The Tearsmith: A Novel

The soul that snarls, hisses and scratches

Is usually the most vulnerable.

Violent and cruel.

That’s how he was described.

He manipulated when he wanted to bewitch, and was terrible on the flipside.

Rigel would show me the blood on his hands, the scratches on his face, the hardness in his eyes when he was hurting someone. He snarled at me to stay away, while his dark, mocking smile seemed to dare me to do the opposite.

He was not a prince. He was a wolf. Maybe all wolves looked a little enchanting, sensitive and prince-like, or else Little Red Riding Hood wouldn’t have fallen for it.

I knew I had to accept this.

There was no glimmer of light.

No hope.

Not with someone like Rigel.

Why couldn’t I understand him?

‘We’re ready,’ Norman called out. The day of departure had come too soon, and as I placed their luggage at the bottom of the stairs, I felt a strange and inexpressible sense of sadness.

I met Anna’s gaze and realised that it was because I wouldn’t see her again until late that evening.

I knew I was overly attached, but seeing them leaving gave me a strange sense of abandonment that made me feel like a little girl again.

‘Will you be all right?’ Anna worried. The idea of leaving us for a whole day concerned her, especially in this delicate stage of the adoption process. I knew she didn’t think it was a good time to leave, but I had reassured her that we’d see each other again that evening and that we’d still be here when she got back.

‘We’ll call you when we land.’ She rearranged her scarf and I nodded, trying to smile. Rigel was standing just a short distance behind me.

‘Remember to feed Klaus,’ Norman reminded us and, despite everything, I lit up. I looked uneasily down at the cat, who glared at me before showing us his butt and strutting away.

Anna squeezed Rigel’s shoulder and looked at me. She smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.

‘See you this evening,’ she said tenderly.

I stood there close to the stairs as they headed towards the door, and waved goodbye as they left.

The sound of the door locking echoed through the silent house.

Soon, I heard footsteps behind me. I only just had time to notice Rigel slipping upstairs. He had left without even deigning to spare me a glance.

I stared at where he had been for a moment, before turning around. I looked at the front door and let out a small sigh.

They’d be back soon…

I waited in the hall, as if they could reappear at any moment. I found myself sitting cross-legged on the floor, with no idea how I’d got there. I tapped my fingers along a groove in the wooden floor, and wondered where Klaus had got to.

I looked towards the living room and found him cleaning himself in the centre of the rug. His little head kept bobbing up and down and I couldn’t help but find him cute.

Maybe he wanted to play?

I crouched down and peered around the doorframe at him. Then, without letting him see me, I approached him on all fours.

He lowered his paw and turned to look at me. I immediately froze, staring at him like a little sphinx. He gave me an irritated look, his tail flicking from side to side.

He turned around, and I continued crawling towards him.

I froze as soon as he looked at me again. We started a game of statues, with him turning round and shooting glares at me and me freezing like a skittish beetle every time he did.

But when I got to the edge of the rug, Klaus meowed nervously and I decided to stop.

‘You don’t want to play?’ I asked, a little disappointed, hoping he’d turn around again.

But Klaus just flicked his tail a few more times and left. I leant back on my heels, a little disheartened, before deciding to go and study in my room.

As I got upstairs, I wondered when Anna and Norman would get to the airport. I was lost in my thoughts when something caught my attention. I turned around and looked down the hallway.

Rigel was standing still with his back turned to me and his head bowed slightly forward. I stopped when I saw how tensely he was leaning against the wall.

What was he doing?

My lips parted, uncertain of our closeness.

‘Rigel?’

I thought I could see the tendons in his wrist ever so slightly bulge, but he did not move.

I peered around, trying to see his face. The old floorboards creaked under my feet as I slowly tiptoed towards him. When I was close enough, I thought I could see him squeezing his eyes shut tight.

‘Rigel,’ I called again, cautiously. ‘Are you…all right?’

‘I’m great,’ he snarled back, without turning around. I almost flinched when I heard him spitting through his teeth like that.

I stopped, but not so much because of his hostile tone. No…I stopped because his lie was so disarming that it stopped me in my tracks.

I stretched a hand out towards him.

‘Rigel…’

As soon as my fingers brushed against his arm, he flinched away. Rigel suddenly turned, retreating away from me, his eyes fixed on mine.

‘How many times have I told you not to touch me?’ he hissed threateningly.

I stepped back. I watched him with anguished eyes. I felt more wounded inside than I cared to admit.

‘I just wanted…’ I started, then wondered why, why I never learnt. ‘… I just wanted to check you were all right.’

I then noticed that his pupils were slightly dilated.

Then his face changed.

‘Why?’ His mouth was twisted with a cruel, excessive sarcasm. It was disconcerting, even for him. ‘Oh, of course,’ he quickly corrected himself, clicking his tongue in a way that seemed designed to hurt me. ‘Because that’s what you’re like. That’s your nature.’

My hands tensed. I trembled.

‘Stop it.’

But he took a step towards me. He towered over me with that stinging, venomous, brutally cruel smile.

‘It’s stronger than you are, isn’t it? Your desire to help me?’ He whispered mercilessly, his eyes as sharp as needles. ‘You want to…fix me?’

‘Stop it, Rigel!’ I impulsively stepped backwards. My fists were clenched but I was always too delicate, too weak and powerless. ‘It seems like you do everything you can to…to…’

‘To?’ he prompted.

‘To make people hate you.’

To make me hate you, I wanted to blurt out. To make me, only me, hate you, as if you were punishing me.

As if I had done something to deserve the worst part of him.

Every time he snapped at me it was a punishment, every glance a warning. Sometimes I had the impression that he was trying to tell me something with those looks of his, something that he was also trying to bury under thorns and scratches.

And while I watched him, swallowed by the shadow he cast over me, it seemed as though I could almost see something flashing just under the surface of his eyes, something that even I was unable to see.

‘And do you hate me?’ He was so close his voice resounded in my ears. His face was slightly downturned, to make up for the height difference between us. ‘Do you hate me, little moth?’

I searched his eyes, destroyed.

‘Is that what you want?’

Rigel slowly closed his mouth, his gaze pinned to mine, before it shifted away over my shoulder. I didn’t need to hear the slow, scathing way in which he replied, almost as if it hurt him too:

‘Yes.’

He disappeared down the stairs, freeing me from his presence.

I froze, his words echoing in my mind, until I heard him leaving through the front door.

—

I spent the whole day alone.

The house was as silent as an abandoned sanctuary. The only sound was the rain. I sat on the floor and absentmindedly watched it fall. The streaks of water running down the window cast shadows on my legs and the parquet flooring.

I wished I had words to explain how I was feeling. To pluck them from inside me and arrange them on the floor like pieces of a mosaic that might somehow fit together. I felt empty.

Some part of me had always known that things wouldn’t work out.

I’d known it from the start. From my first step outside The Grave. I was tarnished by hopefulness, like I had been as a child, because deep down, that was the only way I knew how to live, polishing things, making them shine.

But in truth, I couldn’t see beyond this. In truth, no matter how I looked at it, that black stain could never be polished away.

Rigel was the Tearsmith.

For me, he had always been at the centre of the legend. He embodied the torment that had so often reduced me to tears as a child.

The Tearsmith was suffering incarnate.

He caused suffering, contaminating you with anguish until you cried. Made you lie and despair. That’s what they taught us at The Grave.

I remembered that Adeline didn’t see it that way. She used to say that the story could be interpreted differently, from another perspective. That it couldn’t be all suffering, because if tears were the price of feeling, they also meant love, fondness, joy and passion. There was pain, but also happiness.

‘They’re what make us human,’ she had said. It was better to suffer than to feel nothing.

But I couldn’t see it like she did.

Rigel destroyed everything.

Why did he stay so dark? Why couldn’t I see the light in him, like I could in everything else?

I would have illuminated him gently, tenderly, without hurting him. Together, we could be something different, even though I couldn’t imagine anything other than the way he glared at me.

But we could have been a plausible fairy tale. Without wolves, bites or fear.

A family…

My phone buzzed on the desk with a message notification. I sighed heavily: I was sure it would be Lionel.

He had messaged me several times in the past few days, and we had chatted a lot. He told me many things about himself, his hobbies, the sports he played, the tennis tournaments he’d won. He liked telling me about his successes, and even though he didn’t ask me anything about myself it was nice to have someone to speak to without having to bother Billie all the time.

But that afternoon was different.

He messaged me, and I couldn’t help but tell him about Rigel.

What happened had stuck inside me like a thorn. I told him honestly that we weren’t really brother and sister. I told him there was no blood relation between us, and he didn’t reply for a long time.

Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken about myself so much. Maybe I had annoyed him by drawing attention to myself when he had been telling me about the latest trophy he had won.

It started to rain, and the only thing I could think about was that he was out there somewhere, in that sheeting rain without even an umbrella.

Because deep down, that was the only way I knew how to live. Polishing things, making them shine, even though the more I tried, the more rough edges appeared.

A ringing flooded the house.

I jumped as if a bucket of cold water had just been thrown over me.

I left the room to grab the landline, hurrying back to the living room before answering.

‘Hello?’

‘Nica,’ a voice said warmly. ‘Hi. Everything okay?’

‘Anna,’ I breathed, happy and bewildered. She had called me around lunchtime to let me know that they’d arrived and that it was snowing there. I hadn’t been expecting to hear from her again.

Her voice sounded slightly different. The signal was bad.

‘I’m calling from the airport. The weather’s got worse here. It’s been snowing really heavily all afternoon and it’s not forecast to get any better until tomorrow morning. We’re in the queue, but…Oh, Norman, let the gentleman pass. His suitcase…sorry! Nica, can you hear me?’

‘Yes, I’m listening.’

‘They’ve closed all the gates, they’re cancelling flights and we’re waiting for an update, but they just keep announcing cancellations due to bad weather conditions…Oh, wait…Nica…Nica?’

‘I can hear you, Anna,’ I replied, clutching the phone with both hands. Her voice was a distant echo.

‘They say they aren’t scheduling any more flights until tomorrow morning.’ I heard Norman talking to someone. ‘Or at least until the storm’s over,’ she concluded. I stood there, in the silent house, absorbing what she had just told me. ‘Oh Nica, sweetheart, I’m so sorry…I never imagined that…Er, excuse me, there’s a queue. Don’t you see we’re queuing here? You’re standing on my scarf! Really, I know we said…Nica? I know we said we’d be back this evening…’

‘Everything’s fine,’ I urged down the phone, trying to soothe her nerves. ‘Anna, you don’t need to worry, we’ve got enough to eat.’

‘Is it raining? You’ve turned the heating on, haven’t you? Are you and Rigel all right?’

My throat went dry.

‘We’re fine,’ I said slowly. ‘The house is warm, don’t worry. And Klaus has eaten.’ I turned towards the cat who was resting at the other end of the room. ‘He finished his food and now he’s snoozing on the armchair.’ I forced a smile, sensing Anna’s worry from down the line. ‘Really, Anna…don’t worry. It’s only one night…I’m sure it will get sorted out soon, and in the meantime…don’t even think about it. We…we’ll wait here for you.’

We spoke for a little longer. Anna asked if we knew how to lock the door properly, and urged me not to hesitate to call her for anything. I basked in her concern until it was time to finish the conversation.

I hung up and found myself enveloped by the evening dusk.

‘Just me and you then,’ I smiled at Klaus. He opened an eye and threw me a scowl.

I switched on the lamp and picked up my phone, which I had left on the side table. I still had to reply to Lionel.

I frowned. He had sent me a photo. I opened the message as a flash of lightning lit up the windows.

I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

I should have sensed it. Just like you can smell the rain before a storm.

I should have sensed it, like you can feel disasters, the damage they wreak before they even take place.

The front door was suddenly blown open by a gust of icy wind and I almost dropped my phone.

Rigel towered in the doorway, his fists clenched and his soaking hair dripping all over his face. His shoes were caked in mud and his elbows were red below the short sleeves of his shirt.

He looked terrible. His lips had gone blue with cold and his clothes were soaking. He closed the door without even glancing at me, and I stared at him, shocked.

‘Rigel…’

He turned towards me. I felt a painful throb in my chest when I saw the state of his face.

The sight of his cut lip hit me like a slap in the face. Red blood mixed with rain as it trickled down his jaw. His split eyebrow stood out starkly against his pale skin. My eyes searched his face, terrified, inspecting his wounds.

‘Rigel,’ I exhaled, lost for words. My eyes followed him as he moved away from the door.

‘What…what happened to you?’ The sight of all that blood destroyed me. It was only when he drew closer that I noticed his knuckles were grazed, and my concern deepened into a sense of foreboding. My phone flashed with another message, and I glanced down.

My blood froze, turned into thorns and shards of glass pricking and stabbing the bones under my skin.

I couldn’t breathe. My head was spinning. The world around me was fading away.

On the phone screen was Lionel’s face, bruised and bloody. His hair was dishevelled, the impression of punches blooming all over his skin. I staggered backwards on unsteady legs.

Every letter of his last message was like a needle stabbing me right in the eye: ‘It was him.’

—

‘What have you done…’

I looked up at Rigel’s back, the photo still swimming before my eyes.

‘What have you done…’ my voice trembled a little louder, making him stop this time.

He turned towards me, his fists clenched. He stared at me through his swollen eyelids, and his gaze fell on the phone in my hands.

His lips twisted into a sneer.

‘Oh, the boy cried wolf,’ he jeered.

I felt something explode in my head. My blood was boiling, every inch of me was tense. I was trembling from head to foot. My temples were pounding, my eyes were wide and blinded by tears. Rigel turned and started to walk away.

I lost control. Everything fell away.

All that was left was a burning rage. An anger that I had never felt before.

Something snapped.

I lunged forwards and struck out at him. I clawed at the wet fabric of his clothes, his elbows, his shoulders, wherever I could. He moved away from the unexpected attack and tears flooded down my cheeks.

‘Why?’ I screamed hoarsely, trying to catch hold of him. ‘Why? What have I ever done to you?’

He pushed me away, trying to get to the stairs. He flicked my fingers away as if they were spiders, staring stubbornly ahead as I clung to his clothes with my Band-Aid-covered hands, trying to hurt him.

‘What have I done to deserve this?’ I screamed, my throat hurting. ‘What? Tell me!’

‘Don’t touch me,’ he hissed.

I couldn’t even see any more. I struggled against the hands pushing me away. I raged against him and he snarled, ‘I’ve told you to…’

I didn’t let him finish. I seized his forearm and yanked it forcefully.

It was violent, explosive.

For a moment, there were only my fingers sunk into his bare, exposed skin, and me, tense against him.

The only thing I saw as he shoved me back with force was the angry flash of his black hair.

At the last moment, he grabbed my shoulder with a vice-like grip.

The outline of his mouth came towards me and his lips landed on mine.

Skip Notes

* Akrasia: acting in a way contrary to one’s sincerely held beliefs.