#2 - Silence

From Torin Baskervilles POV sorry for the switch, but she kind of died

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Torin Baskerville �" Old Lasken, Paenich - 1923

Chapter 1 - Silence

The dripping rain, cold to the touch, moist. Bastian, head hung low as we slowly make our way back. Where are we going? I don’t know. Limp, lifeless. I hold whispers in my head. In my hands, I hold Loretta. In my heart, I hold regret. How did she get me to agree to take her here? Why did I agree to take her here? Confused. I remember feeling confused as her life was slowly, painfully torn from her. Something inside her wanted out. She’s gone now.

Moments moulded together, sewn into one with careful hands. Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing. Bastian nods curtly in agreement. It takes me a second to realise that I’m not talking. I’m not talking. Not talking. Words are pointless now. Loretta Jane Baskerville. Guilt. I feel guilt in my head, two strong hands of no more than a simple word. Hands around my neck. Choking. Guilt is choking me. I cough, averting my eyes from Bastian's as he seems to search my face for something. Someone. Loretta. Loretta Jane Baskerville.

Thoughts, thoughts are good. I try to keep my mind occupied with random thoughts. Thoughts are good.

But, hope. Hope is better. Hope has always been better than thoughts. The hope that she is alive, somewhere. That’s all I can think about.

I try not to think about her, but the more I try the more I do. The more I think about her crooked smile, her ability to make herself think she is anywhere but where she is. Here. She is here now. In my arms. Nonexistent.

Forget, I tell myself sourly. Forget, forget, forget. No more Loretta, she’s gone.

Loretta, gone.  

“She’s not dead, you know.” Bastian breaks the careful silence. He’s broken me in five words. Five words. One, two, three, four, and five. Tear’s cascade down my cheeks. I cover my face with a rain-sodden hand and avert my eyes from his again.

“You’re avoiding the truth,” I choke out. Guilt’s grip around my neck is still strong.

“There has to be some logical explanation for this, though, Torin.” He says. “Put together the facts. One, it’s a full moon, two, the seers were doing a portal fix. Do I have to say anymore? Maybe a Darkling got through and took her half while she was changing. Her soul. There’s a chance she may still be alive. Just somewhere else.”

The tears stop. Blocked off. No more tears. No more crying. I wipe the rain from my face and look up. Straight at him. Bastian’s an idiot. She’s dead. It’s the truth. And I’ve got proof, he can see her. She’s dead, in my arms. Gone. Nonexistent. He’s denying it, and he knows it. There is a glint of uncertainty in his eyes. He’s hoping he’s right. He doesn’t know if she’s out there or not.

But, hope. Hope is a powerful thing. Hope is stronger than hate, stronger than everything. Except for fear. Fear is stronger than hope.

I want to believe he’s telling the truth, but I can’t bring myself to it. Magic doesn’t just happen, not matter how much you wish for it. But, this is coming from me. I live and breathe magic. Seers, werewolves, sirens, people who turn into animals, animals that speak like humans. You name it, we’ve got it. I even ran into a boy who had been spliced with a hawk once, a science experiment turned minion. I killed him. He had begged me to kill him. So I did.

“It’s a new era, Torin. Magic, more powerful than ever before. The people who wield it of a new generation. Times are changing, Torin. Nobody can run from it. The Darkling’s will destroy us, and we need to give them a piece of our mind before they do. If we get Loretta back, then just maybe-”

“Then just maybe it will get us all killed, Bastian!” I hiss, cutting him off. No more crying, no more tears. Forgetting. Forgetting is good. “Magic has never been good for anyone! For crying out loud, it tore the world in half beneath our very feet! Two sides, two people, Bastian! Dark and light forever at war with one another and that is what we cannot run from! When mothers in the villages tuck their children into bed at night and tell them everything is okay, they are lying. Can’t you see? Everything is never okay! And why the hell would you even think that it might be remotely intelligent to burst onto their side of this great big stuffed up world and stir up more trouble! Why?”

Bastian. I see Bastian raise his head, and think for a second that he’s got a better plan. But, greatly to my disappointment seconds later it drops. Another nod. He agrees. He agrees with me about us not having any hope. No back-up plan. Nothing.

Blank expression. Hope. Hope is gone. Now our thoughts and feelings are encased by a layer or fear. Fear that one day we might wake up to the sounds of war raging outside our window. Lose all hope. Hope. No more hope here.

Bastian quietly offers to take Loretta Jane Baskerville in his arms. Mine are tiered, my sister is certainly not light, so I don’t resist. Then, we start the long journey home, in the rain and the mud.

Hope is the last thing on anybody’s mind, now.

But, hope might be the only thing that we have left.

***

She’s not dead. Words, three simple words haunt me as finally I manage to collect myself partially and pull back the dusty bearskins that my father calls the door. The house, older than my father, stands on its own on a mud encrusted hill top. The climb home was long, but hardly difficult and Bastian kept up as we took turns carrying Loretta Jane Baskerville home for the last time. But, now we are here, waiting patiently.

I peer in casually, but I notice my father is out. I turn to Bastian apologetically, but he has already guessed. My expression must have given it away.

“We can come back later,” he says like it isn’t that big of a deal. But it is. We’re not actually going to drag dead Loretta Jane Baskerville around the town looking for him, are we? I shoot him an ice hard glare and he hands Loretta back to me.

“Well both of us don’t have to go. It’s like we’re preschool kids who can’t go to the bathroom on our own because we’re scared we’re going to fall in and nobody is going to rescue us.” He laughs. But, it’s fake. He’s just as nervous as I am about the explanation we are going to have to give to my father. It’s not like a chunk of the sky came down and hit her on the head and killed her. Bastian looks at me, and I know that the whole “the sky is falling” scenario is exactly what’s coursing through his brain at this moment. I narrow my eyes and him and he shrugs apologetically.

“It was only an acorn?” He offers. I don’t laugh at his failed attempt at something he’d find remotely funny. Under normal circumstances, I’d laugh. Not today. Not holding my now dead and nonexistent sister in my hands.

Bastian stops smiling. I stop pretending to smile. Bastian looks at Loretta. I look off into the distance surveying the area for any signs of my father in the fields surrounding us. I see sheep, hundreds and hundreds of sheep. But, that is all. Just acres and acres of lambing pastures, and no father tending to any one of them. There are no holes that need fixing in the fences, no wild dogs that have escaped the breeding pits of what we see as the evil laboratory in the distance, and no bull ploughing along at a leisurely pace up and down the fence-line. Nothing but complete silence, besides the occasional “baa” that is exchanged between a ewe and her lamb. Nothing.

Suddenly Bastian stares in fright, expression fearful and regretful at the same time. No hope to light a spark in his eyes, and no flame to keep him believing that we will find her. None.

He opens his mouth to speak, but it takes him a few delayed seconds to get the words out. “Open. Eyes. Look. White.” It’s a broken sentence, a sad, delayed sort of sentence. But, I understand exactly what he means.     

I look down into my arms to see Loretta Jane Baskerville’s eyes open. Milky white. Showing no emotion.

Bastian lets out a strangled cry that slowly but surely creates words that are barely audible. “Loretta Jane Baskerville. First, you die on me, and then, you betray the light for the dark.” The pain in his voice is unbearable, and he breaks me once again. Tears cascade down my cheeks again, and the rain slowly eases to an almost unnoticed dripping. Tear, raindrop, tear, raindrop. They make lines on my face, like the wrinkles on my father’s face etched in by many long and hard years of work. We all succumb to our own fates eventually, and I am about to succumb to mine.

“That means she’s alive Bastian,” I choke out. “We’re going to find her.” He looks at me, and the glint of hope in his eyes returns. “We’ll fight the darkness to get my sister back. I don’t care how many Darkling’s fall, but we will find her and bring her home.”

A hint of a smile. A real smile. Bending, breaking his face until it shows submission to the emotion. Hope. We have hope. We really have hope.

But, fear is still stronger.      

 

Author's Note

A/N – Sorry for how much Torin rambles on rather unintelligently in this chapter, it’s just me trying to recreate the pain of losing a sibling, and then trying to, “forget” about her as Torin puts it. The next chapter will make what he calls the “forgetting” process much clearer. It’s very ...*searches for the right word*... untidy at the moment, but if I write chapter 2 well enough, it will make sense. Be warned, though. In chapter 5, part 1 switches year, date, character and era... Just warning you... James Lockwood is up next, oh the evil things I plan to do to the poor boy.