Ander - Part 5: Subchapter 59
59
The first thing he became aware of was the pain. It was always there in his fingers and toes, boring deeper and deeper. It was the first thing he felt when he woke up each morning and it was the last thing he felt as he struggled to get to sleep. The second thing was the bouncing. It was an odd sensation, but he wasn't really very interested in whatever was making his body go up and down. Truth be told, he didn't feel interested in much of anything anymore, not since...
Dan... I'm so sorry I hurt you...
A new kind of pain surged up inside him, far worse than his fingers and toes. He could live his whole life feeling that surface pain if he really needed to, but this other pain, this inside pain, it was something he couldn't bear a second more.
He opened his eyes.
It was dark, but the half-moon was still shining in the sky. There were almost no stars - just thick, black clouds and countless invisible flakes of snow drifting down from the shadows, striking his upturned face, stabbing him again and again. The trees were solid black lines in the night, sliding by, making the moon flicker in- and out of existence.
They must be in the woods somewhere, but what was this thing he was riding on? It was hot and furry, but what really gave it away was the heavy breathing, almost like a bear.
Sorrin was giving him a piggy-back ride.
Danado didn't give any indication that he had regained consciousness, keeping his arms and legs just as limp as they were before, but he did perk his ears.
"Aagh!" someone cried out just ahead, followed by the unmistakable crunch of a body ploughing into snow.
"Hezzi!" That was Renna. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"You're obviously not! Maybe we should rest for a little while?"
"No! We can't stop!"
"But you're hurt!"
"So what!? If you can keep going, I can keep going. If one of us falls down, we'll just help each other up."
"Hezzi..."
"Come on, you two. Up you get."
Danado was beginning to get accustomed to the dark. There were three figures up ahead: two of them down on the ground, and a larger one bending over them (probably Mellah), helping them back to their feet. If those three were there, then that meant Nilia was probably somewhere behind, covering the rear. Thinking about her awoke the throbbing pain in his jaw. He did not hate her for striking him down, but he felt no gratitude either. He did not care about escaping the Wolves or building a new life in whatever dream they believed lay just beyond the mountain. If Lana had been with them, things would have been different, but she wasn't, so they weren't.
There was only one thing he cared about now, and he could smell it coming for them on the wind.
Sorrin stopped dead in his tracks and sniffed the freezing air. "Oh no..." he whispered, a strange edge of panic to his voice that didn't suit him at all. He ran on, moving deceptively quick for such a bulky Wolf, until he reached the shadows ahead, their eyes shining like tiny stars in the darkness. "Mellah, can you smell that?"
He saw her shadow raise its snout in the air, heard her gasp. "Is it them?"
They looked around nervously, none of them quite daring to say what all of them already knew, until Nilia caught up, slightly out of breath.
"There are eight of them," she said, getting right to the point. "The wind is with us, so they don't know exactly where we are, but at this rate they'll catch up to us in about twenty minutes, maybe less."
"Then we have to hurry!" Renna said, clinging to Hezzi's arm. "We have to go right now! Come on!" She tugged and pulled, but Hezzi remained motionless, as did the others. "Hezzi? What's wrong? Come on! You said it yourself! If I can keep going, you can keep going! So let's -"
"It's too far," he said, cutting her off as if with a knife. "We'll never make it."
Renna looked to each of them in turn, a tiny little shadow inside a sea of shadows. "But that's... that's just pathetic!" She had started off all choked up, but the sudden edge to her voice made even Nilia do a double-take. "After all we've been through, we're just going to stand here and wait for them to come get us? If we're lucky they'll kill us right here in the snow! If we're not, they'll drag us back to the village and who knows what waits for us back there!? I didn't leave everything behind just to stand out here and wait for a bunch of animals to come and murder my friends!"
All of these animals... We just want blood...
"Let me down," Danado said, making Sorrin jump.
"Dan, you awake?"
"Let me down."
"It's okay, I gotcha. I can still -"
"Let me down!" Danado punched his shoulders, not caring about the stabbing pain shooting through his fingers with every blow.
"Hey - Ow! What do you think you're doing!?"
"Let me down, Sorrin! Let me down right now!"
Sorrin dropped him into the snow, and the shock of his feet meeting the cold, frozen ground dropped him to his knees with a barely supressed scream.
"You see!? You see what this foolishness gets you?"
"Shut up!" Danado shouted. "I'm gonna talk and you all are gonna listen!" He forced himself back to his feet, his knees shaking, his toes throbbing. "All of you have bonds with each other. Sorrin and Mellah, Hezzi and Renna. I can tell. I know what those bonds feel like, and I know what it feels like to lose them. It's like a part of your own body getting chopped off, and I can vouch for that, too, because it's another feeling I know all too well. Except the pain of losing someone you love is much, much worse than losing the tips of your fingers and toes, or even whole arms and legs. Mellah and Sorrin, you both know what I'm talking about. You too, Hezzi. You know what it feels like, but you can live through it because you've got others to patch up the breaks in your hearts. Mellah and Sorrin, you have each other, and Hezzi, you have Renna, and maybe even a big brother waiting for you on the other side of the mountain. But me? I have nothing. There's no one around to fix the cracks and hold me together anymore, no one to call me stupid and punch my shoulder, no one to over-cook the pheasant and yell at me when I try to take it off the fire too early, no one to wake me up in the middle of the night with her snoring. That's why..." He extended his maimed hand to Nilia. "Give me the bow and arrows."
"No," she said and readjusted the bow on her back.
"Give them to me!"
"No!"
"Hurry up! Every second we stand here bickering is another second they draw closer!"
"Exactly. That's why, unlike you, I'll be brief. I couldn't help but notice you didn't mention me in your little speech. Is that because you think I don't know what it feels like to lose a loved one? Well I do, and despite what you think of me, I haven't forgotten how painful it is. But let me tell you something, Dan. I got through it just fine on my own, and so can you! All you have to do is -"
"I don't want to become like you!" Danado cut her off. He knew he was going too far, but he also knew it was the only way. "I don't want to grow a layer of stone over my heart! I don't want to kill the feelings I have inside, no matter how painful they are, because to kill those feelings would be like killing the last piece of my sister I have left!"
Nilia balled her hand into a fist, and Danado half expected her to take another swing at him, but she didn't. Instead, she said something he already knew, but hurt even worse. "You're not trying to save us. You're trying to kill yourself."
Renna gasped and turned her face away, but Danado couldn't stop now. "That doesn't make any difference," he said. "You've got a frightened little girl and an injured young Wolf who can barely keep his feet, and I'm just a useless piece of deadweight. No wonder they caught up to us so quickly." He took a step forward, his hand still extended. "Give me the bow, Nilia. I can't stop all of them, but I can buy you some time."
She stubbornly shook her head and took a step back. "No."
"By the Cora, Nilia! Just -"
"He's right," Sorrin said, shocking everyone into silence. He looked around at the group, but didn't meet any of their eyes. Perhaps he was ashamed. "When I lost my only daughter, it really did feel like someone had ripped out a chunk out of my own body." Mellah was standing right next to him, and when she gingerly placed her hand on his shoulder, Sorrin took it in his immediately. "Mellah here was the only thing that helped me get through it. I'm not good with words, but just imagining what my life would have been like if it wasn't for her is something that frightens me. It just... it frightens me. Maybe I'm a terrible Wolf for saying this, no better than the animals chasing after us, but... I think it's better for one to die by choice, than for all six of us to be murdered."
Everything was deathly quiet following Sorrin's words. Even the wind had died down, and now the snow was falling straight down, slowly covering them all in specks of white.
It was Nilia who finally broke the silence, speaking so softly she could barely be heard. "I try," she said. "I try and I try, I try so hard. I was a killer before I could even walk properly, but when I try to save someone I fail every time. I couldn't save Ander, I couldn't save Chieftain Kadai, and now... now you're forcing me to fail again."
"I'm sorry, Nilia," Danado said, "but this isn't your choice to make. It's mine. Now please... give me the bow."
Nilia did not move. She was like a statue, her emerald eyes unblinking, but Danado could sense her anger. It boiled beneath the surface, just deep enough so it couldn't be seen, only felt.
Danado did not back down, and he did not drop his hand. Snowflakes accumulated on his open palm and slipped between his reaching fingers, and he waited. Until, finally...
Nilia slipped the bow from around her shoulders. "You've changed, Dan," she said, holding it out to him like a sacrificial offering.
No... I'm the sacrifice, he thought, grabbing hold so that they were connected by the curved piece of wood. "You too, Nilia... you too."
He tried to take the bow, but she was still holding on with an iron grip, refusing to let go. She looked at him, snowflakes falling onto her hair and drifting past her eyes, and said, "We've all changed, Dan. We're all different now."
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