Call of the Starling

Chapter 3

My face goes white and my knees collapse beneath me, hitting the ground hard. Swift. A quiet girl, sweet, kind, and utterly fun-loving, has been murdered for what purpose? To serve as a warning to the rest of us. I stay unmoving in my shocked state, my mind both numb and clouded by fury and loss. Then, I slowly rise, shaking as I stand. I take one step towards her, then another. I touch her hand.

No pulse.

Biting my lip to keep from crying, I brush a strand of hair out of her face. She looks so peaceful in death- if you can ignore the knife embedded into her chest. Peaceful, and lovely as always.

Hard as I try to keep strong, my willpower fails, and tears well up in both of my eyes. Unable to bear it a moment longer, I turn, stumbling from the room, then breaking into a run. 

Unconsciously, I make my way to Murre’s room, and pound on the door. She wakes almost instantly, and greets me at the door. “Starling, what’s wrong?” she asks me, seeing my distraught and tearstained face. “Murre,” I say, trying to tell her, but my throat catching. “Murre, they killed Swift.” Her expression instantly morphs from one of mild confusion and curiosity to one of pure horror. “No..” she says weakly, but I can see in her eyes she knows that it’s true. Swift was never one of our strongest.

She hugs me, and I relax in her arms, scared, and desperate for a shoulder to cry on. We stand in her doorway for a good thirty seconds before I take a deep, shuddering breath, and stand, determined to see this through. I say, “We should go tell the others,” and mask the cold hand grasping my heart as I turn to go to Jay.

Jay greets me much the same way as Murre did, though he responds in a more masculine form when I tell him of Swift’s fate. He does not cry, but I see him glance away, pain spreading across his face. He lets me into his room while he accesses the intercom to gather everyone else in the practice battlefield. Then, he takes off the headset, and beckons to me to follow him to the room he has designated. Without a word, I walk in his wake, watching my feet, and trying to stay calm and passive. Trying not to let them break me the way they broke the rest of them.

When everyone- everyone left, that is- has arrived, Jay breaks the solemn silence hanging over us, confirming the fears of many of our more astute teammates. “Guys,” he says, “Swift’s dead.”

Shock and horror register on our faces, but below, we seethe with grief and fury. We feel loss and anger far stronger than disgust. Yet we cannot show these emotions to the Sadists. For we must be strong. Or at least, we must seem strong.

Even when we are not.

I wonder, sometimes, whether or not the Sadists know what they’re doing to us. Whether or not they know the pain of losing one of their closest friends overnight, just because someone more powerful felt like killing them. Whether or not it would make a difference if they did know. 

But they can’t know. If they knew the overwhelming waves of grief and sorrow that course through your heart and your soul; if the knew the memories, echoing and reverberating off your skull; if they knew the cries of pain that blocked the outside world out as you feel asleep each and every night; if they knew the grief and regret of having never said good bye, of having never told them what they meant to you… 

If they knew, they never could have done this to us. They never could have done this to children.

I can feel the raging fire of thought and emotion roaring through our minds, linking us together. Our minds become one, and our hurt, our pain; our whole lives flow through us. We won’t stand for this. We can’t stand for this. Someday, we will find freedom, if it is the last thing we do.