by Jenn Polish
I think about getting up and approaching her, but my body decides it likes the corner I’ve made my own.
Zeel helps guide the vial into Blaze’s lips, and P’Tal holds quer hand while Aora helps quer move quer head back to swallow.
Que smiles blearily as the liquid goes down.
“It does sound stronger,” que rattles.
We wait. There is nothing else to do.
Blaze knows. “I’m scared.”
We wait. There is nothing else to do.
We try to let the Izlanian melodies sweep us away.
Jax keeps boiling more and more pine leaves.
As the moon rises even higher into the night, the infuriatingly joyful Lunamez calls now mercifully diminishing, Artem slips out of the infirmary, knowing he’s done all he can with that vial. He motions to Jax, then to Mom’s workspace, then to me, before he steps off the platform. Jax nods without making eye contact. Whatever medicine Artem gave him to give to me, it can wait.
Everything can wait, because there is nothing else that matters.
The Controller remains when the Head Slicer leaves, stock-still. She stands away from the family. I stay in my corner, my knees drawn up to my chest, my wings wilted, my elbows dangling my forearms off my legs.
My fists, like the one Zeel still holds behind quer back, are clenched.
Small moans are coming from Blaze’s little mouth, now, and Mom’s knuckles are purple as she holds my brother up by his waist, his wings crumpled, wilted. I think about flying over there, being with him.
My body won’t move.
It doesn’t matter anyway.
My eyes sting, but they’re dry. At least I think they are. I can’t quite tell. Jax’s and Evelyn’s aren’t. Evelyn’s long nails are digging into her skin as her arms wrap even tighter around herself, like’s she’s trying to hold her body in one piece. She’s been like that for I don’t know how long, and must be bleeding by now. But there’s blood on all of us at this point.
Blaze’s blood.
I do not wonder why she’s here. Why she cares. I don’t have the energy.
I can’t look at P’Tal, Aora, or Zeel. I can’t look at Aon, or my growns. I can’t move any part of my body. Not even my eyes. They leave Evelyn’s nails, her skin, and drop to a spot on the platform ground between us. They stay there. Imagining them moving is…unimaginable. Why does it matter if I move my eyes? If I do anything but sit here? Ever?
My eyes are too heavy to look up. My head is pounding and I can’t bring myself to care. Nothing matters. Because the wracked sobs and the choked out goodbyes that are filling my ears…there will never be another noise. I think vaguely of Zaylam, and wonder how she can possibly be anywhere but here. I wonder how anyone can possibly be doing anything else, thinking about anything else. A breeze rustles the infirmary tent, and I want to scream at it. Punch it. How dare it. How dare anything, anyone, do anything but mourn this young one. Que is younger than me, younger than Aon. And que’s dying.
So I don’t understand why the world still exists.
It happens only a little while later. There are no profound last words. No lingering comfort. Just a last gasp. It sounds more like surprise than it does like pain. Then, the most horrible sounds I’ve ever heard, pouring out of the throats of Blaze’s growns, of my little brother. All the screams they’d kept inside while Blaze was here, while quer soul was in quer body.
Aon is sobbing something, some words, something about being sorry he can’t be a soul keeper, quer soul keeper. But even soul keepers couldn’t stop the plague.
Doesn’t he know it’s useless? P’Tal, Zeel, and Aora cling to each other, to Mama, so hard I don’t know how they’re not breaking each other’s bones. Zeel starts screaming, clutching at quer chiseled stomach, beating into it with quer fists. P’Tal grabs at them, holding them steady, but he’s wailing too. Aora turns and wretches.
I force my eyes up to where Evelyn’s been standing. She’s gone. My burning eyes find Jax, now, as my numb ears register Evelyn’s music box playing Blaze’s life away.
Jax does not wheel over to the growns, does not acknowledge the agony around him. I know he knows that soon, he will have to set Blaze’s body on fire to stop the spread of the plague. He will have to rip P’Tal away from quer body, as P’Tal once had to rip him away from Idrisim’s. And I know he cannot face it yet. He’s crushing pine needles with his bare hands, not even bothering to pull out the splinters that are surely sticking right into his flesh. Hard. Clear droplets, falling off his face, sizzle when they hit the boiling water he’s putting the pine needles into.
I force myself to breathe deeply, through my mouth. It helps a little. But not much. Nothing will. Not ever.
Aon weeps and wails with his head on Blaze’s cot. He shifts, eventually—shuffles on his knees to put his head in Mom’s lap—and he stays like that, his limp wings, his limp body, dead looking when they aren’t wracking violently with sobs.
I do not move toward him. I can’t.
I haven’t flown without assistance for many sunups. Too many. I drag myself up, drag my heavy body to Mom’s workspace. Jax does not stop me. Neither does Mom or Mama, when they catch my deadened eyes with their wet ones. I uncap the vial Artem told Jax was meant for me and chug it down. Almost instantly, my head clears.
Damn the Highlanders and the medicines they keep from us.
I wipe my mouth so roughly with the back of my hand that it feels like I’ve smacked myself. It feels good.
I take one last look at Blaze, knowing that quer body will be ashes by the time I return. No sign of the young one whose Slicing I tried to sabotage remains; no trace of my little brother’s best friend, who galloped with him when he needed someone most, when he needed someone who didn’t care that his sister looked like a traitor. No trace except for the grief que’s left in quer wake.
I leave the tent, limp out to the edge of the low-hovering platform, and launch myself into the humid night sky, where sporadic shouts of good Lunamez make me want to light the entire Forest on fire.
Chapter Nineteen
SUNUP MOCKS ME. A whole cacophony of birds greeting the sky. I open my eyes a crack and peer through the leaves of a sympathetic tree who’d let me collapse in his branches before I fell asleep. The sky is burnt orange and cloudless, and the air is crisp. On another day, it might be beautiful. It’s not. I don’t care. Why would anyone care?
Blaze will never see another sunup.
Guilt stabs at my gut—I am alive, again—and I twitch, hard, almost rolling myself off of the branch I’m on. Instinct catches me, not conscious effort. I let my arms fall off the branch carelessly and my fingertips skim the layer of leaves beneath me.
A soft, persistent thumping from below invades my consciousness. I drag my head down, let it hang loose. Osley’s beady eyes are staring up into mine.
“Quer service is soon. Your moms sent me to bring you.”
Que doesn’t ask how I am, and I’m grateful.
I can’t move. But how dare I mope for the death of a centaur young one when every day I help kill so many people at labor? And I bet P’Tal and the others aren’t just lying there, useless.
I lean over the other side of the branch, away from Osley, and throw up violently.
I hear quer scamper away as I finish. I don’t even wipe my mouth. I just continue to lie there, arms and legs dangling like dead weights.
Dead. Like Blaze. Like all of us, one day. I think of Evelyn, of Lerian, and my body twitches again of its own accord.
“Hey, What’s Your Name.”
This time, my body doesn’t react at all. Not even to Tacon’s grating voice. I don’t wonder what he’s doing here, but it dimly makes sense why Osley leapt off only after I was done throwing up. My body doesn’t panic like it usually does when he approaches. I don’t feel anything. Not even curiosity about why Tacon is flying up to my eye level right now. Not even humiliation that he probably just saw me vomit.
I stare at him.
I wait. He stares back. There’s something different than usual about his face. He’s even paler than he normally is. Like he hasn’t slept. Like he might be having feelings other than hatred.
“You’ll be late for the service,” he singsongs, and I wonder vaguely as his silver wings flutter when the last time was that I saw him actually fly this high.
I exhale. Loudly. He gets my meaning. “What do you want, Tacon?”
He gestures like he’s creating lethal magic toward the nearest cluster of birds and nods toward me. Despite myself, I raise an eyebrow. He usually rejects our nonverbal languages, like the nons do. But, out of practice though he may be, he’s being quite clear. The birds still have celebratory Lunamez songs rolling out of their beaks. “I just want to kill all those birds for singing about a good season this sunup, don’t you?”
I stare at him wearily and hope he understands. “Because there’s not enough death already?”
He goes on like he didn’t get what I said, but I know he did. And the infuriating thing is, that despite what I said, I agree with him. He knows. “And the sun. For shining. Life has such gall, doesn’t it, to go on after a young one dies?”
I furrow my brow at him. He scoffs.
“I’m not heartless, What’s Your Name. I know you think I am. But I’m not. And Blaze was a good young one.” A long pause, and I wonder if his eyes were always that blue or if I’ve just never noticed. “The service will do you good, What’s Your Name. And then labor. Lying around all day won’t help it go away.”
“I hate labor,” I mutter thickly, out loud. “I’m not a killer, like you.”
I regret it the moment it comes out of my mouth. Of all the emotions I’ve ever seen on Tacon’s face, sheer pain has never been one of them. Until now. He pauses. “I know what you think. Poor martyred Idrisim and sainted Jax. And you, parading around like you’re better than everyone else because even though you look human, you hate them. You don’t know—your sanctimonious people don’t talk about it—” He looks like he’s searching for words, his thin face contorting, scrunching up around his nose. He gives up. “You don’t know.”
I sit up now, still feeling heavy and my head spinning a bit. But I’m finally disturbed enough to be curious.
“What don’t I know, Tacon?”
We have another staring contest, and I get the distinct feeling he’s measuring me up for something. Apparently, I don’t have whatever he’s looking for, because his face goes blank again, and he says, “Go to the service. Go to labor. It’ll feel better than lying around alone all day.”
He flies off without another word.
I expect Osley to emerge from wherever que hopped off to as soon as he leaves, but que doesn’t. I shrug and keep hanging off the branch. The tree rumbles to me that maybe I should go, that I might regret it if I don’t. I ignore him.
I ignore everyone.
I don’t go to the service. The buzz around me is that it was beautiful. I don’t understand what could be beautiful about the eight people closest to Blaze rising into the air with quer burning body to help quer soul reintegrate with the Energies.
I don’t understand what could be beautiful about that at all.
I close my eyes.
Somehow, the next thing I know is that we’re lying together in the Plains, aimlessly, on the parched ground under his hatchling tree, Banion.
No one tries to stop us, either.
Eventually, Zaylam swoops over and curls herself around us, Banion rumbles with his roots under us, and Gimla flies low every so often to check on us. Even Harlenikal seems concerned.
The sun comes up and back down, and no one pushes me into going to labor or Aon into his learning pod. Somehow, Mama gets permission to leave her labor at some point each day to make sure we eat, that she and Mom take turns holding us to them each night. They keep exchanging worried looks over our heads. Aon keeps grinding his teeth and muttering Blaze’s name. Zaylam flies low constantly, singing to us and soothing us with her wing wind. Jorbam and Banion are rumbling to each other about us, but they take care to not let us decipher what, exactly, they’re saying.
Looking at Aon’s broken eyes, no spark in them at all, rebreaks me every time I look at him.
Whenever the sun is high, soon after Mama makes us eat grown food—never as good as Rada’s—soon after she leaves, Osley cuddles into my side and doesn’t move until sundown. In the beginning, que doesn’t say anything except to Zaylam.
After this ritual has gone by a few sunups and Aon and I are still inert, que starts thumping incessant information to me. Que tells me that the Controller is nowhere to be seen; after the ceremony of the dead—the ceremony of Blaze—she retreated into her dwelling and hasn’t emerged since. Que tells me that for the last few sunups, que’s seen Iema slipping in and out of the Controller’s dwelling, coming in with food and coming out with still full plates, and with orders for the Hands. Unpleasant heat pools in my stomach, and I grunt and roll over, away from quer.
“Just trying to pique your interest, Sadie,” que thumps out apologetically, but also a little affronted, a little frustrated. I grunt again and Aon shifts so his head is on my ribcage. I run my fingers through his thick hair the way Mom ran her fingers through mine, just a few sunups ago, when Blaze was alive. When the world wasn’t over.
I’m not sure how exactly many times the sun rises and falls, but then there are strong arms around Aon, pulling him from me.
He struggles and then he realizes who it is. I gasp and scramble to sit up on my elbows. P’Tal is cradling Aon in his arms like he’s still a pre-choosing young one.
“Your mother tells me you haven’t been flying, sherba, or going to your learning pod,” he says mildly, his voice low and thick.
I glance over P’Tal’s shoulder and see Aora and Zeel standing at the edge of the Plains, with downcast eyes and arms looped over each other’s flanks.
“I’m sorry, P’Tal. You…” Aon glances back at me, and I mouth the unfamiliar words to him. He nods and looks back up at P’Tal, repeating them shakily. “May you feel your lost one in the Energies, so that que may be found.” A traditional Underlander offering of consolation. I swallow the lump in my throat, grateful that Aon’s never had to use it before.
P’Tal smiles softly, tears shining in his eyes. He loops his hands under Aon’s wing sprouts, so he can support his entire weight. He presses my little brother to his bare chest, and Aon starts to shake. And shake, and shake, and shake. P’Tal presses his lips to Aon’s hair, beige skin all over brown, P’Tal’s hands securing my brother in his wild tears.
I look away and glance at Zaylam, at Osley. Banion, Aon’s hatchling tree, rumbles his roots under my legs. “He’ll be all right, Sadie. He’s releasing it to the Energies, now. What about you?”
I run my fingers wordlessly over his roots, my lips clamped shut. Osley rubs quer head onto my ankle, and Zaylam gets up to hover over Aon and P’Tal, offering them her soothing wing wind.
When Aon’s howls simmer down to soft sniffling, P’Tal lifts his chin up so they’re looking each other in the eyes.
“You can mourn, sherba, and you should. B…” P’Tal closes his eyes, sets his jaw. “Blaze would want you to miss quer.” He chuckles. “A lot.” Aon gives a watery smile. “A lot, but not…not so much that you can’t breathe. You too, Sadie. I know you’re sad for your brother, I know you’ve never seen a young one… Your brother will be all right. And so will you.”
I open my mouth to object. “And so will I.” He pauses, glancing around cautiously, taking the opportunity to dry his eyes on the bulging muscle of his shoulder. “Thank you. For what you tried to do for Blaze. Kashat told us.” He glances back at Zeel and Aora, who both bow slightly at me. I bow back, my forehead almost touching my knees.
“Have a meal with us, Aon. Tacon excused you from your learning pod and your sister from her labor. I know, I was as surprised as anyone. If you’d like, we know you have a lot of Blaze stories, that we wish we could kno
w, that we wish you could share with us. We could share ours too.” P’Tal’s wet smile is agonized, but also real. Aon shakes his shoulders back and forth and follows P’Tal toward Blaze’s other growns. His wings are too wilted for him to fly, so he trudges along, his feet dragging next to P’Tal’s hooves. I hover awkwardly, waiting for them to invite me. They don’t.
P’Tal turns to me, then, like he can read my thoughts, his eyes full to the brim. “Labor’s almost over, Sadie. Kashat said he’d meet you here. He has something to show you.”
I bow again, and they’re gone.
I have nothing to do but wait for Kashat. I flop back down onto the ground, cheek pressing uncomfortably against the parched earth. Osley hops onto my lower back and settles in just under my wing sprouts. Zaylam fans me with her wings. Her wing wind helps, but only just.
How can I be so weak? P’Tal just lost his own young one, and he came all the way out to the Plains to find Aon, to find his young one’s best friend, so that he could comfort him. We should all be comforting P’Tal. How weak must I be that I flew away from Leece being locked up again, that I let Lerian get hit instead of me and let myself fall apart when P’Tal, P’Tal of all people, is out there functioning, trying to comfort my little brother, something I couldn’t even do properly, because I flew away from that too?
Lerian’s right.
I only fly on impulse. I don’t think about how my actions impact people with actual hardships. Just me. Selfish. Weak.
Lerian’s right.
I miss Lerian.
My eyes drift close. Sleep feels nice.
Until Kashat is tapping on my face, tugging at my shoulder, chiming his wing against mine. “Sade, come on, Sadie!”
“What could you possibly want, Kashat?” I grumble. Banion rumbles under me hopefully, and I groan.
“Hush, Banion, just because I’m snapping at people doesn’t mean I feel any better.”
“According to Jorbam, snapping at people is kind of how you let the world know you’re awake every morning, Sadie, so perhaps—”
“Why? Why are all the people in my life who are supposed to love me so irritating?”