Ander - Part 3: Subchapter 38
38
"Ander?"
Hezzi...
"Ander!"
Hezzi!?
Ander looked to the right, then to the left, but there was nothing. Just the wall stretching on for infinity, and a trail of blood to mark the way he had come, haphazardly zigzagging all over the place. There was even a thick line of it smeared along the wall, probably from his shoulder. He wondered if this was how Sarah had felt, walking through the forest, holding him in her arms. No, it must have been so much worse for her. It was raining, and her father was stalking her through the trees. What right did he have to just sit here when she had fought so hard to keep him alive?
"Ander, is that you?"
There it was again. Was he hearing things now? There was nobody out here. Unless...
Ander held his breath and pushed himself up off the ground with his feet, grinding his teeth together in frustration, and turned around to look at the wall. There was a tiny gap between two of the posts, and staring at him from that gap was a single, silvery eye, bordered by a grey shade of fur Ander would have recognized anywhere.
"Hezzi..." Ander hobbled closer, his hand practically glued to his ribs with coagulated blood. "Hezzi... I'm so glad you're okay..."
The eye closed briefly, and Ander heard a loud sniff come from the other side. How thick was this thing? Surely no more than three palms, yet it felt like an entire mountain was separating them.
"I'm not okay," he said, and Ander realized he was on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry, Ander, all of this was my fault. I should have listened to you from the start."
"No," Ander wished he could shout. He wished he could fit his battered arms through that tiny crack in the wall and give his little brother the shaking of a lifetime. "None of this was your fault. Don't say that."
"But it was!" Hezzi insisted. "You're all beat up because of me, and I couldn't even make it up to you! All I could do was get cut, and that hurt you even more than it did me, didn't it? I just make everything worse."
"How is that cut?"
The eye shifted downwards, and Ander could tell something was wrong immediately.
"Hezzi?"
"It's fine. Don't worry about it."
Hezzi, you little liar. Even with his busted nose, Ander could still smell the sticky mixture of animal grease and blood wafting through the crack. "Mother and Father don't know you're up, do they?"
"Mother was gone when I came to," he admitted, "and I think Father is still talking to Nilia. But what happened, Ander? How did you make it out? I tried asking around, but... nobody wants to talk to me."
That threw up a warning in Ander's head. "There are Wolves who saw you walk around like that and didn't take you back to Mother?"
Hezzi's eye disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again. In his muddled state, it took a few seconds for Ander to realize he must be shaking his head. "They saw me, but when I tried to talk to them, they just ignored me. I think they're hoping I'll just drop dead." He hastily added: "But not that that there's any danger of that happening, of course! I'm perfectly fine! This is just a scratch, really!"
"I believe you, Hezzi," Ander said, believing no such thing. He wanted to tell Hezzi about how all the Wolves came together in the end to save him, Nilia and Sorrin and Danado and even Renna and all the rest, but it was hard enough just to see straight. "Ask Nilia when you get the chance. She was there for the whole thing. Just...do it when she's alone. She doesn't..."
"Ander? Are you all right?"
Now it was his turn to lie. "I'm fine," he said, infinitely thankful the gap couldn't afford Hezzi more than a glimpse of how badly he had been torn up.
Things became quiet. Much too quiet. Even the chatter of birds, so excited a few minutes ago, dwindled away to nothing. Eventually Ander couldn't stand it anymore. "I'm the one who should be sorry..." he said, leaning his head against the posts so that he was looking Hezzi dead in the eye. "I left you here all alone to deal with all this crap, while I was off having fun with the Foxes, strolling through the countryside like I didn't have a care in the world, and now I'm doing the exact same thing all over again."
"You? Without a care in the world? That'll be the day."
"Heh, yeah." A sudden idea, so extreme, yet so simple Ander couldn't understand why he didn't come up with it sooner. "Hezzi, why don't you come with me?"
"Huh?"
"Come with me to Grovenglen!" He was so excited he almost forgot he was dead on his feet, but the hot needle of pain shooting through his body served as an effective reminder.
While he winced and applied more pressure to his wound, Hezzi seemed to think about it, but in the end he just shook his head again. "No, I can't."
"But why? Hezzi, the Foxes are really nice. I'm sure they'll welcome you with open arms."
"That's not it."
"Then what's the problem?"
"I'm not like you, Ander!" Hezzi said, suddenly angry. "I never hated this place like you do! And up until now I always fit in! Mother's here! Father's here! All my friends are here! Renna's here, too. I can't just leave them behind. This is my home. It's always been my home. I belong here."
"This stopped being your home the moment you decided to stand with me," Ander said. "Don't you get that? I know exactly how the Wolves will treat you from now on because it's the same way they've treated me almost my entire life. You said so yourself. It's like they want you to just drop dead."
"That won't last forever. Everything will go back to the way it once was. Eventually. I'm sure of it."
Ander shook his head. "You don't honestly believe that, do you?"
"I..." Hezzi's eye wavered, shimmering behind a layer of unspilled tears, just like the ghostly wisps of mist still crawling in the cool spaces between the gnarly tree roots of the forest. The eye shut tightly, but when it opened again, all traces of those tears were gone. It stared back; resolute, unwavering, a silver ring surrounding a deep, black hole. "I'm sorry, Ander." He stuck his finger through the crack in the wood as far as it would go. "I can't come with you."
Ander did the same, sticking his finger through the gap, until the tips of their claws just barely touched each other. His was still wet with blood, but that didn't matter. "I'm sorry, too."
They didn't stand there long, but the way Ander's chest was burning told him more than he needed to know. Time was running out. "I haven't forgotten that promise," he said, fighting hard not to not make it sound like he was in too much pain.
"Promise?"
"I promised I would make you a new carving, remember? I told you... I'd... I'd definitely..." Ander swallowed. Those little white dots were creeping back again.
"Ander?"
"I promised I'd definitely make you a new one."
"I'm the one who broke it, so it's okay. You don't have to..."
"Yes I do! I always keep my promises, so I'll make you the best damn carving ever. I won't be able to get it back here, but I'll just keep it safe for you on the other side of the Cora. And you can take that carving I made of myself out of my tent and do the same. That way I'll have a little bit of you with me, and you'll have a little bit of me with you, okay?"
"Ander..."
"And then..." The world was getting blurry again, but Ander didn't think it had anything to do with blood loss. "If things get bad, you can look at my carving and know that I'm just on the other side of that mountain. And if... if things get really, really bad, you just run as fast as you can and don't stop for anything. Go East until you reach the river, then go downstream until you find the pass on the other side. There's a whole heap of rocks at the mouth, so you can't miss it. You just keep running like the wind, you hear me? Keep running till you reach the other side, and I'll be right there to give you that carving. No matter what, I'll always be there."
A loud sniff from the other side of the wall, a soft "Okay," and then Hezzi's claw was gone, back inside the village he was born in, back inside the prison Ander had tried to escape from his whole life. Back home.
Ander stepped back, took one last look at the silvery eye, and said, "Goodbye, Hezzi. I'll miss you." He turned around and started for the forest, going due East, moving faster than was wise, but he couldn't stand to stay here a second longer. The pain in his heart would kill him much quicker than the pain in his body, that he was sure of. But then...
"Ander?"
"Yeah?"
"I'll miss you, too. You're still my big brother, no matter what anybody says, and I hope you'll be happy."
"I will, Hezzi. I will..."
And with that, Ander disappeared into the forest.
The mist was getting thicker. He could barely make out the trees around him anymore.
It was thick, so very, very thick...
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