After Forever Falls Apart

Chapter 6 (burden)

Woman in the market, dark bandages rendering her speechless as she strolls.

I cannot speak, my hands become my mouth, the wetness of my face is a distraction, a siphon to my thoughts. Along with the clanging bells of sellers, the clattering blades of sea-fishers, the fish-gut scent hanging like dread; the wetness of my face is a distraction.

From the market I need bread, nuts, something for the jet bird--who floats high on a billowing wind above the ocean. I pause and squint at the bright, cloudless sky. She is waiting for something, beneath the waves. I hold my senses back from figuring out what.

Shoe steps stumble into me, sending my feet stuttering. "Sorry," I mouth, my lips stopped by the bandages. I didn't even catch the texture of whoever did it, now long gone. I hold my arms close, walking faster. Boots strike soft against the stone street. Paper wads wallow at the bottom of the empty sack in my tense-knuckled fist. Bread, nuts, something for the jet bird when I can't let her free of the room, fresh water.

At the first wilted shack, merchant selling bread, I find the cut in the bottom of the sack. My startled fingers poke through the bottom, wiggle briefly, slide sideways and grab the paper wads still wadded together but probably some fewer.

The merchant's eyes dart between my bandages and the milling crowd past me. I pull my fingers from the sack and point at the bread. Hold out two paper wads, halves of ones. The merchant opens his mouth, undoubtedly to tell me the price is higher, but I point at the bandages and press the papers to the counter. The shack wobbles. I take the bread loaf, wrapped in waxy paper.

Merchant two, I buy black thread. I clutch the wrapped bread loaf in three fingers, the wood spool of thread in two, the empty sack folded to my stomach. Water, more food, something for the jet bird...my hands cramp at the thought.

So I carve through the clanging rush of the market back to the town, senses overwhelmed under sifting textures, garbled words--how does it still smell of fish guts?--clashing colors crying for my attention. I wind through the rush of the market to the slightly-less noisy town, sneak into a bumpy alley road between two brown brick buildings to a bench stained with soot.

In the quiet, I think. I shut my eyes to still the eddies edging at my attention.

It's not like I brought a needle to pull the thread. But the bag needs mended, or I will carry in my arms a squished loaf, lose a wooden spool through the hole between my elbow and ribs, carry the breadth of a bag of nuts plus bottles of water and still need to search out something for the jet bird. I silently groan. Standing from the bench, I wend my way upwards through the town toward Lakeia road.

The jet bird plummets over the ocean, speeding like a comet, those senses catch the texture of something grand and lumbering in the sea and I wince before the comet crashes against the water.

***

Dear dead, you took your boots off before the water, slipped free of your socks, welcomed the ice waves to your toes.

"What is it to you," you'd said. Less incriminating sounds had come from the jet bird's beak after crashing a patch of flowers.

May as well make it official, you thought.

Taffy bones called out from the water, nibbled at by months of seawater waves.

Taffy bones shivered through the shallows, to your pull. Tatter-cloak's swishing footsteps approached you from behind, which you pretended not to notice.

The first bone slithered from the water, thin and sharp. You furrowed your eyebrows, calling it a fin bone.

The second bone was part of a jaw, skin hanging loosely, you shot that away by threads of blood before Tatter-cloak saw.