She took another small taste and found that it was almost as if a leaf or a bit of dirt had gotten into it. Bernadette wondered if it was a sort of technique to put an herb in the water for preservation reasons, to make the liquid less stale or perhaps to add minerals to the water.
Bernadette was apprehensive of the water, but she was dehydrated. Her better judgment told her not to drink it, but it was just water, after all. She lifted the skin and drank fully. Out of nowhere, Jon sat up with Tom’s bow and arrow. He shot the skin right from her hand, piercing a perfectly good waterskin.
“Jon! Why would you do that? You could have shot me,” she said.
“He told me last night, but I forgot to tell you,” Jon explained. “He said not to drink the water.”
A wall of nausea hit Bernadette. She clutched her stomach and, before she could answer, fell to the ground.
#
“It’s important for all of us to see this place,” her mother said, though it did little to make Bernadette feel any better. She didn’t want to be here. It frightened her.
The catacombs were the final resting place for her people. It was a massive cavern underneath the Mármaros, forever cold and dark. Her mother’s gait was stiff but didn’t require anything but a cane as she led Bernadette down the marble steps. Halfway down the stairs, the marble was met with stone steps carved by their ancestors.
Bernadette carried a lantern as well as a long candle to light the sconces along the walls as they walked. With each sconce lit, she saw a little more of the fate all her people would succumb to. Stone beds lay every few feet. Some had marble people laying on them. Other stone beds were empty and awaiting the next rigid body.
On the verge of their deaths, the people of the Mármaros would be helped down to this place where they would pick their final resting place. There, servants would lay them down and the person would await death. They responded to temperature, so the cold of the room likely facilitated the process of dying. At the very least, it made it too cold for the person to move if they had second thoughts.
Bernadette wanted to leave. She tried to run right back upstairs and forget about this place, but her mother was making her way to the other side of the cavern. “Come on, Birdie.”
Someone else called her “Birdie,” but she couldn’t remember who. It made her tummy sour and she couldn’t quite explain why. Not wanting to fall behind, Bernadette resumed her task of lighting the sconces until she caught up to her mother.
Bernadette looked around at the end of the catacombs. She wondered just what it was her mother wanted to show her. She hoped it was more interesting than anything the high councilor Stevis had to teach. He desired to explain more than he wanted her to learn. It was infuriatingly dull. Bernadette often slipped off while he was lecturing. Her mother caught her on this day, and this was to be her punishment.
Bernadette found herself watching the closed eyes of the people in the room. She imagined them opening her eyes at any moment and it made her feel uneasy. At this end of the catacombs, the people were much older. They were in beds carved from the walls as well as the raised beds on the floor. This area was packed full. No resting place remained empty.
One body had a raised bed that was larger than the others. The man was pink marble like the marble of the Mármaros. There was nothing notably different about him. He was handsome. He must have died before his time. He rested on one side of his bed as if he were awaiting a bedmate. Their people didn’t allow cohabitation of deathbeds today. It must have been an old ritual her ancestors abandoned.
Bernadette looked at her mother, who said nothing of the man with the large bed, and instead withdrew a bouquet of wildflowers and rested them on the empty side of his bed.
“We may not understand who these people are, but we pay our respects,” her mother told her before bowing her head and singing a prayer. The song echoed throughout the massive chambers.
Out of respect for her mother and the people who rested in this place, Bernadette did the same. The air changed in the room as her mother sang her hymn as if fresh air had found its way into the old prison. Bernadette felt a sense of calm she didn’t feel before and wondered if they thought it, too.
When the song ended, her mother looked at her and said, “Come on, child. Let’s get back upstairs before the high councilor notices you’re missing.”
“He’s probably still talking to himself in the gardens. I don’t think he notices I’m gone.”
Her mother chuckled. “He’s going to be the father of your children one day. You should find things you like about him.”
Bernadette gave one last look at the man with the large bed and wondered why his mate never joined him. She pinched each of the sconce flames one by one until they approached the stairway. While there were plenty of empty beds, Bernadette knew that at some point they would run out. When all these beds filled up, where would her children be laid to rest?
“What happens when we run out of room?”
“Carve more beds along the walls, I suppose.”
She supposed since it wasn’t an immediate concern that no one had a plan for it. The continuation of their species was more important to them now. Bernadette thought about what she and the high councilor were expected to do, and it made her cringe. Why did it have to be with an older man like that?
“Come on, girl,” her mother called from the top of the steps.
More than happy to leave the catacombs, Bernadette was just about to put out the light of the last sconce when she realized she was being watched. She looked over and the body closest to her was looking at her. It was a woman laid down just last week. Bernadette’s voice seized in her chest as she tried to scream. The woman couldn’t turn her head, but her eyes were open and looking at her from the side and she opened her mouth to speak. “Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” a childish voice cried from the dying woman’s mouth.
Lost in a whirlwind of images and memories she didn’t remember, Bernadette reached out to feel her way through the confusion. She was lost and it seemed that nothing would anchor her. She fell to her knees and sobbed. That was when the baby inside her began to kick.
All of this was an illusion, something was distorting her mind, but the baby was real. She closed her eyes and waited out the storm, holding her stomach to ground her until it all finally went black.
Part Three
Chapter Fourteen
“Birdie.” The boy’s voice cracked. “Birdie, please wake up. Please come back.”
She opened her eyes and saw six boys in front of her. They were not like her. They were soft and fragile. The littlest one was beside her. He looked so upset as if he had been crying for days. She touched his cheek and smiled at him.
The tallest boy was holding a rather wild-looking boy with tangled hair and a dirty face on his hip. A set of identical twins tilted their heads in opposite directions as they stood side by side in brown furs. Beside them, a plump boy looked at her sullenly.
“Hello,” she greeted them.
“Are you okay, Birdie?” The boy beside her asked.
She didn’t know who Birdie was. She supposed he was referring to her. She couldn’t remember her name at the moment, but she was sure it wasn’t Birdie. “Who are you?”
The little boy looked at his older companions with a mix of rage and fear as if they could somehow make right the situation. She looked around and found that she was lying on a bed of furs. Her dress was stained. She looked down at her stomach and inspected the hard budge.
“Can you tell me what is going on?” she asked.
The boys seemed to think she was under a spell of sorts. They introduced themselves though they insisted that we were close companions prior. They told her that her name was Bernadette, but they called her Birdie for short. They took turns telling her details about herself and she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by all the new information.
It was all so frightfully unfamiliar. Bernadette had to admit that something was wrong with he
r memory. She couldn’t recall anything from before she woke up. The boys were all kind. They gave her food and water and kept her close to the campfire to stay warm while they explained the other member of their party, Alexi, to her.
“So, I am to understand that Alexi is the father of this child.”
The boys shifted uncomfortably. “We are a little fuzzy on those details, but you seemed to think it was,” the fat boy said.
“It’s all that hunter’s fault,” Otto, the eldest boy, grumbled. “If she hadn’t given Birdie that water.”
Bernadette leaned into the warmth of the fire. “Hunter?”
The boys explained what had happened the previous night. They were all rather distraught that something had happened to her, and she felt terrible that they were put through so much at such young ages. “Well, where is this Alexi?”
“He will probably come tonight if the moon is out,” Adam said.
“Well then, let’s wait for tonight and hope this man arrives.”
She didn’t understand what this man could do for restoring her memory. Perhaps he knew how to counteract the spell in some way.
That night, when the sunset, the small moon hung in the distance, but there was no sign of the alpha moon the boys were expecting. For some reason, this somehow meant that Alexi could not come.
That night, they slept together huddled in furs. The two smallest boys clung to her. She felt guilty for not remembering them. It felt as though the link between them should have been strong enough for her memory of them to remain intact. She did feel something—a protectiveness brought on by her maternal instinct, perhaps. She stroked Adam’s brown hair while he slept and wondered if there were indeed a way to regain her memory.
She dreamt that night of a young man with startling yellow eyes. They were standing together on a hillside overlooking a pink palace. He approached her in a manner far too familiar and she stepped back by the surprise of it. “I don’t remember our relationship. I only know what the boys have told me of you...of us.”
The man’s face fell into a rage. He kicked the dirt, sending rocks off the cliff. She recalled the boys speaking of a cliff. They were supposed to travel there to meet Alexi. “I told Jon...”
“You can’t possibly expect a boy to remember such trivial instructions in a time of a crisis?” Bernadette scoffed.
“We were all counting on him—”
“And you count too much on them,” Bernadette shouted. She struggled to lower her voice but was unsure why. She felt on the matter but had no basis for what she was saying.
Alexi tilted his head. “I don’t think you drank enough to wipe your memory fully.”
“There is a way to undo it?”
The man shook his head. “Probably not. Maybe you can regain more recent memories, but not everything. It’s happened too many times now. The damage is done.”
Bernadette was disappointed by the answer, but she had prepared herself for as much. “There’s a small chance I can regain some of it, though.”
“I don’t know, to be honest.”
Bernadette didn’t come here for his defeatist attitude. She came here for the answers the boys were so certain this man would have. His pillar was too high for such little result. “What do we need to do?”
“I don’t even know if it’s worth it...”
“That is not what I asked.”
Alexi grinned, pleased by her insistence. “All right. Go to the Rambling Bush.”
“A bramble bush?”
“No.” Alexi laughed. “Tell Otto. He will know what it is — the Rambling Bush. The boys will want to avoid it, but you must go through it. I can’t promise it will work.”
“I didn’t ask for promises,” Bernadette said, stepping into the shadows of her dream. Alexi turned to follow, but before he could, she said, “Goodnight.”
Before that man could make one slyer smile, Bernadette opened her eyes and sat up. For whatever reason, it was enjoyable to see the look on his face as she ended their meeting. It appeared she had never done that before. “Otto!”
The eldest boy grunted from underneath his furs.
“We need to go through the Rambling Bush, not around it.”
“Did Alexi say that?”
“He did.”
The boy groaned. “Bollocks.”
#
The next morning, the tail of the giant moon was still lingering in the daylight. Bernadette thought it curious but said nothing. The boys were overloading her with conversation throughout the day while they marched in the same direction over steep hills and shallow creeks. They took breaks to eat and observe the wildlife—mostly little birds, snakes, and field mice.
She had relearned their names but struggled to remember everything they told her as it was six against one. By the late afternoon, she had grown quite fatigued mentally but didn’t have the heart to tell her six traveling companions that she could not comprehend another word.
“Okay,” she interrupted their story about her giant shoes. “You’ve all done so well in keeping an eye on me. Why don’t you play as regular children do?”
“We are playing,” the little one cheered. “This is all just one big game. We are pieces that are moved until the very end when the king takes the queen and sits on the throne.”
She couldn’t help but frown. What an odd thing for a boy so young to say. “Did Alexi tell you that?”
He looked down and shifted his feet in the dirt as he twisted his arms behind his back. It seemed this man told the boys things far passed their level of comprehension. Just who was his queen? She presumed it was to be her, but what throne did he covet? Bernadette refused to be used, and she would not let him use the boys either.
“Am I royalty?” she asked the boys.
“No,” Otto answered. “At least, not that you told us. They gave you fancy things and a tall tower to make you happy, only those things didn’t make you happy. When you were unhappy, your people didn’t like you for not being happy and not wanting to make babies for them.”
The whole thing sounded obscene. No wonder Bernadette fled. “They’re the ones who made you forget us,” Adam said. Even if she decided Alexi was not the man for her, these children were hers.
“Would it be all right if I refer to you as my children?” she asked.
All six boys went silent around the fire. Their mouths were agape. It was the wild one beside her who answered. He placed a grubby little hand on her stomach while she laid on her side, and the baby kicked at his hand as if it were trying to interact. He laughed and said, “Mama, baby.”
“Can we call you mama?” Adam asked.
Hearing his little voice call her mama made her heart sing. She smiled., “I’d like it very much if you all called me mama or mother.”
“Even us?” Otto said, referring to himself and the older fat boy, Cal.
“Especially you.” Bernadette embraced the two boys closest to her and held them close. “If Alexi tries to tell you anything in your dreams, tell him to leave. You’re my children now.”
Alexi may have been their father, but she was their mother now. No man had the strength or sway over a mother’s influence. If Alexi wanted to be king, he would need pawns. These boys were not to be his to control. She would make certain of it. Whatever he was planning, he would need to consult with Bernadette if he wanted their help.
Chapter Fifteen
Their silhouettes could be seen as they moved across the landscape. From sunup to sundown, the group camped, walked, or ran. Most often it was the pace of something in between. With two little boys, the unbeaten path was rough. Bernadette carried them as often as she could, but like most little boys, they could only tolerate that for so long. They would escape their mother’s arms and go wandering off on their own.
Crickets were their new favorite. Adam and Gabe would crouch down in patches of tall grass and listen for them. When they came too close, a cricket would jump and the boys would jump, too. Their bony little knees would
jut up as they mimicked the cricket, and Bernadette laughed at their attempts.
Gabe caught one and brought it back to her. “Cheep cheep!” he explained.
The bug was enormous for a cricket. Its shelled body shined in the sunlight and Bernadette found herself rather impressed. “It is a very nice cheep cheep.”
“We’ve passed plenty of trees,” Cal observed. “But Gabe doesn’t seem interested in them anymore.”
“That was where he felt safest at one point, right?” Bernadette asked.
Cal nodded.
It made sense. The boys were close in age—at least she thought they were. Gabe’s speech was continually improving. He still grew frustrated and overly tired with so many companions, but he used more words with each passing day. The wild boy would grow into a tamed young man at the heels of a young lady one day. Bernadette shivered at the chills of the evening coming from the hills that surrounded them.
It had been a month since Alexi made any attempt to contact her. She wondered if he were still coming to the boys in visions, but Bernadette didn’t think the boys would lie to her about such things. Bernadette was their mother now. Alexi may have had their dreams, but their mother was there when they fell and tore the fragile skin on their knees. Bernadette was there when their nightmares of jungle cats and wolves became too much. She was there in the day to observe each triumph and failure.
Besides, the moon had been weak over the past month. She had seen it in the daytime sky faintly sometimes. It was the stars that dominated the sky. Bernadette rather enjoyed the view, but more than once, she caught the boys looking up for signs of the moon.
Tonight, the moon was half exposed from the night shadow. When Bernadette closed her eyes, she was not the least bit surprised to find Alexi waiting in her dreams.
She was in the same area they were currently camped. It was nighttime, but the moon was much more significant in her dreams than in reality. Alexi was leaning against a crimson tree with jungle green leaves. He had his arms folded in front of him. “You’ve grown since I’ve last seen you.”
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