They left Mitchska's door ajar, which was not the ideal thing to do, what with the possibility of Mitchska's mysterious illness spreading at the caress of wind. But they did not want to leave Kodiak unsupervised.
"How are you, Mama?" Inaya tried to seed a conversation.
Mama Annistyn bustled in the wooden kitchen, from stirring the low metal pot to standing on her tiptoes to reach the large oven. Heat flushed them all, and the couple felt useless to sit about and not help, but Mama Annistyn had always been stubborn – just like Mitchska, thought Jantzen, amused – to let her do everything by herself. Seated behind the pantry counter, Inaya nursed her burnt hand with an ice-cold towel, a victim of attempting to adjust the pot's heat and then being smacked away by Mama Annistyn for doing such a foolish thing.
"Not well," grunted Mama Annistyn, "as you can already see, child."
"How long have you noticed this...difference of Mitchska's, Mama?"
Jantzen nudged Inaya and coughed empathically. "Don't," he whispered.
But Mama Annistyn had already heard. A wet sniffle score through her, yet she managed a stoic face. "I knew sending her to school was a bad decision, although I wanted terribly for her to succeed in her own way." She looked both of them in the eye. "It was your father's idea, you see." She sniffed wetly again, and waddled to the pot, crouching before the fire that lit her glassy eyes. "You never realized it, Jantzen, for you were encompassed in your marriage that time, but when your sister came home, she was different."
There was a pause. Heavy, brutal. One you wanted to crack.
Inaya did. Her gaze was fierce. "Different how, Mama?"
"Her mind was filled with strange knowledge. Every supper she kept prattling on about a strange prophecy from an odd dream she had mid-semester. She said she consoled with her teacher, then everything went black, she said. I was terrified if the teacher might have...altered something within her. My sweet, sweet Mitchska."
For the rest of the afternoon, they ate in strangling silence.
YOU ARE READING
THE DREAMER'S LAMENT
Short StoryIn the hearts of dreamers, lament will always linger. Sadness can bloom into the brightest, lambent shades, like the rain giving way to the phantom of a rainbow, like the promise of hope. But sorrow may also wind down a darker, colder path. Our hear...
