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Chapter 22
Then
I stared at the ground, silent for a long while. How could I tell a stranger the memories that made up a life? How could I put into words the dynamic of our little family? I didn’t know where to start.
So, I started from the beginning. The tiny upstairs bedroom. The cold. The stale porridge. Death. So much death. My mother, and how she and I no longer had the relationship we once had; how frustrated I was with her that I had to bear the burden of our survival. Tears came and went from my eyes as memories passed, smiles and laughter following. Calomyr listened intently the entire time, asking questions when he needed to.
“Why do you think the healer treated him without charge?”
“Do you really think there are people watching you?
“Where would you go if you could leave Inkwell?”
When I had exhausted every possible detail I could think of, I turned to him. “And you? What is your story?” He straightened, averting his gaze. “I laid my entire soul bare before you, a stranger. The least you can do is tell mesomething.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek, stifling a smile, looking out of the mouth of the cave at the gulls hovering over the harbor. He was so uniquely beautiful I struggled to tear my gaze away. “Bastard born in Taitha.” My eyes widened. Everyone in my life was born and raised in Eserene. I had never met someone from the outside. “We had a small hut on the outskirts of the city, in the rolling farmlands to the south. My mother was a baker. She baked everything in our own kitchen. If I close my eyes I can still smell the biscuits and pans of layered pastries she baked every day.” I saw his eyes move behind their lids. “My younger brother was a bastard, too, but we never considered what it meant to be fathered by different men. Tobyas was my brother, plain and simple. We looked very much the same, a bit different in the jaw and cheeks, but the main difference was our eyes. My green is identical to my mother’s eyes. She always told me the blue matched my father’s, that it was so unique, so unlike anything she’d ever seen that I’d know him the second I met him. And Tobyas’ eyes were dark, close to black, like his father’s. I had hoped that one day I’d meet a strange man with the same blue eyes and know it was my father. Tobyas wanted the same.” The blue in his eyes was indeed unlike anything I’d seen. “We always imagined that our fathers would be best friends.” A sad chuckle left his mouth. He shook it away, rolling his neck.
I inhaled sharply as I watched the pain flash across his face. “My mother… she–” My palms started to sweat. His words were quiet, clipped.
“You don’t have to tell me–”
“I think I want to tell you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You think?”
“Yes. I’m not sure why. I probably shouldn’t. But I think I want to tell you. I haven’t told anyone in a long time.” I could tell by the look on his face that a part of him died a long time ago. Who had he told before? Had it been harder to talk about it then? He rested his elbows on his knees, letting his hands hang between them. “The only experience I had with death before that day was an old woman who lived on our road. She was covered in veils, carted away to be buried, and that was it. For death to enter my home like that, to see the contents of my mother’s head spill on the floor, to watch the light leave her eyes…”
I gasped at his words. “She…she was–?”
“Murdered. Yes.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, a stray strand falling across his forehead. “All I could do was jump in front of Tobyas to try to protect him.”
“You saw the whole thing?”
His mouth settled into a grim line, a silent confirmation. “A man kicked the door down into our hut. No warning, face covered in a black mask. We barely had time to react before he grabbed my mother and without a word drove her head into the stone floor. Over and over and over again, until…” He swallowed hard. “Until I couldn’t even tell it was her anymore. She fought at first, but it didn’t take long for…” A silent inhale. “And that was it. The man stared at me and Tobyas for a moment before he ran out the door. Just...stared. I felt him looking past me, at Tobyas, even from behind his mask. And then he was gone.” He paused, looking around the cave as if he could see the day among the dips and shadows. “There was an old man who lived next to us, and he heard the screams. When the killer fled, he ran to us. ‘Get to Dry Gulch and find the caravan. They’ll lead you over the border of Widoras to Eserene.’ He pulled us into his hut, filled a canvas bag with bread and honey apples and pushed us down the road. ‘Go!’ he screamed at us. Dry Gulch was only a day’s walk to the south, but the day was filled with Tobyas’ constant questioning. ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Where is Mother?’ ‘Where are we going?’”
His brow angled up, the anguish on his face not foreign to me. His eyes were suddenly molten and frozen at the same time, the line between green and blue hardening as I watched the emotions flow through them. Sadness. Anger. Purerage.And bitter, bitter defeat.
“When did this happen?” I whispered.
“Eighteen years ago now. I was nine.” Nine years old. He was achild. “A kind woman, no older than you are now, found us wandering in the town square at Dry Gulch and pointed us to the caravan. I don’t remember being able to speak much, but it was like she knew exactly what had happened the moment she saw us. She gave us a piece of parchment and told us to wait near the city gates when we arrived in Eserene, that someone would come for us. It turned out her sister had been taking in displaced children that found their way to the city. Lived in Prisma.”
“Displaced children?”
“There had been a lot of violence and unrest across all of Cabillia, Taitha especially. It had been going on for years at that point. Still is. There were uprisings and riots and so many things a nine year old boy shouldn’t know about. But we joined the caravan. King Umfray wasn’t too keen on letting in refugees, so not many groups were let in. We were lucky, and sure enough a woman found us waiting by the Eserenian city gates.”
“Was that…”
“My aunt, yes. Berna.” He gave the same sorrowful, reminiscent smile I had seen more than once today. “Not my aunt by blood, of course. But she’s the one who took us in.”
The aunt he had buried. I thought he said she had lived in Inkwell, not Prisma…but now was not the time to pry. “I’m so sorry.” I fought the urge to reach out and touch him. That maddening half smile appeared on his face, one dimple on his cheek.
“Such is life, Petra.”
“Such is life,” I sighed. “And what’s your position in the Royal Guard?”
Before he could answer, thousands of glittering specks of light suddenly flooded the cave, tiny rainbows refracting across the walls. It was raining diamonds, a swarm of crystalline honey bees in a hive. The sun had hit the waves in the harbor just the right way to reflect its light on the ceiling of the cave, which I now saw was a solid bed of crystal.
“This,” Calomyr murmured, his head slowly bobbing from side to side, watching the lights, “is what I wanted you to see.”
I stood slowly, looking down at my hands as the glitter drifted over them, the movement in time with the crashing waves. The crystals that covered the ceiling were set far enough into the rock that unless light shone directly on them, they would be nearly invisible. The jagged points jutted out haphazardly, completely irregular yet somehow arresting in their beauty.
How could something so beautiful, so magical live so close to the dirt pit that was Inkwell? How could this exist in the same world where dirty brothels and empty bellies and decrepit houses are commonplace?
My mouth dropped open in awe. I was aware of how childish I looked but I didn’t have the mind to care. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I whispered. The specks of light moved across my face, every other one landing in my pupil, the glint captivatingly bright. I felt Calomyr’s eyes on me, heard a slight inhale as if he were trying to speak, but couldn’t tear my gaze away from the magic that swirled around me. I slowly spun in a circle, following the glimmers across the walls as they moved forward, back, forward, back.
And as suddenly as they came, they were gone. I finally turned to Calomyr to find his intense stare looming, his mismatched eyes burning, the dimples of his cheeks showing. I could feel confusion cross my face as I worked out the logistics of what just happened. “Everyday, the sun hits the harborjustright. Magic.” The earthiness of his voice filled my senses as quickly as the glittering lights had, consuming me just as completely. I nodded at his explanation, unable to form words. “I told you to trust me.”
