Chapter 5 When I’m Done Dying #3
I glance at the door, my escape, the only exit in this house. It’s so close, just a few steps away.
So why does it feel so far?
“I have a lot of work to do,” I manage to say.
“I see.” Pa doesn’t mean it, and he knows I can feel that. “Will we see you soon?”
“Yes.” The lie is sharp and bitter, and he feels the sting. The ache of his disappointment resonates inside me, but I force myself to turn toward the door, whispering, “I really have to go.”
Pa frowns. He lost his wife and his daughter on the same day. He’s feeling it all right now, all over again. Death is what he remembers when he sees me, the death I feel every time I walk through the garden in this town.
That’s why I stay away.
I leave before he answers, each step heavier than the last. Overgrown roots and mushrooms blur beneath my feet. Ma’s death lingers in my chest as I race through the garden. I still feel it; I feel it all.
I think I feel it everyday.
My hand shoots up the moment I reach the community mirror, opening a portal to the one place I reserve for a special day. Today is not that day, but I got the the small cottage in the woods, just beyond the academy’s barrier. A place where I can be alone.
A place I used to be alone with Ma.
The trees of the academy woods aren’t as lush as the ones at home. I’ve always known it, but knowing something isn’t the same as living it. After my first trip home in years, I’m reminded of how sparse these trees feel despite their abundance.
I walk along the cobblestone path, its stones split and uneven, veins of green mold creeping between the cracks. Tufts of grass push through where time has softened the edges. The path leads to the chipped, purple door of the cottage.
This is one of the few quiet places in my world. Yet, despite my constant longing for escape, there never is any. Because the moment I am alone, it is not a relief. These are the few moments I feel myself. Never enough time to heal, only enough time to open the wound and watch it bleed.
But sometimes I like the shade of red.
I drag myself inside, past the old, rotting kitchen. Past the purple stools and up the colorful steps.
Most of the second story is consumed by the top of a tree bursting through the floor. The ground is covered in decaying leaves from seasons past.
Behind the branches stands a stained-glass window of a woman dressed in leaves and branches. Grass and flowers grow from the top of her head like hair. Ma used to think it was Zola. I never thought the goddess of balance would look like a Eunoia.
Now, I tell myself it is. If only because it’s a way to hold onto Ma. I pretend like I can hear her voice or laughter when I told her I thought the woman looked like Atlas—the first pernipe.
A monster? Ma asked, her voice full, luxurious.
Before, I had said. When she was beautiful.
Ma kissed my head then and said something under her breath. For many years I’ve tried to remember what it was. But with every try, the memory has only withered more.
I have only withered more.
Some people heal with time.
I’ve only fallen apart.
I curl into a ball on the floor. How I hate it. I will always be alone. I will always be destined to solitude. There is no changing that. There is no fix. How can I live among others when I’ll always feel them? When I am always bound to disappoint them? I can’t feel it again. I won’t.
I want to cry, but it’s as if I’m no longer composed of water and now made of ice. Nothing flows. When it comes to finally being alone, I’m out of emotion to spend. But it’s still there, omnipresent. The boulder in my chest, the weight to my step, the crumbling in my bones.
No escape.
The birds chirp outside the house, a discombobulated sound to match my confusion.
There’s something outside.
I rise, wanting to lash out—kill anything in sight. Out the window, a bird is perched in the tree. I run toward it, arm stretched back and prepared to pull the poor thing apart.
It’s an uncontrollable bloodlust guiding me. A hatred. But it isn’t mine. And as I reach for the bird, I see the monster below.
A pernipe.
The very creature that killed my mother. I see this moment as a gift—a way to succeed where I once failed.
I stand, traveling down the colorful step and onto the broken path outside. Then, beneath the setting sun and the trembling trees, I wait.
The boy comes to life in my mind. I feel his warmth, his warning. “Do not fight, my love. Run. You have nothing to prove.”
I nearly hiss when I answer, “I have everything to prove.”
The pernipe sees me, but I see Ma. Her legs sinking into the floor, becoming roots. When she finally died, those roots turned back to legs. They were still stuck in the ground, disconnected from her body.
That’s what I see when I raise my hand. Not the pernipe, but the sentient tree shaped like a woman, with green eyes and leaves instead of hair.
I see what one of them did to Ma.
Grabbing a branch from the tree’s trunk, I shudder at the sharp pain that radiates from the plant. But I hold the branch like a weapon, sending the tree an apology. When I feel its acceptance, I charge, every step sharp with the need to succeed.
I hit the pernipe—the once beautiful woman whose skin has been turned to bark—again and again. The pernipe strikes back. A hundred times stronger than I ever could.
I fly through the air, the impact brutal. The last time this happened, I lost consciousness and woke to the sight of my dead mother. This time, my back slams into a tree. The wind is knocked out of me, and I collapse to the ground.
But this time, I will do what I never could.
I raise my hand, summoning another branch. When it snaps free from the tree and floats in midair, it feels as though I’ve torn my own arm off. A cry of pain escapes me as I hurl the branch at the pernipe.
She falls. I stand. I reach for her life, doing what I never could. Instead of mending it, the way we’re taught to do, I crumble it, like a discarded piece of paper in my hand. I force her into submission, lifelessness.
It’s as if I’m crushing my own insides, stomping on my own lungs, suffocating myself. But it’s no more painful than healing something.
It’s exactly the same, and I push forward.
Reversely, I feel her life, buzzing my hand—coursing through my veins, like alcohol, like fire. It hurts, it burns, I want it to stop.
I like it.
I pick up the branch I’d thrown at her, standing over the monster. I hit her until each of her branches fall off. I hit her until she has no means of fighting back.
And then I reach down, shoving my fingers into her eye sockets, the bark softening—as if to flesh—at my touch.
One by one, I rip her eyes out—the only way to kill a pernipe.
I do what I couldn’t when it mattered.
It doesn’t seem so hard now.
It doesn’t seem nearly as important, either.