The Springborn

CALDER

E verything I have dreaded has come to pass.

She has left me, she who I guarded and treasured and dared to love without stint. If I always expected it, if I saw it in nightmares, if I once stole a letter to try to prevent it, that is no balm to my broken heart.

Broken, ha. Destroyed, decimated, torn to bloody shreds, more like.

To be truthful, I was the one who did the leaving this time. Sabella stood on the doorstep of that blasted cottage and watched Robbie and me slog away. She watched me run back to her and fall on my knees to beg her to come home. Her fingers grazed my bent head but she said no, not now, not yet.

Was it a mistake, my leaving her there? Should I have picked her up, thrown her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and carried her to the wagon? Would she have kicked and screamed, or would she have let me love and support her through her grief? I will never know.

Robbie drives the wagon over all the bumps in the road. I blame his tear-dimmed eyes and his general lack of skill at driving. All the jostling makes my stomach almost as sick as my heart.

“It will all turn out right in the end,” Robbie says with a mighty sniff. “That’s what Yonaz always told us.”

A moth flutters past and I remember flying with Sabella in my arms. The sun, the breeze, her clutching hands. I remember how she kissed me by the waterfall, the bliss of resting my fingertips on the curve of her waist. The arrow-sharp ache of perfect happiness.

“Yonaz was good for a tale,” I say. For I cannot imagine how I could ever have a happy ending without Sabella to love.