Page 60 of Fable for the End of the World

“I didn’t think anyone washed clothes by hand anymore.” Her eyes flick from my face to my arms as I twist and swirl the fabric of my shirt.

“Most people can’t afford washing machines in Esopus Creek.” Or, in our case, can’t even afford the electricity to turn them on. The Wesselses have a washing machine. Sometimes, when it’s so cold that a layer of ice coats all our drinking water and I’m afraid I could lose a finger to frostbite, I’ll pole down to their house and Jacob will let me use it. For days afterward, I’ll find myself sniffing the sleeves of my shirts, relishing in the floral, faintly artificial scent of their detergent.

“It’s a useful skill to have,” Melinoë says.

I snort. “Yeah. Laundry. Cleaning animal carcasses. My illustrious claims to fame. Hard to believe my mother chose me for the Gauntlet over Luka.”

Unfortunately, I fail to keep my voice even, and the attempt at humor drifts to the ground between us. The wound is still too fresh.

Silence falls over the cabin, and Melinoë’s gaze fixes firmly on mine. Her lips are pressed into a thin, white line, and for the first time I see their faint twitching, betraying the effort that it takes to maintain such a stoic face.

“You know, don’t you?” My throat tightens over the words. “Why she put me up for the Gauntlet?”

Slowly, Melinoë nods. “Her file said she’s sick.”

There must be hundreds of stories like that. Thousands. It’s an age-old narrative: the child sacrificed for their ailing parent.Giving back the life their mother or father gave to them. It’s tragic on all sides, and I can’t imagine it’s ever failed to evoke an emotional response from the audience. I wish it were so simple.

Or maybe it never is. Melinoë said that Azrael crafts his narratives carefully. Maybe he’s adept at eliding the nuances, the ugly little truths behind all the stories of valiant sacrifice and long-suffering martyrdom. If I were smart, I’d stick to that straightforward, reliable fiction.

But the cameras are off. There’s no one to hear the truth except Melinoë.

“Kind of,” I say at last. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m smart,” she says—in a bald, unassuming way that makes me bite my tongue on a smile. A fact, not a boast.

“I know.” My mouth quivers. “It’s just difficult to understand, if you haven’t lived the way we have.”

“Try.”

There’s an earnestness in her voice, a faint gleam of curiosity in her eyes. I’m not sure if she’s even aware of them herself, these tiny, almost imperceptible cracks in her facade. But I know I’m not imagining them. In the light of day, with my senses sharpened by a night of sleep, it’s so clear to me.

“Well,” I begin, “my mother isn’t from the outlying Counties originally. Her family is from the City. She fell in love with my dad and moved to Esopus to be with him. I don’t think she was much older than I am. But by the time they had Luka and me, my parents couldn’t stand each other. They were just too different. I guess they weren’t ever in love.”

“They could have been.” Melinoë’s tone is light, but her gaze is intent. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

“I think it is. I think it has to be. Otherwise, it’s not really love. If the world can break it...” I trail off, cowed by the unexpected intensity of Melinoë’s stare. And the fact that I’m not even sure where I stand on the subject. I’ve never been in love before.

Has she?

“The world can break anything,” she says.

“Then maybe no one has ever really been in love,” I suggest dryly.

“Maybe you have too much faith in people.”

“Luka is always telling me the same thing.”

Bringing up Luka shifts something in the air. Melinoë’s eyes lose that earnest gleam, and her face seems to shrink into itself, becoming icy and remote again. I stare down at my hands, at the now damp bandages that have been dyed pale pink with my blood. Even her cold stare can’t erase the memory of her touch. The brush of her lips against my palm.

“Anyway,” I say, lifting my gaze, “staying in Esopus made my mother miserable.”

“Why didn’t she leave?”

It’s an unexpectedly hard question to answer. “She didn’t have any family left in the City by then. And we didn’t have any money, because Dad refused to take on Caerus debt and Luka wasn’t old enough to hunt. People just get stuck. Sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re drowning until the water closes over your head.”

Melinoë’s expression doesn’t shift. “So then what?”

“Mom started to... deteriorate, I guess.” I pick at the bandages, just for something to do, somewhere to look. “It started with this one cold. Just a cold. It passed in a few days, but she still refused to leave her bed. She started snapping at me, and Dad, and even Luka. Ordering us to bring her things. I mean, I understood, at first. We all thought there might be something deeper going on. We even had Dr. Wessels come up to examine her, but he said there was nothing wrong with her. Physically, at least. And then... and then there was the year of silence, where we couldn’t even be in the house unless we whispered, and if we did so much as close the door too loudly, she’d fly into a rage...”

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