"Mummy?" Kodiak cried out.
Mama Annistyn snapped around, sheathed the blade in her apron's pocket, where all her spoons and ladles lied. Blood seeped into the pale-yellowed cloth. Well, she thought, this would be inconvenient.
A door swung open in the hallway. Footfalls. Sniffles and cries muffled. "It's okay," Mama Annistyn heard Jantzen say. "It's just a nightmare. Go back to sleep, Kodiak."
One more witch to die, thought Mama Annistyn, as the blade dissolved into sugared wings. She cupped a handful of it from her apron. Dessert.
***
Morning raked across the wood of the corridor. Telltales of a monster.
In the grey hours before dawn, Kodiak and Jantzen crept into Mitchska's room.
At the whiff of Death – of rot –, at the terrible crimson streaked across the wall, Kodiak crumpled to her knees. Her scream was terrible and heart-wrenching, and it rang painfully trapped in Jantzen's skull.
***
Jantzen despised funerals.
After attending four funerals in his life, he'd sworn never to have to see another body laid to rest in the cold, hard ground. Yet the universe denied his wishes, and here he was, watching his sister's blue-veined, grey-fleshed corpse being lowered to the unwelcome earth. The moment she rested against the soil, it seemed as though the earth wanted to spit her out, disgusted.
Jantzen clenched his fists, burying them at his sides. A hundred needles flew and pricked behind his eyes. Kodiak's frigidhands clasped his right fist, unravelled it. "Uncle," she whimpered, blinkingthrough her own tears, "we have to get out of the house."
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...
