Ander - Part 5: Subchapter 17
17
"You understand, Father?" Hezzi said, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Cora through a gap in the clouds. "Lana is chained to Danado, and Danado is chained to that tent. They can't come."
If anything, the clouds were getting even thicker now, the wind blowing with even more ferocity, lashing out against everything in its path, rattling the skulls on the gate, making the wooden supports beneath his feet groan and creak. If he stood perfectly still, he could actually feel it sway.
"Sorrin and Mellah... I went to them next, but they angered me most of all. At least Lana and Danado had a good reason, but they..." He punched the railing with all his might, crashing his knuckles against the wood hard enough to make it splinter. "They gave me the same reason I gave Ander. That this is their home, and they can't leave..."
He could feel the sting in his eyes, that wet, cloying warmth that signalled the arrival of a fresh batch of tears, but he pushed that feeling away with brute force. He had allowed himself one tear, just_one_, and that one tear had already fallen.
"I was such a fool... Maybe I did think of this place as my home back then, but now... with Ander gone, with you gone, everything's changing..." He examined his bloody hand in the gloom, watching a thin red line trickle from his knuckle and run between his fingers. It didn't even hurt. After everything that's happened over the past two months, his definition of 'pain' has changed just as drastically as his entire world.
"Nilia didn't care one way or the other. I was surprised, the way she was so casual about it. She had worked so hard her entire life just to be taken seriously as a warrior, but the moment I told her what you wanted me to do, she agreed immediately. She didn't try to talk me out of it or anything. I think..."
Hezzi flexed his fingers, working some of the numbness out of the bones. His blood had already hardened in the cold wind and was breaking off his fur in little red flakes. "I think that maybe, when she looks at me, she doesn't just see some skinny grey Wolf. She sees her last duty to you and the village. She sees the legacy of the Chieftain, and she feels she needs to protect that legacy at all costs. But what do I know? I can't read people like you or Ander. Maybe she's just fed up, I dunno..."
Hezzi grabbed one of the corner posts and leaned his head against it, suddenly too ashamed to even look upon the Cora in its veiled state, completely hidden by the thick, roving clouds.
"I would have done it anyway," he said, looking down at the rickety planks of wood he was standing on. "I would have left almost everybody behind. Mellah, Sorrin, Lana, Danado... All of them. But Father..."
Don't cry.
"When I went to Renna... she..."
*
He found her wandering aimlessly through the woods, not very far from the South gate. She'd walk a bit, look at something for a while, then move on. It almost looked like she was lost.
"Renna? I've been looking everywhere for you!" Hezzi said, slightly out of breath. "What are you doing out here?"
She looked over her shoulder and gave him only the briefest of glances, her face shadowdappled by the sun streaming in through the overhead branches.
She had been crying.
"Renna?" He went up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she said, finally turning to look at him. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the corners of her mouth were turned down and quivering. "How can you be so... fine after what just happened? How can you stand there with your eyes dry, asking me if I'm okay?"
Underneath it all, he could hear her real words boring into his ears, unspoken, but louder than anything: Your father is dead. He's dead. DEAD.
Hezzi closed his hands into fists and said: "Because I have to, Renna."
"You're burying your emotions again, aren't you? Just like at the top of that watchtower. You're so scared of what you'll feel the moment you let slip even just a tiny bit, so you shut it all away. You did it with Banno, you did it with Ander, and now you're doing it with your father."
"I'm not!"
"Yes you are! Just look at you! You're feeling more anger towards me for pointing it out than you feel sadness for your own father's passing."
"I am not! Just - Renna, please..."
"That's not healthy, Hezzi! Don't you remember what happened last time? Don't you remember how you almost lost yourself? You came this close to killing your brother because you kept trying to force yourself into feeling something you don't!"
"Listen to me, Renna!" Hezzi grabbed her by the shoulders, making her eyes go wide. "I don't have time to mourn! I don't have time to grieve! I don't have time to cry! I don't have time to feel anything right now! When this is all over and we're both safe, then I'll bawl my eyes out if that's what you really want, but now is not the time! I have to tell you something really important!"
"H-Hezzi?"
"Renna... the village isn't safe anymore."
"I know that. The village has never been safe."
"You don't understand, Renna. Wolves are going to die."
"Die? What are you saying?"
"I'm saying..." Hezzi sighed. "I'm saying we have to leave as soon as possible. I've already talked to Nilia, she'll help us out."
"Leave?"
"Don't tell anyone. Pack light, just some food and water, nothing else."
"Hezzi, wait -"
"We'll leave at midnight, when it's darkest. We'll wait for the guards to change shifts, and then we can -"
"Hezzi!"
"What?"
"I can't leave!" She ripped herself free from his grasp and stumbled backward, a look of utmost shock and terror on her face, leaving Hezzi frozen, his hands clasped over nothing but empty air.
"What did you say?"
"I said I can't leave," she repeated, pulling her hair away from her eyes. "I just can't."
"But why?" Hezzi was dumbstruck. He had thought that if there was one Wolf left in this entire tribe who would want to escape, then surely it would be Renna. "You try to hide it, but I can still see the marks on your face. We're not welcome here anymore, Renna. There's nothing left but pain and hatred, and it will only get worse from now on. Can't you see?"
Renna bit her lower lip and crossed her arms, clutching her elbows as if to ward off the cold. She looked off to the side, down at the ground, and with a small voice she said: "I can't leave her."
"Her? Her who?"
She looked up and suddenly Hezzi saw the entire truth in the moment their eyes locked together, even though no words passed between them.
"Your mother!?" Hezzi yelled, scaring a bird into flight above their heads.
"Hezzi..."
"No! You can't be serious! Why would you want to risk getting killed for a she-wolf like that!?"
"Because she's my mother!" Renna screamed back, almost doubling over with the strain of it all. "She's the only family I have left, and I'm the only family she has left! You of all people should know what that means!"
"I know she hits you, I know she makes you cry, and I know that's not supposed to be how it goes!"
"I love my mother, Hezzi!" Renna said and slammed her hand over her heart. "I know sometimes she has a strange way of showing it, but I know she loves me, too! Everything she's ever done to me she did because she loves me!"
"Don't give me that crap. Your mother is angry all the time, I can tell. I don't know who she's so angry at. Maybe herself, maybe the other Wolves, maybe the entire world for taking her mate away, I don't know. In the end, you're just a convenient punching bag to take all that frustration out on, and don't you dare tell me different! I've been in that tent and I've spoken to her and I know what it's like in there!"
"You don't know a damn thing!"
"I know exactly what it's like to have a mother you both love and fear! My mother is Shekka, for crying out loud! The Empty One! The witch doctor who could curse you just by looking at you! She rarely hits me, but -"
"No, your father was the one who always hit you!"
"Don't talk about my father like that."
"See? He hit you, sometimes so bad you could barely walk, but you still loved him, Hezzi! And now that he's gone, and you'll never see him again... do you really want me to go through that? I know it's not really the same thing, since she'll still be alive, but to me... if I can never see her or speak to her or sometimes hug her, if I can never go back, then it will be the same thing as her being dead!"
She stood with her hand over her heart, her claws digging into her buckskin top, and Hezzi suddenly knew what Ander must have felt like, standing outside the walls, trying to convince him to drop everything and come along with him into an unknown world.
"Can you understand now?" she pleaded. "I can't leave, Hezzi. I just can't."
"Because you love your mother."
She gave him a nod, and Hezzi started walking towards her. She took a frightened step back and raised her fingers up to her mouth, barely able to retrain herself from chewing on her nails. "Hezzi? What are you -"
"Your mother. The one that did this?" He reached out and touched her left cheek, right where her mother always clouted her.
"Ow!" she yelled and staggered backwards, rubbing her cheek. "What was that for!?"
"She did this too, didn't she?" He touched her beneath the eye.
"Ow! Hezzi, stop that!"
He poked her shoulder, her ears, her nose, all the places that still bore fresh scars from her mother's wrath.
"Hezzi, you're hurting me! Stop it!"
"She's the one that did all this, the she-wolf you love so much you're willing to throw your entire life away! You said it yourself, Renna! When my brother was bleeding in the dirt and you were the only one to come help him!"
"Stop it!"
"You called your beloved mother a cold-hearted bit -"
She slapped him right across the face. It wasn't very hard, but somehow, it hurt just as much as one of Father's haymaker blows.
"I love my mother!" she sobbed, tears streaming form her eyes. "Damn you, Hezzi! Just... just leave me alone!"
She stormed past him, but Hezzi reached out, quick as an adder, and grabbed her by the wrist.
"Let go of me! Let -"
That's as far as she got before he pulled her into their first embrace. They stood together, in the shadows of the forest, Renna as stiff as a statue, not even breathing, while Hezzi held her tight.
"I love you too, you know," Hezzi said, resting his head against her shoulder. "Doesn't that count for anything?"
He could feel her shaking in his arms, could feel her heart racing. Their clothes whispered together as she raised her arms to return his embrace...
She shoved him away violently, knocking him down onto his tail with a hard thump. He stared up at her in disbelief, his butt aching, dead leaves falling around his head and sticking to his ears and hair.
"You can be a real jerk sometimes, Hezzi!" she shouted at him, tears running down her cheeks in twin streams, and before Hezzi could even begin to register what had happened, she stormed off, back in the direction of the village.
"Renna, wait!" he shouted after her, but she would not respond, or even look back. She turned a corner and was gone, leaving him to sit on the cold hard ground, trying to figure out where everything had gone so disastrously wrong.
He should get up. Right now. He should chase after her and convince her to come along, because if she didn't, if she chose to stay...
Then he'd be stuck here, too.
Hezzi put his head between his knees and clutched at his hair, crackling the leaves that had gotten stuck up there. It was true. He couldn't leave her behind, because in his clumsy, inexperienced way, he really did love her.
He was stuck. He was stuck out here in the woods, sitting in the dirt, unable to move, unable to run, unable to take action, unable to do anything except sit still, and sitting still was the one thing he did not want to do, because to sit still would mean to feel, and to feel would mean to -
Your father is dead. He's dead. Stone cold dead, lying on that table in Mother's tent that reeks of herbs and medicines, attracting flies. You'll never speak to him again, or touch him again, and the next time you see him will be at his funeral pyre to watch him burn.
Because he's DEAD.
"Shut up..." Hezzi whispered, pulling strands of hair from his head. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
He's dead, Hezzi. Gone forever. And because you're so weak, all your friends will be next. Lana, Danado, Mellah, Sorrin, Nilia...
"Shut up!"
Even Renna...
Hezzi couldn't keep it in any longer. He couldn't run any farther. He couldn't escape the surge of emotion racing through his body and it burst out of him in an explosive sob. He shut his eyes tight and covered them with his hands, trying to keep it all in, but he could still feel the warmth spreading across his palms, escaping into the outside world, where anyone could see it.
He sat there, in the shadows of the forest, rocking himself back and forth, a layer of dead leaves crackling beneath him with every movement, and he tried to stay quiet, even though there was nobody around to hear his cries or see his tears except for the birds in the trees.
He cried for his father and for the time they spent together. Sometimes he had regarded his drisa as if he weren't there at all, and sometimes, when he did notice, he was quick to anger and even quicker with his fists. But despite all that, he was still Hezzi's father. He was never one to show affection, but the rare occasions when he did were some of the happiest memories Hezzi had, and no matter what happens, no matter what horrors lie in wait, nothing will ever change that. His father was Kadai, Chieftain of the Wolves, and Hezzi loved him deeply.
You of all people should know what that means!
Maybe Renna was right. Maybe he should be able to understand her feelings better. Maybe he really does try to bury his own. But what of it? What point was there in feeling anything if you were all alone?
"Ander's gone... Father's dead..." he whispered to no one. "And now Renna..."
He really was alone now.
He angrily wiped the tears and snot from his face and opened his eyes. The world was just a blurry mesh of foliage and spots of sunlight until he blinked it all away, forcing it back into focus, back into the real world.
He got up, dusted himself off and pulled the dead leaves from his hair, wondering if he should try to chase after her anyway. He was Hezzi, 'Fast Paws', he could catch up. Sure he could. But in the end, he decided it would probably only make things worse.
He sighed, but halfway through it turned into a scream of frustration and he kicked at the leaves strewn about his feet, sending them up into the air in little puffs of red and brown.
"You messed up, Hezzi..." he whispered to himself, starting down the path back to the village. "You messed up so badly it isn't even funny."
He finally made it back, his nose so far down he didn't even notice Nilia standing by the gate with her arms crossed.
"Is everything still good?" she asked.
Hezzi looked up, and the slight frown on her face told him she was asking about more than just his love-life or the turmoil in his heart.
He shook his head.
"I see."
"Nilia, you -" He glanced at the Wolves up in the watchtowers, chatting it up, munching on strips of salted meat. He'd have to be very careful with what he said. "Nilia, I can't go hunting with you like we planned. Because Father, he..."
"I understand." She knelt down so that they were face to face and put her hands on his shoulders, as if to comfort him. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear: "You're staying behind for Renna's sake, aren't you?"
Hezzi swallowed the lump in his throat and whispered back: "I can't just abandon her. I don't know what I can do when things go bad, but I want to at least be here to protect her. I think it's all I can do now."
"You're a brave Wolf, Hezzi. Much braver than you think. When I look at you, I sometimes see Ander looking back at me. I know he would be proud, and so would your father."
Hezzi thought he had cried himself out in the woods, but hearing her say that struck something deep within him. His whole life he had aspired to be more like his brothers, all so his father would be proud of him. He nodded, sniffed hard, and said: "Father told me he was proud. Before he died."
"Of course he did."
"I can't leave anymore, Nilia, but you can. You should just go by yourself. You know where the pass is."
"I can't do that, Hezzi."
"W-Why not?"
She leaned back and looked him in the eye, her bearclaw necklace swaying just below her throat. "If you're going to be protecting Renna, you'll need someone to watch your back for you."
"No, don't do that! You can get -"
"Shut up, Hezzi."
Hezzi shut his mouth with a snap.
"My whole life, all I did was follow orders, but no one ordered me to do this. This, I do for myself, and nothing you say will change my mind. From now on, wherever you go, I will go. I will always be by your side, making sure you don't do anything reckless."
"But you can get out," Hezzi whispered, almost pleaded, and then something happened he's never seen before, something so rare it was like a rainbow in the middle of the night.
Nilia smiled.
"I could," she admitted, her smile transforming her normally stony face into something else, something... pretty. "But tell me, Hezzi. If I leave you and all the others behind just to save my own sorry skin, how would I be able to look your brother in the eye?" Hezzi didn't know how to answer that, not that Nilia gave him any time to try. "Renna looked rather sad when she came in. You should try and make up with her, don't you think?" She gave him a light pat on the shoulder and tipped her head in the direction of the village centre. "Go on. Just apologize for being such an idiot. I'm sure whatever you did, she'll forgive you right away."
Hezzi nodded, and returned her smile with his own. "Thanks, Nilia. For everything."
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