Reyda loved her brother, but there were days she just wanted to strangle him.
Taking care of Narfi was always a struggle. No one ever told you what it was like taking care of a man-child day in and day out. Most days he could do most of the necessary functions of care for himself like dressing and bathing on his own. In fact, they frequently had good days where they would sing together or take walks by the river. Most of the time, Reyda loved her older brother and was happy that she could be there to take care of him.
Then there were days like today.
She had decided to give the house a huge cleaning. Narfi was never any help for this sort of project, so she had sent him outside to entertain himself while she worked. It had been exhausting hauling the various pieces of furniture around so she could scrub and dust. It had taken buckets upon buckets of water to get the place exactly how she wanted. By the end of the day, her hands were swollen and her back throbbed, but she prided herself on a job well done.
Until Narfi came bustling into the house covered in river mud shrieking about how he had seen a fish "this big" with his hands thrown wide. All of her work was destroyed in a matter of minutes because her thirty year old brother had the mentality of a six year old.
She had screamed at him, calling him all sort of names for idiot before sending him to his room. His wails had torn at her heart, but she had every right to be mad, dammit!
It didn't help that the house was getting into bad disrepair. Ever since their parents died, Reyda found it harder and harder to maintain the small building. The roof was starting to sag, one of the windows was busted from a bird flying into it, and the floor was warping.
Reyda had been fifteen when her parents passed away five years ago. It had been a hard winter and both of the older people had caught bad cases of pneumonia. Reyda had done everything she could take take care of them, but she had not been able to keep death at bay.
"Reyda, I hate to ask this of you," her father had rasped, "but someone must take care of your brother. I had hoped this day wouldn't come for many years and you would have a chance at a family of your own before adding your brother as a burden to you, but there's no one else."
She had been eagerly awaiting her sixteenth birthday when she would come of age and could leave Ivarstead. She loved her family, but she wanted to see the rest of the world. Elgrim in Riften occasionally came by and bought her herbs that she gathered, so she had a nice nest egg for traveling. There also had been the high likelihood that Elgrim would take her as an apprentice and teach her more about being an alchemist. He had been looking for one and had not been satisfied with any potential students so far.
"Of course, Papa," she had promised, squeezing his hand.
"Bring your brother here." After she had done so, her father said, "Son, your mother and I are going away."
"Where are you going?" he asked, a huge grin on his face. It had not been uncommon for their father to travel in his trade. He would always bring him a treat for his children to sweeten his absence. "What will you bring Narfi?"
"I'm going to Sovngarde with your mother," he said. It was easier to explain that than the other afterlifes. Narfi had always been fascinated with the heroic heaven and would feel comforted to think his parents were there even if in truth they were not. "So, I'm saying goodbye to you one last time. You'll be a good boy for your sister, right? You'll listen to her just like you did for your mother?"
"Goodbye?" Narfi asked tearfully. "Narfi doesn't want to say goodbye. Narfi wants you to stay."
"I know, my son, I don't want to go either," their father sighed, "but sometimes we just don't get a choice. Feel blessed that you got to say goodbye. Not everyone has that chance."
"Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye," Narfi sang as he shook his father's hand. "Narfi said goodbye." He leaned over and kissed his mother's cheek. She was already deep in a sleep that she would never waken from. "Goodbye, Father. Goodbye, Mother. Narfi loves you."
"We love you too," Father whispered and then he followed their mother into Oblivion.
Reyda had always helped take care of her brother. They had been quite a sight when she was eight and he was eighteen as she was the one guiding him in town to not run into people or get in the way of horses on the road. She had thought surely watching for him now wouldn't be that much harder.
But it was different when you didn't have two parents to help provide for you. Her savings quickly dwindled away. The house had been damaged in the winter storms and lumber was preciously expensive. Temba, the local miller, explained that she had been forced to increase her prices due to bears destroying the nearby trees when they clawed them to mark their territory.
There was still the hope of becoming Elgrim's apprentice. Reyda and Narfi could move to Riften, be safe within the walled city, maybe rent an apartment on the sale of their home, and live sparsely until Reyda finished her apprenticeship.
That dream was dashed to the ground on Elgrim's next visit. He would not stop talking about "that new girl Ingun" who was a true talent with herbs like he had never seen. Sure she had some flaws, but her virtues vastly outweighed them and he was delighted to have her on as an apprentice.
That night Reyda cried, screaming until her throat was sore. Narfi had been scared by her wails and had run around the house in a panic, but she couldn't stop herself from sobbing. It just wasn't fair. Ingun Black-Briar had the world at her fingertips. Her family was rich and powerful. She could have anything she wanted. She already had the brewery as an inheritance and it was no secret that her mother Maven was looking to expand to other countries for export. Why did she have to take the one thing Reyda not only wanted, but needed?
It wasn't fair.
The only time she found any solace was when she gathered her herbs. Elgrim might not want her as an apprentice any more,but at least he still needed her wares. It was a blessing since it was the only revenue the two had to sustain on. Reyda had no other training and even if she did, what profession could she possibly do that could accommodate the high maintenance Narfi required?
Sometimes she would need to travel to Riften for a few days to sell her herbs and pick up supplies that could only be obtained in the larger city. Ivarstead was merely a stopping station for pilgrims heading up the Seven Thousand Steps and did not have a true market.
There was no way she could take Narfi with her on the trip. Among sudden storms, wild animals, and bandits, taking a mentally challenged man with her would have been suicide. Better to travel as a woman alone and be on the alert to hide if necessary than to have her brother along.
Every time she would return home, the house would be in complete shambles. Narfi would be covered in food and he would still be wearing the same outfit she had left him in. He never thought to change his clothes on his own and always had to be strongly encouraged to the point of begging to wipe clean and put on a fresh outfit.
"I swear, you would wear your clothes to rags if I weren't here," Reyda sighed every time.
"Narfi love Reyda!" he would exclaim before giving her a wet kiss.
She would bite her lip and try hard to not cry, because despite everything she really did love her brother. He was just too much to handle for a woman her age and experience.
One day she came into her storage room to find Narfi sitting in the middle of the room gleefully tearing the precious petals off the stems. He was giggling and kicking his legs on a large pile of already destroyed ingredients.
"What is wrong with you?" she screamed. "Get out, get out, get out!"
Narfi screeched in surprise before jumping up and running out of the room. But not before he managed to knock over a basket full of flowers that still needed sorting.
Reyda couldn't stop from crying as she knelt to pick up the scattered flowers. She could probably salvage some of the petals, but most ingredients needed to be harvested and extracted in a certain manner and no doubt the majority of the ones Narfi had been playing with would be beyond repair and would have to be thrown away.
Why did her brother have to be Void touched? Why couldn't he be normal like most people?
The young woman paused, looking at the nightshade petal in her hand. Many alchemical ingredients could be used for poisons as well as potions. It wouldn't be too hard to just give him a few of the more potently dangerous ones. She wouldn't even have to mix them up properly. Just hand him a few flowers and let him naturally put them in his mouth…
"No!" she exclaimed, shaking her head violently. Murder was a horrible sin. To kill one of your kin was a thousand times worse. She loved her brother. She loved his smile, his laugh, by the Nine she even loved his stupid tendency to repeat a phrase over and over.
But, and how she hated to admit this even to herself, but she wanted a chance at a life of her own too. She was only twenty years old and some days she felt like a hundred. She would look in the mirror and wonder who that tired woman was.
Reyda had never been what one would call traditionally beautiful. She wasn't lovely like the mysterious Lynly with her angelic voice or chased by men like Fastred. She had boring brown hair and ordinary brown eyes. She wasn't particularly smart or strong.
Maybe she would make a good adventurer as a mercenary for hire, or a powerful mage in Winterhold, or even just a farmer's wife with a half dozen kids helping bring in the harvest. But she would never know because she was too busy being Narfi's caretaker.
It was improbable that any of the local men would want to marry her knowing what he was like. It wasn't like being an alchemist was that hard. Reyda could take her savings and find another hold with another alchemist looking for an apprentice. She could survive on her own by chopping wood or running errands until she found something solid.
But only if she didn't have Nafri.
It probably would have been nothing more than a dream to help her sleep at night if it hadn't been for the book. It wasn't uncommon for merchants to come through Ivarstead with little bits of this and that. The most precious commodity in Reyda's opinion was the selection of books they would bring. Often, she would trade the few she already owned and read back and forth a dozen times for a set of new ones to start the cycle over again.
This time Reyda found at the bottom of the stack a slim book called "A Kiss, Sweet Mother."
The right thing to do would have been to throw the wretched thing into the river or her fireplace once she realized what it was. Instead, Reyda found herself drawn into the book's soothing reassurance that if you wanted someone dead all you had to do was summon the Dark Brotherhood and they would take care of it for you.
Narfi couldn't read, so she didn't have to worry about him finding it, but Reyda still kept the book hidden deep under her mattress. What if someone from town came to visit and saw it? It was extremely unlikely since they rarely had visitors, but she couldn't stand the shame if someone found out.
It's not like it hurt to see what the book said, right?
"I'm going out for a bit, Narfi," Reyda told her brother one day. Her flower basket felt impossibly heavy on her arm. Inside it held "A Kiss, Sweet Mother" and the morbid components for the ritual. Getting a skeleton had been oddly easy since there was a barrow located next to Ivarstead.
Her older brother bounded over to her and gave her a tight bear hug. Reyda grunted with the force he used, but didn't reprimand him. "Where is Reyda going?" he asked. "Can Narfi come?"
"I'm going to pick some flowers," she said lightly. Reyda didn't like bringing Narfi along when she gathered herbs. He tended to crush them from running around. "I'll be home soon, okay?"
"Okay!" Narfi chirped. "Narfi will wait here for you."
Reyda felt like she was going to vomit as she headed east to the little nest of islands she used as her primary harvesting area. She had been coming out here for months, performing the dark ritual to summon the Brotherhood. Reyda hated doing it. She felt foul and was left shaking for hours afterwards.
But she couldn't go on like this anymore. She couldn't live her life for her brother. She needed to live her own life. She wanted a house that wasn't falling apart, a career of some kind, a husband or wife, and children to love and care for until they were old enough to be adults and go have their own lives too. She couldn't take years of washing up after Narfi until she was old and gray.
Maybe if it had been one particular thing he had done, it would easier to do this. Maybe if she had come home and he had accidentally destroyed their mom's favorite plate or shredded their father's favorite chair. Maybe if he had just done something horrible, she would feel better about what she was doing.
Instead it had been when Reyda was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor after Narfi had had an accident. She looked up at a ray of sunlight and thought, "This is my life. This is what I'll be doing for the next fifty years." Something in her broke. She couldn't do this any more.
Sometimes when Reyda was stabbing the effigy, her mind would go to the strangest thoughts. She would imagine she was stabbing Nafi, his eyes huge and confused as she hurt him. Other times it was her father, looking at her with disappointment. "You promised to take care of him," he would repeat over and over as the knife went down. Rarely it was their mother, maybe because Reyda thought at least she would understand what Reyda was going through. Sometimes it was herself that she was stabbing, feebly reaching for something. Reyda would feel a sharp pain in her chest as the dagger descended.
It was exceptionally cold night as Reyda performed the Black Sacrament. The candles gave off little light and less heat. Her fingers were numb as she stabbed the iron dagger into the skeleton, and her breath hung in the air.
"You can stop now," a woman's voice broke into Reyda's litany. "The Brotherhood has arrived."
Reyda paused, shocked, not believing her ears. She looked up and saw a woman covered in black and red leathers. Her face was concealed with a black cowl showing nothing more than ice blue eyes. Reyda swallowed hard as she sat back on her heels. "You came."
"I did," the woman answered, amusement in her smooth voice. She crossed her arms as she studied the other woman. "My name is Astrid. You have performed the Black Sacrament and the Dark Brotherhood has arrived. Who do you want killed?"
"My brother, Narfi," Reyda stammered. "He lives with me. I have to take care of him. He's Sheogorath touched and I- I- I can't do it any more. It's killing me."
"And better him than you?" Astrid asked, sympathy in her voice. "Do you have the payment?"
"Yes," Reyda whispered as she handed over the last of her savings to the other woman. "Could you please make sure he doesn't suffer? That he doesn't know what will happen to him?"
"It costs more for a bonus," Astrid said coolly as she counted the money, not every pleased at the amount, but not refusing it either.
"I don't have anything else," the younger woman admitted shamefully. She hunched her shoulders as she gripped her knees. "Please, I do love him and I don't want him to suffer."
"You have performed the Black Sacrament and I have accepted your payment," Astrid responded as if reciting from a script. "Thus begins a contract, bound in blood." She stepped back into the shadows, vanishing from sight.
Reyda started shivering violently, whether from the cold or fear she had no idea. Tears streamed down her cheeks, freezing in the cold. Then it struck her what she had done. They were going to kill Narfi! They were going to kill her brother and it was her fault.
She started screaming as she got to her feet. She had to get home. She had to grab Narfi and take him away. Someplace safe. It didn't matter if he was a burden. She loved him and she had promised to take care of him.
She left her basket and its gruesome contents behind as she ran home. It was completely black out, the moons hidden behind clouds as if they were ashamed of her actions. She didn't care. It wasn't too late. She could still fix this.
How long had she sat there after the assassin left? Minutes? Hours? Had Astrid gone directly to the house and killed him while she waited in the field?
"Please, Talos, Akatosh, Mara, Kyne, please," she prayed. Her hair streamed behind her as she ran, her lungs burning as she drew huge breaths. "I can fix this. Please let me fix this."
Reyda was almost back. Just one more island to get over and she would be at the road and then almost home. Her foot went down in a depression and she heard her ankle snap. She was going too fast to stop and ended up tumbling head first into the river. Her head hit against a rock before she was pulled by the current deeper into the water.
It was black and cold in the water. All warmth was pulled out of her body as she was dragged down into the lake's depths. Reyda floundered, trying frantically to find the surface, to find up, but she merely spun in the deadly water. She opened her mouth to scream and it was flooded with the river's contents.
Narfi, Narfi, Narfi! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I failed you. Reyda wept, but couldn't feel her tears in the freezing water. She could feel her body being pulled to the murky bottom as the life was leaving her. She reached out, trying to live even as she felt herself slipping away from her body.
Reyda sighed, her eyes fluttering shut as the cold water claimed her. At least it was over. She didn't have to worry about spending the rest of her life as a slave to her poor brother. She didn't have to worry about whether they would have enough to eat or a roof over their heads. She didn't have to worry about Narfi suffering on his own for too long. Soon he would join her in the Void and maybe there she could take care of him as she had promised.
Goodbye, Narfi. I love you.
Note: This story is an entry for the Bard's College group on Deviantart. It is a collaboration between myself and the lovely artist Ariakitty (who is known here as Fluttermoth). If you find the story on Deviantart, there is a link that sends you to her amazing depiction of Reyda's hallucination of killing Narfi. Also, I highly recommend her fiction, Causa Mortis, which is about her Listener Bosmer Lumen.