Authors: Aimee Hyndman
They didn’t look like themselves. Their eyes were sunken in and their cheeks sallow. Sylvia’s once silvery blonde hair had a dull, grey hue. And Parker’s lifeless eyes could have belonged to a completely different person. Even Sid, who never showed emotion in the first place, seemed worn out and miserable.
It was as if they had been in their cell for years, even though it had only been a few days. Already they were wasting away like the other, older prisoners. It was all my fault. I landed them there and I had
left
them.
“Janet,” Sylvia muttered. She pushed herself, with shaking arms, onto her hands and knees. Her dull hair fell in a curtain in front of her face. “Where are you?”
“I’m coming,” I croaked. “For all of you. I promise I didn’t abandon you. I would never do that.”
“Why not? You always act annoyed with me.” Parker said, raising his head to look at me. “Do you wish you hadn’t saved me? If you had never gone into that building you wouldn’t feel so guilty.”
“N-no. I don’t regret it! Of course not.”
“You would still have your arm.” Parker murmured. The monotone in his voice was frighteningly foreign to me. “You wouldn’t have to worry about us. You could just worry about yourself.”
“That’s not true.” I shook my head. “I don’t want that.”
“Then why did you leave?” Sid asked.
My eyes widened. Sid never spoke much, and when he did, he was usually calm and collected. Now his tone was hard and cold as ice. “To avoid your guilt, right? You want to erase your mistakes like they never happened.”
“No, that’s not it,” I said hoarsely.
“Of course it is.” Sylvia’s head flopped to the side as she stared at me. The grey of her irises seemed to roll like storm clouds. “But it’s too late. You already failed. Janet. You failed us. If you really cared, you wouldn’t have run from Meroquio. You would have done
anything
.” She crawled forward. “You promised, Janet. You promised me.” A noose of guilt tightened around my throat, almost choking off my breath. She looked up at me through her bangs, her smile bitter and so unlike Sylvia. “You didn’t keep your promise,” she hissed.
“I-I know. I know,” I whispered.
Down the hall, a door slammed open and a sudden rush of wind filled the caverns of the prison, whipping my hair about my face. I heard screams from the other prisoners a few cells away. When the wind died down, a fifth person stood in the center of our cell. The girl. The wendigo from earlier. Her sharp teeth flashed as she grinned, her eyes gleaming blood red.
“Play!” she cried, throwing herself at Sylvia.
I wanted to move. I wanted to stand in the wendigo’s way and run her through with the blade on my arm. But all too often, you can’t do what you wish you could in dreams. I could only stare. Frozen. Silent.
Useless.
I watched them all fall. Every one of my friends fell beneath the sharp teeth and strong grip of the girl. They weren’t in the position to fight back in their sickly state. I wanted to scream for someone. Anyone. But the noise was trapped in my throat. At last, the wendigo rose from Sid’s body and turned to look at me.
“Too late.” She sang in that childlike voice. Then she lunged at me.
My body unfroze and I unleashed the blade in my arm, just in time to run the girl through as she soared through the air. As soon as the blade point sank into her stomach, her image shimmered.
Suddenly, the wendigo girl no longer hung on my blade. The girl from the fire . . . The girl I had abandoned to die in the flames. She stared at me with terrified eyes as blood trickled down the corner of her mouth.
“Why didn’t you help me?” she whimpered. “Janet. Why did you push me away?”
“I didn’t mean to.” I tried to shake the body off of my blade but she stayed lodged on, staring me in the face. I couldn’t drop the blade either. It was fused my arm. Fused to me.
“Too late,” the girl said. “Always too late. You’re always too late.”
“I’m sorry!” I screeched, squeezing my eyes shut.
A high-pitched giggle reached my ears and I opened my eyes to see the girl from the fire had once again morphed into the wendigo. She seized me by the throat, squeezing her bony fingers around my neck and choking off my air.
“Too late.” She cackled.
“Janet!” another voice called out to me. It seemed much further away and it didn’t quite register. I was trapped in the burning of my lungs. The pressure around my throat. The leaden guilt in my heart.
Always too late.
“Wake
up,
Janet!”
The scene faded to blackness and I became aware of a stabbing pain in my midsection. I woke up abruptly on the couch in Laetatia’s back room, hacking so violently it felt like my abdomen might explode. My back arched as the coughs racked my body and something, maybe saliva, flew from my mouth.
“Janet.” Itazura knelt over me, his face even more panicked than it had been when he found me sprawled across the road a few hours ago. Or was it days ago? I had no idea. “Great Abyss.”
“It’s f-fine.” I hissed between coughs.
“Fine? This is fine?” Itazura held up the thin sheet he must have covered me with. Something stained the white surface. Something red.
Blood.
“Is that . . . from me?” I gasped out.
“Yeah.” Itazura muttered. “Damn it.” He placed a hand against my heaving torso.
“W-wait! Don’t,” I said. “I’ll be all right. You can’t risk your power anymore. L-leave it.”
“If you’re bleeding from the inside, it’s only a matter of time before it kills you. Then I’ll lose half of my power anyway,” Itazura said.
I tried to get up but he gripped my shoulder and pushed me back against the sofa.
“For the love of all the gods, Janet,
stay still.
You’re only hurting yourself more.” He squeezed my shoulder, hard enough to make the wendigo’s bite burn. “Don’t. Move
.
”
We both seemed to take that advice because we both went very still, staring at each other. His gaze was insistent. Worried even. Was he actually worried for me?
At last, I released a painful breath and shut my eyes. “Fine.” I spit out. “Idiot.”
“Thank you.” Itazura settled a hand over my ribs. His touch brought pain only for a few seconds, but when a familiar blue light flashed from his palm, my agony slowly drained from my body. I could inhale without wanting to die. The pain simply melted away, like the wax of a tiny candle. Within a minute, it had disappeared altogether, minus the soreness in my muscles and the burning in my back from the glass shards. My head had stopped aching too and I could think a little more clearly.
Exhausted I collapsed against the pillow, drawing in deep, beautiful gulps of air.
“Better?” Itazura asked. His smile seemed wearier than usual.
“Yes.” I nodded weakly. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Itazura said, fiddling with one of his pocket watches—the broken one—again. The cracked surface flashed in the dim light.
“It’s broken,” I murmured.
“What? Oh, yes.” Itazura had looked down at the trinket as if he had just noticed the flaw. “It is.”
“Then why do you keep it?” I asked. “You’re always playing with it. Why keep a broken pocket watch? Can’t you afford ones that work?”
“I see working clocks all day every day,” Itazura said after a pause. “It’s a change of pace, you know? Mischief always likes a change of pace.” He stowed the watch back in his jacket pocket. I sensed he was hiding something but I was too tired to ask.
“How are you feeling, little thief?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I’m not dying,” I said. “In fact, if it wasn’t for the glass stuck in my back I’d be feeling pretty wonderful right about now.”
“Glass?” Itazura’s eyebrows shot up. “Exactly how did you manage to get glass stuck in your back?”
“The wendigo plowed me through a bunch of broken pocket watches,” I ran a hand through my hair. “Scratched it up pretty good. If I had been wearing one of my usual jackets I would have been fine but since I kind of charged off without thinking. . . .”
“You weren’t,” Itazura finished. “Roll over, little human.”
I shot him a suspicious glance. “The scratches on my back aren’t deadly. You don’t need to heal them. You only get to heal ribs and vital organs.”
Itazura rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to heal your back. That would be a waste of my energy. I’m not an idiot, no matter what you might believe.”
“So what
are
you planning to do?” I asked warily.
“I’m going to get the pieces of glass
out
of your back,” Itazura said. “I hear untreated cuts from glass can lead to a nasty infection. It’s probably best you get the shards out before the skin grows over them. Roll over.”
I grunted. “Is this going to be painful?”
“Next to getting your fingers nearly sliced off and having half your rib cage broken? Not really,” Itazura said.
I sighed and obeyed. My muscles groaned in protest at this movement and I winced as the texture of the couch grated against the tiny glass shards stuck in my back but the pain abated when I rested on my stomach. Itazura’s fingers brushed the edge of my shirt and I tensed.
“Wait,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Before you lift up my shirt,” I muttered. “Tell me this. Can I trust you not to do anything . . . bad?”
“That’s a very poorly worded, vague question,” Itazura said. “Being the god of all things mischievous and
un
trustworthy, trust is something I can never exactly guarantee. Try being a bit more specific.”
I exhaled, “Can I trust you not to try anything with me while you’re doing this?”
“Is my name Meroquio? Of course I’m not going to try anything with you,” Itazura said. “Quite frankly, little human, you’re scratched up, bruised, covered in blood and very grumpy. None of those traits pique my interests. Does that answer your question?”
I exhaled and forced myself to relax again. “Guess so.” A brief silence filled the room before I said. “But just in case you
do
–”
“You won’t hesitate to pummel me multiple times with your left fist, I know.” Itazura shook his head. “Janet.
Relax
.”
“Sorry.” I rested my cheek against the cushions. “Carry on.”
“Thank you.” Itazura slowly lifted up my torn shirt, moving it carefully so as not to irritate my skin any more.
He whistled. “That’s a
lot
of glass. No wonder your shirt got torn up.”
“That bad?” I asked weakly.
“Worse,” Itazura said. “Hold on. I think Laetatia keeps tweezers in this room for occasions such as these.”
I watched him as he flitted across the room to the private bar and began shuffling through the cabinets. “Mind if I ask why Laetatia would need tweezers?”
“Drunk people break glasses.” Itazura shrugged. “And they fall a lot. Add broken glass to a large crowd of rowdy, clumsy people and you get a nasty combination. Ah ha!” He drew out a shiny pair of tweezers from the drawer. “Anyway, Laetatia is the Goddess of Festivities. As such she keeps tools for all sorts of bizarre situations and injuries.”
“Thank you, Laetatia,” I murmured.
Once Itazura located a bowl for the glass pieces, he set to work. He moved nimbly, causing as little pain as possible given the situation. But that didn’t keep me from cursing every time he plucked a piece from my back.
“I hate my life,” I muttered into the pillows of the couch after Itazura extracted a particularly large piece of glass and placed it in the bowl with a clink.
“It could be worse,” Itazura said. “You could be dead. Then you wouldn’t have a life to complain about at all.”
“Somehow I think that would be an improvement,” I said.
We were silent for a long while, except for my grunts of pain. Without conversation to distract me, memories of my dream slipped back in. Funny, it played through my head more like a bad memory than an actual dream. Every detail seemed so fresh. The words. The sensations. I touched my neck where the girl had wrapped her fingers around my throat and squeezed.
Too late.
Always too late.
And maybe it was. If the wendigoes had raided the prison then my friends. . . .
“What’s wrong, little human?” Itazura asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled.
“Then why are you crying?” Itazura asked.
“What?” I glowered at him. “I am
not
crying.”
“I would check again, because I think you are,” Itazura said.
He had to be messing with me. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. I–I touched my face just below my eye. Wetness dampened my fingertips. “Oh gods, I am.”
“I know,” Itazura said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I croaked. “Just in pain, that’s all.”
“Little human, in the time I’ve known you you’ve been kicked half to death by a shape shifter, you’ve almost lost your fingers, you’ve broken part of your rib cage, and you’ve had a killer hangover that would put some gods out of commission. All of those things are far more painful than what you are experiencing right now,” Itazura said. “But you never cried. You don’t cry at pain. The only time I’ve seen you tear up is after your encounter with Meroquio. And you weren’t crying because of pain. Not physical at least.”
“Since when did you become so observant?” I murmured after a pause. And how had he noticed me crying in the middle of the rain? I had surely turned away before the tears started.
“I’ve lived amongst humans for a while. I’m good at figuring out how they work in a short amount of time.” Itazura shrugged. I flinched as he plucked another shard of glass from my back. “So?”
“So what?”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you crying?”
I exhaled, pressing my cheek against the couch cushions as if I could hide my tears in the comfortable surface. A few days ago, when I first met Itazura, I would have snapped at him and told him it was none of his business. But right now, I didn’t have the energy to put on a tough face.
“Kova said the wendigo hoard picked up a meal of souls when they went through the prison,” I said, instead of giving him a straight answer. “What did she mean?”
“Do you not know what a wendigo is?” Itazura asked.