This War of Ours
Timandra Whitecastle
Things I’ve lost:
Daddy
my home
my favorite socks
my favorite red dress
my special pillow on which I never had nightmares
Auntie Neko
Uncle Loran
our home in the basement of the broken house
my tail
It was the leafless time in the forest, and Mother made me put her gray mittens on, which I immediately used to wipe my nose. She tutted, but didn’t mention it, and pulled the woolly cap deeper into my face before her hands settled on my shoulders.
“Things are going to change fast, little Sparrow,” she said. “It’ll be spring soon. So, what do we have to do?”
“Look for its signs?” I sniffed.
“That’s right.” She squeezed my shoulders tightly. “But right now, in the winter forest, what do we need to be?”
“Silent?”
“Silent.” She nodded grimly. “Were you silent?”
“I was silent,” I started. “I was very silent! It was Bug. He made the noise.”
I pointed a finger at the sling with which Mother carried my little brother on her back. His little kobold face peeked out, little piggy eyes nearly hooded by the too-large cap he wore—my old cap—and the rest of him bundled in cloth.
“Din’t!” he insisted. “Sparra did.”
“Did not!”
“Sparra spoked Bug.”
“Poked Bug,” Mother corrected wearily. “She poked you. Didn’t you, Sparrow?”
“No.” This was true. I had pinched his little porky leg, strapped tightly around Mother’s waist. Pinching is not poking.
He could walk already. But she still carried him on her back because (she said) he couldn’t keep up with our pace, and I wasn’t allowed to go piggyback on her back because I was too big. And Barras couldn't carry me, either. “Unfair!”
She sighed.
Barras cleared his throat. “We need to get moving. The Wildcat’s infantry must have secured the town already and sent for the Falconidae to drop their bombs.”
“Peace, Barras. One more moment.” Mother raised her hand, then turned back to me. “Give me your arm, Sparrow.”
I pressed my lips tight together and tried not to sob. Sobbing made too much noise. Noise could betray our position. Noise could get us killed. Mother had said so a thousand times. I stretched out my arm, tears rolling down my cheek.
“It was Bug,” I whispered as she pushed up the many layers of sleeves, exposing my scrawny brown skin to the cold. “Bug made the noise.”
“Because you poked him.” Her sharp talon’s edge was chill against my flesh, making the tiny hairs on my arm rise. “In this war of ours,” Mother said quietly, “we must learn how to be silent.”
She looked into my eyes before drawing a straight line across my arm, parallel to the other three faint lines.
“We must be stealthy. We must be silent,” she intoned as we watched the blood well up. Mother rubbed the salt into the cut with her thumb, and while I squirmed, biting down hard on my lip, I didn't make a noise.
“Good. It's done. You will remember. You will learn,” she said, wagging her finger, then straightened with a grimace. Bug was getting heavy. He should walk, I thought. Mother hugged me tightly and left her embrace with a quick kiss on my forehead. A wet cold spot like a snowflake’s kiss.
“Things will change soon, little Sparrow.” Her voice broke, and I looked away. I pulled the sleeves back down over my stinging pain, cuffing my hot tears. Too many things had changed already, and I hated it and wished it would stop. Barras clapped his large hand on my shoulder.
“Come on, soldier. Let's go.”
In the forest, Mother teaches me there was always war. War against the elements, war against hunger, war against winter itself, for the leafless time in the forest makes war on us all, she says. Regardless of kind.
And it makes us war against each other. There was always war, she whispers to Barras when she thinks I’m asleep, but now it has changed. Our wars had spectacle, they had ritual, they had art. Now, there is only mess.
“No.” Barras growls. “It's only that the war has changed us. Else we could see that creatures claiming that war has an art must be held accountable for what happens in it.”
She says nothing in response.
Mother and Barras have always been good friends. When Daddy was still alive, we’d stay at Uncle Barras and Aunt Melli’s dacha by the lake on quiet summer evenings. The grown-ups would sit and talk about the last war, the war they fought together, while we children would play, weaving through the trees, sneaking up on one another, hiding and seeking until we fell exhausted into the laps of our mothers and slept. In peace.
When the bombs first hit our town, it was suddenly only Mother and me. She dragged me to the dacha, and we stayed there for a few nights, mourning, until Uncle Barras had stood on the doorstep one day. Alone. His left trouser leg hung in tatters. Empty.
“Town’s crawling with spiders,” he said, swaying on his crutch. “It's a siege.”
“But where else can we go?” Mother asked him. “It's the only home we know.”
“There's a place I know. If we lie low, scavenge for supplies, we might endure. They won't stay long. Nightly shelling gets expensive, and you know it.”
Their voices angry whispers, the stink of alcohol underlining every harsh gesture. I was silent. I made no noise, and so they thought I slept.
But I couldn't. I couldn't close my eyes.
My special pillow was still in the house where Daddy died.
We met Aunt Neko and Uncle Loran later, when we were in our basement home. Loran was sick and Neko wounded, and they stumbled in on us by accident, looking for medicine, blundering on the ground level, tripping over the washing line Mother had hung there. It was the time when I still fitted in my favorite red dress. But not for much longer.
Uncle Loran used to be a star show flyer. I recognized his face from the posters that hung in the grocery store near our old home. Aunt Neko was his lady. They had a small space for themselves; a curtain partitioned off a corner in the basement. But Aunt Neko was always sad and angry. She couldn't stay silent. Maybe that's why she left.
Mother was pregnant with Bug by then. And when he was born, my red dress didn't fit me anymore. Mother made Bug one set of baby clothes from it.
Bug has never been silent.
Maybe that's why Uncle Loran left one night. Maybe he went after Aunt Neko. But maybe he died. I hope not, but he's gone anyway, even if he managed to survive. The town grew emptier by the day. And by night.
“That's good news for scouting,” Mother said, the smile on her face too bright. She stretched out her hand, and I took it. She adjusted the baby sling around her and checked to see if Bug was still asleep.
“Don't take the kids out there,” Barras said in a low voice from his chair. The sheen of a stray moonbeam alighted on his blackened revolver. “You should leave them here with me. That’d be safer.” He paused, then tapped his gun. “I can protect them. I would protect them with my life.”
Mother’s smile wavered. “I know, Barras, but I can't.” Her hand clutched mine, pulling me closer. “They're all I have left now.”
Barras grunted, and as though that was a sign, we left.
At the threshold of the broken house, Mother raised her arms and flapped her wings, pulling the night’s shadows around her shoulders like a well-worn cloak. Bug was wrapped in it, and I hated him for that. She waited patiently until I had roughly thrust my own arms into an overcoat of darkness, blending in with the surrounding gloom.
We stalked the town for supplies, always silent, always wary, picking through the leftover lives in the husks of houses. One time, we heard a creak in the floorboards from above. Mother quickly shoved a small stash of medicine we had found into her satchel, and we left through the shards of the window just as the long s
nout of a rifle peered into the kitchen we were leaving.
I had been silent. I had made no noise. I wanted her to take me in her arms and be proud of me. But her arms were always filled with Bug. She mouthed, “Well done,” instead, and planted a kiss on my brow.
That wasn't the time when I lost my tail. I lost my tail on a later scouting trip, when the nightly town was alive and lit in the center, and sounds of laughter and screaming and shots rippled through the watchful silence. Mother and I lay still on our bellies on wet roof tiles, slick with moss, Bug on Mother’s back.
“We need to warn Barras,” Mother said, tugging on the edges of her spell to make sure it held in the drizzle. “Come along.”
She glided down from the roof like a ghost, arms spread out wide, her wings speckled with star dust, and she landed with the touch of a feather. And I—
I slipped.
My own spell slid from my grasp as I clattered down the roof. The world tumbled around me, only to come to a sudden stop.
I cried out.
My tail was caught in a split beam, and I hung from it, winded by the pain. Far below, the ground awaited me, and though I struggled, I found no purchase. The wooden splinter cracked farther, and I jolted downwards.
Lights blinded me as the night burst into day, and an alarm sounded, deafeningly close.
Then shots, ricocheting off the roof like the ting! ting! of glasses raised in celebration.
For a moment, I thought I was alone. I panicked. I thought she had left me, and I screamed for my mother.
She came, nearly running up the wall.
“Hold on to me,” she said, the roof’s edge in one hand. Her other showed her talons ready. “Hold on to me, Sparrow!”
I dug my face deep into her shoulder, breathing in her scent, and with one deft slash of her talon, my tail was lost. But I-I was free.
Boots pounded nearby.
“The Nightwitch! Get the Nightwitch!”
A spurt of gunfire accompanied the shouts. My mother held me tightly to her chest. I could hear her heart thundering as she wrapped all three of us in her shadows and ran, casting balls of darkness behind her blindly to confuse our pursuers. We were hounded by the Wildcat soldiers until suddenly we weren't. And we went home to Barras in the basement, who stitched up the remnants of my tail and stroked my head in my mother's lap.
It was the only time I made a noise and she didn't cut my arm for it.
She didn't have to.
The nightly raids continued, closer and closer to the decrepit house where we hid, and though Bug’s constant noise was muffled by the siren’s wail, it was time to leave.
We ran in the early morning hours. We ran through the mists curling in the empty streets filled with potholes and craters. We ran past the lake with Uncle Barras’ dacha. We ran for days. We ran despite the morning hoarfrost that covered our eyelashes and the winter that was trying to kill us, trying to lull us to an eternal sleep.
But the winter wood—the leafless time—knows no mercy and no cover, and so we ran into a small patrol of Wildcats.
Mother raised her arms and conjured up a spell, a cover under which we could hide and sneak around them, our hearts pumping rapidly at the proximity of the enemy creatures, our breath misting before our mouths, nearly betraying our position.
One of the Wildcats was on the radio just behind the trees we crept towards. He talked rapidly, a smoke hanging from his lips, but as we tiptoed past, he stopped mid-sentence.
We halted, too.
I was crushed between Mother, holding her enchantment, and Barras, holding his revolver just an inch from the Wildcat’s eyes. I was so close that I could see the cat’s pupils in the yellow iris dilating, then narrowing.
“What is it?” the tinny voice on the radio asked.
“Thought I felt something move…” the Wildcat murmured more to himself, and I saw his whiskers dance nervously.
My hand moved of its own accord, reaching out for the warmth of my mother. Only Bug was in the way. I pinched him angrily, and he protested.
Mother's spell broke, a shot banged loudly, and the Wildcat operator tumbled into the midst of his patrol as dead as a dormouse as we appeared before them.
Mother swept down upon them, her razor-sharp talons flashing forth again and again, as they shouted that it was the Nightwitch! The Nightwitch was on them! Barras’ gun roared another six times next to me.
In seconds, it was over.
Mother pressed her lips tightly together in displeasure as the tinny radio voice called in other troops to assist. There had been an attack by the Nightwitch, and she stamped her foot down onto the radio until it broke.
My arm still stung from the cut, and the clotting blood stuck to my innermost sleeve. Another scar I would carry. It would not be my last, or deepest.
Mother and I conjured up a screening spell around the four of us as we wove our path through the dense forest. To where exactly, I don't think even the grown-ups knew. Where do you go when there’s nowhere safe left?
The forest was overrun with Wildcat troops. They were everywhere, easily recognizable in their flashy gear, the deep brown reddish stripes. Most of them weren't even actual Wildcats. I saw all kinds of creatures in the Wildcat uniform—thin tails, short tails, bushy tails—teeth filed to look serrated, cannibal mouths dripping with the unaccustomed blood.
We tiptoed by the rumble of their tanks as they flattened the trees, as their engineers reinforced bridges to hold the weight of their heavy artillery, their anti-aircraft guns, their womenfolk barking curses and orders at the jumble of child soldiers, squirrels, raccoons, foxes, all trying to be Wildcats.
Mother took my hand when we snuck past the youngest, playing war, playing hide and seek. She held my hand tight. She crushed it.
But even the Nightwitch couldn't hold an enchantment for days on end. Even the hardiest, most enduring love of mothers couldn't protect her young indefinitely, and so we stumbled on together until we couldn't keep going anymore. And, exhausted, we fell down, my head on Mother's shoulder, Bug in her arms, and slept.
And were found.
Barras shot once from the revolver at his hip, and with the sound, mother jolted awake, jumped up, and conjured her wings and talons to tear at our attackers’ faces. Bug started to wail, and I stood over him, swishing my patchy cloak of darkness over us, trying to remain unseen.
The enemies moved quickly, feinting and striking, snarling and growling—now Barras had managed to pull himself upright on his remaining leg—each attack coming faster and harder than the one before. A Wildcat snapped and twisted around Mother, as though to trap her in one last embrace, but she gouged out his eye with her beak, shining red in the twilight.
Fierce, she turned to us, her children, and snatched us up to flee, my hand in her hand, Bug on her hip. But we slowed her down, and as we ran, a Wildcat launched himself at us, claws finding soft tissue, the force of his attack carrying us down, tumbling down a natural dell, down into a clear-running brook.
I gasped for breath, clambering out of the water to the safety of the other bank, and Mother followed, pushing me up.
Her face was torn and ugly, and I had never seen it that way before. I stared.
“Quick, Sparrow, move up!” She held me up to scrabble on top of the bank with both of her arms. “Quickly, now!”
With both her arms.
“Where's Bug?” I asked.
She looked over her shoulder into the water, filling quickly with red swirls, and her face broke.
“We lost him,” she said.
Barras crashed over the embankment and hobbled over to where we pulled ourselves onto steady ground.
“Bug?” He saw my mother's face.
“We lost him,” she repeated.
But she was wrong.
Not far from the brook, Barras found a shallow dip filled with drifts of autumn leaves, and we hid in them, burrowing deep as Mother cast a spell on the eyes of any who came near. She held me close, clutched t
o her chest, racked with silent sobs, while Barras held us both.
Because Bug wasn't lost. He was alive and making noise, as always. He screamed for Mother for hours, until he grew weary and whimpered. And we listened to his anguish for hours in the deathly silence of the forest.
In the evening, mist rose from the brook, and Barras lay on his stomach, peering through the gloom.
“I see no one out there,” he said, “but that doesn't mean it's safe.”
A wail went up once more, and Bug began calling for Mother again, choking on sobs, fearful and alone.
“It's too quiet.” Barras stared into the quickly-gathering twilight. His voice was low, dead, while Bug’s cries echoed against the banks. “Surely they wouldn't leave him there alone when they could take him in for training as one of their own. What a prize. The Nightwitch’s son.”
Mother didn't seem to be listening. She caressed my face, and I was safe and warm in her arms, which I had missed for such a long time.
“My little Sparrow,” she said, smiling, her eyes tender and moist. “You're not so little anymore, are you? You worked your own concealment spell, protecting Bug, and you did it so, so well.”
She hugged me. I hugged her back.
“It's a trap,” Barras said plainly. “They want you to go back.”
“I know,” Mother said, my head nestled beneath her chin. I could feel her hoarse voice. She began to rock me gently and hummed a lullaby just as she used to do with Bug. With me. Before. Before this war of ours demanded silence.
I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent.
“You can't go over there, Freya,” Barras rumbled from afar. “You can't. Think of Sparrow. She still needs you.”
I did.
I needed her. I always wanted her to be near like this.
“Remember, little Sparrow,” I heard her whisper as I drifted close to sleep. “Things change, my love.”
Darkness took me, filled with the terrible screams of my little brother. And then came silence.
Things I’ve lost:
Art of War Page 7