THE DREAMER'S LAMENT

01. IX

It was the seventh night of their stay in Tear. Death pervaded the town of Tear once more, as Inaya Kaliph slipped from the world in her sleep. Grief and sorrow crushed Jantzen, twisted him crooked and broken until all he could do was comfort himself in a dark corner of Mama Annistyn's living room. He rocked back and forth beside the hearth, never moving even when Mama came to light a fire, thus his flesh was covered in cinder.

Mama Annistyn hardly was at home. If she were, the kitchen would taste of splendid chicken broth, candied snow bee wings filed painstakingly in a glass box, and bright blooms of poppy eddying at the bottom of water, bleeding juicy flavour into the liquid. She would always distract herself in pots and ovens and spice jars. Perhaps coping from the loss of her daughter-in-law.

Whenever Mama was not home, Kodiak stepped out of her mother's room once or twice a day to visit her uncle. Her small arms encircled his neck in an embrace that made his heart throb less. The child, suddenly grown in mind and attitude, pressed a kiss on her father-figure's forehead. Peacefulness swept through him, his heartaches healed slightly; it was better than nothing. "Get well soon, Uncle," she often whispered, before confiding to her mother's room.

As Kodiak kept this routine, Jantzen rose from his dark dwelling on the fifth day. He brushed the cinders from his shirt and trousers, bathed himself, and for the first time, that night, he entered Mitchska's room, not to lure Kodiak out for supper, but with the sole purpose of seeing his sister. Kodiak smiled at her uncle and huddled next to him. One arm around his niece, he sat on the edge of the white cot.

"I miss you, sis," whispered Jantzen, though Mama Annistyn was not around to berate him for nearing his ill sister. The silence seemed too fragile, spun glass which he now cradled from splintering to the ground. Mitchska and he had never been too close, for their parents had separated them at birth, Jantzen to his uncle and aunt in the adjacent town. Whilst Mitchska learned all she could about history and gained academic astuteness, Jantzen wrestled against the expectations of society and taught himself the splendours of language and its art. Mitchska chased an academic future as an engineer, but Jantzen wanted to make a family.

So, Mama and Papa sent Mitchska to the boarding school in the north.

Over the three years Mitchska had been absent, a shadow – something terrible and dark – cast over Mama Annistyn. Jantzen had noticed it in the visits he'd done twice a week. But he'd warded it off, asking a nurse to do weekly checkups on his mother, telling himself it was perhaps a small migraine.

And then Mitchska's homecoming happened.

He looked at Mitchska now – truly looked – for the first time, and saw not a girl threatened by Death, but a girl who wore eyes sagging with fatigue, the unrest of the soul. There was something about this, the frozen-in-time photograph she seemed to live in, like a broken clock waiting to be repaired. The hour hand arrested in an unfixed moment, somewhere between one minute and the next, never complete. Mitchska was the caged hand. Everything about the stiffness of her said so. She wanted to break free – but break free from what? What could make a soul so restless?

"If you're worried for Kodiak," Jantzen whispered to his sister, "don't. She's well taken care of, sis."

He swore Mitchska's face contorted painfully, lips twisting with such desolation. Eyes still closed, her lips parted, the movement torturously slow. "Get...out..."

The whisper sent a jolt of alarm through Jantzen.

"What?" he breathed. Then he looked to Kodiak. A grave shadow darkened her face.

"Uncle," whispered Kodiak, her voice a shivering flame in the summer-night wind. She pressed her fingers into Jantzen's arm. "Mummy's scared."