by Kara Timmins
Saying his name cast a shadow of exhaustion that felt leeching. The foothold of a pressing danger was gone, and he didn’t have anything left to keep him from falling into the sorrow of his loss.
“We can’t take him to his home,” Neasa said. “It’s too far. He’ll never make it.”
His stomach churned at the mental image of what she meant by that. “I just want him to be anywhere but here,” Eloy said.
The day broke over the horizon and illuminated a scene of lethargy that seemed anticlimactic after such a victory, but the faces of those who retreated to the makeshift camps looked something close to peaceful. Eloy wanted to follow them, to find a place on the ground among those whose bravery would live as an inspiration for him for the rest of his life, but his curiosity won out over his desire for sleep. As his companions turned back into the forest, Eloy walked out into the hushed marsh. The only sound was the cry of a morning loon flying overhead. He didn’t want to ask Neasa to come with him—it felt like one too many requests of her—but he was grateful when she moved with him into the tall grass.
If there had been any remaining hope that their perception of the Vaylars’ numbers had been an illusion, the clearing they reached after a short walk dispelled it. All the foliage of the grasslands—the tall blades of grass and thick stalks of reeds—was crushed into the wet ground. The area that had seemed to hold a range of waiting dangers when they had first explored it had become an open space big enough that the faded line of the horizon was no longer obstructed.
Eloy walked along the line between untrampled growth and where the Vaylars had stopped until he found what he had set out to see.
The place they had left the dead Vaylars was empty with the exception of the small shell lantern. As he suspected, the lantern was on the same stone he had left it on, a few long strides from the trample line. He picked up the lantern, wiped the smudge of black oily ash with his thumb, and put it back in his bag. He looked over his shoulder to where the Vaylars had come and whispered a sour farewell. If he had the energy to put a great distance between him and that space, he would have, but his body no longer seemed willing to be patient, and the thought of sleep taunted in the distance of his future like a cold spring. He had found the end of his perseverance. He didn’t have any more energy.
60
Eloy slept for an entire day.
By the time he managed to pull himself away from the reprieve of sleep, the energy around him had changed. The laughter from the clumps of people who huddled around warming fires was louder and more frequent than it had been when he had gone to sleep. The atmosphere was such a stark difference from what he had grown accustomed to that he spent a while lying with his eyes closed listening to it.
When he found the strength to get up, the only thing he wanted to do was find Neasa and Malatic. He found them in a clearing far enough away from the main camp that the sound of chatter was barely audible. The fallen leaves and tree needles that covered the ground were trampled and crushed. The steady footfall in the area had created narrow paths around the piles of wrapped remains of the fallen. Gone was the merriment he had woken to.
Insects swarmed the bodies that waited to be taken back to their homes to be buried alongside their kin. Malatic and Neasa stood over one that was set aside. Eloy approached them as they listened to a man whose words came from under a mustache as thick and wiry as a horsetail.
“. . . to go soon,” the man said to Neasa and Malatic. “I was just telling your friends that it would be an honor to have Goodwin placed with our warriors back in our town. It’s my understanding that his family is a long journey from here. Neasa and Malatic have said they were fine with the idea if you were.”
Eloy had his eyes on the carefully wrapped bundle at their feet. Strips of fibrous leaves were wrapped around the tattered fabric around his neck, waist, and feet to make a misshapen and bloodstained idol.
“That’s very kind of you,” Eloy said. “Besides his own family, I can’t think of a better group of people to surround him.”
Eloy looked away from the brown stains that colored the fabric like a bruise to give his attention to the mustached man.
“We lost a lot of people here.” The man squinted his scrub-jay blue eyes. “But it was a battle of honor—something this land hasn’t seen in a long while. I’m still not entirely sure what or who we were up against, but I’m sure glad they went the other way. These people gave their lives for that, and it’s a sacrifice I’ll carry with me until my end.”
“When will you be heading back?” Eloy asked.
“Soon. I was just sayin’ when you walked up. As soon as I can get those who are going ahead with me to come.”
“I’ll go with you and help pull the load,” Eloy said.
The man ran a square of fabric over his wrinkled forehead. “That’s not necessary. You did a lot. You should get some more rest and meet us there.”
“I’ve rested enough,” Eloy said. “I just need enough time to get my things together, and we’ll be on our way.”
The man ran his pointer finger and thumb over his brown mustache. “Well, okay, then. I’m not going to argue with you, and we could use the hands. This is going to be tough and long work getting them there. I would say five days for sure.”
“I’m no stranger to tough and long work,” Eloy said with a twitch of a smile.
“No, I suppose you’re not. Let’s go get the others, shall we?”
Eloy watched the man walk toward the camp and then turned back to Neasa and Malatic.
“I can meet you at the town if you want to go ahead,” Eloy said. “You both look punch-faced and tired.”
“I’ll stay with you two,” Neasa said as she looked down at Goodwin.
Malatic took a small, unconscious step toward Neasa. “Me too.”
“Thank you,” Eloy said.
Even after a day of sleep, his body still held a fatigue so strong that it felt like a sickness, but he moved through it. The ache in his bones that urged him to go back to sleep wouldn’t go away with rest. Maybe it never would.
61
It took six days to reach the town. Just as the mustached man had said, who Eloy learned was named Elliot, every day was tough and long. He counted at least thirty people who had died from this town. Thirty and one more. Eloy welcomed the burning pain in his muscles that came from pulling the pallet of bodies through the uneven terrain of the forest floor and then the long grasses of the fields. It kept his mind off what was under their funeral wrappings. When he was struggling against the strain of physical work, he didn’t think about what had happened in the land at his back.
“It’s just up ahead now,” Elliot said.
The signs of habitation had been building through the sixth day—thatched shelters and well-used fire pits in the center of cleared grasses—but seeing homes in the distance looked out of place. It had been so long since Eloy had seen structures that housed people other than fighters that his mind couldn’t shake the sense of strangeness.
People were gathering even when Eloy and the others were still well away from entering the town’s square. The main dirt road looked barely big enough for two carts to pass one another. Homes made of ash-colored bark flanked the road. Their open doorways let out the smells of nutty breads and roasted foods. Something about the town made Eloy think of his own humble home growing up. There were more people and houses than the place in his memory, but the simple, hand-built walls made of wrapped branches were similar. Seeing it brought a bittersweet nostalgia.
By the time they reached the square—a fifty-by-fifty-stride area covered in dry grass that smelled like an earthy perfume in the sun—it looked as if every member of the community stood there waiting for them. The square had a few buildings bigger than the homes they had seen coming in that framed the area. Places for selling food, drink, and supplies, Eloy had little doubt. Places for gatherin
g, for laughing. Places, he imagined, the shrouded dead had probably enjoyed—the backdrop of their memories.
Some of those waiting cried with joy as they ran to the men and women in the group and embraced their loved ones. Other faces scanned the group and became stone-faced or broken in sorrow. Eloy and the others stepped aside to get out of the way of those who moved in to find and claim their loved ones. They worked in a solemn assembly line as they took down one body after another, looked at the identifying trinket attached to the makeshift rope that bound them, and passed them to the waiting arms of the ones who had loved them. The moans and sobs from misery of the deepest kind filled the area like a noxious cloud.
“You look terrible,” Neasa said next to Eloy.
Eloy turned his head to look at her, the muscles in the back of his neck so tight it made his head throb. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Do I?”
He wasn’t sure if he had ever sounded so somber and tired.
“Elliot said the building on the right of the square is a good place to eat, drink, and buy a bed,” Neasa said. “He said we just have to tell them who we are, and it’ll be taken care of. Go ahead of us. Mal and I will take care of what needs to be done here for Goodwin.”
“I want to help him,” Eloy said. “I should stay.”
“I know you want to, but you don’t look well. We won’t be long behind you. There’s not much left to do, really. There are people here who will prepare the burial. We’ll honor him with the rest tomorrow.”
He looked at the souring packages he had worked so hard to deliver and found himself wanting to look at anything else.
“Okay,” he acquiesced.
Her hand on his shoulder, with its familiar warmth, filled a few of the many cracks in his strength.
62
Eloy had choppy memories of moving through the town and finding the place Elliot had told Neasa about. Eloy didn’t know if he had asked for the wooden cup full of the harsh liquid that tasted so much like the one he had had with Critiko in Valia or if the friendly woman who ran the place just gave it to him. He had a clearer recollection of asking for a second, but things got murkier after he asked for the third.
He woke up when a person’s weight pulled at the level surface of his feather-stuffed bed at his side. He opened his eyes to see Neasa looking down at him with concern on her face. He didn’t remember finding his way to a bed, let alone a private room. Through squinted eyes, he looked around at the room. The bed took up most of the space, leaving a gap for the door to swing inward. A small table held a clay jug and a bowl, which he hoped was full of water. The wooden walls kept most of the light out but not the heat. Every movement made his body feel uncomfortable. He waited for her to talk. He couldn’t explain why her face had become the perfect target for his otherwise homeless anger, but he couldn’t control it.
“Can you get up?” she asked.
He held his silent protest.
“Everyone is gathering outside to go out together to honor the fallen. If you want to go, I’ll see you out there,” she said with patience.
He watched her as she walked out of the room. He thought about staying in the bed made of grasses and soft feathers until the burial event was over, maybe even until the end of the day. Why not?
Both his mind and his body urged him to stop moving, to go back to sleep, but he managed to get himself ready and outside, despite his internal pleas.
Eloy sidled up to Neasa and Malatic.
Neasa reached for her bag. “Do you want something to help you feel better?”
“No,” Eloy said, protective of the malady he had earned.
The cries of sorrow from the crowd hadn’t dimmed since the day before, and every one felt as if they were pointed in his direction. The crowd moved like a herd in a valley. Their progress out of the town was slow, and Eloy let those around him guide his direction. In the time it took to get to the burial ground, he hadn’t looked up from his shuffling feet once.
The group broke apart once they got to a patch of land with a pattern of churned earth. The humps in the ground were redder than the orange dirt around them, and each mount had different weapons with their points resting on a flat piece of shale and trinkets resting on top.
Eloy felt Neasa put her hand on his elbow and guide him to one of the spots. His downcast gaze put the image of Goodwin’s sword directly into view. Eloy felt his mouth tighten against the emotion of seeing it, but the tension only seemed to exacerbate the quiver in his chin.
Someone spoke loud enough to be heard over the sobs and wails, but the words didn’t make their way into discernible form in Eloy’s mind. The customs and ceremony among strangers began, and Eloy straightened his rounded spine and looked around so he could free himself from having to look at the mound with Goodwin’s sword placed on top of it.
A man with a head of white hair walked around to each grouping of those who had formed around different mounds.
“Will you remember the one you have lost and honor their sacrifice?” the man asked a group of mourners.
“We will hear his voice in our dreams and speak highly of his character,” they said in unison.
The man moved to the next group and asked the same question.
“Will you remember the one you have lost and honor their sacrifice?”
“We will hear her voice in our dreams and speak highly of her character,” they said in the same manner as the first.
The people repeated the words over and over again at each group, and when the man rounded his way to Eloy, Malatic, and Neasa, they knew what was expected of them.
“Will you remember the one you have lost and honor their sacrifice?”
“We will hear his voice in our dreams and speak highly of his character,” Eloy mumbled. His chant felt like a cheap impression of those around him.
A few clumps of family members said their words after that, and after a few parting statements from the white-haired officiant, the people started to disperse. Eloy looked at his now-empty surroundings. He didn’t remember walking up an incline, but he looked out from a level-topped hill. He squinted against the golden glow of the long grasses that rippled in the breeze like water. He wondered how close he was to the land where he had grown up, the scene was so familiar.
He looked down at Goodwin’s sword again.
The land he stood on wasn’t one he knew. Its false sense of comfort only made the agitation of being in a strange place with unknown people more apparent. He wasn’t home, and Goodwin wasn’t either. Eloy picked up Goodwin’s sword, the sword that hadn’t protected him, and threw it far enough that he could hear the iron clang against stones as it slid to the bottom of the hill.
“He shouldn’t have been there,” Eloy said. “I shouldn’t have brought him with us.”
“He wanted to go,” Neasa said. “He wanted to stand at your side.”
“And I should’ve told him no,” Eloy said.
“You can’t take responsibility for this,” Malatic said.
“I can,” Eloy said. “I should’ve been better about keeping an eye on him. I should’ve been at his side.”
Malatic looked away and squinted as he stared out into the view, despite the fact that the sun was at his back.
“How can someone matter to me and yet I wish I’d never met him?” Eloy said. “I wish I never knew he existed.”
Eloy turned and walked away so that Neasa and Malatic couldn’t see the contortion in his face that he could no longer control. He tried to breathe through it, but the air caught in the back of his throat in a deep and ugly hiccup—a stumble in his last bit of composure, a fissure in the dam that had kept the tears back. He pressed his fingers into his closed eyelids as if he could stop it. He struggled through a few moments before his inhales stopped catching and he could compose himself. The embarrassment of his reaction burned hot on his cheeks, but the f
eeling evaporated once he looked up at Neasa and Malatic. He saw the reflection of his grief in them.
“How do you get past this?” Eloy asked Neasa, tears in both of their eyes.
Lines furrowed Neasa’s brow, and she gulped. “I don’t know.”
63
The energy of the town was drastically different by the time the three made their return. Gone were the wails and downcast milling about of the townspeople. Everyone moved in and out of wooden doorways and through the grass-covered square with the purpose of accomplishing a task. Some passed by with casks of beverages or freshly slaughtered animals on their shoulders and backs. Eloy saw a merriment that hadn’t been there before, an excitement that made it seem like they had walked into a different town.
“What’s going on?” Eloy asked.
“They’re getting ready for the festival of the victory,” Neasa said. “All of the surrounding towns—all of the ones where people came to help us and even some that Malatic didn’t make it to—are meeting together to celebrate. Most don’t remember the last time they were able to meet like this, what with the threat of Nicanor and Anso.”
“When does it start?” Eloy asked.
“Soon,” Neasa said. “At dusk. I’m sure they’ll understand if you don’t want to go.”
Eloy didn’t know what else he was supposed do with his time. He had grown so accustomed to having a goal and a purpose to the day.
“No,” Eloy said. “It would probably do me good to see some happiness.”
He agreed not because he wanted to participate but because the idea of sitting around an abandoned town without a clear direction of what he was supposed to do sounded worse than going. Even though the task seemed like a small thing, it gave him something to move toward. The plan wasn’t much of a fingerhold, but he pulled on it.
The three offered their help to those who seemed burdened by their tasks, but every person smiled and refused.