Empath

by Evans, S. Usher

  But the question now in her mind was how long she could hold out before the thoughts became too much and she gave into the temptation?

  She looked at her stone, imagining the bright light and trying to will her stone to glow. But it remained dull in her hand, and she let it fall back to her chest. It was useless anyway—special power or not, she wasn't able to wield it in the face of the Anghenfil.

  In the dark of the night, she let the forbidden thought cross her mind: in order to get back home, she would have to defeat the Anghenfil.

  And she couldn't.

  Stuffing that thought back into the back of her mind, she considered other options. If she could keep it at bay, if she could fill her mind with goodness and happiness, perhaps it would lose interest in her and move on.

  She closed her eyes and thought about all the things that made her happy. But she struggled to remember anything that wasn't tainted with a longing to return home, or clouded by the memory of Josh. Even the new memories she'd made here—Aerona, Siors, the twins—while they were loving and kind to her, but there was a wall between them. And Cefin, sweet handsome Cefin. He could be a suitable replacement for Josh, except that she couldn't touch him.

  So she was alone, as she had been back in her own land. It began to settle in her chest, the separation, the loneliness, and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

  "Give it to me, and you'll never feel this lonely again."

  "GO AWAY!"

  ***

  The next morning, Aerona was already awake and tending to Mairwan. Aerona looked as if she'd gotten very little sleep as well but seemed to be pleased with how Mairwan was progressing.

  "Good morning," Aerona whispered, gently stroking Mairwan's cheek.

  "How's she doing?" Lauren asked quietly.

  "She's going to be all right. I can't thank you enough."

  "It was my pleasure," Lauren replied, crossing the room to sit down on the bed next to Mairwan. She placed a hand on the girl's small leg. Mairwan was still dreaming peacefully, and the feeling was stronger than the night before.

  When Lauren returned to herself, Aerona was giving her a curious look.

  "What did she say to you just now?" Aerona asked.

  "She didn't say anything…it's more like a feeling. Just wanted to make sure she was still there."

  "And?"

  Lauren smiled and nodded, "She's dreaming happily. Nothing to worry about."

  Aerona looked down at Mairwan and ran her fingers lovingly over the little girl's forehead. Lauren was strongly reminded of her own mother, and wondered what she might be doing back home. Had she given up hope that—

  Those kinds of thoughts, she reminded herself, were what drew the Anghenfil.

  "Thank you for bringing her back," Aerona whispered. "I don't know…after Ieuan died… And Cefin is always putting himself in danger…"

  "Cefin told me what happened," Lauren said, happy to talk about anything but what was worrying her.

  "I know he regrets it," Aerona nodded, brushing Mairwan's cheek. "He was just trying to protect the village. He was trying to make sure the twins had a father and…" She sighed. "He hasn't forgiven himself, and I know that's why he doesn't come around as much. He can barely look me in the eye."

  Lauren cocked her head to the side. "You aren't that much older than him, are you?"

  Aerona smiled and shook her head. "We played together as children, and I always considered him to be a brother. Our families were close even before I married Ieuan." She noticed Lauren's curious expression and added, "Ieuan was ten years my senior when we married. He and his brother—Cefin's father—were inseparable. So it's no wonder that he followed his brother into danger."

  Lauren watched the way Aerona spoke and wasn't sure if the adoration was directed towards her late husband or towards Cefin. She could tell Aerona cared about Cefin; nephew or not, they had a bond that seemed to extend past her previous marriage.

  "I wish Cefin would allow himself to move on." Aerona sighed, looking at the door before turning to smile at Lauren. "I think he's sweet on you, though."

  "Yeah, well…" The wall was still there, keeping her apart from everyone. The Anghenfil purred in anticipation and she turned to smile at Aerona, forcing the monster back down.

  "Do you think there will be new villagers with tyllwyllwch today?" Aerona asked. "Mairwan will be fine, it seems. I don't think you need to stay here if you don't want to."

  Lauren nodded and played with her necklace, lost in thought.

  "What's the matter?" Aerona asked. "You know that you can talk about anything with me, dear."

  "Just a little tired from yesterday," Lauren waved her off. "But you're probably right. I should—"

  "Lauren," Aerona said, looking at Lauren's necklace, "is your stone darker?"

  A chill ran down her spine but she forced a smile on her face. "A little bit, but Siors said that it was fine."

  It was a complete lie, but Lauren hoped that it would cease any of the other questions.

  Aerona looked down at her hands. "You know, I wish I was as strong as you."

  "What?" Lauren blinked.

  "You just seem to take everything in stride. You didn't even flinch when Mairwan was….you just did what needed to be done."

  Lauren swallowed.

  "And…" Tears gathered in Aerona's eyes. "I don't think that I will ever be able to thank you for everything you've done for us—for me. You are a blessing, Lauren."

  Lauren nodded and imagined the look on Aerona's face when she found out how close Mairwan had come to being devoured by the Anghenfil. They were all in danger, every person that was around her, because if she slipped up just once, the monster would come for her—and destroy everyone in its path.

  Lauren smiled and nodded at Aerona, promising herself that she would do better from now on. No more sad thoughts from here on out.

  The Anghenfil chuckled in the back of her mind.

  ***

  There was no one in the village with tyllwyllwch, and Lauren didn't feel like walking up to Baltes' farm. She was focused on the idea that she needed to be happy to keep the monster at bay, to protect everyone from her own temptations, and she was on a mission to find the things that made her happy. She felt in control of her mind for once, bolstered by the idea that she could bury the Anghenfil under a pile of positive thoughts.

  It was certainly a pretty day out, so that was enough to put her in a good mood. She smiled at a couple of villagers, who were too busy with their own work to stop and talk to her. None of them looked like they needed any help, and they told her as such when she asked.

  In the absence of anything else to do, she wandered up the path to the watcher's post. Cefin was a nice distraction—at least, he was lovely to look at. And if she pretended, she could almost forget that they couldn't be together.

  When she arrived, her heart warmed at the sight of him on the watcher's post, staring off into the sky. As she got closer, she saw the worry and concern etched on his face.

  "Cefin? Are you okay?"

  He nodded in welcome, but didn't look at her.

  "What is it?" Lauren asked, coming to sit cross-legged next to him.

  "I just can't stop thinking about Mairwan."

  "She's going to be fine. Siors said—"

  "I promised Aerona I would take care of her and the twins."

  "Cefin," Lauren said. "You can't protect them from every little thing that happens. Your job is to protect the village from the Anghenfil."

  The Anghenfil which was currently taking up residence in the back of her mind and had become much more vocal in the past day. But she was trying to ignore it and bury it under a mountain of happy feelings, she reminded herself. Perhaps if she helped Cefin, it would be just the thing to push it out completely. After all, she had felt better in Heulog after saving the lives of the villagers.

  "And yet…that happiness was fleeting…gone in the blink of an eye…"

  "Shut up," she hissed under her
breath. She cast a nervous look to Cefin, hoping he hadn't just heard her talking to herself (or worse, talking to the Anghenfil), but he seemed too absorbed in his own pain to notice her.

  "It's my fault."

  She almost didn't hear it, as quiet as he spoke. In fact, she wondered if she felt it instead. She could almost see the guilt radiating off of him like tyllwyllwch.

  Tyllwyllwch, she thought to herself as she clutched at her stone. It warmed comfortingly in her hand. She knew what she needed to do. "Cefin…can I help you?"

  He turned his head slowly to look at her, but didn't respond.

  "I think…" She smiled and the stone warmed more. "I think I can help you."

  "I don't want you to hate me."

  Lauren laughed. "I'm not in any danger of that, I promise you. Let me help you. No judgments here."

  In the back of her mind, she could hear the Anghenfil chuckling at the hypocrisy of what she had just said.

  "Stay out of this," she hissed under her breath. When the Anghenfil did not return fire, she nodded and turned to Cefin again. Still blissfully unaware of her internal arguments, he seemed to be considering her words about helping him, before shaking his head in defeat.

  "There's nothing that can help me," he said sadly. "Nothing that can bring them back."

  "Bring them…" She gasped as she made the connection. "Your father and uncle?"

  Cefin grimaced and turned farther from her.

  "Cefin, that was years ago," Lauren said, not sure if the memory in her mind was hers or Aerona's. "And you made a mistake"—she snorted ruefully—"one that I made as well. You can't beat yourself up forever over something you did as a kid." She paused, beginning to understand him as she hadn't before. Almost everything about him, from his obsession with protecting the village to his attentiveness to the children, was from the guilt of leading his father and uncle to their deaths. She sat back, absorbing this new information, and again, the stone reacted at her neck.

  Cefin remained silent and Lauren wondered if he was going to be silent for the rest of his life. She had the strongest urge to grab his hand and peer into that brain of his, but didn't move. She had already invaded his privacy once; she didn't want to do it again without his permission.

  "I want to help you, Cefin," Lauren repeated.

  "Why?"

  "Because…" Lauren trailed off. Because she couldn't help herself so she wanted to help others? Because doing for others was a surefire way of getting the Anghenfil out of her own mind? Because after all they had been through, she still thought he was handsome and she wanted to be close to him? "Because you're hurting."

  "What are you going to do?" he asked, turning to look at her.

  The stone was hot now. Very gently, she reached to take his hand.

  ***

  "You are not old enough to go up the mountain." The older man stood in front of Lauren, eliciting a spectrum of emotions, from respect to anger to love. He carried a familiar spear on his back, and a sword at his side. For a moment, she was confused, but then realized that she was seeing this scene the way Cefin had experienced it in his youth.

  As if to prove her point, her own voice came out as his, younger and filled with impudence. "But Father—"

  "There is no discussion," the other man said. "Ieuan will continue the night shift."

  "But Aerona!" Lauren-as-Cefin said. "It's not right to ask him to stand guard."

  "I stood guard when you were a babe," he said. "It is a privilege to protect this village." He paused, smiling grimly. "One you will inherit when the time is right."

  Lauren could feel the anger bubbling as she left the small hut. Ieuan would be a father any day now, and it would not be right to ask him to give his life. Cefin knew what it was to have a father wedded to protecting the village, and did not wish it for his new cousins. For Aerona, whom he cared for very much.

  Lauren was now climbing the rocky paths, a makeshift spear on her back. Cefin wanted to prove to his father that he could protect the village—he wanted to defeat the monster that lived in the caves, once and for all.

  Stupid, foolish, moronic.

  He stood in the mouth of the cave, banging his spear against the rock and calling into the darkness for the beast to show itself. His confidence shook as the beast showed its true self, growing larger than anything Cefin had ever seen in his life. He fell backwards as the monster loomed over him.

  Why did I have to go up to the mountain?

  "GET AWAY FROM MY SON!"

  Cefin's father appeared, like a vision from a dream, followed by his uncle. They were fearless, approaching the monster with their spears and swords.

  "Cefin, get out of here!"

  Cefin scrambled away, watching the two men battle the beast. His uncle tossed his spear, which the beast knocked away with a simple flick of his mouth.

  Stupid, foolish boy.

  The Anghenfil opened its great, wide jaw, and fire filled the forest, engulfing the two men in a hellish blaze.

  Stupid, foolish boy.

  Lauren heard their screams of pain as they burned, and guilt burned at her just as badly.

  Stupid, murderous, foolish boy.

  Murderer.

  Lauren was sucked in deeper into the misery, bombarded with regret, shame, misery, and the longing desire to make right what could never be made right. He was carrying this weight on his soul, driving him to flagellate himself with long watches over the pass to deprive himself of being simply a young man.

  "Cefin, why are you blaming yourself?" Lauren found herself asking. Her voice was ethereal, her body non-existent, but she was there with him in the darkness.

  His response was a jumble of emotions so loud that she couldn't make sense of it.

  "Cefin, you need to stop—" she tried again, hoping that one voice would echo out of the darkness. The response was jumbled again, but one voice stood out.

  "It's my fault they're gone," it said.

  "Cefin, you made a mistake, and you don't have to beat yourself up forever," Lauren cried, trying to speak over the voices. "You have to forgive yourself—"

  The response was so deafening that it hurt her nonexistent ears.

  "Cefin, you are allowed to make mistakes," Lauren said, hoping that would resonate.

  "THIS WAS NOT A MISTAKE!" the chorus of voices spoke in disorganized unison, but Lauren got the message. She began to feel hot, as if he were trying to push her out of his mind.

  "You were young!" Lauren replied, pushing back against him. "Cefin, don't push me out."

  The chorus of different voices began talking again, a low roar growing into an echoing cacophony of angrier and angrier words towards himself and towards Lauren. She struggled against the emotion, feeling him falling deeper and deeper into his misery, and she worried that she was going to lose him forever.

  She ran through the voices, each word lashing her like a whip, as she searched for the center, for the true center of what Cefin was really feeling, why he was hurting, and where she could plug the hole in the dam before it broke.

  "Show me," she called to the darkness as it closed in around her.

  She heard crying, very faint in the corner. She turned to follow the source of the crying, knowing that it was the one memory, the one thing that kept him in this place of darkness.

  He was fifteen, crying over his father's mutilated body, begging for forgiveness. He wasn't speaking, but Lauren could hear a single thought echoing off of him in waves.

  "I cannot live when others died because of me."

  "Cefin," Lauren said, kneeling beside him. "Your father, he chose to come after you. He chose to sacrifice himself so that you would live."

  "It's my—"

  "He made his choice. He chose you instead of himself. Even though you made a mistake, he and your uncle loved you so much that they chose for you to live instead of them."

  The darkness that flowed above them began to slow, and Lauren knew she was making progress.

  "You need to let t
his go, Cefin," Lauren said. "Let this go and live your life, because that is what they gave theirs for."

  She began to see a light above them, as the body of his father began to fade in front of them.

  "Let him go," Lauren said, brushing his now adult hair out of his face.

  "Thank you," he whispered.

  ***

  Lauren blinked in the sunlight. Her head was dizzy, and her whole body felt like she had hand-washed fifteen buckets of laundry. But she felt satisfied, like she had just done something truly powerful in someone else's life.

  She sat up and saw Cefin standing on the riverbank. She pulled herself to standing, as the blood rushed to her head, and shuffled over to him.

  "Hey," she whispered. His cheeks were wet, and when he didn't turn to look at her, Lauren worried that he was angry with her for dredging up such terrible memories.

  "I've been carrying around the memory of my father's death for years," he said, his voice thick. "Every day when I walk to the watcher's post, I think about him, and tell myself it's my fault that I am making this journey and not him. Every time I look at the twins, I remind myself it's my fault they don't have a father and Aerona doesn't have a husband."

  "Cefin—"

  "But now, for some reason. I feel at peace." He smiled finally.

  Lauren half-smiled back, and the stone warmed at her throat.

  "I wish I could hug you," Cefin said, looking out in the distance. "But I'm afraid of what other demons you would unearth."

  To that, Lauren let out a barking laugh. "I only use my powers for good."

  "If there's ever anything that you need to speak of," he said, rubbing his hands over his face, "anything at all…I can never repay you for relieving me of this burden."

  Lauren opened her mouth, but nothing came out. All she could see was Cefin's face melting into horror as she told him the monster that had killed his father was living in her head. The wall was still firmly between them—because of her powers and because of her secrets. He was brave enough to let her see his demons, but hers were much more terrifying. Cefin's guilt was misplaced, but Lauren's was real.

  She struggled to reach for the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction from helping Cefin through his inner demons, but it was gone. And even worse, the darkness settled on top of her chest—the very same that had come over her in Heulog.