This is a dream.
This is where she finds the emptiness inside.
In the warmth, in the softness, in the womb of a place unknown. In a body that no longer feels like her own. Beneath covers that scratch her skin, in a room dark enough to make her wonder if she is blind. Her mind does not feel like her own either; it is fogged by a thick blanket that stops her thinking too hard, remembering too much. Her hands explore—is this body hers? She touches her face, moves down her neck, her stomach. Something is missing.
I can help you.
There is something cold inside her, something gone that once was. Push her hands further down her body. Every movement is an effort, an agony. Is it even her skin she touches? It feels like hers, smooth and warm, until she comes across a thick ridge of bandages crusted with? With something. But what? Blood?
Is it blood?
There was so much blood.
I can heal you.
A smell, something herbal, something calming and dulling. Something that stops her worrying. Stills her restless hands. Quietens that dark voice inside.
For now.
She wakes and she is throbbing, a line of ceaseless pressure across her stomach. She wonders what she will be like underneath the bandage where once she was smooth and warm and perfect.
Ugly.
She has seen the poor, the scarred. Seen the disfigurements common among the thankful and the living of the Tired Lands. She has turned away from them, mocked them with her servant, laughed at them and, secretly, been frightened of them—as if poverty and ugliness are something she could catch. But now she understands that you cannot catch poverty and ugliness. You have them forced upon you.
Like pain.
Like shame.
Like hate.
Little by painful little her fingers scrabble at the bandage.
She wants to see it. Wants to touch the line of hurt across her stomach, to know it.
“No, Merela.”
A hand, cold, firm, moves hers away from the bandage.
“Listen to your friend, girl.” A different voice. “Leave the wound alone, let the herbs dull your mind.” She tries to speak, manages only a croak. Water is dripped down her throat, strange, bitter-tasting water. A dark sea rolls in and turns her limp body over on the slack tide of exhaustion. She falls into the void.
When she surfaces, the pain is there again—sharper, fiercer—but it isn’t in her body this time, that pain is dulled. This pain is in her mind. And it isn’t for Vesin, not any longer—poor, poor, Vesin—it is for the emptiness inside where a small life had begun to grow and, before it could even really understand what it was doing, sacrificed itself for her.
She opens an eye—so bright—then the other. The world blurs as water flows down her cheeks. She is in a hut—a small, filthy hut of the kind the thankful build to try and shelter from the elements. Plants and dried meats hang from the rafters and a girl works a mortar and pestle on the floor before her. She tries to speak but can only manage a croak. The girl turns.
Adran. It is her father’s servant, Adran. She tries to speak again.
“Father.” The word struggles from her mouth, that one word that encompasses all she needs and wants. Father, the smell of him, his strength, his smile. “Father.”
Adran stands. Her dress is bloodstained, but the stains are old. Her face is stretched with misery.
“Gone,” she says.
“Father.” She says it again, this time with the strength of rising panic. “Father?”
“They killed them all, Merela.” Adran’s voice is devoid of emotion as she relives the horror. “The ap Garfin came on your father’s camp. Gloated about what they’d done to you. They cut everyone down.” Adran stood, tears rolling from her face. “They were asking where the coin was. They were mad, like men torn with grief. I ran, because they were taking the women and the boys and …”
Adran’s words are stilled by the touch of another woman, impossibly old, swathed in rags, her hair a tangle of grey and black.
“Hush your talk,” croaks the old woman and Adran, ever meek and quick to obey, bows her head.
“Sorry, wise mother.”
“It is early for her to hear this.” The old woman gathers her skirts, settling them around her as she sits on a stool. “But she must hear it, I suppose. First, she drinks more.”
Bitter liquid passed down her throat.
“Father?”
“Gone,” says the old woman, “you are all that remains of the Karn traders now.” The words are hard. They feel like they choke her. “And you would not have survived if the girl had not saved you.”
“Our servant.”
“She is a girl,” says the old woman. Her words are not harsh, but they are a rebuke. “And you are also a girl, and I am a woman. There are no servants here.”
“You are thankful.” Each word crawling out of her mouth. The old woman pulls herself up, grunts, and leans over her.
“Did being blessed save your lover from the knife, eh? Did riches save you? Did it save your child?”
Her child.
There is ice in her stomach. A coldness that spreads through her, a horror. A feeling of loss so enormous she cannot really understand it, only run from it.
Run toward the darkness.
Lose herself in the emptiness inside.
That voice.
I can help you.
“Not yet,” says the old woman. “Not yet.” And she feels a pressure on her neck, drifts away.
Later, she wakes again, in this strange place with its strange smells and strange woman. By her side in the darkness as she tries to sleep she feels the heat of a body, Adran’s body.
“I am frightened, Merela,” she says. “I am frightened of this place, of being alone.”
“I am frightened too,” she says. The words come more easily, the pain is slightly less.
“Remember how your father would tell us stories when we could not sleep?”
“Yes,” she says, in the smallest saddest voice—though she is glad that at least, if nothing else, she is not alone. “Do you remember the story Father would tell us?” she says.
“He told you many,” said Adran.
“Let me tell you my favourite.”
Under the covers Adran’s hand takes hers and she feels a little less alone.
The story begins.
This is a dream.