Nevermor (28 page)

All of them were
looking at her so seriously that it was frightening, and she could see that
they were all firm about it.  She didn’t like the idea of being forced to keep
a secret, and might have told them that she wouldn’t go with them now – except
that she was so curious she could not turn away.

She didn’t only
need Rifter’s approval if she was going to stay here.  She needed to be one of
them too.

“Yes,” she
agreed.  “I understand.”

He didn’t say
anything else to her, but turned away to gather his own belongings.  Wren
didn’t know what to say after that and so she kept quiet.  What was going to
happen now that she’d agreed to this, and what
had
she agreed to?

“You’ll need
this.”  Wren looked up to see Toss holding up a poncho of gray fur, bunched up
and ready to go over her head.  He helped her into it, and she at once felt
like she had grown three sizes.  But she was warm.  This told her exactly one
thing about where they were going.  It was going to be cold there.

2

It was a long
walk through the woods with them, especially since she had no idea of when
their trek would end.  The farther they went, the heavier her fur covering
seemed to become.  It added a few pounds to her weight and made her feel very
large, but the others had put on extra layers as well, so she kept quiet about
it, assuming she wore it with purpose.

The woods seemed
to go on forever, but eventually she felt the air getting colder, as she’d
expected, and she was glad that she had the warmer clothing on.  They passed
under the drooping branches of some tall pines – and directly on the other
side, the ground was covered in snow.  Wren stepped out into the flurry of
white flakes that were falling so silently, and she was stricken with awe.

It’s so beautiful! 
She
had seen her share of winter snows, but never one as pure as this.  She was so
busy staring at the beauty of the spotless white wonderland that the others had
moved on away from her before she’d noticed.

“Come on, Wren,”
Toss said, passing by her.

“Yes,” Finn
agreed.  “If you stay there, you may freeze like that and we’ll have to dig you
out!”

She thought that
was unlikely, but took the hint.  As he was speaking, Finn had dropped down and
scooped up a handful of snow and, after hurriedly packing it into a hard ball,
he chucked it at Sly.  Sly was swift and ducked, leading the hard ball of ice
to nail Nix squarely in the back.

“Oops…” Finn
said, drawing in a hiss of breath.  They all quieted as if they’d just woken a
sleeping bear.

Nix stopped in
his tracks and Finn tried to look innocent when he turned around, but the twins
were trying to hold in their laughter, and the ploy didn’t work.  Nix wore a
harsh look – but it quickly turned into a vicious smile.

“Now you’re
gonna get it,” he sneered, and thus began a rambunctious snowball fight that
had Wren hiding behind Toss for the most part, except when the twins came
around to ambush her.  They all had fun for a while in the snow, their laughter
echoing across the undisturbed landscape.

Once they were
out of breath and tired of their game – after Finn had declared himself the
victor, only to be pelted with more snow – they moved on until they reached an
opening in the rocks at the base of a mountain.  It was dark within, but the
boys were quick to make a fire, which Wren was pleased with because her fingers
and toes were growing numb.

She was looking
forward to resting beside it, but she’d barely had time to start warming
herself before they were calling for her attention again.

“Come see what
we have to show you,” Sly said once the others were already moving along deeper
into the cave with torches.

“What is it?”
she asked, feeling an ominous chill.

“We’re going to
show you where
the others
are.”

The others?
  He had
mentioned them before, and yes, she was curious to know what he had been
speaking of.

It is very dark
back there,
she
thought, but her curiosity wouldn’t let her refuse.

Persuaded, Wren
followed them just a little deeper into the tunnel, led by the firelight, and
there she saw what they wanted her to see.

Etched in the
rock wall, there were words written, and it didn’t take her long to realize
that they were names.  Some were written larger than others, crooked, and a few
of the letters were backward.  They had been chiseled in by hand in rows and
columns to create a list. 

“What is all
this?”

“These are the
others,” Finn said, sounding serious for once.  “The ones who have gone before
us.  We pay homage to them here.”

She remembered
some of the things they had hinted before. 
Don’t ask Rifter about the
others because he may not remember them
.  She knew the reason now – the
answer to that mystery.  Finn had said that there were others before them, and
Rifter didn’t want to talk about them because they were gone – because they had
died
.

“Why here?” she
asked.  “It’s in such a hidden place.”

“Because of
Rifter,” Mach offered up.

“He would rather
we forget them when they die, but we can’t.  They don’t deserve that,” Sly
said, lowering his head in reverence.

Why would Rifter
feel that way?  It seemed horrible to her, but perhaps that was only because
she didn’t understand it.  He must have had reasons.

But if something
happened to me, would he forget me too?  Just like that, without another
thought?

“This is one of
the first things that we do when a new one comes.  We show them this,” Sly
explained.  “We may all die tomorrow and leave only you, and if that’s so, it
will be your duty to put our names here so that the next ones will know that we
existed.”

“So I was
brought here to replace someone?” Wren asked him, discovering it slowly.

“When one falls,
Rifter will replace him – or not, if he doesn’t want to.  There are more or
less of us, depending on what he decides.”

“Yes, he makes
the choices,” Nix sneered.  “I would have liked to think that since we’ve been
here for so long with him, he would give a little more weight to our opinions
by now, but apparently brotherhood is not something he cares about very much,
despite what he says.”

“But you’re
right,” Toss told her, ignoring Nix’s negativity.  “One of us did die
recently.  We called him Cyprus.”

“What happened
to him?” she asked, though at the same time she wondered if she wanted to know.

“We went into
battle and he didn’t make it,” Mach said soberly.

“There is some
dispute on whether or not it was a bad call on Rifter’s part that had caused
it, but there’s no going back on it now,” Sly said.  “We couldn’t save him.”

That was vague,
but Wren supposed she didn’t need to hear the gruesome details.

“It shouldn’t
have happened,” Nix said, still fuming about the whole thing.  That was the
first time he had shown any sympathy for weakness.  It surprised her.

“How long was he
with you?”  She asked this, not so much out of respect, but she did wonder what
the lifespan of the average boy was for surviving in this world.

“The days blend
together,” Sly answered.  “Time doesn’t mean much, but he was not here so long
that we can’t remember when he first arrived, and it hasn’t been so long since
he passed that we have forgotten him.”

He seemed to
speak for them as a group, so she assumed that they had all been here for a
long time.

“You have all
been here together for a while?  You seem comfortable enough around each
other.”

“The twins were
the last to come here,” Finn spoke up.  “Cyprus was here before that, perhaps
even before Toss.  The rest of us are the ones that have been left as the
numbers have been thinned.  Sly has been here the longest.  He was among the
first.”

“But it has been
a long time since we’ve lost one,” Toss added, as if to assure her that they
were genuine.

“And we don’t
intend to go anywhere,” Nix said.  “Others come and go.  Some never have a
chance.  But we look after each other.  That’s what brothers are supposed to
do.”

“And Rifter?”
she asked.

“He will fight
for us while we are alive, but if we fall, he will forget us too, just as he
has forgotten them,” Sly said with a shrug.  “He believes that if we die, we
have broken the Vow.  It’s to save himself the grief, I suppose.  He won’t let
us mention them, which is why we keep this a secret.  As far as he’s concerned,
we are the only ones that have ever been.

“It’s true
though; he really
doesn’t
remember them, and he doesn’t want to be
reminded.  I’m sure he remembers Cyprus for now, but he will forget.  The
longer one stays here, the more one tends to forget, and that will be true for
you too.  Without these names, we would have forgotten them as well.”

Was it the
island that made them forget, or was it their desire that made it so?  She
didn’t think she had forgotten anything yet, but this was only her second day. 
If she had been here for years – decades or more – she may have forgotten as
well.

Maybe they have
to forget.  It’s the only thing that keeps them young.  If they could remember,
they would be old.

Wren looked up
at the rock wall as the rest of them did.  They searched over the names of the
past, recalling to themselves what had happened – remembering the ones they’d
seen die.  They had seen it all before, but as she looked on the list for the
first time, it struck her in a different way.  What was it like to forget
something as significant as the name of a loved one?  As she peered across so
many names, she could certainly understand why Rifter would want to put it from
his mind.  Who would want to deal with so much grief?  At the same time, it
seemed horrible that he wanted to forget the ones who had given their lives for
him.

She went closer
to the wall, looking over the names, touching them with her fingers, and she
noticed that there were a few in bigger letters near the top, separated from
the others.

“Why are those
names divided from the rest?” she asked, pointing.

“It’s the
highest honor,” Toss explained, lowering his head in a moment of silence.

When none of
them answered, finally – surprisingly – it was Nix who took it on.

“It means they
were killed by the Scourge,” he said darkly.

A collective
shudder ran through them, even Wren, though she didn’t know what they were even
speaking of.  It was just the way he’d said it – the way they seemed to hold
their breath afterward.

“What’s the
Scourge?”

She wasn’t
surprised when none of them volunteered to answer immediately.  They always
seemed on guard of what they said, whether Rifter was around or not, but this
time – more than anything – she got the impression that they just didn’t want
to talk about it.

She looked
around for any of them who would offer her the truth, but Sly was the only one
who would meet her eyes.

“The Scourge is
the thing we all fear,” he said.  “The world itself fears him because of the
effect he has on it.”

“Wait,” Wren
said, her eyes wide.  “The Scourge is a
man
?”

“Yes,” Sly
confirmed.  “The most contemptible and evil sort you could imagine.  No one can
say where he came from, but ever since he showed up here – which has been
longer than any of us can remember – there hasn’t ceased to be a threat to the
world.”

“He rides on a
black ship with an army of the most terrible men that have ever washed up
here,” said Finn.  “In a way, I guess they’re like us.  They do what they want,
but they have different ideas about what is
fun
.”

“The Scourge is
a
pirate
,” Wren understood, looking for confirmation.  This made sense,
and also explained the men who had tried to attack her on the beach the first
night.  She shuddered to recall that incident.

“He’s
the
pirate,” Mech corrected her.  “All the others fear him.  They do what he tells
them, or they die.  That’s the way of it.”

“He wears a coat
made of shadow, and his glare can stop your heart,” Toss said quietly.  This
was clearly not a subject he liked to talk about.

“He sits in a
chair of human bones, pieced together from the ones he has killed.  He’ll kill
anyone without blinking, and sometimes when he kills them, he drinks their
blood!” Mech said, his eyes wide as they caught on hers.

“He has no heart
himself because he doesn’t want to feel emotion – not guilt or pity.  He cut it
out of his chest, and it was replaced by darkness!” Mach added elaborately.

“He has a heavy
aura that you can feel on your skin if you get close enough, and everywhere he
steps, the land dies,” Nix finished.