So Hide Your Eyes

Chapter ELEVEN - The Bloated Child

MY REFLECTION SMILED WIDELY. It was just as he said. I did have red eyes. The reflection smiled wider. My eyes have curved into red slits. Pretty, but not as vivid as his.

I screamed.

My eyes had popped from their sockets.

They melted and streamed down my cheeks like the bloody river from a fairy-tale, and gathered at my throat, winding around until my throat has been wrapped in a red cord.

Then the cord cut my throat.

A deep darkness swallowed me.

_______

I felt a hand shake my shoulder.

"Wake up!"

Someone screamed. A hand gagged my mouth and the screaming suddenly stopped. I crawled to my knees and shoved Mama away.

She really shouldn't shake me, or she'd die again.

"Shut up!" Wife roared, rather loud for a lady.

I rubbed my eyes and looked towards her. She was chewing fleshy food the colour of her ruffled dress. 'Coconut,' my mind supplied helpfully. Demon must've woken early to fetch one. I glanced towards the door, and the pile of twigs had been moved aside. So I was right.

Demon leaned over my head while his hand absently petted my hair. "Are you alright?" He removed his other hand from my mouth.

I nodded my head, gripping and the ribbon on my finger.

  For a moment, I'd thought Mama had Revived too. But it was just Demon shaking me, because Mama didn't have the red-eyes. None of the other villagers had. Only us: Demon and I.

That thought didn't make me feel as happy and special as it used to. Because if we hadn't been the only ones, if Mama had been immortal too...

She could have lived.

I would have shared my feelings with her instead of killing her, and she would have comprehended how awful it was to be the demon child of the village and sympathized.

We would have loved each other.

We would have been happy.

A dark, sharp feeling rose in me. It felt like anger, but more vengeful. It burned, and I felt like – I felt like – 'like terminating the world,' I thought.

A smile slid across my face. I was growing closer to Demon, at last.

Demon pinched and tugged at my cheeks. "Why so creepy?" he asked, grinning.

I didn't understand why he believed I was, and I didn't think that love was creepy in any case, so I remained noiseless and raised my shoulders to my ears with intentional ambiguity.

Gesturing to Wife, he said, "Wife suggested we visit the beach."

Wife nodded solemnly from the opposite side, as regal as an elegant black seaweed. "Children, orphans especially, are precious for business. Likaen children are too few in number, it's a wonder how our trade's been surviving without them to complete the unpleasant tasks."

Wife proceeded to give a history on Likah's trade and economy which was not at all surprising for a well-bred woman of her status – the Priest's daughter was the equivalent of a village princess.

I was planning on listening to her because stories were ever so exciting, until Demon interrupted her a few sentences in.

"Don't mind her," Demon whispered close to my ear.

"...OK," I whispered back, secretly thrilled at our clandestine conversation.

"...So you should leave! Now!" Wife ordered.

Oh. She was finished. She must talk very fast to have done so in the span of our short conversation.

"Yeah, ye," Demon said. "We'll leave you to change."

It was surprising how he unconsciously listens to and remembers all that Wife says. That, or he knew she would change after her morning rants because that was her routine.

He snatched up my hand – I sighed a little at the warmth - and yanked me to my feet.

Laughing, he dragged me out of the door and pulled me to our destination.

_______

It was dawn.

The sun sent a warm glow along the horizon, and the sea looked like it'd been set on fire. Beneath my feet, the sand felt pleasantly cool. It wasn't as cold as the night had been, nor was it as scorching as it had been in the afternoon.

"It's pretty isn't it?" I commented.

"Ye," Demon replied curtly. He covered his eyes with a hand and lowered his head.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"Alright."

I glanced along the shore. The beach was empty, except for the fishermen I saw yesterday fishing on the jetty and – I fisted my skirt.

At the opposite end, a sea of lanterns was making their way to the shore.

I watched. I picked up a floppy twig beside me to shove into their eyes if they were after Demon.

When they reached the coast, they stopped and pooled around something. The villagers were obscuring my sight, so I couldn't identify it.

"I'm going over there to check it out," I said and pointed over there.

Demon glanced up. His face paled even further when he saw what I was referring to.

"No," he said. "No no no you don't want to go there."

But I did want to. I screwed my face into an appropriately apologetic expression and petted his hand.

He tried to grab my wrist, but I kicked myself back and sent a storm of sand into his face. He coughed and waved at the storm, and I scrambled to my feet and dashed away.

_______

I stopped a distance away and peeled off another length of cloth from my pants. I tied it around my eyes.

"What's going on?" I asked, pushing through the crowd.

I looked to where they were all staring at. My blood ran cold.

A bloated child. From its pudgy hands and legs, it looked no more than five before it died. Its skin was peeling and purple, its eye sockets hollow.

I shivered.

Behind me, a woman wailed.

"My baby, my baby!" she cried. She threw herself onto the rotting child and hugged it tight enough that one of its bones cracked. But the child was still as ever.

Dead. Several villagers pulled the woman away. They didn't attempt to console her, but a few other women were sobbing too. The first woman lunged against the arms separating her from her child and clawed at the air.

"Why?" she screeched, wobbling on her feet. Her dress was wet with the child's rotting fluids and sea water.

It suddenly dawned on me, that 'this must be why Likaen children were so few in number.'

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