GRAVESKIES

Chapter 23

Thirteen years ago...

Eight years of age, Ryujin didn't understand what she'd done. It takes completely outstanding action to garner both intense love and hatred. But she wasn't allowed to do much at all, so why did she receive such ambivalent treatment from the world? Now she washed her hands for the tenth (zillionth! trillionth!) time in the stream that gushed at the bottom of her garden. A gleaming, golden trickle of water rushed over her short, chubby inkstained fingers. But she was washing for the blood. It had coagulated under her fingers. It had imprinted into her skin, slithering along the lines of her palm like tiny snakes.

"Stubborn, stubborn..." she muttered. Then she began to hum a song. Sunlight got in her eyes, casting an aureate hue over her eyelashes.

A neighbor of hers, the one with the funnily-shaped beard that her parents had been trying to keep at bay, had slayed a baby goat right in front of her yesterday. For her. I baptize this kill in your name, he'd said. Bless me with your divine touch. Let me taste heaven in the pygmy lifetime of a man. With dilated pupils, he'd tainted her forehead with the blood. His hands had hovered over her body and he'd seemed to want to paint her red everywhere. Ryujin had snatched up the goat and ran off, barreling into her parents' house, grinning and yelling Look, mom, he loves me! The jittery white dress she'd overgrown dripped with blood.

Her parents might have gotten angry, but at least they wouldn't do to her like they did her sister, at nine years old. They felt too guilty for that.

The girl glared. "Never got to have a... a shitty pet." Gasping, Ryu glanced over her shoulder. Had anyone heard her say the bad word? Her dad was chopping wood in the front garden, after all.

An awed expression settled on her face. "But if I have wings... Could I be my own pet? Like a big pigeon." She pulled the thick cotton covers off her wings. "Better. Pet."

Giving up and resigning to her fate of being lectured by her mom that bloody fingers weren't appropriate at the dinner table, just like wings weren't, Ryu trudged off.

Would she have time to pass by the grave today and say hi?

A few steps later, she tripped over her dad's axe. The blade returned a muddled, cracked image of her face. Hoisting it up, Ryu made her eye look big and then small and big again in the gangly mirror. Her fingers barely wrapped around the handle, but she picked it up anyway, ambitious to carry it by herself all the way front. Her parents didn't let her do much physical exercise; they said her wings and big, wide bones made her look threatening enough— the last thing she needed was muscle. Her parents were awfully concerned with seeming harmless. Maybe killing someone makes you want to look like you could never do it.

Dad wasn't in the garden. He had left his last log unchopped. She got an idea; laughed to herself a timid chirp and thought, what if I cut it myself? Positioning herself, Ryu turned with her face to the house.

And dropped the axe.

Daddy was hanging from the top floor balcony. The bars were rusted and wet and so, so thin. He seemed frail; Ryujin had never seen him cry before and she hadn't thought people could cry like this. He looked like he'd fall if he didn't pay attention.

She screamed for him. Mom ran out of the house. Ryu's wings burst out from instinct, to jump out to help him, but her mother pulled them back with all her strength, wrapping her arms around them.

"Keep those things away," she hissed.

"But... I gotta help him! I can help!" Ryu thrashed in her arms. Her wings were too weak to break out of her mother's hold, although togethet they were larger than her. Her muscles strained uselessly. Ryu hated that feeling.

"You can't. You won't. Why do you think he's doing this?"

"Why he's..." The reason why he was doing this...? Her hummingbird heartbeat stumbled. "M–me. Because of me? Because of—"

Her vocal chords severed when she heard the thud. The crunch. Blood guzzled out of her father's body. Before burying her head in her mother's warmth, she caught only one glimpse of the body. It burned her retinas.

She could've softened the fall. He would have survived, maybe even uninjured. If only she'd been strong enough.

Her mother pushed her away and rushed to cradle the body. Ryujin fell in the grass and refused to look back, refused to look at them at all. She threw up as her mother's wails formed into words. "See? That's what your kind does. That's the only thing you can do."

Ryu curled up in the grass.

"Galliard... Galliard, she took you away from me."

"What do I love you for? I feed you, and this is what you do!"

Ryujin promised to herself that she would leave and learn to fly, so that she'd never have to pray to disappear again.