Ennah

Sentisse, 66 years after the Rise

The word empty doesn’t even begin to describe the way I feel as I stare down at the freshly dug earth beside Granny’s grave. I’ve run out of tears, run out of thoughts, run out of words to say to myself to make any sense of this.

Even the air itself seems empty. Next to me, Uncle Aniol is silent. The cicadas have fallen silent too, the absence of their usual cheerful songs adding to my misery.

Four days. Four days from Healer to undertaker, four days of doing everything I possibly could to make things better, and seeing every single attempt fail miserably — for both Aunt Carme and myself. She passed away a few days ago and was buried yesterday — a burial I didn’t attend, for obvious reasons. Locked up in my room this time, I had to imagine everything that had happened over here — only now that Uncle Aniol has taken me with him do I really know what it feels like. Two graves and a heart shattered into more pieces than the window I broke just seven days ago.

The sheer speed of Aunt Carme’s decline still baffles me. She slipped from having conversations with fluent, complete sentences, riddled with coughs as they may have been, to barely being able to utter a syllable. The last conversation I had with Aunt Carme had been a tormenting ordeal for the both of us — Aunt Carme trying to say what she wanted to say left us both frustrated, as I couldn’t guess what she wanted to say about Granny’s death, about the vineyard, about a lot of other things I couldn’t make heads or tails of. In the end, I simply put my arms around Aunt Carme’s shaking body, told her how much I loved her, and desperately tried to ignore the awful wheezing and rumbling inside Aunt Carme’s chest — the awfulness the Healer’s medicine couldn’t soothe. It made me wonder whether the guy was an accomplished Healer at all.

Poor Aunt Carme.

Poor Granny.

I could tell them both how much I love them, but they won’t hear it. Not with their ears, at least. But they’ll feel it. Just like I do.

When even the word ‘love’ had become impossible for Aunt Carme to say, I felt it. And Uncle Aniol must have felt it too, for in the last moments of his wife’s life, when he held her so close to his heart, I saw that very heart break. I still choke up when thinking about that moment, more than when I remember how I offered to make more brew so that we could sell amazing wine, make quick money, and send for the best Magical Healer in the world. I know very little of the world outside, but even I’ve heard the tales of the Hefty Mage. I don’t know his actual name — he wears the nickname as an honorary title.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I wish our Healer had learned a thing or two from that guy.

But it was no use. Aunt Carme simply shook her head upon my suggestion, also to Uncle Aniol’s frustration, and at the time I suggested it, it had been too late to do anything anyway. It does little to soothe the sting I still feel about not having been able to really do anything for Aunt Carme

Now, looking at the rectangle of dark earth between the tough, yellow blades of grass, I wish I’d called for the Hefty Mage anyway.

Well, not that I know how to. Since I haven’t left the premises since coming here, and I have zero memory of that, I don’t even know where to find the village, let alone the Mess. I know that you can contact someone else, but that requires payment, and though I have money in Granny’s chest, I don’t even know if they’d be ripping me off or anything.

The emptiness gnaws at me even harder realizing how useless I am, how utterly small and powerless.

I look at Uncle Aniol. He is still silent, his face a grim, pale mask of grief.

There are no words. Nothing to say to make him feel better. I know it. Know it first hand after hearing all the words Aunt Carme used to try and console me after Granny died, and not have any of them register or resonate.

Somehow it feels like she’s tried to console me about that one last time, the evening before she died. I swallow. Aunt Carme meant so well. Fought so hard. Cared so much.

Without really realizing it, my lips start to form words. A little gesture made by my fingers. A feeling released from my heart, to add to the brightness of the light that suddenly appears in the air before me.

Uncle Aniol looks at me, a certain disgust in his gaze, but he doesn’t say a word as the light grows into the shape of a heart. My voice almost breaks when I say ‘Aunt Carme’, and the heart floats toward the fresh grave, disappearing into the earth, leaving a little ray of light behind until that also fades.

Apparently, there are more tears to shed. They fill my eyes and blur my vision, but don’t stop me from seeing how Uncle Aniol looks at me, his face contorted with disgust and, at the same time, some sort of gratitude. “Let’s go,” he mumbles, his voice hoarse and broken.

I don’t trust myself to speak. I turn around to follow my uncle as the tears drip down my cheeks, hot and painful. Before I can step away, I create two more hearts of light and let them float to both of the graves. The ankle bracelets feel completely obsolete now that my heart is so heavy that I can’t believe I’ll even be able to fly, and the chiming sounds so cheerful that it shouldn’t exist in a world where Granny and Aunt Carme aren’t present anymore. I drag myself away from the graves, feeling I haven’t just sent hearts made of light into the ground, but left my real heart down there as well.