Chapter Loud #2
The first thing my younger self sees is Ma, dead and debilitated. Her legs are still rooted in the floor.
Her severed top half lies somewhere else.
Little me doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even cry. Her face freezes as she stares at the two pieces of Ma’s body, once whole.
The world beneath me shakes. The shock waves move through my stomach exactly as they had that day, shaking up the knots that formed. Younger me clutches Ma. Current me nearly pukes.
But I’m too busy watching the story unfold.
I never remembered what happened next—the way I sat with Ma’s severed, dead body. It’s hard to watch as I hold her, the trees shaking violently above me.
Pa runs to us. He holds Ma’s cheek with one hand and mine with the other. He doesn’t blame me. Not yet.
“It’ll be okay,” Pa promises me. The me I watch from a distance. The me I watch in the same way I watch other people. But for once, I don’t feel jealousy.
I’m watching myself lose everything.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Pa says.
It will never be okay again, I think.
And my fourteen-year-old self knows he’s only saying it to calm me down. To stop the tremor that she’s starting in the world.
“It’s my fault,” little me whimpers.
“Look at me.” Pa holds my face. “It’s not your fault.”
“I could have run,” I say. “I should have stopped it.”
“This is not your fault,” Pa says again.
Looking from the outside in, I can see him gulp down his horror. I watch as he wraps an arm around little me’s shoulders, holding himself together just enough to stitch me up.
He pulls me close, whispering in my ear, “Let’s bring her home.”
Little me clutches the rose amulet—Ma gave it to me when I first left for Visnatus. Ma told me it would always protect me.
I think of the boy who holds it now.
Azaire, who’s dead in my arms in the real world.
What little good the rose did.
I follow Pa and my past self, staying paces behind as they enter the house.
On this day, Ma and I had been picking flowers for my birthday. That’s why I was home. No one could have ever guessed this would happen.
No one could have imagined.
As we enter the house, my brother Jasper stands, rushing to meet Pa and my younger self.
I stand behind the three of them: my younger self, Jasper, and Pa.
No one says a word.
Terran and Cassius run into the room while Pa gently sets Ma down on a bed of grass and roses. The cries are muffled beneath the ringing in my ears.
It is exactly how I heard them when it happened.
But I know what comes next, verbatim.
The twins, Cassius and Jasper, cry.
Terran turns to me. “You were supposed to be picking flowers.”
I am no longer watching from the outside in. I am entirely my fourteen-year-old self again, looking Terran in the eye while I feel him.
Sibling rivalry turns to true hatred.
“You were supposed to be picking flowers!” he screams.
But what he means is, this is your fault. I feel it. Both the blame and the guilt. It’s all here, ever-present.
“Terran!” Pa reprimands.
“She’s the prodigal child!” Terran shouts. “The strongest of us can’t pick flowers safely?”
“Ter,” Cassius says. He tries to wrap an arm around his brother, but Terran shoves him off.
“I didn’t like you,” Terran says, turning to me furiously. “But now I hate you.”
I understand. I hate me too.
That’s when the image stops. My family freezes, like they’re characters and not people. I watch them all, suspended in animation. I long for one last touch, one last hug, because the storm comes right after this.
My life changes in a moment.
But as I reach out to the past, I am pulled out of my fourteen-year-old body. I stand at the doorway of my old home, watching my frozen family from the outside.
The way I have been for years now.
The boy stands next to me as I wipe tears from my cheeks.
“You saw yourself,” he says. “A child.”
I cry. “Yes.”
He rests a hand on my shoulder. “You saw her make a choice—to try and save a life.”
I push his hand off of me, my voice steady. “I saw my mother die.”
“Wendy—”
“Take me back to Azaire.” I turn to him, pleading. “I need to be with Azaire.”
I expect the boy to fight, but he nods. When I open my eyes, I’m in the woods of Visnatus Academy. Azaire lies in a bed of grass and mushrooms. Dead. I try to find peace in knowing that his body is intact; it isn’t severed like Ma’s.
There is no peace in that.
I stare at him, wondering if I look long enough—if I summon enough power—could I bring him back?
If my power is life, can I not grant it to him?
I try, I do, but my grief smothers me. I reach to every tree, every plant, every star—but instead of feeling their fire, their life, I seem only to deposit death.
Leaning down on the cool soil, I kiss Azaire’s forehead. His body rapidly loses heat. His blood no longer flows. His heart no longer beats.
He will never be here again.
“Azaire Wenejad.” He can hear me—I have to believe he can still hear me when I whisper, “I love you.”
Sobs choke the words as I sit over him, stealing moments to steady myself—knowing if I lose control, I’ll lose him again, in a different way. A complete way.
As I hold his dead body, I pray to a goddess that has never heeded my wishes. I ask only that Azaire’s soul be safe, untouched. I ask only that she put him in the sky with the other constellations.
Then I walk to Lucian and lay a hand on his shoulder. His tears glisten in the moonlight. He meets my gaze, and I nod.
Lucian kneels over Azaire’s body. He lays the blue beanie over Azaire’s stagnant chest. Opening his mouth, nothing comes out. He falters on his knees, falling over himself, hugging Azaire’s dead body.
“I’m so sorry, brother.” I can feel his sobs, more violent than my own. “I’m so irrevocably sorry.”
I feel the words he wishes he could say but cannot. The heavy feeling in his chest suffocates him.
His guilt feels like my own. Perhaps it is. I don’t know why Lucian would be guilty.
“Azaire?” Lucian says. “Azaire, talk to me.”
Breathing hurts. Standing hurts. I fall, and that hurts, too. I exhale, but it turns to a sob. That hurts even more.
I have to pull myself together. I have to do this for Azaire. For his soul.
I won’t let him cease to exist like this. I’ll give his soul the fighting chance to survive. It’s all I can do for the boy I love.
Love.
Fear.
It’s all the same now.
I crawl to Lucian. I hug him. He cries over my beloved’s body.
“Come on,” I whisper.
Lucian holds me, and I hold him as we walk a step away from my baby.
My sweet, lovely, adorning boy. The best boy I’ve ever met.
The loveliest, kindest soul I’ve had the honor to know.
Dead, dead, dead.
The pressure of power that pushes through my eyes surpasses the pressure of tears. My arms lift, straining against the air as though it’s weighted, to the sky. Every inch of me shakes like an internal tremor until the world begins to shift, too.
Pressure builds in my chest, as if my heart is trying to come up my throat.
From the ground, grass grows. Slowly, the green coats Azaire, like moss overtaking a mountain. It covers him until there is no body left, and from it, bark pushes through. The tree reaches to the sky, the branches reaching for the stars. The flowers that sprout are the same gray as Azaire’s eyes.
Is that all of him that is left?
For a moment I wonder if I’m alive.
I’m gutted, hollowed out like clay on a lathe, and I stumble to Azaire. The tree. They’re the same now.
He’s really dead.
I should’ve let him hold me sooner.
Let me love him faster.
Arms wrap around me. Arms so real and solid that I gasp.
I turn to Lucian, and we cry.
We spend the entire night next to his tree, crying while I try to find the words to tell the stars.