Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 31
31
Nilia was surprised by how easily those memories came flooding back. She had thought them buried under layers of stone, grown thick and strong over the years. Had she really done such a poor job of it? The way they were now, so fresh and painful, it felt like they didn't even have a speck of dust to them.
Mateo hadn't let go of her for a single second, and as bizarre as it sounded in her head, this was, by far, the longest embrace she had ever experienced in her entire life, made all the stranger for the warm patch of tears against her shoulder. He didn't try to stop them or hide them. He simply let them flow, and every scalding hot tear that ran down her shoulder and seeped into her fur made her feel things she could barely understand. There was this deep, throbbing pain inside of her, and even though his tears stung, she felt like the two kinds of pain were very different from each other. The pain she felt in herself was like an infected wound, and his tears were like a red hot glowing knife come to cut her open and drain the pus away.
"They lied, didn't they?" he whispered.
"The plants Shekka used were rare, and there was barely any rain that year. It wasn't her fault. There just wasn't enough to go around."
"So they gave you their share of the medicine."
"It's because I cried. It's because I was weak."
"It's because they loved you."
"If I hadn't been such a crybaby, maybe all three of us would have survived."
"Or maybe all three of you would have died."
"That would have been better."
"Don't say that."
"Or maybe they would have lived, and I would have died. That would have been better, too."
"Do you honestly think that would be better? Do you truly believe that? Think about what you're saying. For a parent to outlive their child is one of the greatest horrors in this world. The pain is so great, any parent would drag their half-dead body through jagged rocks and frigid waters just to make sure that didn't happen. I know, because my own mother did just that."
"You think you know me, Mateo, but you don't. You have no idea how selfish I can be. I would gladly wish myself dead and wreak that horror upon my own mother and father, just so I wouldn't have to live through the day I earned my name."
*
Her dreams were broken and nonsensical, comprised of random smatterings and flashing images that may or may not have been memories. In one moment, she saw herself taking in that horrid witch's brew, sucking on it even as blood dripped from her nose. In the next, she saw her father telling her a bedtime story. She was unable to make out the words, but simply listening to the sound of his voice was enough for her.
There was coughing and hacking and the cloying smell of blood and vomit. She wasn't sure whose. Sometimes she felt something on her lips that wasn't the leathery spout of the water skin, but something else, something that smelled good and made her stomach rumble, but was too hard to chew. Was that meat? She couldn't tell. All moments simply bled into one another, making them all the same moment, the same hour, the same day, the same week. Maybe it was an egg. Yes... she could remember eating an egg. It was soft, and the yolk was just a little bit runny in the middle, just the way Mother always made it. Was Mother okay? She had to be. The little girl remembered seeing her take a sip of medicine every now and then. Father, too. She remembered because she always made sure they took their share. That was the way it went. First she would get hers, then Mother, then Father. It was very important, so important that she always strained against the sleepiness and the pain to make sure she could see them do it. She'd watch them tilt the pouch back, and see their throats work up and down. She remembered checking every time, because... because why? She couldn't remember. She didn't know why she had this burning need to make absolutely sure. There was more than enough to go around. Father said so, and she believed him.
But still...
Better to make sure.
The girl opened her eyes without realizing she had been asleep, creating an odd sort of transition from dreaming to waking, seamless.
There was a pale light coming in from the crescent gap formed by the entrance, shining like a very thin, misshapen moon, shifting ever so slightly as the breeze pushed against the walls of the tent. The light had that weak, but pleasant tinge about it that always foreshadowed rain. Oh... how she would have liked to feel the rain striking her upturned face. She could even smell it in the air, so clean and clear, cutting through the miasma of dried sweat, blood, and vomit that had permeated this place since the first. She used to love playing in the woods when the thunder roared overhead and the rain fell down in big, fat drops that could make the leaves bounce and flip. She used to take chunks of bark and throw them in the river and run along the banks, panting and laughing, barely able to keep up as the water swelled and carried her little boats faster and faster, dashing them against the rocks and spinning them around in vicious whirlpools.
That all changed when the coughing came and wouldn't go away. Then the dizziness. Then the blood from her mouth and the pain in her joints. After she fainted the first time, Mother and Father had forbidden her from going outside. They had made her stay in the dark, where she could sleep even though the sun was bright and shining. The worst part was that she didn't even want to go outside anymore. The pain was just too bad.
She kept thinking she would get better, like all the other times she had fallen ill, but she didn't. It only got worse and worse, and then...
Then Mother started coughing, too.
The Wolves kicked them out not long after that, but the little girl didn't really blame them. They saw this crazy, energetic little girl - who used to spend all day running around, biting heels - suddenly transform into a living ghost, suffering so much that every breath was a torture. They saw this and they didn't want their own children to go through the same.
So she wasn't at all surprised when Mother and Father gathered her up one night and bundled her into a makeshift stretcher. She was barely conscious for most of the ride, anyway. And when she came to, she was in this place. She didn't know where, exactly, but it must be somewhere in the woods, far away from the village, where she couldn't infect anyone else. Someplace where she could curl up and die.
Sometimes she wondered why this was happening to her. Was it because she played in the rain? Did she eat something poisonous? Was the Cora punishing her for something she did? Was it all just bad luck?
None of those answers felt right to her. None of them felt fair. Why did she have to die before she could earn a name? All the other children had gotten names by their second or third year, but she was still just 'Jerardo's enka' or 'Raika's enka' even after six. Mother and Father had told her time and time again that they couldn't give her a name just because she wanted one. It would be a false name. A lie. Her true name would come to her when the time was right, and she'd just have to be a little more patient.
So she had learned as many of the old Wolven words as she could, mixing and matching, fantasising about what combination might one day become her own. Maybe something elegant, like Rivila - River Ripple? Or what about something more impressive, like Bravys - Bear Fist? No, maybe not that last one, it sounded more like a boy's name.
The little girl's thoughts wandered in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she would remember that there was something she had wanted to check up on, but then she'd forget what it was. She was happy to drift, though. She couldn't remember taking any more medicine, but she must have, because she couldn't feel the pain right now.
Hemel... sky. Mahan... moon. Wolk... cloud, the nameless little girl recited as many of the old Wolven words as she could remember. Klou... claw. Len... life. Hatar... heart. Lia... cry. There was an interesting combination right there. The old Wolven word for 'rain' took the word for 'sky' and combined it with the word for 'cry' to make 'Hemelia'. To think of rain as the tears of the sky was so sad, yet oddly beautiful, too. She would have liked to earn a name like that. But, sadly, it will never happen. Never ever.
It was such a scary word, no matter what language it was spoken in. 'Never'. It conjured images of broken hearts and forgotten dreams, empty homes and shattered families, blazing pyres and mournful faces.
'Nil'. That was the old Wolven word for 'never'.
Never...
The crescent of light had travelled further into the tent. She could see it angled against the wall now, like a giant, hooked claw. How much time had passed? An hour? Two? She had no way of knowing. The light, though... it was paler than before, and the breeze had grown into a full-blown wind, making the claw warp and bend as it pushed against the canvass, trying to get in. Somewhere far away, a blast of thunder rumbled across the sky. A storm was coming, but that's not what made the little girl's heart pound in her chest and her breath hitch in her throat. Hours had passed. Hours. She should be writhing in pain right about now, desperately counting down the seconds until she could get another draught of that putrid medicine, but... there was no pain. She was a little sore, but that was it. Her knees and elbows didn't feel like chunks of jagged rock grinding against her bones. Her throat didn't feel like it was melting inside her neck. She could actually breathe without feeling that infuriating scratch in her lungs, forcing her to cough and cough and cough until blood dribbled from her lips. She felt...
Better.
The little girl carefully pushed the pelts away and sat up, not caring about the ache in her muscles. She knew what real pain was now, and a little bed-stiffness was nothing compared to that. She flexed her arms, expecting that wicked pain to come exploding inside her elbows at any second, but it never did. Same thing with her knees. She could move again. She could move...
She spotted the medicine pouch and picked it up. It was empty and floppy inside her hands, with a hard scum of green foam around the lip. She was amazed by how long it had lasted, considering all three of them had partaken of it regularly.
"Mother...? Father...?" Her voice was dry and cracked from not speaking for so long, but she didn't feel the need to cough anymore, and that feeling alone was heaven.
They were huddled together at the other side of the tent, wrapped up warm in each other's arms, fast asleep. The little girl hesitated, thinking that they probably needed every moment of sleep they could get after taking such good care of her, but she was bursting with good news, and wouldn't it make them happy to see their enka all better? Wouldn't it make them happy to know she wasn't dying anymore? Wouldn't they take her in their arms and hug her tight and thank the Cora they could stay a family?
It was with those thoughts filling her heart that the nameless little girl crawled over to the dark patch of shadows where her parents lay.
"Mother, Father," she whispered. "Are you awake? I feel better!" She reached out to them, and that's when she noticed the smell, so strong it was like a slap in the face. There was no mistaking that smell. It was the stench of dead squirrels hiding inside rotting logs, of dead frogs found floating in pools of stagnant water, of dead birds on sunny days, crawling with ants. It was the stench of the offal pit in the summer, with clouds of flies buzzing around the decapitated heads of deer, their empty eye sockets boiling with maggots.
It was the smell of death, and it was coming from her parents.
"M- Mother? Father...?" As she reached for the shaggy bear pelt draped around their shoulders, the little girl didn't feel much of anything, maybe because her heart had forbidden her from feeling what she thought she ought to be feeling: dread, fear, terror, hopelessness. Why feel any of that when the thing you were afraid of was an impossibility? There was simply no way anything could have happened to her parents. No way at all. You might as well have told her that the sun would never shine again, or that the moon would never rise over the mountain again, or that...
That she would never run in the rain again...
Isn't that exactly what I thought? That I would never...
The little girl gripped the bear pelt in her tiny fist. It was hard and crusty from some dried liquid.
Never...
She swallowed nervously and immediately regretted it. She could taste that foul stink on her tongue...
Never...
"Mother? Father?" She pulled back the pelt -
NEVER
- and that was the moment the nameless little girl, after fighting so long for her very life, finally died forever.
They were lying in each other's arms, perfectly still, their noses almost touching. Father's hand was resting on Mother's cheek, but it wasn't sweet. It was horrible. His hand had been reduced to a skeletal claw, his fingers as thin as the bones inside. Mother's face, normally so full, so beaming, was now a gaunt horror, nothing but leathery, patchy fur stretched over a grinning skull. Their lips had peeled back to reveal bloody teeth sticking out of blackened gums. There was a puddle of dry, bloody vomit splattered over the pelts, hardened to a crust.
She didn't know how long she knelt there, too scared to move, too scared to even think. She suspected this really was no different to how she would have felt if the sun really had gone dark and the moon really did never rise over the mountain again; this numb state of complete and utter denial. This simply _couldn't_be happening. She rejected it outright.
Their eyes were still open, and there were dry tracks of discolouration running down their cheeks. They had died staring into each other's eyes...
They had died crying secret tears.
No. That didn't happen. They're not dead. They're not dead. I was the one supposed to die, not them, so this can't be happening...
Their eyes told a different story, though. They had sunken deep into their sockets, as if they had... shrunk, somehow, but that wasn't even the worst of it. Mother and Father had the liveliest eyes of anyone she had ever known. Mother's was a vibrant green, just like hers, and Father's was a deep, dark blue, just like the river on a winter's day. But now they had gone dull, glassy, unfocussed, blank. They just stared straight ahead, without seeing anything.
They were dead.
In a terrifying moment of clarity, the little girl understood exactly what had happened.
It's okay, girl. There's plenty to go around. You can have some more.
Father had lied.
It's okay, dear. You can have some more.
Mother had lied.
We love you, turtle dove...
They had both lied. They had only pretended to take the medicine. They had given her _all_of it, every last drop, and she had sucked it down like a venomous parasite.
They had lied because she was weak. They had lied because she had cried. They had masked their pain with fake smiles and shed their tears in secret, where she couldn't see. They covered it up, they pushed it deep down, where it couldn't hurt her.
They had sacrificed their lives for her because she was too weak to stay alive on her own.
That's why she was alive and they were dead. They had saved her from their tears, but she had been unable to do the same for them.
The nameless little girl reached out, not quite knowing what she intended to do until she did it. She closed their eyes, letting them sleep.
I did this... she thought. I did this...
A single tear ran down her face, travelled along the string around her neck, and came to a stop, hanging from the curve of her mother's bear claw necklace. It stayed there for a while, growing heavy, and finally, it dripped down onto Mother's closed eyelid.
You broke your promise, she seemed to say as the tear ran across the bridge of her muzzle, slowing down as it was absorbed by her fur. You promised you would be strong, but you lied to me.
"No..." The little girl couldn't hold them back. Tears flowed from her eyes in a torrent, unstoppable. They dripped from her cheeks and landed on her dead parents' faces, forcing them to cry the tears they had kept hidden from her for so long. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry! I take it back! All of it! I'll be strong, I promise! I'll never cry again! Just please, don't be dead! Please!"
Mother's lip twitched into an expression of pure disdain, as if the very notion of her cry-baby enka never shedding another tear for the rest of her life was as laughable as it was impossible. That tiny movement was enough to ignite a spark of hope in the nameless girl's heart, but it was extinguished a mere moment later when a fly emerged from her mouth, wet and glistening. It crawled over her teeth, made a short, buzzing leap onto her cheek, and began to drink her tears, its tiny black tongue moving up and down.
Lightning tore through the sky, so unbearably bright it was able to shine right through the pelts and illuminate the inside of the tent in a hellish white light. The shadows of her dead parents leaped out at her, reaching with their bone-claws, thunder erupting from their jagged, rotting throats in a furious roar, intent on giving their little turtle dove one final hug and one final kiss on the cheek as they dragged her down to join them, where she could cry all she wanted.
She fell back, screaming and crying, and scrambled for the exit, fumbling with the knots in a pure panic until she finally ripped the whole thing loose and stumbled out into the woods.
She ran. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, but she couldn't stay here. Her calves began to ache after only a few seconds, but she kept going. Her lungs burned in her chest, but she kept going. She kept going and going until she simply couldn't go any further. She tripped over a root and ploughed face-first into the forest floor, scraping her knees raw against the hard, dry dirt.
She whimpered and sobbed into the carpet of leaves, hating herself for it. She curled her hand into a fist and pounded the ground in an attempt to make herself stop, but the tears kept coming, running down her face. She could taste them on her lips, running into her open, gasping mouth, disgustingly salty.
"Stop it!" she screamed. "Stop it! Stop it!"
The world flashed white and another bust of thunder rumbled through the woods, scaring a flock of birds into flight, and still she cried. Even after murdering her parents with her tears, she was unable to stop.
I'll never cry again... Please... Just please... I'll never cry again!
Never cry again...
Never cry...
She felt the first drops of rain striking the back of her head, cold as ice, and she slowly got up on her knees, watching as more and more fell all around her, almost invisible save for the occasional twitching of dead leaves. The sound they made was identical to that of her own tears striking the eyelids of her dead Mother and Father.
She looked straight up at the sky, dark purple, like an infected bruise, pregnant with rain, bordered on all sides by the tall, jagged green spikes that were the trees of the forest, bending and groaning in the wind. The rain struck their branches and slicked their leaves, dripping, dripping to the ground.
Hemelia... The sky might be crying, and the forest might be crying, the very world itself might be crying, but she would never cry again.
Never.
"Never cry..." she whispered as the raindrops struck her upturned face, flowing into her eyes, making them sting, but she kept them wide open in defiance. She would never cry again. Never. Not even if the sky poured its tears directly into her eyes would she do it again, because tears are weakness, tears are poison, tears murder the ones you love and it's all your fault, so she would never... never...
Nil.
Lia.
Never.
Cry.
Nil. Lia.
Never. Cry.
"Nil... Lia..." she whispered, blinking every time the rain struck her open eyes. "Nil... Lia..." she said it again, louder this time, as if ordering the sky itself to stop. "Nil... Lia... Nil... Lia... Nil... Lia..." She grabbed her mother's bear claw necklace and held it tight, continuing her chant, louder and louder and louder until she couldn't keep it back any longer. It burst out of her, all at once, in an eruption of emotion to rival the thunder itself. "Niliaaa!!"
In that moment, with lightning flashing overhead and with the tears of the sky running down her cheeks, but none of her own, she became the first Wolf ever to give birth to her own name, a name that would stay with her for the rest of her life, quietly reminding her of her sins, never letting her forget that she was weak, that she was a murderer, that she had killed those who loved her more than anything with her own tears, always reminding her, always...
Never cry.
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