Paper Confines

xxxi. Divinity and Damnation

PAPER CONFINES.
31. / Divinity and Damnation

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       Myrtle laid there like a shot doe.

The forest, full of new life, chirred on birdsong and wind, and the needles blew sundried from the branches. Light clung to the gust. The smell was still sweet despite the corpse. The corpse was still alive despite the dying.

Amoret tried to reason, thinking of the big white star that was the edge of the world, how it had waned and spluttered over the months; how the animals had grown, sound and orbit at last filling a once-empty, stagnant world. She reasoned it made sense to come to this—a bigger body, a greater life—and reasoned very little else because there was nothing reasonable about it at all. Her mind went flat and static as she looked upon the body.

"Oh my God," she whispered dumbly, and her hands went up to her face, cupped over her mouth like a prayer. "Oh my God." The words were muffled.

Tom, recovered sooner, inched toward the body like a hunter assuring his bullet had aimed true. It was too true a comparison—he had killed her. Perhaps in the wake of his failure he would do it again.

Amoret was nauseated out of her shock.

"Don't touch her," she gasped, shoving him aside. It did very little in her weakened state, barely knocking him back a step, but it turned his attention toward her, and with a scowl and narrowed eyes he at least stopped moving.

"What do you imagine I'm going to do?"

"You killed her! You—am I the mad one here? Of the two of us, am I fucking mad?"

He looked flatly between her and the body. "And you'll carry her back to the castle, too, will you?"

"I'll do anything if it keeps her away from you," she spat.

Amoret knelt shakily at Myrtle's side, the faint glow of white skin vanishing at the sharper contours of her face like the bones had cut the light away. The stringy black hair blew from her eyes, and Amoret put a hand carefully to her cheek. She was expecting the cold feeling of death, and had felt it before, but the simultaneous burn was severe, rendering her arm sluggish, frozen and aflame at once. Amoret yelped and stumbled backward off her knees.

Arms came down behind her to steady her fall.

"Don't do that." Amoret wobbled onto her feet and shoved him again. "How is she here?"

He took her charges with ease, capturing her balled fists in his hands. "I don't know, Amoret."

"Either it means she's still alive, or we're both dead."

"Don't be impulsive."

"Don't be fucking calm!"

His fingers twitched over hers and she wrenched them free.

"You killed her," Amoret said again, this time with a quiet sort of shock, like she'd forgotten it after all this time. "Feel something about it," she pleaded, "Shout, or cry, or curse a god you don't believe in. Be proud. Be honest about it, at least. Aren't you proud, Tom? Look at her. It's not a silver platter but she was delivered to you nonetheless."

He did. Myrtle was a slump of gangly limbs and bruises, his metaphorical bullet in her chest, and there was only the tell of his lips dipping at one corner to indicate he had any thoughts on the sight at all. Then he looked to Amoret. Stiff upper lip. Even eyes. "You know what I am, Amoret; don't let your sentiment usurp your sense." It was an awful kindness, a monster warning that it was a monster. He said it again to be certain. "You know what I am."