Lycila
Troy had been a singer.
A
coloratura soprano, to be exact. One like no other. It was said you could still
hear the reverberations of her final note if you stood alone in the main
amphitheater of Storm City’s opera hall— a shattering in sound, a shiver of the
air that could not contain the voice behind it. That was false, of course. She’d
saved her last songs for the grim weeks in the west wing of her home, not the
stage of her stardom, and her ghost had better things to do than go back there.
She’d sung brazenly at first, in defiance of her fate— then softly but still
optimistically, as her lungs weakened. Then she’d lost the optimism and could
only sing softly. After that her music had turned into a hummed tune, faint enough
that it couldn’t have been heard if not for the otherwise-silent surroundings.
Finally, she’d fallen quiet entirely, and so had the wing. Mostly.
There were
blurry conversations of where she and Cyrin should go, the memories just as
hazy as the words from the phone speaker had been. The rationale on where they picked
was clearer, though. The west wing had a piano. It locked from the outside. There
were bathrooms, and it had its own kitchen they could eat from. The wide windows
had idyllic views of the Prism, and there was a television and library for
entertainment. As quarantines went, it wasn’t a bad place to make into a living
grave. The lock had clicked shut on the two of them, and the blurry
conversations with the outside stopped there too. Maybe no one wanted to talk
to the doomed.
She’d
talked to him, though, at least in the early days. His mother had held him on
her lap in front of the fireplace, fussing over his hair as if he needed to
look presentable for something. Maybe she’d thought so. As she’d Faded, her
mind had become more of a broken record, replaying the old and past on loop. By
the second week, she’d been rambling about needing to go to the same event that
had exposed the family and gotten the two of them sick. Whenever that happened,
Cyrin had always let her braid his hair— shorter then than it was now, but
still wild and a little unruly— and tie his shoes for him, even though he’d
been able to do that for a year by then. But every time, she’d always stopped
herself before they “left”. Put a hand on the doorknob, froze silently. Then
murmured a quiet of course before turning, taking him by the hand back
to the armchair.
Someone
else was holding his hand—
~ ~ ~
—but not
really, just touching it. Palm against palm. The skin was cold, which felt so
wrong when they were on fire. Words were spoken in a hush, and Cyrin didn’t
think they were from them, because their tongue failed to translate the weak,
guttural exhale their lungs made. Then the hand was gone, but they didn’t feel
the dragging of fingers from it being pulled away. Just a sudden coldness
colder than that skin. There was no fireplace here to make it otherwise.
This limbo
of being conscious and then not was stealing away time that could have been
spent being dead. Or being alive. He’d take either one at this point.
A breeze
passed over him, cooling some of their feverish heat, and Cyrin stiffened,
moving for what felt like the first time in centuries. The others hadn’t, had
they? Opened a window…?
No, I
want the door. The door.
Not dead
yet, they strained to raise an arm, extending it to the arbitrary direction the
door might be in. But they didn’t get to open their eyes and verify their guess
before the layer under their eyelids turned a new shade of black.
~ ~ ~
They were
sick. That had been certain. The restless energy that Cyrin remembered having
in every cell of his young being was gone, and his mother’s head would fall wearily
against the back of the armchair. But while the physical symptoms of the Fading
kicked in early— the aspect of the disease the corrupted Salve caused— the
mental symptoms from the Rationale took longer. And so they’d been able to hold
conversations that were almost normal for a seven-year-old and his mother,
besides the weight of death hanging over them, while sitting in front of the
nature documentary on television. A wolf was weaving through snowy pines, its
eyes bright and alert as it scanned the woods for prey.
“That wolf
looks lonely,” Cyrin had commented quietly, snuggling closer to his mother as
if the winter on the screen was chilling him.
His mother
had hummed softly, stroking his hair and readjusting him on her lap. “It might
just be away from its pack,” she suggested, tone gentle despite her exhaustion.
“It probably has a bunch of friends there.”
“But what
if it doesn’t have a pack?” Cyrin had worried. “It could have no friends to go
back to.”
Again, his
mother had hummed, but more sadly this time. Her gaze was pointed towards the
wolf, but she seemed to stare straight through the TV screen.
“You know
your story of the lone wolf and the raven, don’t you?” she’d said, suddenly
switching to speaking in Ren with them.
Cyrin had
nodded. Storm City’s Ren cultural center— the same place they’d been visiting when
the two of them had gotten exposed— hosted weekly storytimes of Ren folklore
and legends for children. Casper didn’t care for the event, but they and
Allison were always begging to be sent down to it. This folktale in question
was their favorite. “Yes,” they’d said, a little more eagerly.
Their
mother kept absently stroking their hair, holding them closer for a few
moments. “Well,” she said eventually, sounding like she was choosing her words
carefully, “sometimes the beginning of the story happens in real life, where a
wolf loses its pack and has to wander through the world alone. A lone wolf is not
something to imitate, despite how some people will tell you that striking out
on your own is what will make you strong. Strength doesn’t come from that.” She
shook her head. “No, above all else, a lone wolf is a creature to be pitied.
It’s lost its family and friends and doesn’t know what to do on its own.”
On the
screen, a snow hare was up close to the camera, sniffing the air with its
fluffy nose. It was standing still, but it was twitching, and its large black
eyes made it look almost nervous.
“And when
that happens in real life, does the lone wolf find a raven to be friends with?”
Cyrin had asked curiously.
“Sometimes
it does, yes. Wolves and ravens in nature have what’s called a sym-bi-o-tic
relationship,” his mother explained, sounding out the word he didn’t yet know,
“which means the two depend on and do better with each other. The wolves get to
play with the ravens, and the ravens get a share of the wolves’ food.”
The wolf
reappeared on the screen, stalking the hare from behind the trees. The hare
didn’t move, unaware of the predator’s presence. It just kept sniffing. Cyrin
felt a sense of dread sinking over him.
“What if
this wolf is alone, and it can’t find a raven?” he asked quietly.
Like she
knew what would happen next, his mother drew an arm protectively around him.
“Then it
may be fine for now,” she said gently. “But without loved ones, whether it’s those
it was born with or those it found along the way, it will soon begin to feel
the weight of its loneliness.”
The wolf
caught the hare in one tremendous, violent leap and sinking of teeth, and Cyrin
had cried while they still could. But they hadn’t known which of the two they
were crying for.
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