Chapter 2 Door of the Moon #2
Valentine watched the floor, stroking his wooden leg as if it were sore, “The Strike. We try to forget them, and then we forget who they murdered. They see everything with their eyes, Baker,” he said as if trying to preserve information he felt he would soon forget.
“They can mutate anything they touch, break the laws of nature, pull the soul right out of your body.” He clutched a trembling hand to his chest. “They took little pieces of my heart,” he moaned softly, “little pieces of my heart.”
Baker waited under the door frame, looking out into the quiet, unspoken world. The moon was clear on the horizon, a silver coin against a murky blue and purple sky. She yearned for the freedom of it, wanting to linger under the open sky as if the cottage doorway were a guillotine.
Valentine was an outcast like her, for while most people drank Amnesia to forget, Valentine preferred alcohol. If he faded away, she’d be the only outsider left.
“Come,” Valentine said, urging her inside.
Baker remained where she was, knowing that if today ended, it would not repeat tomorrow. Things would change forever if Valentine did, and the island on which she danced would grow that much smaller. If he didn’t see her, she was convinced she would vanish entirely.
She felt Valentine’s eyes beckoning her inward, but she rebelled against them, knees locked. As she looked out there into those fields, she thought of the stranger, riding over the hills. He wouldn’t come back like the sun. He had gone somewhere, someplace beyond that horizon.
“Baker.”
She shook her head, and he had to know why.
In accepting Amnesia, he was betraying their alliance.
He had always confided in her about the past and his hatred of Amnesia, perhaps with the comfort that the words wouldn’t go anywhere else, but she’d felt a certain bond in that.
He’d once been a soldier, a traveler, an adventurer and had filled her head with those stories.
Valentine recoiled into himself on the cot at her stubbornness. His weathered face grew heavy with shadows that extended beyond the touch of the night.
They sat in silence, and it seemed her simple disobedience had won her the battle until, for the first time, she saw a tear trail down his cheek.
That single tear flooded the heat inside her. He let the tear balance on his cheekbone. Another followed. He didn’t speak until they’d slipped into his beard, the trails they’d painted drying on his face.
He disarmed her with a vulnerability he seldom exposed.
His expression unfurled like a welcome to a casket he was already lying in, and for the first time, she didn’t see a hero, only mysteries he wore like stitched lips.
The warrior in him had been buried, and now she’d have no room to exist either because she’d learned very early on that somehow it took courage to see her.
“Go to bed,” he said with a hammer in his voice, “now.”
Baker swept past him like a ghost. He’d dealt a killing blow and delivered her into the dark of the cottage. She moved past the rows of huddled masses, haunting them before she reached her cot and curled up under her blanket near the other women.
She felt like she was sinking into the cot, and she clutched her pillow as if it kept her afloat.
Every day for years, the village felt like it was getting just a little bit smaller.
Death was closing in, Baker praying every night to whatever would listen that it wouldn’t notice her.
Her heart revolted against the feelings.
Every passing moment bolstered some violent tide inside her until it rolled her out of bed.
No. The word rang through her head like the fall of a gavel. No to it all. Everything.
Hands shaking, she clawed under her bed, scooping up the tools and wooden toys from under her cot and piling them onto the blanket.
She stuffed her things into it and tied it up like a bag, scanning the surrounding spaces to make sure she hadn’t woken the others.
She crept back through the cots until she found Valentine again, eyes closed, hands folded over his stomach.
She slipped his old knife from out of his boot on the floor and tucked it through the belt on her waist. She kissed the long, sunken scar on his forehead.
I’ll bring you something back, she thought like a conviction, as if the quest she imagined was for his very soul—and her own. There had to be some piece of life out there that could resurrect his spirit. There had to be more left of the world than this.
Heart racing, she left the cottage, barefoot with her blanket slung over her back.
She looked at the surrounding houses, the candlelit windows like glass bars through which she’d watched strangers live their lives for years.
The moon was like a window of its own. Wanting to leap through it, she picked up her pace.
The houses passed her by, and then she was in the fields, galloping over thick grasses that tickled her legs.
Her breath was heavy with fresh air, the night gorged with the thrill of the unknown, the stars brilliant with the wild pulse of freedom.
The world was a wonderful place.