A searing pain ripped through my chest. Nothing had stricken me, nothing had pulled through my skin… but the look in Mariana’s eyes made me cringe and my throat tied around itself. My breath betrayed me. I pressed my hand against the two wounds that had been created in Mariana’s house, just before I was taken as it began to sting. I sat up to look at her, everything weighing me down to the floor.
‘I’m on Death Row because of you,’ she huffed as she returned to staring at the wall across from her. ‘Because of you, I lost everything.’
I swallowed and turned away, breath still far from my reach as my chest tightened. I leaned against the wall, letting it support the weight that would flatten me at any moment. She couldn’t have been in here because of me… My parents had made her leave the city after she saved me the night I was born. Why was the city taking action now, rather than then? If they just wanted her dead…
‘What happened?’ I wheezed as my eyes began to sting. Everything inside me sunk down and I felt the thick depression weave itself along my rib cage and compress my organs. I felt as if I would explode, or as if I would crumble with the next breath I breathed. I knew I shouldn’t get out of the situation alive… but there was no way I’d leave this place dead. Not with the barren floors of this cell, anyway. No way of taking something when nothing can take the burden and blood of your own hands.
‘They came for me.’ Mariana’s voice quivered, her voice making my chest tighter. ‘They found out I was harboring a One-Hundred without the King or Queen’s knowledge, even though I lived outside the city limits like a hermit… the guards accused me of being an ally of Unwea.’
‘Unwea?’ I asked her, my voice barely a murmur as it bubbled past the blackness coating my trachea. So it wasn’t because my parent’s hate grew and they suddenly took a final action. It was because Mariana helped me.
My insides felt worse and worse; that terrible aching had expanded and soaked up all the light and positivity I usually had. It grew and swelled until my entire midsection cramped—until the last bit of light was nearly snuffed out.
Her eyes drifted to mine, lost in thought.
‘I’ll be dead within the hour.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I countered, my throat suddenly feeling dry and tired. It should have been me that was wasting away quicker than I was meant to, not her. Not the woman who took care of me and taught me so much about this underwater world. Not the woman who looked past my pity-soaked impulsive nature, my stupid over-dramatic fixes to my deeply rooted emotions. And yet, it’s the perfect torture for someone like me. Someone who kills and doesn’t recall the incident. Someone who goes to the extreme when something pushes me down. Someone who doesn’t belong anywhere—not beneath, not above, nor in the one person’s arms I’d loved… I belonged nowhere.
Mariana exhaled heavily, almost unable to pull me from my thoughts. How had everything fallen apart so fast?
‘Oh, but it’s true, child,’ she sang somberly as she stared at the wall her shoulder was crushed against. ‘I was injected with something. They gave me an estimate of two hours an hour ago. I’ve been counting the seconds. I’m afraid the remainder of my life will be spent within the span of sixty minutes.’
I objected with a no, the whisper wavering across my tongue and off my lips as my chest tightened and my heart shredded. Down here, whispers can’t be heard. ‘Why didn’t they just let you go, then? And let you spend the precious time you have left out in the open where your death—’ my voice cut off as I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists, the last of my fight trembling and fading fast. ‘Where your death—it can be… less torturous?’
I groaned as my body shook with a mixture of emotions and sucked in a deep breath. I shuddered with what would be sobs. What did I do to make them deserve this?
She shook her head and continued to bore holes in the walls with her distant gaze. No reply came from her, and my eyes stung with a deluge of disaffection as I watched the cloud that hung over Mariana grow heavier and heavier upon her shoulders. My own settled onto me, clinging to my skin like soggy clothing on a dreary day on land. This was it. This was me giving up, once and for all.
Happiness, life, enjoyment… laughter… all of the goodness left my mind, and I sunk into a deep hole. My mind brought forth words of farewell to the woman on the other side of the cell. The woman who saw so much and said so little. But it was always enough. It was always what I needed.
Nevermore.
‘I never said thank you,’ I croaked. The sudden burst of sounds didn’t stir her in the least bit, but I kept on talking, paying close attention to her chest as she breathed slower and slower. Spindly veins began to devour her arm and half of her neck, making her look sick and near…
Death.
‘For all that you’ve done for me, and—’ I clear my throat as it tightens, ‘for all the knowledge you’ve shared with me. And I wanted to say—’
My throat closed off, as if a hand was crushing my trachea and forbidding me a passage to speak. I began to choke, the gills resting on the back of my neck pressing tighter together and beginning to grow hot with pressure.
Tell her that you hope she dies soon.
The snake.
I’d forgotten.
Again.
I gasped and wheezed, my chest on fire and my body beginning to tingle from the lack of oxygen.
Or else.
The pressure was released, and I collapsed, sucking in water as if I’d never felt the rush of breathing before.
Now.
‘Leave me alone,’ I grumbled aloud to the voice in my head.
Mariana stirred and made a sound, a stroke of pain ripping across the surface of my heart.
I’ll die if I don’t repeat what he says, I reminded myself. But…
‘I can’t,’ I breathed.
‘Can’t what?’ Mariana slurred. ‘Bear to see me die?’
I felt the snake grow excited. Feel the pain. Feel the lies in your heart build until you burst. Tell her you hope she dies soon.
‘I… can’t.’
My voice came out as a hiss, tiny spastic bubbles spurting from my mouth. Pain came like a strike of lightning ripping through my side as the ball and tendrils sent my muscles into aching spasms.
Do it!
The fire let up and I was left gasping on the floor of the cell. I could feel Mariana’s eyes on my bare back as I stilled.
Maybe she didn’t have to die alone.
‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’
I shook my head, my face swollen with aching emotions. Everything was swelling inside to where it was almost as if I almost couldn’t feel anything at all. As if I was so overcome with sensations that I was entirely numb.
I’ll kill you both if you don’t.
‘She’s dying already,’ I whispered to the cell door as someone in this prison rustled around.
She isn’t. She is alive and well, tortured with the lie of her promised death. Look at her. Haggard. Crestfallen. Forever defeated until her mind gives out, and the mind is such a powerful, dreadful thing.
My chest grew heavy. My heart cried out for her as I opened my mouth to take a breath. She wasn’t dying?
Don’t say a word, the snake warns.
But there was a glimmer of hope shining through the darkness inside my brain.
‘I can’t.’ I pushed myself up, defiance rising in my chest. ‘Mariana, you aren’t dying.’
‘What?’ She asked, her voice cracking on the edge of hope.
I cried out as the tendrils spread agony across my torso. Blood tainted the water.
Tamir-in…
Something slices through my brain, a thought of my own. That voice. I know that voice. It’s… not the snake’s.
‘You’re going to live. It’s all a lie,’ I continued, determined. My strength was increasing and my optimism was slowly returning… She was going to live.
Tamir-in, wake up…
That voice…
‘Tamir, don’t tease me like this. My poor heart—’
‘I’m telling the truth! Agh!’ I clenched my fists and tried to block out the pain rampaging through me as another tendril rips through my skin. ‘Please… don’t give up, Mariana. Death won’t take you just yet.’
Tamir!
‘I won’t let it.’
Wake up!
A bright cyan light left my hand and swallowed the darkness surrounding us. Everything was shiny and white took over my vision.
And then it faded.
And before me, there was a face. A face I knew. A face that belonged to a girl named Amawa-na.