Page 4 of Under the Lion Star

I shrugged as if I didn’t care. We continued our walk in relative silence, but the doubts grew like a fungus—feeding off the uncertainty. Was my mother capable of such a thing? It wasn’t even the idea of blackmailing wealthy elves that bothered me, but would she truly keep them away from us if they expressed an interest in being involved as parents?

The time to ponder such questions came to a halt as our cottage came into view.

A flurry of activity had even the younger girls stopping and turning back toward Nima and me.

“Hold her,” I handed Zara off to Nima. “Keep them all back.”

When I was sure that none of them were following, I approached our house cautiously.

A sizeable horse-drawn carriage was at the end of the path that led to our cottage. Men were scouring the property as if looking for a lost item, and several came in and out of the front door like they had been welcomed in. Conversations were murmured amongst themselves, but one law officer seemed to be in charge of whatever was happening.

“Woah,” he said as he noted my approach. “You can’t be here, young lady. Run on home.”

“This is my home,” I protested.

“Ah, fuck,” he grumbled. “You live here with your mom?”

“Yes,” I squared my shoulders. “And I doubt she would want you all in our house. I kindly request that you leave.”

He set his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky, now painted a deep pink with the sun's dying light. His eyes met mine, filled with irritation and something akin to pity. No words came as he worked his mouth to speak several times before letting out a resigned exhale. My attention left the officer, turning to the front door.

Looking back, I’m sure the doorway had only been opened for a few seconds. The rusted hinges frequently would stick, but in that instant, it moved fluidly. Even so, time slowed as if moving through molasses.

My mother’s feet were the first thing I noticed. Particularly how they hovered over the floorboards. They hung limply, slowly rotating in a circle above the floor where she had been standing when my sisters and I had left only hours ago.

Working my gaze up from there, I noted that her limbs were loose, dangling from her body. Her skirt was dusted with flour, marked with handprints from where she used it as a cloth even though she always made us wear aprons. The dark blue linen matched her tunic, which appeared torn. Had it always been like that?

The laces on the bodice were askew, but my mother often looked in disarray by the end of the day. When I got to her head, dipped forward over her chest, I realized what I was seeing. The pale purple strands of her hair had created a curtain that blocked her face. The continued rotation of her body from left to right meant that each second that passed revealed more of her to me.

The breath was sucked from my lungs, but I couldn’t look away. It felt as if the Gods themselves held my eyelids open and forced my focus onto the sight before me.

Her flesh was mottled. Purple and gray covered the usually olive skin of her neck and upper arms. Slack-jawed, it almost looked as if she were screaming, but no noise registered to me. Not even the shouting of the law officer at my back.

Wide eyes bulged forth from their sockets, rimmed with red, highlighting the emerald in her irises. Above was the length of rope that trailed up and out of view, but I knew it was attached to the wooden beam that spanned our home. The same beam from which we often hung paper birds that would entertain Mera for hours on end.

The door swung closed, and time resumed its standard pace despite the realm cracking open beneath my feet. The man who had exited approached the lawman at my side. He said a few hushed words, and if he paid me any attention I couldn’t say as my focus stayed fixed on the closed door.

Someone was shaking my shoulders and speaking to me, but I remained motionless as my mind was assaulted with flashes of what I knew lay beyond the door to my home.

The activity that surrounded me continued as if the men walking in our yard were unaffected by the fact that my entire world was crumbling around me, piece by piece, and threatening to bury me alive.

I pressed my eyes closed, hoping that might stave off the vivid recollections while my brain worked at the futile task of putting the pieces together to provide some palatable explanation of what I had just witnessed.

When I opened them, my eyes remained on the doorway until my knees finally gave out and dropped me onto the dirt. My fingers splayed between the blades of grass, desperately searching for something to steady the spiral that I was falling into.

I sucked in gulps of air before my mouth filled with the acrid taste of bile, and I heaved the contents of my stomach onto the ground.

The need to scream was overwhelming, but I forced myself to fight off the encroaching sobs, keenly aware that just yards away, my five sisters were waiting for me. All of them unaware that our mother was gone. That our lives as we knew them had come to an abrupt and unwelcome shift.

The men standing over me continued to speak, either unsure how or unwilling to intervene on my behalf.

“She has extensive bruising on her abdomen,” the man who had exited my house stated with no emotion. “And the claw marks around her neck would leave me to believe this was no suicide.”

“Are you surprised?” The lawman scoffed. “You invite strange men into your home, and eventually, you’re bound to find an unhinged one.”

“What do you want me to put for the manner of death?”

“Suicide,” he said as if he were annoyed at the question. “I’m not going to waste resources on the murder of a whore.”

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