Somme
Trains were louder and taller than Elias could ever have dreamed. They reminded him of when he first stood next to a horse as a child, staring up miles of leg into a dark face that snorted at him in pillars of steam.
He had been told when he had to transfer and given the appropriate tickets. He could not sleep the entire time he was riding so he could listen for the shout of the station name. He could not pull information from the signs as they passed by.
Inside the train was like many rich men’s couches all in rows: high-backed booths facing each other, plush red cotton, and gleaming golden wood. Men, women, and children, all strangers to each other, crammed together.
People in cities knew how to avoid each other’s gaze in a way that Elias struggled with.
He kept accidentally lingering on faces and receiving either looks of contempt or the confusion of seeking recognition.
So Elias sat, with Franz’s bag on his lap, as close as he could to the train doors and kept his eyes closed.
The ride was long. He had time to think.
Elias did not know Victor’s family. How it was shaped. If he had siblings or grandparents. But he felt the loss of his own like a hole torn in his side and knew Victor must be made to match.
Elias would never be able to go home.
He was the man who killed for desire and the man who killed for justice all in one. Exile and life exchange and penance. His hands shook at the thought of righteous blood, and he clenched them tight to stop it.
Even if he turned around now and got on a train back home, bought a horse, and rode it to his village. The people he knew would look on him in recognition and it would damn them.
They lived now soothed with the knowledge that they had driven a dangerous creature from their midst. His return would haunt them with the revelation that they had failed an innocent. Wronged him deeply.
The cycle would begin. He would be owed retribution; people would fear his revenge. Even if he pushed that away and tried to reintegrate, their guilt would shift to resentment and resentment to suspicion and finally to hatred until justice was settled. Or he was removed again completely.
And what justice could he mete out against a whole community to satisfy them? What penance could he accept with grief in his heart at receiving it?
Elias could not bear the thought of the pain his return would bring to his family.
Yes, they might cry with joy at his return at first, but the memories of their shouting at him and terror would stalk their nights and days.
He could not close his eyes without seeing his sisters shrieking and his mother turning to hide her face in his father’s chest.
Would they wake screaming in the night at dreams of whatever he looked like on their doorstep?
Would he remind them too much of the sight and be unable to dry their tears?
Elias was still Margarite’s child, cast to drift in the sea. Charged with a holy mission, hands soaked in the blood of man. The butcher she raised on milk and meat, the cub she cuddled on cold nights.
But now, he was no one’s son. Victor had slaughtered the connection between him and the only home he’d ever known. All he had now was a doll that did not even truly belong to who it reminded him of.
Elias wasn’t sure what sort of man he would be when Victor’s house was finally hollow as a gourd. When the wind whistled through his windows as the stench of rot sank into the linens and carpets.
How he passed through its gate. How he would walk the earth, after.