Page 3 of Of Flames and Fallacies

“The one son,” she murmurs.

I shake my head and brush my fingertips over the back of her hand, hoping the sensation will break her concentration. “Mother, I’m here. It’s me. It’s Katerina.”

“The one son.” Her voice grows louder. “Chosen to lead them all. Wasn’t a son but a maid.”

I cradle her face in my hands and stare into her blue eyes as I brush my thumb over her right cheek. “It’s okay, it’s just a dream. I can get your medicine. Did you take it this morning?”

“Until binds of death did that grave deed bade…” With each word, her tone tips toward hysteria.

I turn toward her nightstand and pull open the top drawer and retrieve her bottle of medicine. The cork is missing and nothing but droplets are left inside.

“In death blood is shed!” she screams.

I bolt for my room, bursting through my door and dropping to my knees near the bed. My chest tightens as I rip out the wooden crate stashed under my bed. I rake through other empty vials until I find a full one. Swiping it, I race back to my mother.

Standing near the window, now she splays her open palms to the window, her forehead pressed against the pane. Her wide blue eyes stare outside.

“But from blood there is life!” She explodes into maniacal laughter then rears back and slams her head against the glass.

“Mother!” I jolt forward, grabbing her shirt.

Once again she rears back, slamming her head into the window a second time before I can stop her.

Wrapping one hand over her forehead, I pull her back toward me. A warm, sticky substance drips down my forearm.

“No!” She thrashes against me.

Bracing the back of her head against my chest with one hand, I clench her cheeks between the fingers of my free hand, forcing her mouth open and pouring the liquid inside. I hold my grip until she swallows.

“Restored by air and night to end allll ssstrifee.” Her words slow and morph into a slur.

Her body slackens, and relief floods me. I shift my attention to my forearm where blood—my mother’s blood— stains my skin crimson.

Mother’s eyes flutter closed, her jaw relaxing into a lazy grin as a trickle of blood drips down her forehead toward her chin.

I grab a handkerchief from her nightstand and press it to the wound on her forehead. Swaying her back and forth, tears well in my eyes. My gaze moves to the cracked window and the dark green pine trees of the Northern Forest it frames. It’s over—for now, at least. Though she’d begun pounding her fists with her last few episodes, she’d never done this kind of damage. A shiver shoots down my spine at the realization of how her episodes have escalated and how much more she might still spiral.

When I was a kid, her episodes consisted of her singing as she watched the distant clouds roll by, swaying to whatever had entranced her. At the time, I thought it was an exaggerated song of the sun and night. My older brother told me to ignore it and not to interrupt. But then I got older, and the episodes got worse. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how bad they had become.

In the deepest parts of my memory, before she sang, she laughed. But laughed with a slow, warm clarity at my childish questions like where clouds came from or why some deer had sticks on their heads. Back then, she was the one who held and rocked me, the one who cared for and comforted me. We shared with each other our wildest dreams. We skipped through the snow in the winter and shouted into the night sky how much we missed my father. Somewhere between then and now everythingfell apart, like the threads of an old blanket unraveling until there is nothing but a heap of string.

Now, I’m the one holding the threads of what she once was between my useless hands with no knowledge of how to knit her back together. All I can do is hold her and yearn for the mother she once was.

After several moments, I lay her on her bed and pull the sheets up to her chin. Removing the bloodied handkerchief, I survey the gash on her forehead and breathe a sigh of relief that the wound is crusted over. Inching out of her room, I close the door and sink down to my heels with my head leaning back against the door.

I have nothing left.

Nothing left to eat.

Nothing left to trade for more medication.

That vial was the last I had.

two

FISHING

Sunlight chases away the sounds of crickets and toads, replacing them with songs of birds. I skulk through the forest, the glow of the early morning light bathing the Northern Forest in hues of oranges and yellows. Pine trees stretch over my head, casting dappled sunshine across the forest floor.

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