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“So maybe, ye don’t need her scent; ye just need to remember her presence. An’ this place is the best place for ye to do so. Ye just have to try, Deka.”
Try…. I nod.
But when I look around—take in the devastation surrounding me, I’m suddenly so heavy, I can’t remain standing a moment longer. I walk leadenly over to the hearth, where a single bench remains, its legs rickety and half broken. Mother used to place me on that bench when she was working. And then, as I grew older, I used to stand on it so I could help her in the kitchen.
Now it’s all that’s left. All that’s left of Mother. All that’s left of home. The place that I lived in for sixteen years of my life. It’s an empty shell now. Just like everything else around me.
Tears slide down my cheeks and I wipe them away.
A hand presses on my shoulder. Belcalis’s.
There’s sympathy in her gaze. “I’m sorry, Deka. I know this must be distressing for you.”
Distressing. No word has ever felt so inadequate.
Distressing is when you stub your toe, or stumble in weapons practice and fall on your arse. This, what I’m experiencing, is devastation.
My entire family is gone. As is my home. And now there’s no going back, ever.
Not that there ever was.
I think of everything I’ve learned about myself over the past few years—my abilities, the truth of my origins. No wonder the villagers destroyed this place the moment they could. I never belonged here. I was always an outsider, a pretender. That’s why I can’t reconstruct the memory of Mother’s scent even here, in the cottage where she birthed me. Why I can’t even picture her face, hear her voice.
Because I never was hers to begin with. I never was her true daughter.
If I was, I would at least know her scent. Recreate it from memory. I wouldn’t need things like clothes or this awful place to remember it. To find her body.
I brush away my tears, then shrug Belcalis’s hand off my shoulder. “I’m fine,” I whisper, looking down. “Everything is fine.”
“Except that’s not true, is it?” she says, not letting go of me. She comes closer, kneels at my feet, her midnight eyes burning into mine. “You may not be human, Deka. You may not even be alaki. But you can still feel pain. You can still feel anger. And it’s all right—both emotions are appropriate, given the circumstances. This was your home, and they tainted it.”
“Was it really?” I turn from her with a bitter laugh. “Was it ever truly my home, or was I just there, this thing that insinuated itself into their lives?”
I can see it now, the life my parents would have had if I had never been born. They would have remained as they were, happy. They could have perhaps even had more children—the son Father actually wanted.
But they never got those things, because I came along, and now they’re both dead and their home is destroyed. Elder Durkas was right: this was my fault. It’s always been my fault.
More bitter laughter wrenches from my throat. I swallow it down, then return my gaze to Belcalis. “I must seem in a dire mood indeed if you’re the one talking to me about feelings.”
“I feel.”
When my eyebrows lift at this proclamation, Belcalis gives me a wry smile. “Sometimes I feel all sorts of emotions. And sometimes”—she beckons to me and I lean in closer—“I even feel joy. Imagine that.”
I laugh despite myself. “A shocking notion.”
“Indeed,” Belcalis says loftily. “But the point is, it’s all right to feel. And it’s all right to be overwhelmed when you finally give your biggest tormentor his comeuppance, only to find your home destroyed by him.”
I blink, startled by this concise assessment. Trust Belcalis to cut to the heart of the matter. But I don’t want to give her credit so easily. I sniff. “I’ll take your word for it,” I say. Then I glance around at my other companions, who are huddled around me, as if to protect me from the barrage of my own emotions.
Except they can’t do that. No one can—or should—do that, not even me. If there’s one thing I know from bitter experience, it’s that if I hoard my feelings, if I let them circle and circle in the back of my mind, they will eventually consume me.
“It’s strange,” I admit finally, rising. “This was my home. And now it’s not. And I don’t have anywhere else to go. And that makes me angry. And it makes me sad. And it makes me a thousand other things. I have no home to return to.”
I say the words out loud again, as if testing them.
“Neither do I.” To my surprise, Belcalis shrugs in agreement.
“Me neither,” Keita says.
