“Carmine?”

Everything around me was black. What was I standing on?

Not sure.

Where was I?

Not sure.

I heard that voice again.

“Carmine?”

Canus, to have heard your voice was so daunting, for it haunted me to the depths of grief.

Shapes formed out of the darkness. Embellished walls of peach and brown painted in studded swirls presented themselves around me. My feet clasped the cold limestone floors white as snow. Thick linen soaked deep in blue dye expensive to the broth mixed colder than that night.

It could not be.

Yes, that night. How did I know?

A feeling.

My eyes fluttered upward as the door opened. Darkness was the only visitor.

I stared behind me at the bed and its cyan sheets slanted over the white ones. This was my bedroom in Ascus. An old friend that I missed.

There was something I was supposed to remember about this.

“Carmine?”

I flipped my head back to the entrance.

Where was that voice coming from?

“Why do you not love me?”

Sorry?

“Why do you not love me?”

I found my voice. “I always loved you.”

His voice was hoarse. “Lies…”

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Liar…”

“Huh?” I project my voice. “What do you expect me to say?”

“Liar…”

Throbs of pain hit the back of my head, so I groaned in discontent.

I snorted and almost laughed. “I love everyone, alright? That too much for you? Everybody desires loyalty, but they never, never ask me what I want. No, no one asks me what I want. It's always what they expect of me, what they think of me, what I am supposed to do! That makes me a liar?!”

“Liar…”

“You know what cometh to mind, to the dead lake with you!

“Carmine…”

A shadow moved out of the darkness and toward me. My heart skipped a beat.

I pulled the sheets off the bed and used them as a shield as if they could protect me.

“Carmine…”

I froze, for this was a female's voice.

"Carmine…"

Fingers grasped the side of the door and those painted nails mesmerized me.

"Come to mother."

Mother?!

I shook my head and stepped back. My back slammed into the bed's board.

"Carmine…" that woman called.

Stop calling my name.

A chorus of voices trumpeted in my head. “Carmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!”

I flung myself up and twirled, yet fell shoulder-first into the ground. A yelp escaped my dry lips.

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I was in the bedroom given to me by those people I usurped, but damnation how did I roll off the bed? Still, to hear Canus’s voice calling out my name like that.

Damnation to those nightmares, for I hated them.

As far as the female voice, something about it shouted familiarity to me and danger within the same breath.

Now is not the time to think about that.

I growled low and with some effort climbed back onto the bed. Time passed, though I was not sure how much.

I looked up into the roof as the pain throbbed in tandem with my boredom. Part of me shuddered at the idea of going outside, but lying here was not going to make me any safer.

I groaned and pushed myself up. With the gun in tow, I advanced out to the outer reaches of the town. A frown crested along my lips at my future demise. This gun was my life. My life was never going to leave my side.

Dying was not an option. Death was not the prerogative that served me, yet despair would be the end of me, for I lost too much to death as it was.

The bushes in this area were tall and tended to climb the trees with web-like roots crisscrossing across the dark dirt. Those trees blocked out the sun effectively. A lovely blessing amid a cool ambiance, for it aided my eyes toward the target.

I lifted the gun and fired an arrow into a tree. My legs were weak when I went to get it.

The nagging smell of the moist earth treasured by moss and mushrooms caused my throat to strangle for equanimity. A thing that frequently escaped my grasp.

My hand clasped around the arrow then I heard a snap. I looked back, around, gauging the surroundings, yet I saw nothing dangerous.

Silence reigned at that moment. I tensed a bit, but I pulled out the arrow. Lodging it into the gun’s metal thread, I relaxed my body. Poised, I was ready to fire again.

The rustle of leaves caught my attention. I lifted the gun at the tree. There was silence, then the bushes moved. I flung my body wide and fired into the bushes to my right.

A thud emanated.

Something wallowed.

Got you…

Chubby, small hands crawled forward carrying the boy into my now widening eyes. My heart sank and I slumped backward in fear. What, that boy, it was the boy that brandished that makeshift wooden sword at me.

Before I could utter a word, some boys ran off leaving their friend behind.

I shouted, “Hey!”

They kept running and the boy I shot was crying out with suffocated whimpers. I froze. “Ah, oh dear—wha—ah, sore me—sore me! Ah—” I came near him, but he flung himself about wildly, tears drenching his face.

A cold chill held my body.

I shivered and turned to see Sandream behind me.

She went around me and looked back at me. “We must move.”

I nodded my head with frightening speed. “Right.”

Sandream took up the child and carried him to my hut. I called Janilla, ignoring the gathering of townspeople in front of my hut. The arrow got lodged into his upper left leg.

Sandream pushed the boy into the bed, quite forcibly, much to our shock.

“He is moving too much,” Sandream said matter of factly. We rolled with it, not much we could say to that.

Sandream wrapped my stockings across his eyes to block his view of what was happening. Five was called for assistance in gathering anything Sandream asked for. She used one of my robes, tore it, and wrapped it around the arrow. I held the wrapping, while Sandream and Janilla miserly negotiated the removal of the arrow without damaging his vessels or arteries as Sandream called them.

Once removed, Janilla applied some herbs she got from Five and Sandream wrapped a tight bandage around the wound.

How long it took, long, how bloody was It, a lot. Why did I always end up being caked in blood? I groaned at the sight of my robes and shook my head at my dismal life.

Sandream stood over the boy, who breathed slowly, coming in and out of sleep. I sat on the chair and looked at my blood-smeared fingers.

I heard a commotion outside, I said, “Five remove those people, please.”

Janilla stepped in Five’s way. “Wait, let me calm them down. Let us be peaceful in these times.”

I was about to retort, but Five said, “I understand, but let me go with you for I do not trust them and your safety is paramount Sister. I will be silent and let your voice carry through to the masses.”

Janilla smiled. “Thanks.”

They went outside to the mob at the front. Sandream shot me a glance before turning to leave out the back of the house. I looked at the boy and sighed.

Taking my tired behind up, I followed Sandream. I caught her staring out into the forest. “Thanks. That boy really surprised me back there.”

She said nothing. Still harboring hatred I saw. I was about to turn away when she said, “You were never surprised. You did what came natural. You saw that boy.”

I stiffened in defeat, but a rumble raised. Gathering on the tip of my tongue was my anger. I twirled around to her. “How?”

“I have seen you. You are not that foolish.” She looked back and gave me a scowl. “You just had not cared.”

“I did not see him. I only saw a shape! I saw something. I was not sure. I was not sure, what I saw—”

“Right, as always nothing is your fault. It was the circumstances.” She frowned. “You carry death with you and it is never your fault.”

“Ooooohh, no, never do you dare! Back to Canus, again? Hm? Pray tell, how is that my fault?”

“You knew what was coming for you. You put his life in danger. If you cared you would have just given yourself in.”

“Nooooo, no, I will not give myself into the hands of people that want me dead.”

“Anyone else before you right?”

I stalled.

She sneered. “I will be dead soon, I know that much. I wished—” Her eyes filled with melancholy as they gripped my gaze and sucked me into the demise of serenity that once graced it. “—I wished Canus could be alive to see you for what you were.”

“He died protecting the one he loved.” Closing my eyes, I realized the vicious dismissiveness of that. My eyes ripped open. Sandream stared at me and her eyes became distant, lost, swept in an emotion that I remembered that night.

The night I looked into that mirror when I heard Canus would never be given to me. The cries I mumbled silently in my despair.

I stepped forward. “You love him?”

Sandream’s head quivered briefly.

I opened my lips.

She spun her back to me. I called after her, but she jumped high and onto a tree branch. She hopped from tree to tree and disappeared into the forest.