Chapter 74
Niklaus
“What happened—what has happened!” Vrath smacks himself in the head, fighting an unseen battle with his own rotting mind from old age. “Where am I! What has happened to my precious tree?!”
I rise despite my body deteriorating from Vrath’s plague of a presence.
My walk is heavy, willing to lose everything for the vengeance of my father—for striking down my dear friend who stayed by my side in that prison.
The gentle friend who tucked herself against my cold skin on long winter nights.
The one who found a way to bring me food when I was being starved by the kitchen.
A chord is struck behind my half-crest stare. Every word I hold back trembles in my jaw.
It hurts to move.
To breathe.
To think for too long.
But this atomizing wound that turns leaden in my chest is stronger than any disease Vrath spreads to me.
One hand scoops the other half of the branch from the ground, and I jog up to Vrath who is spinning in confusion, throwing his bowler hat to the ground.
Pitching my arm in an upward motion, I hook the splintered, frayed end of the abominable wood up Vrath’s throat, splitting into his esophagus. Severing tendons and puncturing his windpipe. Heat gushes over my hand.
It’s a fountain of spurting blood shooting from Vrath’s painted mouth.
“You took everything from me!” I say through my teeth, then twist the branch until it crumbles to dust in his bloodstream. “BURN. IN. HELL. YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
That tree’s poison floods Vrath’s veins, causing him to convulse before it turns the whites of his eyes black, then decays every cell and organ from the inside out. His corroding skin decomposes to mold and mush at our feet.
And the sickness lifts like a wet, moth-eaten veil—but not without lasting damage that we may see for years to come.
Sapphire and I rush to Dellilian still on her side, unmoving and bleeding into the frosty dirt.
“Hi, sweet girl!” Sapphire murmurs.
“Dellilian. You’re fine. You’re okay. That was amazing!” I kneel in front of her face, sliding my hands around her snout.
“Come on, girl. Tell us you’re okay.”
Dellilian’s eyes are open, and they blink slowly. Still breathing.
“Dellilian still hurt?” she asks.
I touch her furry chest, examining my hand as the steaming blood blankets my palm. The crimson glimmers in the moonlight, warm and thick. I am unable to look back into her eyes as I calculate how much she’s lost…
We sigh. “Yes.”
I did not know animals could shed tears, but they appear in the saddest drizzle, leaking into her soft fur.
“Move Dellilian away…” Even that small voice in our heads is a ghost of its usual volume. “Move Dellilian from Bad Man.”
My hands shake as I scoop my friend up in my arms, wincing as more blood splashes to the pinecones and dirt. The lesion grows in size as if it’s being eaten by an acidic, live virus of the wooden instrument that Vrath used to hurt her.
Sapphire offers to help, but I reject it, fighting for dear life to hold my emotions together.
We walk until we reach a small nook in the North Sapphrine Forest. A hidden alcove where we can see the full moon, and a dazzling show of stars.
After laying her down, I hold the back of my hand up to her nose and silently thank God for the light puffs of air tickling my knuckles.
“Dellilian?”
“Hmm?”
“You were…so brave.”
“Yes?”
“You are a fucking hero… A hero!” I stroke her ear as my eyes begin to water.
Sapphire sits at my side quietly, keeping a warm hand on my upper back.
The small wolf with a big heart whimpers. “Dellilian hurt bad.”
“Tell me how to fix it,” I beg.
“Bad tree. Poison.”
I pinch the back of my neck, pleading with myself to hold it together. For Dellilian. For Sapphire. But I’m coming undone like a loose shoelace.
“Mr. Niklaus? Can Dellilian say something?”
“Anything.”
Her breaths sputter in and out, choppy and inconsistent, fading, like a song winding down until the final note is gone forever. I press my hands against the wound, buying as much time as I can manage.
“Dellilian watch many brave human and beast. Save many sad souls. Rescue lost children. Thousands of years. Long, long time. Remembers every name. Every good deed. Hero tales live forever and ever.”
Each sigh she expels drives a knot of anguish through my gut. Her dark fur loses its star-shining sheen, like a dull sky with no moon.
“Will Mr. Niklaus make sure Dellilian name—live long? Dellilian been so scared. But Dellilian not so scared—when Bad Man going to hurt—friends.”
My jaw and chin quiver, but I clamp it shut. My warring emotions battle each other under a pile of rubble within me. Her words… Her words are needles being stabbed and rotated in my heart vessels.
Sapphire’s nails dig into my shoulder as droplets of blood appear from our small friend’s nostrils. I push my hands harder against her chest.
“I should have protected you.” My voice cracks and collapses on itself.
“Please, forgive me. I was afraid of you when we first met. You reminded me of bad part of my childhood. But even though I wasn’t very kind—you held my sanity together in that prison, my brave girl.
Remember that night they barred my mouth closed?
I was going to lose my mind. But you spoke with me all night, sharing stories about your adventures, and it made me feel like I still had a voice. ”
Sapphire trembles against me as she loses it quietly, and it tugs at a loose string holding me emotions together. Slowly, I fight to grasp it again.
“Thank you for protecting us against the bad man. You—you were a hero. You showed no fear. Without you, that prophecy would have come true, and Miss Sapphire and I would both be dead.”
A muscle in her chest twitches. And the wound opens wider past my hands, like paper being eaten away by a fast-moving flame. But I don’t give up. I hold on to her as my triceps burn from being locked in place.
“To answer your question…” I look into those small, sleepy, dusky eyes that block out the rest of the world to capture her last memories of me so beautifully.
“Yes, I swear to you, I will make sure your name lives on forever. Do you hear me, Dellilian? Just like the many stories you’ve told me of great, brave figures—your name will never die. ”
Her tail gives the smallest thump in the dirt. The movement, simple, yet ripping my chest open and plucking my heart clean out of its cavity. And that’s it. The breach gapes wide. Everything else follows. I bend forward and disintegrate in place, crying into the back of my clenched fist.
Sapphire guides my shaking hand to her paw.
“Thank you for being my guardian angel… I love you, Dellilian!” I sob so hard, Sapphire has to brace her body against mine, keeping me in place.
That small paw twitches, once, then twice—the muscle memory of galloping through the Nightlung on her many exciting adventures.
Time itself seems to hum around her, cradling this brave little Short-Haired, time-traveling, Windila.
And those ears tip back, as if to say she loves me back.
As if to apologize for not being able to stay with me any longer.
I bring her soft paw to my lips, wet with tears, and kiss her fur.
The poison of that tree does not boom through her. It sings a quiet end. This wolf has seen more centuries than kingdoms, more wars than the trees that have lived through them. Yet she lies here looking so terribly fragile.
Her pulse flickers under my hand. The world keeps moving, though Dellilian does not. And the world quietly shuts the door behind her.
I cry so abruptly, it breaks the respectful silence in the North Sapphrine Forest. The tears welling from my eyes do not touch my skin as they drip endlessly onto her dimming fur.
I’m so sorry, Dellilian. I love you, girl. I love you. Please, take care of my dad. Tell him how sorry I am. Tell him I love him. Tell him I forgive him for the basement. Tell him I am proud of the man he became. Watch over him, Dellilian!
The cold settles into our bones as we sit with our dear friend for what feels like hours. I hold her close, unwilling to let an ounce of warmth leave her body. The moon hangs over our heads like a glimmering vigil candle we never lit. And we don’t speak her name. We don’t say anything at all.
Sapphire knows there isn’t anything she can offer verbally. I cannot wrap my mind around what I have lost. I cannot begin to put thought into how I’ll tell my mother that my father is gone. I don’t know how I’ll ever live without my sweet Dellilian.
“Niklaus…” Sapphire nudges me.
My cheeks and eyelids are frozen as I look up to see something of a miracle. In a burst of silver light, her body weaves into the soil, like roots find their home in the earth. Of stardust and celestial smoke, she returns to the world as if she never meant anything—
“Look! They’re trees!”
My eyes fight to adjust to the moonlit spindling trunks emerging from the dirt. The wood curling into unruly helixes, branches stretching wide and crooked, draped with pine needles that glitter like shattered constellations.
Four trees canopy the stars.
Four trees cast a blanket of warmth and everlasting love.
And with it, I know they hold a special meaning for Dellilian, myself, Sapphire, and my dad.
“What should we call them?” Sapphire asks breathlessly.
I smile through the tears.
“Dellilian’s Hearts.”