Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 2

The familiar numbness creeps over me as I tread across the worn muddy path towards my house. The interaction with Fionn and Diana plays out in a loop inside my head—promised violence and betrayal whirl. It’s unbearable—the thought of all the things I should and shouldn’t have said, and what I’m going to do if someone finds out. What is there to be done?

A small shack, the color of the gray stone of the mountains, comes into view through my panic. The winter has painted the brambles a deathly shade, overgrowing the farm that once flourished, their sharp thorns climbing over my childhood home; now a lifeless hull.

I know it’s ghastly. I know I should try to restore it, as they would’ve wanted. I would feel ashamed of the state of my living quarters, but nobody ever visits me here anyways.

Except Diana, once. I had no idea she would come. She hobbled up on me one day when I didn’t show up for work. I had been stuck, staring at that lump in the yard. I had no idea the entire day had passed as I sat and fought with myself—trying to find a reason. She sat down next to me and started jabbering on about nothing. Once she grew tired of a one-way conversation, she had yanked me up and started guiding me up the road, murmuring something. “…not meant to be so alone, Alyx.” I didn’t understand what was happening. I just walked beside her up the road, thoughtless and floating. What really snapped me out of the haze was when she began talking of a room in her house that would be mine.

I have many regrets about the words we had next. I hated that. I hated spewing vitriol at the one person who gave a damn. That was the slam that caused my front door to tilt sideways a little. She left in a hurry after that—I’m glad she hasn’t come back. We never talked about it. I don’t look at the lump in the yard anymore.

I pick my way across the path to the door, gaze fixed straight ahead, avoiding the sight to my right. I’m holding my hem up, so it doesn’t catch on sharp thorns. My exposed legs get the worst of it, but they’re just a few small scratches. They overlap all of the others.

The wood on the door used to be a warm reddish-brown color, made from an old redwood. It’s gray like the rest of the place now, worn down by the relentless elements of life. It creaks as I lift the splintered bar and push, struggling with the weight. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to build another door that was less troublesome, more pleasant to look at. So this one will have to do.

Closing it behind me, I step into the darkness. There is a small window over the kitchen area, though it brings in little light through the smudges and dust. I move through the house by memory. I know it by heart. If it were light enough, if I were to light a fire in the hearth, you would see the worn path I walk. The only places the dust hasn’t rested. The path from the door to my bed on the floor. The path from my place on the floor to the back of the worn-in chair that I sling my spare clothes over. The path to the countertop in the kitchen where I will bring my bread from town, maybe the occasional stick of dried meat, berries Diana forces into my hands. If I leave anything there for long the mice get it. It’s alright—they need to eat too, and it feels nice to have another living thing share my space again.

I shuffle towards my corner, feeling the weight of the day with these last few steps. My feet cry out in relief as I take my slight weight off of them and plop down on the cold ground. The threadbare blanket is chilled when I sling it over my body, kicking off my shoes beside me as I lay my head on my flat cushion. I rub my feet together, hoping it warms up quickly.

We were always poor, even when the farm produced what little it could, before the blight on the land and the Crows’ descent. My parents got the bed. I used to have a cushion with chicken feather stuffing. That was a luxury. Mice needed the bedding one winter a year ago, though. I do miss the extra padding on my hard bones that press into the floor. I feel the pressure at my ankle bones and knees, my hip bones and ribs rubbing against hard ground with every breath.

The rain starts up, pattering against the wooden roof. I can see it splash against the ground in the slot under the door. I shut my eyes tightly, breathing deeply, finally letting that heavy weight drag me under. The rain begins to roar as loud as my thoughts, finally giving me respite.

Not seeing the emptiness helps. Not seeing the dust cling to their bed, my father’s pipe that he left on the table by his bedside. In the dark I can’t even see the rust-colored stain on the wood floor next to the bed.

One night, soon after it happened, I had lit a candle. The sight of it—sitting still, right where he left it in the warm glow of flickering candlelight—made me want to burn it all to the ground. Me with it. So I don’t light anything anymore. No fires in the hearth, no candles. One less chore I need to do anyway. I always hated chopping firewood. I’ll take the chill over the screeching in my mind.

My stomach howls. I’m so tired. And there is nothing here for me. Nothing here to eat.

If I could move, if I could leave, I would. But I just stay here.

And let the dust settle over me too.

I feel that I’m awake before I can pry my eyes open. The sleepy hum in my bones only lasts as long as I don’t move. So I lie there until enough light filters through the windows that I know it is time for me to do the responsible thing and get up. I could just not go in today. Not have to spend the day, waiting to be carried away by a Crow. Not listen to Diana drone on and on about thistles and teas and hope. She could run her own errands for once. Gather Fionn’s precious medicines.

Opening my eyes is an exercise in self-control. They latch onto a burned spot along the gray wood grain in the floor near the door, maybe a finger length long. My hips, back, and shoulders creak far too much for my twenty-year-old bones as I push myself up from my curled position on the floor. My gaze is still trapped in a memory, on that little burn scar in the wood. I analyze it as I slip my shoes on, still sloppily discarded next to me on the floor. It’s been there for a year, but I still can’t help but stare at it.

Pushing myself up, shuffling stiffly across the space, I drag all of my clothes off the back of the wooden chair by the kitchen. I don’t bother putting them on as I tromp outside, gaze forward, body still awkward from waking up. I take the worn path over to the river to wash. I do my daily hygienic things because Diana once complained that I stink. She may have been joking, but I won’t take that chance. I can be a lot of things—homely, mousy, surly—but I refuse to stink.

The river flows gently, forming the border of my family’s land. I keep my eyes on the shadows shifting in the woods, the forest of Wynedd. What sick raiders are hidden by its darkness, I have no clue. They’ve been pillaging the countryside since the new king was crowned a few years back. Burning villages, stealing food, all in the name of some foreign king, some heinous plot to make our fragile kingdom crumble. I can already see the cracks, the fissures of distrust, the deaths that quiet our communities. At any moment, your neighbor may let slip your “treasonous” acts or words murmured in the quiet of your own home. Everything belongs to the Crown: every morsel of food, every son or daughter. Every fire burning warms the seat of the king.

The Pretty King, they call him. No one knows if he is indeed as handsome as the name implies; he’s never bothered setting foot in these parts. He came from seemingly nowhere; starting as the king’s adviser from a court across the eastern Seas. He must have been more than pretty to charm the king into naming him heir to the throne of Suri on his deathbed.

I remember my father grumbling about “this serpent” bringing “war and famine” to our lands. He would accuse him of whispering half-truths and poison in the king’s ear. My father was mostly concerned about his farm falling victim to raiders and pests, but he was already too weak to tend to his dying land anyways. I waved his pessimism off at the time. Kings hold enough power to keep the food in their hands instead of ours, but they don’t have the power to steal the life from the very ground. Even so, his reign has been worse than I ever would have imagined. The people of Suri have never known such fear, never been so firmly under thumb as when the king decreed the Crows would reside amongst the people for our safety. But I fear the bones that litter the wood are mostly of hard-working, gentle folks that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bitingly cold waters jar me fully awake as I edge my way down, my body tensing further with every step past the knees. Dunking my head underneath, my mousy blonde hair turns brown with wetness. I feel alive again for a moment. The power of the river’s current is a song in my blood as peace washes over me.

Once clean, I pull on an old, worn dress and braid my wet hair into one plait down my back. My boots have holes that fill with water as I trudge quickly back up the hill to town. The cold is the only thing that gives a semblance of energy to my steps. The backs of thatched roofed buildings grow closer as my mind wanders.

I have no hope. Not one ray of light warms my heart, that the boy from yesterday has made any progress. I dread looking his mother in the face, seeing my own reflection in her blank stare. How do you move through a loss so great? How does one live with a phantom lurking in the corner of every new memory? I still don’t know.

My own phantom sings to me glimpses of the past—soil underneath fingernails, wet coughs, the scent of peppermint and mullein teas, rattled breaths. Memories stained with gray and crimson, freeze the ground beneath my feet.

Consumed in my reverie, I am unprepared when some force runs straight into me, knocking me almost off of my feet. A blaze of red hair tells me who it is before I see her face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I wheeze, getting my footing and my mind back in the present.

“You have to go!” Mariana pants out in between breaths. I take in her ragged appearance. Usually Mariana is a brilliant flame flitting from place to place, her smile warm, her freckles and smile always cheeky. This Mariana is frantic and fluttering. She is rattled. Her house is on the other end of town; she must have run all the way here. Her hem is splashed with mud up to her knees.

“What?”

“Diana…” she pants. “They think she’s helping rebels…” More pants and gulping breaths. “She’s gone.” One trembling breath. “Dead.” Her eyes are imploring me as her hands stay on my arms, pushing me off the road, into the woods. “You need to get out of here!”

My mind is unable to process what she is saying. Nothing but an echo-chamber, the word “dead” a cacophony. Our last words repeat in my mind, choking me, burying me—

No. Not now.

She died not knowing all I never said. Only knowing the worst of what I did.

“Who?” I feel my mouth repeating the word over and over. The world around me blurs as my eyes flit between Mariana’s blue ones. I feel my feet following where she leads, back into the brush, into the shadows.

She’ll never know now .

“They’ll kill you! If she’s a rebel, you’re a rebel by association. You need to leave before they bring you to the stage, too.” She finally stops, satisfied with our place amongst the shadows, but her hands stay digging into my bony arms, right in the bruises from the honey-eyed man from the night before.

The blood drains from my face and my breaths quicken. It’s over . The figurative rope that has been around my neck for the past year is going to become real. My feet will sway just like all of those others.

There is no universe where I plead ignorance, and they acquit me. There is no mercy, no fairness to be had in this realm of death. We are all the Pretty King’s carrion.

“Where do I go?” I whisper. I am the hunted—a mere prey animal. I’m a dumb lone deer in a wood made of shadows and predators, too afraid to run, frozen and attempting to blend into a tree.

I doubt the tactic ever has much success.

“Anywhere but here, for now. Maybe… maybe I can talk to my father, and we can try to get you off of the continent. He still has connections I’m sure…” Her voice trails off as her eyes take on a distant look and she slowly nods.

A shred of clarity slams into me as I realize how she and her family may be implicated.

“No.” It’s the first firm word to come out of my mouth.

She opens her mouth to protest but I cut her off. “You need to go. Now.”

“Alyx, you can’t be serious—”

“I am serious. Go. If they see you with me…” I don’t need to finish. Twin corpses hanging from a parapet flash in my mind—bodies of two foolish girls who never learned when to stop loving each other.

I remember girlish shrieks echoing across valleys. The kind of joy only children know. Water splashing as we played in the creek during the summer when the water was low. A friendship that gave me memories to cling to when my life was painted gray and crimson. When all I could hear was rattled breaths or nothing at all. Reminders that things are just this bad now . That I am capable of feeling joy. That I’ve felt it before and that if I hold on, just one more day, I could feel it again. The same memories that made her run across town, risking her own life to give me a head start. If only to give me a handful of minutes.

“You need to go,” I whisper again. Numbness has crawled over my frigid bones of stone, like creeping thyme. “I’ll just go west, to the coast, for now.”

She searches my gaze.

I almost think she sees it.

“Fine,” she finally relents, somewhat nervously. “Make it count!” she shouts over her shoulder, darting out of the brush, taking off at a sprint back home.

My gaze turns heavenward, at the canopy above, noticing the whispers between the trees as their leaves shuffle against one another. Their sparks of life are almost tangible when I actually pay attention. I can feel them, warming my frozen insides. I should have paid more attention.

I probably won’t make it out . Without supplies, I’ll be lucky to survive the elements for more than a few days. But going to town is a fool’s errand and my house is the first place they’ll look.

There’s almost nothing there of use anyways. I’m wearing my only cloak and there’s no food there.

But there is something there. Something I need to see.

My boots seemingly turn themselves around and begin walking back to the house. I just want to say goodbye to one more person. They’ll come for me there soon enough.

If they beat me there, I’ll deserve what I get.