Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 73
73
- stop it!!"
There was a time Hezzi would have been horrified to have so many eyes on him again. It was always followed by some terrible event. Always. But now he wasn't even aware of their empty stares, their blood-crazed eyes.
He had grabbed his head by the temples without even realizing it, pushing against his skull as if to keep it from splitting wide open and spilling his brains all over this damnable pass.
Mother stepped forward. The dark splotches of blood deep inside her broken eyes moved from left to right as they darted across the wall. "Hezzi?" she said, her voice completely different from the shriek of before. "Was that you? Where are you? Hezzi!"
"I'm here, Mother," Hezzi answered almost automatically, and her eyes came to a stop right over his own.
She reached out to him, searching for his presence inside the total darkness. "Hezzi, oh my dear sweet stupid Hezzi, are you all right?"
No. I'm not all right. I'm as far from 'all right' as I can possibly be.
Hezzi felt this, but could not say it. There was too much going on, too much new information, too many conflicting emotions waging war inside his mind and heart. He couldn't make any sense of it.
"Hezzi, please!" Mother yelled. "Things have changed! Wardo is dead! You can come home now! I made it safe! I made it safe just for you, my drisa! You don't have to worry about a thing! No one will hurt you, I promise! Jump down from there! Please come home to me, Hezzi! I miss you!"
Mother was crying. Every sob was like a blow to the stomach. Hezzi was deathly afraid of his mother, but he loved her just as surely as she loved him, and he couldn't stand to see her crying like this, especially when he knew he was the cause of those crimson tears.
"Pleeeaase, Hezzi!" she pleaded. "Please come down from there! You don't have to fight! You don't need to be a part of any of this! I can take you home, where it's safe and warm! Please, Hezzi! I lost a son once and it nearly killed me! Don't let Banno's return be marked by your loss! I can't go through that again!"
Banno (or the creature that looked like Banno) was quietly watching the whole thing unfold, a rather unsettling smile touching the normal side of his face, like he was enjoying it.
"Please, Hezzi!" Mother sank down to her knees, her hands outstretched, palms up. "I'm begging you! Just come down!"
"I can't!"
"Why!?"
Because it's death down there."Because I -" He glanced at the mountain tops, then quickly looked down again as if the peaks had somehow stung his eyes. "I just can't!"
The corners of her mouth turned down into a furious snarl. "You're choosing _them_over me!? You're choosing strangers over family? You're choosing the enemy over your own people!?"
"Ander's not a stranger or an enemy! He is my brother!"
"He is _not_your brother! He is a filthy half-breed abomination! The spawn of sin, born from a Fox's womb! Everything he touches he rips apart! Go on and ask him! Ask him who he really is!"
There were so many thoughts flying through his mind, crashing and colliding and careening off each other, just like these snowflakes, caught in a gale.
The things they had said, Mother and the Fox called 'Sarah', things about Father and Ander... If it had been just one or the other, he could have dismissed it. But it had been both of them, speaking of things that couldn't possibly be true.
But how could they know each other? How could they have so many hurtful words at the ready? Not just random insults hurled at a stranger, but accusations aimed with purpose.
Father knew this Sarah vixen, the one who kept mispronouncing Ander's name? Mother had a daughter at some point? What happened to her? Did she die, or did he have a big sister somewhere, kept secret for some unknown reason? And worst of all...
Hezzi turned to his big brother, to Ander, not Andrew, and asked a question he never even knew existed.
"Ander? Are you really my brother?"
Hey, guys. Sorry for the short subchapter. I was really busy with family stuff over the holidays, so I didn't have time to get as much work done as I would have liked. The next few subchapters will probably be on the short side as well.
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