Chapter 7
A Legion of One
It felt like the screaming had started hours ago, and it wasn’t stopping.
Jesstin hadn’t learned how time was read, how his papa looked at the dial in the garden and the sun hitting it and could say the time.
Full ticks, half ticks. None of it made sense.
He hadn’t learned much of anything yet, but he wanted to.
His mama insisted he was too little, but she was gone now, and he didn’t think she was coming back.
Rhiain and Emrys had said as much, and they knew more than he did.
His papa wanted to send him away. Jesstin hadn’t wanted that at all, but it sounded all right just then as he cowered in a corner while Papa yelled at Jesstin’s big brother, Emrys, about Mama and called her things even someone as little as he understood were very, very bad.
“Even you know she was a whore, Emrys!” Papa boomed. “And the boy? That boy is a bastard, and nothing, nothing can change that. She did this. Your mother did this.”
“You know he can hear us, don’t you?” Emrys screeched. “He’s always underfoot, and you never watch your tongue!”
Mathias scoffed. “He doesn’t understand.”
“He understands more than you think, not that it concerns you.”
“What concerns me, Emrys, is how my eldest son spares too many tears for a woman who put her cunt above her own children!”
“Oh Guardians, you... You did it, didn’t you?”
Mathias went quiet.
“You’re not denying it!” Emrys’s voice was strained, like he’d been crying. “Why aren’t you denying it?”
“She was a whore, and she died a whore’s death.” Mathias made a spitting sound. “And you can’t stop asking questions you don’t really want answers to.”
Jesstin rocked and rocked. He didn’t understand what they were fighting about. He didn’t understand what it meant.
“Oh, but you do, love. How I wish you did not though, my darling dearest, my beautiful baby boy. Would that I could have protected you from the worst of it forever and always.”
It was Mama’s voice, but only he could hear her. That was how he knew she wasn’t coming back. When only he could hear someone, it meant the person wasn’t ever coming back.
“You are my sweet baby, Jesstin, and you are too young for these truths, but it is too late for that. Stay clear of your papa. He’s unwell. Deeply unwell. Emrys and Rhiain will protect you.”
“Hi.” An angelic voice rang above him. The girl was older, with hair like Rhiain’s. Like Mama’s. “I’m Ellie. Do you remember?”
Jesstin did remember her. She and her mother and brother came to visit sometimes. He nodded through his tears, embarrassed by them. You were never a fussy baby, his mama used to say, but he was being fussy now.
“My mother came to collect her baking dishes, but she’s...” Ellie frowned and glanced behind her. “I think she’s made friends, because I haven’t seen her.”
“Papa is angry.”
She stopped looking for her mother and looked right at him instead. “His words aren’t for your ears, Jessie.”
“What is ‘whore’?”
Ellie pulled back. “Do you know, I saw some frogs in the garden, lots of them. A whole family of them. I’d like to go see them. You could join me.”
He did want to see the frog family, but he was distracted by Emrys, whose voice had grown much louder and more scared.
“You murdered your own wife! My mother!” Emrys sobbed and made other horrible sounds, sad sounds. “Why won’t you deny it?”
Papa huffed. “Does it matter what hand pushed her?”
“You’re... You’re a monster. You’re not even a man. You’re...” Emrys cried some more. “I’ll take Rhi and Jess away, and you’ll never see them again. Never.”
“You try, and you’ll see your mother much sooner than you planned!
” Papa yelled back. He followed it with a dark cackle.
“She wasn’t even a mother, Emrys. A woman like her knows but one thing.
And she died for it, and it’s done, and you will move on.
You will hold your tongue. You will not talk about this with your sister and brother, or I shall cut your tongue out and feed it to your hound. ”
Jesstin’s fingers and toes went tingly. He understood little of what had been said, but what he did understand was very, very bad. The rest made him very, very uneasy.
“Jessie, can we go play with the frogs?” Ellie pleaded. She touched his cheek and turned his face back toward hers. “They won’t be there forever. Frogs are very busy animals.”
“Oh?” He wondered about that. He knew the word, busy, because Papa used it all the time when Jesstin toddled into his office. He pictured the frog family sitting at Papa’s desk and giggled. “Do they have jobs?”
“Of course they do.” Ellie leaned down and lifted him into her arms. She struggled with it, probably because he was almost too big to be held now, or so Rhiain said whenever she tried to pick him up.
He caught a glimpse of Papa and Emrys as she shuttled him down the hall and away from Papa’s office.
Papa raised a hand and slapped Emrys. Emrys slapped him back, which stunned Jesstin into holding his breath.
Papa grabbed him by the collar, and that was the last Jesstin saw, but he heard a lot of books falling to the floor and Emrys grunting in pain.
Ellie set him down in the garden. There were other gardens too, but he liked this one because it was quiet and there were lots of butterflies.
He hadn’t seen the frogs before. He’d only seen frogs in the picture book Rhiain read with him.
He liked the book because it was colorful, and there were magical creatures inside.
“Now, let me see where those frogs went...” Ellie frowned and looked around.
“Emrys is sad.” Jesstin lost interest in the frogs and magical creatures. “Papa is angry.”
She stopped searching. “Sometimes bad things happen, and they make us sad. It’s okay to be sad, Jesstin. People say bad things when they’re upset too. Your mama loved you very much.”
“I miss Mama.” Jesstin clamped his hands over his face and cried more.
“I’m always here, my love. You know I am always, always here. You listen to Ellie now. She’s a good girl and good for you. Let her show you the frogs.”
Ellie knelt and put her hands on his shoulders. “Do you know what stars are, Jesstin?”
Jesstin nodded, a little annoyed at the question. He knew what stars were. Why wouldn’t he?
“Well, some say the stars are the Guardians, but there are only seven Guardians, and there are thousands of stars.” She wiggled her fingers, like Rhiain did when talking about magic.
“Before we are born, we live amongst the stars. When we leave here, we return to the stars. Your mama is a star, which means she’s always there, looking after you. ”
“Mama is a star?” That didn’t seem right.
“I know you can’t understand now, but you will. Those who love us are never far away.”
He already knew that. Mama was right there, only no one else could hear her, so he couldn’t say so.
Emrys said Papa had pushed Mama. Mama was gone. She was there, but she was not the same. He couldn’t see her. He could hear her but not always. Maybe he couldn’t see her because she was a star. But Papa had pushed her. Emrys had said so.
He curled onto his side and sobbed so hard he hiccupped.
“Oh, no, no. It’s all right. It’s all right,” Ellie kept saying. She rubbed her hands over his arm. “Jessie.”
“I don’t want to feel bad. I don’t want to know. I hate him. I’ve hated him for so many years now, hated him so much, I hated myself. Make it stop. Make it stop!”
Ellie’s hand stopped. “What... What did you just say?”
Jesstin looked down. Confusion snapped like a band across his mind. The hands he turned were a child’s hands, the legs plump and squishy. It was all wrong. He had to be dreaming, but the clouds between his thoughts started to thin, and he remembered who he was and where.
He sat up in the dirt. Young Ellie—Elloven—was gone.
He was alone in the garden near the Skylark mausoleum, where there had been frogs, but he hadn’t remembered that until he moved through the memory.
He hadn’t remembered the fight between Mathias and Emrys or the fact Elloven had been there, and all that was understandable because he couldn’t have been more than three, but it didn’t explain how the moment had become so damned vivid now.
Mathias and Emrys had been fighting about his mother.
Everyone said her death had been a terrible accident, that she’d taken a tumble down the stairs, but Emrys had accused Mathias of murdering her.
It didn’t match Jesstin’s recollection of the relationship Emrys and Mathias had shared, which had been strained but not estranged.
If Emrys believed Mathias had murdered Nara Skylark, he would never have forgiven him.
Unless.
Unless Emrys didn’t remember that day either.
Jesstin had been too little to recall the fight, the accusations, but Emrys would’ve been a teenager.
A long shadow crept over him. “I don’t suppose you know why we’re both here?”
Jesstin quickly pushed himself from the dirt to his knees, then to his feet. It wasn’t a conscious choice not to look up. It felt like something was shoving his head away. “Please say you’re an illusion.”
“I was helping a farmer in the Forty-Ninth when I was pulled here. An eccentric woman in a hideous suit said I was needed for a trial. For you.” Mathias stepped closer. “What trial, Jesstin?”
Jesstin held a hand out to protect his distance. “Stop.” He shook it at Mathias. “No closer.”
Mathias’s slow exhale was joltingly wistful as he shuffled through the moonlit garden. “I never expected to see this place again.”
Jesstin never expected to see him again, but as his wits returned, he recalled Mathias had been one of the three faces in the mirror, and he’d felt nothing but confidence he could handle whatever the especular threw at him.
But that was before he’d heard Emrys’s hysterical accusations.
“You took that day from all of us, didn’t you? From me? From Emrys?”