The Human Experience

Quarter P, day 19, 3400.

Today I ascked asked mom what greef grief was. It is something hurting so bad inside it is worse than body pain she said. She said grief happens when someone you love dyes dies.

She said grief happened when I threw the baby out the window.

I asked if she had grief because I had to go to the place for bad kids.

She said yes.

I think I can tell when someone is lying now.

Two P, day 9, 3402.

I killed someone today. It was just poison. I put it where Orcadis told me since he’s not immune like me and he can’t go into those Voice-ridden places, as he calls them.

Mother used to say killing was a ticket to Pyrrhus’s Pits. I asked Orcadis if I would be sent there. He said no because it wasn’t really killing it was liberation since the Voices take over your identity. But then wasn’t I still killing the Voice, I said? Orcadis laughed and said Voices aren’t alive so we can kill them.

I wonder if my killing made that person’s family feel grief. I know grief can lead to revenge and hate so I think soon people will hate me and want to kill me too.

Nine-Quarter P, day 27, 3407.

Orcadis was staring at her picture again. Honestly, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be so consumed by a person. Aren’t there other women in the world? She’s not even that attractive, from what I can gather, though I’ve never seen the picture properly. Great tits, though. Must have some Inaulti blood or something (that’d explain why Kaed’s such an underdeveloped little pipsqueak).

Anyways, it’s strange to see Orcadis experiencing grief. I’d always thought he was above such things. I guess he’s pretty weak, then, just like everyone else.

Funny that he makes a living off of censoring thoughts but he can’t censor feelings.

Ten-Quarter P, day 2, 3415.

My surgery was two T-turns ago, but I’d never really felt grief until today. Vara got Infected. Mother was right. It’s like some animal is living inside me, gnawing at me. I don’t know how to make it go away.

The things people said are all true. Grief does bring hate: I hate the Voices more than ever. It does bring a desire for revenge: I want to destroy those motherfuckers.

But nobody told me grief could also bring sacrifice, because if I could change places with her I’d do it in a heartbeat.

It’s not altruism, though. Seeing her safe would make me happy, first of all. I know that. So I still think altruism doesn’t exist.

One P, day 33, 3417.

I don’t know if this will be legible. The tears keep smearing the ink, but I can’t stop them.

I can’t write this. That would be like confirming it. No, I’m not ready. It’s been two weeks but I still can’t.

One P, day 33, 3417 – take two.

Alright, it’s Lykus now. With a steady hand I can say that Varali is dead. It was her own fault. Hector told her not to climb things for the very reason that she could have a seizure. Well, she did it, and to tell the truth I regret her loss. The kid was always there. I used to think her insistence to be with me all the time was so tiring it was almost worth tossing her from another window. But now I find myself turning to share a thought and there’s nobody there. It’s different. And not pleasantly so.

Delia has all but disappeared since Vara’s death. She doesn’t come home the nights I’m Hector. I honestly don’t know where she sleeps. I don’t even know if she’s grieving. If she is, she’s grieving like I (Lykus) am. I know comforting others isn’t among her strengths. The woman is useless in serious situations, and frankly I’m pleased she has the decency to keep from forced jokes. She knows she’d be no help to Hector, so she avoids him. Some mentalist, huh? I get it, but Hector has wanted to do nothing but cry on her ever-absent shoulder, that weakling. He resents her absence.

That’s not to say she hasn’t helped with the formalities of it all. Oh, she was on that like an Iron Helm on one of the Infected. Hector’s driven senseless with grief, acting like some blithering fool, and I’ve been coming out too infrequently to deal with all that. Delia organized and paid for the funeral. Delia wrote the eulogy (she says it was horrid, but I managed to get a good three flagons of mead into Hector before it started, so I honestly don’t remember).

Neighbours say Hector tried to cast himself onto the pyre when they set it aflame. I don’t know about that. I mean, he was wasted. Maybe he staggered and almost fell on. Anyways, Del caught him (him, me? Who knows anymore?) before any real damage could be inflicted.

I’m spent. Hector’s grief is exhausting. I can’t stand being him. My eyes burn like hell from his tears, my throat is sore from his cries. I need to fix this before we both go mad.

Orcadis will have to pay for doing this to me, but first I need him to put me right again. Del and I are leaving for the Iron Keep tomorrow.

The dizziness is setting in. I’m going to prepare some warm spiced wine before Hector takes over. Gods, it’s gonna be a long night.

The suns throbbed down on the turquoise blanket spreading to the horizon. Waves licked the ferry’s moss-covered sides as it cleaved through the sea, suns flashing white off the roused waters in its wake. Though the salty sea-wind tempered high summer’s heat, most passengers had retreated to the ventilated indoors. Del was glad. She had this freedom all to herself. She’d enjoy the rush of waves and the wind streaming through her hair. They could have their indoor prison.

She’d have hers soon enough.

Her forearms rested on the railing, fingers loosely knitted as though in prayer. But she wasn’t praying. She was trying to stop her hands from shaking.

Prayer. If she’d waited for the Star-Gods to answer her prayers, she’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere.

She spared another glance north. That hideous, tumour-like mound still swelled on the horizon. By now she could just see the vague shape of the citadel’s towers rising from the artificial island.

Fort Neoma. Capital of Vangarde, site of that godsforsaken Iron Keep and its abomination of a leader.

Del swallowed. What madness had driven her here? Last P she’d been on the cusp of abandoning Hector and Varali to escape being captured by the Helms. Now she was going to march right into their stronghold. Why did she always have to hold her breath and plunge headfirst into her fears? For what? To prove what? That Hector was wrong and she could solve her problems instead of running away from them?

Closure. The word drifted to the fore of her mind as if it had a will of its own. She balked to acknowledge the truth in it. For all that she was determined to make sure Greathelm Durant didn’t brainwash Hector into becoming the Wolf again, that was only a part of it. She couldn’t help Hector before helping herself, and to help herself she needed to retrieve the past the Greathelm had stolen from her. No matter what it cost, she’d get it back.

A presence rippled the air behind her. Del pushed off the rail, attuning her senses, hoping it wasn’t –

But yes, it was. Those long, melancholic wavelengths flowed over her and she knew it was Hector. They weren’t as oppressive today, bouncing off her in a jerky, uncoordinated fashion. She tried to string his thoughts together, but they only revealed one thing coherently:

He was drunk. At midday. Again.

“Hold the railing,” she said without turning. “I can’t imagine the rocking ship is doing anything for your balance.”

Hector gave a soft moan. Then a sheet of black hair whipped into her peripheral vision as he collapsed against the railing and retched. Del’s heart clenched. She drew his hair back, holding it out of the way for him to vomit into the waters. Finally, when he could no longer dry-retch for exhaustion, he lowered his forehead against the rail, groaning.

What to do? Pat his back? What if he wouldn’t want to be touched in such a state? Del sure wouldn’t. Nothing was worse than being coddled and hushed and lulled in the midst of that grief.

There were no words to give. It wouldn’t be okay. He wouldn’t be alright. She didn’t know if Varali was in a better place, a worse one, or had just stopped existing.

She’ll always be with you, no matter what. That was what people were supposed to say. It was bullshit. And somehow the particles that made up her body will continue existing didn’t sound as satisfying.

So Del shrank away from him. She hated herself for it, then hated herself more when Hector drew in on himself as if recoiling from her rejection.

Damn you, his thoughts read, their accusing energy wafting over her. Damn you for being disgusted by the very creature you helped create.

It was a punch to the gut. She took another step back to escape the waves emanating from him. I’m not disgusted, she promised him silently. Not with anyone but myself.

She caught movement from the cabin. “Someone’s coming out on deck,” she whispered on impulse.

And hated herself more. Hector growled through his groans. ’Someone’s coming out on deck?’ she chided herself. Why not just tell him to tack on a smile so he won’t embarrass you?

The new arrival sauntered toward the railing, then stopped when he saw Hector. “Seasick, eh, comrade?” he said with fatherly concern, drawing up beside Hector. “Buck up, there! You’ll get your sea legs.”

And he did pat Hector’s back, with a wide, kind palm that didn’t look half as awkward as Del had imagined it with her own stiff hand.

“Oohwhee, you’re a bad case!”

Hector lifted his head, struggling to look at the man through hooded, red-veined eyes. “This i-is unbearable,” he said, squeezing the words from his swollen throat. “I can’t t-take i-it.”

The old man leaned close and a shadow of gravity crossed his features. “Listen here, boy,” he said softly. “I seen ya around the ship, taking swigs from that hip-flask o’ yours. That ain’t gonna help it, see. It’s like becoming a new man. You gotta learn to walk all over again, learn to keep your balance an’ all. You gotta navigate your new surroundings without no crutches, else you’ll fall o’erboard and drown.”

Hector’s eyes wandered for a moment, and then he forced them to rest on the old man. His bloodless lips twitched up slightly. “Thank y-you,” he whispered.

Del retreated farther, but not before feeling the longer, more even wavelengths of gratitude rolling off him. The man’s moustache pulled up as he smiled. He clasped Hector’s shoulder and retreated to the cabin.

Even a stranger gave better consolation than she did, she realized with a pang. And he’d been talking about seasickness.

“It hurts, Del.” Hector said it so softly she almost thought it was the wind. He stared straight ahead at the sea. “I see her everywhere.”

This was her chance. Del tried to pluck up her courage. She should say something good here, something meaningful, something to return the light to the forest-green eyes she loved and feared all at once.

“Maybe you should take your tranquilizers?”

Crap. The words registered before she’d finished stinking up the air with them. Why had the Quintet even given her a tongue? She spun away and bit down on her knuckles, hard. With her fist in her mouth she at least couldn’t make things worse.

When she turned Hector was unwrapping the syringe he always carried with him. Light reflected harshly off the needle at its tip.

He let it slip through his fingers. It spiralled down and was swallowed by the waves.

Del gasped. “Hector!”

“It makes me feel like an animal,” he said simply, slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and ambled in a zigzag back to the cabin. She yearned to follow, but couldn’t imagine Hector wanted her loathsome presence. No, she’d best stay away now. She’d ruined it already.

Del didn’t withdraw to their cabin until first sunset, when Pyrrhus flashing in the wine-stained sky had started giving her a headache. She found Hector collapsed on the cot in only his breeches, his limbs spread haphazardly and one arm pulled through the collar of his shirt.

The air around him was still. Del clicked the door shut behind her, stood pressed against the wall feeling her stomach lurch as the cabin seesawed with the ferry’s motion. Slowly, she walked over and lowered herself on the cot’s edge.

Squeeeeek.

She winced, but Hector didn’t stir. Even the furniture knew she was overstepping her boundaries by trying to offer comfort beyond brain chemicals.

Still she curled up beside him, laying her head softly on his arm and feeling his chest rise and fall evenly against her. The smell of scotch clung to his hair, his skin. Del tilted her face up to his. Stubble sprouted along his jaw and down his neck, reminding her that Lykus had been absent for two days to shave it. His obstinate fast had depressed his cheeks, letting shadows cling to the contours of his face as Pyrrhus reached through the window to paint his complexion golden. Indeed his face looked more pointed than ever compared to the wide Ferralli forehead. His black eyebrows, normally arched, were always furrowed in pain these days.

She reached to push Hector’s hair from his shoulder, revealing the imprinted black wolf with two red pins for eyes. “I only wanted to help,” she whispered. “I thought I could fix you, but I made it worse. So many T-turns spent studying mentalism under the most gifted chirurgeon and I still stink at it.”

Del arranged his hair back over the wolf-head, covering its horrible judging eyes. Hector may blame her, but who else had seen him as anything but a monster? Orcadis Durant? The name sent shivers of disdain through her. Yes, he’d taken Lykus from that correction facility, raised him and provided for him, but only in the way an executioner polishes and sharpens an axe.

Del had found him and brought him home like the pigeon with the broken wing she’d nursed as a ten-turn-old. And the orphaned basset hounds after that, and the abandoned kitten with its puss-crusted eyes swollen shut. That had been the last straw, that kitten. Its mewls had failed to move her mother, who’d shrieked and chased it out with a broom and thrown Delia into a scorching bath all within the hour, enumerating the diseases such a creature could have carried as she scrubbed her daughter’s arms with that horrible hog-hair brush.

Maybe Del was still that ten-turn-old, only now she was trying to patch up conscience-lacking mass-murderers instead of pigeon wings.

Maybe she wished someone would have taken her in, too. But they’d let her drag herself through the dirt, broken and battered, until she finally hauled herself to her own damned feet. She only wanted to be the splint nobody had ever provided her. That way Hector could heal properly, not bent into the mangled shape of his injuries as she was.

A low sigh vibrated against Del’s ear. “I’m awake,” Hector said. “I guess you want to jump up and run away, huh? Don’t worry, I won’t trouble you.” He turned his head away from her on the pillow. “I won’t cry.”

Her throat tightened. Why the hell hadn’t she detected the change in his thought wavelengths? This was why animals were better companions than humans. The pigeon had cooed and pecked her cheek affectionately. It had taken the broken love she’d offered and been content with it. Eventually it had flown off. Hector wanted to lean his weight on her poorly-healed frame until she crumbled.

Delia jumped up and ran away.