Sky in the Deep(56)

I tried to think about it even though I knew the answer. I had no idea. I shook my head in answer. “Who was the first?”

The air between us changed—the space growing small.

“A man in my first fighting season.” He scratched his chin. “I was fighting with my father and he knocked him down. He held him up and told me to cut his throat. So I did.” He looked back at me from the top of his gaze.

“How old were you?” My voice quieted in the dark.

“Twelve. You?”

“Eleven.”

He didn’t ask who it was or how it happened and I was grateful. It was the only time I remember killing someone and feeling something other than survival. I’d been scared. And I’d been deeply ashamed of my fear.

I’d fallen asleep in our tent that night with hot tears falling down my face and my father didn’t say anything. He prayed with me for my mother’s soul and then he sat beside my cot until I fell asleep. The next day, I killed four. The day after that, three. And I didn’t cry about it ever again. But I could feel them now—those same tears that had fallen down my face as a young girl. They were fresh and raw, seeping from the same place within me. Hot against cold.

“What is it?” Fiske looked at me.

One tear rolled down my cheek and I let it. “It’s a strange feeling,” I whispered.

“What is?”

“Being so alone. I’ve never felt like this.” I looked around the dark home. “Even in Fela, I still had the Aska.” I sniffed. “I was going through each day to get back to them. But they’re just … gone. I feel like…” I caught the sob in my chest and swallowed it, suddenly embarrassed.

He leaned in closer to me. “Like what?”

My eyes ran over his face. The scruff on his jaw. The dark lashes around his blue eyes. “Like I’m a flame about to burn out.” My voice was so thin it sounded like I could reach out and break it with my fingers. “Like I’m going to disappear.”

The room quieted, the space between us sucking everything into it. His eyes dropped down to my mouth and the burning in my chest ran into the rest of my body. It found every dark, hidden place and lit it on fire.

I tried to breathe, but it wouldn’t come. I was underwater, trapped beneath that frozen lake. And as soon as he moved, it broke loose and the sound of my breath rang in my ears so loud that every thought ran like a retreating army. The heat of him hit me just before his lips touched mine and I froze, trying to feel it. That stinging, throbbing pulse beneath my skin.

I lifted my hands slowly, opening my eyes to look at him. My fingertips touched the lines on the sides of his face and he pulled his mouth from mine, looking back at me like he wasn’t sure I was still there.

His breath touched me.

Somewhere I didn’t know I could feel.

Somewhere I didn’t know existed.

“Fiske.” I said his name in a voice that wasn’t mine and it hung between us in the silence.

He pressed his lips together. “What?”

I stood at the threshold of the thought. The thought of Fiske that had been buried alive in the back of my mind. I looked over the edge of it, peering down into the darkness. It called to me. It screamed my name.

And I jumped.

I found his mouth with mine again, the breaths coming like the waves in a storm now—crashing into me and pulling me under. I grabbed hold of his armor vest and his hands pressed into me, pulling me forward. I slid across the stone, trying to get closer to him.

The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up.

I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.

His lips moved down to the hollow at my neck and when he stopped, breathing there, his chest rising and falling against me, the silence came back. And it was just long enough for it to erupt again. That pain.

I fell into him, the weight so heavy that I couldn’t draw another breath. His arms slid around me and I pushed my face into his shoulder. I wept. A dark, sacred cry rising up out of me. He held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn’t feel. I cried until I couldn’t think.

The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.





THIRTY-SIX


I woke up in my father’s cot with the blanket tucked in around me as the seabirds called out over the water and the smell of the dead found me again. It brought me rushing back. Back to Hylli.

I sat up, swinging my legs to the ground, and my head pounded inside my skull. I rubbed my swollen face, looking around the small house. It was empty.

The sun was already halfway up the sky, sending the light casting down through the house in beams hazed with ash and dust. I pulled my sheath and belt on and walked down the path to the dock with my arms wrapped tightly around me.

The dirt turned to gravel and when I reached the water, the familiar crunch of my boots over the round black stones broke the silence of the village. I pulled the clean sea air coming off the water into my lungs and crouched down, scooping it up and splashing it over my face. My fingers raked back into my hair and I looked out to the horizon.

The green of the water hugging the shore melted into blue as it deepened. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It was just the same. The same sea. The same beach. But then I looked back to the village. And the truth resurfaced in my mind. Nothing would ever be the same again.