Page 61 of The Merciless Ones
We hold the funeral for Father and Elfriede in one of the Kamandas’ many terraced gardens later that evening. It’s a quiet, makeshift affair: we light a fire in their honour, then float some paper lanterns representing their mortal bodies onto the lake. As they drift into the falling darkness, I deliver a eulogy that I only half finish, and Ixa makes a low yowling sound that somehow translates all my grief. Keita and Britta hold me when I sink to my knees and cry as if my heart will break. All the while, Lady Kamanda, Lord Kamanda, Karmoko Thandiwe and the quiet boy watch from a nearby terrace, silent and respectful witnesses.
When it’s done, I feel much better. Lighter, somehow. It’s as if a weight has been lifted off me, but I know that’s just my eagerness to move on from my feelings. It’s as Britta said: grief is an ocean. But I’m already desperate for that ocean to find its end.
A tall shadow falls over me as we walk back to our rooms. “Is that your mother’s necklace?” Katya asks, peering down at the necklace in my hand. I’d told her of it before, when we first entered the Warthu Bera and were sharing what our lives looked like in our villages and towns.
I nod. “I’m going to wear it again, something to remember her by. To remember them both by.”
I had almost considered consigning it to the flames – a symbol of Mother’s reunification with Father – but I decided against it. Wherever Mother and Father are, they’ve already made their peace with each other. I’m the one who still needs tokens of their existence, reminders to show that they were once alive.
“That’s good,” Katya says. “It’s good to keep hold of the warm memories of the past. I wish I could do that.” She glances longingly in front of us, where the quiet boy, Rian, is once more leading the group.
Keita informed me of his identity this afternoon, although I had already suspected from the way Katya kept looking at him last night. Rian is the betrothed she told us about so often back at the Warthu Bera – the boy who tried to prevent the jatu from carrying her away when she was proven impure; the one whose name was the last word on her lips as she died her final death. Only he would make her act as strangely as she has since yesterday.
“Why don’t you just tell him who you are?” I say.
“Tell who?”
“Don’t play ignorant,” I reply. “You know who I mean.”
When I glance again at Rian, Katya stills, then looks down at her hands. She’s suddenly squeezing her claws into her palms so tightly, blood is welling up from them. She sucks in a trembling breath. “I’m a monster, Deka,” she whispers. She displays her bloodied claws to me. “I mean, look at these. I couldn’t even hold him any more if I wanted. I’d probably hurt him. And I can’t even talk to him – we speak two different languages now.”
Pity sears through me as I take in the truth of her words. As a deathshriek, Katya can’t communicate with most ordinary humans. In fact, the only reason Keita and the other uruni understand her is because they’re so used to the different deathshriek growls as well as the battle language they often use, they’ve become nearly fluent in the language of our resurrected bloodsisters.
I reach out, intertwine my fingers with hers, my eyes widening as memories surge into my mind: Katya and Rian playing in the forest together. Katya and Rian kissing for the very first time by the lake.
He loves me, Katya/I think happily. Rian really, truly loves me. Can anything be more wonderful than this?
“Deka?”
Katya’s voice scatters away the memories, pulling me back to the hallway where my hand is still intertwined with hers. “Deka?” she repeats.
There’s a shaky quality to her voice.
I force myself to push away the last of the memories and look up at her eyes, which are now flowing with tears. She’s well and truly distraught. “You’re still you,” I tell her gently, squeezing her hand. There’s still blood on it, but neither of us mind. “No matter what you look like, you’re still you. And if Rian ever loved you the way you always say he did, he’ll still love you now.”
Katya glances nervously back at him. “Deka,” she whispers, uncertain.
“He came all the way to Hemaira for you,” I say. “Somehow, he found his way to Karmoko Thandiwe, and together, they both found their way here. What is that, if not fortune moving in your favour?”
Katya tugs the quills above her left ear – a nervous habit from the time when she was an alaki. “Do you truly think I should tell him?” she asks.
I don’t bother to reply. Instead, I step to the side and look pointedly behind her, where Rian is swiftly approaching. His body trembles with emotion as he watches her tug her quills, a gesture immediately recognizable to anyone who knows her.
“Katya?” he whispers. “It is you, isn’t it, Katya?”
Every muscle in Katya’s body seems tense as she turns to face him, and for a moment, I’m frightened she’ll run away. Then she slowly, hesitantly nods.
“Katya!” Rian gasps, rushing to her. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.” As she looks down at him, her body still frozen with uncertainty, he embraces her with all the strength he has. “Katya, Katya,” he says, weeping. “I knew it was you. I would know you anywhere, my heart.”
I watch the scene, my own heart blossoming, until a hand suddenly tugs at mine. “Let them be,” Britta whispers, pulling me in the direction of my room. “Give them space to sort themselves out.”
I hesitate. “But what if they can’t underestand each other? Shouldn’t we help?”
“Love like that, it transcends everything,” Adwapa adds quietly, no doubt thinking of her own love. “If he came all the way from the North searching for her, I’m certain he can find a way to talk to her.”
“Now come on.” Britta drags me along.
The moment we enter my bedchamber, I slump onto the bed, exhausted beyond belief. Between the funeral, Katya’s sudden reunion, and the strange memories I just experienced, I’ve lost every last droplet of energy I had. So I just remain there, trying to build up my strength.