He looked into Mother’s eyes. They were different. Sad. It knew it was going to die, and there was nothing it could do about it. There was something else though, deep in the black parts, but what, he couldn’t tell.
He let go of
the handle. You should have stayed in the cave.
It still mouthed the word, teeth and lips covered with blood. He looked at his hand, squeezed a fist, then looked back to Mother. It gasped and dribbled blood. He knew he was supposed to feel bad about it, but he didn’t.
Light appeared through the gaps in the walls, and the birds started up their morning songs. They’d made him feel happy when he’d heard them here. Now he felt like he’d never be happy again.
The smell of Mother was stuck up his nose. It had stopped him sleeping, and the more he’d thought about what happened, the more he thought Mother didn’t need to die.
“Wake up, boy.” Silas tapped Scab’s shoulder with his boot. “Come and eat something while I ready Vala.”
“We didn’t have to kill it, did we?”
Silas didn’t answer and left the cabin.
At the fire, Scab poked at his squirrel rather than eat it. Each time he’d gone to take a bite, he felt sick.
“Bring it with you. You’ll be hungry later.” Silas tightened up Vala’s saddle.
Scab placed the squirrel on the rock and looked out at the mountains.
Silas sat next to him. “You had to do it,” he patted Scab’s back, “sometimes it’s either them or you. We do these things to make the world a better place. Those that die have no right to live; they only make others suffer.”
Scab watched a huge bird circle high above.
Silas looked up. “They glide for hundreds of miles without a beat of a wing. Must be peaceful up there.”
They watched the bird together until it disappeared from sight. Silas took Scab’s squirrel and went to Vala. “Come now, boy. Time to leave.”
Scab scraped his foot in the dirt. “I think it knew my name.”
“Don’t trouble yourself with what that thing was calling.”
“When I looked in its eyes… it…”
“It what?”
He couldn’t explain it. “I don’t know.” It was like Mother had looked into his head and knew everything about him.
Silas returned to kneel next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, boy. I should have killed that thing myself.”
Scab looked into Silas’s eyes. “My name is Mara.”
4
Descended from the mountains, the day was hot. The path they followed cut through an expanse of felled woodland, dry and splintered stumps resembling gravestones for the enormous trees that used to be there.
They had travelled in silence for hours. Silas hadn’t felt uneasy for years. The conviction in those grey eyes when he said it.
He’d imagined Mara plummeting a hatchet into his head as he spoke his new name. His mother had warned him of demons in the shadows like all mothers do to their children. Even today, priests in some cities still warned of the grey-eyed among us that were here to take our souls.
He believed none of it, neither had he ever met anyone with grey eyes. Until several days ago. Now a grey-eyed boy sits behind me, who’s named himself after the demon of death.
“Where are we going?” Mara said.
“A village called Vespen.”