WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

twenty | spirals

"That's not how you do it!"

Cole fumbled with the weapon, small hands fisted over the leather-laden throat of the axe. Niamh stormed through the snow. Her eyes were hard, severe - she had that tell-tale look on her face that warned him to take a step back if he didn't want a pinch on his ear.

He puffed out a long breath. "Can we go back inside, Ma? I'm tired."

She clamped a fist over his and straightened his posture, guiding his two hands to hold it properly. She leaned forward so that her gaze was level with his. Her voice was scarily steady in his ear, the calm before the storm.

"Not until you know how to throw a proper hit," she moved the axe slowly, cutting the air up, and then down. "You're going to need to know how to do this more than making toy horses out of wood."

"But-"

She shushed him with the edge of her nail against the back of his hand. It left an indent in the skin, crescent shaped. "Come on, I know you can do it. Show me."

Then, letting go, she pushed him forward. Cole stumbled in the snow before righting himself, sparing a glance over his shoulder, where Niamh stood with her big arms crossed over her chest. Loose threads of hair fell from her bun and stroked the side of her face, soft as cobwebs.

Cole was only starting to grow into himself. His limbs were too long, his legs and arms uncoordinated. He couldn't throw an axe like his mother - not yet.

But he could try.

He refocused and lifted his head to face forward, where the tree was wrought with long, streaking grooves. Marks from his mother's axe. The aftermath of throw after throw of relentless practise and precision, leaving cuts and creases in the hard wood, stripped of its bark.

Breathing in, Cole squared his shoulders. He was a warrior now, at the ripe age of thirteen, and like all Welish warriors, his tendons had been sewn with threads of hot steel by their miracle-givers. Throwing an axe into a tree was supposed to be nothing compared to what he had been created for. This was supposed to be as easy and as simple as breathing.

Niamh urged him forward. "Do it, Cole. Then you can come back to camp and get some dinner."

Cole wet his lips with his tongue and tightened his grip over the throat of the axe. Come on, he pressed, just do it.

Two hands up, axe lifted over his head, he mustered up every last piece of strength and threw.

The axe flew through the air, slicing forward. Cole held his breath. He watched the weapon sail, sour, cut - and fall. It didn't reach the tree. Instead, it embedded its sharp edge into the snow, its throat sticking up like the serrated fin of a fish in shallow water.

"Pick it up," said Niamh curtly. "Do it again."

"But you said-"

"You won't be coming back down until that axe-" She pointed down at the upturned weapon, "-hits that tree," and she lifted her finger up, directed towards the cut-up wood, the stripped bark. "Galanthus can't have you falling behind. The other kids already know how to swing their swords. The axe is your weapon, you should know how to wield it."

Something in Cole deflated, and he made a noise resembling a groan as he trudged back through the snow to retrieve the axe. His fingers curled loosely around the throat before he tugged it forward, turning the earth. The sharp edge was slick with cool mud. Behind him, he heard another voice call from the bottom of the hill. Lower than Niamh's.

"You've been up here for a while," the voice said. Angus' dad, Bjorn. He was always nice. "Why don't you let Cole come down for some food?"

Cole could hear the sigh in Niamh's voice. Her bones jutted out under thin skin. She had slowly, pitifully become corpse-like over the course of the last two years, as if she'd left the life in her back with Clan Ursa, after they escaped the army. Sometimes Cole blamed it on himself - if only he were more of a warrior, if only he could make her feel better.

If only, if only, if only.

They stopped sounding like words ages ago, the way words lose their meanings the more you hear them. Now they were just noises in his head - noise, noise, noise.

Bjorn and Niamh exchanged a few tired, under-breath words before Bjorn gestured Cole forward with a calloused hand. He smiled warmly. If Cole ever met his father, he hoped he was like Bjorn.

"Come on, I've made stew."

|||

Cole's gaze trailed Alistair's face. Wide eyes, fingers splayed out in the cool, dark earth and white snow. He was shaking. The darkness around them pressed inwards from all sides.

"Are you okay?" Cole said.

Alistair looked up, gaze hooked on his. "No," he seethed. "I most certainly am not okay. What was that? You ran off by yourself! I thought something - something..."

Cole blinked and looked away. When he pulled his arms back, Alistair sat up and pulled his body away, side-glancing like a small dog ready to snarl and bite. Cole folded his long arms over his legs and fumbled with his hands. "You shouldn't have followed me."

Alistair laughed dryly. "I shouldn't have followed you after you hadn't returned? After your negligence and my saving you from that bear?"

Cole snapped his gaze forward. "Yes, and now we're even. I saved you, didn't I?"

"About that," Alistair gestured forward with his hands. Cole could see the mismatched creases along his palms and hear the thick tremble in his voice. "How exactly did you save me? What, with your boundless intelligence and raw willpower?"

Cole hauled himself up and offered Alistair a hand, who turned his nose up at his outstretched fingers and lurched tiredly to his feet. When he staggered, Cole caught him by the shoulders and allowed the other boy to lean his weight against him. He wasn't heavy. Cole wondered whether his bones were hollow, like a bird's.

"No," he replied gruffly, considering his words, "I - I share my father's gift. He was from Clan Lupus. That means-"

"You don't share a connection with the bear," Alistair said inquisitively, "but with the wolf."

Cole blinked once, then twice. Alistair was learning quickly. He didn't know whether to be impressed or worried. He decided on both.

Cole nodded without meeting his eyes, his hands resting on Alistair's shoulders. Light hair brushed his fingers. Alistair peered at him through a strangled wince and shrugged his shoulders free, but the anger was gone, readily replaced by an odd curiosity and slight, red-faced shame. But Cole didn't want to test his limits, and the Chrysosian's leg was bleeding.

"Come on," he said. "Let's head back to camp."

They staggered through the snow. Inky shadows slipped passed them like oil-slick hands. Cole was accustomed to the dark - he'd spent plenty of hours travelling under the cover of night, too wary to light a lantern and illuminate his path. But Alistair didn't know how to navigate his way through the snow, couldn't follow the tracks, had to strain against the darkness.

Despite the thumping of his still-cautious heart, Cole's lips curled into a halfway smile. Just a small one. When the mindrenderer had saved him, he'd felt unimaginably useless, the scars along his back had squeezed and not let him go. No, he liked being the saviour more.

When they spotted the fire through a copse of weather-beaten trees, which was a barely lit pit of black wood and ash, Emer was already standing there with her arms crossed and her eyes like lightning.

"Care to tell me where you boys ran off to?" She forced out through a mouth of gritted teeth. "Because I woke up to two empty beds and a dead fire. Oh, also I'm soaking wet."

And she was. Cole hadn't registered the rain at first, and yet somehow Emer was more soaked than either of them. She was more rain-water than girl, her hair pasted to her neck, her forehead. Droplets clung to her dark lashes as her eyes fought back sleep.

He would've taken this opportunity to laugh at her, but Alistair's leg was bleeding. So he shrugged passed her, narrowly missing brushing up against the shoulder of her wet coat, and shouldered off his coat.

"Come," he said in Chrysosian as they watched on. "That bite needs attention."