Disclaimer: I'm only playing in Pat's beautiful playground.

Chapter 8: Adrift

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The world fell silent after that. I lost my grip on the surface. I lived only beneath the water, where sounds were muted and visions were murky and deep. Down there, voices were only noise that couldn't touch me. And the pain and anger were too immense to feel. I didn't have enough heart to hold it all. And any time I broke the surface for a breath of air, it would all overwhelm me again. The air on my face would stab at me, knifelike. The colors would be too bright. The clarity of it all would hurt my eyes. It was easier to sink again. Easier in the beneath.

From the time after she bled out on the street until the first breath of spring, I remember only moments. I remember the deep red of Mother's blood pooling among the dirty traces of snow. Spilling hot and furious across my frozen hands. It was so cold. How would she stay warm if all her blood was on the outside? I remember the weight of her, still and leaden. I remember crying out her name in futile sobs. She was gone. I knew it as surely as the blood stained my hands. She had stepped through death's door… to dance with Denna.

Not with me.

Beyond that, I knew nothing.

I breathed from moment to moment. Lived life in flickers, like a campfire in heavy rain. Constantly on the edge of burning out.

The funeral was a swarm of pitying faces. I can't remember a single one of them in detail. I remember their empty words, flashes of well meaning kindness, whispered gossip and speculations.

"She fell right in front of Tehlu's carriage."

I remember Grandmother's thin and withered hand in mine. The warmth of her body beside me. Her grasp tight and gentle both.

"It's a tragedy. The crowds were so wild Midwinter's Night. It's getting more dangerous every year."

Grandfather embracing Father in the chancel, both arms squeezed firmly around his back while Father sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. The sound of it all but froze my heart.

"Horrible accident."

Flowers everywhere. Piles upon piles of them. Overflowing the chancel and the altar both.

"First Denna, now Althea. That poor family…"

Father's swollen eyes meeting mine in the snow-covered graveyard outside the church, the blue of his eyes nearly black. His hand on my shoulder. A glimpse of a reassuring smile.

The last remains of my family beside me.

"Merciful Tehlu. On Midwinter's Night, of all days."

"Perhaps it's Tehlu's justice. Punishment for Denna's impropriety…"

The suffocating silence of the empty night after. Nothing but my acidic thoughts to fill up the hours.

A part of me burned with anger at what I'd heard in the whispers carried about the church. But the rest of me didn't have enough feeling to fuel the fire. My world had grown flat. My touch of it fleeting. And there was a certain truth to their hard words I couldn't deny. Wasn't it a punishment? But there was no Tehlu. No justice. It was one Mother had condemned herself to all on her own.

She had stepped off the footpath. I'd seen the naked truth of it with my own eyes.

But no one had seen it but me.

I remember leaving the inviting warmth of Grandmother's house and stepping into the empty silence of home. Father had refused Grandmother's offers to stay in Tehlu Town and did not wish for her to move into our small house. And I couldn't bear the thought of Father staying there alone. Not after losing Mother the way I had. Grandmother couldn't disagree.

"You need each other," was all she said when I told her of my plans to return home, in one of my flashes of clear thought.

And I wondered if she believed me — believed that it hadn't been an accident. That Mother hadn't slipped and stumbled into the street, jostled by the reveling crowd. I wondered if she blamed me as heavily as I did — if that were even possible. Or if she blamed herself for letting me stay in the easy happiness of their home when Mother needed me. We had all lost Denna, but I had been the one to lay the weight of that loss at Mother's feet. And now she was gone.

And the fault was mine.

I sank back under after that, the pain too big to grapple with. If the waves were going to crash over my head the second I tried to live, then it seemed better to stay asleep. To stay beneath the water. To breathe by the air that filtered down to me through the piping of routine and let that guide me through the dark.

So that is where I stayed, in our small house beneath the water. I didn't leave its confines outside of necessity. I cooked meals and scrubbed floors and dreamed of horrors in the empty nights when sleep dared to find me. I barely spoke, except to Father. And even then, our words were few and far between. For five span, I kept my hands busy with mindless tasks and my mind was empty and numb. It was the first time that I had ever truly felt alone.

Oh, I shared the house with Father… but it could not be said that we lived together. That we were family. If anything, we simply occupied the same space. We flitted around each other, like ghosts trapped in our own hauntings of time. Both lost in the seas of our memories, rough with patches of scars. Passing each other unseen.

In the end, we found ourselves at the same lighthouse, drawn there by broken notes carried over the swirling waters. We clung on to the thin stretch of solid ground, together in the light at last.

When I found it, I thought it would fix everything. I thought the ground was firm enough to stand on, and long enough to travel. That the narrow stretch of land was not an island but a road that would lead us out of the roiling waters.

I was terribly and horribly wrong.

I never imagined that the island was an iceberg, and that the only way to go from there was straight down into the frozen sea.

I was standing at the washbasin, mindlessly scrubbing the pots, when I heard the faint traces of music trickling into the kitchen. The notes sounded broken, like the instrument that made them was old and creaky. Its bones jarringly out of tune. But frayed as they were, I would recognize them anywhere. Mother's rebec. I hadn't heard its song twining with the open air since… since that night.

My breath caught in my throat, as if unsure if it should stay or go. My mind had frozen, trying to logically puzzle out the source. But my body had decided for me. I walked, my steps light, my ears tuned to the sound. I followed it, flitting through the house like a ghost lost in time, until I stepped out into the yard, where the broken music was louder.

Father was sitting on the swinging seat overlooking the garden, which was just beginning to come alive with the first traces of spring. He was holding the rebec against his chest. He held the bow in his other arm and was trailing it against the strings, which squeaked shrilly beneath his touch. The sound set my teeth on edge at the same time as it stabbed into my heart with all the barbs of nostalgia. I drew in a sharp breath through my teeth and he looked up, seemingly surprised to find me there.

The terrible music stopped, and I was simultaneously relieved and horribly disappointed. Mother was gone. Of course. I knew that. But for a moment, it was as if I had heard her in the wind.

"Sorry," he said, after a long moment. "I never was any good with this thing."

I nodded, not entirely sure if I was accepting his apology or simply agreeing with him. Maybe both. He eyed me for a moment longer, then shifted on the seat and held the rebec out to me.

"You were pretty good with this, weren't you? Budding little musician, you are."

"I— I was just okay," I mumbled, not daring to take the instrument. I hadn't even seen it since I'd chased Mother down Harney Road. I had no memory of what I had done with it after I ran to her. No idea how it had found its way here, to the house. In the last five span, I hadn't given it a single thought.

"Go on," he said, offering me a smile. It seemed to lighten his entire face.

I reached out, my hand trembling, and closed my fingers around its slim neck. The wood was warm. Like it had been kissed by early spring sunshine. Like it held all the heat of Father's body within its pear-shaped bowl. I brought a hand gently to the strings, running it along their lengths until I reached the tuning pegs. I twisted them very slightly, as Mother had once taught me. The familiar feel of the strings beneath my fingers felt like tear tracks carved across my hands.

"Go on," Father said again, and I glanced up to see that he was offering me the bow. He was smiling still, his face bright and sunny as the dawning spring. As if this was a normal moment. Just a father and a daughter out in the yard enjoying the first breath of spring. No bodies lying between like terrible walls.

I held out my hand and he placed the bow within it. And then my hand was moving, almost of its own accord, placing the bow to the strings.

When I played Mother's rebec, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't even particularly good. It was full of errors, and the music faltered and stalled. But Father still swore it was beautiful.

He hugged me when it was done, laughing and crying both, and said that I reminded him of Mother in a way that made my heart feel full for the first time in months.

"We've been hiding from each other, kid."

We had been sitting in silence for a while, gazing out across the garden when he spoke. I glanced up, my eyes meeting his across the length of the seat. They were as dark as they had been the day of Mother's funeral, the blue of them nearly black as pitch. I wondered if sadness — real sadness — could change the shape of a person. But for all that, he was smiling.

"Losing Denna, that was a horrible thing. And your mother so soon after…" He trailed off, his expression growing hard for just a moment before he pushed the darkness aside. "We've brooded a long while, haven't we? It's about time we started living again."

I nodded silently, drawing my lips together. In that moment, he sounded so much like Grandmother that it hurt. She still stopped by several times a span, kept me company for a bit while Father was at the shop. Talked to me in platitudes like they meant something other than that she loved me. I loved her too, but since when was love enough to fix anything? Denna had loved Trent, and she died. I had loved Mother, and she died too. Maybe it all hurt a little less without love. Or so I thought anyway, until Father slid over on the seat and wrapped his arms around me.

I fumbled with the rebec in shock, and it made a melodic sound as I all but dropped it on the hard wooden bench. But I barely had room to think of it, for Father was holding me for the first time in months. And I couldn't understand what had changed, for yesterday he had returned from the apothecary in the late night as always and said barely two words to me as he placed a small sack of potatoes on the kitchen table. And today he was out in the yard. Hugging me. Smiling. Denna and Mother were just as dead, and the house just as empty. But the brightness of his sudden smile was everything.

I hugged him back, letting some of my anxious sadness whither away in the warmth of the embrace.

"So let's get to living, shall we?" he said, his voice as light and gentle as I dared remember from happy days long past. "And let's fill this house with music again. I'm hopeless"— he laughed, the sound of it fresh as the spring air—"but you're great, kid. You're going to be as good as Illien one day."

And though it was entirely untrue, the compliment wormed its way straight into my heart, cracking the icy shield around it to pieces.

Father was back. Tehlu had pulled him out of the darkness and returned him to me. And in that moment I could see the shape of the road before us, as if a sudden wind had blown away the storm that we'd been struggling through, and now the sun hung freely in the sky, lighting the way. Finally, we could walk it together.

The next months were happy. There is no other way to describe them. I found my smile again, found my footing out of the dark. Father spent less time at the apothecary and more time at home with me. He took care to bring home fresh vegetables, soft cheeses, and cuts of beef and pork and chicken from the butcher. He'd join me in the kitchen sometimes, attempting to cook along with me and failing spectacularly in his efforts as he over-seasoned several roasts past edibility, dropped an entire dozen eggs, and even somehow managed to burn a potato so spectacularly that it resembled a piece of coal when he fished it out of the fire.

It hardly phased him though, even when he burned his hand among the coals. He merely yielded the kitchen to me, shaking his head at himself with an easy laugh, and suggested it may be safer for him to watch from the sidelines. To compliment my cooking, he bought apples, pastries, and fizzy drinks. He replenished the herbs that had long grown stale in the pantry, stocking it with salt and pepper, rosemary and sage, flour and sugar cubes, the last of which he nibbled on as he watched me bake my way through Grandmother's recipes.

For my twelfth birthday at the beginning of Caitelyn, he brought home a large cake, layered and decorated with swirls of brightly-colored cream. Grandmother and Grandfather joined us for dinner, and I played the rebec for them all after in the garden. Grandmother gave me an approving smile when I finished my rendition of Home Westward Wind. There in the garden, in the midst of Mother's blooming plants and the memory of her music swirling around us, the sting of losing her and Denna didn't feel quite as sharp. In that moment, with my belly full of cake and my heart full of love, it all hurt a little less. Like things were falling slowly but surely into place. Like we had spent the long winter hibernating, much like her plants, and now we were also reaching for the sky, ready to bloom.

I'm glad I have this memory; this one last birthday in the light. Even if my view of it all was already skewed. I'll still gladly take it for the remembering, for the things that came after were even darker, even harder, than all the ones before. They are the things I wish I could forget… But how can I, when they make up the shape of me? I dream of them nearly every night.

If only I had been a little older. A little smarter. If only I'd understood a bit more of the world, perhaps it would have all turned out differently. But even for all the tragedy I knew, I was still a naive twelve-year-old girl. Raised with love. Sheltered beyond the scars. What did I know of the sudden happiness of forgetting, wrapped in smiles as white as snow?

Oh, I was just a child. And I knew nothing.