Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  But on the morrow she would ride alone, in search of what knowledge Aponé could bestow upon her, for the completion of her task. If there was nothing of the kind to be given, her decision would not be affected by such. She would come for her men, and she would ride forth in blindness. She might die in the trying – but that was neither here nor there.

  ~

  Heidi lay long awake that night, thinking on present and past as she seemed to have done so often since the day that Jade evaded her so narrowly beside the river. She recounted repeatedly the events of that day, and weighed the amount of time she had had, against the speed of her own pursuit. Though there may have been no truth in it, she could not help but feel that the two things were out of balance, and that she could have done more.

  She propped her head up on several pillows, the better to watch the dark shadows that slithered across the wall. Ominous-looking things they were, tall and imposing, with piercing eyes and pointed teeth. She closed her eyes, when it began to appear that they were moving nearer; and tried to imagine that the night had already passed away, and that the chamber was filled with sunlight.

  She opened her eyes, blew out the candle beside the bed, and whispered:

  “Luné.”

  A faint blue light ignited above her head, and spread through the room to illuminate the dark places. This light, unlike the flame of her candle, cast no shadows upon the walls.

  Episode IV

  XXIII: Remás

  The morning sky was one of steel and snow, hovering there over the melted ground as a reminder that winter was not yet passed. A few flakes began to fall after the breaking of the fast, and grew thicker as the morning wore on. The earth, filled with turned mud and dead grass, was filling quickly again with snow – and becoming once more the perfect canvas upon which the hours of the day were painted, one by one until the white roadside was covered in dirt and grime.

  Its perfection, its infinite smoothness of clean frost, was a fleeting thing; and would soon no longer be the thing which made the heart just a little gladder, and would become the thing which made the heart drop slowly downwards into a brew of sadness and regret. Of course, the brew was always there; but the ruination of that beautiful landscape only served to initiate the boiling of it, so that it flew up in scalding drops to the chest and the throat.

  Helena Makepeace stood with her hands submerged in the suds of the sink, fingers clutching a dirty plate which she should have already been scrubbing. She heard the sounds of her two children playing behind her, running to and fro from the kitchen to the parlour, communicating in shouts despite the fact that they were never more than four feet from one another.

  Helena glanced back over her shoulder, and saw her husband at the table reading his paper, smoking his pipe and looking quite at peace there in the commotion of the children’s merry-making. After a moment or two, he noticed that Helena was staring at him, and asked, “All right, dear?”

  “Quite,” said Helena, turning back to the dishes once again. She peered out of the window above the sink, looking into the world which she seldom ventured to, and cursing silently the spotlessly clean floor on which she stood. She had only just washed it the night before, scrubbing long into the late hours for want of sleep.

  She found herself drifting there at the sink, her eyes fluttering open and shut as her fingers grew ever more wrinkled and clammy in the lukewarm water. She looked down, and realised that the dirty dishes had all been cleaned, and so emptied the sink and scrubbed it out. She leaned there against it for a moment more, reluctant to turn towards her husband; but felt finally that she had no other choice but to do so, as it would sometime begin to look strange that she was standing there, so still and silent, for seemingly no reason.

  She sat down across from him at the table, and reached for her cup of tea. It was cold and disgusting; but she drank it, anyway.

  When she had become quite lost in her own thoughts, and was paying absolutely no attention at all to the fact that he was sitting there with her, her husband asked:

  “Are you sure that you’re feeling all right? You look a bit peaked.”

  “Quite certain, Andrew.”

  “Well, all right,” he said. He returned to his paper, and said not another word more.

  Helena closed her eyes, as the children came running back into the room, and tried to shut her ears against their raucous hollering. She could not keep herself from it, and so turned round to face them, and said loudly, “Do be quiet, boys! You’re giving Mother a terrible headache.”

  “Sorry, Mother,” said they, hurrying off again into the parlour.

  “They are only boys, Helena,” said Andrew, in rather a reprimanding tone of voice. “They only need to stretch their legs, every once in a while.”

  “I would agree with you,” said Helena, “if they were not doing just such a thing, every single minute of every day. Contrary to what you may think, Andrew, I do need at least a small amount of peace – even if only every once in a great while!”

  Having been quite shocked by his wife’s sudden outburst, Andrew sat quietly, clutching his pipe as if for dear life.

  “I must lie down for a while,” said Helena. She rose from the table, and was nearly bowled over as the boys raced into the room; but said not a word as she walked past them, and climbed the staircase to the second floor. She went down the hall to her own bedroom (which was separate, nowadays, from Andrew’s), and locked the door fast. She lay down upon the bed, and stared out of the window, her thoughts fixed somewhere outside of it, but of a place some distance away and some years back.

  A small boy came smiling into the kitchen, where Helena was fixing a pot of stew for supper. He walked to the stove, and threw his arms round his sister’s waist, afterwards beginning a routine of rubbing his small hands against his eyes, as he sat down at the table.

  “How was your nap?” Helena asked him, lowering the fire beneath the pot.

  “I didn’t sleep very well,” he answered. “Someone was banging something against the wall.”

  Earlier in the afternoon, when their mother burnt the roast that was intended for supper, Nirin threw a terrible fit. He tossed the blackened meat out of the window, and then took the pan to the wall, beating it repeatedly and spattering gravy all round the room.

  “You can go back to bed after supper,” said Helena.

  “But what was that sound I heard?”

  “It was nothing, Eriah. I dropped something, that’s all.”

  He sat back in his chair, and crossed his skinny arms over his chest, twisting his face into a pout to let Helena know that he did not believe her.

  “Wipe that look off of your face,” she said. “Or you won’t get any of this nice stew that I made.”

  “But I like your stew!”

  “Well, you had better smile, then.”

  He gave her a big grin, and then came to stand beside her. “I saw Mummy crying,” he said, leaning his head to rest against Helena’s hip. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” said Helena, smoothing back the hair that stuck up all over the right side of his head.

  “That’s what she said, too.”

  “Then I suppose you had better believe it, hadn’t you?”

  “But why would somebody cry, if everything was all right?”

  Helena set down her wooden spoon, and patted Eriah’s cheek. “Boys don’t,” she said simply; “but sometimes girls do.”

  “Oh,” said he, with a nod of understanding. “And is that why Heidi cries, too?”

  “Yes,” said Helena, shifting her words past a great lump in her throat. “That’s why Heidi does it, too.”

  “Okay,” said Eriah. He went back to his chair, and sat with his little feet dangling a foot above the floor.

  Helena extinguished the flame in the stove, and placed the glass cover atop the pot.

  “You stay here and wait for me,” she said to Eriah. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll have supper together.”


  “Mummy and Heidi, too?”

  “Mummy and Heidi, too.”

  She went from the kitchen, then, and entered the hallway to the right of it. She went down to the end, where Heidi’s bedroom door stood locked. She rapped softly with her knuckles, and when there was no response, spoke Heidi’s name with her best guess at a balance between softness and audibility. For, of course, Nirin may only have been (and almost certainly was) sleeping under a veil of spirits in their mother’s room, just two doors to the left.

  “I’ll be out in a moment,” said Heidi quickly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Half a blessed moment!”

  Helena laid her head against the door, but raised it quickly when the door gave way to a view of the room. It was in shambles. The bedclothes had been ripped from the mattress, and the drawers of the bureau had been emptied of all their garments. Those had been tossed all over the floor, creating multi-coloured spots upon the brown, threadbare carpet. Everything atop the bureau had been swept off of it, and the mirror above it had been thrown down to the floor. Shards of broken glass lay everywhere.

  “What happened?” asked Helena breathlessly, examining the wreckage with quite as much composure as she was able.

  “Nothing happened,” said Heidi, who put forth a valiant attempt to shut the door on the sight. “It’s only a little messy.”

  “All of your things are ruined, Heidi.”

  “Not all of them. There are some things I can fix.” She smiled unhappily. “Except for the mirror, of course. I can do nothing for that.”

  “And I would have to agree,” said Helena. “But we won’t take another step down this hall, until you tell me what happened.”

  “I took Eriah to the stream this morning,” said Heidi. She tried again to push past her sister, but had little success. “He wanted to go fishing. I thought that he had his own pole – but he took Nirin’s by mistake. It snapped, when he caught his last fish. But you really should have seen it, Helena; it was a monster of a thing. He was so proud of himself –”

  “Forget about the fish,” said Helena, laying a firm hand upon Heidi’s shoulder. “Will you please tell me what happened?”

  “Can you not guess for yourself?”

  Helena reached behind Heidi, to open the door to her bedroom, and pushed her inside with a single shove. She closed the door against the hall, and looked at Heidi seriously.

  “Let me see your back.”

  Heidi shook her head. “He didn’t, Helena.”

  “I don’t believe you. I can tell you’ve been crying.”

  “I was upset about my mirror. Grandmother gave that to me, you know.”

  “I’m only going to ask you once more. Either show me, or I shall look for myself.”

  Heidi removed her sweater (not without a grimace of pain, made reluctantly visible) and turned to face the wall.

  Helena tugged gingerly at the bottom of her blouse, and rolled it up, all the way to her neck. She could hear Heidi drawing sharp breaths through her teeth, as the fabric came away from the bond it had formed with the dried blood.

  “I’m going to have to clean this,” said Helena. “It’s worse than last time.”

  “It’s the same.”

  “I’m looking at it, Heidi – and I’m telling you that it’s not.”

  Heidi moved away from her, then, and her shirt fell back into place over the wounds. She seated herself on the edge of her naked bed, with a familiar look of grim defiance upon her face.

  “Only let me get some hot water,” said Helena. “It won’t take long.”

  “Can it not wait until after supper?” asked Heidi. “Eriah had no lunch. He must be very hungry.”

  Helena pressed her fingertips to her temples, and closed her eyes; but pushed quickly past the overwhelming nature of the moment, and reached down to take her sister’s hand. “Come on, then,” she said. “To the kitchen with you.”

  Together they went quietly on down the hall, to the table where Eriah sat patiently, hands folded neatly before him.

  “Do you feel better now, Heidi?”

  “I’m feeling much better,” said Heidi, taking a seat beside him. Then she sniffed the air, and grabbed Eriah’s hand, making her eyes wide as she said, “I wonder, is that our sister’s buffalo stew I smell?”

  “It is!” exclaimed Eriah, bouncing up and down on his seat. “It smells so good, I could eat the whole pot!”

  “Well, you had better not,” said Heidi, rising from the table to take Eriah up in her arms. “If you don’t save some for me, I’ll just have to eat you!”

  She buried her face in his neck, and he giggled wildly, kicking his feet in the air.

  “That tickles, Heidi!”

  “Do you promise to share?”

  “Sure I do! Because I love you!”

  “Oh, and I love you, too,” said Heidi, lowering him back into his chair. “More than all the waters in the sea.”

  “More than all the stars in the sky!”

  “More than all the trees in the forest!”

  Helena placed a bowl of stew before each of them, and then turned back to the stove. But Heidi caught her about the waist, and smiled up into her face.

  “And how much do we love Helena?” she asked Eriah.

  “More than all the fishes in the stream!”

  “Wonderful,” said Helena, squeezing Heidi’s hand. “It’s very nice, knowing that you love me more than a fish!”

  Eriah began to laugh again; but a melancholy look passed betwixt Helena and Heidi. So they turned their attention to their supper, watching gladly as Eriah smiled to himself after each spoonful – but also trying, with each passing moment, to somehow buoy their sunken spirits.

  At the very least, Eriah was so occupied with his stew, that he forgot to ask why their mother had not joined them at the table.

  ~

  Helena woke from her troubled sleep to find the room filled with twilight. Having come to some unconscious decision while she dreamt, she rose from the bed and went to the closet, excavating a large suitcase from a pile of boxes at the bottom of it. She set the case upon the bed and popped it open, going next to the bureau to remove an assortment of clothes. She placed them into the case, grabbed a few other small and necessary things, and then fastened it again. She hefted its weight in her hand; found it to be less (or, in this case, more) than desirable; but decided that she could manage it. She went back to the closet and pulled out her wool cloak, wrapped it round herself, and fastened a pin at the throat.

  Downstairs, she found Andrew in the parlour with the boys. He was reading a book and smoking, as usual, his damned pipe. He looked up at her when she reached the bottom of the stairs, and his eyes went directly to, and lingered upon, the suitcase she held.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, standing quickly. “I only just got home – and the boys told me you were asleep all day! They played down here by themselves for hours; and I’ll say that it’s no small wonder they didn’t burn the house down somewhere along the way. Now you come down to us, dressed in your snow-garb and carrying a suitcase?” He took a deep breath, having gotten himself overly excited. “What am I to make of this, Helena?”

  “Whatever you wish,” she said, setting the case down so that she might take a last look at her husband. His thick beard, which he never shaved in winter, was at the stage where it began to curl just below his chin (of which there was indisputably more than there used to be). He stood only just taller than Helena herself (who was, granted, quite tall for a woman), but had begun to bulge out considerably at either side. The buttons of his years-old waistcoat were pulled tight against his round stomach, protesting silently against their discomfort. His cheeks above his brown beard were a ruddy red, even more so now that he was in such a flurry. His small watery eyes looked upon her angrily.

  He had once been such a handsome man! He had swept her off her feet, much to the displeasure of many a jealous suitor he had turned down for her sake. But now he wa
s only an old man – many years her senior, and so very far away from her, that their remaining together seemed the absolute most inconceivable thing in all the world.

  But then she looked to the boys, who had finally collapsed from their play, and were lying atop one another on the carpet. Their small faces were stained with the sticky-sweetness of candy, and their mouths hung open as they breathed the deep sleep of children, in and out, and steady as the sea. The annoyance and hatred that they inspired in her did not seem, at that moment, to rival the love that she felt for them. She looked upon their sleeping faces, and longed to kiss them. But she did not want to wake them; and despite any feelings that had been roused in her, she still intended very much to leave.

  “I don’t understand this, Helena,” said Andrew, slipping his hands into his pockets, and looking like a man lost. “I know that you are not happy anymore; but don’t you think this a drastic thing? For goodness’ sake, we have children!”

  “I know that, Andrew,” said Helena. “I am looking upon them this very instant; and am assured that the peace of their sleep has very little to do with me. I have neglected them, Andrew; and I have treated you poorly. None of you deserve to go on this way.”

  “Come now, Helena,” said Andrew, stepping forth to lay his hands upon her. “We are husband and wife! Even if things are not as you imagined they would be – we might still go on from here. If you simply tell me how, I can change things, so that they are more to your liking. I will discipline the children when they misbehave; and I will spend more time with you. Because, don’t you see? I love you, Helena.”

  “I know you do, Andrew,” said Helena kindly, pressing his hand before moving out of his grasp. “But I don’t love you; and there is no way around that.”

  He looked as though his heart had broken where he stood, and crumbled to the floor in a thousand tiny pieces. She stepped carefully around them, so that he might have no trouble setting them back together again, once she had gone.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” she said. “I care for you deeply – but we cannot go on as we have. It is time for me to go, and time for you to make a life that suits you better.”