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Tortured.
Just as I went to reach out for him, he slipped that mask back on, nodded his head in place of a goodbye, and then he was gone.
Digging through the topsoil was easy, but it was the compacted clay beneath that made it feel like I was digging into rock. I shifted my body weight from side to side, forcing the end of the shovel farther into the ground. Heaving it up, utilizing the long, wooden handle as leverage, I threw a shovelful to the pile I made on the side. I was about three feet down, maybe four on one end. I wiped the back of my sleeve against my slick brow before a bead of sweat rolled into my eye. I ignored the need to stretch my aching back, ignored the fire rasping my overworked lungs, and continued to dig. My body might crave a break, but my mind did not.
I whittled down what I was doing to a step-by-step process. One shovel after another. That was it. I didn’t look at the grand picture of what I was doing—that part remained a protective blank. When I asked myself,Why am I digging?my brain would perform a mental shrug and say,I don’t know. And so I just dug. And dug. And dug.
When the blisters on my hands popped, caused by the friction of the wood handle, I gritted my teeth and dug some more. I got lost in it, paying little heed to the fact that Von should have probably been back by now.
I grunted as my shovel refused to sink any lower. Had I thought the clay was hard? This—whatever it was—was far worse. I dug around the hard thing, working away the ground that cradled it as if it were some precious gemstone. Well, stone didn’t cover the half of it. It was more like a boulder—a big, ugly, gray one. I glared at it—how dare it get in my way? Dropping to my knees, I clawed the ground with my fingers like some deranged hound digging out a buried bone. Dirt flew out behind me as I worked, uncovering more and more, revealing its increasingly growing size.
“Damn it,” I seethed when I realized the rock went past the four-foot-wide perimeter I’d marked out earlier. I rolled over onto my butt and leaned against the side wall, bent one knee, and propped my arm on top. Frustrated, I slammed the back of my head against the dirt wall—why must a simple task be so hard? I inhaled a deep breath and stared at the gods-damned sky, particularly the sparkling, cheerful sun.
I glared at it.
How dare it shine today? It could shine on any other day, but today? Today, the sun should never have risen. It should have dipped its head in sorrow while the sky blanketed itself with heavy, dark-bottomed clouds and mourned.
I wiped a tear away, snorted, and got back up. I didn’t need clouds to make the sky weep—I could do that all on my own. I raised my hands, feeling the moisture around me—in the ground, in the air. I forced it to move for me, to meld with other molecules like it, to grow and replicate. I let it build and build, and then I let it go, and the rain came crashing down, pelting the empty canopy of the trees, sailing right on past, to the ground, washing over me. It drenched my hair and clothes, mixing with the dirt on my face, on my hands, on my knees, turning it to mud.
“Do you see?” I screamed at the sun, tears streaming down my cheeks. “This is how it’s done.”
This time, I did not wipe them away.
I let the sun watch as I wept in my brother’s grave.
“Sage?” called a voice through the light pitter-patter of rain. The voice sounded impeccably similar to Ezra’s.
I must have been imagining things because that was impossible—she was supposed to be in the Cursed Lands. Or gods only knew where else her wanderings had taken her.
Ezra’s voice called out again.
“Go away,” I said, dismissing the phantom. I lay in the hole I dug, flat on my back, saturated in mud. The rock beneath me had jammed a part of itself into my side, as if it weren’t bothersome enough.
A head, gray-haired and white-eyed, peered over the edge, a hand-carved cane pointing down at me. “What a find!”
“Ezra!” I jerked upright, my eyes going wide. I shot to my feet, my head growing fuzzy with the sudden shift from latitude to longitude.
“Yes, yes, hello, hello. Now, scuttle to the side. This old bird would like to get a better feel for that marvelous specimen,” she said by way of greeting, bending to her knees and scooting down, as limber as a twelve-year-old. It was funny how rocks had that effect on her. It was like they were her own personal fountain of youth, and even in her blindness, she could miraculously sense them. Rocks, for Pete’s sake—whoever Pete was.
She shoved her cane into my dirty hands, her white orbs staring right on past me. She plopped onto her knees and cocked her head to the side. “Oh yes, very promising indeed. If I can just . . .” She tugged off her scarf and began to carefully rub some of the mud away, like she was polishing a diamond—exquisite and rare. She froze, her knobby, arthritic fingers flaring wide open, twitching in anticipation, like she was just about to dig into a nice, juicy steak. She leaned forward and pressed her ear against it. Suddenly, she jerked upright, the side of her face covered in mud. “Do you know what this is?”
“A rock?” I asked, her vast excitement making me question myself.
But this was Ezra asking, and I highly doubted it was a secret passageway to some forbidden world. It was—I glanced at it again, just in case—a bloody rock after all.
“Hush, child. You must not insult it,” she scolded, pressing her hands over the rock as if it had ears, as if it could hear my thoughts—it was bad enough she could.
One would think after spending a lifetime with Ezra, that I would get used to her bizarre antics, and yet, here I was, still not used to them. I doubted I ever would be. Still, a small part of me was thankful for them.
Ezra leaned forward, pressing her ear against it again, listening for gods only knew what. “Mhm,” she said to the rock before she turned her muddy face back to me, her milky white eyes narrowing as if she could see. “Why are you trying to dig it up?”
My mouth popped open. Quickly, I snapped it shut. “Because it’s in my way.”
“Funny. It says the same about you.” Ezra cackled, patting it softly with her aged hands, like they were two gossiping old biddies.
I rolled my eyes. “How did you get here?”
“Von shadow walked me here,” she muttered under her breath, a mechanical-sounding reply, her mind otherwise occupied.
