Authors: Cyndy Aleo
Janina gasps at the unanticipated onslaught, but Bożena knows it for what it is. In sending the girl away, he has torn out his own heart. If he could hear them before, and send them his thoughts, as he did when he called Bożena and Janina to take the girl from the forest, it is now beyond his control with the pain he feels. Now he must learn to live with a giant black hole inside of himself, and the rest of them will feel that emptiness along with him until he does.
Many of the sisters are moving in the opposite direction as they get closer, and even Janina turns and flees into the forest. Bożena keeps moving forward. She finds Jakub exactly where she thought she would: where she left him, by the water. He’s on his back on the rock and dressed in his human clothes again, letting her know he moved after she came and took Donovan out of the forest, but he’s so still that if it wasn't for the emotions crippling the rest of her sisters, she’d think she was looking at his corpse.
“Jakub?”
He doesn't move. He doesn't even blink.
“Jakub, can I help you?”
No response.
Bożena dares to climb onto the rock next to him. At first, she thinks he might be crying, but there are no tears; he's staring blankly at the sky. There’s no emotion visible at all; it's all being funneled outward into the forest and toward the sisters.
“Jakub, she’s safe. We left her at the castle with her things. We waited in the trees to see people come out of the castle for her. We would not have left her until we were sure she was safe and others would care for her.”
He turns his head toward her, and now she can see the emptiness in his eyes. They’re blank, with nothing behind them. The hole is bigger than his heart, she thinks. It has grown to take in all of him.
“Can someone travel?
”
he asks.
Bożena nods.
“Can you send her? Whoever it is who can travel? Please? I have money. I'll tell you where. I just need someone to follow her.”
“It's none of my business, but why —?”
“You're right. It's none of your business. Please just bring me whoever can travel. As soon as you can. I need to know she's safe. I can't know she's safe if no one can see her.”
Bożena hopes Regina hasn't fled too far into the forest and has some relatively current clothes to travel in. She isn't bothered by his dismissal; she needs to focus on getting the tribe under control and out from under Jakub's grief. If putting Regina on a plane to wherever the girl goes will do that, then Bożena will put Regina on a plane. Somehow, though, she doesn't think it will be enough to fix everything he has broken.
46: Empty
In other words, he's obsessed, and he knows it.
Most of the sisters have fled into the forest, and won't come anywhere near him. He can sense what he thinks of as the DMZ around him: a neutral area that separates him from them. The women won't enter it because they think it's too close to him to keep from drowning in his emotions. As a favor to all of them, by nightfall, he takes to the forest himself so they can return to their huts — and their beds — to sleep.
His grief heads out in front of him, and the sisters can probably sense that he's moving even if they don't understand why. It will push them back toward their village (for want of a better word) and that suits him perfectly. He knows he won't be able to sleep himself until he knows Donovan is safely back in the States and cared for, and Bożena can explain his motives if they’re afraid he'll come back before they can rest.
He laughs at himself, the sound echoing in the silent forest. There's no one to pretend for out here, and he certainly isn't fooling himself in thinking he'll be fine once he knows Donovan is safe back in the States. He can send a hundred Dziwozony after her, and it won't make any difference; he'll live the rest of his life missing her and wondering each second what she's doing and if she's okay.
Knowing if he keeps walking around, he'll just keep moving the "safe zone" he's created for the tribe, he drops to the ground where he is and stretches out on the forest floor. Soon, it will be covered in snow. The seasons here will change, and probably differently than they do back where he and his mother last lived in the States.
He wonders what Donovan will think when she gets home to find his mother had signed everything over to Donovan's name before they left: the house, the car, the land, some of the bank accounts. She can go back to school if she wants or sit around and do nothing instead. She can take over Grace's herb business or burn the place to the ground if she wants. And, he thinks, he'll never know what she'll decide to do with it all. Unless he keeps sending Regina back to check on her.
Jakub thinks maybe Donovan might just want to burn the place to the ground. He would if he were her. He'd burn anything that had any trace of him near it if he were her.
He has no idea what he was thinking when he made love to her. Especially after all that time spent
not
having sex with her. Years spent erasing his memory every time he started remembering who he was, usually prompted by his feelings for her. And now when he finally knows everything about who he is, has done everything his mother ever wanted him to do, and he's lost her anyway, and he’s about to lose Donovan as well, he loses all sense of who he is and what he's supposed to be doing and gives in, idiot that he is. Knowing there wasn't much time. Knowing Bożena and Janina would be there to help him.
When he'd sensed Bożena outside the hut the night before, he knew he had to ask for help. He'd never be able to send Donovan away on her own, never be able to get her out of the forest and leave her with the humans. He'd bring her back here every time, without fail. He wouldn't have been able to leave her at the edge of the forest and watch her cry as he ran away. But the sisters had no real ties to her, and would help him. They knew humans don't belong here.
“You’re wrong, you know.”
His eyes pop open. He’s so obsessed in his grief that he doesn't hear Bożena approach him. She’s apparently the only one willing to come close to him. The rest of them are staying as far away as they can because of the emotions he can't seem to keep bottled up, but she doesn't let them bother her.
“She could have stayed,
”
Bożena says. “She would have been fine here. I know your mother did well for herself with plants, and that’s because of us. Our healing is better than the medical things you had out there.”
“But you don't treat humans,
”
he says.
“Not usually, but we can. We’re all part-human. You forget that. Our sires are human. You think it’s all magic that creates us while it’s science that creates humans? Think on it. In breeding with humans, and no males of our own for centuries, we'd have been diluted into nothing by now. We are more than just created, Jakub. Have you not thought it all through?”
She's right; he hasn't thought about it at all. To him, there’s always been the human world and this other world, but not once did he think about how they got here, and how they've continued to exist over centuries, and probably millennia. The Dziwozony have returned to humans to breed with time and time again, with no dilution in their size or their power. How can that be?
Bożena crouches next to where he lays.
“You could have kept her with you for as long as you wanted, if that was what you wished, even with no Dziwozona blood in her. We don’t know the full extent of your power, but we’re sure you could have managed that, at least. Instead, you chose to send her away. You neither asked, nor looked for answers. When she was ill, you didn’t trust in us, but thought constantly of human trappings and medicine for her. Why?”
“Because that's where she belongs,
”
he says. “he never asked to be part of this. She fell for a very tall, human boy and all that came along after with me was forced on her, without her consent. I brought her here because I was convinced she wouldn't be safe if I didn't, but the truth is that I brought her here because I was selfish, and I never asked her if this was what she wanted.
“In the end, she was kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed. She watched my mother die. I can’t protect her here, and have to leave her to the care of strangers in order to keep her alive. The whole time she was terrified and screaming for me and I couldn't do a damn thing for her.”
“So then you showed her with your body how much you love her and cut her out of your life afterwards without asking what she wanted once again? I may not understand human customs, Jakub, but that doesn't make sense even when I include your explanation in trying to understand.”
A burst of anger escapes him, and Bożena jumps back. It's the first time he's managed to frighten her with his emotions, and he instantly regrets it.
“I don't know what I'm doing with her, so it's better she find someone human to spend her life with. Someone normal who will love her and care for her and protect her.”
Bożena shakes her head and walks away from him.
“She had that here until someone took her heart from her.”
Jakub’s pulverizes the closest tree in his anger. Bożena makes everything sound so simple when it's anything else but. He gets to his feet and starts walking out of the forest. Regina will be back in a day or two, and if she has the skills and knowledge to travel, she can probably also help him buy a house. It will be easier to check on Donovan from time to time if he has access to things like electricity and Internet. A house will solve some of his problems, and right now, he needs to get away from Bożena and her overly simple logic and her lectures.
He'll wait for Regina’s return at the edge of the forest. It will be faster to get everything he needs that way.
47: Foreign
She finally collapses into a cab, giving the driver an address she hopes is her own. There are too many people and the cars on the road are enough to make her even more disoriented. She's not even sure of the date, of how long she’s been in the forest, but it’s long enough that the bustle of the city feels alien to her. She wants to go back, but she can't. He sent her away.
Tears run again, though she should have run dry by now. She closes her eyes and shuts out everything. With her eyes closed, she can pretend she's anywhere: back in the forest hut in a warm bed, sleeping in his arms. Or in the castle, with nothing bad having happened yet, and Grace still alive. Her heart not yet broken, and everything still a possibility rather than a reality.
The cab is at a full stop and the cab driver is clearing his throat noisily before she realizes she's supposed to be doing something. More tears fall when she realizes she gave him the address of Grace and Vance's — Jakub's — house rather than her own, but she feels too stupid now to tell him it's the wrong house. Besides, they have cypher locks, and she's known the combination for years. She hardly thinks he'll care at this point if she spends a night here before making it back to her own apartment.
She pulls out a wad of cash to pay him, only to see she has Polish zlotys and not American bills. Stuttering, she offers her debit card and adds a fat tip in embarrassment, fleeing into the house after she scrawls her signature.
Everything looks exactly as it did when they left it; Grace must have asked someone to take care of the plants in their absence, because there's not a brown leaf to be seen.
Donovan wanders from room to room, touching the worn corduroy of the couch, the cool granite of the kitchen counter. She hesitates at Grace's computer, where she's done so much work to earn extra money, and sees an envelope in Grace's old-fashioned-looking script. Of course, now she knows why the woman's handwriting had always looked so ancient, but it seems out of place seeing this note addressed to her now, from beyond death.
She walks away from it three times then returns to it, too afraid to open the envelope to see what Grace might have written. What could she have wanted to say to her before they left that she'd leave a note here, of all places? How could she have anticipated Donovan would return here, much less alone, without Jakub? Or is there also a similar note left back at her apartment?
The fourth time, she can't resist, and she lifts the envelope, sliding her finger under the seal carefully, like tearing it will ruin something. It's nothing more than a single sheet of printer paper inside, and the note is written in ballpoint. It looks like it was written hurriedly, like Grace had done it while they were preparing to leave.
Donovan,
While my son believes things will turn out differently, I know my fate. I also know that after my death, he will be afraid of where his path has led him, and he will likely send you away. I made contingency plans for that eventuality, and this house, and my business, have been signed over to you, as well as a bank account.