Page 17 of Fable for the End of the World

“It doesn’t matter how many deer I kill if Inesa isn’t there to mount them,” Luka says icily.

“Don’t you try to make me feel guilty.” Mom’s pitch rises, and color comes into her cheeks. “It’s my right, as your mother. Neither of you would be here without me.”

She’ll always have this as her trump card. The debt that every child owes their parent, a levee that never breaks, no matter how hard the water rushes against it.

“I sacrificed everything for you,” she chokes out, forcing tears into her eyes. I’ve heard this a thousand times before, too. “I came to this miserable place for your father, and look what happened. I could have lived in the City. And I never would have gotten so sick. I’m doing what I have to do for our family, and look how you’re treating me. Trying to make me feelguilty—”

“There won’t be a family anymore, after this,” Luka says. “It’ll just be you and me.”

I fix my eyes on Mom. I’ve gone so long without speaking that my voice is hoarse when I say, “I know that’s what you’ve always wanted.”

Her shoulders rise to her ears.

“You’re ridiculous, Inesa,” she says. “I can’t reason with you. You blame me for everything wrong in your life—you never take responsibility for yourself.”

My chest tightens and the tip of my nose grows hot, like it does when I’m about to cry. And I hate myself as much as I hate Mom in this moment, because I can’t stop my eyes from welling, can’t stop myself from being the weepy, weak, pathetic daughter she thinks I am. Because I can’t stop myself from crying over something I should’ve seen coming. Because I’m mourning a corpse that’s long dead. It feels like all I’ve ever done is cared for things that everyone else has left to rot.

“You’ve always wanted me to be the worst mother ever,” Mom goes on. “Are you happy now that I’ve proved you right?”

“Am I happy? Am Ihappy?” My voice rises, and I’m shouting now, playing the daughter who’s too unstable, too emotional. When the cameras come on, this is what everyone in New Amsterdam will see. Tears blur my vision, and I try to blink them away.

“Why don’t you ever blame your father for anything?” Mom snarls back. “At least I’mhere. I’m the one who stayed.”

She surges toward me, all her false fragility forgotten. I put my arms up over my head—it’s been a long time since she’s laid a hand on either of us, but I remember the sting of her palm against my cheek. The way she gripped my face so tightly that her nails left half-moon gouges in my skin.

This time, Luka steps between us before she can reach me. He’s as impenetrable as a wall of steel, and Mom collapses againsthim. She inhales sharply and then lets out a great, heaving sob, eyes squeezed shut, hands balled into fists. Ordinarily Luka would let her lean on him, help her to the couch, lay her down and cover her with a quilt. Now he lets her slide to the ground, onto her knees, the blanket pooling around her.

She wails and blubbers, wordlessly now. It’s hard to feel sorry for her, but it’s also hard not to. Her sicknesses are feigned, but the pain behind them is real. The feeling that gathers in my chest is mostly pity. It thickens over my own hurt like a scab.

My bedroom isn’t private enough. I can still see Mom’s silhouette from behind the curtain and I can still hear her bawling. The sound is punctuated by the incessant dinging from my tablet, notifications from the $ponsor app from all the people who searched my name the moment the Gauntlet was announced and found my account. Messages piling up by the dozens. New subscribers that are worthless to me now. I’ll be dead before I can stream again.

I march out onto the porch. Luka follows me. The storm clouds have gathered, fat and gray-bellied, blotting out my face and name from the sky. The air is heavy, almost unbearably so.

I lean against the side of the house, head tilted back, and close my eyes. I can’t hear anything except the eerie, unrelenting buzz of the tracker, counting down the seconds until I die.

“Nesa.”

I open my eyes. Luka is standing in front of me, slightly hunched so that our faces are level. I see the faint, pale scar that cleaves his left eyebrow. I gave it to him when he was seven and Iwas eight, sword fighting with sticks on the hillside. He gave me an almost identical one on my left pointer finger, a small crescent above my knuckle. Sometimes I think that’s what love is, really—giving each other matching scars.

“I’m going to die, Luka,” I say.

There’s a strange relief in speaking it out loud. A dragonfly flits through the air above us. They were smaller when I was little. Now some of them are the size of sparrows, the hum of their wings as loud as helicopter blades.

“No,” Luka says, voice low. “You’re not.”

“You saw what happened to Sanne.” The image of her laid across the counter flashes in my mind.

“You’re not Sanne.”

“No,” I say, “but I’m not strong, or brave, or smart. You’ve watched the Gauntlets. Everyone knows how this story ends.”

Before Sanne, the Lamb was a man in his mid-forties, thick and muscled, who had carried a machete in his belt. If there was no mercy for a twelve-year-old girl and no bloody, hard-won victory for him, there’s no chance for me.

“We aren’t like everyone else,” says Luka.

“Yes, we are!” The anger that spikes in my chest surprises me. “We’re exactly like everyone else—that’s the problem. Land animals in a drowning world, like Dad said.”

“I didn’t think you listened to anything Dad said.”

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