This is a rather... interesting retelling of the fairytale "Brother and Sister." Just to warn you, it does involve sexual description and attempted rape... amongst other things.
Thanks in advance you guys!!
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or "Brother and Sister," as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, or Loreena McKennitt's "Samain Night."
My mother died when I was only four years old, but the repercussions of her death continued to haunt me from that morning until the few years just recently past. A wretched, fateful dawn in spite? I suffered to neglect it, but still the memory returns. Its rustic chill remains within me, specter of my despicable past.
The sun could scarcely reach the spires of the gallows that morning, for the clouds were so thick and sated with the apparitions of many an abandoned child that stalked the woods. They whispered sometimes as they wandered passed; a mournful gaze or frightened shudder was their only memory of a mortal life stolen, breath in unison with the wind as they sounded their cry in the hush of dawn. It was a stale shriek? nearly deft. But today they wept, their tears falling from phantom lashes and purifying this lowly, earthly crypt, rueful for her weary soul in the form of a gentle morning rain. Amongst this numinous and foggy realm remained only a few slits for daybreak to peek through as my father and I stood before my mother's body-- Sprawled out before the dampened soil of her grave. A reminder of her irrevocable stillness, a symbol within the vibrato and wail from the rain, the dawn cast a soft but dreary light upon the earth. It washed the woman's skin in a subtle glow, so disparate from her pale cheeks. Her lips were white and cold since no breath parted them. And my father clutched my hand beside me to console me the only way he knew: with detachment.
He held a baby in his arms then, still smeared in the bearer?s blood, and he tried to shield it from the rain. A little girl, my sister... the child which my mother had died giving birth to. A forfeiture of life under the premise of maternal obligation. The baby came a month earlier than expected, and Mother lost a lot of blood during the delivery. Too much blood.
She died just after she handed the baby girl to my father, whispering with ragged breaths as her blood continued to soak the down and sheets of the bed in enough crimson to condemn her to her fate, "You. Shall call her. Relena. 'Child. Of. Lament...?" and bowed her head in weakness and in pain. Her last word was a groan of such sorrow that her form trembled with its release, resonating into the twilight and hushing the crying babe with her mother's final lullaby.
And that was the end. She was gone.
But being one so young and, I suppose, as Father thought, unable to understand the finality of death, he always told me that my mother was only sleeping when I asked about her. We had to leave her alone so that she could rest? She merely needed to rest. That's why we buried her in the ground, he would always say as I sat at the window, eyes fastened to the grave where she lay. We did it so that no one could disturb her slumber, and, supposedly, the soil muffled the forest's din.
And I believed him.
I was so young and naive that I took him at his word. So foolish that whenever I was outside doing chores after that day, if I passed near her grave, I would always tiptoe and offer a silent prayer that the birds would be still and wolves deterred from unearthing the loose mound. And I can only scoff at myself now to think that I truly believed they could waken her, that the blood she left on the bed that night meant nothing. I was in denial. Gullible. Stupid.
It wasn't until one night later that summer, when the ghostly children that walk the woods met under the full moon?its silver beams shimmering through their fingertips and dancing across their faceless cheeks as they locked hands in a circle around the mound?that I understood Mother... wasn?t going to come back.
In a perfect ring they stood, stepping around the coven with entwined hands that they raised up to the stars--witnesses of their eerie dirge. Little voices echoed a pitiful verse while they turned the circle the opposite way to haunt the night. Deafening love; hypnotizing the moonlight.
People cry and children die
No one ever hearing
How they scream or how they sigh
Through the dark so dreary
Even as their hymn enshrouded the grave she didn't stir; the song that called all weary souls to life didn't reach hers. She wasn?t there? She left me here alone... not even offering her voice with theirs. Yet their song continued through the night.
Without me? Without her.
Then a year went by. Despite the revelation of that night, I managed well enough. It was difficult sometimes when the tempests set in, their drown?d whips of lightning painting the skies in luminous ribbons that shimmered as they cracked against one another, joined with the roar of fellow thunder that scourged the gusts that wailed passed. Nearly surreal?
My mother used to sit by my bedside on such nights... she?d sing to me tales she had heard of long ago, stories her mother told her when she was my age. The storm was nothing then?with her there.
I'd never felt as safe as when Mother stroked my forehead as I lay still in her lap and she sang her lullabies over the storms' tantrums. It. Took every bit of hatred I had for my current situation? That she had gone. And. Left me with nothing but a memory. It took ignoring all that so as to not cry myself to sleep on those later nights when the thunder just got louder and louder with every bellow. It just served as a cruel voice to remind me, how much I missed her sweet voice and the feel of her warm fingers through my hair... where now there was only chill.
"Milliardo," she always murmured just above the cry of the storm when she thought me to be asleep upon her lap, "do not forget the way my lips feel when pressed against your skin or the warmth of my hand on your face. But even... if you forget all that," she would whisper with a shaking voice as her hands began to quiver, "you must remember the sound of my song against the storm. Never forget..." No. I could never forget. I?
But now I digress.
As I said before, I managed with the knowledge of my mother?s death, but Father was never able to handle that fact as well as I did. He just seemed so withdrawn after the morning she left us, attending my younger sister and I out of duty more than love, so I perceived. His hold upon his daughter was lax; his eyes were glazed over as she wailed to be fed. It was as if he couldn?t even hear her, like his spirit had fled even if his body still remained on this earth as a mere, cryptic keeper. As far as he was concerned, I could handle myself, and I had to since he wouldn?t. The man was just biding his time, anticipating the moon?s rising as it meant escape from consciousness and dreading the sun?s return to the horizon as it brought just the opposite: the following day. Being alone just never suited him. I think because he was afraid of what we all, as humans with an embedded desire for warmth and love, fear most: loneliness.
And it would be an adequate guess to say that was what probably drove him to seek the companionship of another woman besides my mother, when at her burial he professed an undying devotion to her even beyond the constraints of time itself? That he would never find another to replace her. But grief can make even the most willful individuals break their vows in despair and with the threat of a lonesome grave, and it claimed my father as its next victim.
He married another woman only a year and five days after Mother died, barely giving her corpse enough time for maggots to consume. Disdainful. She was a woman who frequented the market only a few miles out of the forest where he'd go weekly to sell the furniture he'd made. Their courtship was a brief one... so brief that I was unaware of it.
They called her Lady Une.
I never did understand why she married him. As her title implied, she was a Lady, a child of noble blood, with long dark hair and the most stunning brown eyes that offset her naturally pale skin. With such beauty, she could have had any man she desired with a dowry as plentiful as her comeliness to match.
But even so, for whatever reason?which I know wasn?t love?she chose my father.
And I hated her. The moment I, as a boy of five years, looked upon her, chills slithered down my spine in waves of an unprecedented forbearance, of an intrinsic dread beyond my childish intelligence. My eyes traveled up her body as she stood indignantly for me to observe; I was especially distrustful, since I didn't even know her until the day my father introduced her to me as his bride. But the moment I looked into her hellish bronze leer I tore my gaze away, my hand trembling slightly from the intensity of her glare. It was hard. Vengeful even.
But I didn?t know why. I couldn't say why I felt so small when she looked at me-- Stared at me.
She may have been beautiful with an aristocratic title, but her manner; her stealthy grace; the licentious way she stood before me? They all reeked of deception, of some sort of cunning that I couldn?t pinpoint being as young as I was. But when my attention was brought to her eyes, I was startled, petrified to find that they showed me nothing?black as pitch behind those muddy, elusive irises. Abysmal coves of damnable mire that held only more filth the deeper one tried to delve. She didn?t know kindness, for otherwise her eyes would have shown me so. She didn?t know warmth, or her sight would have been a welcome sensation on my skin. She couldn?t know fidelity, because then her eyes would have softened when they beheld my father. No. She knew only vanity and avarice and advantage.
I think she hated me, too. She must have, because when she stared me up and down the first time my father presented her, those callous eyes scoured every inch of my frame, first resting on my arms?then my chest?and then my face? Slowly memorizing each limb for frailty and weakness, at least I assume. My mouth went dry under her scrutiny, and my palms drenched themselves in an anxious sweat. And she knew it, for she narrowed her eyes as they encountered mine, quickly realizing how much they intimidated me. The ember brown became firelit at that delectable discovery she?d made.
I suppose she was so anxious for my fear because she considered me a threat to her position in the household as my stepmother or my father?s wife. Perhaps she knew that I questioned her motives early on?
My baby sister the woman despised as well, even more than myself, I soon realized. When she first saw Relena?s head resting against the coarse wool that lined the crib, noticed how peacefully the baby slept within the ribbed cage of the cradle--with little blonde ringlets nestling her soft, swollen lips that curled over her fingers? My stepmother glowered down at her with blanched fists as they clutched the crib's bars.
"She's..." the woman hesitated with her word choice, snorting, "a pretty child." She sneered viciously and tightened the pins that held the two braided buns taut on the sides of her head, then snatched the blankets covering my sister?s face. "A little too pretty for her own good," Une mused with impatient breaths, retracting her fingers from Relena?s cheek as if the warmth from the baby's flesh scalded her. She brought them back to the cradle?s edge.
"A pret-ty child," she brokenly muttered while putting emphasis on the second syllable, starting to rock the cradle back and forth jarringly. My sister stirred and drowsily moaned in protest to the sudden, agitating motion.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
"Prettier than all," Une barked to the affright and sniffling babe whose chubby fingers tucked the edge of her blanket between her tiny lips. Her face scrunched and eyes teared in aggravation, at the veracity in the woman?s ire. The witch's rune ruptured the morning with encrypted rage.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
"When the bough breaks...
Back and forth. Back and forth.
... the cradle will fall...
Back and forth. Back and forth.
...and down will come baby...
Back. Creeeeeeak. And forth. Creeeeeeak.
cradle and all."
My hands reached out for the cradle?s bars, my fingers grabbing around the wood and halting the crib only moments before the basket turned over completely and sent Relena's susceptable body hurling to the floor. Still... like Mother's. Cracks. Of bones?
My sister?s shrill cries and pummeling fists still return and echo in my mind on quiet nights, making me revisit the past that I only wish to forget. I can see her wide and yowling mouth. See her little arms flail. Rewarding my guilt with more grief?
I stood there hunched over the crib, still clutching the bars as Lady Une rose from the bedside with utter disgust written upon her face? From a plan well foiled. And as her boot heels scraped along the floorboards when she withdrew, she leisurely turned back to my crumpled form over the cradle, left me with a glare so caustic that I felt my throat seize and knees rattle from the venom. I even wet my pants, I was so frightened by her. And I was only able to recover once she vanished behind the doorway.
She tried to kill her.
I was sure of it. She had just tried to murder my baby sister in cold blood, and her only remorse was an expression more infamous than the deed itself. If I wouldn't have been there to stop the cradle?s sway, Relena would have? No. No I couldn?t let myself dwell on how close I was to losing her: my mother?s last legacy. I would drown in that guilt and never accomplish anything. But I also couldn?t allow myself to forget what that witch had attempted, regardless of the fear it instilled within me to recall the bitterness-- No, hatred that clouded her eyes. The revulsion she emanated when her gaze was set on my sister?s face. I grappled with the absurd concept that a single person could have such intense enmity for a child that could not even as of yet speak. It seemed impossible.
But I know what I saw.
She would not be permitted to try such a stunt again, since I personally saw to it that she was never in the room with my sister alone, without me. Wherever the woman?s eyes ventured mine were there beside hers. Whatever room she entered I followed. I was always there. Always watchful. Just waiting for her to pounce.
Because I had to protect my baby sister. She was truly the virginal, chaste martyr in this witch?s perverted plot, trying to be made a whore in the brothel of repugnance and covetousness. Relena, of all who dwelled in that house, didn?t deserve that woman?s vengeance. And if Une insisted that it weigh on Relena?s breast, then it would have to be carried by mine first. I owed my sibling as much. However, I also knew that this promise would be easier to keep if I had Father?s sympathy on my side, and therefore I was determined to prove to my father that he'd made a mistake in marrying her.
But I never got a chance to tell him. The shrew thought of that, too.
He died not even a month after their marriage. I found him in his tool shed one early winter's morning... with his carving knife sticking through his chest, blood seeping from his lips and making a puddle on the wooden floor. It tarnished the soles of my feet as I walked across the gory smear to lie beside him in that devastating, sepulchral shadow of dawn. The sunlight was mirrored in his unsettling, glassy eyes and washed out his skin. And I just stared into those eyes. Smelled rank death as I tugged on his chilled hand with my own, still vibrant one.
Lifeless. Disturbing. Vacant, far-off gaze.
I just lay there for hours, placed his left arm over my shoulder and snuggled against him, not caring about the smell? Until the dog laid down and lapped up the blood that had pooled between the corpse?s legs. It licked my fingers, too... with a bloodied muzzle.
It was atrocious.
When asked about it, Stepmother claimed she saw him when he tripped over the loose floorboard the night before, falling directly on the blade.
"It was so sad," she boredly mentioned while keeping her concentration on the book she was studying, her words laced with apathy, "that I couldn?t bring myself to tell you about it earlier."
Flip of a page. Flip back.
But I knew better. She killed him. She crept upon him that morning, took the knife from his workbench, and stabbed him in the chest, probably smiling as she was spattered with his blood that sullied the window behind them. Moaned when she heard his grunt of agony that she stifled with her hand against his bloodied, gaping mouth. Laughed as she speared him again and again in that darkness. Over twenty-seven times. But when I found him the blood was already smudged and rubbed into the wood? She licked it off the ground to satiate her lust for death, stroking the weapon clean with her tongue. I know it.
But I don't know why she didn't kill Relena and I, too. With our father gone there was no one to protect us, and no one would even know we were missing. We were the children of a wood carver, poor and plain. Deaths of orphans weren?t uncommon or highly prioritized, and so we were vulnerable targets. There was absolutely no threat of culpability for her.
But she couldn?t even spare us that. She couldn?t even put us out of our damn misery. Not even that.
Instead, she raised us like the dogs she always accused us of being-- Which, technically, shouldn?t have been such an insult since the dog was the only thing she showed any sort of concern for. But apparently her sympathy didn?t quite embrace the human animal.
Her mongrel and her bitch, she often called us as we served her on command.
She starved us unless we did as we were instructed, and needless to say, I went without food for many a day over the next seven years. But I always made sure Relena at least had something to eat daily, even if it involved me stealing from the pantry and being brutally lashed for the theft later. I eventually found a way around that, though: some of my best meals over that time came from the real dog?s bowl.
Maybe I was mongrel. But at least I wasn?t a hungry one.
It didn?t matter, though, because despite Une?s efforts to the contrary: dressing the poor girl in rags and smearing her in soot and cinder from the hearth, my sister grew more beautiful with every day and sweeter after every night. Her lengthy golden tresses spilled down her back and enhanced her cerulean eyes. They were bottomless gems sparkling with innocence and perseverance, making her pale skin glow like moonlight. She was a daughter of beauty; a lovely, premature maiden of pretty guise.
Une was right: she was too beautiful for her own good. But I didn?t care. Not then at least.
Relena had our mother?s spirit, too, always disobedient when it came to my commands. I remember Mother was always finding something else that seemed more important than her work to do, usually helping wounded animals or fixing a meal for some hungry beggar that happened to stumble on our doorstep? My father scolded her for that so many times; he claimed it wasn't safe. Then she'd just look down at me and press her finger to her lips, asking me to keep her charity a secret. I'd just smile and giggle, and Father would ask me what was so funny. And I'd say--
Relena was no different. Whenever I needed her help the most she found some fawn to lie with in the fields or rehearsed a descant with a dove and tenor robin. They were certainly more interesting than a woodpile or raving older brother, I?d think.
"The fawn had a tummy-ache earlier," she told me once after I sent her to find some medicinal herbs in the thicket nearby. She couldn?t have been more than five at the time. "I had to give all the herbs I found to him, to help him feel better. He's okay now, so I can help you," Relena smiled playfully, pointing her little finger at me.
Her smile. She always had a smile, one that flooded her eyes with illumined azure and put color in her cheeks. That sweet smile that called me to life every day was followed by the dulcet tones of some runic rhyme she sang while doing the chores beside me. An ancient song upon her lips when she milked the cow; a folk ballad while she gathered wood. They were just dispelling staves that wafted in the lazy afternoons, charming our forest to passivity and mesmeric sedation.
But each time her breath formed itself into another haunting pitch my thoughts would wander to our Mother... and her voice that still caroled in my dreams, lyrics and sorrowful aria begging that I never forget.
How could I forget, Mother, when with your final lament you breathed your own voice, your own song into your daughter?s breast? I hear you in every note she holds, every lyric she utters. I can never forget you.
You won?t let me.
* * * *
I could have easily left the shrew?s "care" with Relena at my side when my father died; he taught me the basics of survival. I could manage. But that would have been selfish.
It must be understood that I endured our stepmother's torture for Relena's sake. She hadn't known our mother or how eternal a mother's love could be, even when taken away; and I figured that even a neglectful mother's affection (or lack thereof) was better than none at all.
But I was wrong.
And that misjudgment almost cost me everything that day: the afternoon of Relena?s twelfth birthday. It's a memory that still bothers me even now... a remembrance I can?t escape and will never let myself forget?retribution for the sin of cowardice. Punishment I so unintentionally yet fervently earned. I brought it on myself, with my fanciful ideas of change and thinking that a female body could replace our mother.
Idiotic.
With money I'd earned from helping the men in town mend fences or run simple errands, I bought a small chocolate tart for Relena to commemorate the occasion. I'd been saving for months, due partially to the fact that Stepmother found the coins I hoarded under my mattress and confiscated them. She compensated me for her thievery in full, though? Repaying the sum in sound lashings. An equivalence in blood-let. I therefore had to start the process all over again, but this time I never let the coins leave my person. I learned my lesson well.
It was worth every extra callous on my hands from the labor and scar on my back from the guilder?s whip, because when I handed the cake to my sister, she with wide, amazed eyes that blinked incredulously at the pastry? Her lower lip began to tremble. She fought a duel of smiles and tears. Her eyes glistened as the sun showered her from the window in a golden haze. Lathered her in innocence. Truly innocence.
After taking a nibble of the dessert, licking her lips of the icing and pokily savoring such a rare delicacy, she was benevolent enough to grace me with her blessed smile, one that passed surely from cheek to cheek. There was a faint blush from the sweetest heart, mixed with the gooey decadence on the edges of her mouth. Her eyes glittered happily. And it was at that moment, for the first time since Mother?s death, that I felt my heart skip a beat, leaving me warm and breathless in that simple instant. Calm. Weightless and content. It was a sensation I missed so much but was denied for so long that I almost didn?t recognize it when it came over me.
I realized then, soft as a hummingbird?s stride.
I loved her.
The way her hair tangled in the breezes of winter as she made angels in the snow, how her laugh tinkled like little silver bells amongst the pines, and the warmth of her fingers as she held my hand on our quiet evening walks through the glen? I only forgot Stepmother and her abuse when Relena was by my side.
Relena? She was my mother?s dying breath made flesh. She was my last living blood relative. She was all I had.
So that afternoon I let my guard down and kissed her cheek as tenderly as I could, my heart aflame with her love for me and mine for her. She returned the gesture quite evenly, smearing my cheek with the chocolate smudges that were all over her mouth--then smothered all over mine. It was disgusting, actually, but the fudge disaster was worth the feeling of her soft mouth pressed against my cheek. Our affection was cradled by the sun and added to out closeness--
That's when Stepmother walked in and noticed the piece of cake in Relena?s hand.
Her eyes were saturated by fear and unsettled with the ocean?s ravaged temper that churned violently amid usually gentle blue. My sister?s breath caught at the presence of the woman and her jaw went slack; she was so startled by Une's vehemence that she dropped the tart to the floor and stumbled back. It was then that I stepped forward to halt the shrew's passage. But she continued to advance with anger scorched across her countenance at each new step.
At sixteen, I easily towered over the slight witch that approached me dangerously, her eyes glinting with a hatred she focused solely on the girl whose whispers warmed my back. It was a glare of fiery pledge. Of pending violence. The brown-haired wretch shoved another hairpin into her tight, fastened buns and raised her nails at Relena. She revealed the claws she would use to rip the ingested pastry from my sister's stomach.
This woman lusted for my father. For his blood. And now she was filled with similar passion to see that red river flowing again. From his daughter?s veins.
It was so pitiful. I could've broken the woman in two if I'd only tried? But I couldn?t move. My body was frozen in the range of those eyes?those demonic spheres that flickered with the corruption of danmnation against the sunlight, I swear it. Those that burned into Relena's breast and choked the courage from my veins in simmering sweat and hellion skin. I had never known fear... until I saw that paralytic glare set upon us.
The only physical challenge I made against her approach was the hair on my neck that stood erect at the thud of her footsteps on the rotten wood. Rigid in my stance. I just let the woman seethe. Let her grind the cake into the floor with her boot heel. Allowed her to pull my sister away from me... my mind screaming... heart pounding when the my sister's eyes widened from terror and shock. That I didn?t stop the hellish dame.
Before I could even react, Stepmother had backhanded the milk-white skin of Relena?s cheek with so much force that the poor girl's body lurched to the ground, followed by a sickening, earsplitting crack. Broken echo. A condemned resonance that hugged the stagnancy.
So many mistakes. So little sleep I?ve known for them.
And I let her do it. Watched her do it. I. Let. Her. Strike my Relena? Without even putting up a fight. I failed my baby sister. Because of fear. Because of simple fear. Unwarranted fear.
I can barely remember as I helped my sister to her knees, with her brittle form trembling and twitching when I pulled her close to me. She had every right to be scared in my arms and visibly wince from the pain, since I couldn?t protect her. I deserved to see that torture and have it branded on my memory. What good was my embrace if it couldn?t protect her?
I somehow found the gall to look into Relena?s eyes, and it was at that moment when I noticed a sleek, runny trail of blood mar her dazed face. It was a deep, angry scrape that marked her cheek where the witch smote her. The blood ran down onto her lips. Bitter and ravenous. Like a scarlet serpent that ate away at her flesh.
Instinctively, I looked over at the woman's hand when she pulled it back to her body and noticed her silver wedding ring coated in my sister's blood, which slithered through the wench?s fingers. My mother's wedding ring.
My vision went black. I was completely blinded by my rage as I let my virulence spread its poison into my thoughts and muscles. My hands shook in my anger-- That she scarred my sister with our mother?s ring. A symbol of love was used as a tool for the will of hatred.
I was going to kill her. Someway, somehow I was going to kill that witch. I knew it. I couldn't control myself. If I didn't escape from the anger forcibly coursing through me?if I didn't put distance between us. And so as night came to the woods that late summer day, I took my sister and fled our home. Never to return. Never to look back.
But we couldn?t leave... she wouldn?t let us go. Even when we were out of her line of sight she watched us, stalking the woods for us with that fiendish gaze. She burned it into our memories even as we sprinted through the trees; narrowed those eyes and then opened them wide in a flash of triumph at her power. Her laughter chased us through the darkness as we ran deeper and more desperately into the thicket, with the relentless shadow of her scowl glowing behind every withered shrub and slumped patch of greenery that we passed. She tried to scare us back to the house. They reached out for us; servant trees possessed by her glare grabbed at my tunic with their lower, finger-like branches and showered us with leaves, trapping us in a foliaged net. Every set of eyes that gleamed tallow in the moonlight seemed to be hers; every silhouette that navigated across the terrain belonged to that woman. Her form just waited to seize her prey and bring it back home to feast upon our fear. Damned she-wolf. Scavenger.
I ran through the brush wildly, not knowing where I was going. I was running away from the cottage, where she was, and that alone was enough. I just tried to find any trace of light that could lead me away from that stare of burnished copper? But it never appeared. Relena was dragged mercilessly behind me, splattering her gown with mud and grass and pollen. It couldn?t be helped. I had to escape?we had to escape. With our lives.
I awoke the next morning to find Relena and myself huddled together against the bark of an old maple tree; the fresh dew skimmed our bodies and chilled our naked skin, refeshing us. But how we got there, I couldn't recall. My mind was a blur of the events of the previous evening, an utter haze of black, blue, and sinister yellow eyes that continued to plague my dreams. Even when lying beneath the safe, concealing gown of the tree's ruffage. Nothing seemed certain anymore: not the trees surrounding us, not the grass I sat on, nor my own memories. Everything was strange. Intimidating. My own mind betrayed me.
My body flinched involuntarily as I felt Relena snuggle even deeper into my shoulder for warmth. Her lips were iced with a pale blue film from the cool of the dawn and she absently slid her tongue along her mouth, wetting that cold flesh. In my haste, I'd pulled my sister from her bed, which left her that morning dressed only in her nightgown. There was nothing else but that gauzy fabric to keep the gusts from gnawing at her skin or perhaps worse.
So I had to be objective: we needed to find shelter soon. Otherwise I knew the chilled nights and equally cool mornings would come to take a toll on her, so thin and delicate as it was. It might even begin to affect me if enough time elapsed. Food would become a concern as well in a couple of days, but it was best to resolve these matters before our bodies began to suffer from neglect, while we still had the most stamina and will.
With a soft pat on her shoulder I roused my sister, and she slowly opened her eyes and lifted them to mine.
"We need to find a place to stay tonight, and I don?t know this region of the forest very well," I confessed as my eyes wandered to the trees around us in search of something I recognized. But there was nothing. The woods were quiet here, absent of the cries and calls of the phantom youth that stalked our glen. The winds were calm of their laughter, grasses undisturbed by their footsteps. They weren?t near. "We?ll have to start searching now if we want any hope of being sccessful... or surviving." The last statement was more of a murmur than a declaration, but from the way her eyes sought mine as I mentioned it, I knew she must have heard me.
I'll admit that telling her such things probably frightened her more than motivated, especially my choice of words that grew colder and more monotonous with every one. I stole her from her bed the night before, dragging her through the brush in a sleepy haze and stopping beneath a dampened maple. It was probably more like a dream to her than anything else. But my words were harsh realities, things that although she may not have wanted to know, deserved to be made aware of.
* * * *
It wasn't until the early afternoon that we finally came across a stream and its lazy gurgles that wafted on the breeze, keeping rhythm with the steady flap of birds? wings and the pant of a rogue fox that skulked about the water for laggard drinks. The rivulet?s face scintillated seductively as the sunlight caressed the rippling glass that beckoned to be touched, to be disturbed by a man's fingers as he licked the water from them in a carnal craving. It looked so delicious.
We stood over the water, faces reflected back as we looked into the crystal mirror to find our own eyes watching us. Bodies dirty and gaunt. Hair tousled from sleep and constant winds.
My thoughts were distracted from our reflections as the murmur of the brook once more called to me to look at it, so thirsty as I was from walking those hours in the midst of the day's heat. Wetting my lips with my tongue, I knelt down to gather a pool of the water into my hands for a drink, with fluid dripping through my fingers as I raised it to my mouth.
But my lips remained dry, because Relena grab my hands desperately. Her grip was stern. Firm. Her eyes stoic as she reached for me. Her golden hair skimmed the water when the wind brushed it from against her back.
"You mustn?t," she bayed me as her hold on my wrist trembled while lifting her other hand from the water, capturing my fingers with it. "You can?t get a drink here. It's not safe." She bowed her head for a moment and turned away from me, her tresses falling over her shoulders as the wind carried them across her face, hiding her eyes from me in splitting plies of amber. Her gaze searched the depths of the stream, slowly as though looking for something. Waiting patiently for her target. But it didn't seem to appear, since she came back to look at me. "It told me so."
My facial muscles didn?t move. I stayed there, silent, waiting for her to go on.
"There was a voice..." she began a bit hesitantly and licked her bottom lip as the air whistled over it, "... when you were running to the stream, I heard a voice. It sounded like an echo, but its words were too clear for it to be that.
"I was originally going to ignore it," Relena reasoned with herself as she spoke, glancing for a moment to the left?and then behind. Unsure, as though contemplating what she thought she heard. "But it said something strange... something that made me shiver when I heard it.
He who drinks from the water?s chill
Shall be fashioned a tiger by his will
"I know it?s crazy, but... I couldn?t let you drink and take that risk. You might have transformed into a tiger, and you would have devoured me and been left here alone? With me in pieces in your stomach," she choked, her whisper fading as the thought consumed her.
From the look in her eyes, I could tell what she was thinking? White fur streaked with sable rushing past her and a mouth full of fangs closing around her throat as she cries out. Her neck snaps. Then dead silence.
She laid her cheek upon my shoulder as she knelt beside me in the rill, her breathing soon calm, relieved that I still wielded the body of a man... and that of her brother.
Her allegations were ridiculous. I realized that. But the peace that descended upon her eyes in a serene gaze of azure, how she simply breathed and that gentleness kept the chill from my skin? They stopped me from pursuing the matter further, mute to argument.
And so I lowered my head in that defeat and hoisted myself back onto my feet, reaching out my hand to pull Relena from the stream's bed. The bottom of her soaked gown dribbled along the grass, causing those blades to sparkle with the sunbeams as I led her back to the trail.
I could wait. For her, I could wait.
* * * *
Not even two hours later, I heard splashing coming from a nearby lake. Its waters teemed with swans as the new, proud mothers coaxed their babies into the shallow slough. The cobs weren?t readily cooperative, however, taking refuge beneath the parents' wings and breaking into fits when the mothers nudged the little ones with their beaks. Pearlshine feathers floated on the sheer surface, lifted by the breeze then dropped as the current broke, misting us in downy snow. Wind rushed through the feathers of these slender-necked creatures, a shushing sound as it sailed along their backs.
Cautious of the young ones skittering across the water, I walked through the liquid until it was up to my calf, haunching over on my knees with one arm supporting me. I lowered myself to the pond and took a handful of it in my palm, while Relena lagged behind. She took hesitant, slow steps toward the water?turning her head this way and that amidst the sunlight... listening for something. Lost in down.
My tongue was parched. My mouth was dry. And that?s why I was so reluctant to listen to my sister when she begged me to stop once again, this time calling to me from the shore.
With apprehension lacing her plea, wringing her milk-white hands at bothering me again, she bayed, "You can?t drink from this one either, Milliardo! The voice warned me about this one, too!" She ran down to the edge of the lake; the splashes she made circled her in watery iridescence as they twinkled in the sunlight. The glassy beads kssed the ends of her hair as she neared. "It didn?t say the same thing as last time, though. It changed it a little.
He who consumes this fluid rare
Shall scavenge by the wolf?s lone prayer
"A wolf, this time. You would tear me limb from limb and be tempered by the moon."
I was dying of thirst. Just completely desperate for anything to relieve me that the only thing I could think about was how wonderful the water would feel as it slid down my throat and showered the dust on my tongue. I wasn?t convinced.
Her chest heaving, she came further into the water, falling another time to her knees as she beckoned, "Let?s just return to the path and find another place to drink. I?m sure there?s one around here." I was just so thirsty, though, and the water glittered so tantalizingly in my palms that my tongue dove down to lap it up without my consent.
We had been walking the entire day with nothing to drink, and even she was beginning to wear on my patience.
Her scream? shrill as it tore across the day, terror-stricken as it resounded over rocks and trees? Startled me enough that I reflexively let the fluid drip from between my fingers before I could taste, watching sadly as it joined the rest of the water beneath me, as if I?d never held it. Water could be so fickle about who it chose to be its drinker.
I was not pleased.
Keeping my eyes on hers as I raised my head from over my hands, I walked over to her wide-eyed figure, yanked her to her feet as I brought her so close to my face that her nose touched mine, and whispered in my most callous monotone, "No voice will stop me from drinking at the next spring, even when you?re its messenger. I hope you?ll understand."
We traveled the woods in silence after that.
* * * *
Evening came with feathered, fiery clouds and purple hues, and my eyes caught sight of a small lakelet only a few feet off the path.
I closed my ears to all other sound but the babbling of the pond as it murmured against the bank, attentive to the timbre of its collision on the muddy grass and followed by the humming of the winds through the branches. Relena's screams were drowned by that luring melody.
In ravenous gulps I ingested the liquid, relishing the chill that had settled over the gully as evening set in, and I couldn't help but close my eyes in satisfaction as my tongue ceased to stick to the back of my teeth and lubricated the roof of my mouth.
I tried to turn around to show my sister that I was fine, and she too had nothing to fear from the creek? When my stomach lurched as it tried to dispel the accursed drink. My mouth sealed against my abdomen?s rejection, preventing me from retching the offal. My tongue involuntarily washed the refuse to the back of my mouth, forcing down my gag reflex and inducing me to swallow it along with a wave of bile that stung my throat as the disgusting spice slid back down? But not before trying to come up again. My lips quivered as the spew settled back in my stomach, leaving me breathless and vulnerable to the pain that began to well in my temples. It spread down my back?through my arms?into my thighs?grappling with my chest. All in a matter of moments.
He who drinks
Feeling my knees buckle, I couldn't do anything to stop my fall except shove my arms out to brace myself? But they weren't my arms anymore.
Of this water clear
My fingers were fusing together into one single entity, turning the same color as the black muck at the bottom of the water's bed, and my chest crested in a mane of alabaster white seemed weighed down. It was so heavy that it forced me back on my hands and knees? I couldn't stand. My torso, my shoulders? They were just too heavy. My once blonde hair turned auburn as the sun scorched it; rust-colored strands crept along my shoulders and back to coat the rest of my body in an intense copper shade. I felt the water seep through the fur and tingle the skin beneath.
Shall sired be
A searing pain wrenched my skull just above the ears. Everything went dark and silent for an instant, torment suspended and all feeling lost to me as my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I only fainted for a moment from the strain... but it wouldn't be merciful and and leave me be. It gnawed at my dormant soul, resurrecting me from sleep and back into its clutches. There was only pain and the echoing of my breath in my ears, screaming against my heartbeat. Threatening darkness.
My neck strained in trying to hold up my head, weighed down by a set of velvet antlers that cast shadows over my reflection in the lake. I released a rough groan from my breast as I tried to call out to Relena on the shore.
The ever-silent seer
I was a roebuck. A roebuck drenched in human sweat. Cursed by the water of the lake in which I lay.
I couldn't breathe. I could barely think when the moans muffled by my sister's hands over her mouth resonated in my ears, when the wind laughed at my stubborn ignorance. It caused slight ripples in the enchanted rivulet as the breeze rushed over it. More cackles. More chuckling.
I couldn't even look at her I was so ashamed. I didn't trust her? My Relena with her precious smile and lovely song. Betrayed her faithful hymn to me.
Our mother?s dying canticle.
So I ran. Darted through the reeds and fallen twigs so I wouldn't have to see the pity in her eyes as I faded into the brush. Alone. No more forgetting the sorrow as I stood by her side. No more love for her to give.
I was clumsy in my new shape, tripping over my slender legs and having trouble balancing on the hooves; my antlers caught in the lower brush as I struggled to flee. Rotten logs of musty foliage hindered my sprint. But I had to get away, find a place where I could think this through, where memories would leave me in peace... before I could face Relena again.
I just needed to be alone.
My new instincts were already taking hold as my hooves led me to a desolate meadow. And after slowing to a gentle gallop, I began to give in to my impulses as they beckoned me: losing myself in the tall grasses and stoic against the breeze as it tousled my fur. Anonymous. Unseen. Safe when out of the eyesight of another. I could feel myself breathe again.
It was amongst this solitude that Relena?s voice shattered the silence, her cry resounding from the hollowed trunks and once blooming petals that withered at the pitch? To leave the forest brown and lifeless, a graveyard of earthen tombs with the shriek of lost souls whistling through the branches.
The wraiths of children dwelled here, but they didn't share their requiem with the ones I knew. These children? Their spirits were wandering from a reaper of hell, trying to run from sin itself. I knew, for the nocturne that they chanted killed even the sun as its glow faded with each lyric they breathed, each time their lips parted. They kneeled on the ground with their hands joined in a demonic ring, heads thrown back as they sang to their dreary, satanic fate.
Scorched skin in flaming fire
Surrendering forever
Evil once so evil now
Condemned in curse?s ire
These were souls of the damned... those pitiful ghosts who scavenged the earth for more abandoned, naive phantoms they could drag to their condemnation. And they were waiting for Relena?s soul to join them. Their circle was a cry to her spirit, to guide her to damnation if the soul severed from her body was so tempted. She was in danger of death.
I had to protect her. It didn?t matter what had happened before. I wouldn?t allow her to suffer because of my vanity. By God, this place of strewn petals with a promise of demise would not be her grave? It too closely resembled our mother?s.
I found myself praising my keen senses this time as I left those disturbed specters and their dirge in the distance, my ears leading me directly to her body curled up amongst the leaves. Rocking back and forth with sobs muffled by her sleeves. She trembled as she heard me approach her, stirring the leaves to a soft crunching and choking on her whisper as she pleaded, "No. Please. Leave me alone. What have I. Done?"
I lay down beside her in the brush, setting my velvet cheek upon her hair, trying to calm her. Her shoulders flinched when she felt my touch, a gasp escaping from her lips to testify to her fear. But that quickly subsided when she pressed her forehead against my fur, wrapping her arms around my neck as she realized it was me who was beside her. No danger threatened her anymore.
The children had stopped.
"She was here," Relena finally broke the silence and absently stroked the fur around my face. Her eyes were intense and open but staring at nothing. "Lady Une was here. She tried to kill me." My ears perked.
Relena was quiet again, though, removing her right hand from my face and bringing it to her neck, rubbing it softly. "I was going to run after you after you?d... changed. But when I turned to follow you, she was there. And. She was holding water from the lake.
"?Your brother should have listened to my warning, and now he?s been punished for his stubbornness,? she told me, and she just kept staring at me, holding that water. Then she stepped closer. Her eyes just stared at the water in her hand. And she mocked me, saying, ?Wouldn?t it be fitting to have a matching pair of deer for me to hunt? I think it would.? She brought the water up to my face, and I stumbled back into the lake and fell on the hem of my dress. She knelt down in front of me, and she thrust the water to my lips. But before I drank, she brought her hand back and decided, ?No. It would be better if I finished you off here and now... so your brother can come back to find your body lifeless.?
"She lunged towards me, taking my throat in her hands and tried to wring the life from my breast. She was too strong, her hold on me so tight... but then she let go. And you appeared, and..." the phantom stains of the hag's fingertips still lingered on her throat as she recalled the tale, staining her neck in an angry red memory. The witch must have used her sorcery to vanish when she heard me coming, because Relena seemed perfectly alone when I neared the pond.
"No one can hurt you anymore, because I?m here to protect you? I will always protect you," I whispered while resetting my cheek upon her hair, the scent of pine needles wafting up to my nostrils and coaxing my muscles to relax. Somehow, despite Une?s witchcraft, Relena could still understand me. Or perhaps she just knew me well enough to understand my devotion to her. No words needed to assume my feelings.
"And I will protect you. My Roe," she laughed slightly at the title while using the back of her hand to caress my forehead. Relena then slipped the garter off her leg and fastened it around my neck like a collar: a golden collar with the buds of roses twined around the silk. A noble sash for my neck. "Now I can tell you apart from the other deer in the forest."
* * * *
No sooner had we left the lake than we found an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of the bracken. It was an austere dwelling with only one room, and hay covered the floor and some of the wood was warped by the rains. But would keep out the draft and shelter us from the cold well enough. That was all we needed.
We spent over six years in that home, growing up together without the outside world to bother us. It was a simple life, yes, but it was a happy one filled with love and warmth between us. Une seemed like nothing more than a distant memory over that time, since her eyes left our dreams and her shadow no longer haunted the trees at twilight. We could want nothing more. We were free. We had peace.
And then my little Relena, my baby sister, found love. Or something close to it.
