Tears of Leyden (6 page)

Chapter 7

I slowly awaken with not much of a thought as soft beams of early morning sunlight start to migrate over my face, the window’s air giving me shivers as I burrow deep into the bed. Inhaling quietly I take in the fresh sent of warmth, just as my home smelt of in the dream. I sigh and try to forget that horrid nightmare which had seemed so real. All had been a dream. I start to drift and smile at the familiar sounds of riders shouting at their horses or bartenders shouting their wares. All is as was before.

Then, I slowly start to open my eyes. At the sight of the large room, I feel my heart grow unconditionally heavier. It all slides into place in my head. I slowly rise, unable not to as the horrors slowly flood back in. I feel my throat clog with guilt and curse myself for sleeping so very comfortably.

What had I been thinking? Taking refuge and so effortlessly falling into a deep sleep?
I tremble as I make my way off from the bed, my bones and muscles feeling heavy and yet good, as if they had been revived from last night’s slumber.

I arrive at the table and now I am in need of food. There is no resistance to the smell of hot oats boiling in a pot. Nadeje is facing the stove and crouched down to fix something. When he rises and turns, seeing me standing here looks as though I have stunned him. I can’t help but wonder what it is like from his point of view, to have a young girl in his house, to have to guard her from something you yourself don’t know the reason of. I find myself actually believing that maybe he is as fearful of the circumstance as me, him perhaps more of the consequence of failing, me of the outcome of his success.

He steps back a little, and for a moment in his face is a blind point of uncertainty. It is blanched and lost, as though he has just seen a ghost. I cannot help but feel a little agreement with whatever made him this way. Seeming to see the truth of me being in his kitchen however, his expression loses its stupor and he firms. He looks down a moment at his hands as though unsure of what he had last planned to do with them. In them is a bolt. Seeing it he seems to spark to life again. He looks up to me and then slights his glance to the table again.

“You are probably hungry?” It is not so questioning, but it is kind.

I do not respond. I myself am unused to a man being near me in a house,
all alone
, inquiring me about breakfast.

When he looks up his eyes are stormy and dark but not his expression. It is an odd combination, his eyes balancing out the soft openness of his face with their deep but not unsettling secrets.
I like them.
The moment the thought occurs to me I feel a flame of heat wash across my features and force down the want to run away and curse myself. I settle with doing so inside my head.

“At least by now I hope?”

It puts me back in my place and I try to focus on the words over the imprecation going on in my mind. I can only manage a nod, knowing he spoke of food and wanting something of that nature.

He drags his gaze from me and after a moment of thought he steps towards the cupboard to my right. I do not move as he takes from it a plate and a fork from the cup holding the silverware. He sets the fork down on the table and turns to the stove. I watch his back as I hear the sounds of him scraping something off of a dish, then a scoop of something more liquid flowing. When he comes back he places it down and I see eggs and potatoes mixed with some small irregular black things that I suppose to be Spanish.

He turns back to the stove and picks back up the bolt. He turns and seeing me unmoved, stops himself. “You want it, don’t you?”

I glance to the steam rising off the plate and my mouth waters.

He waits, and when I don’t respond he comes forward and takes up the plate. I almost protest, but instead of moving away from me, he moves towards. For one awful moment I believe he will spoon feed me, but instead he stops a good foot away and holds it out to me. “You can eat in my room if you like.”

I can’t get myself to understand the simple proposal. He is watching me kindly, not in any way insincere. I look back down to his hands and slowly take the plate. It is warm and smooth. He steps back after I have done so and I can’t help but wish he hadn’t brought over the plate as my stomach twists with discomfort. I step back and manage to knock into the door. I am sure I am blushing now.
I hate myself.

Thankfully, when I say nothing, he turns away and picks up the bolt to kneel next to the stove. He begins to handle something unknown to me and I turn and walk back into the room.

After I close the door, I step to the bed and sit down on the edge and close my eyes. My hands are so tight on the plate it takes me a while to loosen them. I breathe deep and sigh with thanks to God. I don’t know whether to eat or to sacrifice it. All my people are starving, and here I sit, not inches from food I could eat freely and without price. The smell of the food is comforting, and makes me remember how much my stomach is cramping. I look down to the plate and after a few more breaths I poke the fork into the eggs.

Chapter 8

The eggs and side dish, whatever it was, did well for me both physically and mentally. It was savory and very good cooking, not that I would’ve minded if it was not so good; I was shoveling it down so fast I hardly tasted it.

I had gone nowhere after eating, until there was a knock at the door and I was forced to answer. Nadeje offered to take my plate and asked if I was better. I merely gave the plate and nodded to his words and then closed and locked the door after him.

I lay here now, unsure of what to do, my stomach feeling full and unused to being this way. It has at least been a few hours that I have spent here, and I am pretty sure I should go out. I also don’t go out. It must be evening again, and everything outside would look dim as it does when the sun sets below the wall. Closing my eyes, I find that here is the only place I can find peace. I stay here, ready for sleep if that is the path of least resistance.

When I wake up, it is sunny outside. It must be morning, and for some reason, I am hungry. Not just hungry, but starving. I blame it on my conscience knowing that food is within reach here. I empty my thoughts from my sleep and pray a moment for Meyleia and moeder. It hurts, but knowing that I could mentally be helping them in some way, it makes me feel like maybe my survival wasn’t for nothing, maybe because I am free, I could help.

When I am done I unhurriedly step back to the door and open it. Nadeje sits at the table with his front to me. He is holding some papers, and his brow is crinkled slightly. When I enter the room and turn after shutting the door, his gaze rises to me. The way his face dims its expression, I know something is wrong. I feel my pulse begin to pound in anticipation and I know the surging feeling I feel in my stomach is not something I can ignore or call coincidence. I want to ask him, to beg him, to shout at him to tell me or stop looking so grave, but I cannot move my tongue. I am stuck.

“What is it?” It is the first time I have ever addressed him before him me.

He watches me a while longer, every feature and crease in his face seeming to present concern. “I just…” he looks down and runs his fingers across the seal of an envelope. As though feeling it is keeping him from focusing, he sets it and the rest of the papers onto the table. When he looks up, his eyes are gentle and pitiful, something I would rather have no share of from him. “I received word…” he seems like he had more to say, but is unsure how to put it. As I process his words, I feel like the pounding in my pulse grows louder. I understand.

“What happened to them?” I can hear the light tremble in my voice, but in this moment nothing matters more to me than what floats about in his thoughts due to my family.

His face is grave. “They…were…no,” he stops and looks down a moment. “They were…” He looks up to me, speaking in a firm but worried tone. “Promised protection…but the lie only lasted long enough for them to…”

He does not finish, but the very word about to come from his mouth rings in my head like a siren; prosecute.

“I’m so sorry…” His words are there, but the ringing prevents them from entering farther than my awareness of them.

At first I cannot feel anything. I had relied so confidently on the thought that they were only outlawed, or at least alive. Now I see that for the past several hours, I had been wrong. I had lost everything. I had been alone.
Alone
.

This is what brings the reaction crawling back in. A sensation of loss and loneliness enter so quickly the next moment I cannot process the emotionless feeling being there before. I feel hollow, but full of remorse at the same time. I feel nothing but everything.

“No…” It comes out soft and disbelieving. “No, no, no, no, no…”

That is half of how I feel. The other half knew; it knew when I left them the day we were separated. I just hadn’t let it make conscious evidences as much as the other.

I slowly reach for the chair in order that if I should fall, I would be sitting at least. I feel my hand clenching the chair, and as I try to pull it back, I feel I am trembling. I plop down into it and stare across the table’s wood at nothing. I feel something large and hard form in the back of my throat but my eyes stay clear. I cannot move for what feels like a long time as it washes through me, the fact that moeder and Meyleia are no longer tangible to me. After a moment, instead of fading, the ringing gets louder and I feel a tug in my heart. I cover my face with my hands and breathe. No tears come, but the trembling in my chest and churning in my stomach are enough for me to feel my pain.

“Lyra…” I can’t even put out the knowledge that he is using my improper name. When I raise my face from my hands though, I see that they are a little wet. I do not look at him. I can’t. Not after…

I choke back a sob and place my hands cupped together in my lap, trying to keep them from trembling so hard. I can tell that he is watching and I don’t want him to, I don’t want him to know what I do after this.

“Can I help you?”

The pain surges with his question, and I suddenly feel tortured to have to be in a room with someone of the decent that killed my family. I stand, not hurriedly, no, but cautiously balancing myself. The doctor always said I had a knack for low blood pressure, and that if I took shock, I could easily faint at my will, which I don’t want to, but he never said anything about being able to stop a faint against my will. I turn away and start for the door to his room.

“Lyra…” It is gentle.

I reach the door as he says it, and I brush against the wall, leaning on the door frame.

“What could help…you forget…?”

The words are harmless, but the meaning scares me.
Forget Moeder and Meyleia.
No.
Without meaning to I grow breathless and I tense up in my stomach. I don’t feel it as I slowly sink down and flutter to the floor. I land lightly, and it is almost graceful like a bird, my dress floating out around me like a moat of blue over my legs. Nadeje rises almost instantly.

“Lyra…”

He comes to me urgently but carefully, seeming to know by now that fast movements could frighten me. He kneels down with me and sits at the edge of the lace in the bottom of my dress, like it is a boundary which surrounds me, his borders and my protection displayed by the fabric. I can tell he is unsure of what to do or how to comfort me. I do not look at him. The silence is a little reassuring.

After a moment, I don’t know why but a sudden urge to speak about memories of moeder and Meyleia become needful. I ignore it and continue to lean my head to the wall, away from him. I take a shaky breath and I feel a tear escape like a cold crystal, sharply sliding down my turned cheek. I close my eyes and try to remember who I am, what I am doing, why I am here, who is beside me.
It isn’t working.

“I couldn’t do what moeder asked…” I nearly choke up on my words, but they keep coming. “So she would make me sit in a corner and count to one hundred…” It is quiet and I cannot tell if he is listening or not, but I don’t care, this is for me to let it out, not for him to know about it. “I despised it…it was dark in the corner…and often too cold and…boring. I often nonetheless got stuck there to count anyways…” I look down at my shadow below me and swallow hard. “Now…I feel like I am always in that corner…sitting and trying to count to get free…but I can’t seem to remember the numbers.”

It is faint and I feel the prickle in my throat as a warning that I could break down. It didn’t matter though; it was all I needed to say.

He is silent a few seconds, giving me time. He does not judge or take action for me, he just listens and considers
. I like it.
I feel a terrible fluttering in my stomach telling me it is wrong to like it, and to feel comfort after what I just heard, but I can’t not feel it when it is there.

“Do you want to get out of the corner?” It is smooth and not teasing, sincere, even.

I do not look at him. I nod a little.

He quietly watches me. “I understand you.”

It takes me a long time, but I manage to let out the question. “Your sister?”

Though I am not interested, it could distract me from my current pain.
Why do I need distraction?
The thought is lost as he begins to speak.

“Yes,” it is calm and soft, comforting, but I can tell that it pains him. “I was young still when my moeder and vader died…” It is quiet a moment. Then he starts again. “First it was my vader…then my moeder after remarriage…I planned to take care of Carmela…but she left as well…” I listen halfheartedly. “I got stuck there…after my family had gone…my step dad would have shared some of the money…but he would have remarried again and I could not stay with him. So I left…and became what I am now.” It is silent in the house. “There is more to it…but that is a summary of my story.”

I swallow dryly. “Are you still stuck?”

He is quiet a moment, as though contemplating it. “No.”

I choke back tears. “How did you get out?”

He is silent longer than last time and I am afraid he did not understand or did not hear, but then he says it carefully. “I got help.”

I close my eyes and wish it would end. “I can’t think of anything that would ever…”

He waits. When I do not follow through with it, he interrupts the incomplete sentence. “You have to find it.”

I don’t know why, but it triggers something loose inside me, and I feel myself break down. I sob once, twice, three times. I feel the tears as I breathe shakily and too loud.

“Dutchling…” It is gentle and for some reason I like it, but I do not respond.

I wipe my nose and try to stop the tears, but they continue. My chest is shaking too hard to stop it and I feel worried. He does not reach for me. I am grateful.

“Help me,” I whisper it, still turned away.

He watches a moment, unsure I suppose, if I am referring to physically or the corner. “How?”

I shake in the shoulders and slowly sink further. He seems to see past the physical gesture and to the point where harm could be done by this action, for one moment he is a good distance, and the next, I feel his presence close in.

“No…” I beg. He stops midway from taking me and coming closer as I look up. “No…don’t hold me.”

He stops and obediently returns to his post beyond the moat, at a distance. I look away again, and after a few more moments of my sobs, he speaks to me.

“Do you wish me to leave you for now?”

I wait a moment as a tear tickles down my nose and drips into my lap. I nod.

He is still seated for a little while, lingering and watching as though making sure I am okay. He slowly begins to leave. I curl up into a tight ball against the wall as he rises and I hear him step away. I glimpse his boots stepping over the floor into the room with the bookshelf out of the corner of my eye. I rock as another sob takes me into a fresh batch of tears and I let it.

Eventually I grow tired of knowing he can still hear me easily, and I slowly uncurl. I crawl to the bedroom door and turn the knob, crawling through and shutting it behind me.

At first I just sit here, and wonder if the tears are gone. Then I see the bed and remember home and Meyleia, how I used to sleep so close to her. I command myself to stand, and to my own surprise I do, weakly. I head out for the bed, and when I reach it, I quietly crawl in and collapse onto my side. I only wait a minute for the tears to overtake me again. My throat burns now, and I do not care. I sob. I do not move from here for the next few hours.