Morning in Raiga's Hold

I blinked, and found my hand held by a small girl.

“It’s not good to be here right now, with a whole chest! We have to go!” she urged, and I allowed her to drag me as swiftly as her tiny legs could take me. Noora was quiet, trying to calculate our location in the world. As usual, when flung, Noora attempted to grasp where and when we were as I strove to keep track of our more immediate bearings.

“Where are we?” I asked her, receiving a stern exhalation warning me off making unnecessary sounds.

She’s no older than five years old, our years, right?I asked Noora, who chuckled as the girl led us down a long corridor, through a door to our left, up a staircase, across a small room with books and tables indicative of a preliminary meeting place, and down a short flight of stairs which led us, after a short curve round a column, into a small room filled with dolls and soft friends and a projector, which the girl capped after closing the door as quietly as possible and turning off the lights.

“Sit here, with me,” she whispered, turning the projector so that its mitigated light illuminated our space enough so that she may see me. She didn’t know I could see her regardless of the amount of light in the room, I supposed, but I didn’t see fit to mention it; she was being courteous, and I appreciated that greatly. The girl closed her eyes a moment, preened her ears.

This would be much easier outside, Noora answered my unthought query.

You’re doing your best, I assuaged.

Noora shifted her weight atop my head, preening her ears in the way the girl before us did. The latter opened theirs suddenly and reclined, pleading for me to do the same. She gestured for me to cover the projector’s light – I would have turned it off entirely if I hadn’t recognised that doing so would change the sound within the room and thus alert anyone listening to our presence, which the girl obviously sought to obscure – and so I opened my mouth and invited the light in. So long as I held my breath, which I could almost indefinitely, no light would escape. The room was silent, save for the whirring of a projector and muted breaths of a small girl; the room was lightless, save for that which peeked out from behind the curtains suppressing a view of the large windows opposite the door.

There is something outside, Noora affirmed. I… I can’t fully identify it without exposing us.

For the sea’s sake, Noora, please do not! I plead, on both the girl’s and my own behalf.

There was shuffling at the door. Most living beings have a specific shuffle, a by-product of the species’ walking habit, of their gait. I could tell this one was biped, but it did not walk like a biped. It had a strange, off-rhythm step, a strange pace. It was listening for anything irregular, any indication it could go through the door.

“Checked it already,” scolded a person further along the wall, away from the door. “That’s why it’s closed.”

“You never know, with the small ones. You remember all those children who were killed by the child who never grew? They can be sneaky ones. And violent.”

“The door is closed because it was checked,” mentioned a third voice. The second one greeted and agreed with their compatriots, and the three of them walked down the hall with their odd gaits which matched each other but not any pace I was familiar with.

The girl rolled over, eyes wide and overbrimming with questions. I smiled, releasing the light back into the projector; she gasped, wincing away a moment as she thought it was going to hit her.

“How’d you do that?” she asked. “Are… you a chemist? An astronomer?”

I chuckled, deliberating as I sat up a little. “I… you could say that, I suppose.”

“Most scientists wouldn’t listen to a little girl,” she observed.

“Most scientists wouldn’t be able to… swallow light...?” I countered.

“That’s true. What’s your name, then?”

“I am Sampaa. What’s yours?”

“Ella Rocente canna Dvrohst m’Shral – but you only have to say Ella. We’re the only two with whole chests, so we should stick together and be very careful!”

She is absolutely precious and we will kill anything for her, Noora announced.

Internally, I nodded; aloud, I replied, “I will forever be glad I met you, Ella, and I agree wholeheartedly.”

Ella looked at me weirdly a moment before breaking into a delightful laugh which filled not only her form, but mine.

Everything, I amended Noora’s pronouncement, we would kill everything for her.

Noora nodded.

“Can you tell me what happened here? Who are the ones trying to find you?”

“You don’t know about the Heart?” the small child asked, marvelling at my innocence. “Where did you come from?”

I smiled wryly, hating the answer. “A pretty long way away.”

“Like… Shila far? Or Gressemay?”

“Like, far enough that I have no idea where those places are.”

Ella’s eyes widened in amazement and shock. “Wow!” she whispered. “That is far! My aunt and I were visiting here to entertain some of the princesses – my aunt can craft people from clay just from one glance at them! She brought me along because I visit her over the spring, when school isn’t going… she’s probably dead now, though…”

There was nothing more disquieting to Noora nor me than the desolation which settled upon Ella’s face. She was too young to have earned that kind of despair.

“Tell me more about the Heart,” I asked, hoping to learn more about the people I knew I had to destroy. “Do they have a leader? Are they… do they have control of the area? What do they do?”

“They take people’s hearts,” Ella glumly explained. “No one knows what they do with them, but once your heart is stolen, they take the people who survive the ceremony and add them to their group. They seem to live forever, but they can be killed.”

“How?”

“That’s not something adults tell children,” she whispered.

“Foolish of them,” I sighed. “Have… have you heard any stories?”

“Of killing them?”

“Or survivors, yeah.”

Ella tapped her index and middle fingers to her mouth, furrowing her brow as she dove through her mind and memories.

We could just… peruse them ourselves… Noora offered, hoping to hasten the search, but I staved her off. I never wanted that kind of invasion when I was her age – nor ever, really, except from Russu – and so tried to let people just tell me things, especially if they were a child.

Ella’s eyes glittered wide with recall. “There was one who escaped! A person claimed it… it was in the papers a while ago! They said they made their way around a bunch of them by pretending to be as dead as they were, slowing their heart so it barely beat. But… my uncle told me that was impossible. He’s a healer, and no one else has told a similar story, so maybe it was just a fluke…”

“There’s a touch of truth in every fiction, Ella,” I quoted reassuringly. “It’s our job to discern where it lies.”

“Which part of that story do you think was true?” she asked.

I smiled, feeling the urge to kiss her forehead. “I’m hoping all of it.”

You’ll want to focus on getting her out, Sampaa, Noora pointed out, and someplace beyond the Heart.

“Is there anyplace safe for you, Ella? Beyond here? Beyond the Heart?”

Ella shrugged. “I don’t know any family besides my aunt. I travel with her alone, so I don’t have many friends… I don’t know if the Heart got to them all already, either…” Her eyes turned glassy, and the calm with which she propped herself up wavered. If you’ve seen a weak-stemmed sprout shudder from the weight of their own leaves, or shake slightly from its shifting crutch, you’ve seen how Ella’s demeanour changed, how she suddenly seemed so exhausted and frustrated and overbearingly sad.

We’d have to meet them for me to know them, Noora sighed.

I know.

No promises we’d survive. Or that Ella would, if she were with us for the encounter.

So, we get her someplace safe, tucked away. Come back, tell her how to kill them. Spread the word.

They don’t value children here, if they don’t tell them how to protect themselves.

I nodded internally. Noora sat on Ella’s shoulder, mostly imperceptible to the girl. A new sort of calmness grew about her; Noora spread her wings, no longer merely an owl; a protective aura surrounded the girl as my spirit swore an oath for the two of us.

Then Ella can tell all the children, and the next generation will thrive where the preceding could not.

Such is the way of the world, anyhow, Noora agreed.

“Ella,” I murmured, kneeling so that we might look eye to eye.

“Y-yes, Sampaa?” she whispered, sniffling as tears clawed their way from the eyes she sought to imprison them in.

“We’re going to hide you away, okay? A little distance from here, we’ll tuck you someplace they won’t look for you, and I’ll figure out how to end them. And then, unlike the many adults who should have done better, I will tell you how I did it.”

Ella clung so tightly to my wrists that my eyes watered a moment. “You can’t leave me! They’ll get you, too!”

It’s best if she hides herself, so that they can’t glean her hideaway from you, Noora suggested.

“I won’t leave you, Ella. You’re going to leave me, and I’m going to find you. Let me see your hand.” Ella hesitatingly released my wrists, and I opened her palm. “When you find your safe space, Ella, you’re going to leave this marker for me.”

I drew upon her palm the sigil of my name.

“It feels kind of tingly… what is that?”

“That’s my name.”

“I don’t recognise the letters…”

I grinned, closing her fingers around the song I’d woven into her memories. “Then neither shall they, hm? Now, Ella, I’m going to walk out of this room. You’re going to leave this room without using the door, run from here. Far from here. “

Answering my implicit question, Noora remarked, I estimate she’ll keep us here for a day or two more.

“And I will find you again. I promise.”

Oh, fool! Noora chastised compassionately.

I break at least one rule every visit, I retorted, earning me a grin from my spirit.

Ella pulled me into a hug, dampening my shirt. Her tiny arms tried their hardest to wrap around my frame, and I awarded her efforts with a return embrace.

“You’re the nicest adult I’ve met since my aunt,” Ella whimpered. “I don’t want you to go, and I don’t want to leave you…”

I kissed the top of her head and leant her a lesson I hated for her to learn so early. “You’ll grow into the nicest adult either of us have ever met, Ella. And, to get there, sometimes we have to leave the very things that make us feel safest. Sometimes those things become very unsafe.”

“And like with stories, we have to know the difference?”

“We have to learn them, yes. Yes.”

Ella looked up at me with her enormous after-storm hued eyes and wryly smiled. “See you soon, Sampaa!”

“See you soon, Ella,” I prayed aloud, standing as Noora fluttered from Ella’s head to my shoulder. Humming a song of abject silence, I opened the closed the door behind me, refusing to listen through the door as I cased the hallway for any of the Heart. At my home, we count the day by each Mai’ visited by the Drowned on their sojourn through the world. There are ten of the day, and the Drowned spends an equal amount of time in their dwelling beneath the sea. Not even one had passed in the time I had met Ella, and yet I found myself as affixed to her as light to a flame. Noora and I both marvelled at the attachment one could make to others just as one of the Heart remarked,

“I smell a whole one!” and another, “I see it!”

A third commanded uproariously, “Capture it!”

I guess they don’t like to wander individually, Noora noted as I leapt over one of the Heart trying to tackle me.

They’re not the ones who do the ceremony, right? Like… they would bring me someplace special for that?

Noora chirruped in uncertainty. You should ask, I suppose?

“Hey, question,” I began, ducking beneath the swift swipe for my face. “Do you guys do the whole heart-removal procedure on the spot, or…?”

“That honour is only for the most elevated Heart!” the three of them answered in unison as I launched myself over the lunge of one and the shoulders of another, pausing a moment on the wall they couldn’t reach.

“Does the most elevated Heart have a name? A purpose? A hatred of travellers?”

“We do not speak their name! We do not speak their purpose!” recited the three, intermittently jumping up to reach me and failing every time.

“I’ll gladly take yours,” I admitted, pouncing from the wall with wicked velocity, revelling a little in the impact of my knee on one of their temples and delightfully rolling aside another’s dive for me.

“To serve the Heart forevermore! To assist in the liberation from mispurpose!”

You’d be a great interviewer, Sampaa, Noora teased.

You finished analysing them yet? I snorted, slapping away the punch thrown by one and kicking them in the abdomen before stepping away from their clawed reach for my face.

Almost.

I caught another lunge from the Heart I faced with the outside of my forearm and palmed them in the face simultaneously, taking them off their feet just as the other two shakily rose to their feet.

If they don’t have hearts, how are they still animated?

You know damn well that asking that question means we’ll have to be brought to a ceremony. Do we have time for that?

Ella could profit from the knowledge, I countered.

We might not catch Ella in time if we stay. I’ve figured out how to kill them – that’s what we came for!

What if we find a cure? Or a —

Sampaa! You promised her you’d see her soon. If we get there, and let’s say because it’s us that we’re able to escape, what if she’s more than a day and a half away? Days are shorter here than home!

We could pass the knowledge along the old way, sing a song into the world itself. Eventually it would get to her.

Noora refused to reply, which in itself was response enough. Often, I played the role of Want and she of Need; our tensions were balanced in victors. This one, however, went to me.

“Alright, guys,” I sighed, holding my hands behind my back, “I’ll come with you.”

“It will?” a Heart asked.

“I will. I’ve decided I’m tired of mispurpose.”

I heard the whistle of flesh through air; I woke up in a dark feasting room, on my knees, wrists chained to my ankles.

Pretty impressive I slept through all that, I admired.

It’s been half the day. They spent most of it carrying you here, anointing your or whatever they call it.

“It awakens, your Heartliness!” announced one of the Heart.

Ignoring most of the utterances thereafter in preference to glean my surroundings, I saw that to my left were two whole-chested people, a young girl and an old man, and to my right knelt a single weeping woman with a similar hair colour and scent to Ella.

“Are you an aunt to a little one?” I asked her.

She startled awake, turning to me and realising that I was speaking to her. “I… when did you get here?”

“Few hours ago; Sampaa’s my name. Are you an aunt to a little one? No family besides you?”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “You’ve met my cousin, then? Is… is she… I can’t see… is she safe?”

I saw that her eyes were filled with blood. Noora…

Noora shook her head, peering into my eyes. Spell’s still active, so you’re the pinnacle of physical perfection, save a slowly fading scar or two. But I think we’ve figured out how they keep the rest of the body alive; they usher blood throughout the body, drawing it into the arteries before ripping out the source.

Bodies can’t live very long that way, I recollected. These probably live for such a short time… no wonder they’re always trying to refill their ranks. Their ranks rot rapidly.

“She’s not here,” I assured her.

Is it too late for them? I asked Noora, who went off to peer into the eyes of the old man and the girl to my left.

She returned, informing me, Old man has the clearest eyes, but the lass’ keep emptying. I think her heart’s healthy enough to draw it back through her veins. Adults are probably the target – so you and the cousin are the most viable.

I hoped for the two of us that this didn’t make the old man nor young girl expendable.

Chains ready to unlock when you are, Noora updated me. Showtime.

“Which one of you are the Heart again? The… I should have…” I sighed as the entirety of the Heart standing in the room announced that they were the purposeful Heart, dedicated to liberating others from mispurpose. I leant towards the young girl and murmured, “I should have specified which one I meant. Which one of you are the… what did they call it… the elevated Heart? The… Heartliness?”

“It shall not address her!” hissed a Heart from behind me, moving forward to crack their knuckles across the back of my head. I bent forward as they swung, causing them to lose balance and fly over me in the same moment I rolled backwards, onto my unbound feet.

“It is unbound!” acknowledged one of the Heart.

I wiggled my fingers as if I’d done something miraculous. “Scary, isn’t it?

I’ll unlock theirs too, but I can’t promise I can fix their blood in time, Noora remarked. We have little until she moves us again.

I love you, Noora.

I love you, too, Sampaa.

“I want to speak with you, your Heartliness. Couple of questions, a concern or two, too. Question one! Why are you collecting hearts? I know you’re all about redirecting purpose or whatever, but whose purpose are the Heart fulfilling? I know you need to keep refilling your rapidly rotting ranks – spoilers, friends; you’re going to die in the next couple of days, likely, victims to necrosis and all that – but why are you tearing out their hearts? That’s what’s lost on me… I’ve seen so many people taking advantage of others, but this endless pursuit of more to conquer and convert into your enforcers or whatever you call them… Maybe that’s the answer? Am I close? You make their foreseeable futures so imminent and short that they see no other reason to live but that for which you give?

“But how does that help you? Some conquerors I’ve meant do it to protect their people, others ironically to end conflict, others, still, out of a deep and unyielding love for their significant other(s)… What drives you, your Heartliness? Is the burden of a heart too much to bear? Or… is it something to do with you? Do you not have a heart of your own? Are you amassing an endless supply of hearts so that you – and perhaps your kin, or whomever you work with, since a force this effective could not have been crafted in as short a time as you’ve been in this place – might have hearts to spare forever?”

“It shall not address the Heartliness!” screamed the Heart for the last time as I finished. As I fell silent, so did they, and I sighed. There was silence except for the anxious breaths of the whole-chested ones behind me, until a single member of the Heart which had been sitting leant forward in their seat, fixing their white-eyed gaze upon me.

“Your heart is precious to me,” they cooed in their sickly, ancient voice, all wobbly and raspy and grating. “All hearts are precious to me. I am the Heartliness, Empress of Hearts, Rocente Monarch Undefeated and Eternal. Your heart is strong; its beats resound throughout the chamber more so than any hearts I have conquered this lifetime. I will remember that heart for my unending lifetime.” They leant back in their seat, exuding a drawn-out sigh of pleasure as they nestled into the sable cloths which were draped upon them and their throne.

“I appreciate your name, Heartliness; can you tell me your purpose? So that I might find a better way to help you than this?”

They did not reply.

“Why do you do this? Killing so many people, endlessly… what… what’s the point? It’s ineffective, isn’t it? Chronically dying forces, always having to roam and find more… why do you do this?”

They did not reply.

Sampaa… I… I don’t…

The horror filled both of us.

I plead, “Tell me! Why this incessant…?”

I don’t think there is a reason.

Tears sprang from my eyes, hot and confounded and furious. Of all the violence in the cosmos, meaningless violence was the kind I could not ever understand. The “because I can” attitude, unforgivable. Such a mindset had led to my predicament, after all, or a similar reason. I hadn’t yet parsed that out. The world around me shuddered, feeling the waves of wrath emanating from me.

Are they freed? I asked. Noora landed on my shoulder, whispering the affirmative. Thank you.

My eyes found the Heart who had likely once been Ella’s aunt; she was an older version of the young woman behind me, whose eyes spilled blood as she wept in both agony and fear. I opened my hand and hummed the gentle call of a lightning bolt, which effortlessly eviscerated the ceiling above and obliterated a large swath of the Heart between myself and the Heartliness. I switched songs, having started a fire potent enough to direct tightly bound waves of heat to scatter the Heart which surrounded the other captors. Swiftly, I asked the young girl to help up the old man as I scooped Ella’s cousin in my arms.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl and old man. “The short versions, please.”

“Christiana,” she answered.

“Peter,” said he.

“Peter, I don’t care what aspects of your culture disallow you to obey children, but today, you will listen to Christiana no matter what she says, and from this day forth you will treat them with enough respect as to teach them how to save their own lives, or we will leave you here to fend for yourself. Now—” here I knelt so that he could obey more easily —“onto my back. Christiana, you’ll need to scout for clear hallways. Stay within sight and yelling distance so neither of us get lost.”

“Oh… okay!” she stammered, nearly overwhelmed by everything going on. Noora fanned her wings at the space between the five of us and the horde of the Heart just as the Heartliness’ voice resounded through the chamber, offering a chillingly nonchalant command:

“Return them to us.”

Noora flew ahead with Christiana, surveying for the best path forward. It took another decent portion of the day, but we made our way from the smoking palace, whose hallways and floors would likely forevermore be stained by smoke and char. We made it beyond the moat surrounding the palace, beyond the fields, into the wooded areas surrounding. We walked with the sun as it made its way towards its zenith, pausing only once the other three needed a break.

Any luck sensing out where Ella went? I asked.

I thought you were —I’m joking, Sampaa! Aw… you really got upset…

I inwardly rolled my eyes, earning a chuckle from my spirit.

We’ve been following her the whole time. It seems like she stopped a short while ahead, then started moving again just when we stopped.

I felt relieved that she’d gotten away, and hoped the others would, as well.

“Christiana,” I whispered, summoning her towards me. She leant in with her dew-soft gaze, lending me her full attention. “They have followed us a bit, some who escaped. Do not panic; they won’t find you. I’ve convinced the forest to help you a little longer. But I need to tell you this, so you can tell everyone you love, everyone whose chests are whole. Can you do that?”

“I can,” she murmured, “but… why are you saying this in the way adults say goodbye?”

I softly grinned, laughing internally at the flurry of curses Noora flung at the adults who thought children were too silly to comprehend the world. Aloud, I answered, “Because for now, I may very well be departing from you. There’s a girl I would like you to find – if you follow your very strong core, you shall find her soon – who bears this sigil. Tell her that I am sorry I could not keep my promise to her.” I drew my name into Christiana’s palm, with a mark added so that she might find Ella with less incident and more ease. “You’ll have to take care of these two on your way there, but most importantly, and I’m sorry to place this burden on you, but you’ll have to convince the adults and children alike that you survived, that all of you survived the Heart, and that these are their weaknesses.”

For Ella’s cousin, Nathalie, I did my best to restore at least most of her sight. During our journey away from the palace, she had healed considerably, but her eyes still troubled her.

“You have been kind,” she whispered, crying watery tears this time. “I never saw well to begin with, though. There is no reason to try. You’ve given us hope, and a way to protect ourselves. I’ll tell everyone about you… what was your name?”

“Ask Ella, once you find her,” I smiled, turning towards Peter. “You’ll live longer and happier if you remember the oath you swore to me, Peter.”

“I have seen too much today not to, sire,” he affirmed. “Thank you.”

“You’ll thank yourself later, I think. Wait here a moment, then go when Christiana says. Stop when she says. And so on.” I turned towards the bumbling Heart marching towards us and sprinted to their left, leaving plenty of space between them and the three I’d left as I yelled, “Come then, Heart! Come find the strongest beating chest your Heartliness has ever heard! Come!”