Mame used to tell me when I was younger that a line was the distance between a heart and its desire. She would take one hand and place it on my chest while the other rested on hers. Pawpaw, seeking to balance the scales in my head, would hastily step in to correct her. "No, child. A line is the distance between two points. Here and there." How was I supposed to learn my numbers if my head was filled with fanciful nonsense? Mame would laugh at him and his complaints. I always said nothing. A line was a line. Simple.
Not today.
The roar was deafening and the light blinding. My hands came up, shielding my eyes from a sight which would have caused them to bleed. Had I worn a visor, I would have risked raising my head. But I always complained about visors. "They are too heavy, Pawpaw and I never see clearly with them, " I would whine. Pawpaw never said anything to the complaints. Never reacted. I had to wear the visor. I wish I had worn the visor.
To my left was Jeflin, knocked down by one of her blasts and unconscious. His sword had long since been broken and his helmet knocked off his head. Scattered in the arena were the bodies of soldiers among the corpses of the ordinary people. The stench of blood and roasted meat had assaulted me before I had even set eyes on her. If she was going to die, everyone around her had to come with her.
Out of my field of vision, I could hear a voice screaming into the eye. "Finish her, Asana! Do it for me!" Asana, please, I begged her. I knew she could hear me. That raging ball of heat and fury was sentient. It was not stone. It was not water. Asana could hear me.
Who would have thought that I would have to fight my sister in such a way?
Asana the Black was what they called her. Exiled in Odeza, I heard the tales. Could I bring myself to believe it? I could not. No one of my blood could be what they said Asana was. No one of my blood could be a killer. And yet, I was.
A line is a line but not today.
All I needed was a clear line of sight, the path into the center of the eye. From here to there. But Asana was quicker. There would be no easy paths to direct my arrow into. Her light blazed brighter, blacking out the edges of my vision and causing me to fall to my knees. Asana, sister. Please. The light only grew brighter and hotter.
"Asana cannot be killed," Jeflin had informed me before we left Odeza. "How do you know that?" I had retorted. Kill Asana? That was never in my plans. Why would I kill my own sister? Why would I shed the blood of my blood? Yet I have and the guilt still gnaws at my soul.
"Asana cannot be killed," Jeflin said again, far from Odeza, at the gates of the capital. "She is mortal. She can die," I scoffed. I was confident. Maybe I could render her unconscious and spare her the death she deserved but I did not think I had it in me to send my sister to the afterworld. Pawpaw would have wanted me to forgive her and I did.
"How do you know she cannot die?" Curious, I asked him last night. Jeflin had been slow to respond, even slower to meet my eyes. I wanted to know, truly wanted to know. Was this our only chance to regain my birth right or would we perish as we attempted to claw the land from her tentacled talons?
"Kill her! She is right there! Kill her!" The voice screeched again. "Call me mother," the voice had once whispered in my ears between lashes of the whip. I would whimper, not wanting to declare my pain. Pawpaw never knew I was down there, hidden away from sight. Pawpaw never knew anything in those days.
The eye burned brighter, blistering and blackening my flesh where it was exposed. Scorch marks. Just like those Jeflin had said were on the skins of Asana's dead. He had described them to me in detail, beginning with what she had taken. "Great holes in their chests where their hearts used to be," he had gestured with his hands. Last night, I learned for the first time how my husband died. Jeflin- loyal friend and brother of my slain Maduke- held me as I wept.
