Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  Chapter Thirteen

  Athel had the vague sense of being carried, and people talking to her, but she could not make any sense of it. There was no sense of time. There was nothing. Nothing but a wretched misery that swallowed her whole.

  She lay in a bunk at night, not aware of how she got there, nor did she care. She cried out in a hoarse voice, her throat parched, her tongue dry and leathery from screaming. For what felt like an eternity, she lay there in utter anguish, her heart dying inside of her. It felt like shards of glass churning around inside of her chest. She tore at the sheets until the fabric tore free, then tore at the mattress until it came apart, her shredded fingers yanking the material to pieces as she writhed in agony.

  She cried and cried until her eyes dried up, and yet she wept still. Finally, her body collapsed in on itself from exhaustion, but she found no solace in sleep. The pressure and agony of consciousness gave way to the nightmarish torment of unconsciousness. Over and over in her dreams she was forced to relive the experience of feeling Alder slip away, knowing that she had been the one to do it. Her body slick with sweat, she tossed and turned, cursing herself, the world, the Gods, everything.

  Her sense of space unraveled under the weight of her grief. She existed in a world filled only with suffering. It stretched out in all directions for eternity. Pain without beginning and without end. An endless void filled with a single horrifying truth: That Alder was gone, and she had killed him.

  In the morning, throbbing consciousness returned, but the misery continued. Offers of food and aid fell on deaf ears. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe. After awhile, even her emotions dried out, and she found herself experiencing a complete numbness. Compared to the torture of before, it was a welcome oblivion. During these periods of numbness, she would roll over, force some tasteless food and water into her ravaged body. Then, something would remind her. Sometimes it would be a scent. She would catch Alder’s scent on her pillow. Other times, it would be an item. A hairbrush he had used to braid her hair, or a book that he had marked up with red corrections. Memories of him were everywhere, all around her, in all of her clothes, in all of her possessions, in the very air she breathed. His touch lingered on her skin, his breath on her neck. And when she was reminded, the spasms and agony would begin anew, just as strong and sickly as they had been before.

  Every fond memory she had of him became pure torture. Every happy moment she could recall only wrenched her heart within her chest, transformed into a new memory, a powerful memory, the only memory that existed in her soul now. The memory that he was gone. That horrifying moment the last of his soul slipped through her fingers, like grains of sand. At night, she would curl up in a ball, screaming so mournfully that it choked her throat, clenching her fists so tightly her nails drew blood, but nothing would change that horrible moment. It hung over her, like a blood red moon in the sky. Ever present, inescapable, irresistible. Her mind was now a field of bear traps, just waiting to be stepped on, and when they clamped down on her they dug deep, refusing to let her go.

  Every familiar place to her was now a barb. Every chair reminded her of when he had sat in it, every plate reminded her of when he had held it. Every piece of clothing reminded her of when he had worn it. She was beset by grief from all sides. There was nothing she could do to escape.

  Alder’s death didn’t just leave a sore spot within her, it immersed her entire world. Every thought, every place, everything was now wrapped up in it, as if all of existence served now only to cause her more pain and remind her of her loss.

  Athel had no sense of how long she lay in that bunk, or what was happening beyond that door. The whole world had stopped, and as the hours dragged on into days, and as the days seemingly dragged on into weeks, Athel became acutely aware of something, and it frightened her so much that she was able to feel it even through the periods of numbness.

  The pain was not weakening with time, it hurt just as much now as it did the day Alder died, and in her heart she began to understand that it always would. This was not something that she could distance herself from. This was not something that would heal. This was not something that would pass. She would roast alive in white hot grief, and it would last forever.

  She began to wish he had never existed at all, so that she would not have to remember him. She wished she had never met him, never fallen in love, never known him, and that wish made her feel guilty beyond measure. She hated herself for wishing it, but the pain was so vast, any relief seemed welcome to her.

  The door cracked open and the sounds of a baby crying spilled in from outside. Mina poked her head in, her own eyes red from crying. In her arms, she held little Ash, who was wailing against her shoulder.

  Athel dared not look. She realized that the others were hurting as much as she was. She realized that little Ash no longer had a father, and that it was all her fault. She hated herself. She hated herself for all the pain she had caused. She hated herself for not being there for them when they needed her. She felt like the worst mother in the world. She hadn’t held Ash once since it happened. Hadn’t comforted him even one time. He cried out for his father, and he didn’t come to him. In desperation, he cried out for his mother, but she didn’t come either.

  Mina’s heart nearly broke anew when she saw Athel lying there. Slick with sweat and grease, filthy with grime and dried tears. “Sweetie, your baby needs you. He wants his dad, but he doesn’t understand. I thought that maybe it might help you both to hold him for a little while.”

  The paper thin walls of her numbness collapsed, and Athel began to cry again.

  “I’m sorry…I can’t…”

  Athel covered her face, sobbing deeply.

  “I can’t hold him, I can’t even look at him. All I see is Alder’s face in his eyes. All I see is what I did to him.”

  Mina sniffed and wiped her cheek. “It’s all right, sweetie.”

  “NO! IT’S NOT!!!!!”

  Athel rolled over. She hated herself. She hated herself so much.

  Mina looked down sadly. “You’re right…it’s not all right.”

  Mina tried to snuggle Ash as best she could, stepping back outside. Athel’s horrible wails could be heard from every bunk in the ship.

  “…And it never will be.”

  Athel became vaguely aware of their return to Wysteria. Instead of lying in her bunk, she now lay in her bed within the palace. Gifts began to accumulate. Offerings of food, letters of encouragement. Vases of flowers by well-intentioned foreigners who didn’t know any better. Athel watched as the flowers slowly died around her, as the food spoiled, as the letters faded and the paper dried. It seemed like all was dying, she lived in a place of decay and rot, and it echoed the dead void that now existed in her chest.

  She felt her body growing weaker as the days passed. Sleep came faster, lasted for longer. Her body stopped asking for food, stopped asking for water, and she was glad for it. She didn’t feel like she deserved them anyway. She didn’t feel like she wanted them ever again. Sometimes people would come in and plead with her, raising their desperate voices, even yelling at her and shaking her, but she just stared lifelessly at the ceiling, her eyes like a corpse, her heart like cinders. Their words never reached her. She couldn’t even tell who they were or what they had said. She felt herself growing more and more disconnected from this world of pain. It wasn’t happiness. Happiness was unfathomable to her now. It was blessed numbness, a cold blanket wrapping itself around her body, welcome oblivion.

  Her eyes closed, and they didn’t open again.

  Athel felt herself sinking through the material of her bed, passing down through the layers of living wood and soil. Somewhere, distant voices were screaming out for her, but she couldn’t make any sense of them, she didn’t even want to. All she wanted was for this feeling to continue. This blissful nothingness, this death of spirit. There was no peace here, only a
void. But compared to the world of pain, it was paradise.

  As she passed through the soil, something swam past her, as if the layers of rock and dirt were as soft as spring water. She brushed her hair away from her eyes, and saw it again. A man swimming past through the rock as she sank through the roots.

  She felt herself slowing, and she settled down at the bottom most roots of the royal tree, miles below the surface, where their tiniest rootlets met with the bedrock, the foundation of the very island itself.

  Stone and root were as one here. The voices calling out to her faded away completely and she rested her head against the stone.

  Everything was so cold here, so dark and still.

  Numb.

  “Athel…”

  Senseless, detached…frozen and insensate…

  “Athel!”

  She opened her eyes weakly from inside the rootlets and looked out into the stone around her. Odger was sitting there, but it wasn’t the Odger she knew. His hair was combed, his teeth brushed, his skin clean. His eyes were a different color than she recalled them being, and he looked right at her, not through her as he normally did. His gaze was focused, but overwhelmingly sad. It was a deep, penetrating sadness she recognized immediately. It was the same thing found in her own eyes.

  Listlessly, Athel reached out and poked Odger’s cheek. There was no warmth there.

  “Did you just poke me in the face?” he asked.

  “Are you...real?” she coughed.

  She looked around at the roots and stone around her. “Is...is any of this real? I don’t think it is.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I think I died back at the Monolith, and now I’m trapped in some kind of perdition. An endless nightmare I can’t wake up from. Or is this reality? Is this the real world, and the time I was happy was just some kind of weird dream that I’ve now woken up from?”

  She felt her pain well up anew. “Was I ever happy? I can’t even recall what that felt like. In my mind, I see someone who looks like me sitting and laughing with Alder, but I can’t recall ever feeling that way. They don’t feel like my memories. It must have been a dream, a dream of someone else’s life. Someone’s happiness I just glimpsed for a moment before returning to my own private hell.”

  “Can you recall no happy times?” Odger asked.

  “No…there’s nothing. There’s nothing green left inside of me. I…I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know what season. I can’t even tell you if such a thing as spring really exists. All I know is winter. It’s cold. So cold, I can feel it pressing in from all sides. I just want to give in to it. I just want to it to take me.”

  “You have to fight it, Athel.”

  She closed her eyes. “Why? I’d give anything to never open my eyes again. There’s no warmth in the sun, there’s no life in the air. There’s just...grief. I feel, saturated by it. Like a back dye I’ve been marinating in. Why would I want to return to that?”

  She opened her eyes again. “I am dead, aren’t I? This world, all this suffering, it’s punishment for my sins, isn’t it? I wasn’t worthy of retuning to Milia, and now I’m lost to the void. A purgatory for discarded souls. Perhaps there never was a girl named Athel Forsythia. That feels right. It feels like she was all just some dream, some illusion I came up with to deaden my torment. I must have been someone else, a terrible person, and this is the afterlife, my punishment…my reality…I dreamed up a girl who was once happy, but she never really existed, did she?”

  She looked up at Odger. He didn’t say anything; he just sat and listened quietly.

  “Why are you here, Odger?”

  He looked back at her, tears in his eyes. “I have always been here. You just are joining me for the first time.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  He looked off into the distance. “Since the first day. The day I discovered the void magic I was using was powered by the souls of dead children. I died that day, just as you died the day you lost your husband.”

  “So, I really am dead, aren’t I?”

  “In a physical sense, no. Your body lives, your heart beats, your lungs breathe. But in every way that really matters, yes, you are dead. The person you were is gone. No soul can receive such a deep wound and remain as it was. Like me, you are now a shell. A body that keeps on breathing long after the heart has died inside of it. A corpse that just hasn’t been buried yet.”

  He looked back. “But unlike me, you cannot stay this way. People need you, the world needs you, and your children need you.”

  “Children?”

  Odger held out his hand. “I am here to show you the way back.”

  “I…don’t want to. I don’t know how. I can’t.”

  “I will teach you how. The first step is to let go of who you used to be. I spent decades trying to get back what I lost, and I never found it. What’s gone is gone. You must pick up the pieces, and build a new life with what is left.”

  “NO!”

  She swatted his hand away. “I don’t want a life without him. I don’t want to live a life that doesn’t have Alder in it. Do you know how cruel it is to ask that of me?”

  He nodded. “I know it is cruel, that’s why I could never do it. But, the longer you stay in this place, the more you will lose touch with reality. You will go mad from grief like I did, and all of your children will have to suffer not only a life without their father, but a life without their mother as well.”

  “You keep saying it that way. What do you mean?”

  The light around him began to fade. “Time grows short. You must leave me soon. The longer you stay, the weaker the thread connecting you with your body will become.”

  “I can’t go back there, I can’t…I just can’t. I won’t. I just want to feel nothing. I want numbness…I want oblivion.”

  He looked at her kindly. “Is that what Alder would have wanted?”

  “NO! Don’t ask me that! Don’t make me think about that! Don’t even speak his name! I can’t bear it!”

  The light faded further. Odger reached out and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her roughly.

  “What would Alder have wanted?”

  Athel felt her heart beat painfully, and she sobbed anew.

  “He…he would want me to care for our children.”

  “Then go, care for them. They need their mother.”

  Athel curled up in a ball, and the numbness that had protected her began to fade. Weakly, with trembling fingers, she reached out and took his hand. He pulled her aloft, and as they rose through the rock and root, her comforting blanket of winter fell away, and the pain returned, like daggers in her heart. As they reached the upper limits of the bedrock, he stopped, allowing her to rise up past him. For one final moment, his fingers lingered with hers, then they separated.

  He watched her as she wept, ascending through the roots.

  As the light disappeared, Odger’s fading eyes grew moist.

  “Go Athel, return to them. Do what I could not. I was never strong enough to bear the pain. Face the grief, endure it. I hope there is light…on the other side.”

  And then he was gone.

  On the morning of the 23rd, Athel opened her eyes from a night full of horrible nightmares. A wave of nausea passed over her. Instinctively, she rolled over to the basin and threw up. Her stomach empty, she only managed to heave painfully. The pressure was so bad it felt like her eyes would rupture. Finally, the heaving subsided, but she felt just as nauseous as she had before. As she rolled back onto her side, she felt something stir inside of her, a kind of feathery flutter, unlike anything she had ever felt before. Placing her hand on her stomach, she realized that it looked a little swollen.

  “Am I...pregnant?”

  * * *

  Captain Evere shook the rattle before Ash’s face. The baby cooed and giggled happi
ly, reaching out with his chubby little fingers.

  “You like that, huh?”

  The baby laughed harder.

  “Okay, go get it!”

  Evere tossed the rattle to the floor, about a foot before Ash. He giggled and squirmed happily, trying to scoot himself closer to the toy.

  “There ya’ go, good job! Well, done lad!”

  Captain Evere saw a pair of tapping boots before him. He looked up to find his wife glaring at him.

  “Are you playing fetch with the baby?”

  “Um…no.”

  A door clattered in the hallway, startling them both. They peeked their heads out and found Athel doing her best to walk down the corridor towards them.

  Her eyes were dark and hollow, her auburn red hair faded. Red bags hung underneath her eyes from weeks of crying. She looked sickly, frail, tired. She was weary and distant, clinging to the very walls to stay on her feet.

  “Lass!”

  Evere went to help her, but she swatted his hand away.

  “I need to see him again,” Athel choked, her voice raspy.

  Evere stared at her.

  Athel reached out with thin hands and grabbed his jacket. “You can do it, make me dream of him.”

  Mina came in, holding Ash.

  “Just one dream,” Athel pleaded. “That is not too much to ask.”

  “What you are asking is a dangerous thing, lass. People have wasted away their lives, chasing dreams, reliving old memories over and over again. It won’t be real.”

  “I don’t care if it’s not real. I know it won’t be real. But, I have to do this. I have to see Alder again, please.”

  Evere looked unsure.

  Athel reached out and placed her hand on Ash’s little head. “Don’t worry, I’ll come back.”

  “How can we know that, lass?”

  Athel leaned forward and took Ash. She held him tight, and he hugged her back. She had always felt close to him, but now it was different. Now they shared an additional bond that was as deep as blood, as profound as family.