Chương 89: A Wound Collected

Wretch woke up late. No one had put the kettle on. The sheets were clean, the quilts warm. It didn't soothe him. He heard steps outside and crawled into the fetal position. It had only been a day since they lost their captain. The worst part had been telling the twins. He couldn't bear it. The thought of their smiles turning into grief that would stay with them forever was too much.

Instead, he had locked himself in the bathroom, turned on the shower, and clasped his hands over his ears, letting the water pour over his head and clothed body as Astrid talked with them. They hadn't spoken much since, but he knew Elenya was drinking, the smell of alcohol creeping under his door and her uneven steps echoing from her room. He had heard her walk down to the training room in the middle of the night and the crashes and trembles of wood being smashed against stone.

He himself had done nothing, just sat there staring at the wall, waiting for something to rouse within him. Yet nothing came. No anger, no burning hatred, not even the violent urge that had plagued him for months. He was empty, devoid of any and all emotions, lethargic, without even the strength or will to eat. Astrid was keeping busy.

Perhaps that was her way of dealing with things, tending to the twins and sleeping on a mattress laid out on the floor by their bunk bed, cooking food in vivid colors that somehow were tasteless to his sensitive tongue. A knock came from outside. Wretch got up, pulling on a white shirt and opening the door. Astrid stood there with a tired and blank expression in an exquisite black dress. On the table behind her sat the slumped figure of Elenya, absentmindedly stroking the orange cat.

They had had to stop it from clawing at the entrance to the captain's room. Astrid held out a piece of black cloth.

"The funeral is in an hour at Erdahl's Rest. A carriage arrives in thirty," she said. Her face rarely carried emotions, but now it was as stiff as a mask.

"Put on the best clothes you have and wear this over your face. It is tradition." Wretch nodded.

"Okay." She gave a nod, and the door between them shut. For a while, he just stood there, staring down at the cloth with a monstrous hand resting on the coarse wood of the doorway. He had known something like this could happen. Others had even said it was certain. But he had believed that as long as he was there, ready and willing to suffer any hardship, he would be the first to meet death. Was there meaning in loving anything when losing it meant such torment?

A while later, a carriage arrived outside the tiny house. The sign above the door screeched in the wind. Richter's Company, it read, though the flowers outside the door that had been stark red when Wretch had first seen them were now withered with winter's approach. The four people exited through the door, and Astrid locked it behind them. Over her face hung a black veil, obscuring the details of her face.

They were all wearing similar garb, even the two tiny figures of the twins, holding each other's hands in their own tiny black dresses. One of them was clutching a pocket watch in her hand. At the sight, a shiver rattled through his body. He had seen terrible things; death, horror, starvation. But two parentless children dressed for a funeral cut into him as no blade could. Elenya had a simple outfit with black pants, a white shirt, and a black vest that reeked of spirit.

Wretch had forced himself into the fine suit he owned. It barely fit him any longer with the changes to his body, his hunched back, and longer forearms. He didn't see why he had brought it anymore. They got into the carriage without a word. A figure in a black dress and veil was already there. Wretch recognized her from the smell. Dalynja the Beast-Breaker looked strangely out of place without her giant dog. They got to their seats as the carriage rattled forward.

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"My condolences," Dalynja said, and Astrid nodded in response. The carriage traveled along, taking one of the few elevators designed for larger cargo. Outside, people were walking along like normal, as if nothing had happened, as if their world hadn't just been crushed. Somehow, that lit a spark of anger within him. After crossing a walkway to Erdahl's Rest, they ascended along a spiraling road upward. The Spire itself was covered in graveyards, and they headed to the very top.

The summit was flat, covered in a field of short grass that caught the autumn light. All over the grounds stood white crosses, each no different from the others, all of them surrounded by a metal fence and a single opening. The carriage rolled to a stop, and the figures stepped out. Wretch glanced at a plaque over the metal gate. Rest now, hunter. Let it be known, they found no weakness in you.

The open sky stretched all around them, offering a view of both the Lows choking with smog and the jutting spires gleaming in the sun. On any other day, it would have been a spectacular view. They walked inside as the cool wind blew at their veils. Thousands of the white crosses stood in rows, but only one had a coffin standing above the earth. Astrid led them onward.

"How do you do it?" Wretch said through gritted teeth. Astrid didn't change her gaze, or if she did, he couldn't see it through the veil.

"I was the worst hunter on the team, but I can bear this, if nothing else." Wretch held on to one of those words. Was. As they approached the coffin, a woman in a white shroud like that of a priest stood by the side, and two men were preparing to lower the coffin into a hole in the frigid ground. Wretch let his eyes trail to the next cross over. The paint had flaked, and the engraving was discolored. Still, he could read it. Julia Richter. They had all known that this could happen.

Everyone but a true fool knew that the people around them could disappear, and they were hunters. Such things were a matter of time with the things they faced. The Captain had even left instructions for allocations of his massive inheritance should it happen. Yet that didn't soothe anyone. You couldn't prepare for such a loss, at least Wretch couldn't, not of someone who truly meant something. Perhaps that made him a fool. They stood there, the tiny group of people who knew the man now reduced to a memory.

One of the twins looked up at Astrid with a sob. He didn't know which one. Astrid stroked the veil.

"It's okay, love." As the priest started talking, the coffin was lowered into the ground. Wretch didn't hear what the priest said. He was too busy driving his claws into the palms of his hands. It hit him then that this was real. He decided that from Edmund's death he had learned nothing. He had gained nothing. He had not understood any profound secret. He was simply and honestly suffering.

The priest went on about the hunt and the Saint while his mind receded into a dark place he hadn't been in for a long time, watching the world through a murky window. When the priest finally finished, Astrid walked forward, putting a picture frame by the cross. It was the newly taken picture from Elenya's birthday. In that black-and-white photograph, they truly looked happy.

Edmund in the center, had a wide laugh, holding on to his daughters as Wretch stood off balance to the side, Elenya clutching a panicking Whiskey, the cat having just been thrown through the air. That picture would have offered him joy. Now it, and the memories that accompanied it, would always be followed by a mellow ache. They stood by the cross in silence. First, the priest left. Then Dalynja, squeezing Astrid's shoulder as she passed. After a few minutes, Astrid spoke up, stroking the veiled heads of the twins.

"I am walking away from the hunt. I will arrange Edmund's inheritance, get a good place for the girls, and take care of them. I'll climb no further in the grace of the flame."

"Add my share of the coin," Wretch said. Finding his voice came thick like gravel. Elenya pulled off her veil, revealing her puffy cheeks and red eyes.

"Add mine too. I am going for a drink," she said as she walked away, rubbing the back of her hand across her face. Astrid looked at him. In the wind, the semi-translucent veil distorted her features, shifting them as if she held a different expression in each moment.

"What about you?" she asked.

"Coming back home?"

"You can go ahead," he said. She nodded and led the sobbing twins away. As soon as he heard the carriage roll down the slope, he fell to his knees, letting the wind blow the veil away from his face. It coiled away in the gust, disappearing from the top of the spire to twirl over the city in the light of the suns. Sitting there on his knees, he searched for an epiphany, something that could justify the pain–the wound he had now collected. None came.

All he could do was look at the grave of the first person to offer him true kindness and breathe, and then breathe again.