Silent Heart

by Susan Simone

  Stone wet a cloth and started cleaning the soot off my face. I ignored him. I let him turn my face for a better angle and turned back to the fire each time he let me go. If he tried to talk to me I didn’t see it. He offered me food, I ignored him. At some point in the night he carefully pushed me down on my side and put a rolled up blanket under my head. I was aware he lay down near me, but he didn’t touch me again that night.

  I stayed awake the whole night, keeping vigil. I should sleep but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. I was empty. I felt the loss of my other half. People don’t understand twins. As long as he was living and part of my life I was whole. With him gone, half of my soul is gone as well. I didn’t know how to face life without him. I didn’t want to try.

  The sky slowly lightened, fading from black to gray. I watched the clouds roll in with the dawn and watched the fire slowly die down. The hot coals glowed red and yellow through the cracks of black. The black faded to a gray to match the overcast sky with little slivers of the molten center. I didn’t grieve, I didn’t think, I didn’t feel. Bear was gone. There was nothing left in the world worth feeling.

  Stone got up. I could feel him watching me from the sidelines. I didn’t move. I watched him put out the coals and saddle Sugar. I didn’t really see him. It was like he was always on the side of my vision even when he was right in front of me. I was vaguely aware of his movements but he could have been on the other side of the world for all I cared. He could have left me there and I would have stayed in that position until death came for me too.

  He lifted me by the arm, pulling me into a sitting position. I let him. He handed me the water skin and I let it fall to my lap. He packed up the rest of our gear and pulled out a carrot. The carrots and apples from the stable were for the horse, but we didn’t have any other food. He put the carrot in my hand and closed my fingers over it. I didn’t move.

  Eventually he pulled me to my feet and put me on the horse. Sugar’s sweet nature pulled me out of my revelry for a short time. I smiled sadly and gave the horse the carrot. Stone caught my hand and looked at me sternly. I shrugged and fiddled with Sugar’s mane. Shaking his head he mounted behind me.

  We trudged through the day sullenly. I refused all food and water I was offered. I was like a doll. I went where Stone guided me. I sat when he had me sit, I stood when he had me stand, I walked when he had me walk. There was nothing left in me to give. I thought if I refused to live I wouldn’t have to acknowledge Bear was gone.

  We made slow time. It couldn’t be helped. We had almost no supplies. When you think of travel you only think of the adventure. You envision racing through wild green forests and wading through crystal lakes. Even on a mission as grim as ours you think only of dangerous bandits on your tail, or moon filled nights desperately hiding in a cave. No ever thinks of the tedium or the basic hardships of survival.

  One has to search for food. You have to forage and hunt taking an hour for each meal out of your day unless you’re lucky enough to find things along the way. Then you have to clean and prepare the food. That’s another hour. Then there’s the cooking, eating, cleaning taking up yet another hour of precious time. You can’t take short cuts or the animals will follow you. You can’t leave debris behind or your pursuers will find you.

  Then there’s the business of self maintenance. Mostly you reserve to be dirty and smelly. There isn’t always water to bathe in or even privacy. You have to dig a small hole every time you want relieve yourself and cover it up so anyone following you can’t track you by your droppings. All this, of course, after you’ve found a place secluded enough to do what needs to be done but near enough to shout for help.

  You can reasonably expect to lose five hours of travel time each day when you have no supplies. I didn’t eat or drink anything. I only stirred to relieve myself. We were slightly less slow than we would have been.

  The rhythmic motions of the horse beneath me lulled me into a deeper stupor. I leaned down and rested my heavy head on Sugar’s strong neck. Darkness stole my sight almost instantly. My awareness floated away. I dreamed I walked in a black forest searching for Bear.

  I kept seeing his back through the trees. I would run after him only to have him run from me. I was stumbling in the dark nightmarish landscape praying I could just get his attention and make him turn around. The black trees around me oozed with bright red blood.

  Something shifted beneath me and my eyes flew open. Stone had moved me and I was resting on his chest, one strong arm holding me in place. I looked up at him startled and blinked hard. The sun had come out and was resting low on the horizon shining in my eyes. How long had I been asleep? Stone waved his fingers at me.

  ‘Hi.’ I absently corrected the gesture. He seemed pleased with that. I moved to sit up on my own and the world spun. Stone grabbed hold of me before I could fall. I put my head back on his chest and sighed. I guessed I didn’t have much choice. He gave me the water skin again and I let it fall to my lap. He took my hand and closed it around the top of the skin. I shook my head, realizing for the first time that I was leaning on my bruised ear. I winced and pulled away nearly swooning again. Then he did something I’d never forget.

  Obviously frustrated he pulled the horse up short. He shifted his grip and pushed me back on his arm so I was cradled like a child. It was so quick I actually squeaked in surprise. He picked up the water skin covering my hand with his and brought it to my mouth like a baby bottle. He squeezed the cool liquid in my mouth and held my head back so I had no choice but to swallow or drown. Satisfied he sat me back up and started Sugar walking again like nothing had ever happened.

  That night when I refused the water again he knelt over me holding my head back and forced me to drink. I didn’t bother fighting. I had no fight left in me at all. He put food in my hands and I tried to give it to Sugar. He blocked my hands before the horse could see it and sat me down in the grass. I fell asleep exhausted with the meager rations still in my hands.

  It was full light when he woke me. The sun was high. I got up and stumbled. My body weighed a ton and my muscles weak. The blanket that I hadn’t put on myself felt like wet wool as I tried to fold it. I moved so slowly I felt like I was in a dream. Stone handed me the water skin with warning in his eyes. I learned not to fight him and drank. Not a lot, but enough to keep me alive.

  The food was mysteriously gone from my hands but we were almost ready to leave before I remembered there had been any there in the first place. I stared at my hands for a long time trying to puzzle out what happened, but my brain was slow, foggy. Stone handed me an apple and I fed it to Sugar still trying to figure out what happened to what I had the night before.

  He shocked me. He took me by the arms and slammed me into the side of the horse, the way one would slam a person into a wall. I was so tired and so confused I started shaking.

  ‘Eat, please,’ he tried to say. As usual he got it all wrong. I corrected his hands and moved past him to collect the blanket I’d dropped. It was so heavy I almost didn’t make it back up. Stone snatched it out of my hands and angrily stowed it away. He made me walk. I was too dazed to complain or even wonder why.

  He started pointing to things that day trying desperately to learn my language. He’d point at something and make us stop until I showed him the word. Every half hour he was making me drink and trying to get me to eat. I put up with the water because I knew what would happen if I didn’t but managed to avoid all food. I had forgotten why I didn’t want to eat; just that life wasn’t worth living.

  Stone kept me moving all day. Sometimes I walked, sometimes I rode, sometimes we rode together. He pestered me all day for words and phrases. Sometimes he’d make me repeat one’s he already knew. I knew it was a ploy but absently repeated the gestures anyway. I fell asleep alone in the saddle and came crashing down. Stone almost couldn’t catch me in time. He saved my head while the rest of me met the earth with a bone jarring crunch that vibrated throughout.

  ‘Paige, eat. Pl
ease,’ he pleaded. I waved a hand dismissively and got to my feet. We stopped early that night. I was asleep before my head even hit the grass. The soft, soft grass. I couldn’t ever remember feeling grass so soft in my life. I was grateful to lay in the soft grass because the blue eyed man kept looking at me and cutting me with his diamond hard eyes.

  ‘Why are you cutting me?’ I asked. ‘I thought I made the right choice.’ He just stared with his unblinking gaze. All my blood flowed out through the wounds leaving me cold and shivering in the black forest. Rocks piled over me like a barrow and I was warm again.

  I woke tangled in blankets. They felt like chainmail, so heavy around me I couldn’t breathe. Stone knelt down in front of me with the water skin. I reached for it and it fell out of my hands. He looked haggard picking it up, the way he looked when we buried Rinald. I tried to sit up but it was too much. He reached an arm under me and pulled me up. He helped me with the skin and I took it blindly.

  The water tasted different, like a broth. It was warm and thick. It tasted so good. I didn’t think I ever tasted anything so good in my life. If it was broth, it was the best broth ever made. I drank down more of it until my stomach clenched over the invasion.

  Stone picked me up and carried me to the horse, still wrapped in blankets. He arranged me as best he could and mounted behind me. He put the skin in my lap and urged me every five minutes or so to take more of it. I was kind of full, but it tasted so nice I tried anyway and slowly my head cleared a little though I was still wobbly and weak.

  He started the word game again. I was so tired of that game. He kept asking questions every minute of the day, never stopping. He made himself seem a poor student when I knew different, always bungling words or mixing them up. I got so frustrated with him after awhile.

  ‘You know that word,’ I said finally when he asked about a tree.

  ‘No I don’t,’ he smiled.

  ‘Yes you do. Show me.’

  ‘Oak,’ he stared me down.

  ‘In a sentence,’ I challenged. He looked genuinely confused. ‘Words. All. Together.’ I tried. ‘Sentence.’

  ‘I am looking at an oak tree,’ he gestured slowly and fumbled for real. I corrected the details and nodded satisfied. He pointed at the snow capped mountains looming ever closer in the distance.

  ‘Mountain,’ I said. He pointed to the ground we walked on. ‘Path.’

  ‘We go mountain path,’ he said badly. I frowned at him.

  ‘Between or over?’ He thought about that for a minute and mimicked the gestures to himself trying to puzzle them out.

  ‘Between?’

  ‘We are going through the mountains,’ I gestured slowly. ‘No more words. Sentences.’ He laughed. With a sigh I leaned down on Sugar’s neck again and started to nod off. In the very back of my head I was aware of Stone shifting me before consciousness fully left me.

  Eight

  The path started to climb the foot hills before noon. When I was awake I stared in awe of the looming mountains until we got so close I couldn’t really see them at all. The path grew steadily steeper and narrower with each step. Several times Stone had to dismount and guide the horse by hand through a tough spot.

  Mountain paths are never straightforward I learned. They twist and turn so many times you think you’re turned back the way you came. They go up and down and skirt dangerous cliffs. You could be walking along with as much room as you please only to find yourself walking sideways and sucking in your breath to get between two massive rocks. There are places where you have to wade in icy cold water because there is no other safe place to walk, and you never quite know how high you really are.

  I looked out over a picturesque valley that seemed hundreds of feet down. I couldn’t begin to think of how we would get the horse down. What worried me most about it was I couldn’t remember going up that high. The mountains around us disappeared from view into the sky line. Even on a clear day I couldn’t see the tops. They were just a vague white that blended with the blue.

  I soaked in every detail wanting to store the images in my mind to paint later. Later. Would there be a later? I was dying. I could feel it. Each second it was harder to live. Even with whatever concoction Stone had slipped me, my body was slowly failing. It was so hard even to hold on to Sugar’s saddle. I used to love riding her as fast as I could go, feeling the wind on my face. Now it was all I could do to stay upright. My hands shook all the time. I could only relax with Stone behind me. I didn’t need to be strong then. He literally held me up.

  I couldn’t decide if I cared if I died. I knew I had to tell Evard about his son. My odd sense of honor demanded that I finish that at least; but half of my soul was gone. It took away all my fire, my drive. Without that piece of me nothing mattered. I felt as though I lived because of Bear and with him gone I just didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t know if I wanted to exist. I missed him with every breath.

  It burdened me just to breathe without him. Each breath I took was a breath he never would. Every laugh was one he would never have. Every joy, simple and complex, was one joy he would never feel. He was so young. We were only 19. He had so many years to enjoy life.

  Admittedly my brother was a bit of a lusty soul. He liked women (and occasionally men, but only I knew that), and drink, and fighting, and games. He loved life and all it had to offer. No one else enjoyed things like food as thoroughly as he did. He’d sit in our little home and let a simple bite of potato melt in his mouth with a blissful smile. I always teased him that he was going to get fat. He’d laugh and say ‘Good’ while helping himself to more.

  He was also a sweet soul. He was sweet to me and sweet to the ladies he courted, even the prostitutes. Through all his lustful debauchery and drinking his basic goodness always showed through. He cared so deeply for me. He was there whenever I needed him, like he knew before hand that he needed to be at my side.

  That was all gone now. A vivacious life cut short.

  Through all my days whenever we were so much as in different rooms, I felt his presence. It was like a tether that always kept us close no matter how far apart we were. The tether had been cut. I was empty now. A hole like a gaping wound allowed all emotion to just pass through it.

  The world started to spin and I grabbed Sugar’s mane as hard as I could to hold on. I was slipping. Black spots blurred my vision and my body thrummed with terror. Was this it? Was I dying now? Stone was leading the horse up ahead. I couldn’t move to throw something and get his attention or I’d fall. I closed my eyes and made sound. I prayed I made sound. I kept going until my throat hurt. I had to be making sound.

  Hands pulled me roughly off the horse and set me on my feet. My knees buckled and before I knew it I found myself on the ground being held up by Stone. I held my head willing the world to stop moving. It was so fast, spinning out of control. What was happening?! Make it stop! Make it stop, please God! I heaved forward and rested my head on my knees, Stone’s hands still supporting me.

  Slowly the world became still again. I breathed deep and ragged trying to calm my heart. I could feel the blood pulsing through my whole body like a giant throbbing wound. The hole where the tether was felt like it was gushing my life force. Everything was draining away. Diamond blue eyes raked over my tattered wounded soul leaving nothing behind. It wouldn’t be long now. A day, maybe two, and I wouldn’t wake from my sleep. I really wished I could decide if I cared about that.

  Stone lifted my face in his hands, carefully, like I was a fragile, priceless treasure. I willed my eyes open to look at him. He was so worried, so scared. Why would he worry about a willful woman he met in the woods who was making his life so hard?

  ‘Paige?’ he asked trying to get a handle on what was going on.

  ‘I’m dying,’ I said calmly. It surprised even me, how calm I could be about it. Maybe I didn’t care after all.

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘Soon.’ He frowned, confused by the word. ‘Little time,’ I tried.

  ‘No.
Not soon. Not ever.’ I waved dismissively and tried to get to my feet. I stumbled and he caught me. He put me on the horse and mounted behind me. I leaned gratefully into him. I could rest awhile.

  ‘Why are you dying?’ he asked after a long stillness.

  ‘Broken heart,’ I shrugged. It was the nearest I could explain it. He stopped the horse suddenly and forced me to look at him.

  ‘Fight,’ he demanded. ‘You don’t need to die.’ I didn’t know what to tell him so I looked down. The horse started moving and I was pulled against him again. His chest vibrated in a long series of words we both knew I’d never understand. He was probably cursing me out behind my back so to speak. I decided to let him be angry. It was easier to lie against him and let his steady heart and vibrating chest lure me to sleep again.

  As the sun began to sink into the valley below, we started on a dangerous pass. The trail became a glorified ridge winding around a sheer cliff face. It was barely wide enough for the horse with no lip or ledge for safety. The mountain sloped steeply up above us on an impossible incline to the next ridge about 60 feet up. Below us was a sheer rock wall with no purchase an impossible number of feet down. I didn’t even want to think how far that fall was.

  My leg kept brushing up against the mountain side. Stone got down to lead the horse the food and water slung around his back so he could reach it without trying to climb around. It was frightening to sit upon a horse on so narrow a ridge but I didn’t think I could have walked it either. Sugar’s hooves skirted the outside edge so many times I thought we would fall. The shaking in my hands worsened until I had to wrap the mane around my wrists to keep from letting go. I looked out over the valley to keep my mind off of it.

  It was a scene that would live forever in my dreams. Around us the mountains ended in a half circle leaving the horizon open. A river flowed near straight into that impossible forever with no ending. The plains and forests of a thousand dreams cradled it gently. The sun was low and orange enough to look at. It reached down to kiss the water turning the river undulating shades of gold. A lone eagle silhouetted against that fiery ball in a flight so straight to the setting sun it seemed frozen in air.