by Kody Boye
Bowing his head, Nova gave himself but a moment to compose himself before reaching down to touch Carmen’s shoulder, though as always he miscalculated the distance and ended up touching the top of her head. “Sorry,” he said.
“Eh, don’t worry about it. It’s an endearing thing, more or less.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to have dinner with us. Katarina wants to see you.”
“That’s awfully nice of you to ask,” the Dwarf smiled. “Of course I’ll come. Who’s cooking?”
“I assume the castle—that is, unless Katarina gets a wild urge to go down to the kitchen and make dinner herself, which isn’t completely out of the question. She prefers to cook for her guests.”
“She’s a good woman,” Carmen agreed. “I’m just happy you guys have decided to settle down even though all this shit’s going on.”
“I can’t keep denying the two of us of something we both want. There may be a war going on, but… well… hopefully by the time our son is born, things will have cleared up by then.”
“You know what the baby’s going to be already?”
Nova tapped the side of his head. Carmen frowned, tilted her face to one side, then opened her mouth in an O when she caught on to the fact that he must be talking about his Sight.
Good old Carmen, Nova smiled.
Though no one would ever truly replace Odin, she was as good a friend as any, especially when it came down to the fact that his wife enjoyed and loved her very much.
“So,” Carmen said, cutting him off in mid-thought before he could continue. “What time’s dinner?”
“I know your room number. I’ll come get you.”
“Awesome stuff.” The Dwarf hopped up to smack the hand dangling at his side. “Well, friend, I should probably get back to work. The guys need all the help they can get if they want to get these houses up before the snow falls. Not that it already isn’t or anything, but you get what I mean.”
“I get you,” Nova smiled. “Have a good day, Carmen. Try to get to your room around dark. I’ll come get you then.”
“All right.”
The Dwarf bade him one final goodbye before running back down the road.
From his place on the windowsill, Nova tried desperately not to allow memories of the past to haunt him for fear that he would have an emotional breakdown. Hands trembling, teeth clattering as if in the cold and every hair on his arms risen to harsh points, he bowed his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts, but found that he couldn’t in spite of all the good things happening around him.
It’s all right, he thought. You can have your moment.
He deserved such things, these moments of weakness. He was human, was more of one than Odin or even Miko had been, so it was only right for him to feel as though his entire existence had been uprooted and replaced upside-down. The hourglass had flipped, changed, distorted itself so sand fell down at an awkward angle. While it still held the same semblance of its usual appearance, it had, for lack of better description, lost several of its bearings. The ornate wings that once crowned its surface were now gone, replaced by bitter pieces of bone, while the sturdy legs upon which they stood had lost some of its toes. Were someone to push it, it would simply fall over, then spill all its sand onto the floor and erase the test of time. There could have been no other way to describe it, though if he had tried to explain to his wife the metaphor, he assumed that she would not understand, if only because it was too abstract even for him.
It was moments like these that made him remember the past.
Upon that windowsill which he currently sat, he imagined Miko would have been here, had he been alive and looking out the window and nothing at once. Odin, meanwhile, would have been sitting in the corner, while he himself would have been lying in bed, passing the time by attempting to sleep. In the past, he would have considered the actions of both his friends arrogant and, for all purposes, inane, as it seemed useless to do the things they did to further themselves as individuals or people. Elves need not look out windows in order to see the things they needed to see, and men who planned on becoming knights need not read in order to learn the way of the world, for they needed nothing more than to know how to use a sword to defend themselves. It was those things that made their actions arrogant, their personalities conflicting and their roles in life disregarded, and it was those things that made Nova realize that things, as seemingly normal as they were, had changed.
In that moment, sitting upon the windowsill and looking out at the world, he began to realize things he would have never taken notice of in the past, as his ignorance had been all too plenty in the days of his youth.
You weren’t, he thought. You were just stubborn.
In the past, he had been so foolish and bullheaded to realize the things that could have made his life so much easier than it really was. One need not sit in bed all day to try and sort things out within their head, for without reasons of disregard, answers may sometimes be found in books or outside one’s own window.
If only I could have knew you more, he thought, sighing, bowing his head to shield his eyes from the harrowing view of the outside world.
Maybe if he had known Miko better, he would have learned so much more about himself and his future.
When Odin returned home—if, perhaps, he ever did—he would have to hug his friend long and hard and apologize for all the grief he had to have caused.
In the past, he’d been nothing more than a stupid, bullheaded man.
With a child on the way and a wife who would need his support now more than anything else in the world, he had to buck up, less the titans of consequence swallow him whole.
Night came more swiftly than he could have ever imagined. With it came food fresh and warm from the castle’s kitchen, smelling of meats, cheeses, breads and soups. There even appeared to be a noodle recipe, which lay covered in sauce that resembled something of spaghetti, except this appeared to be made of some kind of white cheese rather than actual tomato sauce.
Upon returning to the room with Carmen in toe, Katarina immediately assaulted them with praise over the fact that she had personally gone down to the kitchen to make the meal.
“The noodle dish is mine alone,” Katarina said, offering a smile that was enough to warm Nova’s heart instantly.
“It smells delicious,” Carmen said, climbing up into the chair beside Ketrak. “Hello, sir.”
“Hello,” Ketrak said.
“How are you this fine day?”
“I’m well, thanks.”
“That’s good to hear,” Carmen said, turning her eyes on Nova and Katarina as they approached the table. “I had a long day myself, working on the three of you’s new house.”
“How is it going?” Katarina asked. “Thank you for all you’re doing.”
“No need to thank me. And it’s going great. Not a whole lot happening right now, other than getting things mapped out, but it should look nice once it gets going.”
“That’s good to know,” Nova said, pulling a chair out for Katarina before he seated himself.
“Have you heard anything from Odin, by any chance?”
Nova’s breath caught in his throat.
Did I really hear what I think I did?
“Sorry?” Nova asked.
“I asked if you heard anything from Odin. You know—got a little bird or something.”
“We haven’t heard anything,” Katarina said, reaching down to take Nova’s hand just as it began to tremble against his thigh. “At least, if we have, I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“There hasn’t been anything for the past month,” Nova said.
“Nothing?” Carmen frowned.
“Nothing,” he said.
The word alone seemed to summon a ball of anger in his chest that began as a black knot that swiftly turned into a fireball. Raging within his heart, burning into his mind, forcing his breaths to come ragged in and out of his chest—it could have been painful, had he allowed i
t to be, as the torrential storm within his mind seemed ready not to die down. In those crucial moments following Carmen’s question, his entire body seemed ready to revolt, though he was more than sure it was only his wife’s presence that allowed such things to be encaged.
Once upon a time, Odin had described the emotion like a beast trapped within a cage of metal.
Except in your bones.
For fear of overreacting, Nova pulled a plate from its place on the table and began to spoon food onto it—first meats, then the cheese, followed by a bit of the pasta his wife had so painstakingly made. As if sensing his distress, Carmen began to do the same, though their eyes did not cross once during the entire ordeal.
Katarina squeezed his hand.
Nova turned his eyes on her.
It’s ok, her twin blue orbs seemed to say, their radiance like soft ocean waves pouring from the shore and onto sands beneath his feet. You can feel whatever you want to feel.
The tremor in his hand ceased.
The muscle in his arm died down.
“I’m sorry I asked,” Carmen said.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Nova said, looking up at the Dwarf as she settled back with her fork in hand. “It’s just a touchy subject with me.”
“I can only imagine.”
“Good friends are hard to come by,” Katarina said. “You’ve been with him for so long. It’s any wonder you’re holding up as well as you are, honey.”
Am I really holding up, or does everyone just think I am?
Some could say that he was a man on the brink of a meltdown—that, regardless of how wholesome he seemed on the outside, there was really something burrowing from the core of his being that threatened to explode out his mouth. They said in the lands to the far southeast, toward where the Hornblaris Mountains ended and was known as the Chainfire Passage began, there were constructs able to belch fire from their cores and liquid so hot and thick it could create entirely new terrains and kill anything within its path. This liquid, they said, resembled something like mud laced with fire, and from its essence earth was carved into black rock that could not be broken with a simple pick and hammer. One would find trouble crossing over its surface, so tough and ragged as it were, so it was no wonder that when Nova reached up to rub his throat he felt that liquid were in his body, slowly eating away at his being and creating an entirely new him. It would, if left unchecked, be only a matter of time before this liquid poured from his mouth and onto the table. As horrifying as that seemed, and as destructive as that might have been, that very core could be controlled—chilled, essentially, to keep said liquid from boiling up to the surface—but how long would it be until nature took its course and decided to uproot him? Would it be a day, a week, maybe another month, or would it be in but a moment, slowly ticking by like that broken hourglass he’d so sadly imagined no more than earlier that day?
Knowing more than well that if he thought about it he was apt to lose his mind, Nova retrieved his fork from the side of the plate, stabbed a piece of noddle upon its tip, then slid it into his mouth, all the while desperate to contain the emotions that threatened to spawn forth.
Deep breaths, he thought, just like your father taught you.
In, out, in, out, up, down, up, down, higher, lower, faster, stronger—this was the technique that was said to ease the beast of burden, to calm the restless and ease the sorrow of plenty. It had never before failed him throughout his entire twenty-three years, so when his heart began to die down and the horrible throbbing in his ears slowed to a halt, he bowed his head and took one final breath.
Things would be fine.
Dinner could be salvaged.
Raising his head, he turned his eyes on Carmen and began to ask about the day’s work, all the while forcing himself not to think about Odin or just where he might be.
As had happened several times before, he was roused from sleep by the raucous nightmare of Miko’s death and Odin’s following flight. Such was the unease within his mind and heart that he woke crying and had to stifle his tears to keep from waking either members of his family up. A sob snarled in his throat, tears more than wet in his eyes, he rolled out of bed and made his way toward the door, where he first checked to make sure the fire was still stoked, then pulled a jerkin over his nightshirt before making his way into the hall.
Almost immediately, he was met by a guard walking the distance of the hallway.
“You, there,” he said, raising his armored glove and pointing. Nova merely stood in place and waited for him to say anything further. “What are you doing out of your room?”
“I need some fresh air,” Nova said. “That’s all.”
“All right. Go get your air and be back before I find you wandering around.”
In day’s past, when the war had not been so affluent, one could wander the castle’s halls without being harassed. There would, of course, be guards, and the occasional page or squire to contend with, but never would someone have to worry about being confined to their room or the office they lived within. That alone unsettled Nova so much that when he stepped out into the training field and tilted his head to the sky to regard the moon, he began to cry.
The tears thick, the sob no longer contained, Nova dropped to his knees and sobbed.
Why now, of all times, did he have to have a breakdown, especially when things seemed to be improving and his life seemed all the better?
It should have been us, he thought. Not me.
Us—three people, three souls, two companions to one man whom should have lived a life without hardship and the demons of the past: this was the term that bloomed within his mind and created upon a vine three flowers haunting in the ever-vast darkness, that spread across a tapestry of one and flowered upon their surfaces a shade of red, black and blue. Me, I—one person, one soul, no companions of which to call his own and no shoulders upon which his tears could be cried: this was the term that stabbed his heart and cut him in two form neck to groin and then back again, the one thing upon the ever-dying vine of life that seemed to turn black and curl at the very base. These things—this beautiful you and I—was, without any disregard, a thing that had been sewed in vision and granted to one with love. A man need not a lover when he had the greatest friends, need not suffer without ever having someone to turn to, need not feel lonely when he was accompanied. It was for these reasons that Nova felt as though his life was slowly falling apart—that it was, without a shadow of doubt, cracking in two like a great monument uprooted by tyrants and pulled down by a growing mob of protestors. Enslaved and controlled by a dictator, killed and tortured in glee, this governmental icon would fall and crack its skull open, but what of the man whose image it had been shaped in? Did he, too, bear wounds, or did he simply hold an emotional scar that could easily be seen but not yet touched?
Pushing himself to his feet, all the less willing to continue with an existence that seemed too fractured without the man he considered to be his best friend, Nova turned and made his way back into the castle, only nodding to the guard once before opening the door, stepping into the room, then slipping into bed without so much as a second word.
I need to do something, he thought.
He could not go on living like this.
There had to be a way for someone to help.
The morning came late and without true consequence. Larks in the sky, singing their songs; light shining overhead, reflecting off dew; a chipmunk in the distance, picking a nut from the ground and skittering off into its burrow—Nova examined them from his place in bed when he woke to a new day and found his wife reading in the corner of the room and the sound of water running in the washroom. He could not, for any discerning reason, find where Ketrak was, though if the running water was evident of anything, it was likely he was already bathing. That, however, didn’t necessarily matter, for it seemed that all odds were stacked against him and not against his family.
Is this what I get for helping him? he thought, thinking back to
a cold stormy night some five years ago, when he was but an eighteen-year-old boy and looking for the safety of his family.
Safety, salvation, a family to call his own—it could have been described as the ultimate paradise, for he need not worry about paying for the food, board or room in the presence of the king, as he was a soldier who served in the army and a refugee from Bohren. Many men would have killed to have been in his position—would have, for all the reasons in the world, taken a knife and stabbed his brother in the back—so for him to be feeling unappreciated and therefor unthankful was enough to make him chastise himself for even feeling such emotions.
What he truly wanted, if he were to be completely honest with himself, was a home to call his own—one of which, Carmen said, would be done in a fortnight if rushed in time for winter. That in itself was fine. He needed no furniture, for he could wait for such things to arrive, and he need not worry about his home having the modern revelations of running water like the castle had. Wells could be drilled, water could be pulled up in buckets, laundry could be hung on tethered ropes and furniture made from the hides and stuffing of animals and flowers—that would be the greatest thing in the world, an independence that he had so grown used to in his brief weeks of living with his wife.
“Nova,” Katarina said.
“Yes?” he asked.
“You’re awake.”
“I’ve been awake for a little while.”
“Why haven’t you gotten out of bed?”
“Haven’t felt like it,” he shrugged, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands.
“Did you go out last night?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“What were you doing?”
Trying to maintain my sanity.
At the risk of scaring his wife, Nova only offered a smile and pushed himself out from beneath the blankets just in time for the door to open and Ketrak to step in.
“Morning,” his father-in-law said.
“Morning,” Nova replied.