Aeolia

48: Knotted Hands

When Ravine awoke, she didn't recognize herself. Her body was too thin, her skin too scuffed. Her hair felt tough and dry, like wild straw. Or hay. She could never remember the difference between the two. She'd been taught at school, but the lesson, like so many others, had gone in one ear and out the other.

     She held her hands before her. They were still, no longer shaking. She could see the flexing bones and blue veins underneath. Her fingers were long, her knuckles knobby—like knots on a branch, her mother said. Don't worry. I have big knuckles, as you do. They might not be pretty, but you do good work with these hands.

     Ravine laced her knotted fingers and watched the branches move above her, tossing the weak sunlight back and forth. It was a shy green-and-gray day. The distant chimes she always heard made music in the rain. Warm water drummed on her face. The hanging stars were dim, winking with dew. As Ravine stared at them, glinting and gentle, she thought of her father and his smile. His teeth had been too large for his mouth. His lips spread wide when he laughed. He'd always told Ravine that if one was paid for being happy, he'd be the richest man in the world.

     Her heart ached. She hadn't thought of her parents in ages, because she knew if she did, she would start sobbing and never stop.

     But she wasn't crying. She had no tears in her eyes at all.

     Something twisted inside her. Guilt. Why didn't she cry?

     And why was her chest so empty? There was nothing below her skin but bone, there couldn't be. There was no muscle, no tissue, no thumping red. Just the hollow arc of her ribcage through which the wind blew.

     She looked at her hands again. Still they didn't shake.

     A heavy mist enclosed her body, difficult to see through. She let her thoughts go. They were worthless. They led her nowhere and meant nothing. To Ravine, a lot of things seemed to mean nothing now.

     With a hard yank, she drew the curtains over her mother's strong dark hands, and over her father's wide smile. She draped her memories of life before in muffling fabric. She pulled the curtains over spitting in the gorge, over the piano lessons she'd once taken, over the soldiers and the gunshots and the running and the forest that had screamed around her—

     The screaming forest. Spire.

     She stood. Spire. Where was the little bird?

     And where was Frost? And the Kingfisher? The Viper?

     Where was anyone she knew? Where had they all gone?

     Ravine's knees buckled and she fell into the leaves. She felt the weakened pillars in her body break. Her spine bent, her stomach crumpled. She folded over as if in prayer. She clasped her mother's hands together and sobbed till she couldn't breathe.