Arc 20: My First Lesson
“It always hurts. No matter how angry you are, no matter how much you hate them, it always, always hurts.”
* Unknown
- - -
The plan I devised that night was simple, flexible, and effective. It's first point: tell no one, not even Clarke. I'd let everyone think that they were right, that I'd been acting from grief, and had come to my senses. My silence worked, even as it insulted Juliana's memory, and soon all the careful treatment, cautious questions, and pointed talks came to an end. Their attention turned to keeping Jeremiah alive, to thwarting his ongoing effort at drowning himself in the drink he once sold. Not a day went by when Milo would have to round up a group of strong men to haul his snoring, insensate form to bed.
He distracted them from examining my silence too closely. For that, and that alone, I'm grateful.
The second point: take what paltry woodcraft my parents saw fit to give me and turn it into something useful. I began to roam the hillsides cradling Amberdusk town, speaking to the crofters and woodsmen who plied their trades there, and learning all they would teach. It wasn't much, more snatches of advice and warnings than anything else; but each small piece of knowledge added to a greater whole. I've felt starvation's edge but once before. I'll not suffer it again.
Lavinia came with me on some of these hikes. She'd find a twig to twist between her fingers or a stick to swing at the long stalks of yellowed grass as we walked the narrow paths that snaked among the hills. It was on one of these roamings that she unburdened herself, confessing in a long ramble her fears for her mother's health, her father's mind, and of the bramble-beast's specter that would sometimes haunt her dreams.
I hadn't known how to respond and had said as much. She'd shrugged, sighed, and sounded far older than her twelve years when she'd said, “I know. I wanted to...I wanted to tell someone.”
“Me?” I'd asked. “Not your parents or – or Clarke?”
“They have enough to worry about,” She'd dropped her gaze to the path, to the edge of the rut we traversed. “and with Clarke, it's...it's different.”
“How?”
Frustration had bubbled in her words. “I don't know! It just – it is!”
“Alright.”
I didn't ask if she was sure or insist she talk more about it. There wasn't a single moment of carefully talking around what she'd said or how she'd felt. I did for her what I wished had been done for me: let her be. I kept a quiet companionship and let her feel how her heart chose.
A few paces of that had gone by before she'd ended it with a quiet, “You – should – kill her.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“I know.”
She'd swung her stick through the grass, wielding it as I once did her father's sword. “She deserves it.”
“She does.”
Long, yellowed grass broke beneath her strikes, their pulpy remains wrapping around the tip of her weapon. “How are you gonna do it?”
The third point: learn to fight, to kill. One might think I already have all the skill I need in this, because I am still alive, but they would be wrong. If I possess any skill in any relation to this, it is survival.
This skill, if it could be called that, is all but entirely comprised of staying alive until circumstances change enough for me to escape. It, and luck, has brought me this far; scarred, but alive. It wasn't good enough. Not anymore.
I needed violence, true violence. I needed to know where to hurt someone and how to hurt them most. I needed to make my fists into the same weapons that Flint used against me. I needed to find someone who would make me a killer. Milo, the only one left alive with these skills, would not teach me.
We'd stopped at the crest of a hill, Amberdusk town below us. Lights in windows and on streetcorners flickered into life. “I don't know.”
On the road into town, four horseback travelers were made shadows by the setting sun.
- - -
The word spreads like fire across town, leaping from stall to market stall, from laundry lines to passers-by, and between neighboring front steps. It comes to us through Milo, dirt under his nails and a pallor beneath his sun-tanned skin. We're in the Thorngage sitting room when he finds us, bent over a book of maps and imagining what it must be like to live here, or there, or what about there. I find some of my old wanderlust in tracing my way south, down the long road into the Grasslands. I follow the outlined walls of massive city-kingdoms with my fingertip and wonder: who are the people more like there, Juliana or Merigold? What would they think of me?
The front door slamming open, as if struck by a ram, puts an end to those thoughts. It makes Lavinia jump and cry out, Clarke reach for her piece of ice, and me search the room for something, anything, I could use to defend us.
The fire poker. I take it in hand as Milo's voice, roughened by exertion and strangled by fear, shouts, “Lavinia?! Girls?!”
I squeeze the poker's handle, dig the wire wrap into my skin. My jaw locks and my nose flares. Frost leaks between Clarke's gripping fingers, her icy power gathering in her palm. Lavinia is still, her mouth still parted. She starts to shake.
Clarke meets my eyes. In them, I see the same fear that stings acrid on my tongue; but also courage and determination beneath. The distance between us, grown with each passing day, vanishes; and in that moment we are able to decide without a sound: protect her. I put my free arm around Lavinia's shoulders, draw her behind us. Whatever's happening, whatever comes, it will contend with us first.
I hear boots; his, and no one else's. He moves into the kitchen and again calls out, “Lavinia! Girls!”
Another look passes between Clarke and I, another decision following: say nothing. Keep quiet. Let him find us.
From behind me, a scared, shaking voice comes from a scared, shaking girl, “In – in here!”
He storms into the sitting room, wide-eyed and panicked. Lavinia tears free of me and throws herself into his arms. He cups her head, tucks her into his shoulder, as she starts to cry. “Goddess bless,” he breathes, relief cutting the knees from under him. “Oh, Goddess bless, you're alright.”
Clarke's hold on her ice and her magic loosens. The streaming frost dissipates into nothing, the gathered power dismissed. She lets her hand fall into her lap and clears her throat before asking, “Why wouldn't she be? What's happening?”
“You scared me!” Lavinia scolds, muffled by her father's shirt.
He rubs her back, soothes her. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm sorry. It's alright. You're alright.” He looks to us over his daughter's shoulder. “You have to leave town, both of you.”
Lavinia pulls away, looking at her father in shock. Clarke mirrors her. It takes a deliberate effort to unseal the line of my jaw. The fire poker's weight is solid and sturdy in my hand, against my leg. “Why?”
Is it me, I don't ask, is it because I'm a danger to her?
“Windrunners,” he says, putting a pit of cold dread in my belly. “They're here.”
I push words through a dry mouth. “Looking for us?”
He shakes his head. “I don't think so, but – just to be safe...”
Clarke nods. “We should leave.”
Dread in my belly.
Wrath in my heart.
Hatred in my blood.
“No,” I say.