by Krista Rose
The Crone emerged from Janis’ room around midnight, and checked on my father before coming to sit in a chair beside me. The others were sleeping, rolled into their pallets, and she gazed at them with her enigmatic eyes.
“You can’t heal her, can you.” It was not a question, and I did not expect her to answer it. I looked to where her eyes fell, and smiled a little to see Alyxen and Kylee curled together, their limbs and hair twining as they slept.
The Crone sighed. “Someone told me once that death is the Gods’ way of telling us our lives have been well-lived. There is supposed to be comfort in the knowledge that their suffering has ended, and that Ca’erlyssa awaits them, where they will know peace and joy without any more pain. But I have never found death to bring comfort, only anguish.” Her gaze turned to me, and I saw a glimmer of emotion within them, but before I could decipher it, it was gone. “Life is fragile, Wild Rose. Seek immortality. Let no one else suffer with your passing.”
I was not yet ten years old, so I could not understand the warning in her words, but I shivered nonetheless, and kept silent, no longer sleepy. We sat, side by side, and kept our vigil through the long, cold night.
Janis died in the morning.
KRYSSA
21 Emberes 569A.F.
“Kryssa, why do people die?”
I paused in the act of brushing Lanya’s hair. It had become our routine in the evenings, and I sat in a chair before the fire, combing the snarls from its long, golden length. She knelt on the floor between my knees and gazed into the flames with a sleepy expression on her small face.
The others ceased whispering, growing still in their pallets as they waited for my answer to her question. I could feel their eyes on me, the weight of their stares making my tongue clumsy.
“I- I, um-” I swallowed, trying to forget my memories of Janis’ cold, still face as we had buried her beside our mother. Why did people die? What purpose did it serve, but to hurt those left behind? Was there even such a place as Ca’erlyssa, some heaven those we loved could look down on us from? Or was it simply the Gods’ way of laughing at us, for being weak, pathetic, and mortal?
“I don’t know, dear heart,” I said at last, my shoulders slumping. “I really just don’t know.”
“I know why,” Alyxen spoke up, his high, childish voice excited. “I read it in a book.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, unsurprised to see him sitting up in the middle of his pallet, his blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. Kylee lay on her back beside him, staring at the ceiling.
“Which one?” I asked curiously. I had only read a small portion of Janis’ books, but Alyxen had all but devoured them, reading at least one a day since her death. I did not know if this was normal- he was only four- but it seemed unlikely. Kylee struggled with her letters, more often than not abandoning her lessons altogether to vanish into the barn.
“It was called Tales of the First Race.” Alyxen bounced with excitement; he loved to be the center of attention, and telling stories seemed to come naturally for him. “It’s about the Elder Gods, and the Old Ones they created.”
“Will you tell us the story, dear heart?” I turned back to brushing Lanya’s hair. “We’d love to hear it.”
“Well, once the world was only full of the Old Gods. Elder Gods, I mean. And they were good once, not bad like they are now. They got the world right after Destiny made it. But there weren’t any people here yet, just dragons and syrens and so on. So the Elder Gods all got together, and made the First Race. They called them the Golden Ones.”
“Like me?” Lanya tried to turn her head, and I put my hand on it, holding her still. “I’m the golden one.”
“No.” I could all but feel Alyxen shake his head. “These Golden Ones were actually made of gold, or at least their skin was. The pictures show them as really shiny. Anyhow, because the Elder Gods created them all together, they were able to make them immortal, so the Golden Ones would never, ever die.”
“Never?” I repeated. “That’s a long time.”
“That’s what the book said. So the Golden Ones and the Elder Gods are really closely connected, because of the Gods creating them and all. I don’t remember all their names, but there was one God- Ezio, I think- who was secretly bad. The Darkness got him. And he corrupted the other Gods, and they turned bad, and they were going to turn this world into another Ca’ersenta.”
I shivered at the thought. Ca’ersenta was the world of the damned, where bad people were sent to suffer when they died. I tried to imagine our fields filled with demons, and was glad when I could not.
“Because the Gods were bad, the Golden Ones became bad, too. That’s when they started being called the Twisted Ones. They stopped being pretty anymore, too, but I think that part happened later. Anyway, there was another Elder God who didn’t turn bad-”
“Diona, Goddess of the Stars,” Kylee interrupted, sounding bored. “We’ve heard that story.”
“Let him tell it, Kylee.” I set the brush down, ignoring the sounds of a brief scuffle behind me, and began to braid. “Go on, Alyxen.”
“So Diona decided to create more races, to help fight the Darkness,” he continued, sounding a bit smug. I guessed that he had won against his twin. “But this time, she was all alone. She couldn’t make them immortal or perfect. She made Men and Elves and Dwarves, but they were all messed up. Men were selfish, and Elves were scared, and Dwarves were greedy. But Destiny told her that it was alright, that they needed to be messed up. It told her that immortality, like what the First Race had, was wrong. Souls need to be reborn, to filter through other lives. No one on Ca’erdylla was dying, and it was making Ca’erlyssa die instead.”
I frowned, and looked back at him. “Are you sure that’s what the book said? How could a world die?”
He nodded so vigorously I thought his head might come off. “I promise, that’s what the book said. The worlds need souls, even Heaven. Without souls, the worlds would die.”
It made no sense to me, but then neither did death. I tied off Lanya’s braid, and tapped her to let her know I was done.
She turned around, resting her arms on my knees as she looked up at me. “Do you think we die for a reason, Kryssa?”
I swallowed, staring down into her sapphire eyes, so like my mother’s. “I think we live for a reason, dear heart,” I answered honestly. “I’m still not sure yet about death.”
She nodded, satisfied with my answer, and yawned as she crawled over to her pallet, curling up beside the twins. After a few minutes, I heard the quiet, measured sounds of breathing, and knew the others had fallen asleep.
I stared into the flames of the fire, and thought of immortality.
7 Davael 569A.F.
When the snows melted, Father returned to his place at Adelie’s side, seemingly oblivious to the fresh grave beside hers. The full, powerful man of my childhood had vanished, and nothing I could do or say- Gods know that I tried, in those difficult first months without Janis- would bring him back. He ate, perfunctorily, of the pitiful attempts at meals that I brought to him, sustaining himself as I took over the duties of our farm.
The Crone returned several months after Janis’ death, unbidden and unexpected. She took in our sorry state at a glance, and left again without a word, returning some hours after noon, as the sky grew dark with storm clouds. She pulled up to the hill in her rickety cart, which should have shaken itself to pieces on the pitted road that led to our farm, and yanked on the reins. Her grey gelding, Teodore, sighed wearily, and slowed to a gentle stop.
Kylee, with all the joy of her six years, ran toward him, and would have thrown herself bodily at his legs had I not caught her arm in a firm grip. She turned her pixie face up to me, laughing.
“It’s a pony, Kryssa!” Her voice was happy and unafraid. “He’s so pretty.”
“Yes, dear heart.” I forced a weak smile as I allowed her to pet his soft, snuffling nose, once I was certain she wouldn’t spook him. “Pretty.”
My gaze returned to the Crone, watching as Brannyn solemnly helped the ancient woman from her cart, then stepped aside. She made her way across the hill toward the Teminar tree, where Malachi knelt beside Mother’s grave. He barely moved to acknowledge the Crone’s presence, though I could tell he heard her when she called out. The sun blazed down on his hair like a halo, and the clouds rolled across the sky, threatening to smother the light at any moment.
I never knew what passed between them beneath that tree, save for what I saw. The Crone spoke for several minutes, her words lost in the distance as she gestured toward us, and then to him. She proffered something from her pockets- a dark glass vial, gleaming in her hand in the dying light.
My father stared at it for what seemed like a long time. At last he reached out to take it, his hand shaking and skeletal, his eyes burning with a desperate hope in his sunken face.
A sense of foreboding struck me, so deep and hard my throat sealed shut with it. Screams rose in me like a tide, threatening to shatter the sudden fragility of my bones. My legs trembled, and I struggled to breathe against the overwhelming fear.
He’s holding poison.
Kylee laughed, Teodore’s fine whiskers tickling her hand as he nuzzled.
Father drank the Crone’s offering.
There was no immediate change, and yet… everything was different. He shook his head, as if waking from a dream, and offered the empty vial back to the Crone, who hid it again in her pocket. She spoke awhile longer as the clouds finally swallowed the sun, plunging the world into unnatural twilight. Then she turned, leaving my father to keep his vigil, and slowly walked back to her cart.
I thought I saw guilt in her gaze as it met mine, regret and shame and immeasurable sorrow, but then she looked away, and it vanished.
She climbed slowly back into her cart, unaided by Brannyn, who remained silent and somber, watching her. His amber eyes turned to me, and, for an instant, I felt the same nameless, numbing fear surge in him as it had in me. Kylee gasped and clung to me, burying her face in my skirts in fright. Inside the house, I heard Reyce begin to cry, and Lanya’s voice rise in a familiar, comforting lullaby.
My knuckles turned white as my hands clenched into fists.
The Crone pulled on Teodore’s reins, clucking to him. The gelding sighed, and started back down the narrow dirt road, toward the unnamed village our mother had once, laughing, named Desperation.
I stood, staring after the Crone, my heart heavy with fathomless dread as the sky rumbled, and the rain at last began to pour.
8 Davael – 16 Vikos 569A.F.
Perhaps it is only my bitterness that causes me to remember my father as weak. Adelie had been his world, their love like a wildly burning flame between them, melding their hearts together. What would it be like to lose the other half of your soul? Was it possible that the only reason he did not kill himself outright was because of us children? If so, the thought brings precious little comfort.
The Crone returned every day for months, feeding him more of those dreadful, swirling potions that she bottled in dark glass. He drank them without speaking, and stared after her with scorching eyes as she left. My stomach knotted as I approached him with his meals, my dread growing I watched the dull cast of his eyes spark with animosity, his apathy slowly vanishing into towering anger. I could scarcely breathe near him, the sickly-sweet smell of the Crone’s potion choking me, and I dropped my gaze as quickly as the food, my heart racing as I hurried back to the house and the duties he had forsaken for years.
There are a thousand things necessary for running a farm, and all of them are difficult for a child. Without Janis, it rested on me to rise before dawn every day, to see to the milking of our few goats and the feeding of our assorted animals. I hauled the buckets inside and woke Brannyn to fetch the eggs as I began on breakfast, a skill that remained meager at best.
When the sun lit the sky, I woke the others. After breaking our fast, we began our chores for the day; Lanya, calm and gentle, looked after the twins and Reyce, tending to the small, domestic tasks she could manage as Brannyn and I saw to the rest.
Repairs, great and small, to the buildings and the house and the equipment were something we struggled with nearly daily; we never seemed to completely fix the leak in the roof above our great room. Laundry- there was always laundry, and I strained for hours to wash linens and clothes, scrubbing the dirt from them in our rusted, dented washtub outside with two heavy stones before hanging them to dry on the line. The house itself had to be cleaned: sweeping, dusting, washing windows, scraping ash from the fireplace. Dishes must be washed, the garden weeded.
Luncheon was most often a few vegetables gathered from the gardens or apples gathered from the trees that grew beside the barn, and we washed them down with warm goat milk. Meager fare to be sure, but our supplies dwindled rapidly as we did not dare to travel to the village ourselves. The fields lay fallow, since without Janis to pay them the hirelings had abandoned us, and we were too small to work the plow ourselves.
Baths were given in the evenings, especially to the twins, who found accumulating dirt to be a great pleasure. After supper, I stayed up to mend the clothes which needed it most, as the younger children slowly tumbled off into dreams to Lanya’s lullabies or one of Alyxen’s stories. We had taken back our room a few months after Janis’ death; the four youngest slept tangled together in the bed, while Brannyn and I kept our pallets on the floor.
In the end, I would sleep as well, the exhaustion of too much done in a day dragging me down into dreamlessness.
Months passed. We settled into this routine, growing used to the exhaustion of it.
And then Malachi woke from his trance.
KRYSSA
17 Vikos 569A.F.
I loved my mother. She was beautiful, as I’ve said before, glorious and in love, filled with passion, and she brought joy and laughter with her wherever she went. There was a presence to her, and a kindness that could make anyone feel special just by being near her. Adelie Rose was all that was lovely in the world, and her death had created a hole in my heart, which was never truly filled by Janis.
I still love my mother. But in the years that came after her death, I learned to hate her, too.
It began the day my father woke from his state of despair, and staggered, with surprising strength, from my mother’s grave back into the house. His voice was rough and rasping from disuse as he called for a bath, and Brannyn and I rushed to fill the heavy tub in the great room with heated water, our backs and shoulders aching under the strain of the heavy buckets.
Our legs and arms trembled with effort and apprehension as we toiled, the air feeling close and heavy. I saw the rage build on Father’s face, and was helpless to stop it.
And then he struck me.
At first, I was too stunned to even feel the blow. I stumbled back, tripping over my own feet, my buckets tumbling from my hands to spill water across the floor. Wide-eyed, I stared up at him, pain blooming across the side of my face, tears sparkling in my vision until they all but blinded me.
His face was contorted, his hands clenching into fists at his sides as a muscle ticked in his jaw. I gulped in fear, and retreated another step away from him.
“It’s your fault she’s dead,” he whispered, the words grating and harsh in the abrupt silence. “Worthless bitch. You killed her. You killed my Adelie.”
My breath caught, my heart lurching with grief. “Father, no, I-”
“Shut up!” The second blow knocked me to the floor and flooded my mouth with the taste of blood. Tears streamed down my cheeks, though I scarcely noticed. Panic, fear, survival- all of these were rushing through me, and all I could think of was that I needed to run, to hide until his rage faded.
Then I lifted my head and saw Brannyn. He stood frozen in the doorway, the buckets dangling uselessly from his hands. In the instant that our eyes met, I felt his thoughts as my own, brilliant red, filled with fear and fury.
I’ll ki
ll him.
No. Fear for myself vanished before the hot certainty of his thoughts, and I looked away, to where Lanya cowered in the doorway of our room, her face white as the others peered around her. Protect them.
It happened in mere moments, this understanding between us, his guilt and relief and impotent fury flooding me as he gave in to my will. His jaw clenched, his eyes still uncertain, but he set down the buckets and went to our room, pushing Lanya and the others inside. His eyes met mine in one last, conscience-stricken glance before he closed the door and locked it, leaving me alone with Malachi.
I took a deep breath, and stood.
The anger emanating from Father was all but a living thing, lashing out, threatening to cripple me. I do not remember all of the names he called me, nor the number of times he swung, though he mostly missed, his eyes too unfocused to see me clearly. Suffice it to say that he blamed everyone for my mother’s death, for taking his Estaur away from him. He blamed Reyce, of course, and the twins, for making her too weak to withstand my brother’s birthing. He blamed Janis for not doing enough, and the Crone for arriving too late. He blamed Lanya for resembling her, and Brannyn for possessing her smile. He even blamed the Gods, and cursed the vision that had made her seek her own death.
But, most of all, he blamed me. It had been my hands that had been covered in her blood when he had entered her room; my mere presence had been a curse, dooming her. He claimed I had let her die to save my brother, shrieked in a broken voice that he would never forgive me.
His star was dead, and his world was darker for it.
And then, abruptly, it was over. My father sagged as the emotions drained from him. He crumpled in upon himself, weak and weary, full of remorse and piteous tears.
