Chapter Five

“Well,” Tamara began, keeping her voice low and collected, “you remember my sister. She was calm and dutiful; I believe you yourself once went so far as to call her obsequious.”

Yes. I remember your sister. I remember you, as well. For instance, I remember the day you left me and gave your word that you would never come back.

“I’m not coming back,” she protested. “I’m here on behalf of my sister. She’s dead.”

Naturally.

“Naturally?” Tamara asked, still keeping the usual shrillness out of her voice. “There was nothing natural about her death.”

I mean, naturally she has died after trauma like what she has experienced.

Tamara paused, keeping her thoughts off her face. “You knew, then.”

I can feel when one of mine dies. I did some investigation into the circumstances surrounding her. It was a terrible tragedy, but losing life to give life is as strong a fate as dying on the field of battle.

“The life she gave was not worth her sacrifice, and she did not give it willingly,” Tamara said coldly.

Is there something wrong with the child?

“The child sapped her mind until, when he was born, she was little more than a well preserved corpse possessed by a spirit.”

You have harsh feelings against this boy then?

Tamara hesitated. “I am apathetic; I care only about my sister’s final wishes,” she said. “In her last lucid moments, she told me how deeply she hoped for a good home for her son. He is in my care now, but you’ve known me since childhood; I am not a mother.”

It’s too late for that, Tamara. You cannot hide your emotions as well as you think you can; I can feel your hatred for this boy. You don’t mean to bring him here because there is a better home here than with you. You bring him here because you can’t stand to look at him.

“That is not the case,” Tamara said, trying not to take the bait and lose her composure. “Of course you’re too wise for me to fool you into thinking that I want this child as my own. My intentions for coming here are more than what I’ve said. But they do not have to do with any emotions I have in or out of this boy’s favor. I am scared for the safety of people Out There who come into contact with this boy and his obviously formidable powers.”

You think that because your sister died due to complications in childbirth, her son is obviously the culprit? Do you realize how often these things—

“My sister went mad. She did not just die.” Tamara’s voice went flat and she struggled to keep from gritting her teeth.

Silence.

“I am asking for help,” Tamara said. “Before I left, you said I needed to do that more often.”

You’re not asking me to help. You’re asking me to relieve you of a burden.

“He will be safe with you and the rest of the world will be safe without him.”

What is his name?

Tamara blinked. “What?”

What is the boy’s name?

“He—he doesn’t have one. He was just born and his mother is dead.”

What was his father’s name?

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know him.”

And you didn’t name the child yourself?

“No. I don’t…I am not….my daughter’s name is Mond because of the moons in her eyes. I don’t name things well.”

You have a daughter?

“I took her in two years ago.”

I thought you said you were not fit to be a mother.

“I’m not. Mond and I are only together temporarily. Until I can find her a better home.”

A pause. If I am to take the boy, I will take the girl as well. As payment.

Tamara’s eyes widened in shock. “Payment? In what way does a child ever count as currency?”

You don’t want the boy. You do want the girl.

“I just told you, I’m finding a different home for Mond.”

I can feel your lies, Tamara. You think the girl is worth something. Either I take both or I take neither. Come back to me once you’ve decided.

Tamara could hear the finality in his words. Even though she didn’t want to end the conversation—it didn’t feel over for her part—she knew there was nothing she could do now. She turned and left the clearing. She had a long, cheerless walk through the once-familiar hills. She had forgotten the rank smell of decay.

Chapter Three

Dinner with Geneva’s lashlings was worse than what Ben had prepared himself for. The food, though somewhat dry for his taste, wasn’t the worst part of the meal. The worst part of the meal was that he was reminded that, wherever he went, he experienced the same chasm of loneliness that it seemed others had found a way to cross.

Living with Gus and Martha wasn’t always painful—Martha was his sister and Gus had told Ben on several occasions that he felt lashed just as much to Ben as he was to Martha. But going to dinner with lashed couples, watching the way they interacted with each other under the full and safe assumption that the strength of the relationship could not fade no matter the actions of either side…something about that unsettled Ben and always made him feel inadequate.

Living in Medias, he had grown accustomed to not remembering the beginnings of things. The same darkness that clouded his past—When did he first come to live with Martha and Gus or was it they who came to live with him? Why was Tess not his sister when he felt so much closer to her than to Martha? Was he really related to anyone? Who and where are their parents?—clouded everyone around him as well, so he could get no answers from anyone if he ever asked why he didn’t have a lash.

Everyone at the dinner party was lashed, most of them, like Gus and Martha, had been together for years, but the two couples throwing the party hadn’t been lashed for very long. But neither of those time spans meant anything. The lashlings couldn’t remember a time before they were lashed any more than Gus and Martha could. Time was not an object, which was both the answer and the question of why Ben could never be lashed.

After the party, Ben told his family he was going to go catfish fishing on the edge of the hills and wandered his separate way, knowing that he wasn’t fooling either of them. He did walk to the edge of the hills and sit by the catfish pond, but instead of fishing, he lay back and watched the darkening clouds pass overhead, covering and uncovering the stars as they opened bleary eyes to the night.

“Ben?”

He blinked, sighed, smiled. “Yeah.”

“Fancy seeing you here,” Tess said quietly, coming to stand over him and let her curly hair hang around her face and frame her against the sky.

Ben patted the ground next to him, and she took the cue to lie down at his side. “What brings you all the way out here?”

“The loosening,” he said. “You?”

“The same. It got to the point where I couldn’t remember a time where I wasn’t cleaning house, even though I knew there had to have been one.”

“There was one. I remember it,” Ben assured her. “That time when I saw you in the market and you told me that you didn’t have anything to do and that you’d just left the house because you could.”

“Oh right. I remember that. Thanks.” He heard her hair rub against the grass and felt her breath against his ear when she spoke again. “What was wrong with you?”

“Dinner party,” he said. “Couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t eat poorly seasoned food for dinner every night.”

She laughed lightly and turned her face back to the sky. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah.”

“I was in a shop today where some musicians were playing what they called ‘cloud music,’” Tess said.

Ben laughed once loudly. “What did it sound like?”

She pointed to three wisps that caught the gray-blue of twilight. “It’s hard to describe, but it really sounded like them.”

Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I want to leave Medias, Tess.”

She let her hand fall into her lap. They sat in silence for a few minutes before she rolled onto her knees and brushed the dead leaves off of her back. Ben closed his eyes and bit his lip as he listened to her walk off.
He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t wish that she wouldn’t have been able to walk away.

Chapter Two

“This…this thing,” Tamara yelled in disgust, pointing to the writhing creature on the bed, “is not, cannot be, and will never become my sister. My sister was a woman of poise and perfection and this thing is three parts animal.”

“I don’t understand,” the doctor called over the screams of the woman on the bed. “The baby is perfectly healthy. He was extremely large for a newborn—”

“She was in intense pain through labor,” the midwife offered.

“She has been degenerating into this mass of worthlessness for the past nine months,” Tamara yelled. “She started out the beaming lady she always was and slowly lost her mind to that vampiric demon-child—”

“You’re not suggesting the fetus did this,” the doctor said sternly.

“I know it did. It took until she had nothing left to give. It sucked her dry until she turned into this half-dead urchin…”

Suddenly the baby screamed. Not the regular cry of a needy child, but a shrill, hawk-like scream. Everyone in the room went silent, even its mother, who rolled to her side, laying her hair in the pool of sweat that had collected on the pillow.

The scream droned on, higher and longer that the baby’s tiny lungs should have been able to support it. The mother joined with a low, guttural moan, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

Tamara, who had been on the verge of angry, hot tears for the past several hours, now let go and wailed, running from the room.

The sterile white hallway outside was short for the number of strides it took Tamara to barrel down it. And then she was out into the brisk dawn, the sun sluggishly pulling itself over the distant hills of Medias. Looking into those hills, Tamara let out a scream of her own: frustrated, pining, and fearful.

The child must die, her first thoughts.

You could never kill a newborn baby, her second thoughts.

My sister will die soon, herself.

That child will be mine to care for.

Mond will be his sister and he will kill her.

He will do to me what he has done to my sister.

Someone has to take this child away from the world, strip him of any power, and keep us all safe.

The hills were scarcely more than knolls, especially from this distance, but Tamara knew the secrets of Medias, and it knew hers, so the size of those hills was something she felt and didn’t see.

She turned around to the midwife lodge and judged how much time she had to herself, then turned back and sprinted towards those hills. Someone had to do something, and it wouldn’t be her. She had done too many things in her lifetime. It was someone else’s turn now. Someone who couldn’t say no.