Famine by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 50

Famine

The days become weeks, the weeks become months. My scythe doesn’t rust and my muscles don’t grow soft, but I have gone to seed, my purpose set aside.

Just for a moment, I told myself when we settled in. Then I will get back to my task.

I knew I was telling myself a lie, but it was alright at the time. I wanted to give Ana a respite; she asks for so little.

But the truth is, I actually like this derelict little house of ours, and I’m curious just how overgrown I can make it before Ana actually loses it.

I expected the townspeople to plot against me, to rebel and fight for their lives. I was ready for that confrontation. But while I sense their deep and abiding fear, they have left me alone. I even get the impression that they respect me.

Ana, on the other hand, is openly adored. The same people who cast me fearful glances will happily pull her aside to chat about this or that. I would die before I admit it, but a part of me is proud of how beloved my fiancée is.

And now I’ve come to the ridiculous decision that maybe I’ll hold off killing them altogether—at least while Ana lives. Only then will I resume ravaging these lands.

My throat closes up at the thought of Ana one day dying.

What will happen when that day comes? Once she’s given me children—assuming, of course, that she ever wants them—and she grows old and passes. She’ll be gone, and … and … I will be forced to feel the earth take her body back into itself. I will feel it pick her apart and disperse that beloved skin and that beautiful hair and every other bit of her into the ground, food for some other, newer life. The world will go on, I will go on, even if she won’t.

I find I can’t breathe at the thought. It cuts too deep. Much, much too deep.

Why have I never considered this?

It’s not even her dying that causes me grief; it’s the lingering on without her. Lingering on and on.

I stand out in our yard, taking in my surroundings with a sort of helpless fear I’ve come to despise. I can hear Ana somewhere in the house, humming while she burns the dish she’s trying to make.

I still can’t get enough air in my lungs.

How will I ever possibly take back up my scythe once she’s gone?

I won’t.

I can’t.

It’s as simple as that.

What a fool I’ve been to believe I didn’t have to choose between Ana and my task. Choosing her was the end of my task. There’s no moving on once she’s gone.

But—if I’m made mortal—I’ll age with her, die with her, move on to whatever comes next with her.

I want that. I want it bad.

But mortality would mean living in this body I have long despised, a body I’ve only recently been reconsidering. And it would mean giving up my powers.

That’s a staggering tithe—one my brothers have already paid.

I finally understand why they traded in their weapons and their immortality. There is nothing quite like being human. This damnable, deranged experience actually has some perks.

I find I don’t care nearly enough about my power to shake away this notion that I could be mortal with Ana.

I want to do it. Right now. Before I lose my nerve and retreat back into my usual, apathetic self.

However, there is one more thing that stands in my way, one other thing that’s always stood in my way.

Forgiveness.

The word rings in my ears like God Herself spoke it.

Forgiveness.

I suck in a sharp breath. Ever since I first heard Ana speak that word in her sleep, a word her vocal chords shouldn’t have even been able to produce—it’s been there, taunting me.

I’m not sure who I’m supposed to forgive, but I imagine it’s everyone. God would expect no less.

It’s not even in my nature to forgive. I’m apathetic at best, vengeful at worst. And after everything humans have done to me, to Ana …

Forgiveness is preposterous.

I don’t need to do it. Not today, not ever. I still get to have Ana.

Ana, who every second is losing bits of her life, the clock counting down to her end.

My steady pulse grows frantic.

I don’t need to decide today.

I don’t.

But the longer I wait, the closer to death she’ll get. Is it wrong that I want to age with her?

Forgiveness. I turn the word over and over in my mind. Forgive these petty, wicked creatures.

It’s so wholly oppositional to what I’ve been doing this entire time.

Above me, storm clouds gather, the thick plumes of them darkening the sky. The ground is beginning to shake—just a little.

I think of Ana. Ana, who asks nothing of me. Ana who saved me before she knew what I was—and then saved me again once she did know.

Ana, who I forgave long ago—I forgave her the very night we met. And I’ve forgiven her every day since—for harming me, for hating me, for every slight she’s inflicted. It’s easy enough to forgive someone like Ana, who is kind when she doesn’t need to be. Ana who is radiant and thaws my cold heart.

It’s much harder to forgive everyone else, especially when everyone else includes the people who once hurt me.

They made ribbons of my skin, they disemboweled me, they stabbed me—over and over—and burned me alive. Those men and women made pain an art form.

And the very night Ana saved me, my body still mutilated, God forced me to consider that damnable word.

Forgiveness.

You ask too much, I’d whispered into the darkness, my voice broken. Far too much.

I hadn’t been able to forgive this teeming mass of humanity then. I still haven’t been able to do it. But I know intuitively that I don’t get mortality until I do this.

I swallow.

A raindrop hits me. Then another. The ground beneath me is shaking.

If I forgive humanity, then what?

I think of these wretched people, with their crudely-dug wells and their rickety corrals full of bored looking animals. I think of the crumbling cities overgrown with plants.

Human hearts are spiteful and selfish; they are what bid me and my brothers here.

As though aware of my thoughts, my armor materializes on my body, and my scythe and scales appear a mere arm’s span away from me.

I feel the weight of not just my armor, but my hate and anger, my task and my immortality—all of it—on my shoulders.

I drop to a knee and place a fist against the trembling ground, even as raindrops begin to patter against my armor, coming down faster and faster. My breath is labored and my ever steady heart is quickening.

Something’s happening to me. I don’t know if it’s as simple as my mind changing, or if the forces that brought me here, the forces that made me a man and forged my purpose into form are now transforming.

“Famine?”

I jolt at the sound of Ana’s voice.

My gaze flicks up from the ground, where small plants have started to flower and twist up my wrist.

She stands outside our doorway, her cotton dress whipping in the wind. Rain is pelting her, and her eyes look spooked.

Still, she’s so goddamn radiant that it makes my chest tight looking at her.

At what point did she become my purpose?

Her gaze roves over me. “What are you doing?” she calls out to me.

I don’t … I think …

Fuck, I’m uncertain. I hate being uncertain.

Forgiveness.

That bloody word echoes through me.

“I’m … relinquishing my purpose.”