Abigail Fredrickson

Dylan

I step inside the kitchen quietly, looking around.  The inn is far too quiet.  Yes, it’s the middle of the night, but no matter how late it is, there would always be someone.  I swallow thickly, looking around.  “…Mrs. Winter?”  The kindly woman doesn’t respond.  “Mr. Winter?”  More silence.

This, combined with the party of samurai I’d seen gathered outside the inn earlier does not bode well.

I cautiously step inside, “Hello?”  Maybe they’re just sleeping…yeah…

I step into the hall, and instantly that thought is banished from my mind.  My eyes lock onto the still forms lying in the hall, red pools around them, soaking into the wooden floor.  A glint of metal from a stained knife reflects what little light there is.  I can’t see their faces, it’s too dark and they’re mostly turned away from me, but I don’t need to.

I already know that two of the kindest people in my life…are gone.

I freeze as a thought enters my mind.  Tearing my eyes away I sprint into the closest adjoining rooms, searching, “Ariel!  Terry!  Ariel!”

Before my panic can really set in, a soft voice cuts through the haze.  “…Dylan?”  I whirl, spotting the 13-year-old girl peeking out of the kitchen.  Her eyes stare into mine, the tiny voice falling into a thick silence.  Her hand grips the doorframe, nails digging into the wood, but shaking.

I meet her eyes and immediately a huge weight rolls off my shoulders.  She’s alive.

“Terry?” I ask breathlessly, not daring to raise my voice above a faint whisper.

“Alive,” she replies, eyes finally breaking contact.  They don’t move toward her parents though, searching for solace at the other end of the hall.  “Safe.”

I carefully move over to her, stopping in front of her.  Her shoulders are trembling now, and I can tell she’s trying desperately to hide it.  She’s not doing a good job of it though.  I gently cup her cheek, turning her face toward mine.  Ariel squeezes her eyes shut rather than meet mine, but not in time for me to miss the pain reflected in the blue irises.

“Ariel…” I murmur.

She shakes her head.

“What happened?”

A sob.  She reaches up to cover her mouth.  I pull her into a hug, and that’s the last straw.  She crumples against me as her whole form is wracked with shudders, her cries muffled by my chest and her hand.  I ignore the dampness growing on my shirt and focus on holding her as securely as possible.

I should’ve brought Dad…He’s always been more empathic than me, even if not more so than Mom.  I wish she was still here.  She’d know exactly what to do.

Trying not to think too hard about the dead bodies of people I’d considered like family lying near, I work over the situation.  I’d woken to the sound of the samurai troops earlier.  I thought it was strange that there were some coming off schedule, but hadn’t thought too much of it until they left the inn.  Why would they come and stop there briefly, if they weren’t staying?

The bad feeling had started then, but I’d tried to push it away until I’d heard for myself what was going on from Mr. or Mrs. Winter.

But no matter what that worried part of me thought, it could never have expected this.

Why would they do this?  Not a single member of the Winter family had ever done a thing that could warrant this.  Unless…somehow they learned of the Rebellion…?  But that’s impossible, unless someone had ratted them out…But if that was the case, why weren’t they murdering every member of the Rebellion?

And why leave Ariel and Terry alive?  Not that I’m upset about that, I’ve never been more relieved about anything in my whole life, but…it doesn’t make sense.

Ariel’s sobs begin to slow, shifting more into tired sniffles and shaky breaths.  I rub her back, hoping the gesture comes off as comforting instead of patronizing.  Things like that always rested on a thin line around her.

Thankfully instead of jerking away with a harsh glance or comment, she just sags against me with a broken murmur, “S’rry…”

I shake my head, blinking back the sting in my eyes at that, “Ari, you have nothing to apologize for.  If anyone has earned the right to cry tonight, it’s you.”

She shivers, “Won’ he’p…”

“No, but you feel a bit better, right?”

A tired, empty smile as she pulls back to rub her eyes, “Maybe a little…”  I gently reach up to wipe away the remaining tears, searching her face.  And while she still looks just as pained and grieved as before, this time she’s no longer shaking, no longer avoiding my gaze.

“I don’t know what to do, Dylan,” she whispers, and though she never turns away, her eyes glaze over, and traces of fear creep into the voice I’d never thought could bear that emotion.  “They’re gone.  They’re both gone…Mama…Papa…I-I don’t…”

I grab her hands and squeeze them gently, bringing her back to me, “I…I know.  I know, Ari.  We’ll figure this out, I promise.  But right now, please, tell me what happened.”

She shakes her head, eyes suddenly dark like I’ve never seen before, “He killed them.”

“He?”

“The prince,” she growls.  “He killed both of them, he wouldn’t let me help them, and I don’t know why.”

I squeeze her hands again, and I don’t understand, I don’t know why either, I’m just as confused, but- “We’ll figure it out.  We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I hate him,” she says quietly, eyes drifting to the door.  “I hate him.”

I repress a shiver at the ice in her tone, and the first seeds of dread sink into my heart.  “I know.”

“I’m going to kill him.”  I have to lean impossibly close to catch it, and then wish I hadn’t.  My breath hitches.  Ariel is strong and happy and bright.  She showers everyone around her in joy and can’t stand to see someone hurt physically or emotionally.  She’s not…not this.  Ariel isn’t freezing cold, sharp and dangerous, driven to the darkest and coldest kinds of hate, not resolute in the intent to cause harm to someone.

Or at least, she wasn’t.

Not before.

I push those thoughts away into the increasing list of things I’ll have to process and deal with later.  Instead, I slip my arm around her shoulders and guide her through the kitchen, to her room.  She doesn’t protest, but her sudden, distant demeanor doesn’t leave.  I try not to dwell on the terrifying implications of that thought.

As she sinks onto her bed, me sitting beside her, she murmurs, almost as if to herself, “I saw it all…all of it.  The blood…They killed Papa first…He was trying to protect us…trying to reason with them…Then Mama…She barely had time to draw her daggers to fight back…”  She huffs a humorless laugh, an angry smirk slipping onto her face.  “I cut him.  Right here.”  She draws a line across her cheek.

She cut someone.  I swallow.  I know that someone had just killed her parents, forced her to watch them die, but…for some reason the thought sends my mind reeling, struggling to see the laughing, bright-eyed girl who was teasing me without a thought or care barely twelve hours ago in the hardened, sorrowful woman beside me.

‘Loss changes people,’ Mrs. Winter’s soothing words echo in my mind.  I don’t know why they stuck with me, when I’d found refuge in her welcoming kitchen as a grieving child of six.  She’d knelt before me with a warm smile, hug, and cookie, a sad glint in her eye as I’d accepted it all, soaking up the comfort here where I struggled to find it in my father.

The memory triggers the tears in my eyes when the memory fades to her twisted, lifeless body laying in the cold night.

“They need to be buried,” Ariel says suddenly, quietly.

I look at her tear-stained face, turned up towards me and lit by the faint moonlight from her window.  No trace is there of the broken, sobbing girl from barely five minutes ago.  Her eyes only reflect sharp determination and unbreakable will.  The change is unsettling, like she’d slammed a wall down on the tidal wave of anger and sorrow, replacing it with an impossible and unnatural calm.

I nod, slowly, “I’ll tell my father about this.  He’ll figure everything out.”

“I know he will,” she states, the smallest of smiles gracing her lips.

I swallow, starting up.  The calm breaks for just a second as she quickly grabs my wrist, desperation sparking in her eyes, “Don’t go.  Please.”

I quickly bend down to hug her reassuringly, “I won’t.  I’m just…just gonna cover them.  Okay?”

Ariel takes a shuddering breath and returns my hug briefly, “Yes, of course.  Right.”

I pull back and squeeze her shoulders, careful to make sure she’s looking at me, “I won’t leave you.  Or Terry.”  She nods, reaches up to my wrists to give them a small squeeze, then her eyes drop to her lap.  I force myself to move away, against every nerve in my body screaming against the thought of leaving her alone in her room for even a moment, even for this.  But she’s Ariel.  She’ll survive.  She’s always been strong.

I make my way to where I know the sheets are kept.  Grabbing two, I return to the bodies and cover them over as carefully as I can.

I have to pause for a moment and let myself breathe after seeing them close up.  Mr. Winter’s face I didn’t see, but the wound straight through his chest to his back made my stomach churn so that I nearly hurled.

But it was Mrs. Winter’s face that really made me stop.  Her gentle blue eyes so much like Ariel’s glazed over, sightless.  Her brows furrowed in that steely protective gaze I’ve rarely had to see on her but could never forget.  Her skin whiter than snow from death, blood loss, and the silver light cast on it, gentle brown waves of hair falling across the floor.  True to Ariel’s words, a dagger lay in her loose grasp.

I covered her face after reverently kissing her forehead in a silent goodbye.  She was never my mother, could never replace her, but she had still done so much for me and carved a special spot in my heart that once I’d slipped up and called her ‘Aunt Sarah’.  I never did it again, too embarrassed even though she’d laughed, a pleasant surprise and joy in her eyes at the name, and reassured me that it was alright.  Now I wish I hadn’t been such a coward.

I rub a hand down my face, sighing heavily.  The Creator take their souls, may they rest in peace until the final day where we meet again.  The silent prayer repeating in my mind, I get to my feet and return to the family’s living quarters after gathering a sheet and cot for myself.  Stopping at Terry’s door, I peek inside.  Though Ariel’s reassurance that he is safe was a relief, I just need to check.

The young boy lies curled beneath a lovingly placed blanket, holding tightly to a stuffed animal he’d claimed to be too old for, face buried partially in its head.  Tears stain his pale cheeks.

Safe, but not unaware of what had taken place tonight.  I swallow thickly.  I would have wished him have a few more hours of blissful ignorance and peace before discovering these events.  But maybe this is better, that he won’t have false expectations of a normal day when he wakes, only to have them dashed.  Maybe it’s better that Ariel won’t have to find a way to explain to him that his beloved mother and father will never greet him in the morning and tuck him in at night again.

A blessing in disguise.

I return to Ariel, leaving the cot and sheet outside her door.  She turns from the window with a wry smile, an achingly familiar shawl wrapped around her shoulders, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

“You should try.”

“I will.”

I step forward and pull her into one more, lingering hug, pouring all the emotion I can into it.  Her shoulders sag wearily as she leans her head on my shoulder.  I don’t know how long we stand there like that, but it’s long enough that I sensed her nearing sleep.  So I kissed her forehead, guided her to the bed, and left the room with whispered promises to be right outside her door the whole night should she need me.

Hypocritical as it is, I find that outside, lying on the cot, sleep refuses to come immediately.  I close my eyes when the sight of the ceiling grows tiring, but even so, my mind refuses to rest for many hours to come.