The Tearsmith: A Novel

Only those who have known darkness

Grow up seeking the light.

I had never been strong. I had never been able to be.

‘You’re like a butterfly,’ my mom would say. ‘A sky spirit.’ She had called me Nica because she loved butterflies more than anything else in the world.

I had never forgotten it.

Not even when her smile faded from my memories.

Not even when all that I had left of her was tenderness.

All I had ever wanted was a second chance.

I loved the sky for what it was, a clear surface and white clouds. I loved it, because it was always calm, even after a storm. I loved it, because when everything else crumbled, it always stayed the same.

‘You’re like a butterfly,’ my mom would say.

For once, I wished she was wrong.

—

I remembered that face like skin remembers a bruise. A stain in my memories that would never go away.

I remembered it, because she had engraved it too deeply into me for me to ever be able to forget.

I remembered it, because I had tried to love her, as if she was my second chance.

That was my biggest regret.

I loved the sky, and she knew it. She knew it, just like she knew that Adeline hated loud noises and that Peter was afraid of the dark.

It was where we were most broken that she would push the hardest. She used our weaknesses, the areas in which even the oldest of us were still childlike. Our fears were like seams that she would unpick, as if we were dolls to cut apart, bit by bit.

She punished us because we misbehaved.

Because that was what naughty children deserved. It was penance for our sins.

I didn’t know what my sin had been. Most of the time I couldn’t understand why she did it. I was too young to understand, but I remembered each of those moments as if they had been tattooed on my memory.

They never left.

When one of us was punished, the rest of us all huddled into our seams, praying we wouldn’t be next.

But I didn’t want to be a doll. No, I wanted to be the sky with its clear surface and white clouds, because it didn’t matter how many rifts ran across it, how much thunder and lightning marred the calm, it always stayed the same, never breaking.

That’s what I dreamt of being. Free.

But I always returned to porcelain and rags when her eyes landed on me.

She dragged me onwards, and I saw the cellar door, the narrow stairs leading down into a dark abyss. That bed without a mattress and the belts she constrained my wrists with all night long.

My nightmares would always look like that room.

But her…

She was my worst nightmare.

—

I’ll be good, I said to myself when she passed by me.

I was too small to be able to look her in the face, but I would never forget the sound of her footsteps. It terrified us all.

‘I’ll be good,’ I whispered, wringing my hands, wishing I was invisible, a crack in the plaster.

I tried to be obedient, I tried to give her no excuses to punish me, but I was like a butterfly, with the tenderness my mother had left me. I cared for lizards and injured sparrows, got my hands dirty with earth and pollen, and she hated imperfection almost as much as weakness.

‘Cut it out with those Band-Aids like a little street urchin!’

They’re my freedom, I wanted to tell her. They’re all the colour I have. But she would drag me onwards and all I could do was clutch at her skirts.

I didn’t want to go down there, to spend the night there.

I didn’t want to feel the iron bedframe scratching my shoulder blades – I dreamt of skies and a life away from there, someone who would hold my hand instead of grabbing my wrist.

Maybe that someone would arrive one day, with blue eyes and hands too gentle to bruise. My story would no longer be one of dolls, but something else.

A fairy tale, perhaps.

With golden flourishes and that happy ending I’d never stopped dreaming of.

—

The bed shook with the clanging of the woven steel.

My legs were shaking and the darkness fell like a curtain around me.

The belts around my wrists creaked as I thrashed and flailed, feverishly scratching at the leather.

My eyes were burning with tears and my body writhed for a crumb of her attention.

‘I’ll be good!’

My fingernails scraped and snagged in my desperation to free myself.

‘I’ll be good! I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I swear!’

She left through the door behind me, and darkness swallowed the room.

All that was left was a sliver of light on the wall opposite, then darkness within darkness, and the echo of my screams.

—

I knew…I knew I could never speak of it.

None of us could, but there were times when light seeped even through the walls of The Grave. There were times when keeping quiet seemed like an even worse nightmare.

‘You know what will happen if you tell anyone about this?’

Her voice, a whisper like nails down a blackboard.

‘Do you want to find out?’

Her fingernails, plunged deep into the flesh on my elbow, asked this question. I lowered my face, as I did every time I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze – because there were abysses in her eyes, dark rooms and fears that I didn’t have the courage to see.

‘You want to know what happens to disobedient children?’

She tightened her grip on my arm until my skin cracked open.

The familiar feeling of my heart plummeting, the belts constraining me, crushing me, the noise of the leather under my fingernails, the plunge of panic. I shook my head, stitched my lips, wide eyes promising that I’d be good, good, good just as she liked.

—

We were a little institute on the periphery of a city that had forgotten us. We were nothing in the eyes of the world, and nothing to her either.

She was supposed to be more kind, more patient and more loving than a mother, but it seemed as though she did everything possible to be the exact opposite.

No one realised what she was doing.

No one saw the suffering on our skin.

But I preferred smacks to the cellar. I preferred blows to the leather on my wrists. I preferred a bruise to that iron cage, because I dreamt of freedom, and bruises don’t get inside, bruises stay outside and don’t stop you from flying.

I dreamt of a good world, and I saw light even where there was none. I searched the eyes of others for what I had never found in her, and silently whispered prayers they couldn’t hear – Choose me, please, choose me. Look at me and choose me, choose me for once.

But no one ever chose me.

No one ever saw me.

I was invisible to everyone. I wished I could be to her, too.

—

‘What have I told you?’

My wet eyes were pointed downwards at her shoes, I was incapable of looking up.

‘Answer me,’ she hissed. ‘What have I told you?’

My trembling hands held a lizard to my chest. I felt so small, with my short legs and pigeon toes.

‘They wanted to hurt her…’ My little voice was always too weak. ‘They wanted…’

A violent yank tore the words from my mouth.

I tried to keep hold of the lizard but it was no use: she wrenched it from me. My arms were outstretched, my eyes open wide.

‘No…’

The burning of skin on skin, her palm on my cheek, the blast of her slap. Scorching, smarting, like a swarm of wasp stings.

—

‘You remember what you told me?’

In the shadow of the storm, Adeline’s eyes were the only colour in a sea of grey.

‘What your mom said to you…do you remember?’

I nodded and she took my hand. I felt her gaze on my jagged fingernails, that I’d snagged desperately scratching on the leather belts.

‘You know how we can make everything disappear?’

I lifted my swollen, tearful eyes and Adeline gifted me one of her smiles. She kissed each of my fingertips.

‘See?’ she said, leaning over me. ‘Now they don’t hurt any more.’

She knew that in reality they’d never stop hurting. We all knew it, because our seams all bled the same.

Adeline hugged me, held me against her too big, shabby clothes. I let her warmth envelop me, as if it was the last bit of sun in the world.

‘Never forget it,’ she whispered, as if that memory of my mother belonged to her too.

I dug in my memory and clung to it as tenderly as I could.

‘You’re a sky spirit,’ I repeated to myself, like a dirge. ‘And like the sky, you can’t be broken.’

—

‘Was it you?’

I trembled, paralysed with terror.

A stray dog had got into the institute and had wrecked her office, scattering her papers everywhere.

Nothing scared me more than when she was angry. And at that moment, she was furious.

‘Did you let it in?’

‘No,’ I whispered anxiously. ‘No, I promise…’

Her eyes glared frightfully. Fear overcame me. My breathing quickened, my heart surged, and everything crumbled dreadfully around me.

‘No, please…’ I whimpered, stepping backwards. ‘No…’

Her hands shot forwards. She made to grab me and I turned around, trying without success to escape. She caught me by my top and hit me quickly and brutally, her fist like a stone in the small of my back. I lost my breath and my vision went hazy.

I collapsed to the floor, a searing pain in my kidneys ricocheting through my entire body.

‘You and your disgusting habits!’ she shouted, towering over me.

I couldn’t breathe. I tried to stand up, but I was too dizzy. Unbearable stabbing pains brought tears to my eyes, and I wondered if I’d find blood in my urine that evening. I covered myself with trembling hands and prayed I’d become invisible.

‘This is why no one wants you,’ she hissed. ‘Disobedient, dirty little liars like you stay here!’

I bit my tongue and tried not to cry, because I knew how much that incensed her.

She was breaking something inside of me, something that instead of growing up, would stay small forever. Fragile, childlike and ruined. Something desperate and naïve that would make me look for the good in everyone, just so I would not have to see their bad side.

It’s not true that children stop being children when they become disillusioned.

Some have everything taken from them.

And stay children forever.

—

‘Choose me,’ I would beg when someone came to visit.

‘Look at me. I can be good, I swear, I know how to be good. I’ll give you my heart if you choose me, please, choose me.’

‘What have you done to your hands?’ a woman asked one day, looking at my jagged fingernails.

For a mad moment, the world stopped and I hoped against hope that she would see, would understand, would say something. For a moment, we all froze, holding our breath and our eyes wide.

‘Oh…nothing.’

The matron approached, her smile like a sore that turned your blood to ice.

‘You know, when she plays outside all she does is dig about in the dirt. She digs and digs and uproots the grass looking for stones. She likes it a lot, don’t you?’

I wanted to scream, to confess, but her glare sucked out my soul. All my bruises throbbed. My heart shrivelled. She was inside me, the terror was devouring me, making me nod. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to get out, I was scared of what she’d do to me if they didn’t believe me.

That night, the bed jolted as I thrashed against the belts constraining my wrists. The darkness fell over me again, punishing me for having attracted attention. The tears and the screams would stay inside there forever.

‘I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I’ll be good!’

I would have screamed until I lost my voice, if it hadn’t have been for…that touch.

That unique touch.

Every time, the door quietly opened, and a slice of light glided into the room before narrowing the next moment. In the dark, footsteps approached the bed. Warm fingers touched my hand, held it gently, and a thumb traced comforting circles on my palm that I would never forget.

And then, nothing…Then, the pain would dissipate in my tears, my heart would slow, my rasping gasps would become gentler breaths and I would try to make out a face to put to the only gesture that had ever brought me comfort.

I never glimpsed anything.

There was just that caress.

That sole relief.