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Jakub stills as I pirouette around him. His knuckles are white from the tightness of his grip around the handle of the knife as thunder booms and rain pours down, drenching us both. Water runs in rivulets over us, sticking our clothing to our skin, but he doesn’t move and I don’t stop dancing. There’s a freedom in my movements, a strength that cannot be tamed or caged. Not by fear, not by uncertainty, not by distrust.
Another crack of lightning illuminates the courtyard in stark white light revealing the two remaining Masks. They rush forward, but I don’t need either of them to protect me. Not this time.
“Stop!” I command. Their feet still, obeying me. Stepping in front of Jakub, I lift my hand to his white mask, palming it in my hand. “You haven’t come here to kill me,” I say, my jaw chattering with cold as the rain continues to pour.
“You don’t know that,” he retorts, his hazel eyes locking onto mine then dropping lower as he raises the knife and presses the tip between my breasts.
“I do. You won’t kill me,” I say,knowinghe doesn’t want to.
“I could drive this into your heart and end this all now,” he insists, the tip nicking my skin, drawing the tiniest drop of blood. “I’ve thought about it over and over again. Even after all the kindness you’ve shown me, I’ve thought about it.”
“But you won’t.”
He stares at me, eyes blazing. “What if one day my father wins, and this barely human heart of mine turns to fucking stone again?”
“That’s impossible,” I say.
“It’s not. It happened over and over again. Every time the goodness seeped back he poured cement over my heart, trapping it in a coffin of darkness.”
I shake my head, the wet ropes of my hair flicking as I move. “On the floor of the cabin you fought against your past. I watched you claw your way back to humanity one painful memory at a time. You broke through all that stone encasing your heart. You’re still fighting. If you weren’t you would’ve driven that blade into my heart already. That counts foreverything.”
“What if I’m not fucking strong enough.”
“You are. If your brothers can do it, so can you,” I say, placing my hand on his and urging him to lower the knife.
“But they don’t have his DNA!’ he exclaims, his hand dropping, the knife falling from his grasp.
“Nala does, and she’sgood, Jakub. She’s kind, thoughtful, sweet.”
The air cracks with electricity that lifts the tiny hairs on my arms, filling the courtyard with seismic energy. Behind us the Weeping Tree creaks and groans in the wind that’s funnelling around the courtyard, covering us both in goosebumps.
“Every time I look in the mirror I see him. Every time I speak I hear his motherfucking voice. He’s in my blood like a fucking infection!” Jakub shouts as he claws at his shirt, tearing at his skin, ripping open barely knitted wounds. “He’s in my head,” he continues, ripping off his mask and tapping his temple. “He’s everywhere I fucking look.”
“Then together we’ll find a way to help you drown his voice out until one day you won’t hear him anymore. We’ll show you another way to live so you won’t feel his presence, or see him in your reflection. We’ll do it together. ”
“I don’t deserve your help. I don’t fucking deserve it. My God, the things I’ve done. FUUUUCKKK!” he roars, balling his hands and tilting his head back to the sky.
A stream of curse words fly free from his mouth as he lets out years of pent-up anger, frustration and disappointment. It floods out of him as he rages and rages until, eventually, he falls to his knees, panting and breathless.
Behind him, Konrad and Leon watch with pain in their eyes, unable to do anything but observe their brother fall apart again. Whilst Jakub might have faced his past in that cabin, and survived the trauma for a second time, he’s still fighting the hold his father has over him. It’s not as simple for him to separate himself from his father. This will take time, and like my mother had written in her letter to Thirteen, time is something he doesn’t have.
Crouching down, I cup his face in my hands and remind him of what I said to him yesterday. “Be worthy of the little boy who saved that precious baby girl from dying. Do this for him, for Nala, for your brothers.”
“For you,” he chokes out.
“What you hear inside your mind are just echoes of your past. That’s all they are. That’s all they’ll ever be. They don’t hold any power over you.”
“I could kill you. If not today, then tomorrow or the day after that.”
“But you won’t.”
“I could hurt you.”
“You could, but that’s because you don’t know how to be any other way.”
“I don’t trust myself around you.”
“Then trustme,” I say, swallowing hard and forcing thoughts of the night I’ll carve my name into their chest right here in the courtyard out of my head. “Trust me to show you a better way.”
