by G. Deyke
~*~
I don't want to wake up from the gentle empty darkness that is sleep. I want to stay here, lying still, with the hair that has fallen over my eyes helping my eyepatch to filter out the harsh gray dawn. I want to be swallowed up by the earth and left to darkness.
But this is not the earth I would be swallowed by, I remember. I must find my way back through the gate. I must live till then.
I sit up and pull off my eyepatch. We aren't inside the circle of stones on the hillock anymore. I can see the shape of it behind us, but here there are only thin gray grasses that crumble when touched. Ty and Therrin are eating, and the curse sits beyond them, looking away, keeping watch.
“Good morning,” Therrin greets me, and hands me my breakfast. I look at it listlessly. My belly hurts, and I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. “How much food do we have left?” I ask.
“Enough,” Ty answers. “We shan't have to eat anything that grows here.”
I look back at the food.
“Eat,” Therrin pleads. I take a bite and chew, grind it down between my teeth. Swallow. My tongue feels thick.
Once I was kretchin and I was always hungry and I was always glad of food. Sometimes it was hard to eat because my stomach turned with fear, but at least the taste was good. And I was glad of even the smallest portion because it was anything at all, and I was so hungry, always hungry.
Now I am fed three times each day. Now the food tastes ashen in my mouth. I don't want it. I don't want anything.
I have been away from my home too long. I can no longer even say I am kretchin; kretchin would be glad of any food. I don't know what I am anymore. I am nothing.
I don't remember coming down from the hillock. I don't remember putting my eyepatch on again. I don't know how we came here.
I don't want to ask.
I finish my portion and bind back my hair. The world is gray and lifeless all around, except for a thick darker stripe ahead of us. I gesture to it with my chin, because it is the only thing that is different. “Are we going that way?”
“Yes,” Therrin answers, and we are on our way.
Ty tells me what happened as we walk. I listen and remember, although I don't know how much I believe him. I don't know if I want to know. I didn't ask. I don't want to. I don't want to talk.
The ghost didn't like us, he tells me. It didn't like that Therrin wants to bring the dragons back. It – he – wants an end to his nightly hauntings, wants a true death, even if all the world must die with him.
“Of course, he can never have that even if Therrin doesn't succeed, but at least he'll have an end,” Ty says. I don't know if I understand, but I don't try to. I won't think. I won't.
“Maybe we can help him,” Therrin says. “After the dragons are freed, of course – but the third treasure can cut through magick, the witch said. Maybe it can cut the chains that bind him there.”
“Maybe. And maybe he deserves his eternal half-life. Wanting freedom now isn't the same as regretting what he did.”
“He's already dead. What more can he do?”
“Point taken.”
The darkness ahead is taking form: tall trees, the edge of a forest.
“At any rate he seemed intent on killing us, or at least keeping us awake all night, so we fled and slept elsewhere.”
“I don't remember,” I say before I can stop myself.
Therrin looks at Ty quickly, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the forest ahead of us. He says only: “I carried you.” Therrin says, “You were asleep,” but her voice is unclear and she is looking away. When she looks at me I can see pity in her eyes.
I look at the ashen ground beneath my feet to hide the dull shame rising to my cheeks. I can remember nothing of this. I have an impression that I fought them while they begged me to flee, but no true memory, and I don't know how they might have subdued me. They say nothing of how I tried to kill the curse. In fact they say nothing more at all, and the rest of our walk passes in silence.