CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
C HAPTER T HIRTY- E IGHT
Thaddius stayed his distance for seven days.
In truth, Farra had expected him sooner. He entered Annika’s home with apology eking from every pore of his being. “I am sorry, malishka,” he said, lowering himself to her pallet beside her. “I was sent to hunt.”
“You aren’t supposed to return at all,” she reminded him, though she could not completely disguise the hurt in her voice. She never thought it would be quite so easy for him to leave her alone.
“Are you well?” he asked, eyes scanning her for any hint of abuse or injury.
“I have not bled,” she blurted, forcing the words past her lips. She had thought on what to say to him when he came, but painful news was better delivered quickly.
It took the Glacian longer than she had expected to understand her meaning. A line appeared between his eyebrows first, but then his face became blank, stark, before his eyes dipped to her stomach.
“It is still too soon to tell,” she said, though it was in complete contradiction to the sickness that had begun to keep her awake at night, the listlessness she felt.
Still, the Glacian said nothing.
“I should have thought of it sooner,” Farra said, her sight blurring, as it had often done these past days. “We shouldn’t… shouldn’t have–”
Thaddius stood abruptly. His gaze had turned watery, and he looked at her as though she had thrust a sword through his chest.
Annika appeared through the draped divider and she gave Thaddius a wary glare. “Easy, Thaddius.”
“A child?” he asked, the word cracking as it released.
Annika levelled him with a cutting sniff. “Have you just thought of its probability now , mighty noble? It didn’t occur to you when you were on top of her?”
“Stop,” he breathed, closing his eyes. Then, to Farra’s astonishment, he fell to his knees, as though they could hold him upright no longer and buried his face in his hands. “Mother above.”
“Doubt your prayers will help you now,” Annika said. “Though, I suppose there is little else to be done.”
“There must be something,” he argued, lifting his face, eyes pleading. He did not address Farra at all. Did not look her way. “You must know of some… tonic? Some method?”
“None known for their effectiveness, nor safety.”
Thaddius groaned, as though that sword in his chest had twisted, entrenched deeper.
Farra watched the scene unfold as though she were a mere observer and not the source of its anguish. Frowning, she rose to her feet. “It is not for either of you to decide the course ahead,” she said firmly, ignoring the wave of nausea that rolled through her. “Take me to the valley,” she said to Thaddius. “Now. Before anyone should see the pregnancy for themselves, and I will have the child there.”
But neither Thaddius nor Annika readily agreed. Neither would hold her gaze.
“I cannot stay,” she told them. “Surely, you both know that. If it is known Thaddius sired a child with me, they will kill me. They may very well kill you, ” she said to him.
“Our deaths are already upon us, malishka,” he said, a tear escaping the corner of his eye. “No human can survive the birth of a Glacian child.” Finally, he deigned to look her way. “And I will not remain and watch you die.”
The child inside Farra grew, as did the gaps between visits from Thaddius. It seemed to pain him to see her, slowly swelling from her middle. He would blanch, his eyes dipping to her stomach, and then turn away. He did not dare touch her.
It had been many weeks since he last came to her, and she had begun to ache in the most unexpected places. The small of her back, the inner tendons of her thighs, the bottom of her ribcage. Her chest burned when she ate, or drank, or moved. It was as though this baby was punishing her for forcing its existence. She could not blame it. What a world she would bring it into, before swiftly departing it herself.
That admission had struck her like lightning at first – seared through her core and staked her in place. The baby would kill her. She could not survive it.
Annika gently described the way the baby would grow too large to be birthed, but that she would birth it anyway, and the trauma it would cause would take her life.
“If anyone should survive it, I’d rather think it would be you, Yennes,” she had said, clutching Farra’s hand.
“Yennes?” she murmured coarsely.
“A survivor,” Annika told her. “One who endures all.”
Farra hardly thought the moniker would save her now, yet she warmed to the name. The idea of being someone else was, at times, what she yearned for.
She became oddly at peace with her impending death. There was only so much time one could borrow, after all. Had her death not been secured the moment Thaddius’ talons pierced her skin? Every day she lived was a mockery to fate’s whims. Time would catch up with her – it was an enemy she could not fight.
She blamed herself. She had been a fool. It had been easy to forget the world, a reality outside of the room she’d been confined to in the Glacian palace. She had lost track of time in there, lost track of reason, lost herself.
For a while, however long time had stretched within those walls, she had begun to think the Glacian loved her. That perhaps, she loved him.
But the Glacian’s absence stretched. And when he did come, she seemed to make him shrivel.
“There is good within him, Yennes,” Annika told her, more than once. “More so than any other brute you’ll find in that palace. But he was born in a world designed exactly for him and he grew believing the space he occupied was more significant than another’s. I fear that, for all the good in him, there is simply too much to unlearn. You must know he regrets his actions. He blames himself, even if he does not have enough sense to say it.”
“I am not without fault,” Farra said, not wishing to speak on the subject any longer than she had to. “What’s done is done.”
She tried to find consolation in the days that remained. The hut kept her out of the wind. She was kept fed and warm and safe. Others came to visit Annika, who mended their clothes and fashioned new ones in constant rotation, and soon, the visitors began to know her too. They called her Yennes and asked for tales of the Ledge.
She told them all she could recall – what reason had she not to? She spoke of the Selection Days, the pine grove, the tilt of the shelf down to the Chasm. She told them what it was like to fossick the Drop, the never-ending violence of the desperate. She told them of her parents, and her only friend, Harlow Sabar.
When there was no audience, Annika prodded her with questions until she thought of another story to tell – Harlow climbing a pine only to get stuck in it, the games they would play as children, the boys they would fend off as teenagers. She wondered where Harlow was now on the Ledge and how she was passing the days, without Farra to call on her.
“She was family to you,” Annika said when Farra fell silent, lost in thought. “This Harlow Sabar?”
Farra nodded.
“You speak of her often,” she remarked.
Farra ran her hands over her distended belly. “There are no others to speak of.”
Annika pushed her thread through the hide she stitched and frowned in thought. “It seems your Ledge and this Colony have much in common. Both trapped by brutes, living by their mercy alone. Though your kind seem to have a penchant for killing one another.” Her nose wrinkled. “It is odd you have not found unity together.”
“It is difficult to be unified when one can die for the simple impudence of stepping outside.”
Annika dropped her gaze then, her lips pressed tightly shut. Farra knew the female kept her speaking for distraction. She did not allow Farra to wallow. Yet now silence stretched between them, as she pulled on her thread and chewed on her tongue.
Farra thought she seemed regretful.
Finally, Annika said, “Humans do not belong on this mountain.” She lifted her eyes and let them travel over Farra’s limbs, pressed in tightly beneath her bundles of furs. Still, Farra trembled with the cold. A blizzard blew outside and it found easy entrance to them both through the many cracks and crevices of this hut. It did not seem to bother Annika at all.
“We mixed do not live easily here,” Annika continued. “We eat what we can trap and what the brutes deign to feed us. We are restricted to the borders they created, kept tightly beneath their reign. They take our children, our iskra when it suits them, if not as often as they take yours. But this mountain – the cold – it is still our home,” she said. “And we do not fight its touch each day that we dare to live.” She returned to her work once again, uncharacteristically leaving Farra to her thoughts.
“You had a child. Ryon,” Farra said slowly, cautiously. “Thaddius told me a little about him.”
Annika’s hands stilled, but her eyes stayed averted. She sighed before continuing. “Yes,” she said, her voice sadder than before. “He was beautiful, but too spirited for this place.” She shook her head, smiling. “I imagine him flying somewhere out of reach now. A boy like that was never going to remain confined for long.”
“And… his father?” Farra pressed.
“He was killed soon after,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “He was heartbroken. Filled with rage. It overcame him, as hatred often does.” She shook her head. “It was only a matter of time before he did something stupid.”
“What did he do?”
“He tried to kill a brute,” Annika said, sniffing derisively. “As though killing just one would do any good.” She reshuffled the piles of garments she was working on and stood, clothing in hand. “The difficulties you face are… unthinkable.” Her voice was far softer, meeker, than Farra had ever heard it. “But if there had been a way to trade my life for Ryon’s, I would have gladly taken it. It would be a relief, not having to endure without him. Mothers are supposed to pass before their children, Yennes. You suffer now, but you will not suffer long. There is some solace to be found there, I think.”
She shuffled away then, disappearing beyond the drape, and Farra traced small circles around the top of her stomach, feeling the life of the child within.
Another month passed without Thaddius’ presence and Farra felt it with every twitch and kick of the baby in her womb.
When the threadbare drape of the shelter’s entrance was finally pushed aside by a stark hand, it was not Thaddius who ducked his head through the opening, but Phineas, and his biting glare found Farra immediately.
Annika backed away, fear widening her eyes. “Wait–”
“Hush,” Phineas said, stepping inside. “I have not come to tie you to the stocks. Though I should. ”
“Phineas,” Farra said stiffly.
“So, it is true.” His eyes had lowered to the swell of her abdomen. His expression changed into one of disgust. “Holy Mother,” he muttered. “What trouble you’ve brought upon yourself.”
“What do you want?” Farra said abrasively. The revulsion in his stare made her skin crawl.
“Only to see with my own eyes what Thaddius has told me.” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “The thing that has swallowed him whole and spat him out.”
“And what concern is it of yours?”
“ He is my concern,” Phineas growled. “He does not eat. Does not drink. Does not follow orders. And it is you who drives his madness!”
“And do you suppose I asked to be taken from the Ledge? To be wrenched out of the pool? Has it not occurred to you, Glacian, that perhaps I would rather have let that pool take my soul, than be before you as I am now?” She huffed with exertion, unable to catch sufficient breath.
“He loves you. Do you understand that, human?” Phineas growled. “He is… killing himself. Slowly. You must convince him not to.”
Farra laughed shallowly, darkly, though there was a twinge of pain that could not be ignored. An involuntary response to the thought of Thaddius dying. “I have not seen him in many weeks, Phineas,” she said. “And I have little time remaining. His child will make its presence any day.”
Phineas cursed loudly. His presence was too big for the shelter, too imposing. His very width threatened to knock the walls of Annika’s home to the ground. “And if there was a way to save you…” he growled, the tension apparent in his neck, in the quake of his wings. “Would you accept its course?”
“What?” Farra blurted, brow furrowed.
“If there was a way to… to mend you afterward,” Phineas bit out, his eyes filled with malice. “Would you be willing ?” This last seemed to pain him, as though he were reticent to heed the will of a human.
Farra fell silent. She stared at the Glacian with nothing short of blatant suspicion. “And why would you go to any lengths to help me?”
“It is not you I wish to help.” There could be no arguing the callousness with which he said it. “Thaddius is my brother. I will not see his life squandered by some human he professes to love. If he insists on this insanity –” Phineas paused, readying his words. “Then I will do what is necessary to save him. Even if it means saving you. ” He said it as though the entire idea was absurd – that a Glacian could love a human, or that a human could be worth saving.
“By what means?” Annika said, still stricken in her place. She watched Phineas as though he might tear her to pieces at any moment, a complete contrast to the way she regarded Thaddius.
“When will the child come?” he asked.
“Such things aren’t certain,” Annika answered. “I expect by next moon.”
“You will send word when it begins,” Phineas told her. “Send someone you trust. I will be waiting by the East gate.”
“And then what?” Farra demanded, clutching her stomach with her hands.
“Then Mother help you,” he said giving her one last look of exasperation before leaving. Farra was left with her heart in her throat and a rapidly intensifying sense of foreboding.