"Lavern...."
I see the hand on my arm. Such a perfect hand. Smooth, tan. I glance over my shoulder and see Sorina's eyes before I do anything else.
I let Myra climb out of my arms. Lean forward. Let my lips touch hers.
"What's going on?" Her words and breath mingle. Yet the panic in it is distinct.
I shake my head. "I don't know."
I don't know.
It is chaos in the street. I cannot distinguish the screaming from the mutterings, the knees from the shoulders, the fright from the confusion. It is all just a conglomeration of turbulence. I cannot even see Paul Vorren's corpse. I suppose I don't want to.
Perhaps chaos is just what I need. It distracts me from having to relive the final moments of his life.
Hand pulling. Mother's. Away from Sorina. Away from the din behind her.
"Goodbye," I say. Her lips ripple a response, but it is lost forever. Lost forever in screams.
Goodbye, Sorina.
School is supposed to resume today. Needless to say, it doesn't.
I am alone as I tread wearily upon the path through the village. As I glance around at the unlit shops and weary homes, I catch a few disquieted faces staring back at me. No one but me has heart enough to take the daring step out their front door. Not after yesterday. I am alone as the powdery sky leans against my shoulders.
There is no store. It was burned down. That's what I heard. For fear of infection. Like anyone would go back there anyway.
So there is nowhere for me to go. For some reason I avoid Vorren's shop. I have been in there too many times for my eyes to fully take in the destruction that it has suffered. Is it still burning? Or is it a cold mass of ashes, the color of the shopkeeper's skin, grain by grain being whispered away in the silent wind? Is there still that cash register, buried somewhere in the heap, that he always seemed so fond of? That he would pat lovingly every time we purchased something?
I try to avoid thinking about the plague that murdered him. But I cannot. Cannot help reminiscing his scorched eyes, his writhing scream. It rings on in the depths of my mind.
But is it over? Is this darkness finished?
I pretend not to know the answer to that question.
When I ease the door open, Mother looks relieved. She is sitting on the same wooden chair, next to the fireplace, facing me. As I slip off my leather shoes, I hear her say,
"I was afraid that...that...." She appears to think better of what she was going to say, shaking her head as if clearing a thought.
I sense her worry. "I'm sorry," I say. Nothing more.
I had been expecting her to ask where I had gone, since the store had been laid waste to. But she doesn't. She understands.
Myra enters the room, stopping when she sees me. I see her slip a piece of yellow paper behind her back. It takes me an instant to realize what is is.
"Give it to me."
I do not try to restrain myself. I do not yell, but I allow the heavy weight of my loathing to latch onto the stinging words. I see it swinging back and forth as the accusation rolls across the wooden air, hitting her in the stomach, sinking. She lets out a gasp of surprise and guilt and anger.
"Give...give...?"
Give what?
But I am beside her, uncurling her fingers from the envelope, unperturbed by the pain I know I am causing her with my forcefulness.
I stalk away to my room. Sitting on my bed, I take out the thorn, twirling it in my fingers. As I ponder it, I conclude that it must be meant simply as a means to recollect Father, a remembrancer. Like I would forget about him without it. But Mother had made a point: wouldn't he have given me something a bit more noticeable? This thorn is so small. As I toy with the enigma of it all, I notice an almost imperceptible black spot on it. Charred. I never noticed this when I first received it from Mother. Perhaps because it is so slight. But it did not take me long to catch it this time. So what if...?
Myra is in her room.
"Don't lie," I growl. That is all I need to say.
She turns, and I am taken aback by the expression of fear carved into her face. I mean to be intimidating, but not this, not threatening. Not the thing that brought upon this distress in my little sister.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, "I...I was wondering why Father would give it to you, and I thought I might...er...."
"What? What did you do?" All pity is sapped from my voice.
Her next words are spoken so low that I cannot hear them, but I manage to catch the word fire amidst her regretful mutterings.
I glare at her. My gaze is enough to capture my antipathy.
Though no word is spoken, she is defensive. "I knew that there must've been something special about it. I knew there must have been some purpose. You should've, Lavern. You should have known that Father didn't give us things without any reason. It's your gift. It should have been you who threw it in the fire, not me!"
I have had enough. I turn my back on her spilled pile of words and pass through the doorframe.
"Wait. Lavern."
I stop.
"The thorn. Think. It didn't burn, did it? It's still there, in your room, with just a small char mark. The fire didn't destroy it. When I took it out with the poker, it wasn't even hot. I was right. It isn't ordinary."
I leave the room.
It is morning again. The black clouds overhead are slightly brighter.
The lake alongside me is silent. An abysmal expanse of gray. No fish could live in there.
I realize that this was the place where Felix nearly drowned. I can almost see him, plummeting endlessly downwards, yet never disappearing from my sight. Never.
I had never talked to Mother about the inconsistencies of the event. Felix's disappearance that very night had erased any thoughts of interrogation with her. She should have stayed with Felix. If I hadn't decided to set out in search of them, the bones of my little brother would still be at the bottom of the lake, buried in the mud and rocks.
But where is he now? Did I not rescue him with purpose? He cannot be dead, not after that. And yet the lake he is in right now is too deep for me to pull him from.
Winter has arrived. It blows in the wind, stabs into me. Only reminiscence can keep me distracted from the cold.
It occurs to me that I am dragging my feet. I glance up.
There is fire in the distance. Another death.
It is spreading. I need to get home.
Days pass. The sky remains sepia. The door remains closed.
When I wake during one of these dreary days, I am pursued by a sudden sense of anxiousness, which, in my still somnolent mind, I cannot accurately label. Something about fires, and thorns, and Felix, always Felix, drifting down into the open jaws of the lake. As awareness begins to settle inside me, so does memory, and I immediately wish I had never woken. I dig my eyelids into the edges of my pupils, but the images do not cease to inundate me. I finally relent and open my eyes, finding that the blank ceiling above is as abhorrent as the darkness.
On mornings such as these, there is no breakfast. We must preserve the little food that remains in our kitchen: scraps, nothing at all substantial. Yet at the same time it would be foolish to let the supply spoil, a point Myra incisively pointed out after she was caught trying to smuggle an extra slice of bread to her room (it was a point worth noting, no doubt, but nonetheless Myra was scolded harshly). I offer multiple times to journey into the village to revitalize our provisions, but each time I am met with Mother's adamant refusal. She reminds me then of the plague and the horrors upon which it had inflicted Paul Vorren. I am not swayed from my opinion, but as of the moment I do not leave the house.
Somewhere around the second day, running water fails us. It is I who discovers this new predicament.
A broken glass cup. A dry faucet.
The day is spent in distress. We can savor the food, but not the water: the latter is a necessity we cannot last days without. We sit together in the kitchen, thinking, worrying. The silence is interrupted only by the occasional epiphany, which, after a few minutes of discussion, is deemed either too dangerous or impossible. Naturally, my idea of going to the lake is categorized as the former.
But when night begins to seep in through the window, we are still tangled in the quandary of the situation. Our throats are cracked and dehydrated. We need a solution. I once again offer to go to the lake with a bucket. This time it is more difficult for Mother to refuse.
"Lavern," she chides hoarsely, "I thought we agreed that going to the lake was unsafe."
But we will die anyway. In the end she acknowledges this fact, and lets me go.
It is breathtaking how dark it is out here. The dirt path at my feet is barely visible amidst the thick ebony. Dark as the silent wings of a black bird.
And it is cold. Already I feel an icy numbness trickling down my hands. It does not matter that I did not bring my jacket; the frigidity of the air would burn through any amount of clothing. The veins in my bony face pulse more and more rapidly as my bloodstream threatens to freeze over. The handle of the bucket is frozen into my palm.
At last I reach the place where I believe the lake is; in the darkness, it is nearly impossible to tell. I bend down and let my hand probe the ground for the water.
I feel it. A sharp jolt of realization runs through me.
Why hadn't I anticipated this? It is obviously below freezing. This has happened only once in the past, on a winter long lost in memories of childhood. And yet I know what these temperatures do to water. Icicles. Snow.
A frozen lake.
Frustration is now the single pillar that holds up my mind. The cold streams into my head through my ears and my running nose, freezing along the edges of my skull, issuing a noxious fog that squeezes like dry ice. I cry out; my voice echoes along the expanse of frozen water for miles, before finally rolling to a stop. I pound the bucket against the lake's surface, again, again, my strength pouring out onto the ice and dirt, grip weakening, before finally I hear a slight crack and the bucket frees itself from my grip, rolling away, then back towards me. Eyelids threatening to close, I feel along the ice for any sign of a fracture. I find it. Letting my hands and feet fall from under me, I endure the pain of my chin slamming against the ice and lick thirstily at the cold liquid that oozes from the crack.
So cold...so cold....
The lake's frozen skin embraces my light shirt. The front is damp, and my legs ache from being pressed against the hard soil. And soon I find my tongue glued to the ice, and the small issuance of water that had escaped the thick armor has already frozen. My heartbeat is thin against my chest. The substance flowing freely from my nose has solidified onto my cheeks. And now the darkness reaches into my chest, twisting, pulling, and with its other hand pounds against my head. Finally the cold and the darkness together pull me into the abyss.
A slender hand is the last image that registers, before I am claimed by the numbness.
It is early morning when at last I wake.
This is not my bed, I think. But I have slept here before, not too long ago. These heavy blankets, this orange candle beside me. Yes, I have been here before, but...I can't remember....
I am still struggling to recall when I fall once again into unconsciousness.
Keep up the great work, and let me know when you post more!
Please PM me when the next chapter is up, if you don't mind. This is getting better and better, and I'm eager to read what's next.