House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  Some time before midnight, the others fall asleep. I keep rowing, my achy arms protesting every movement, and it’s so cold that each breath creates a puff of white mist in front of me. I try to talk to Titania, but only a crackle answers me when I activate my earpiece. We’re very much on our own.

  The bump comes out of nowhere. One moment the boat is rocking normally on the water, the next it jerks violently to the side and almost flips over.

  Sybilla jolts awake immediately. “What the hell was that?”

  I grip my father’s sword in both hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Radha!” Sybilla barks over the roar of the sea. “Wake up!”

  The boat jolts again. Radha stirs. As the third bump hits and the boat teeters all the way onto its side, I grab for her, but I’m too late. She tumbles over the side and into the water.

  “Shit!” Sybilla cries as the boat rocks back onto its base. “Radha! Esmae, can you see her?”

  Radha’s head appears over the water and she gasps for air, thrashing wildly. We reach for her, scrambling to get hold of her arms, but she’s too wet and slippery. She goes under again.

  “Stay here,” I say to Sybilla. She opens her mouth in furious protest, but I thrust the Black Bow and my father’s sword at her and leap into the water before she can speak.

  The shock of the cold makes me gasp and swallow a mouthful of seawater, which is strangely sweet, but I recover, take a gulp of air, and dive under the surface to find Radha.

  It’s dark below the surface, where the moonlight barely touches the water, and the only light is the eerie, otherworldly glow of flowers deep in the sea. Blueflowers. I use the glow of the flowers to find Radha, a shadow floundering desperately a few yards away.

  I seize her arm. She looks into my eyes, her mouth wide open in a silent scream, and I look down to see she’s fighting against a long, twisting shape pulling her deeper into the sea.

  The creature rears its head to look at me and I see that it’s like an eel, slippery and powerful, with horns and several rows of sharp white teeth. Terror freezes me in place, but only for an instant. With my chest aching from holding my breath and Radha’s thrashing getting weaker, there’s no time to waste on being afraid.

  I slide my hands under the beast’s slippery tail and try to pry it off Radha’s ankle, but those teeth snap an inch away from my elbow. I pull my knife out of my boot and slash across the tail, spurting dark blood into the water. The creature’s horned head lifts in a silent roar.

  As I pull Radha free, the beast twists in the water and strikes. Teeth clamp into my shoulder, sending sharp white pain across every inch of my skin. I cry out and swallow seawater again, too much this time, and I choke.

  In the middle of that searing, blinding white of the pain, I hear Max’s voice. This is the secret no one tells, he says. It’s easy to go. It’s harder to stay.

  I drive my knife into the beast’s eye, forcing it to let me go, and Radha and I kick our way back to the surface.

  Sybilla pulls us into the boat, then points a loaded crossbow into the water. As the horned head breaks the surface in pursuit, she fires. It sinks below the surface.

  No one moves for a few seconds, waiting to see if the beast comes back. When nothing happens, Radha leans over the side of the boat to spit water. I let the blood and pain get the better of me and collapse into the bottom of the boat. Sybilla whirls around and tosses her crossbow into the corner with an angry clang.

  “I knew you’d be a liability!” she snaps at Radha.

  “Can this wait until later?” Radha demands. “Esmae’s hurt!”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “Mine! I know that! But now’s not exactly the best time for this argument, is it?”

  “Enough,” I growl through the pain. “Someone help me get my tunic off.”

  With one arm hanging limply at my side, I can’t do much but wriggle my body so they can get my tunic up and over my arms and head. With the tunic gone, the wound on my shoulder is exposed. Ragged flesh, teeth marks, a flash of white that looks sickeningly like bone.

  Sybilla recoils, then searches frantically for the packs at the bottom of the boat. “I’ll get the laser so we can seal the wound.” I close my eyes and hear her shuffling and swearing for a moment or two before she says, “Esmae, I think your pack went overboard when the boat tipped. That’s where the laser was.”

  “Of course,” I groan. “How predictable. Do we have a needle and thread?”

  “I do,” Radha says.

  “Okay, that’ll do. I can sew the wound closed with my free hand if one of you helps me thread the needle.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Sybilla. “I’ll do it.”

  “Can you even sew?” With medical lasers so readily available, no one is trained to sew wounds closed the old way anymore. But I grew up altering and mending my own clothes, so I think I can do a passable job on this wound.

  “How hard can it be? Shove a needle in, loop it around the wound a few times, then tie off the thread. Easy!”

  “Give me that needle,” Radha says in exasperation, practically snatching it out of Sybilla’s hands. She threads it expertly, even in the half dark. As she gets ready, Sybilla rips open a pack of sterile gauze and mops up the excess blood. Radha bites her lip as she looks down at me. “This is going to hurt, Esmae. I’m so sorry.”

  Sybilla wraps her arms around me, a gesture as much for comfort as it is to keep me from bucking and thrashing while Radha sews my wound closed. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my teeth as the needle moves in and out, piercing the skin each time. Sybilla hums a song to drown out the terrible squelch of thread pulling ruined flesh back into place.

  When it’s over, they strip off the rest of my wet clothes, spread them out to dry on the floor of the boat, and put my dry jacket over me. Radha swaps her own wet clothes for the spare set she packed in her bag and huddles next to me so we can both keep warm.

  Sybilla picks the oars back up, and we continue on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I wake up with a start. The stars are still bright overhead and we’ve reached the shore.

  Sybilla and Radha are on the beach next to the boat, taking stock of what we lost when the boat tipped. I test my shoulder. It hurts, but nothing’s broken. My clothes are still damp, but I put them back on and shiver as I climb out of the boat and onto the beach. Snow and stones crunch under my boots.

  “It should be colder,” Sybilla says, shuddering.

  “Speak for yourself. I think it’s plenty cold, thanks.”

  “That’s because you two got wet, but I stayed dry and I can only just feel the nip in the air. With all this snow and ice, it should be much colder than it is.”

  Beyond the beach is the dark line of the ice forest. The trees are bare, naked branches coated in sparkling frost, the ground covered in snow. Somewhere in the distance, past the trees, I can see one of the gleaming towers of Kirrin’s palace. It glitters in the starlight, pale blue and trimmed with frost.

  “Should we stay here until morning?” Radha asks. “Or risk the forest in the dark?”

  “I’m not keen on staying near the water,” says Sybilla, glancing back as if she expects to see another horned head come out of the sea at any moment.

  “If we can see the palace from here, it can’t be too far away,” I say. “And the light from the moon and stars will reflect off all this snow, so we should be able to see better than we could when we were on the water. I think we should go ahead.”

  “Onwards, then,” Sybilla says, shouldering her rucksack and drawing her sword out of its sheath at her hip. I hand Radha a knife. With my pack gone, I have only my sword, bow and a handful of arrows left, so I keep the first in my hand and the others hooked over my good shoulder.

  We cross the beach and enter the line of naked trees, leaving the sea behind. The taste of sea salt on the air gives way to snow and sharp, spicy wood. The tower of th
e palace disappears as we walk deeper into the forest and the trees take over, so we use the stars to guide us the right way.

  I walk slowly, my shoulder sending ripples of pain across my body each time I move. “I miss my blueflower,” I say bitterly.

  “Can’t you ask Amba to give you another?” Radha asks.

  “I don’t think it works that way. There was power in that petal because it came from the flower my mother plucked.”

  Radha considers that, then says, “I envied you when we were little, you know. A goddess had sent you to the palace. A goddess had noticed you. I wanted so badly to be noticed too.” Her mouth lifts in a small, sad smile. “Now I see the trail of destruction the gods’ favor has left around the very people they favor and I wonder if maybe I was lucky they never paid me any attention.”

  I open my mouth to agree but find I can’t bring myself to say it. To say Amba’s favor has brought me only ruin feels like a terrible betrayal.

  “She told me stories,” I hear myself say instead, into the snowy silence of the forest. “When I was alone and my world was still so small, she told me stories to make it bigger.”

  We walk on. Snow crunches under our feet and the trees cast sharp, cruel shadows across the starlit, white forest floor. Nothing stirs, not a branch, not a twig, not even a snowflake. It’s a strange, eerie unreality, like we’re picking our way across a dreamworld that will dissolve into smoke if we try to touch it. I realize we’ve seen snow and ice the whole time we’ve been on the Empty Moon, but not once has it actually snowed. Maybe the sky is not where this snow comes from. Maybe it’s not even snow.

  “Anyone feel any different?” Sybilla asks, obviously worried about the effect the moon might have on us.

  “I don’t think so,” says Radha, and I shake my head, too. Of course, we’ve only been here half a day. Max has been here a week. I swallow. There’s no way to know what’s become of him.

  An hour in, the wind picks up. Salt from the sea blows in, the first warning, and then the sparkling gusts of frost follow. At first it’s just a wind, weaving in and out of the trees, but it doesn’t die down. The sparkling frost turns into icy blue flurries, circling around us, and suddenly I can’t see anymore. There’s only the snow and the frost and the stars.

  “Esmae!” Sybilla yells, sounding like she’s very far away. “Radha!”

  I can’t see where I’m going, so I stand very still, grinding my feet into the forest floor. My hair whips against my cheeks and I squeeze my eyes shut.

  Then, as quickly as it came, the wind is gone. The frost fades into nothing. The forest is still and silent once more.

  And I’m alone.

  “Sybilla!” I call, heart racing. “Where are you? Radha! Sybilla! Can you hear me?”

  No answer. I call a few more times, but there’s nothing. Not even the echo of my own voice. There are no footprints in the snow. No sign whatsoever they were ever even here.

  The cruel, dark shadows of the trees loom over me. I don’t know which way to go. I don’t know how to find them.

  Then there’s the sound of snow crunching behind me. I spin around, so relieved—

  —and see Rama.

  His face breaks into a grin. “There you are,” he says. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to find you?”

  “You’re not real,” I whisper.

  “Thanks,” he says drily. “That’s nice. Thank you for coming to find me, Rama. I’m sorry I keep demanding so much energy and activity from you, Rama. Would you like a nap, Rama? All excellent options, but no! I get you’re not real. Thanks, Ez.”

  I throw myself into his arms with a sob. He’s so solid, and warm. I can feel the pulse in his throat against my cheek.

  “Esmae,” he groans, “I can’t breathe.”

  I let him go, reluctantly, and he leans against a tree like it simply requires too much energy to stay on his own two feet any longer. I look up into his twinkling, dearly loved face. “You’re so you,” I marvel.

  “Your compliments need work,” he replies.

  I snort a laugh, tears tracking their way down my cheeks. “I’ve missed you. Are you really here?”

  “Would you like me to be?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  He straightens. “Let’s dance,” he says unexpectedly.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember? I taught you how when we were, what? Nine, ten?”

  He grabs me around the waist and twirls me around, laughing. My shoulder doesn’t hurt. So I dance with him, joining in every silly spin and wiggle, laughing too. Music drifts across the forest and we dance.

  And somewhere, deep inside, a part of me knows that if anyone is watching now, they would only see a wounded girl twirling alone in the snow.

  “So you’d bring me back if you could?” Rama says.

  “Of course I would.”

  “And then what? Happily ever after for everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiles. “You can’t lie to me, Ez. Not me. There would be no happily ever after. And you know why not.”

  “Why are you asking me all this?”

  “Why not, Esmae? Why wouldn’t there be a happily ever after if I came back?”

  I swallow, my hands clenched tightly in his. “Because I’d still be angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” I say, teeth gritted, “I don’t hate my brother because he killed you. I hate him because he tried to kill me. And you coming back won’t make that go away.”

  He nods. “I know you miss me,” he says gently, “I know how much it hurts that I’m gone. But the rage, Esmae, that’s not because I died. It’s because you were betrayed.”

  “Yes.”

  “One more question,” he says, twirling me by one hand. I keep dancing, too afraid to stop, too afraid he’ll disappear if I stop. When I spin back to face him, his eyes are grave and intent. “That cold you felt in your heart after Titania told you the truth about your father. It was a shield. Why?”

  “To keep away the grief.”

  “No,” he says, gentle yet more ruthless than Rama ever was. “Not grief. What was it, Esmae?”

  “Grief,” I repeat, desperately.

  “No,” he says. Somewhere in the distance, I hear wolves howl. “I want the truth.”

  Don’t look.

  “You have to look,” he says, as if I spoke out loud. “You have to look at it. What did you feel when Titania told you your father had been alive for years?”

  “Joy.”

  “Yes, but briefly,” Rama says. He’s merciless, this inquisitor wearing Rama’s familiar, beautiful face. “What came next?”

  Don’t look.

  “I can’t,” I sob.

  Rama holds my hands tightly. The wolves are howling, louder and closer. “You can. You are stronger than your ugliest truth. What came next?”

  I close my eyes. “Fear.”

  “Fear,” he repeats. “Fear. And what was it you felt when Titania told you he was dead?”

  The wolves are so close, their howls almost louder than the scream in my head. Don’t look. Don’t look.

  I open my eyes, and look.

  “Relief.”

  It’s barely a whisper, a broken sob, but he hears me over the howl of the wolves and the howl of the scream.

  He cradles my face in his hands, thumbs brushing the tears away. “Why?”

  Because I didn’t want him to be alive. If he had lived, the war would have ended. They would have wanted me to forgive Alex. They would have wanted to be a family. They would have wanted me to let go of the rage. I would have wanted to let go of it. And then I would have had nothing.

  There it is, the darkest, ugliest, most monstrous truth I never wanted to look at: I don’t want this war to end.

  Getting Rama back would never have been enough. Getting my father back would never have healed the jagged wounds scored across my heart. I’m relieved he’s dead because it means I don’t have to g
ive up the fury. I can go on without him holding me back. I can go on, and on, until everything around me hurts as much as I do.

  I say none of it out loud, but I don’t need to. This was never about me saying it to Rama.

  The wolves are quiet.

  “The truth can hurt,” Rama says, “but once you look it in the eye, you can transform it. This doesn’t have to be your truth forever, Ez.”

  He presses a kiss to my brow, and then he’s gone.

  Pain seeps back into my shoulder. I kneel in the snow, staring at the pawprints of wolves all around me, and at the empty space where my best friend so briefly stood.

  Above me I hear the gentle beat of wings. Vahana lands in the snow in front of me, their face kind.

  “You have passed the test of truth,” they say.

  I wipe my face, climb unsteadily back to my feet. My shoulder protests, but I ignore it. I ignore the intense shame, too. “Where are my friends?”

  “They must pass their own tests to go on,” they reply. “Come. This way.”

  I follow them through the forest until they stop in the shadow of a tall, spiky tree. A little way ahead, standing in the snow and hugging herself, is Radha. Tears streak down her face as she talks to someone I can’t see. Two enormous gray wolves pace near her, growling low in their throats, but she doesn’t seem to be able to see them.

  I take a step forward, but Vahana uses one wing to hold me back. “You cannot interfere,” they say. “She must pass on her own, or none of you will gain entry to the palace.”

  “Who is she talking to?” I ask, but I think I already know.

  “A ghost.” Vahana rests their palm against my forehead, and a spark of heat spreads over my skin. “Now you can see.”

  When I look back at Radha, it’s not Rama I see in front of her. It’s me.

  Radha’s chest heaves as she sobs, and then, with a sudden burst of violence, she shoves at the other version of me. “I wish it had been you!”

  The silence is so sharp, it hurts.

  “There it is,” says the other version of me. She sounds like me. Hurt, angry, but kind. “You wish it had been me.”