Beware the Ills: Part 41
There is something cold in my mouth. It tastes gritty and bland. It’s dirt. I move my mouth slowly and carefully. That’s all I can do right now. My throat stings and bites me. Something heavy pushes on the inside of my skull. I’ve never felt like this, it’s a unique sensation. I move my jaw some more. Something long and fibrous fills my mouth.
It’s Blue’s hair.
After a few moments, I begin to stir under this lumpy mass. My body has been curled up; my knees are against my chest, and my arms are wrapped around them. I struggle slightly to move anything. My strength has been sapped because of the poison. It’ll come back. It didn’t kill me. I’ll cut you to pieces for this Haukter. I will. No more pity from me, no more pity. I breathe some more in the darkness, more strength rushes back to me. I can hear the wind bustling off the shore and the wrestling waves on rock. The sea turns half an island away from the river where we battled.
How did I get here?
I start to wriggle my arms free of the weight. My hands are around my ears. I touch something smooth and round behind my head. I panic.
“Blue, get off me, I need to move,” I gurgle.
No reply, only the crashing of the waves.
“Blue, please get off me, I can’t move. I can barely breathe.”
Still, only silence and wind.
I feel around the back of my head, and I know it’s his face. I try scratching his round cheeks in the darkness.
No response.
I’m angry. Strength flows into my chest, some sort of bloodlust, it presses against my ribs and stomach. It’s coming back, all that fitness in the cold, the hidden fire. I want to throw him off me, but he might be hurt. I can’t hurt him anymore. I start to uncurl gently and carefully. Something long and floppy falls to the ground on my left letting cold air inside. The frigid air startles me like acid. My skin is still sensitive from Haukter’s poison.
I’ll kill him for this. I have never wanted to kill something so ardently.
The weight on my back feels less and less. I’m regaining strength by the second, a vein-fire burning bright. I stand up slowly, letting the mass carefully slide off my back. The white daylight burns my eyes, and my head throbs for a simple, confused moment. A group of velvet trees tower over me, watching and spying. I’m in a clearing near the shore, just a few high hills away from the black water. I can see the waves shifting in the white spaces between the trees. I’m back on one knee. I stood up too fast, shadows bubbled in from the edges. The snow beneath my feet has been dyed in discs of red. My stomach sinks somewhere into my spine, and my throat tightens up into my jaw.
Behind me, Blue is dead.
His body has toppled over now that I have moved. His back sprawls a frosty and raw red. Every scrap of flesh, skin, and sinew has been hacked off. There are arrows, probably close to a hundred, peppering the fused chunks of red. They must’ve shot him after she’d cleaved his back with the ridiculous axe. Those arrows could never have pierced his hide without help. The damage to him shimmers disgustingly vivid.
Was this necessary?
He was the one, the only one who cared about me.
I pick up Blue’s massive paws. His iron nails are all gone, all torn out from slashing and clawing. The wind turns quiet while I look at his hands. They look gentle and soft without the nails, like they weren’t the hands of some beast.
I watch the snow falling carefully. The pace and flakes nearly match the flurries from before. Not that much time has passed. We confronted them in the early evening. This must be the next morning, the very edge of dawn. It took me that long to recover from Haukter’s poison? The invaders will be attacking the city now; they’ll have needed to recuperate from our battle. The Shingles probably stopped them in the dark. They’ll have waited for new daylight.
Blue’s round face looks so small against the red snow, so frail and little. He’s smiling beneath the fur and blood.
Why are you smiling, Blue?
I have never buried anything before. In fact, I have seldom known dirt. Only when a few of the encroachers have used weapons, which bite the earth in fiery explosions, have I known bursts of it. I’ve never buried the encroachers either. The corpses twisted and preserved by the island are too persuasive.
I drag his body close to the cliff, to where the trees break completely, and you can see the shore. The sun continues to fall lightly between the clouds. The daylight’s wandering randomly, like its gleam won’t take hold on the island.
Blue carried my sword too. He knew I would need it.
I cut through the ice and snow, and into the ground. It takes a few slashes till I can see the brown earth beneath it. The soil stirs dark and mangled with wormy roots. I use the point of my sword to cut through them and pull the dirt towards me. The hole barely widens, the ground’s hard and stubborn.
How did he hit me? Nobody has ever hit me from that far off.
I’m sweating, but it’s still cold and frosty. Why am I sweating? It’s dripping down into the hole. It’s still not wide enough, my sword’s too narrow. Why did they have to kill my animal? More sweat, more ripping the ground. I must widen it now. My sword is heavy. I drop it and tear off my black-hide gloves. They never should have hurt him. He wasn’t truly a threat. Why did they mutilate him so? They knew he would die, why would they maim him so?
More rage through me, I’m losing control as I dig. The hole has become massive, deep, and dark. I must relax. Life has misery. Misery has life. Blue will no longer be here. He’s no longer here and his pain’s over. I must finish the hole. They will hit the Shingles and walls next.
I relax. I breathe heavily. My hands are shaking.
I’ll be releasing my novel Beware the Ills in segments every Friday. You can find out more about the book right here, or check out Amazon’s info. I love this book. Happy to simply share it.
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