THE DREAMER'S LAMENT

01. XIV

"Mama," Jantzen began. He joined his mother on the settee in front of the fireplace. Her fingers dug into the margins of a crinkled photograph of Mitchska during her graduation day. Even in the tintype it shone clear that his older sister's skin had begun to grey, bulging veins stark on her neck, where the so-called illness started.

"She was a beautiful bright girl, that Mitchska," mused Mama Annistyn. It was unsettling to see this side of Mama Jantzen had never been shown before. To know the woman was capable of reminiscing something wonderful and holding regard of it as such, and not lamenting over the darker shades of life – it awakened something in Jantzen. Pity? Or was it...sympathy?

"She was," said Jantzen.

Her eyes glazed over. "Terrible, the thing that happened to her."

Jantzen shifted in his seat. Gathered his courage. "Did something happen to her at school?"

"No," Mama Annistyn said firmly. Her eyes were coals burning in the dark, fierce but hollow and desolate enough to haunt you. "Something happened to her since birth."

He suppressed a shudder. "What do you mean, Mama?"

"Her babe tears were salt. Saltwater. They did not dry upon blotching the floor and linen. They filled the room."

Jantzen was silent.

"I was still in labour at the time, delivering you. They took her to be washed in a separate room. Pain glossed my vision, so much that I was unaware of the deluge that pooled the next room.

"They thought it was a severe leak. A burst pipe. But there were no peeling plaster or holes in the wall to allow the leakage to pool in that room. Everything was closed shut. I knew better.

"I had been trying to smother her abilities. Taught her history and science. Got her to pursue an academic future, just so that your Papa and I could send her off to that boarding school. Far, far from here. It didn't work. She was too strong... Frigdan told me to stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. It didn't work. I failed, I failed, I failed, I failed..."

Tears welled in Mama's eyes. "You can never change the world if you are a monster to the world." She bit down on her lip. Her eyes squeezed shut. The photograph was crushed, Mitchska's grinning face distorted in its centre, in her hands. She wailed, "I can't bear it any longer."

She stood up abruptly. Her steps rang hollow on the parquet as she stormed down the corridor. Jantzen chased after her, heart beating raucous in his ears. No, no, no, he thought.

She was going for Kodiak's room.

He caught his mother's wrist, gripped it. "Mama, don't––"

A flash of silver-blue in the dark.

Excruciating pain sundered through his extended arm, deep and gashing, and then the affliction was wrenched back, ripping through bone and tissue.

The wall supported him from collapsing to the ground.

Black spots danced in his vision as an ache tore through his body, pounding in his head. "Kodiak," Jantzen groaned. "Kodiak, get out!"

A door creaked open, Kodiak tiny in its frame. "Uncle Jantzen?" Her voice was frail, petrified. She had to be protected.

Mama Annistyn pivoted round, blade in hand dripping blood. Kodiak's face paled. Jantzen leaned his uninjured arm against the wall, and staggered towards his niece. Before his mother could.

An agonizing headache seized him; his vision blurred. He nearly slipped. He looked down through his blotted sight. Blood was pooling beneath him, a steady stream drawn from his arm's wound.

Another pang of pain, like gongs reverberating in a small, empty room.

"Jump out the window!" screamed Jantzen, clenched by frustration.

There was a crash, a shrill child's shriek. The creak of a window shoved open, and the thuds of bodies on grass.

Consciousness slipped from Jantzen's grasp––

And he fell, fell, fell, down an abyss of darkness.