Page 25 of Anathema

“Best you can do is wait and see, then. If it gets worse, we may have to amputate.” The most I’d heard Uncle Felix say in all the time I’d known him.

The most horrific words he could’ve possibly spoken.

Screams.

Horrible screams echoed inside my head.

A young girl wearing what looked like animal hide reached for an older woman, who lay motionless on the ground in a pool of thick blood. The girl cried and wriggled in the arms of a man dressed in armor, like the age of old. I watched him carry her to the edge of the world, where nothing but a thick white mist stood beyond the rock. The young girl’s cries turned hysterical, and she clawed at the metal of his suit in futility.

With little care, he threw her small body over the edge of the rock.

A flash of black swooped down from the sky toward me.

I saw my reflection in the shiny, black eye of a raven.

Blinding brightness pounded against my eyelids, and I turned over with a groan. Painfully luminous, it had my eyeballs aching and my head throbbing. A cold sting pulsed through my arm, and with a whimper, I took in the state of my bandage, profusely soaked in black blood.

Worse than the night before.

A strange metallic scent, not like rot, or infection, struck the back of my throat while I unwound the dirty gauze. When I finally reached the end of the wrapping, I paused, confusion clamoring through my already aching head. The wound had closed, the skin contractured and pulled together into a fully healed scar, the edges of which glowed a strange silver. I ran my fingertip over it, noting the slight hum beneath my skin where I touched. The marking seemed to have a deliberate shape, though it wasn’t until I turned my head a slight bit that I noticed the way the skin had tightened around the wound like vanes to a rachis, giving it the appearance of a feather.

How peculiar.

It didn’t hurt. I no longer felt the delirium, or heat of a fever. I sat up, noticing Aleysia’s bed empty and made. Squinting against the light, I rested my palm against the ache in my left eyeball and stumbled out of bed toward the dresser. In the mirror’s reflection, my skin seemed paler than before, if that were even possible. I lowered my hand from my face and jumped back on a gasp. The lower part of my iris, ordinarily a deep, winter gray, had paled to an icy silver. I leaned in, my fingertips skimming just below my eye, and studied the aberration that almost appeared like a metallic fleck stuck to my eye.

“Oh, thank god, you’re awake!” Aleysia’s voice shot a startling jolt through my muscles, and I nearly poked myself in the eye. “Thank the ever loving and merciful god!”

Merciful god? Since when had she begun crediting him for anything?

I turned just as she crashed into me, wrapping her arms around me.

“I thought we lost you! I thought … I …” The tears in her voice had me frowning. What had gotten into her? As she straightened herself, I covered my strange eye to keep her from seeing it. “You … you slept so long.”

“Yeah, I had a hard time falling asleep last night. Kept waking up in the night, after you went back to your own bed.”

Face painted in confusion, she shook her head. “After I went back to my own bed? Maeve, that was four nights ago.”

“What?” Suddenly, I was the one confused.

“You’ve been practically comatose for days.”

Days? I let out a nervous chuckle. “That’s …. That can’t be. It was just last night I was singing to you.”

Her brows flickered, and she blinked away the shine in her eyes. “Uncle Felix said you were actually dead for eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds. He tried to revive you.”

Dead?

How could that be? I’d had moments of lucidity. How could I have not known that I’d died? That cold feeling of disbelief swept over me again, and I stumbled back into the dresser, catching myself. “I don’t remember any of that, at all. Just … moments of waking and sleeping. But it felt like it happened over the span of an evening.”

“You came down with an awful fever. Mr. Moros arrived, and you were still in bed. I had no choice but to tell Agatha about the cut on your arm, so she had Uncle Felix look at it. Then you … you stopped breathing, and he started talking about wheeling you down to the morgue …. Well, I … I was beside myself. And then you started breathing again.” Clearing her throat, she flapped her hands at her eyes as if trying to stave off the tears and pointed to my hand still covering my eye. “The condition with your eye is called duoculos, according to Uncle Felix. He doesn’t know what caused it, but he said it’s relatively harmless.”

At that, I lowered my hand, somewhat relieved. “What does he think of the cut?”

“He told Agatha to monitor it. If it didn’t get better, they were considering chopping it off. I’m just relieved you’re better. You must be starving.”

It wasn’t until she suggested the possibility of food that I noticed the ravenous ache in my stomach. “I am. A little.”

“I’ll grab you some warm broth. Probably better that you take it slow. No big meals.”

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