Bring Me Their Hearts(6)
A fox watches me from a ridge nearby, curious and fire-colored. I wave. It doesn’t move, fixed on me. What an attentive audience! Those are so rare these days. I clear my throat.
“At this point, I’m sure you want to ask—I hate Nightsinger, don’t I? I mean, anyone sensible would hate the person who has her life in the palm of her hand. That’s reasonable—expected, even!”
The fox blinks blankly at me.
“The answer…” I raise a finger like I’m a polymath and the fox is my student. “Is yes. And no. Because nothing in life is simple. It’s all utter maddening chaos and contradicting emotions.”
The fox blinks again. I throw my hands up.
“Don’t look at me! Take it up with the gods if you’re so mad about it!”
The fox is, understandably, not as incensed as I am. It slinks away over the ridgeline without so much as a thank-you for my gracious life lessons.
I adjust the basket higher on my hip and sigh. “Talking to animals like they’re people who can understand you was last year, Zera. Let’s try to think of something new and more rewarding to pass the rest of our immortal life with, all right? Maybe something that doesn’t make you seem mad.”
I start walking again. The answer to the fox’s question—my question—is this: I don’t blame Nightsinger for taking my heart, no matter how it’s twisted my body and soul. How could I? She saved my life from the bandits who murdered my family, from the darkness of death itself, and so I serve her. I’m a monster, not a complete arsehole. I know that one good turn deserves another. It’s just been a very, very long turn. This palatial forest, this empty chest of mine, these memories of what I’ve done—I’ve been stuck with them all for three years. I can’t remember much about my life before my death—no Heartless can. Those memories fade when our hearts are ripped from our chests. But I remember every second of what happened during my death. And after.
I wait, and wait. And like a faithful, awful dog, the dark voice in my head comes out to play.
Five, it hisses at me, like a snake’s scales sliding against midnight grass. You killed five of them. One old, one young, one with no left eye, one who never screamed (not once), and one with a bad smile that didn’t last long. You wish he lasted longer. You wish Nightsinger turned him into a Heartless, too, unkillable like you, suffering forever like you—
I might not have a heart, but I still have a stomach, and it churns violently. I hurry my steps like I can leave what I did behind, the trees leaning away and into me, creating a path otherwise inaccessible to the outside world. Their branches shudder, roots trembling and bark groaning with the effort. They conceal Nightsinger willingly—unlike me, they had a choice to join her.
Somewhere between the shifting trees and my own self-pity walks a beautiful young boy in an orange tunic. “You didn’t kill the celeon, Zera,” he accuses.
Just seeing the boy’s outline makes the awful voice dim, lessen. Finally, something other than the past to focus on. I flip my hair haughtily.
“Yes, well, I don’t do a lot of things. Wear the color puce, for instance, or obsess over swords. Also, kill perfectly innocent assassins.”
The boy snorts, unimpressed. He’s younger than me, and he’ll always look that way, until Nightsinger releases his heart back to him and he can start growing again. His curly black hair falls in his moss eyes, his skin a deep umber and smooth with baby fat. His full name is Crav il’Terin Maldhinna, born of Mald the Ironfist. He’s a Warprince of the Endless Bog, and the third and final Heartless of the witch Nightsinger, but I have my own nickname for him that he appreciates and cherishes.
“Look at you, Crabby.” I walk up to him, measuring the top of his head against my shoulder. “You’re permanently almost as tall as I am.”
“Fall into a pit,” he retorts.
“Gladly.” I pat his arm. “Just as soon as I’ve had something to eat. Nightsinger said she left food—did you have some?”
He wipes his mouth on his arm, his sleeve coming away a bit red. “A little. I’m not that hungry.”
“Nonsense. We’re always hungry.”
“Well, I’m not.” He thrusts his proud chin forward. He became a Heartless only a year ago—he still fights it in the most childish of ways, in ways I used to. “Now answer me. Why didn’t you kill that celeon? He attacked you.”
We walk together, the trees parting one last time. In a violently purple thicket of foxgloves and nightshade sits a round stone house no bigger than any village house nor any fancier. The roof of the cottage is magic-touched canvas to keep heavy rains and snows off our heads. A tin chimney puffs smoke into the air. The few windows of the cottage glow warm with buttery candlelight. I don’t know what it is about this clearing, but fireflies adore it like no other place in the forest—hanging in the air as gently pulsing clusters of turquoise glimmers.
“Not everything that attacks me has to die, Crav,” I say patiently. I don’t expect him to understand—the people of the Endless Bog decide everything in their lives by a strict code of martial rules.
“The number of my wounds is the number of my enemies dead.” He recites his favorite Endless Bog saying. I laugh and gather my bloodstained skirts to walk up the few steps to the covered door.