Sort of Dead

78 - Family.

AAR's POV:-

'YOU!’ Marra yells, his voice causing an aggressive thunder in my chest. His eyes are red, red with tears, red with rage, red with untainted emotion. He fixes those eyes on the Grahi Witch (who suddenly has wrinkles on her face?) and she actually seems to flinch.

Let me reinstitute what I just said: the Grahi Witch actually shrinks away from Marra’s anger.

He, on the other hand, looks like a rock that’s been on the shore of a sea for hundreds of years, prepared to take the wear of an umpteen number of waves.

My eyes are still twitching from the crack of rainbow earlier, and I can’t quite seem to get a hold of my senses, but I see Marra launching himself like a bull at a red flag at the sorceress who kissed a second, cursed life into him. I cannot recognize Marra for my friend. I refuse to believe.

His Uncle and Rasthrum both belt at him simultaneously, trying to obstruct his way, but Marra is fast. Way too fast.

I see pain in his pace.

Es lies where he found here, lifeless as coal. She has a smile pasted on her face. She looks pretty.

But her glow is gone.

'YOU!’ Marra howls again, a real guttural quality in his voice, the kind you would expect in a lion's thrumming breath.

The Grahi Witch, all bones and no tricks, slides across the cold stone floor like the wind, like a slab of ice over the water surface, like a rickety house that would come down in a sneeze.

I blink vigorously, clearing my eye of the bubbles of mellow light interrupting my vision, and a few such blinks later, Marra is farther from where he was. Inhumanly farther. His hand holds the bronze shuriken.

No. No, no. No, no, no, my friend. You cannot think of doing that, not now.

But I cannot utter a word. It is as if my lips are a sealed envelope.

Rasthrum falls in an attempt to catch hold of Marra's loose burlap uppers, and Mr. Om is too fatigued of his resources to push.

The thing that had once been the Grahi Witch paces away from Marra, but she isn’t even a termite where our Marra is a tiger. Her brown straps betray her as she flees, and her red drapes flow freely around her, like smoke around a dwindling campfire. She trips over a fold of her own garish clothing, and tumbles down harder than a fat lady down a set of aluminum stairs. Her head bumps her stone floor, which remains impassive, dark and brutish, and it is nothing short of a miracle that she does not knock herself out.

Marra is barely ten feet away from her, chest swollen, eyes mad and red like Saayu the Nerth-doll, teeth barred, when –

'Stop!’ shrieks the witch-thing. ‘Stop, have mercy!’

Marra doesn’t stop. It is written in large neon letters on his face that he has forgotten what mercy means.

‘Wait, wait, child! Your parents! I can bring them back! I can, I can!’

Marra hesitates for a second, five feet away from her, while she slowly, slyly crawls away.

I am mesmerized. The very same way that sometimes a certain actor/actresses' performance captures my complete and undivided attention. But this isn’t theatre. I do not have any rehearsed lines. This is life, and I do not know what to do.

At my feet, See squeaks, as if to ask me who that boy with that violent gaze was, making a woman beg for her life.

'Yes, yes, child, that’s it,' the witch's birdy voice slithers into my ears, and the ears of all those around me. ‘Get rid of the weapon. You want your parents back, do you not? You will never have them back if you kill me. Never see them again.’

I am vaguely aware that Bee's arm is now holding my own. I am vaguely aware of her weight leaning against my own. Vaguely.

‘Yes . . . yes, child . . . wise child . . .’

I can see Marra standing there, his shoulders heaving up and down with each effortful breathe draws. I can see Marra travelling back in time to when his mother died, sick and bald and suffering. To when his father died, by his own frantic seizure and Bee's club. To when he used to have them, to when he had them both. To when he had been happy.

I can see the corners of my friend's mouth quiver and tic into a sad, heartbreaking line.

'No, Marra!’ Rasthrum's desperation is abundant in his voice. ‘Remember what I told you!’

I don’t think he does. I don’t think he even knows who we are as he looks face to face, from me to Bee to See to his Uncle. I don’t think he sees us.

'Do not listen to fools, child,' whispers the Grahi Witch. ‘I birth’d you. I will give you all that you desire, and much more. Family. I see it in your head. That is what you want, do you not, child? I will give you family. I will give you your mother, your father. They were innocent. They did not deserve the bitter end they received. But that can be changed . . . oh yes . . . drop the weapon, child . . . ‘

Marra stands there, looking at the petty figure that is this woman.
He takes another step toward her.

‘Come now, child!’ the Grahi Witch pleads. ‘I will give you your family back! Drop the weapon!’

I feel dizzy. I almost fall on top of Bee.

Marra inhales. Smiles. His entire face lights up. Tears, in duos and trios and foursomes, range down the terrain of his cheek.

He turns back, and takes a long look at Es, who is now not even a reflection of what she used to be. Her form is turning into a color, a pale brown, a buff skin.

Marra's smile deepens. He meets the woman who gave him a second life in the eye. He says: 'I already have family.’

I fall unconscious, taking Bee down with me.