Chapter Thirteen: The Spearshafts
The boy crouched; his body pressed into the corner of the room. The rough brick dug into his back through his threadbare shirt, abrading his skin and spotting it with blood. He hugged his legs, folding them tightly against his chest, and his hands gripped his knees so hard his fingertips turned white.
He huddled there, his tear-streaked face half buried under a mop of oily hair. Only his silver eyes peered out, glossy and red-rimmed.
The bright midday sun filtered in through the narrow windows, filling the room with its harsh, golden light. But its familiar, summery brilliance seemed surreal. At odds with the sickening chill radiating throughout his body, its icy crystals splintering his insides.
His mother lay draped on the floor, her body unnaturally limp. Her dress burned white in the sunlight. It was an old thing, tattered at its hems. She'd worn it every day since he could remember, its tailoring bland beside the exquisite garments she stitched on her lap.
But today it was different.
A rich red spread along the collar and shoulders, dyeing the linen with blooming garlands. The excess dye pooled under her body, flowing across the tile. Its red edge crept close to his scrunched toes, and he whimpered. His back ground against the brick as he pressed harder into the corner, frantic not to dye himself.
He spied the ragged cuts that raked his mother's wrists. The crisscrossing grooves ran deep, exposing mangled tissue and glimpses of white bone. Her neck was its own raw horror. Punctures mutilated her tender throat, each welling with thickening blood. The wounds clustered like honeycomb, revealing her ribbed trachea and shredded arteries.
Amid the desperate carnage, he spied a nub of glinting silver. The blunt end of the seam ripper. The rest was buried deep in her throat.
And his gaze fell to the bloody handprint smeared over her slightly swollen belly. He remembered the way she clutched it, her hand knotted with rage and despair.
His eyes returned to the seam ripper.
His toy arrow during the endless summer days had struck true, unraveling her into a spreading pool of broken thread.
Had he unmade her? Or had she unmade herself? He couldn't tell. All he knew is that she had left him behind. He hadn't been worth anything to her to take with her.
Then the icy chill aching his insides reached his heart, and the pain subsided into numbness. His tears dried and he let the seeping blood touch his toes. He stopped feeling anymore.
And yet, he softly hummed her wordless song, filling the silence as though she was still there sitting under the windows, longing for the pale sky outside.
OOOOOOOOOO
Nil's eyes flew open as his body seized with a shuddering gasp.
The cool night air filled his lungs with shards of broken glass, and he groaned as they rasped his throat raw. Weakly, he fumbled for his neck, and his chest burned under his grazing touch, the skin dry like tinder. And through his feverish mind, he wondered if it would combust, peeling away like kindled parchment.
Soft grass swayed in and out of his red-hazed vision. It brushed against his arms and legs, its caress slicing him like razor blades. He gazed up past it, through silhouetted trees and into the infinite black sky. Across it, the galactic river shimmered, its star-filled currents casting gentle, silver light.
Slowly, his mind cleared, detaching from the pain and the fever devouring his body, and it floated upon it like flotsam after a wreck.
He was on the mesa in the Spearshafts. He'd been waiting for someone.
He'd been waiting for her.
His gaze fell from the distant sky to the silhouetted trees looming over him. But they weren't trees. They were instead the fletched ends of arrows, and they pierced him through his chest and torso. His fingers grasped at one, and the sharp agony split his lips with another groan.
"Fuck," he rasped.
His hand felt its way down his body, creeping towards his belt. His fingers clumsily crawled over emptied pouches. Everything of value looted by her hand. As the hunter and the hunted, he expected satisfaction at their roles fulfilled, but he only felt an unexpected pang of anguish carving his heart. For all the times he maligned bandits as filth, for her, there had been no difference between he and them. He'd become another kill and another body to exploit. And what she hadn't wanted was left to prune in the sun.
His fingertips grazed a leather sheath, and then with bated breath, he discovered the metal hilt of his dagger. He drew it out, its steel catching the starlight, and he held it up over his throat. His dead mother in a pool of blood pressed its way back into his thoughts.
Was he ready to be unmade? If he let himself languish in this high, lonely place, he'd only suffer a long, torturous death. A suitable end for a coward if he was willing to be one.
The dagger sank, its edge slicing slowly towards his throat.
He could finish what Aloy hadn't. What his mother had failed to do. He'd done it before to others. More times than he could remember. He could make it quick. Not like the seam ripper.
But before he could close his eyes and do it, the dagger's edge glinted orange, catching the flickering light of a nearby campfire.
He breathed out a stuttering sigh and tears spilled down his cheeks. He wanted to touch their cool wetness, their presence as unfathomable as peace.
Instead, he pressed the dagger against an arrow shaft with his thumb braced on the other side, and with a sharp snap, he broke it in half. One-by-one, he lopped them off, felling the forest she had planted in his body.
He slipped his dagger back into its sheath. His jaw clenched, and after a readying breath, he started to push himself up. Shuddering grunts coughed in his throat, his mind overcome with blinding agony. But he battled through it, his hands knotted in the grass and his arms straining. Slowly, he sat up until his weary, bloodshot eyes fell on the distant ridge and the sprawling jungle below.
His head turned, wobbly on his neck, and his gaze panned to the shabby tents of the makeshift camp. He remembered it from earlier when he had scaled the mesa. The outlaws had been surprised. The place felt like a refuge. A haven from the consequences of their violent lives. Now their bodies lay bloated after a day of rotting, their sweet, putrid stink saturating the air.
The campfire burned, and he could see the latticework of split logs that fed it. He recognized her hand in the way it was stacked, and for a heartbeat, he wondered if she had left it for him. But the hope passed. It was her habit to set a fire before heading out on the next leg of her journey. A way of marking where she had been and nothing more.
Under its glowing firelight and nested between a pair of grimy bedrolls, he spotted a supply cache and the familiar shape of his bag.
He clenched his jaw again, his trembling body tensing for what would come next. Shakily and with more effort than he'd ever needed, he rolled over and clambered onto his knees. His vision flashed red as the pain slammed into him and sent him reeling. His arms crumpled under his weight, and he collapsed onto his elbows. There he held, the splintered ends of the arrows in his body hovering over the ground. Drool seeped from his gasping mouth, and he choked back a cry.
He hung there, waiting for the pain to subside and for his breathing to slow. Then he summoned every bit of strength he had, and he drove himself back up onto his hands.
Grimacing, he began to crawl towards the cache and prayed that his guts didn't spill out along the way. Wind erosion had given the mesa's crown a mild slope, but it might as well have been a steep mountain for him to summit. But he pressed onward, pushing himself across the pebbly ground that abraded his palms and knees.
The campfire burned brighter as he neared, overwhelming the gentle starlight, and under it, he could see more. He looked at his slumped bag, its drawstring loosened, and its contents emptied onto the ground. Bowls and plates lay scattered. His pouches of ingredients strewn. She hadn't been contented with just looting his body. All that he owned had been appraised, either taken or tossed away.
He swallowed dryly when he saw his canteen amid the mess, his raw throat urging him forward.
She wouldn't be that cruel, would she? In a jungle teeming with rivers and streams, would she take the thing that would be priceless only to him?
He hobbled towards it; his heart buoyant with hope. And when his shaky hand grabbed it, he felt its contents slosh inside. A whispered prayer to the Sun escaped him, and he sat back onto his knees. With his thumb, he uncorked it and brought it unsteadily to his lips, his body listing like a ship on rough seas. The first splash of water hit him, still warm from spending the day in the sun. It flooded into his parched mouth and poured down his throat, soothing it like a balm. He tipped its end higher, gulping thirstily as the excess spilled from the corners of his lips and drenched his chin.
Soon the canteen was empty, its nourishment spent. He gave it a shake, lapping up its last droplets, and then he let it fall from his hand. A worthless husk without its treasure. His eyes scanned the mess, and he spotted his next desire. A sleeve of needles gleamed beside a spool of thread. He scooped them up and slipped them into one of his emptied pouches. Then his attention fell to the supply cache.
He crawled towards it, wincing in pain, and what hopes he held evaporated when he noticed that its clasps were already flipped.
"Did she always have to fucking loot everything?" he mumbled to himself.
He reached the cache and then sat back onto his knees. His body hunched forward again in prayer, though through the fog dulling his thoughts, he couldn't recall what he was so desperate to find. He lifted the cracked lid and found what he expected. Rusted tools and mildewed bandages, victims of the lowland's constant humidity. A few knocked over bottles filled the bottom of the box, their contents corrupted.
Except for one.
He plucked up the bottle into his palm. Even under the amber firelight, he could tell it was a green syrup that swirled inside. He thumbed off the stopper and lifted its rim to his nose. His chest rose as he breathed in its odor and then heaved as he gagged on it. It was definitely the same medicine Fashav had given him years ago after Cinnabar Sands. He would never forget its cloying, synthetic flavor, and if he wasn't certain that there was an infection raging through his feverish body, he'd gladly let it stay a bad memory.
His stomach churned as he put it to his lips, and with a shuddering sigh, he slammed the concoction back. He could feel his throat's betrayal as he choked it down. The medicine roiled in his belly, but after a few shaky breaths, it settled.
He turned back to the cache and fumbled through it again. An old pair of pliers caught his eye, and he wiped at the rust speckling their jagged jaws. They weren't ideal, but they would work, and he hooked them onto his belt.
The campfire beckoned, its welcoming glow luring him like a moth. He edged towards it, scooting on his knees until he felt its heat washing over him. Wincing, he shrugged out of his vest and set his headdress on the ground. Then he took stock of his injuries.
Five arrows punctured his body. Three in his chest and two in his abdomen. They were clustered over his heart and liver, but they hadn't gone deep enough, the ends of their arrowheads peeking out above the skin. The flesh radiating from the wounds appeared blackened and singed with no blood trickling out. He lowered his head and sniffed. A faint trace of blaze lingered, and he realized why he was still alive.
She had used fire arrows.
The blaze coating made them unwieldy at the tip. They had to be crafted smaller and used with a bow that had a lower draw weight. They were meant to burn, not penetrate.
Had she been that angry? Had she hated him that much? She had intended to kill him. Stripping him of his possessions was evidence enough. But the blaze? She knew how he reviled it and why. Yet he couldn't fault her. It was the farewell he had arranged. The one he had tricked her into.
But in the end, it was her spite that saved his life.
On the other side of the campfire, he spotted a lumpy bag on the ground. Its open end lay gaping, and from it, fruit and vegetables spilled out. Tomatoes and garlic. Papayas and mangoes. Coconuts and avocados.
And the tiny, orange peppers that burned her mouth.
He retrieved the pliers from his belt and positioned their jaws around the first arrowhead. He tested his grip with a firm tug. Pain bloomed behind his eyes, filling his vision with red. He readjusted his grip, and with a hard yank, he ripped the arrowhead out.
Agony tore a cry from his lips, and he swayed as the pain rolled through him. Through bleary eyes, he stared at the clamped arrowhead in his hand, his cauterized flesh clinging to it.
And he couldn't help thinking that it was what he deserved.