by Krista Rose
“Will you honor our arrangement, Malachi?” She took a key from her pocket, using it to unlock a small wardrobe. Row upon row of dark glass vials sat nestled within, and the sight of them chilled me to the bone.
Father was staring at them as well, his face alight with naked greed, and so failed to see me standing only a few feet away, shrouded in the shadows of the doorway. “Yes.” His voice held no emotion but need. “Upon their sixteenth birthday, I will give the twins to you.”
I gasped, a small hiss of indrawn breath. Father did not hear me, for all of his focus was upon the vial the Crone removed from the wardrobe and handed to him- but the Crone did, and met my gaze calmly as he drank the potion.
My mind reeled with shock, and my heart, which I had thought immune to his cruelty, broke anew. This man, who had once treasured his children as blessings from the Gods, had bartered my brother and sister as slaves to fuel his addiction.
The sight of the two of them suddenly sickened me, and I retreated back into the bedroom, pressing my forehead against the cool, warped glass of the windows until my nausea passed. Bitter hate boiled within me, and I prayed to the Gods I so often neglected that they would remind Father that he had loved us once, and would break the hold his addiction and the Crone had over him.
Failing that, I prayed that they would kill him.
In the great room, I heard Malachi regain his familiar, belligerent self, and finally take his leave of the Crone. Not trusting myself to speak around the rage that hammered at my temples, I picked up my things and headed home early. The Crone said nothing as I left, and I could scarcely bring myself to look at her, truth and hate and pain warring in my chest until I thought they would strangle me.
I am certain that Brannyn at least suspected something was wrong when I arrived at the house, his amber eyes taking in my pale face and shaking hands in a single, questioning glance. But he did not ask, and so I was not forced to lie to him. It was a horrific burden, this secret, but I was determined to bear it alone.
I returned to the Crone’s the following Sunsday, and I think that my appearance then was the only time I ever saw her truly surprised. The knowledge hung between us like a weight as we stared at each other, and came to a wordless understanding: I would spend as much time as it took working for her to buy back my brother and sister. Her shoulders slumped in resignation, and she stood aside to let me into her home.
I did not know if I could ever truly buy back Kylee and Alyxen’s freedom, but I had a little more than six years until Father gave them to the Crone like unwanted kittens, and so I had no choice. Doubt ate at me; I put on my mask to hide it.
I had to try.
LANYA
28 Cuna 572A.F.
“It’s not fair.”
Kryssa opened her eyes and glanced up at me. The others had all gone to bed, exhausted by the fury of another of Father’s outbursts, and so we were alone in the great room. She had stripped to the waist, lying on the floor before the fireplace so I could press compresses of sharp-smelling vinegar to her back. “What’s not fair?”
“This.” I jerked my head toward the marks, a rainbow of colors between vicious purple and fading yellow. “All of this. You should let me help.”
Her gaze grew intent upon my face. “You do help.”
I snorted, though I kept my hands gentle. “Useless lullabies and bits of medicine from Janis’ books. I do little better than nothing. I want to do more.”
Her eyes hardened into emeralds, her jaw jutting forward. “No.”
I swallowed, struggling not to cower. “You can’t protect me forever.”
“Perhaps not,” she conceded, and shrugged before closing her eyes again. “But as long as I’m alive, I can try.”
I bit my lip, holding back what I wanted to say, afraid to tell her that being behind closed doors did not protect me from her pain, or Brannyn’s. Echoes of the blows they took resounded in my bones as I were the one receiving them. I could feel the agony pulsing beneath their skin, the ache of it battering against my thoughts. We suffered the same; they could not shield me from their anguish.
My breath caught as I traced the ugly bruises on my sister’s forearm, marks left from fingers that had grabbed her too tightly. Though her face remained serene, I could feel the pain even my light touch caused her, and my vision blurred with tears. She endured so much, and I could do nothing to save her.
“It’s all right, dear heart,” she murmured, her lips curving as she reassured me. “I’ve had worse.”
The truth of her words clawed at me rather that comforting me, and I blinked, over and over, willing myself not to cry. It was not fair that she was beaten and I was spared, that she was punished for Father’s insanity while I was forced to hide in my room.
Her bruises should be mine.
My arm began to ache, growing from a slight sting to a bone-deep throb. Kryssa’s bruises faded away, and I gasped, shoving up my sleeve to stare wide-eyed at the finger marks that now encircled my forearm.
“What is it?” she asked, and I hurriedly yanked my sleeve back down, before she could see what I had done.
“Nothing,” I lied.
She sighed, and smiled, her eyes remaining closed. “You’re getting good at that, Lanya. My arm scarcely hurts anymore.”
I kept silent. Kryssa had named herself our protector, and she was determined to save us to the point of foolishness. If she learned that I could take her pain and make it my own, she would no longer allow me to take care of her, out of sheer, stubborn pride.
But I was just as stubborn as she, and so after that night I began to steal her bruises, and Brannyn’s. Not all of them, or they might have grown suspicious, but enough to reduce their suffering, to allow them to sleep comfortably and wake without stiffness. They thought it was my poultices, that I was gaining more knowledge of herbs and medicines. I let them believe it, even going so far as to start an herb garden in front of the house, where I gathered the ingredients I claimed I needed to treat their injuries.
It was nonsense, of course. As I learned more of my gift, both its limits and its strengths, I found that I had power over their emotions as well: I could drain my siblings’ unhappiness at a touch, chasing the shadows from their eyes, or push my contentment into them, easing their worries so they could rest. I gave them my exhaustion until they collapsed into sleep, though it left me wide-eyed and jittery for hours after; I drained their pain, though the weight of it transferred to me, heavy and agonizing. I could not take cuts or broken bones, nor could I heal our father’s broken mind- though I tried once as he slept, and spent several hours vomiting over a bucket for my efforts.
But I grew stronger, and as the years dragged on I kept my family from giving in to despair.
I earned my secret.
But it was a burden, and hard to keep when we lived in such close quarters. More than once I was nearly found out, flinching as one of the others brushed against my ill-gotten bruises, and then having to allay their concern with careful falsehoods. I took to avoiding contact, never quite allowing the others to touch me, lest they discover the marks I hid beneath my clothes. I bathed while they slept, and slept in my clothes. Thankfully, the others mistook it for a manifestation of the fear that walked among us like a living thing, and never pushed me for the truth.
A year passed, and another. I turned thirteen, and Kryssa showed me how to hide the changes of womanhood, though I do not believe our father would have noticed. I took over my sister’s duties at home so that she could earn more coin in the village; though we never spoke of it, I was more talented at these domestic chores, especially cooking, and she was grateful to relinquish them.
Destiny works mysteriously; if Kryssa had not been working in the village to pay off the debts that hung over us like a headsman’s axe, we may never have learned how strong the connection among us truly was.
12 Cuna 574A.F.
Alyxen had revealed a surprising talent for fixing broken things, in between the stories h
e told, and soon had taken over all repairs around our neglected farm. While Brannyn and Reyce tended to the fields and Kylee saw to our dwindling number of animals, Alyxen busied himself with mending everything, from the worn-out farming equipment to the failing water pump. We grew accustomed to the sounds of both hammering and his clever curses, so that it was nearly a melody we had all learned to ignore.
I was washing laundry the day he decided at last to tackle the leak in our roof, scrambling atop the ancient, cedar shingles like a sure-footed mountain goat. I hummed quietly to myself as I draped wet, heavy sheets across the line. I did not notice when the hammering stopped, barely heard my brother’s faint cry as he slipped on the slick eaves. But I knew he had fallen when the pain slammed into me and stole my breath.
Alyxen.
The clothespins dropped unnoticed from my hands as I ran to the side of the house where he had fallen, my heart thundering in my chest. He was struggling to sit up, his face white as death with shock, his left arm dangling, bent unnaturally. I dropped to my knees beside him, my heart caught in my throat.
I do not know what possessed me to call for Kryssa, save that she was our beacon, our safeguard against fear. I reached out to her- and found her, irritated for some reason, her thoughts filled with lemon wax and beautiful sky-blue eyes.
Alyxen’s hurt. My panic burst out of me like a flood, and I was helpless to stop it. I don’t know what to do.
The sky-blue eyes were replaced in an instant with a bone-shattering calm, and I heard her, somehow, like an indigo wave within my mind. I’m coming.
Brannyn appeared beside me, his face set in determined lines. Without speaking, he gently lifted our brother, careful of his broken arm, and carried him inside the house. I followed, wringing my hands. It was not until Kylee and Reyce met me at the door, the blind terror in their eyes cutting through my own, that I was at last able to think again.
Our father had hidden a heavy bottle of whiskey beneath his bed a year before, and promptly forgotten about it. I asked Kylee to fetch it, and sent Reyce to the woods to find two of the straightest sticks he could for setting the arm. The bottle was dusty, and I hurriedly cleaned it with my skirt before pouring a healthy swig down Alyxen’s throat.
I held him down as Brannyn set the arm, pulling sharply on the break until the bone was straight; though I tried to take as much of his pain as I could, he still screamed, and fainted. I wiped cold sweat from my forehead, grateful for a respite from his agony.
Reyce returned with the sticks at last, and I tied them to my brother’s broken arm with strips of rags. I left Kylee to watch worriedly over her twin as I staggered outside with Brannyn, Reyce trailing silently behind us as I sat heavily upon the steps that led to our door.
I found I was still clutching the whiskey bottle, and took a large gulp, gasping as the fire of it burned away the ice in my veins. The warm breeze dried my fear-sweat, and slowly the nerves and anxiety inside me eased. I offered the bottle to Brannyn, and he sipped from it, making a face as he handed it back.
Kryssa arrived at a gallop, throwing herself from the wild-eyed Renic before he had even stopped. I tried to reassure her, but Brannyn shook his head at me as she brushed past, hurrying inside to check on Alyxen. Reyce sighed, and went to care for Renic, who stood where she had left him, sweating and breathing like a bellows.
She emerged again after several minutes, and sat beside me on the steps. I handed her the whiskey wordlessly, and she took a long pull from it before returning it to me.
We stared off across the fields for long minutes, unsure of what to say to each other.
Brannyn finally stood, restless, and broke the silence. “You heard her.”
The words were meant for Kryssa, and she nodded. For a moment, I could sense the worry and confusion swirling within her, and took another gulp of the whiskey.
“We all heard her.” He leaned against a post holding up our roof, his gaze flickering between me and my sister. I gasped; I had not realized the others had heard me when I had reached for her. “What does it mean?”
I thought of the ease with which I’d touched my sister’s mind, reading her thoughts of sky-colored eyes. If she reached for me, what would she find? Would she be able to see my secret?
“We can’t let our minds spill into each other’s carelessly,” Kryssa said slowly, voicing my concern. A shadow passed behind her brilliant green eyes, and I realized with astonishment that my sister had her own secrets that she did not wish to share. I had been fortunate she had not been thinking of them when I had so recklessly entered her mind.
“Shields,” I blurted, and blushed when they both looked at me, the whiskey merrily dancing through my blood. “We need to learn to block each other out.”
They nodded, and so it was agreed.
We practiced each night before bed, talking to each other only in our minds, learning how to focus our thoughts so that we shared only what we wanted with each other, keeping our secrets to ourselves. We quickly became proficient, able to find each other and talk to just one, despite the distance between us. We learned to create shields, blocking each other out, and found that our gift was useless when we were asleep, like a blank wall that we could not penetrate. I think that was a blessing- surely I had no wish to inflict my nightmares upon the others.
It is hard to explain to others this method of communicating between us. It is not so much a voice, but a color and a presence, accompanied by a series of emotions and images. Mine, the others told me, was like a golden light in their minds, and they found me serene and calming. Kylee was vibrant green and wild, Alyxen silver and unyielding. Brannyn was brilliant red and burning, his thoughts often accompanied by the fury he tried so hard to keep buried. Reyce, oddly, was white, nearly blinding, his presence like an ache that pressed against the back of my eyes; in time, he learned to control it better, so that it did not cause the rest of us so much pain.
Kryssa was the hardest to describe, and I looked at her helplessly when she asked me of it, unsure what to say.
Brannyn saved me, staring at her with dark eyes as he answered. “You’re blue, Kryssa. Deep as the sea, and filled with all the rage and calm of it.”
A strange comparison, surely, for children that had never seen the ocean.
ALYXEN
1 Veyshin 573A.F. - 28 Narens 574A.F
If my years in my father’s house taught me anything, it is that there will always be light, even in the midst of so much darkness. There were still moments, brief though they were, when life was joyful and happy, and our fear, if not erased, was at least temporarily forgotten.
I knew at an early age that it was my talent to create these moments, to breathe long-lost laughter into our lives, to ease the burden of the shadows we labored under. I began by retelling the stories Janis had once read to us, changing them bit by bit until they became my own. I learned to create my own, and acted them out before the appreciative audience of my siblings before bed. They were ridiculous and absurd, often a blending of too many ideas, but they made my brothers and sisters laugh, and that was all the encouragement I needed.
As I grew older, my stories grew more elaborate. I think I was the first to dream of what would happen when we were old enough to leave our father’s house; certainly I was the first to speak of it, though I framed it in the guise of a comical story of a family of squirrels that set off into the world to find dragons.
The others were quiet when I finished, though I could sense they were still awake. I was too large for the bed now, my limbs lengthening rapidly as I neared my eleventh winter, and so I lay on my pallet on the floor, my hands pillowed behind my head as I stared up at the ceiling.
“Do you think it’s really possible?” Reyce asked at last, his voice quiet as if he feared being heard. “Do you think we could really leave one day?”
“We can’t stay here forever,” I pointed out reasonably. “One day we’ll be able to leave this place. No more farm, no more Desperation.”
If he understood the double meaning of my words, he did not choose to comment on it. “Where would we go?”
“Anywhere we want.” I shrugged. “Mejares, Cardoza. Even Tante.”
“We should stop in Fallor first, meet Mother’s family. Get provisions for the road.” Lanya twisted in the bed, getting comfortable. “Then we can see the world.”
Reyce sighed, wistful. “I would really like to see dragons one day.”
“I want to ride one,” Brannyn joked, though I could hear the longing in his tone. “It must be wonderful.”
“Well, I want to be the first to ride a unicorn.” Kylee’s voice was filled with determination.
“Those are supposed to be really aggressive, you know.”
“That’s why I’m going to be the first. And then I’m going to the Ice Flats to get my very own pegasus, so I can fly wherever I want.”
“Val Estus,” Lanya murmured sleepily. “I want to see the golden spires. And attend a ball. Maybe even dance with a prince.”
“Romance.” I made a face. “Blech.”
She sniffed. “Shows what you know. You-”
Reyce interrupted before our bickering could escalate. “Kryssa?” The bed creaked as he turned to look at her. “What do you want to do once we leave here?”
It took so long for her to answer, I thought she had fallen asleep. Her voice was quiet when she finally spoke, so that we had to strain to hear her. “I want to be happy.”
Her words sobered us, and we spoke no more of leaving, or of the future.
But that did not stop me from dreaming of it.
When I broke my arm, I had plenty of time to consider my freedom, since Kryssa and Lanya insisted that I remain confined to the bed to rest, not even allowing me to perform the simplest of chores. I prowled the house and the gardens when they weren’t looking, careful to keep my shields up so they wouldn’t catch me. Though our newfound telepathy was useful, it was also inconvenient, for I was restless, and nearly certain I would die of boredom.
