up into their arms and kissed her all over her face until she was quite embarrassed and threatened to bite them all. By the time the queen and king had wiped away their tears and scolded their daughter that she really ought to be wearing shoes in the courtyard, the old lady was gone. And they all lived happily ever after.”

  Mum was asleep, and Charlie didn’t wake her. He just tucked the blanket up under her chin and kissed the very top of her head.

  “Only dream of lovely things,” he whispered.

  Theo and Grandpa Fitz came back very late. Charlie heard them downstairs. No voices, only the sound of the door and the dry rustling of coats and then footsteps, the THUMP-drag of Theo’s walk distinct from Grandpa Fitz’s. The sound of it, the thought of his bad leg dragging, the tight scar tissue keeping it locked in place, brought with it a rush of some emotion Charlie couldn’t identify.

  Charlie made sure he made a bit of noise as he walked, stepping on all the creakiest floorboards down the hall until he was outside Theo’s room. He heard Theo pacing back and forth inside.

  I’m going to find a way to get your heart back, he wanted to say. The war wolves have taken so much, but I won’t let them keep it. Not if I can help it. You’re brave if you do brave things, and I want to do a brave thing for you.

  He knocked at the door, just once, soft. He heard Theo pause, then keep pacing.

  “Theo, it’s me,” Charlie said, still soft. “I just—I wanted to tell you that I understand, if you really do want to go to that Rosehill place. But whatever you decide to do, I didn’t mean what I said before. And I want you to know that I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to do whatever it takes to help you. I promise.”

  He heard Theo pause, and take several steps towards the door. But the door between them stayed shut.

  29

  “I THOUGHT I’D BE SEEING YOU AGAIN.”

  Remorse tilted her head towards him, her coat silky and silver in the moonlight. Charlie was holding Biscuits in his arms, and turned his face into her fur. When he didn’t say anything, the wolf continued.

  “My brothers and sisters, with their vast, aching hunger for hearts, they eat their fill and they are done. But I? I love you, all of you, all of your lovely, rich tears. I can follow my flock their whole lives long. Hearts can be eaten, or harden until there is no sweetness left to be sucked out of them. But tears? Tears are a wellspring which never runs dry. Regret alone may last forever. Have you done something you regret, lovely boy? Have you brought me something sweet?”

  Charlie turned his face away from Biscuits’s coat.

  “I was cruel to my brother.”

  Remorse’s tail wagged a snow angel into the soft fallen powder. “And?” she panted.

  “And I won’t ever be able to make it okay. I told Theo that he should never have come back.” He thought the tears would be slow to come, knowing their fate. But it was as if they had been waiting for this, for release. He put Biscuits down on the ground, and she hissed at Remorse, squaring her body to the wolf.

  “And?” Remorse slunk towards him, slow and languorous, her tongue rolling red and steaming from her mouth.

  “I can never make it right, because it was true. Even if it was only true for a minute, I can’t take it back. And now every time Theo sees me for the rest of his life he’ll know I wished that. He’s going to leave because of me.”

  “Sweet boy,” Remorse whispered, her breath hot against his cheek.

  “This is all my fault.”

  Charlie crumpled to his knees. Remorse sat down on her haunches next to him, and without quite knowing why or how, he wrapped his arms around her chest and buried his face in her thick, silky fur. Her coat muffled the sounds of his wet sobs and soaked up his tears even as they fell.

  Charlie was little. Maybe four, or maybe younger. He had been playing hide-and-seek with his big brother for hours, all day practically, but Theo always found him easily. This time he’d been sure he’d found the perfect spot. He’d smothered his giggles when he heard Theo walk past the front stairs he was hiding under, calling for Charlie to come out, come out, whenever he was. But Theo kept looking. And looking. And looking, and not finding him. And it was cold under the stairs, and there were maybe spiders, and the shadows were wrapping thicker and thicker around him with every minute.

  It was dark by the time Theo crawled under the porch, a smear of dirt across his nose and a worried expression in his bright blue eyes. Charlie had immediately burst into tears and been too upset to move, so Theo had scuttled on his hands and knees under the stairs until he could reach Charlie and grab him up in a hug.

  “I didn’t think you would ever find me,” Charlie had snuffled into Theo’s neck. “I thought I hid too good.”

  “Oh, Charlie, I’ll always find you, don’t you know that? No matter how long it takes, I’ll always find you.”

  “I regret it, the things I said, the things I thought about Theo. But . . .”

  Remorse looked at him, and there was something in her expression he didn’t have a name for.

  “But that’s not your name. Regret, I mean. Remorse . . . it’s not always bad. It’s not always bad to remember things that hurt. Because it means you know what you’ve done wrong. And if you know that, then you know how you can be better.” He hesitated, then stroked the silky fur of Remorse’s head, just once. It felt like touching silk that was also somehow snow. “Will you walk with me? Just to the entrance?”

  “My boy,” Remorse murmured. She sounded . . . sad. “I will go with you wherever you would take me. For I fear you and I may never be done with each other. I get so lonely. My poor boy.”

  Biscuits walked between them the whole way, her ears flat to her skull and her claws ready for anything. But they walked together all the same.

  He left Remorse outside the shelter entrance. He did not turn back to see if she would watch him go down into the old subway station. Instead he picked up Biscuits—the way he hadn’t been able to the last time he was here, when he’d had to rush to the shelter, the time he thought that she was gone forever—and carried her down into the tunnel. She was trying to growl and purr at the same time, and was succeeding at neither, instead just making an odd snuffling sound against his neck.

  The first thing to remember was that monsters always wanted something. Well, he knew what these monsters wanted, had always wanted: his scarred, scared, still-beating heart. To make a meal of it.

  But the second thing to remember was that there was always a way, somehow, to win against them.

  He had to set down Biscuits to pull the heavy twine necklace of keys over his head. They clinked against each other and Biscuits mewed in answer.

  “I have to,” he said to her without looking down. If he even glanced at her lovely yellow-green eyes now, or stroked her soft fur, or felt the thick rumble of a purr from her warm cat body, he might change his mind. If he remembered that there were soft, good things in the world, and that he wanted to be one of those soft, good things, too, then he might lose his fragile nerve and run away. And then Theo would never get any better and Charlie would always know that he had had a chance to make it right, and he had run away.

  Theo couldn’t run away from what had happened in France. Charlie wouldn’t run away from what had happened to Theo.

  Wrath’s lock first, at the topmost edge of the door.

  “I understand,” he said as he slid the heavy key into place and turned it with a heavy clank.

  Next came Remorse’s lock, right at hand height, the tiny silver key tinkling against the bright metal of the lock.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he turned the key with barely a sou
nd except a soft, musical clink.

  Agony and Anguish’s lock was last, and he had to stoop down to reach it.

  “I won’t forget,” he said, and shoved the key into the hole. The lock fought him the whole way, turning only with a whining metal groan.

  Finally, there was a deep thunk and the door creaked open, just a bit.

  “This is it,” he said, looking down at Biscuits. His cat lashed her tail—once, twice—then puffed out her fur to its battle proportions and hissed a silent warning to anyone who might be listening who thought she would back off without a fight. She was brave. Charlie could be brave, too.

  “No,” he said.

  Biscuits turned to look at him, distracted, her ears pinned and ready for war.

  “No, Biscuits. You can’t come with.”

  Biscuits ignored this and began marching towards the door, but Charlie grabbed her around the middle. She squirmed and yowled and clawed and he almost dropped her twice. “I love you so much,” he whispered into her fur. Then he tossed her as gently as he dared and ran through the door, slamming it shut behind him. A second later a cat-sized something smacked into the door over and over again. He could hear her wails. She sounded so far away.

  “There’s no cure for scary like having a job,” Charlie whispered to himself.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Charlie Merriweather.”

  He opened his eyes to find himself in a large room, although how large, he couldn’t tell, darkness swallowing up the corners. It was dimly lit by a lone, bare bulb overhead, swinging just a little in a breeze he couldn’t feel. And underneath the bald glare was set after set of eyes, like gas lamps, gleaming in the shadows beyond the bulb’s light. The eyes—there were so many—didn’t seem to be reflecting the light from overhead, but instead seemed to wink back at him with a glow that was entirely their own.

  “Manners,” one of the war wolves growled, and Charlie recognized Anguish, hulking and grinning next to his brother. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and gulped down, hard, swallowing every memory of light and hope and love like a spoonful of medicine or a warm cup of tea or a magic potion. Please help me. Please keep me safe. Please don’t let them win.

  “He-hello,” he said, opening his eyes again. “I’m Charlie. Charlie Merriweather. I came here for my brother, Theo. You ate his heart. I—I want it back. Please. Please, give his heart back to me. He needs it.”

  One by one the wolves began to grin, red wolves and black wolves and wolves the color of gunpowder and grease and old ash. Their teeth gleamed brighter than their eyes in the dim light. Then, one by one, they began to fall back, to edge away, their claws scraping against the grimy tile floor. And as Charlie stepped farther into the room, they formed a great circle around him, and only one war wolf remained in the center beneath the bulb.

  The last wolf was smaller than the rest, but being smaller made her scarier. She was bony, her fur matted and dull, but her teeth were a perfect, well-tended white.

  “I do believe it’s time for us to meet, dear Charlie. I apologize it’s taken so long, my fault entirely. I’ve just been so very busy these last few years. Agony and Anguish have feasted during this war, of course,” said the small wolf, and Agony and Anguish licked their chops. Very briefly, Charlie smelled old meat. “But I always get my share. I pick off every straggler, I follow them home and then I eat their flocks’ hearts, too, sometimes.”

  “Who are you?” whispered Charlie.

  “My name is Acceptance. How very nice to meet you, Charlie Merriweather.” And the small, wicked wolf smiled at him with her horrible teeth, gleaming beautiful and pristine in the ruin of her mouth. “A brave heart, now that’s good eating if you can get it. Tough meat to soften up, but any heart can be eaten if you’re willing to work at it. Why, my sister Melancholy’s been worrying your Mr. Churchill’s heart for years now, long before this war business ever got started. She’s his oldest friend. She greets him every morning and curls up right on the center of his chest each night. She hasn’t been this devoted to a man in a suit for decades,” Acceptance mused, almost cheerfully, stretching out her rangy legs and crooked tail.

  The wolf padded closer to him, until Charlie felt his bones turn to tuning forks, humming with terror under his skin with a sound he was certain she could hear.

  “But enough with this small talk. Tell us again, dear Charlie, what it is you want.”

  “I want my brother’s heart.” His voice was so small and squeaky he sounded like Biscuits. Or worse, like one of the mice she liked to catch.

  “No. You don’t.”

  Agony and Anguish snickered, a strange snorting sound that pushed itself out wetly from their cruel, pointed noses. Anguish bumped his furry shoulder into Agony, who grinned yellow and huge.

  “I do,” Charlie persisted, swallowing again and again until his voice came out almost like his own. This was when the hero was supposed to spring the trap to trick the enemy. This was when he was supposed to realize how to win. But he had nothing. “I want my brother’s heart back.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s long since eaten, dear Charlie,” Acceptance said, very polite, inclining her head towards Agony, who winked one enormous yellow eye at Charlie.

  “You’re war wolves,” Charlie forced past his thick, dry mouth. Something was building up in Charlie’s chest, gaining momentum every second like the train that had brought Theo home and started Charlie down the path that had led him to this room. “You can do anything.”

  Acceptance tilted her ears, pleased. Agony and Anguish woofed with agreement.

  “That may be,” Acceptance allowed, wagging her many-times-broken tail just a bit so a light cloud of dust billowed up around her. “But it remains: the heart is just the means, Charlie. It is not what you want.”

  “It is, too!” Charlie was surprised that his voice came out like that, strong and true and quite angry. “You don’t know what I want.”

  “Oh, but I do, sweet Charlie. Longing is the sharpest smell there is. It’s how I find all my very best meals. Nothing tastes sweeter than longing stamped out into nothing. It distills in the heart and gives the richest flavor. I love to suck the memory of wanting out of the softest parts of a heart.”

  “I want his heart.” He was whispering again, mouse-quiet and papery. The thing in his chest was pushing at the edges of him, searching for a way out. He could feel it, shoving itself against his mouth for release.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do!”

  “What you do long for, my own dear Charlie Merriweather?”

  The thing in Charlie’s chest burst forth, shoved itself past his tongue, his teeth, his trembling lip, barreling out into the open, unable ever to turn around. “For things to be like they were! For Theo to be nice again, and happy, and funny. For Mum to smile again and have a pink dress for church. For there to be butter and jam for toast and eggs on Sundays. For a Sunday jacket that fits and shoes that don’t pinch. For Grandpa Fitz not to forget things. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I just want to go back.”

  The only sound in the room was Charlie’s breathing. One by one, the war wolves’ mouths split into red grins, their teeth catching the light.

  “Not even war wolves, Charlie, can go back. There is only forward; all other directions are a myth, made up by scared men to comfort themselves around fires. Myths keep no one warm, Charlie. There is no back.”

  “You can’t give me his heart, can you?” Charlie felt like he had Hollow Chest, empty and wrung out.

  “Eaten is eaten, Charlie Merriweather. You can’t un-eat a heart any more than you can un-fire a bullet or un-birth a pup. We are war wolves: we are made for one thing. We do it very well.”

  The truth of it landed heavily inside him like a stone. Theo’s heart was gone. It had all been for nothing. All of it. Nothing.

  Acceptance cocked her head at him and sniffed the air deeply. “Your heart is broken. A deep crack runs through the center of it.” She padded over
to him, her nails clicking on the tile of the floor. She pressed her nose to his chest just as Dishonor had done, but instead of freezing him, her touch burned.

  Charlie gasped and tried to shrink away from her.

  “I know you think us cruel, Charlie Merriweather. I know you think us beasts and monsters that only maim.”

  Charlie thought of Remorse. Of her mad, sad eyes, the feel of his face against her fur.

  “But we can be kind to you, truly. Let us be kind.”

  Charlie closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hear what she would say, because he knew now, knew how it would sound to him here, alone in the dark and surrounded by monsters and all the hope draining out of him like lifeblood.

  “Let me ease your burden, young one. Too young to carry something so heavy.”

  Here, in the dark and cold and more alone than he had ever been in his life, it sounded . . . nice, almost. This is how it happens, Charlie realized. They wear you down to nothing, they heap the weight on top of you and then say they can remove it. The relief of the pain stopping seems like a kindness. How could he have ever blamed Theo for accepting? Monsters had herded him into a trap and sprung it. They had made his heart intolerable to bear.

  Charlie shook his head, so hard a tear went flying from where it was clinging to his chin. His voice only came out as a paper-thin croak.

  “No.”

  “We need good, strong hearts to sustain us, sweet Charlie, and we have perhaps overindulged ourselves these last few decades. Eat too much of a flock and eventually there will be no more sheep, correct?”

  “Y-yes?” Thump-THUD. Thump-THUD.

  “I cannot give you back your brother’s heart, Charlie Merriweather, any more than I can give you back your father’s life. Therefore, I could not accept your heart for tender, with nothing to exchange. But perhaps . . .” And Acceptance licked her chops, and he smelled smoke and singed hair.

  “Perhaps what?”

  “Perhaps another bargain could be struck. A partial exchange for a partial return.”