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Chapter 5: Lost

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The day we buried her was the day the first snows fell.

I remember feeling cold. Inside and out. As if the snow had reached through my skin to lodge in the raw cracks of my heart. I shivered and shivered and couldn't get warm no matter how much I shook. I was lost… trapped in the black. In the water. In an endless sea of whispers and sobs; the entirety of it roaring in my ears and making no sense whatsoever.

I know there were words spoken. By my parents, whose voices shook harder than my small and broken heart. By the Tehlan priest, who mourned with all the decorum the church allowed. By the neighbors, who came with empty words and left with enough gossip to light their hearthfires for days. By my grandparents, who had truly loved her. I didn't hear any of them… couldn't. There were hands on my shoulders, but they couldn't touch me. I was broken, and frozen in pieces. Still as stone. Shrouded in ice.

All I could remember, then and now, was her body. Broken. Shredded. Painting the sheets beneath her. She had still been clutching the clout.

Of the time after, I remember little. Mostly darkness. I remember how big my room felt without her bed in it; the empty space where it had once been marked only by its absence. I remember staring blankly at the floor. Hours and hours and hours, just staring at the empty space and wishing I couldn't feel anymore. But I didn't know how not to feel, because I felt everything. My emotions danced around me in such a whirlwind that I could barely find firm ground to stand. I was overcome with grief. I was so angry at the world for taking her away. I cursed at Trent. At Tehlu. At Eamon. I would think of her laughing or butchering a song as she worked in the kitchen and smile. And then I'd cry again, harder than ever, as if that smile, that silly slip of memory, had torn my heart apart again with its jagged edges. But I didn't know how to cope without the tears. So I cried and cried and cried until they ran dry. Perhaps I was wise for it.

Not that it made any difference.

Sometimes all the tears in the world aren't enough at all.

Mother tried to talk to me at first. She found me often in the beginning of Dearth. She would approach me in the wintry remains of the garden, where I would sit silently for hours, and pull me inside the kitchen, which was colder still for all the warmth of the fire. She would grasp my cold hand with her soft fingers, and whisper, "It'll be all right. She wouldn't want us to cry so, little bird. She'd want us to be strong."

But her touch reminded me of Denna's, and that hurt. The warmth of her hand seemed to burn my frozen skin, and I would think of Denna, still and cold, and clutching at a clout that would never be fit for anything. And then I would scream. I would rage. I would grab dishes and throw them at the wall until the floor was coated in shreds of clay, and ceramic, and porcelain. And then I would run, leaving her alone to cry silently. To pick up the pieces.

But I didn't want her. I didn't want Father. I didn't want anyone, no matter how much they loved me or how much they had tried to do their best for Denna. They had let her run around with Trent without ever stopping her. And how could they do that? Didn't they know how important Denna was? Were they in such a hurry to marry her off and make her leave? And they hadn't forced her to listen to the doctor until it was too late. Stupid Denna! She had died and left me. I was furious with the lot of them. And I took it out on my parents. On Father. But mostly I took it out on Mother, because she was there.

Oh, Mother.

It wasn't her fault. Oh, I know that. If anything, it was mine.

Mother stopped trying with me after a time. Instead, she withdrew into herself. Father, for his part, had grown hard and silent as a stone. He had no comfort to offer even Mother, so what could he possibly have for me? There were often people at our table at first. My grandparents stopped by several times a span. The priest visited to pray with us. Neighbors brought food wrapped in words of comfort. I sullenly ignored them all, and eventually, the visits grew fewer and farther between. And when it was just the three of us, dinners were spent in silence as we all picked at our food. After a time, Mother stopped cooking altogether, and meals became a smattering of edibles scraped from our dwindling stores and eaten alone. Neither Father nor I said a word.

The winter grew colder, chilling our house along with it. Father began spending more and more time at the apothecary. He would leave early in the morning and not return until well after nightfall. Rather than join him, Mother spent the hours wandering aimlessly from room to room. I watched her sometimes as she sat in the sitting room, surrounded by Denna's old things, which had been shoved away into boxes and stacked in the cellar.

"Do you want to join me?" she asked, when she spotted me watching her through the doorframe at the end of Dearth. "I was going to sort through her clothes. Maybe give some things to the church."

"You're giving her things away?" The thought stabbed straight through my chest like a big chunk of ice.

"Maybe." Her voice sounded weary. There was no conviction in it. "Just some of her clothes. They're collecting for the midwinter charity. They could really do some good—"

"You can't!" I cried, my voice rising dramatically. I thought of the Midwinter Pageantry. Just days away. Denna would never stand beside me at High Mourning and watch demons swarm the streets ever again."They're her things— How can you—" Denna would never again see Tehlu catch Encanis and strike him down.

"I want them!" I managed, tears prickling at the edges of my eyes. They burned hot and angry. "If anyone should have them, it should be me!"

"Little bird—" Mother began, her voice breaking. But I was beyond reproach.

"I'M NOT YOUR LITTLE BIRD!" I screamed, and I grabbed the dress she was holding with so much force it surprised even me and tore it out of her hands. There was a horrible ripping sound as the fabric sheared down the middle. Mother let out a sharp gasp, staring down at the ruined dress.

"Tehlu anyway!" I cursed, starting to cry in earnest. I dropped the dress, whirled on my heels, and ran out of the sitting room, slamming the door to my bedroom behind me. It wasn't supposed to be only my bedroom. The bitter thought made me cry harder.

Mother called after me. She stood outside the door and knocked and called my name. She tried the door, but I had been cruel enough to turn the lock. She asked to come in, and I could hear the sadness in her voice. I could hear how the tears warped and colored her words, and shaped them into broken pleas. It hurt me. I loved her. I didn't want her to be in pain. But I was young and thoughtless, and it only made me angrier that she was hurt too. That I had hurt her. How dare she be upset over something I said in my own pain. I didn't want to feel guilty too, on top of everything. Didn't she understand that it all hurt too much already?

So I screamed at her, my words bursting through the wooden door with all the spiteful anger I possessed.

"Go away!" I told her. "Leave me alone!"

"I love you," she said through the door, her voice quiet and choked with tears. "I know it's hard. It's hard for me and your father too. But we need to talk through this. Denna wouldn't want this—"

"Denna didn't want to die either!" I screamed. "But you let her! You let her say no to the doctor, and now she's dead! It's all your fault! I hate you!"

There was a silence on the other side of the door. A silence as thick and heavy as a new coating of snow on midwinter's morning. It settled in my chest, cold and hard and harsh. I stared at the door, an odd feeling seeping through me. My mouth suddenly felt dry, and a chill broke out across my arms.

Mother didn't reply. The silence swelled, taking all the air in my lungs with it until I felt empty and breathless. And then, when I couldn't stand it for a moment longer, there was a slight creak outside the door, followed by the sound of Mother's footsteps, growing softer. Falling away. Until the silence returned, heavier than before. I realized what the feeling was then, as it played my own words back at me. Screamed them shamefully inside my head.

Regret.

Mother was nowhere to be found when I tried to apologize, and I spent the rest of the day alone, finally falling into a fitful sleep as night swaddled the house in darkness. I awoke in the early morning hours with my stomach gnawing with hunger to the loud creak of my door and a pervasive smell of whiskey. I blinked, turning my head slightly to see Father's dark shape standing, backlit, in the doorway. He didn't come in or speak, merely stood there and gazed into the room, his face in shadow. I watched him, still in the silence.

I had barely seen Father in the past few span. He'd hardly spoken two words to me. A foolish part of me hoped that he'd come to make amends, to right things between all of us. If only Father stopped disappearing to the shop, if we were all together, maybe… but he merely stood on the threshold, unmoving, until Mother appeared beside him and pulled him away with a whisper. The door slipped shut behind them, leaving me in darkness once again.

I heard Mother speaking softly, her voice an indistinguishable whisper through the walls. Father offered her a short reply, his tone brusque. They exchanged words like that for a while, their voices growing somewhat louder until I could just make out pieces of the argument through the paper-thin walls.

"—lay off, I don't—!" Father's voice sounded sharp and angry. Entirely foreign. "I can't—"

They never argued.

"—drinking!" Mother replied, her voice ringing clearly through the word. "Our whole family—" Her words trailed off into a choked jumble. I thought perhaps she had started to cry.

"—fault is that?!" Father exploded. There was a loud thud, as if someone had banged the wall, and my mind flashed back to how helpless and angry Father had looked after Denna refused to listen to the doctor and begged and begged for Trent. I let out an involuntary shudder.

"What would you have—"

Mother murmured something tearily that I couldn't make out at all, though I thought I heard the familiar pattern of my name with an undertone of anguish. There was a heavy pause, then Father spoke again.

"—can't. I'm no…" He trailed off into a muttered whisper.

I couldn't make out a word after that. Their voices grew lower, the edges gradually losing their sharpness, until the only sounds that remained were heavy footsteps, walking decidedly away. They were almost loud enough to mask the soft sobs they left behind. But not quite.

I spent most of the next day in a daze, avoiding contact with Mother. It wasn't difficult as she seemed determined to avoid me too. She left the house early in the morning and was gone for most of the day. Likely to the church with Denna's things. The thought didn't make me angry anymore. Simply sad.

I spent the morning sitting at the scrubbed wooden table that took up most of the small kitchen. I nibbled on some hard cheese and stale bread, though I had no appetite despite my aching hunger. I felt completely empty inside. Exhausted. Heartless. The guilt of what I had said to Mother the night before was all but eating me alive.

She was surely in as much pain as I was. Father too. And I was hurting them more. Tehlu hold me, I was so stupid. How could I say those things to my sweet, kind and gentle mother? It would be better… better if I wasn't there. Better if I…

I almost wasn't aware of slipping into my coat, hat, and scarf. I absentmindedly dropped the remainder of the bread and cheese into my pocket, my mind whirling with thoughts of going… somewhere. Anywhere, really. I just had to get out. I slipped on my gloves; the warm wool ones Denna had made me last winter. They still smelled of lavender and burned incense. Mother and Father would surely be better off without me taking out my anger on them. They could fix everything if I wasn't there. They could talk about Denna and comfort each other. Things would never be the same, I knew that. But once they were… better, I could come back. It would be all right somehow. I would just—

The cold winter air hit me like a brick wall when I stepped through the door. I shuddered, drawing the coat tighter against my trembling body. Every breath burned as it rippled down into my lungs. I was cold. I had been cold long before I stepped out into the icy wind. Long before my boots sank down into the snow. Ever since I lost her. Denna. I could barely remember the warm feeling of Before.

The day melted into an icy blur, the hours too cold to remember. At first the winter simply surrounded me, but as the day went on it stole through me, settling deep into my bones. I wandered, trudging through the steadily growing snowfall with no destination in mind as the sky fell to darkness. With midwinter quickly approaching, the city was bustling despite the cold. Masked children ran past me up and down the streets, and no one gave me a second glance, even as I grew weary and my steps faltered. I vaguely remember shuffling past a church, its doors thrown wide open in preparation for the pageantry with priests bustling in and out. I remember the smell of fresh bread warming the air around a large inn, the heat wafting tantalizingly out into the street where I stood, reaching for my frozen food with numb fingers.

But mostly I remember the cold. I remember how it burned. How it froze my lungs until I could barely draw breath and the world grew dim around me. I remember my lungs straining with the effort; the rattling sound they made as they struggled. The dizzying way the world spun. The pain as the sharp edges of the icy air cut into my chest. I don't remember making the conscious decision to walk to Tehlu Town, the small district on the southern end of the city that has more churches per square mile than any other part of Renere. I'm not sure how my small feet made it there at all, when they were barely holding on to the spinning earth. But I do remember finding myself at a familiar yellow door, the color notable even through the darkness and heavy snowfall. Mostly, I remember how icy the door felt beneath my naked hand, the metal plating of the knocker so cold it stuck to my stiff and frozen fingers. I could not remember where Denna's gloves had gone. But the pain was so sharp it momentarily stilled the earth. And then the door opened inward and I stumbled through, all but falling into Grandmother's arms.

She reached out to steady me with a gasp, her face pale even in my dimming darkness.

"Thank Tehlu!" she gasped, pulling me inside. "Where have you been, child? Everyone's been looking for you!"

"I—" I mumbled, but I couldn't draw breath enough to speak. It was a gasp more than a word, and even that had left me dizzy and gasping for air.

Grandmother pulled me further into the house, into safety and warmth, which turned to softness and the dimming darkness of sleep.