by A. R. Asher
“I’d say… Well, based on what I’ve read, anyway. I’d say four months.”
I can’t imagine that I’ve even been gone from the village for four months, let alone my best friend being pregnant for four months. Whose child is it? It is between her abusive ex-boyfriend and her abusive future husband who wants me dead and ruined my life, so either way, I’m not entirely thrilled about the circumstance. Regardless, she is alive.
Calico starts to lift up the bottom of her dress.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
He sighs, “I need to make sure I treat everything, and if she’s pregnant, it’s probably a good idea for me to check around the… pregnancy area. Correct?”
“I…” I sigh. “I guess so.”
He stops pulling the dress up once it’s at her knees. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” I ask, feeling a jolt of panic rush through my skin. “What is it-- what’s wrong?”
“Come here,” Calico says.
I gulp and move to his side. Her legs have clearly been attacked by something. There are claw marks of various sizes and depth scattered around her legs, but the birdlike qualities of them are impossible to ignore. Her legs and feet are stained with blood and yellow and purple bruising.
“You should leave for a bit. I need to sew everything back together.”
I shake my head, adamant. “No. We’ve gone through this before, and I’m not leaving her now.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and hold her hand in mine, as I begin to sing ‘Amazing Grace.’
I can feel Calico’s eyes fixed on me, burning patches through my skin, as he listens. I feel the exact moment when he gets to work on her legs, because his gaze has left me.
She doesn’t wake up. Something within her refuses to wake up, regardless of the pain her body is experiencing and the strange stimuli all around her. I am glad. She shouldn’t have to feel any pain at all right now. She just needs to sleep and know that I am here and she is loved.
It takes a few hours, but Calico finishes, and he checks on the baby and her body parts and says the baby and the necessary organs seem perfectly healthy-- Grace just has a fever and exhaustion from walking so far in the condition that she’s in. And possibly something worse, but the word never crosses either of our lips.
“Can we get pancakes now?” I ask sleepily, having sang for the past few hours, albeit quietly.
“We can get pancakes now.”
Calico’s kitchen and dining room are so small it’s almost laughable. To have such a huge house and such a small space for eating made absolutely no sense, but I loved it all the same. I felt so cozy sitting in an old wooden chair at an old wooden table. It reminded me of home, back when my parents and I used to have the supper we’d killed that mom had prepared every night, and there was always laughter and smiles and love.
Calico has put his hair up into a weird sort of bun to keep it away from the stove and pancake mix.
“Why do you have such long hair?” I find myself asking sleepily.
“Why do you have such short hair?” He asks, and I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“It didn’t feel right anymore so I cut it off. Your turn.”
“I have no idea.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.”
I bite my lip, thinking for a moment. “Well… Keep it like that.”
“What? Why?” He flips a pancake over and I hear it sizzle in the pan.
“I, um… It looks good on you. Er, it suits you, I mean. Not that I think you’re handsome. I mean, you are handsome, but that’s not what I’m trying to say-- I quit.”
He laughs and I feel my cheeks burn bright red. “I’m handsome?”
“Well, yeah. But, I mean, it’s just an observation. Fuck it, I can’t talk.”
“I love the way you talk.”
“Liar. Nothing I say ever makes sense. It never comes out the way that I want it to.”
He turns around and lets our eyes meet. “Hey. I don’t lie. Let’s clear that up right away.” He turns back to the pancakes.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Why do you love the way I talk, then?”
“Because we live in a world where everything everybody says has already been planned out in their head, rehearsed millions of times over, and usually isn’t even the truth. When you talk, you say exactly how you feel. You don’t censor yourself. You’re totally honest with yourself and the world and I think it’s a beautiful thing that you exist.”
I try to change the words around in my head so that what he actually said was ‘you’re beautiful’ so I wouldn’t have to worry about my previous embarrassment, but after some time, I realize that this compliment is the best thing anybody could ever give to me. I’ve struggled all my life hating this part of myself and having it bashed apart by twelve-year-old kids from a nameless village. But this man who’s supposed to be evil, this man who is supposed to be my enemy, thinks the way I talk is beautiful. He thinks that my existence is beautiful.
“Um… Thank you, Calico. It… it means a lot.”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m glad. But call me Cal. Calico’s such a weird name. Makes me feel like the monster everybody says I am.”
“You’re not a monster. I think you’re the nicest person I’ve ever met. I think you’re an angel.”
He turns around, eyes wide and brows furrowed. “You… you’re serious?”
“I don’t lie. Let’s clear that up right away.”
We smile in our comfortable silence for a few minutes.
“So, how many chocolate chips are we thinking on these bad boys?”
“Literally just assault those pancakes with chocolate chips. I don’t want to see the actual pancake. But just the top one. And then the other two are normal. Oh-- I like them in stacks of threes, if there’s enough. Just fuck that shit up with chocolate chips.”
Calico laughs, “As you wish.”
We eat mountains of pancakes assaulted with chocolate chips, and drink wine glasses filled to the brim with orange juice.
Cal talks about how he was raised by a veterinarian mother, and she was always very kind to him and told him that life helping life was the intention of the universe. His father happened to be King Luther, though Luther never accepted him as his child and claimed he was a liar, despite the irrefutable evidence claiming otherwise-- namely, Calico’s eyes. Regardless, when he tried to meet his father against his mother’s wishes, Luther turned him into a slave and sent Elliot to kill all possibility of the existence of an affair-- namely, Calico’s mother. Calico managed to find hope and love in Benny, Julian, Anna, and Silas-- all four of whom took him in as their brother and tried to prevent the cruelty he faced when they had any say in the matter. Unfortunately, they rarely did, and for many years Calico spent his life scrubbing his father’s floors and being forced into solitude.
“I never knew why he didn’t just kill me,” Cal says nonchalantly, downing a forkful of pancake. “It would’ve been so easy for him. I think… I think he enjoyed the idea of my suffering. I think knowing that the thing that came from his suffering was a child who suffered made him feel okay, somehow. But I guess I’ll never know, now.”
“You’re so calm about all of this. So relaxed.”
He smiles, “I have endured horrible things, but I have learned. And right now, I’m eating chocolate chip pancakes and drinking orange juice with someone who I consider to be a friend. And I think that’s enough reason for me to feel okay.”
“But… but the world threw you away. Even after all of the good things you’ve been trying to do. You even quarantined yourself here to keep the crows away from the villages… Don’t you feel mad, or sad, or scared?”
“Oh, sure. Everybody would. But I bet if I helped save the world and stop the apocalypse and the plague and whatever’s about to happen… Maybe people might not hate me anymore.” He chugs down the last of his orange juice only to refill his glass. “This stuff is really good. So tell me about you. Where you came from, how
you met everybody, how you wound up here.”
I nearly spit out my orange juice. I knew the direction of the conversation was heading towards this, but I had forgotten… For a little while.
“I-I… I…”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I know it can be hard.”
“But you made me pancakes.”
He laughs, “Pancakes are not a bartering tool for life stories.”
“Well… You want to know?”
“I would like to, yes.”
I tell him everything. I tell him about my little nameless village, and my mom who could almost see the future with her intense spirituality and how I needed to protect her from everything, because she was my best friend and the only family I had left. I tell him about my dad, who was perpetually obsessed with nature, writing about species of plants and wildlife in his little journal, and whenever he was particularly happy or sad, he’d play on the piano, and he’d study music or history or anatomy until he fell asleep. For both of my parents, every day was a beautiful day.
I told him about when I gave up on mankind after my dad was taken and Evan left me-- though I knew now that he never really left. He was just trying to protect me.
I tell him about Evan-- all of the time I spent with him, and how we accepted each other no matter what, even through the roughest times in our lives.
I tell him about the bullies and my vague childhood memories, and then I tell him about the avalanche, the princess who brought me here, how Grace and I held hands in the doctor’s office, how Leo had saved me when they were trying to give us baths like cattle, how we all danced and then how I chose Leo’s protection over Cal’s. But then I met so many people. Good, beautiful people.
“And I… I feel like I’ve abandoned them now,” I whisper.
“If you are doing the right thing and following the feelings in your gut, betrayal does not exist,” Calico says quietly, sparkling brown eyes earnest.
“Leo saved me from a fire. Why would he do that if he was being controlled by Elliot?”
“Part of him must still be in there. All the drunkenness and sleeping around and anger and denial-- that’s Elliot’s doing. Maybe the good parts are the puzzle pieces of who he really was, before… Before he went mad, when Jacob died.”
“He named Jacob after me?” I ask, lips trembling.
“Yes. When you talked about what you did with Reya-- you weren’t changing the past. You had been there before and you were reliving a memory.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Your spirit could’ve been there, sent by Reya before you were even conceived. The world we know about works in strange ways; it would only make sense that the world we don’t know about works in ways even more strange.”
I shake my head. “Life is so weird.”
He smiles, “But maybe that’s what makes it worth experiencing.”
“You’re not some sorta crazy religious philosopher, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. I’m a psychopathic medicine aficionado who lives in an abandoned manor in the middle of nowhere to keep his horde of crows away from civilization, while painting and reading books to feel less alone.”
“You’re a dork.”
“Did you know that ‘dork’ is another word for whale dick?”
“I didn’t, but that confirms my suspicions.”
“You’ve caught me red handed. I am, in fact, a sentient whale penis.”
I smile. “You’re much more handsome than a whale penis.”
His eyes grow serious. “And you are the most beautiful person I have ever met, inside or out.”
We sit in silence, and he looks away, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t help but notice the way my heart leaps at my ribcage like a charging bull, or the way my palms grow sweaty, or the way I feel an intense electricity consume every particle of my being. I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to feel like this ever again. I will never be ready to love another person, and I will never be ready to be loved. It is something of which I am simply not capable, and I was born to throw those feelings away. And Leo… Leo was supposed to be my everything. But Elliot took him away from me. He took all of my hopes and dreams for the future away with him.
But maybe, just maybe, I could start a new future in my head. One with a farm that grows sunflowers, roses, and apple trees. One with chickens, pigs, goats, horses, and cattle. One where I can write my poetry and hide it in the bushes.
One where I will never feel the intense burning of being hated by another person ever again.
“I miss my sisters,” I say absentmindedly, unable to catch myself before the words slip out of my mouth. I sigh. “I know they’re not really family, but… I do love them. And I miss them. And I would do anything for them. Even Kira, despite her being a bitch.”
Cal laughs, “Sounds like family to me. I love all of my brothers, too. Well… except Lowell. There’s not a speck of good or decency in him.”
“We killed him,” I say quietly, unable to meet his eyes.
He shrugs, “Some people were born to die.”
“So what are your other brothers like?”
“Well, you’ve met Jericho, and I would take a guess that you know him pretty well. Probably even more than I do. So that leaves Peregrine and Hawthorne. Perry is the ‘son of seduction’ or whatever mainly because he’s just super nice and handsome. He rarely sleeps with anybody, he was just born with that kind of power. He would never use it on anybody, either. He’s too nice. He’s more stubborn than a dead mule, but he’s so smart. Good head on his shoulders, nice to nearly everybody. When he’s angry he’s angry, but if he’s angry it’s your fault and not his. Hawthorne is the ‘son of destruction’ because he is the clumsiest person on the face of the earth. If there is a banana peel within a mile radius, he will find it within minutes just to slip on it. He’s broken just about every bone in his body, poor guy. But he has the best sense of humor. He’s always cracking jokes, always making light of bad situations. He loves animals, too. They listen to him like he knows their language.”
I smile. “They sound… Really, really nice.”
“I’m glad you think so. Maybe you can meet them someday. But we’d better check on your friend and that dog of yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
We walk into the room, and Grace stirs a little at the sound of the door creaking open.
Her eyes open.
A flood of joy drowns my doubt, and I rush to her side. “Grace!”
She looks at me, pained face streaked with sweat and strands of damp blonde hair. She manages a smile. “I found you.”
“How the hell did you even get here? You… You have all these scratches, and marks, and… and you’re pregnant, and… Grace, what’s happening? Oh God I’m so glad you’re awake,” I say, whisking her into my arms and holding her close, pressing my ear against her chest to make sure that her heart is, in fact, beating. She is alive, and well, and here.
My friend.
“You’re still weird,” she says with a dazed smile.
“Of course I am. I’ve changed a lot, but not that part. That part stays. But tell me! Answer my questions.”
“I… Elliot was really mean, Jay. He… kept saying I needed to get pregnant if I wanted to be the queen, and I told him I didn’t want that… I… he was so scary. I would sleep next to him and his body would turn so cold I thought he was dead. But I couldn’t leave… he’s so beautiful. I’ve never seen a more stunning person, the way all of his body connected…”
I shudder. I know exactly what she means.
“It’s like he wasn’t real. And he was so nice to me in public, and he’d say these beautiful things, but when we were alone, he’d be so aggressive. He’d ask me questions about you, and the village we came from. He would touch me in this really weird way-- just his fingertips. And his eyes would… they’d change color…
“He made me have sex with him. That’s when I knew I h
ad to run away. But I didn’t know how. I was worried about what he’d do to me… If he found me again. If he figured out what I’d done, then… Well, he already hit me a lot. But then when I got sick and I found out I was pregnant and he kept hitting me, I knew I had to find you, because… I couldn’t take it anymore, Jay. Those men. I…”
It’s as though she suddenly sees Calico in the doorway, otherwise ignorant to his presence throughout the duration of our conversation. She begins shaking and shuffles backwards and away from him as fast as possible.
“Jay, no. No, no, no.” She starts panting manically, shaking and clenching her fists. “GET AWAY FROM ME! GET HIM AWAY!”
She picks up a pillow and throws it towards Cal, but I block it halfway.
It wasn’t enough, though. The damage has already been done. Cal is staring at the floor, the weight of the world in the sag of his shoulders.
I gesture for Grace to wait as I grab Cal’s hand and lead him out of the room as he begins to tremble. “Why does everybody hate me, Jay?” He whispers.
“She has been hurt by men her entire life. You could’ve been anybody and she still would’ve reacted the way she did. It has nothing to do with you, Cal. Please, believe me.”
He hits his fist against the wall, leaning into the wood. “I don’t know how much more I can take.” I hear the break of a sob in his voice, but he’s trying to keep it in. He’s trying to keep all of the pain, and misery, and agony, and cruelty that he’s ever experienced locked away inside of his body.
I take his hand and turn him around and hug him close. I ignore the fire, the electricity in my stomach. I don’t need that. I just need him to know how much he is needed here. I need him to know that it is the world’s fault and not his own.
“You can cry,” I whisper, and he holds me like I am the last thing in the world to hang on to as he sobs against my shoulder.
We stand there for maybe ten minutes. He cries and I cry and we rock back and forth as we hold on to each other.
“Please tell me,” he whispers, “That there are other people like you.”
“Other people that will accept you, do you mean?”