Chapter 4 - Edith

Northern Facility, Vanstead Dukedom of Augustein, Year 989

News of the Raymoths’ demise spread quickly throughout the cell. Neither of them had been particularly quiet, after all, and soon enough everyone was muttering about it.

Edith still wouldn’t talk to her. Every time Amara approached, the other girl would huff and turn away. It got to a point where Amara regularly had to resist the urge to grab her and demand what the hell was wrong.

More present than irritation, however, was growing fear and concern. Edith had been pulled away for more and more sessions lately, and Amara didn’t miss the way she could barely work up the energy to stand sometimes. At night, Amara would wake up and see her staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide open and distant. She looked like little more than a doll like that. Motionless and unseeing.

Amara would lay awake as well, watching her. Her fingers would ache to reach out and shake the girl, to make sure she was really alive, but she never did, too scared that she might do it and find Edith unresponsive.

—

The night was cold. Amara frowned and rolled over, not even flinching when her bandaged wounds pressed into the ground. A strange unease had bubbled in her stomach all day. Something about the way the guards had paced around outside their cell, more active and restless than usual, and even the steady drip of water from the leak that had appeared in the ceiling a month ago felt wrong.

Amara squinted, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She rolled over again, bumping into Lily. She winced and held her breath, but the girl’s breathing remained even. Amara sighed and slowly sat up. It was probably better to move somewhere else for the night, lest she wake someone up with her tossing and turning.

Rising to her feet, Amara spotted the old corner James used to occupy so many years ago. Sometimes it felt like just yesterday that the boy had been dragged away, limbs thrashing and flailing. Other times it felt ancient and distant, every bit as blurry as her supposed life before the facility.

Amara crept over to the shadowed corner, pausing when she realized it was occupied. Edith sat with her back against the wall, her face hidden as she hugged her knee. Amara frowned. Edith had been taken away for a session before her that day, and when Amara had returned to the cell, she hadn’t seen the other girl. She was about to ask when the girl had come back before she remembered that Edith wasn’t talking to her, so she stayed silent. She glanced around, searching for another open space, but before she could move, a hand shot out and grabbed her.

Amara spun around, tensing, but the main thought ringing in her mind was how cold Edith’s hand was.

Edith mumbled something, and Amara leaned in closer on instinct.

“I can’t hear you,” she muttered, eyes briefly flickering over to the rest of the cell.

Edith exhaled shakily, and her breathing sounded shallow and uneven. Amara’s brows furrowed in concern.

“...I did something really bad,” Edith whispered. She released Amara’s hand, reaching up to yank on her hair that had grown so much thinner since she’d first arrived. Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment before opening again. “I don’t—I don’t think, I don’t know—” The girl stumbled on her words, sounding nothing at all like the Edith Amara knew.

“Edith, what happened?” she asked urgently, struggling to keep her voice quiet. “What’s going on?”

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Edith just shook her head over and over.

“You wouldn’t get it,” she said. She pulled her hair tighter, and Amara grabbed her hand, carefully moving it away.

“You know, Amara, I used to be really jealous of you,” Edith was saying. Amara swallowed and kept her attention focused on untangling the girl’s fingers from her hair, refusing to look at the other girl’s face as she continued to babble.

“You never react to things, you don’t get mad, you just exist and don’t care about anything. I wished I could do that. Be like that. It must be nice to not have to feel things.”

Amara’s throat was dry when she swallowed. The feeling in her gut rose.

“It’s not like that,” she whispered, but Edith didn’t hear her, her words still rushing out all at once like a broken dam.

“I tried, you know. I really did, but I just can’t push things down like that. So I thought, it’s okay if I’m not like you, because I’ll be the one who fights.” Edith laughed hollowly. “I thought, I’ll show her, I’ll be the better one, I’ll be the hero.” She squeezed her arms around her knees so tightly that they shook. Amara’s hands hovered above her, not sure what to do or where to place them.

Finally, all at once, the shaking stopped. Edith’s entire body slumped down in defeat, and her head dropped back down, thin dark strands falling like a tattered curtain over her face. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled.

“Hey, Amara?”

Amara swallowed. “Yes?”

“Can you promise to look after the others?”

Amara nodded, then remembered Edith couldn’t see her. Her fingers clenched into a fist, then relaxed again. “I promise,” she said, forcing her voice to remain as steady and calm as she could manage.

For a moment Edith didn’t respond, silence pooling between them. And then, slowly, Edith nodded.

“Thank you,” she mumbled. Head still lowered, Edith turned, shifting so that her body was facing away from Amara and leaning slightly against the wall on one side. The movement was clumsy and uncoordinated, and it took much more effort than a simple action like that should have.

Facing away, only her hunched form visible, Edith whispered, “Good night.”

Amara stared at her, wondering if her back had always been so small. She ran through different words in her mind, but her tongue felt heavy. Finally, she simply swallowed and turned away as well.

“Good night.”

Later, when weariness settled deep into her bones and her lids grew heavy and her senses hazy, Amara thought she heard Edith say something. But the growing weight of sleep had already taken its hold, and before she could respond or ask her to repeat what she’d said, it was already too late.

When Amara woke up the next morning, the space beside her was empty. She slowly moved her head, scanning the cell with dull eyes, but Edith was nowhere to be found.

Tom whispered that some of the guards had taken her away for a session that morning. Amara had just nodded dully, the words barely processing. She let herself sink into the distant comfort of numbness.

She stayed there for the rest of the day, back against the wall and eyes never leaving the cell doors.

—

The night passed. Amara stayed awake the entire time, not caring how much her eyes burned. She refused to look away from the gleaming metal cell door. She simply sat there, still as a statue.

Another night passed. Then another.

By the third morning, Amara was so exhausted that she could barely hold her head up. Her head throbbed and her vision was so blurred that she could barely make out Ben’s hesitant form approaching her.

“Amara?” he asked, and she distantly thought about how strange it was to hear him say her name. No one but Edith ever did.

The boy’s body shook, or maybe that was the weariness catching up to her. Ben’s voice was small, and he sounded more like the crying child he’d been in those first few months than he had in years.

“Where’s Edith?” he asked. His voice cracked.

Amara stared at him, vaguely registering other figures gathered around them. All of them knew, just like she did. They were looking for confirmation, the sort of confirmation they usually turned to Edith for.

Amara swallowed, throat dry. Her limbs felt heavy, like they weren’t her own, but still she reached forward and hugged the boy, hoping that the flaring cold deep within her core hadn’t spread to her skin. Ben froze slightly, then buried his face deeper into her shoulder.

“She’s gone,” Amara whispered.

“She’s never coming back.”