Severed Veil - Tales of Death and Dreams

by Bethany A Jennings

carved in my brain,

  the eager compulsion,

  that cry of my soul,

  the frenzy,

  the vision that’s burning a hole

  in my mind.

  I can’t shake it.

  It’s mine, this I know.

  My quest, not another’s—

  for only I’m full

  of this racket,

  this chaos,

  this burdening fight

  of characters, stories

  that scream for the light,

  this rabbit hole,

  endless,

  that calls me to war

  to fill barren pages

  with worlds from my core.

  And I fidget.

  I bite

  on my lip in the dark.

  Am I a creator?

  And is this my spark?

  Or is this insanity?

  Should I give in

  to this spellbinding blaze

  captive under my skin?

  What if I’m deluded,

  my passions misled

  by this thing,

  this enigma

  that dwells in my head?

  Am I stubborn,

  a fool,

  to think this could be gold?

  But I’m sick

  at the thought of my heart left untold.

  Perhaps I’m obsessed

  and should let it all go—

  but a prayer leaves my lips.

  and my heart whispers:

  “No.”

  THE DISCONNECT

  To RJ — this story belongs to you

  Eighteen years old. Time to disconnect.

  I have dreamed of this day all my life—every blink of time when my mother didn’t tamp down my longing with practicality and the need for obedience.

  Now I finally sit on the edge of an exam table, my feet held still so they won’t swing, my arms at my sides so I won’t wrinkle this beautiful, crisp yellow blouse.

  The doctor’s face is heavy with the gravity of the moment. “Tiffany Lewis, after your training chip is removed, you will be solely responsible for your actions. Anything you say or do that is socially unacceptable could have lifelong consequences. Do you understand?”

  I nod. I’m supposed to feel cautious, maybe proud, but most of all somber about this responsibility. I will be a great adult.

  “You may lose control briefly,” the doctor says. “Your body is not used to moving or talking without the safeguards of the Parental Control chip. One day if you become a parent, you will appreciate how hard your parents worked to protect and guide you to this point.”

  I’m supposed to be grateful. I smile and nod again. I am a perfect example of good manners.

  “The procedure will take only a minute.”

  At the side of the room, my mother smiles at me. I feel an appropriate swell of gratitude for her years of guidance.

  I’m supposed to be sad now, grieving the connection we are about to lose. My lip curls in a pout. She blows me a kiss.

  Latex dust flies as the doctor snaps on his gloves. His hands mess with my hair, pinning it aside with a clip.

  The scalpel slits the back of my head.

  I wince, but my mother and I share a glance and a smile driven by her encouragement. This will be the last time she helps me be brave and strong, she reminds me. After this, I have to do it all myself.

  “I’m removing the chip,” the doctor says.

  Pain flashes like lightning in my skull and whips my entire body. A warbling cry bursts from my mouth.

  My head pounds. The doctor grabs for me, but I tumble to the floor and collapse on hands and knees on the concrete, trembling all over. Light dances in my vision.

  I have to get myself up. Nobody is going to do it for me. I can arch my back but that’s about it. The world is swimming, and my insides swim with it.

  The doctor’s gloves snap behind me. “Congratulations, Tiffany Lewis! You are now an independent adult.”

  I curl over and pitch my stomach’s contents all over the floor.

  “Tiffy!” Too close to my ear, a high voice squeaks in wounded outrage.

  Mother.

  Her stiff hands drag me up, and I stand like a newborn calf, sick and dizzy with my knees bent inward.

  “Your legs will remember how to walk,” the doctor assures. “Adjustment will take a couple hours.”

  I dry heave again. “Wha…” These are supposed to be my first words, the first real words coming from me.

  I don’t even know who I am yet.

  Mother puts her arm under my shoulders to steady me, and I aim a light, dizzy swat at her.

  “Stop vomiting. Behave!” she hisses in my ear. Too close, too shrill. “Francie’s videoing!”

  She gives her friend a pained look. The woman stands nearby, holding a camera aloft.

  “This is all perfectly normal, Ms. Lewis,” comes the doctor’s calming voice.

  “I am not normal!” Mother snaps. “I mean, Tiffany is not normal. I am not one of those lazy moms. I worked hard raising her! Control your gag reflex, child,” she whispers. “I can’t do it for you, remember? Get it together.”

  I overcome the gagging shelf that feels like it’s blocking my throat. Words come slow. “I…was not…me. I was you.”

  “Don’t be silly, dear. Smile!”

  She drags me toward the camera, her face filled with a wide grin. “Look at her, all growed up! Yay!” Her voice hasn’t changed much since the baby videos.

  Francie is filming this.

  I wobble. There is blood in my hair and bile on my lip, and these legs are too long and narrow to move with this unsteady toddler gait.

  She’s probably streaming this to all her social networks.

  I toy with the idea of retching again, this time in Mom’s hair.

  She wipes my mouth with her own sleeve. “Sorry, peeps! I didn’t realize the disconnect could get so ugly!”

  “Ugly” is this yellow blouse she had me wear. Mom wants yellow everything. I never noticed how hideous it was. I was supposed to think it was the nicest color in the world.

  Mom aims her big green eyes and pointy smile at me. “Tiffy! Say something nice for the camera!”

  If this is what she’s going to share with all her friends, it’d better be good.

  I stammer and blink. Words feel unfamiliar. “Well…my head hurts, but it’s starting to clear…”

  As I speak, I suddenly feel firm on my feet again.

  My own two feet.

  I push Mother’s hands away, and lift my chin for the camera, rubbing the back of my neck. Wetness is seeping into my collar. My fingers come away red with blood.

  Mother’s jaw drops as I smear it across the front of my blouse.

  “I’m a grown up now,” I say. “And yellow is the ugliest color in the world.”

  SPARKS AND ASH

  “I’ve taken your family. Your things. Your memories. Nothing left but your tattered skin. I’d kill you…” My enemy straightens. “But why bother killing a nobody?”

  In the wake of her triumph, my laugh startles the silence.

  “But this proves I am Somebody.” I etch words into the air through my pain. My fragmented thoughts ignite – sparks on gunpowder trails. “I’ve altered the world. I’ve seen it in ways all my own. You can’t erase me. I exist. Even if you burn my bones…I will exist as ash.”

  She seizes her axe, but I smile as it swings.

  NO MORE BLOOD

  Something in this sword feels...broken.

  It’s so perfect between my palms, the rippled steel cold on my fingers. With my own gifting, and with the skill-magic that hums through this ancient blade, I could carve down any enemy.

  But memories leach from the steel, soaking into my fingers, permeating me with the bitterness of metal and blood.

  “It doesn’t want to fight anymore,” I murmur.

  Rekin’s dry voice cuts into my awareness. “Well, that’s stupid. What use is a sword
for, if not fightin’? Kinda like what use is a prophesied savior-girl, if she’s not doing any actual savin’?”

  The men laugh. I flinch. Recovering the enemy’s most powerful weapon still hasn’t earned their trust.

  My voice falters. “This blade’s re-forging...it didn’t ask for it.”

  Rekin sneers. “Ask?”

  “Hush.” Captain Tathe halts. “Listen.”

  The company silences, and a stick snaps between the redwoods. Rekin tenses. Hands slip toward sword hilts.

  The captain’s voice cracks through the air, aimed at me. “Run!”

  Figures in crimson dart through the trees—burst on our company like flying drops of blood. Coming for the sword. Coming for me.

  Every instinct screams for me to fight.

  Run?

  Shock streaks through my frame. Tathe believes me. Believes this crazy old weapon that pleads with my soul.

  What use is a prophesied savior-girl, if she’s not doing any savin’?

  Please, the blade begs in my sweaty palms. No more blood.

  The crimson warriors close in.

  And I flee. Not looking back. Casting aside all fear of Rekin’s scorn. The sword’s relief pours into my soul until tears streak my cheeks. Behind me, soldiers crash through the ferns, but I am far ahead.

  She shall defend the defender, the prophecies say.

  But I was not born to fight with this sword.

  I was born to fight for it.

  LIVING IN THE LIGHT

  What if I told you

  that living in the light—

  living in blessings,

  living in all my dreams come true—

  doesn’t stop me from seeing the darkness,

  walking along a dim path,

  crying, heart twisting,

  as I walk beside someone who’s not?

  Someone who’s living in a shadow they can’t shake,

  crushed beneath a mountain that,

  try as I might,

  I cannot move,

  cannot budge,

  cannot push aside.

  So here I am, standing in the light,

  with someone I love buried in rubble.

  (Lord, let it never be real—

  real dirt, real rubble.

  Let it never be real.)

  What if I told you

  that the darkness that pours from my pen

  is deeply felt,

  is crying out on behalf of another,

  not myself—

  is that okay?

  “Write what you know,” they say.

  And I know what it’s like

  to stand beside the heap of darkness,

  crying for a loved one to get out—

  (Please please please, let them out)

  to wish that I could rip depression’s face with claws of steel,

  but it’s untouchable, just a darkness,

  nothing I can grasp.

  It slips through my fingers—

  while it holds them in an iron embrace.

  I want my love back,

  I want my heart back,

  but here I am,

  living in the light,

  calling down through the cracks,

  crying, “There’s light,

  there’s light up here,”

  wishing they could only see it too.

  “What do you know of darkness?”

  you may wonder.

  But rest assured,

  one can live outside the grasp of darkness,

  one can live out in the light,

  one can live in glorious bounty,

  but still be a survivor.

  THE DESTROYER PRINCE

  For Brittany

  The screams of the dying are a distant whisper on the wind.

  Here by the mirror pool, hidden in the cleft of the mountains, I can barely hear the chaos, the aftermath of what I’ve created. I release my mare to graze, and sink down onto the sand beside the rippling water.

  My hands are red with blood—but not my own.

  Nothing shall harm him.

  The fae called it a gift. For me it is a curse.

  Soon the company will find me, drag me back, parade me through the streets, and send me out for another bloodbath. If there is time, perhaps I will snatch a scant night’s sleep—haunted by the screams of villagers I’ve slain. A shudder of loathing rolls down my spine.

  No more. The invincible hero will be their slave no more.

  Moonlight glints on my knife as I raise it to my wrist.

  “Don’t.”

  The single word cuts the air like a crystal blade. I startle from my seat on the damp sand. “Who goes there?”

  A head rises from the water, hair dripping in thick braids like weeds—or perhaps they are weeds. Shoulders follow. Then a naked torso, pale as paper in the moonlight. She is as delicate as any of the women who were thrust at me in the courts, before my brother slit his own throat. Before the gift fell to me.

  Around the woman’s narrow waist, glints of steely scales reflect the water that hides her lower half.

  I shiver, feeling rooted to the ground. Mountain merfolk bewitch travelers, luring them into ponds and drowning them, dragging them into their watery caves. But surely she cannot hurt me.

  The blade edge brushes my wrist, and I remember what I was about to do.

  “Don’t,” she says again, softly.

  “Because you prefer your meat alive?” I whisper. “Why do you care what I do?”

  Her weedy hair shifts as she tilts her head to study me. “Because you matter.”

  “Of course I matter. I’m the damned Destroyer Prince!” Bitterness floods my tongue. “I’m tired of mattering. I want to not matter. To be free.”

  “You are afraid.” Her silver voice threads through my head, sending out tendrils of keen curiosity.

  “Nothing can harm me but my own hand. I have nothing to fear,” I growl.

  She gestures toward the knife. “You have visited this pool since you were a boy. But since the curse fell to you, when you visit, you always sit with your knife and look at your wrist—hesitating. How many times has it been? Five? You are afraid. Because you know that you should not.”

  “Is it wrong to kill myself when I know hundreds will die by my hand tomorrow if I do not?” I cry. “This is my country and my mother its queen. What else is there for me but this?”

  “What enslaves you, prince?” Her moss-green eyes pierce me. I know better than to lock gazes with a mer-fae, but I cannot look away.

  The green consumes me, dragging answers from my depths like a net drawing in dark fish. “I am enslaved to my warmongering mother. To the people. To the songs they sing of my legacy, though I’ve only begun to be this destroyer they exalt. There is no life for me outside of that. Only disgrace. At least in death I will not face disgrace.”

  When did I enter the water?

  The coolness ripples around me, flooding into my boots, soaking my breeches and tunic. I stand waist-deep in the pool, now, and the merwoman’s fingers trace down my arm to my hand...and gently draw the knife from my bloody fingers.

  Her green eyes meet mine again, tender and searching. “There is always another way.”

  The blade melts in her hands and blows away like a wisp of smoke on the wind.

  “Their songs will change,” she declares. “Now they will sing of the Lost Destroyer Prince. The hero who disappeared.”

  Sudden fear thrums inside me. “If you have the magic to kill me,” I croak, “do it. But the curse will pass to my cousin. It will never end. Even your people will fall, if the queen has her way.”

  “What seems to be a curse now may be a gift later.” She nudges me into the deeper waters, leaving barely a ripple on the surface. My own movement creates a splash that frightens a nearby night-bird into the treetops.

  A shout rises from the grove beneath the mountain cleft, and a stab of alarm pierces my heart. They’ve found me!

  “Your people
drag men into your caves, and drown them,” I whisper.

  “Not you, prince.” The mermaid shakes her head.

  Scaly hands grasp me from every side, dragging me deeper. A shout of panic rises inside my chest, and I move to wrench away from their grasp, but their cold grip is too tight.

  Water closes over my head. The moon becomes a rippling, shapeless blast of white trickling into the pool.

  “No more,” the princess says—for now I see the row of sparkling horns like crystal daggers across her brow. The crown of the mer-fae queen. “No more lives will be lost tonight, my prince. Not even yours.”

  Her voice comes clear to me, even in the water as it surges past, as they draw me down to their caverns. A faint lilt of music rises in the current.

  I can breathe.

  “Did you not say,” the queen sings in my ear, “that nothing could harm you but your own hand?”

  I reach one last time toward the surface, toward the life I have known—and in the rush of pure mountain water, I see the blood flowing away, dissolving into the pool like my dagger vanishing in the wind.

  My hands are clean, and I sink downward, falling toward the distant sound of mermaid song.

  AETHERWORLD

  I stop at sunset.

  In the wilderness, all is silent except the rustle of trees. Swaying on aching feet, I glance up the deserted road, then down a hillside into a valley below, where sweet-smelling grass ripples in the warm wind. This is far enough from civilization. It will be safe—for a moment—to check the Aether for Nyam.

  I pull the little elixir bottle from my pocket. Only a few drops shimmer in the bottom now, and without training, this tiny vial of magic is my only way to reach the Aetherworld.

  I sink in the grass, uncorking the bottle, and tip a single drop into my dry mouth.

  My body collapses. Like sand trickling through an hourglass, my soul slips from it, drifting into the secondary Aetherworld.

  It overlays the physical realm like a rippling curtain of gauze, coating the world in gray as far as the horizon, and it has valleys and mountains all its own, dipping and climbing in and out of the physical world in unpredictable ways. I can still see the physical realm beneath, but it feels distant and muted.

  The Aether is so cold and empty—not even sunlight. I forget how harsh this hidden world can be, reflecting my emotions in its weather.