Chapter 24 Where is Home Exactly?
Chapter twenty-four
Where is Home Exactly?
Percy Flores
We rode in silence for hours through the dark of night, until Ana’s breath became heavy and she began to snore lightly.
“She thinks I’m dead, then?” Valen said, breaking the silence.
“Who?” I asked.
“Selene, of course,” he replied.
“Arvid promised he would kill you in exchange for ensuring Oskar's death, so yeah, she thinks you're dead. Everyone does,” I said.
Valen laughed a low chuckle, probably careful not to wake Ana, as we were both talking at a low volume.
I didn’t think Valen was going to try anything, not right there; he was as slimy as Arvid, but harming us wasn’t useful to him in that moment, and Ana needed to rest. One of us deserved some sleep in a relatively comfortable environment. The SUV was warm at least.
“That’s good. The lost son of the north. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Song worthy, I would say. My return will be of mythic proportions,” he boasted.
“You think you’ll just be welcomed back?” I asked.
“Now more so than ever,” he answered. “Selene really screwed everything with her power grab of Vouna. From what I hear, the northern Houses are in shambles, and my cousin was bested by a poorly organised minor rebellion. The whole of the north is going to welcome me back, you stupid girl.”
I didn’t rise to the insult. Valen could boast and call me names all he liked, so long as he got Ana and me out of Halvorsen and back on our way home, it didn’t matter what he said.
“What did Arvid want from you? What do you really get in exchange for your freedom and helping us?” I asked.
“That isn’t any of your business, is it?” He laughed. “You really are an idiot if you think I would simply tell you everything I have up my sleeve, not even that pompous overgrown bear has any idea what I’m truly capable of. Everyone underestimates me.”
“You realise as soon as I’m with Selene again, I will tell her that you’re alive?” I asked, curiously wondering if he still felt he would have the element of surprise.
“Please do,” he answered.
“How long before we reach the ferry?” I asked.
“Can’t wait to part ways? And here I was thinking we were having such a good conversation,” he said.
I didn’t respond.
It was a few more hours before we reached the Oskar River. I didn’t know my geography well enough to know what the original name was, but it was much larger than I had expected. It was extremely wide, and the shore on the opposite side was difficult to see.
I nudged Ana gently awake.
“What?” she asked, sitting up in fright and immediately whistling in Valen’s direction.
He clutched his chest and ground his teeth.
“Give it a rest!” he demanded.
“Ana, we’re here, everything is okay,” I reassured her with my hand on her shoulder.
She released Valen.
“I can’t wait until my enchantments are in place again,” he groaned out as he opened his door. “You best pray to whichever god you follow that we do not meet again, blood-witch, because if we do, I will rip your head off.”
“You’re not in a position to be making threats,” Ana replied.
Valen responded by slamming the car door shut.
I unlocked and opened my door, but Valen shut it again before I could get out.
“Stay here,” he commanded as he walked away towards the surprisingly small and rundown dock.
“We shouldn’t trust him,” Ana said after he was out of sight.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Whatever he’s up to, for himself, for Arvid, I don’t think any of it is going to make things easier to avoid a full out war. It’ll just result in more upset, more violence. We should kill him. Once we’re in Maria,” she said.
“Ana, what? No!” I whispered, scared he would come back at any moment and overhear us.
“It makes the most sense,” Ana argued.
“No more death!” I stated. “No more killing. We have to find different ways of dealing with things, remember? That’s what we agreed to.”
“I don’t want a war,” Ana corrected, “But I’m not na?ve enough to think that there won’t be a single death, Percy.
Come on! People like Valen, do you really think they can be reasoned with, that they would give up their attempts to take power because they’ve been asked nicely?
No! People like Valen will see the offer of peace as a weakness and strike, causing the deaths and disruption of so many more lives than we can even envision.
Sometimes you’ve got to shoot the fox for the sake of the chickens,” she insisted.
“Ana, no,” I stated calmly.
“Percy —” she began.
“No, Ana!” I said more forcefully, “You’ve never taken a life.
Never been the reason that someone is dead.
You don’t know what that’s like. It’s not something you can walk away from.
Taking someone’s life like that, even someone like Valen, it takes a part of you too.
A part you can’t ever get back,” I told her.
“Percy, you’ve never killed anyone —”
“I have,” I interrupted, “And I see his face in my dreams, I see all their faces. I’ve stood by and watched, never intervening, as so many people have been killed right in front of me, friends, enemies, it doesn’t make a difference.
Our hands still have Kat’s blood on them, and you want to add to that! ”
“Who did you kill? And that wasn’t our fault,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper.
“Wasn’t it?” I questioned. “She was there because she had gone looking for you and me. We made a thousand choices that led us to that moment, and maybe if we had made just one different decision, she might still be alive. You felt it when her heart stopped. I know you must have; you were touching her. She might not have been someone you knew, you might not have shot her, but the impact of being there, of being involved, of holding even a drop of responsibility, you felt it. Taking someone’s life, no matter what you tell yourself, you could drown in the guilt. ”
“Percy,” she began softly and reached out and took my hands, and I turned my face away in shame.
I hadn’t told anyone about the servant at Ardens that day, “you’ve never spoken about any of this before.
I knew something was wrong after you escaped Vouna.
You’ve been anxious, sometimes moody, I guess.
I’ve seen the lack of sleep on your face, but I didn’t know it was this bad.
I didn’t know you were carrying so much —”
Valen knocked on the window loudly, and we were both startled by the interruption.
“We’ve found a ride,” he said as he opened the door, “Get out.”
“I thought we were taking a ferry?” Ana asked.
“We can’t exactly purchase a ticket at any of the large commercial docks, you fool. We’d be back at The New Foundation’s Halvorsen headquarters before lunch,” he said as we got out of the car. “I’ve secured us passage on a small boat,” he explained, “No questions asked.”
We walked across a loose stone path and down steps towards the wooden dock. Each step felt precarious, the wooden dock was not well-maintained, and the boards were being eaten away by rot in some places.
“Right this way,” Valen instructed as he walked ahead of us and towards a small motor cruiser about twenty feet just big enough for us. A large, older-looking man sat at the helm; he was slumped over the steering wheel as if asleep.
The closer we got, the more my stomach began to sink. Something felt wrong.
Valen jumped into the boat and turned around, holding his hand out for me. I allowed him to help me down and stood motionless as Ana joined me.
Valen stepped around us and to the man.
“Don’t mind him,” he said casually as he lifted the man from behind under the arms and carelessly moved him to the companion seat.
The man’s body slumped back, revealing a dark red gash torn open in his throat.
The man gurgled, blood sputtering and bubbling from his neck, and his eyes moved to me.
Valen laughed, “Sorry, ladies, I thought I had finished him,” he smiled, flashing his fangs, “It’s been a while since I had a good meal and my eyes were bigger than my stomach.
He won’t be much of a distraction for long,” he said and patted the man on the head like a dog.
“Sit down now,” he instructed us. Ana grabbed my hand and pulled me down onto the back bench as Valen started the motor and the boat began to move.
I turned to Ana, and she gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher. Was she mad, sad, disappointed, vindicated? I couldn’t tell.
I felt cold, colder than the weather made me, colder than the missing piece in my chest kept me. So cold that I couldn’t move.
We travelled upriver as the winter sun rose, eventually lifting us from dark grey into a lighter grey.
“It’s a lovely day for this,” Valen commented after such a long silence.
We didn’t reply.
“Not long now, and I will have fulfilled my promise of getting you both out of Halvorsen safely,” he continued speaking, uncaring of whether we replied or not.
I had noticed when the man had stopped gargling.
Noticed when his eyes had stopped searching for help that would never come.
Noticed when the light had left him. And still, I couldn’t look away.
I wondered who he had been. What he had been doing out on the dock that early.
There wasn’t any fishing gear in his boat, but maybe it had been left back on the pier, and I hadn’t noticed it.
Was there someone worried for him right now? Would he be missed?
Time passed almost endlessly until we slowed as Valen prepared to dock. Only when Ana tugged on my hand did I look away from the dead man and to our surroundings.
We weren’t docking; Valen was approaching the riverbank nose-in, nudging the bank until the bow touched mud and stopped.
“This is where we disembark,” he announced.
“Where are we?” Ana asked.
“We are firmly in Maria now,” he answered. “Let’s get a move on. I’ve got appointments to keep,” he said as he jumped out and waited for us to follow.
Ana refused his help, then turned to offer me support as I disembarked.
When we were out of the boat, it began to gently slide down along the river’s edge, the man floating away with it.
“Well, this is farewell for now,” Valen sang, happily, “I do hope you make it back to my cousin safely, Percy,” he said before he fell to his knees, clutching at his chest with one hand.
“You aren’t going to make it any further,” Ana gritted out, and I saw the grip she had of his wrist.
“Ana, what are you doing?” I asked. All her concentration was on Valen, fury in her glare.
“What needs to be done,” she said.
Valen was gasping, and his eyes were rolling back.
“Ana,” I screamed and threw myself at her, breaking her hold on Valen.
“Get off me!” Ana roared beneath me.
“Stop this!” I cried, “You can’t do this,” I pleaded.
“You saw what he did to that man! He has to be stopped!” she said, trying to push the weight of me off her, where we lay on the cold, wet ground.
“Not by you,” I told her. “Not by you,” I repeated.
“Then who else? Who else has to die before someone stops him?” she asked.
“You can’t go back from this. You can’t undo it.
He isn’t attacking us. He isn’t a threat to anyone right now.
If you do this now, you might think it’s justice, but it’s not.
It’s just murder. That man’s family will never know what happened to him, no one will get to have the pain and grief he’s caused them recognised, and he will never have to answer for anything he’s done.
This death is too easy, too good for him.
All you’ll be doing is making yourself feel better in a moment and cursing yourself to a lifetime of knowing what you did, even to someone like him,” I cried while trying to keep her down.
How could she not know what this would do to her?
“Percy, Percy,” she called. “Calm down, hey, calm down,” she said more calmly, “I won’t do it,” she agreed, “Just get off me and help me up, I’m freezing.”
“Do you promise?” I asked, embarrassed by how much I was crying.
“Yes, for now. But I hope you know what you’ve done here. We had a chance to stop him. The others he kills from this point on are on you, Percy, not me. I was willing to stop him,” she told me angrily.
I nodded in understanding as I helped her up.
“I hope you can live with yourself,” she snapped as she marched away from the riverbank.
I turned to look at Valen and knelt beside his still body to check for his pulse. He was alive.
“I hope so, too,” I whispered to myself as I stood up to follow Ana.