The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

21. The star circle of solitude

The howling winds of the Rift, the mist and ashes swallowed her and in that moment I knew better than ever before that I wanted to be where she was. I didn't want to survive but she made me promise I would. That's why I still stand here recalling these events, so I survive, so madness doesn't swallow me.

My last memory of her is how she smiled in the face of death. She smiled and it was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen and the most heartbreaking.

What happened afterward I can't even recall properly; it feels like the foggiest period of my life. The days that followed are now just a big blur in my memory. I didn't really live, I only survived.

I remember how I woke up in this room with Chioma and Salma. They were both hurt and just as broken.

We didn't talk much but we held hands when going to sleep. Chioma was crying every night, for Mairi and for her future.

I remember many nights when I couldn't sleep at all. In one of them, I encountered Chioma's eyes in the dark. She looked at me, pink eyes blazing, and asked if I thought that non-believers can get to paradise and if Mairi was in the gardens of The Grand God of Everything.

I didn't know the answer to that question as I don't know it now either. Nobody I know does. But I told her that I hoped so and if that weren't the case all the gods could die from my part because I didn't want to believe in any of them anymore.

We stayed together in this small room for a few moons in a row, till the sisters came and took them away. They said it was Red Day, and that they were bought off and needed to leave.

Salma's pregnancy became noticeable soon after we got there and at the time she had to leave it was hard to hide. All those moons she couldn't stop thinking about Yamal, whom the imperial soldiers had beheaded in the dirt before carrying her away. The punishment for deserters is death. The punishment for kidnapping a high-born citizen is also death. For empty ones, most of the punishments for offenses that idk someone important are death because we are so very expandable.

Chioma squeezed my hand until the sisters dragged her away. "Be strong, Zara. We will meet again."

I nodded. I wished. But Chioma doesn't have the gift or foresight to see if we actually will, it was only wishful thinking.

Then came complete loneliness for countless days. The only time I saw another being was when the sister on duty brought me food. That didn't happen daily, only a few times a moon. Never was darkness so lightless or silence so crushing.

I asked when I would be able to get out and join the other girls. Sister Nai answered 'never', because I was disobedient and corrupting others. I wondered who told them it was my idea. Likely Salma. I hoped she at least got something for that.

There aren't many things you can do in an empty room for a lot of time. There were times I thought I could rip the sheets and make a noose out of them but to do that, and most other types of suicide you need to use your hands. The back of my right palm had the burn scar Mairi gave me, that didn't let me forget that she didn't want me to die... That I owed her to survive.

So I stood up and counted my steps in the room and looked out the little window that was too small and too high up to climb out.

But despite my best effort sometimes I felt my mind going astray. I had the feeling I had lost the ability to speak for how long I hadn't talked to anyone.

Despite all the efforts, the situation was nagging at me. After a few moons of complete solitude, the one that brought food one morning was sister Lora, the librarian.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and despite being known as the most frightened and obedient of the sisters she did something really brave.

She brought me a book. It was a book on healing, likely because she saw I took an interest in that. She told me to hide it from the others and read it carefully; to read every page, as many times as need be.