Authors: Cyndy Aleo
“You left the girl in the woods for the animals!”
“She should not be here. She should not be with us. Humans should never know about us, and in that, you have broken the second law. But above that, she loves that thing you call son. If she were to breed with it and create more, we cannot imagine the consequences.”
“He is not what we were told he would be.”
“We cannot afford to believe you.”
Grażyna watches Edyta's arm rise and tries to guess her first target. Jakub — Jakub will be here soon. She need only buy Donovan more time. Even seconds will help. A full minute or two will be ideal. Grażyna pushes Donovan behind her again; the girl will not stay where she is put. She has been moving to Grace's side to better focus on the others and is probably watching for Jakub to save them. Or more likely, to try to save them herself and cause more havoc.
Time slows inexorably as Grażyna watches Edyta's movement: first her arm's rise, then the blade's descent. She can see Edyta has cared for her weapon all these years she has kept it hidden. The handle is clean, the blade sharpened. She can read the inscription carved into the side of the blade; the swirling cursive will fill with her blood in no time, she is sure.
Edyta has long known how to kill and do it quickly; she has often been the one to dispatch the human males after bedding. Grażyna feels the searing burn of the blade where it enters just on the inside her collarbone. With a duller stake, the death takes longer. Sometimes it has taken the men full minutes to die, begging for their
matky
. With Edyta's sharp blade, Grace has only seconds.
She thinks of herself as Grace now, not as Grażyna. Odd that as connected as she has felt to this forest upon her return, she is now the woman she was out in the world.
She is Vance's mother. Jakub's mother. Donovan's mother. But she has survived all these years for one thing, one purpose.
Her knees buckle and she falls. Her head hits Donovan as the girl tries to catch her, and she begs her, “Do not lose him to hate. Promise me.”
She hears no response. Please,
Matka
, hear my plea. Let the girl help him. Let him not lose himself. Edyta yanks the blade free, and Grace sees it slice the side of the girl's face on Edyta’s upswing even as she feels her life pouring from her, in both the blood flowing from the wound and her spirit leaving the body.
She focuses her eyes on the door, hoping for one last glimpse —
Ah, there he is, and he is magnificent. She has prepared him for this moment his whole life. Her eyes remain open, fixed on him, her son, knowing this is worth having saved him.
They are open, and watching him, until she sees nothing at all.
~
Even as she runs, Bożena already knows she’s too late.
The feeling of Zuzanna’s death is palpable, like someone has cut off one of her arms, if she had so many more than two. She’s already in flight when she feels that which is Zuzanna vanish from her mind, when the trees scream and the earth moans and she knows without a doubt that it will not end with Zuzanna.
She will lose more of her sisters today, and there is nothing she can do to keep it from happening.
There is a burn just under her skin that she feels and she knows it is Grażyna, that she is with Edyta, that things will not end well. She can feel Edyta’s anger, her hate, her furor over the loss of Zuzanna.
It should not take so long to get to them, and yet Bożena feels like she is running through mud, her legs and arms heavier than they should be, slowing her down.
She can’t see them, but she knows the moment Edyta wounds Grażyna, the moment her long-lost sister is injured, that the wound is fatal.
She stumbles, knowing the exact second her sister falls, and she keens as she falls to her knees.
She has been denied. Her best friend, her closest confidant.
She did not even get the blink of an eye’s time to see her alive again.
Was it worth all this, Grażyna?
she thinks.
Bożena picks herself up and continues toward them. She already knows how this will end, that she will not beat him there.
And she finds that she doesn’t even care.
34: Return
He faces his mother's “sisters,
”
but no longer thinks of them as such. They are enemy. They have killed her. For all he knows, Donovan is dead as well, but he would surely feel that if it were true. The connection between them is still there, still pulsing, so she must somehow be alive.
“Man's weapons?
”
he jeers. “So much for the humans being inferior. Or have you saved that all this time just for my benefit?”
Edyta turns, obviously shocked. She has not heard his approach, nor him entering the hut. And yet he makes no move to attack. She appears confused.
“I always knew you would return and do this. I have known for centuries that one would betray us. I needed to be prepared,
”
she says.
“Or maybe you simply hoped one would,
”
he says. “My mother was more
Dziwozona
living among humans for 200 years in hiding after breaking the First Law than you have ever been.
“You don't believe in sisters or equality or justice or even in doing what's right. You want to lead, and you feel you could change this from a peaceful tribe to a dictatorship, if only the others were out of your way. What better way to get the sisters to follow you than to show that not only was Grażyna wrong, but so are the other, peaceable sisters, like Bożena, and Agnieszka?
“Create chaos. Break the laws to make it look like yo
u’
re solving problems instead of creating them. It might have been a good plan, Edyta, but for one thing.”
“What's that?
”
she asks. “Tell me what you think you know, and then we will kill you and end this entire monstrosity that Grażyna brought upon us.”
“Stop.”
Yet another voice joins in. Jakub moves from his spot, where he’s been blocking the door, and Edyta sees the rest of the tribe behind him. Bożena at the front. Tears run down her cheeks.
“My own sisters. All these years I have trusted you and this is what you brought into our midst? Human weapons? Torture? Judgment without trial before the whole tribe?”
“It is forbidden to let male issue live,
”
Edyta says.
“As it is forbidden to kill your sister.
”
Bożena turns to the sisters behind her.
“I propose we rid the tribe of those who would introduce this evil to our midst,” she says, addressing only those who have followed her, not those already in the hut.
Shouts of assent meet her proposal, and she doesn’t hesitate when she turns to Jakub.
“You can finish this, yes?”
Jakub nods, his muscles aching to get to Donovan, to check on her. But he can’t move right now without the tribe's agreement.
“Then finish it,
”
Bożena says with authority. It’s not quite an order, but he feels it’s best to behave as if it is.
It takes nothing now, he knows. It’s no more than a release: all the anger for his mother's death and her two centuries of hiding him, all to end like this. All his fear for Donovan, pale and bleeding on the dirt floor, terrorized by the
Dziwozony
, left for dead in the woods.
It bursts from him in a torrent, but his focus is so clear that not a hair moves on Donovan's head. The four who wanted him dead, however, are nothing but a few swirling flakes of ash.
And then he’s on his knees, keening sobs breaking free. There’s no point in holding his mother; her stare has been fixed and empty since he came into the room. Gently, he pulls her lifeless body off Donovan's and leaves her to the care of her sisters, who’ve begun entering the hut. Some are crying over his mother's body as they do whatever it is they’ll do before they’ll take her, but others seem to be waiting for his permission.
For what?
he wonders.
With his hand under the back of her head, he lifts Donovan like a rag doll. The blood has already begun to congeal. It sticks to his hands like glue as he tries to move her hair out of the way to feel for a pulse. Her head turns when he slides his fingers along her neck to feel a thready beat, and the wide split down the side of her face is exposed. Bone shows through at her cheek.
“
Pan Jakub.
”
He thinks it's Janina who speaks. “Please let us help her. There is so much blood, and we need to close the wound.”
It’s then that he loses it.
“Please no. Don't leave me like this, Dee. It can't end like this.
”
His embarrassing sobs continue, and he rocks Donovan in his arms. Too afraid to let
Dziwozon
y
— any
Dziwozon
y
— take her from him again, her blood drips onto his arm in thick beads.
His pride brought them here. They should have stayed in hiding. He could have continued to be Vance, and his mother would be alive and selling her herbs to the local stores, and Donovan would be alternately falling in love with him and growing to hate him, depending on what state his memory was in that day.
They could have kept moving, maybe forever. Now, his mother is dead and Donovan may be soon, all because he felt it was necessary to claim his birthright. To stop running and finally face everything his mother had run from. Power enough to obliterate four women into almost nothingness, yet he couldn’t save his mother, nor can he heal the woman he loves.
The sisters knew the whole time what he was. He’s nothing but evil. And his mother should have destroyed him at birth. The laws were right all along.
The fight leaves him, and the sisters lift Donovan as if she’s no more than a feather, cooing over her wounds and discussing what they should do in a rapid stream of Polish he doesn't even try to follow. He slumps over, his cheek in her blood, and closes his eyes. Maybe now that the internal threat is gone, they can eliminate the external one. He’ll wait here, in the combined blood of those he loved, but not enough to save, and wait for death.
35: Awakening
Grace.
Grace and the bayonet and all the blood.
She wants Jakub.
She wants Vance.
She wants to wake from this never-ending nightmare to find she's home and Vance has forgotten her again, and that's all that frustrates her.
Did they kill him, too? Are they torturing her now?
She screams again, but can form no words; it's all incoherent sobbing. There's a hand on her arm and soft babbling in her ear, but none of it makes sense, and the burning intensifies when she tries to turn her head to see who is speaking to her.
They hold her down.
They’re setting her on fire; she's sure of it.
Every cell in her fights them. The need is there to get up, to run, to find Jakub, to get out of the forest and get home. Until finally, a hand on her arm feels familiar and she stops struggling.
“Please, Dee, it's me. You need to stop moving so they can see how badly you're hurt. Please let them look at you. Please. I don't know how to help you.”
It's his voice, but she can't open her eyes to look at him. If she opens her mouth even a little, she's in agony as the fire burns up her neck and into her hair. There's no way to speak to him or let him know she can hear him if she can't open her eyes and can't speak.
Desperate, she tries for a low hum.
“Let go of her arm,
”
he says.
No sooner is her arm free than she feels his hand wrap around hers. Donovan realizes how cold she is, and the shivers overtake her until her teeth are trying to chatter. She isn't sure which is worse: the burning when her jaw knocks her teeth against each other, or when she tries to clench to keep from moving.
“Can you understand me?
”
he asks.
She gives his hand a squeeze.
“We're going to move you out of here. There's a hut they use for healing; it's the closest thing they have to a hospital and we have to stop this bleeding, okay?”
This time, she doesn't just squeeze his hand; she clenches until her knuckles are white and her nails dig into his skin.
“I won't leave you,” he says. “I promise I won't leave you. I’m so sorry. So sorry. Let go of my hand for a minute so I can lift you, okay?”