Chapter 5

In the end, she doesn't get to teach him anything.

It starts one sunny day when they are roaming the market, Jeremie dancing through shoppers, light on his feet. She is not worried. She has him in her sight and he knows not to stray too far from her.

She is comparing the feel of two fabrics, thinking of buying another furred robe for her son who has outgrown his last one. She can simply cover him up in the softest of pelts, but doing this, choosing his clothes and haggling for price makes her feel like a person. There are still some days when she gets lost in her head, thinking silence is all she has, but then his tiny hands slip into hers and he starts talking about all matter of things.

Like how the uncle at the restaurant always puts extra pieces of meat on her plate, how the woman who runs the shoe stall likes ruffling his hair and passing him sweets when Elena is busy negotiating the amount.

Slowly, awareness seeps and her eyes loose that far away look. He is wise beyond his years, her Jeremie.

They have built a life.

Most mornings, they trek through the forest, collecting herbs and wildflowers that grow near the oldest of Cedars. She sells them to the apothecary in the market.

There are days when she hunts the wild animals who go berserk and try to venture into nearby human settlements, skinning them and bringing the pelt to the market.

She keeps the softest ones for Jeremie…

It's his cry that breaks her out of her reverie. She turns hastily and sees him sitting on the ground, sobbing as he holds his bleeding hand, surrounded by people

She has him in her arms in a moment, her breath harsh and labouring as she tries to put pressure on the bleeding gash.

It's a knife wound, not deep enough to touch the bone, and yet not shallow enough to be cured by the blood-her blood-that runs in his veins.

She carries him to the apothecary and the elderly matron clucks and coos as she applies the paste and wraps the wound with clean cotton bandage.

Her mind is numb.

Someone hurt her son. Someone intentionally cut him open. Her son. The son she has guarded so zealously that there is not even a scar on his body. She has carried him in her arms, put him to sleep in her arms, fed him in the comfort of her embrace. He hasn't felt pain from the moment she picked him up. He does not know what it is to fall and hurt, to cry out. He doesn't know the way skin darkens in a bruise or burns hot as an open wound. And someone dared to hurt him.

The potion bubbling in the cauldron ices over, the fire dies and frost starts climbing the walls.

The matron is startled when wisps of vapour start escaping her bare hands.

"Did you see who hurt you Jeremie?" She asks quietly, hiding him in the swish of the wolfskin that sits on her shoulder when the matron steps away.

He hides his face in her chest in response, small hands clutching her sides in a grip that belies fear.

So, she doesn't repeat her words, instead she stands up, pays the terrified woman and makes her way out of the store.

She hums his favorite song as she carries him back, seething internally in rage, leaving behind trampled and obliterated grass.

"She wore a circle of silver berries on her head, Tatki," He whispers. "And her eyes were those of a wolf."

She pats his back in soothing circles, trying to calm him.

"She was a God, Tatki. She smelt like one… "

In the end she can't do anything, but watch her son die.

There is something in his blood that is crawling slowly in his veins, leaving them dark as it inches towards his heart. He sobs and screams, begs her to make the pain stop, and she, his mother, can't do anything but watch helplessly as he suffers.

She cuts opens her hand and tries to feed him her blood, but he chokes and vomits it all out. He is lost inside his head, fever burning up his tiny little body, skin painted with veins that press from inside of his skin.

She scoops him in her arms again, apologizing for hurting him and she runs like wind towards the human market, aware of the death dogging her heels, eager to sink it's greedy, bony claw in her son.

The matron of the apothecary is closing the door when she finally comes to a stop.

It doesn't even take words for the old woman to push open the door and gesture her inside.

She lays Jeremie on a table and lights the lamp, before picking up a bowl from the lower shelf.

"Did his fever not break after I applied the medicine in the afternoon?"

"No."

She pulls a root from the tied bundle hanging from the ceiling, a lotus bud and a pinch of white dust and starts grinding.

Jeremie whimpers in pain as the black inside his veins crawls from shoulder to his clavicle, one branch making it's way slowly towards his heart from across his stomach.

When the old woman tries to spread the paste on Jeremie's skin, he screams, his small body bowing in half as his back jerks away from the table surface.

The skin of his legs starts turning ashy and when she touches it, his skin, and muscles crumble beneath her fingers to leave only the bone.

She doesn't need the old woman's gasp of fear or her fall to know that she can do nothing for her son.

He is dying.

So, she does the only thing she knows. She lays a gentle palm over his heart, willing the cold running inside her to pour out of her fingers like a lullaby. It's an act of love, the way frost freezes his heart and his nostrils still amid a flair of a half breath inhaled. Ice covers him like the toughest of cocoons, running over his skin, inside the gaping hole from where his bone peeks, digging into his veins, and climbing over every strand of hair on his perfect head to freeze him in perpetuity.

He is dead.

Her son Jeremie is dead…

I am sorry. This hurt me, but I needed to do this for the story. I am sorry.