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Val? Wake up.
She startled awake, her gut twisting at something that she had not yet remembered.
It was morning, but the windows were still boarded up, and only small streams of lazy light broke through their cracks.
The morning was cold; she shivered and pulled the blanket closer. She saw that he had none and draped half of it across him.
It trickled back into her slowly as her eyes ran across his unnaturally still form.
“No…” She whispered, her hands falling limply. A wave of ice washed over her insides. “No… gods, no…”
The lingering smell of the campfire mixed with something else. It was a sickly smell, reminding her of rotting fruit and dairy left out in the sun. It soured in her nostrils.
Horror struck her as, under its putrid notes, it still smelled a bit like him.
She scrambled up, swinging the door open. It cast light into the room, and when she turned, she saw for the first time what he had looked like, washed of blood and soot, in daylight.
He was pale, his face sunken, and where he was burned had turned black and waxy. His cuts lay open, raised above the rest of his skin.
Although he was right there, it was his body and his face; he could have been just any fixture in the room. There was no presence left.
“Gods, no!” Val rushed to him, feeling every tear rush forward at once. Her heart thumped - or perhaps it did not beat at all? She could not tell, but it was in her chest, the tightness, the dread with which she’d awoken, blossoming and devastating.
He was right there.
Right there.
But he wasn’t. And that did not make any sense to her. He had been there so long, every day, his voice, his smell, the feeling of his fingertips - his lips had all been there. How, then, if he was right here, was he gone?
“YOU CAN'T!” She screamed, her voice cracking as she coughed. Her hand flew to grab at his chin, but before making contact, she yanked it back. She did not want to touch him; this could not have been real. It was some trick, some way, it was the Nothing that had come, and it was luring…
But, it had been a man. It was not the Nothing-touched. It had not been a creature, monster, or a gheist. It had been a man who took him. A sword that had put him to death…
To death.
Death.
He was dead.
As if in waves, the tears and involuntary thrashes came. She lay on the ground, her face wet and snot coming from her nose. She tasted earth as she pressed her face into the dirt floor –anything but this. Anything but to be inside herself right then. If she could push just hard enough, perhaps she would sink into the ground herself and fall fall fall away from there.
“You didn’t have to!” She screamed suddenly at him, sitting up. “You didn’t have to do it! We could have ran! We ran!”
She pulled herself closer. She could not see him through her tears. And, through the glaze they cast over her eyes, he might have had an expression on his face—one of an apology, regret, anger, annoyance - anything. But when the tears cleared, he was still there, face unmoved.
Vacant.
“It was not your choice!” She cried. “It was not yours to make! It was ours! It was always ours, and you took it from me!”
She fell to the ground beside him again.
“We could have run…” She gasped, her cheek against the cold ground. “Why did you remain? How could you?”
She lay so for some time until the tears had dried on her stinging face. When she sat up, dirt had caked her skin and hair. She did not look at him.
“Take it.” She said, her voice trembling. “Take what is inside me. You kept telling me, ‘There's power in a name, Val,’ so take it now!”
As if looking for something, her eyes darted to and from. Names, gods, names. She tried to remember all that she had known. Even in her village back home, the superstitious folk had named their sons and daughters powerful names because the gods would hear powerful names when they prayed.
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“Hava.” She breathed. “Beathan… I name him Calian, I name him all these things now live. I give him to you. I name him for you. Take him, take his name and live!”
Desperately, she recited any name she knew to have meant life.
“Chayim! Just live!”
She dropped her head between her knees, resting it on his thigh.
“Gods, just live.”
But she got no answer.
No one had been in the room to give her one.
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Aditi walked slowly down the gravel road, her rider limp in the saddle. Val barely had a hold on the reins, her eyes absent and focused almost unblinking on something off in the distance. Something that did not exist.
Most of the direction had been of the horse’s whim.
Earlier that day, she set his bag underneath his head - propping it up. She placed his left hand on his chest and, in it, tucked a dried Carduus - a preserved plumeless thistle - to ward off the beis.
When she crossed the other over it, she laid Erlan’s broken compass against it, praying that the brothers would find each other, void of sin, in the place beyond. She tucked the Ambrosia Bloom far away, its wilted shape unbearable to see.
His once beautiful face.
It was still beautiful, marred only by the price he paid for her life. She kissed him one last time before she left, and as she closed her eyes, she imagined it had been on the threshold of the cottage - and he had just come home, smelling of sawdust.
“I love you…” She whispered to him, “I promise, where you go, I’ll go. I’ll find you there.”
She packed his blanket in her bag and tucked hers around him. She pulled it up and over his head.
Val barred the door again, and with Aditi’s might, they brought a large piece of charred wood to slump against the door. No man, woman, or beast coming this way could disturb him now. He, most of anyone and all, had deserved peace.
That is not the only way to get lost.
The gravel rolled and fell away beneath the horse’s feet. Aditi’s ears perked up at the chatter of people riding a wagon in the distance. Val did not hear it, not even as they passed her going the other way. There had not been a point now to hide. No point in staying off the road. Johannes and his men were dead. They were searching for a man and a woman. There was just a woman now, traveling alone.
And alone she was.
It was as if the world grew vast, the skies higher and seas deeper, colder, and she had been suspended somewhere between them—nothing but the immenseness of everything in this world that was not him.
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At first, there were signposts. Then, people began appearing on and around the road.
Houses, although destitute, had children sitting on benches out front or playing among the patches of vegetables nearby. Then, the city wall itself rose in the distance. They stood as tall as the roofs of the houses beyond. The gates wide open, Aditi kept her steady pace as she had for many leagues already, her rider seemingly confused to see the stone walls and plastered sides of the buildings inside.
A light of life lit up in Val’s eyes ever so slightly as they passed the buildings here. The windows were latticed in blue, with decorations of roosters and flowers - in the tradition of the North. They were familiar to Val.
They rode forward until Aditi stopped just an inch away from a merchant’s cart, the barrels inside filled with apples. She snorted and reached for one when Val seemed to wake up and pull the reins back, making the mare back up. The merchant came rushing around the cart and gave her a sour look.
“Could I buy four?”
She sat down on the first surface that was not dirty, sticky, or next to a pile of garbage - a task that had been fairly difficult to accomplish. It was a short pony wall that separated one building’s courtyard from another. In front of her was a fairly busy street, vendors on the other side.
The apple had been the first thing she had eaten in days, and still, she had no appetite for it. The other three went to the horse, who crunched through them without a care in the world - sending bits of juice flying to the cobblestones and all over Val’s leg.
A man across the street walked by rapidly; he wore a hood. For a moment, she thought it to be Marat. He was about the right height. Her heart jumped as if she had momentarily forgotten. But, as he crossed the street toward - and then past - her, it was apparent that her mind had been playing tricks on her.
It came in waves.
“Gods…” She whispered, willing herself not to cry.
Another bite of apple.
Another man. But this one, he was not even Marat’s height. Yet, there was some semblance of recognition. He’d been walking toward her, preoccupied with something he had inside a bag. He had not even seen her. And yet, she watched him with a furrowed brow—the square face, the upturned nose, and ears that stuck out from under his flattened hat...
“Ura…” She muttered in disbelief.
It was, but it was not.
She’d known a boy, and here was a man who had resembled him, as if you took the boy and had him drawn anew.
Her voice seemed loud enough for him to hear because he turned and then jerked his head from one side to the other - looking for anyone who could have said his name. His eyes passed Val, but not a drop of recollection crossed them.
She shook off whatever daze it was that stunned her into silence before.
“Ura!” Louder now, and he looked right at her nervously as if afraid that she would ask him for money - or worse yet - try to sell him something.
She jumped off the stone wall and took a few steps forward, suddenly becoming aware of how dirty and dingy her clothes had been. She looked like a beggar girl standing in someone else’s yard with clearly someone else’s horse.
She held up a hand when he tried to step away hurriedly.
“Valeria!” She shouted. At this, he slowed. “My name… Valya… Valeushka…”
Once, he had called her that.
She wondered if he remembered. And, with the speed he turned around - his face paling in recollection- she knew he did.
When they parted, they’d already spent an hour in hurried conversation.
Val asked him feverishly every question she had wanted to ask for the past fourteen years. He told her that her mother was alive and well but that her grandmother had passed peacefully in her sleep.
Then, he had to go; his wife had been home with their three kids - they were sick, and he was in town to get them some stronger medicines. But, before he’d gone, he drew a map for her detailing the way to the village. He explained each street that led to the correct gates - each turn on every fork in the road. She stared at it in disbelief.
“I’m glad to see you…” he trailed off, already walking away, and his eyes gave her disheveled form a look, “alive.”
“I’ll see you soon…” She muttered back.
They left the gates when it was already beginning to get dark, riding through the night. By morning, the vaguely familiar patches of thick trees had turned into thick, thick forests on either side of the road. She knew them as if from a long passed dream. And, as she saw the final fork in the road that would lead her there - the heart-wrenching thought had come to her.
After all, Marat would never know that he brought her home.
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