The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  “Did he raise his hand to you?” Adam asked me the next day, when I was taken, quite randomly, to his room in the middle of my shift in laundry.

  I had been rather relaxed that morning, partly because Janna and I had risen early, before dawn, right when the cells were unlocked, and hurried off to the shower, where, as I reminded her each time we chose that spot for our epic love-making, we were living out the fantasies of one million men and some women, both Earthean and Pangaean. I try to keep from describing our joint showers, because the water-flowing, steam-billowing, and soap-rubbing details are so utterly cliché, and so gratuitous that they could be viewed as exploitative. Janna and I were not together for the sake of being a scintillating fantasy, we were together because we loved each other.

  Just know that after the start to our morning, I felt significantly more even. Every part of me felt more relaxed, and all throughout the morning in the laundry room, I had pulled her to me when no one was watching so I could kiss her. It was hot in the laundry room, because of all the steam from the hot water, and standing close to anyone seemed to increase the temperature by one-hundred degrees, and still, we found each other throughout the morning, and increased the temperature by one-thousand degrees.

  “Of course not.” I replied to Adam as I sat on his bed, looking at him as he stood, though he was not looking at me. “How do you even know about this?”

  “Grace told me.”

  “When the hell did you see her?” I asked angrily.

  “Today. I sensed something in your hearts, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. It was reaching me even through all the corridors and barred doors of this ship, so clearly, it was quite serious. I wanted to handle it, and she wanted me to handle it.”

  “Right. Because she cannot fight her own battles, she runs to Daddy.”

  “Brynna.” He said, and his voice was quiet but very firm, which told me that he was beyond irritation, beyond just a touch of anger. “What you did was wrong. You swore to me that you would not discuss Tom and Rachel with her unless you were with me, and James said…”

  “Oh, so you talked to James, as well?” I asked through a bitter laugh, “Look at all of you, banding together against me. Look at you and James, brothers-in-arms.”

  “Oh, spare me the persecution complex and the thinly-veiled paranoia!” His voice rose ever so slightly, and still, it seemed to bound through the room. He stopped, took a breath, and continued quietly, “I am not going to shout at you. I have never shouted at you, and I will not start today, even though I am very angry with you. On the matter of James, I will tell you that he brought Grace to me, because she wanted to see me, and the three of us talked.”

  “Wonderful. You men, I swear, I don’t know what effect you have on her, and what effect she has on you. Perhaps she knew all along that her father was not exactly devoted, at least not romantically, to her mother, so she disowned him a long time ago, and she has been looking for a big, strong, straight man to play her Daddy ever since. Either that, or I passed my attraction to older men through the womb. So pathetic…”

  “The only one who is behaving pathetically here, my dear, is you.”

  I looked at him, as livid as I had been the night before when James had called me a child. Who were these old men to call me out on my behavior, but especially to suggest that my behavior somehow made me less mature than they were? Adam had married me, and James had chosen to stay by my side for over twenty years. He had met me when I was actually twenty-two and not just physically so. The reason why he had not beaten himself up too badly over our relationship was because he said I was so atypical in relation to other girls my age. He would never fathom having a relationship with a girl who behaved as all twenty-two year old girls should. Adam had said the very same, and yet here they were, accusing me of this childishness with total ignorance as to how foolish it made them look, for carrying on with me. Or perhaps I was blowing it out of proportion, as they say.

  “The girl was raised by Rachel and Tom, yes, but she went to school with children from Old Spirit families. From families dedicated to the Old Spirits. She attended Tyre’s services, she heard the old One God’s words, and regardless of how valiantly Rachel and Tom must have tried to keep her from picking up those prejudices, she was exposed to them every day for sixteen years. It is not her fault that she cannot accept that Tom loved other men. She has spent her entire life thinking that he was devoted to her mother, and not only that, but also thinking that for a man to love another man is wrong. It condemns one to Eternal Darkness. Her father is dead, Brynna, and if he truly did love other men, then according to their creed, he has not found peace. Instead, he is lost in some other realm, burning and drowning in darkness, constantly searching for a way out, aware that he is dead, that he has not been given salvation, but unable to find his way back.”

  “That is not why she was so upset. She would not hear it. She called him ‘idem,’ Adam. She called him that terrible name, and if it were only a matter of his salvation or lack thereof, that word never could have passed her lips.”

  “She is young and foolish. She knows not how serious it is.”

  “Yes, she does. You and James want to think that she is so young and innocent that she doesn’t know the error of her ways. If she grew up around these prejudices, then she knows that there is no worse slur!”

  “You are so stubborn.” He snapped, and his voice was an exasperated hiss. “You are as afraid of her as she is of you, if not more so. Had I known that this is how you would have treated her, I would have…”

  He stopped, because unlike James, he could stop. What he was going to say was going to wound me terribly, and he gathered his sense even in the midst of his anger to stop himself from saying it. But just as I had done with James, I pushed him, except this time, I did not ask what he would have done, because I already knew exactly what he had been going to say, so I filled in the words for him.

  “You would have let her die inside of me, or you would not have put her inside of me at all.”

  He looked at me, unsure if I had read his mind, though I had not needed to. His eyes were so cold, so tired. He was seeing me as the villain for how I had treated Grace over the previous months. In his mind, he was thinking how peculiar it was that he respected James more than he respected me in that moment, because James had brought Grace to him, and because Grace had felt comfortable confiding in James before James had convinced her to talk to Adam. I, on the other hand, had made Grace’s life miserable since the moment I had met her, and I had made it even more miserable after I had realized that she was my daughter.

  “If you want to read my mind, fine.” He told me coldly, “You do not like what you are seeing there, but it is how I feel. I know that you are capable of being better than what you are being right now. You are capable of immense kindness, and I know that because I have seen it. But as these weeks and months and years go on, I find myself less and less able to find that part of you. I shudder to think how you would be if something happened to those of us you love. It saddens me to think that your kindness could not stand if it were not for us, but…”

  “Just stop right there.” I snapped at him, and my voice was trembling. “This coming from the man who tore apart not only his cities but the other cities in an effort to hunt down the man who killed his sister!”

  “You will not speak of her like this, Brynna.” He snarled dangerously, “You will not use her as leverage in this…”

  “Would you still be kind if I died? Would your ‘kindness stand’ if it were not for Idan and me?! I may not be the same person I was twenty-five years ago. I may be colder and more dangerous, but everything that I am now I am to protect myself and the people I love! You know nothing about me. You know nothing of the sacrifices I have made!”

  “I see the effect of those sacrifices every day, Brynna!” He snapped, “Every day, I see the woman with whom I fell in love slipping further away…”

  “Oh, so whe
n you call me down into the Arena with you, and the brutal, heartless ‘warrior queen’ is of use to you…”

  “That is when we are in front of the eyes of our enemies! In private, I expect you to be softer and warmer, of your old self, but instead, you push James and me away, and you use your own daughter as a means to dispel your anger with your mother, or with me, or with James, or with the Old Spirits. It is not that poor girl’s fault that she feels the way she feels! But instead of working with our child to help her see, you push her away. You chide her, and abuse her with your coldness and your insults! This is not the woman I married! The woman with whom I laid in that bed, feeling the light of our daughter’s life within her belly, the woman who confided in me all her darkest secrets every night. You say that all of this is an act, but your act is bleeding over into this room, into your dealings with James and with Grace. Janna seems to have escaped your wrath, but then, she is your little wilted flower, is she not?”

  “I am sorry, would you like to be my little wilted flower, Adam?” I asked in condescending sweetness, “So I will be nice to you? Janna has ‘escaped my wrath’ because she has done nothing to deserve it. It is a strange day when I say that she is the most sensible and the most supportive out of the three of you, given the rather rocky start we had back in Shadow Village. But there you go: she is the most sensible and the most supportive, but please, do not tell yourself that she never speaks her mind about me, and that is why I do not turn my ‘wrath’ onto her. She has just mastered the skill of speaking her mind in a way that you and James cannot even fathom.”

  “Oh, I am sure.” He replied sarcastically, “She coddles you, and that is what you want us to do! The second she ‘speaks her mind’ to you in a way in which you are displeased, you will begin viewing her as the villain, as well. By the One God, are Penny and Idan next? Will they be the next that you push away?!”

  It was not a rhetorical question, but I treated it as such, because I knew that he was not finished. Still, the silence that fell between us was as stubborn as both of us, because neither he nor I would break it. I stood up, feeling those vile tears rising up into my eyes again. For the first time in so long, I felt totally isolated. I tried to cast my mind’s eye back to the last time I had felt this way, and my mind found the moment James had walked away from me after I had shunned him, right after we had landed. I wanted to say that I did not need them, that I would simply be alone again, but I could not fathom being without them. Perhaps that makes me a weaker woman, my reliance on those men, except it was not just them. It was Janna, and Illa, and Penny, too.

  And all of this after I had spent the last twenty-five years allowing the brother of the man who had imprisoned us to have sex with me, or to demand that I have sex with him. Sure, it was not as terrible as it could have been; the Lord of War, though he could be a rough lover, did not make me feel completely subjugated in our relationship. He always thanked me, and he always doted upon me. It did not erase what he was requiring me to do, but I had to acknowledge that it was not as bad as it could have been. Still, it was as against my will as it could be without being totally against my will, because I never would have spread my legs for him willingly, to put it vulgarly. I slept with him because he let me see my daughter, because he left Adam alone, because he could not begin to question James’s loyalty when James was often the one taking me to and from his room. I kept him pacified and swaddled, close to my breast—metaphorically, of course—because that is what he wanted and perhaps even needed. I played that role to him, so they could live.

  If saying all of that makes me sound like a martyr, or if it makes me sound like I have a “persecution complex” as Adam had suggested I did, well, I am sorry. I did not expect them to pity me, but I expected them to say “thank you” and to get off of my fucking back, pardon my vulgarity.

  After two days of getting scolded by the two men I loved most in the world, I found myself at first feeling a scorching of blind rage deep in my heart, but it was quickly extinguished by ice. It was that old ice I remembered from years before, but now, it was even colder and even harder to break. I would not shout back at him. I would not defend myself. I would not give him the satisfaction of thinking that I wanted to appease his anger by supplying some heartfelt explanation. I was feeling so cold, and yet the hot tears were in my eyes again. My next mission would be to shut them off for good, to cocoon myself in ice for the final time so that these stupid people I loved could not hurt me anymore. Every shrink I ever saw, including Savannah, had told me that it was better to love and be hurt than to feel nothing at all, but that was such utter bullshit. It was so impractical. I had been so stupid to allow those men so close to me. I had been so stupid to allow myself to love so many people, when it is only the people we love who are capable of truly hurting us.

  So instead of breaking the silence, I stood up primly and began to stride towards the door.

  “Do not walk away from me, Brynna.”

  “Oh, should I look at you while you’re talking to me, as well, Daniel?!” I shouted at him, and even though I did not want to appeal to his sympathy, I did.

  “Sweetheart…” He began, and his voice was only a little softer, because he thought that I was purposely playing to his sympathy.

  “Just…” I held my hand up to stop him, and my eyes closed for a moment, “Just don’t, okay? I don’t need you, and I don’t need James. All I need is Penny, so when we escape at the end of our time at sea, we will go off on our own to find Violet and Eli, and then I will be right back at square one, exactly where I was before your new best friend, James, stalked me in a bar one night whilst doing your bidding.”

  I turned and banged my first hard against the door, but he had come up behind me and gently placed his hands on my shoulders.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  I banged the door again, this time so hard that the side of my hand ached.

  “No.” He said, “We have never left each other angry, and we will not start now. The moment we start will be the moment our downfall begins, and I love you too much to see our marriage go the way of mine and Janna’s.”

  “You love me when I am what you want me to be, and only then.” I snapped back, and when I banged the door with my fist again, cursing the guards in my mind, he reached out and grasped my wrist, but not before I had sufficiently bruised my hand.

  “Stop.” He whispered, and his head was hung so that he could whisper in my ear, “I love you always. Sit down, and we will talk. I want to hear your side.”

  “No, you don’t.” I snapped, “Neither of you care about that. You are just threatened by what I have become because you think that it gives me independence from both of you, so you choose to think that I have victimized a little ignorant Old Spirit child who just so happens to be the same child I put in Rachel all those years ago.”

  “I want to hear everything that has happened over these past few weeks that you have not told me. You have been so troubled, and I want to know why. My love, my beauty, please tell me.”

  “No!” I snapped, and I stomped my foot and pulled against his embrace until one of my arms was free, and I could bang on the door again. The tears were falling, my heart was racing, and I knew that soon, it would all burst out of me. I had kept my silence for so many years, and if Adam kept prodding me so gently, promising me his understanding and his protection, I would tell him what the Warden and I had done. He thought that it had only been for a few weeks that something had been upsetting me, but it had actually only been a few weeks since mine and Tyre’s conversation, which is what had finally turned the general upset into panic. I had been generally upset for twenty years. Still, he was asking me to tell him all now, and I wanted to. More than anything, I wanted to. As always, my husband could exorcise all the darkness from inside of me when no one else could even breach the surface.

  “I am just… I am just cruel, and angry, and this is who I am now, and…” I started to say, but he shushed me and kissed the back of
my neck.

  “You want to tell me. You have wanted to tell me all along, and you are safe here with me now, so you may tell me.”

  “I can’t!” I cried, “I can’t, Adam! You don’t understand!”

  “You can, and help me understand.”

  “No.” I replied firmly, and I broke free from him, but he held me again.

  “He told me not to tell anyone,” I said softly, “But I told Tyre, and James already knew, but if I told you, you’d kill him, and if you tried to kill him, he’d kill you, and I have been stopping him all this time, but now, I violated the contract, he says, and now, he’s going to take away everyone I love, because I told Tyre…”

  And so it began. The inevitable result of a brainstorm? A long and intricate, but not totally logical or linear, spewing of secrets.

  “I told Tyre, and he promised that he wouldn’t let him hurt all of you, but then the Warden said that I violated the contract, and I will never be a good mother, either! Not to Grace! Because when I passed her to Rachel, a part of me hoped she would die. I hoped she would die, Adam, because she would be growing up out there, with them, with the Old Spirits, where they could corrupt her, and make her hate us, and my mother loved me so much, but then she hated me, and I loved Violet when she was small, and then I pushed her away, and now, Penny is getting older, and I’ll do the same to her, because I can’t do this, Adam, something’s off. Something’s wrong. Something’s broken. And…” I was gasping, hyperventilating. My knees had given out, and I had not noticed. We were on the floor, him behind me, holding me, telling me everything was going to be alright, urging me to keep going.

  “You can’t hurt him!” I cried, and my voice was eerily similar to how Penny’s had sounded the night before, “Don’t you understand that it’s all my fault, Adam?! He said he’d kill all of you, so I said he could have me when he wanted, and it’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing, because I said it was alright, and he said to close my eyes and pretend it was you, but you’d never do those things to me, not like that, and I let him because I love you, and I love Penny, and Janna…”

  My words dissolved into a long, sickened moan, and my body lurched forward. My hands came up to cover my mouth, hoping that it would keep the bile down, but it didn’t. My vomit spewed all over me, all over his floor, because I had kept it a secret for so long, and now, I was literally sick with worry that Adam would try to hurt him, and the Lord of War would prove his name and kill him first, or that the Lord of War would make good on his promise and slash Adam’s throat while he slept. My head was pounding, my stomach was rolling, and all the while, I was crying, doubled over, with Adam holding my hair back as I lost the few contents of my stomach all over his floor. When it was finally over, he turned me to him, wiped the vomit from my mouth with his hands, and then kissed my forehead slowly, over and over again, whispering to me that he was so sorry, asking why I hadn’t told him, why had I let myself carry the burden alone for so long?

  I didn’t answer, because the Lord of War’s words from the previous day were echoing around in my mind. I could feel his hands grasping my upper arms in that impossibly tight, impossibly painful grip.

  “And once I have fucked you while you are bathed in their blood, I may be merciful and snap your neck, or perhaps I will be a mad dog and sell you to the Unallied, let them put you on a leash and make you lie on your back for one hundred men when it’s time to breed…”

  “No.” Adam told me firmly in my ear, because my mind had grabbed onto his and was holding on for dear life, needing to tell someone that the Warden had sworn to destroy me, that my serving him for so many years had been for nothing. “Do not think on it for even one second, my love. My perfect love. His filthy hands will never touch you again, and you will never be anywhere but right here with us, with all you hold dear.”

  “Oh, God…” I groaned, “Oh, my God…I don’t know what to do… I have to calm him down, I have to do something… I don’t know what I should let him do, or what I should do to him, but I will let him do what he wants, because he is going to kill all of you and maybe me if I don’t…”

  “No.” He said firmly again, “No, my love. You do not have to do that anymore.”

  “I do, Adam. I do. Of course I do. He is so angry. His mind… It was so… dark, and so full of what he was going to do… I can’t stand to see it…”

  “Shh… Leave this to me now, my love. James and I will make this right. Together, we will protect you, and we will take you far from here, far from him, I promise you. Look at me.” He pulled me away from him so that I could look into his face, “Look at me.” He brushed my hair away from my face and then wiped my tears away with his thumbs.

  “I ask now that you let me take care of you.” He whispered, before kissing my forehead again and both of my tear-stained cheeks. “May I, Brynna? May I remedy this for you?”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want them to get hurt, and I don’t want to get hurt.” I said, and I could barely get the words out because my sobs were so forceful and my lungs were still gasping for air. “It will all have been for nothing if something happens to all of you, Adam.”

  “I will not get hurt. I will do this not by acting on the impulses of the blind rage that I feel, but as safely as I can. I promise you that I will not allow harm to come to me or anyone else you love, and that very soon, I will take you far from this place, and far from him. I promise you that.”

  I nodded, pressed my forehead to his, and held his face in both hands.

  “I cannot tell you how scared I am, Adam.” I whispered, so softly that I was sure he could not have heard me, “There are no words for it.” I pressed my forehead to his and took a shuddering breath as both of my hands came up to grasp his face, “I have never felt anything in my life like this fear.” My voice broke, “I am so afraid, Adam. I am so afraid.”

  His arms tightened around me, and I brought my head down to nestle it under his as I cried. The tears ran hot and fast down my cheeks, seemingly without end, and in both of my hands, I was holding a fistful of his shirt so hard that my hands were shaking and my fingers were numb.

  In my ear, he whispered, “I know. I can feel it in your heart.”

  “Yes. Some Warrior Queen I am.” I said, “I am supposed to be fearless and strong, and I am always supposed to know a way out of these tight spots in which we find ourselves. And look at me… Full to the brim with fear, and crying like a goddamn three-year-old against you. What is this changing? What is this helping? I am so weak, Adam. I know we say that I am a Warrior Queen in jest, but I have always liked to think of myself as that, and now, I am…”

  His finger rested under my chin, and he raised my head so he could gently hold his lips to mine. For several long moments, we kissed, and when our lips finally broke apart, he whispered:

  “It is not in jest. It was never in jest. And you are her. Through and through, you are a Warrior Queen. That you are afraid means nothing; it does not revoke the title. Do you know why? It is because while we are afraid, we show our capacity for courage. He has threatened every person you have ever loved. He gave you one way to pacify him, and it was to do something you dreaded doing with him and feared doing with anyone for many years. He has threatened your life, and threatened to sell you into slavery, and still, you did not break. All these years that he has threatened you, and required this of you, you have not broken. You are…” He kissed me, “…the strongest woman in any world, Brynna Elohimson. You are a Warrior Queen, through and through, and I am in awe of you, and I am undeserving of you, and I am so proud to be your husband that I cannot even begin to describe it. I love you so much, and once again, I am in awe of you.”

  I nodded, nestled my forehead against his for a moment, and then brought my head down to rest on his chest.

  “I love you so much, Adam.” I cried, “And I’m sorry.”

  “No.” He shook his head, “I am sorry. I am sorry that I did not look deeper into you to see how far dow
n you were feeling this fear. I should have been more attentive, more persistent. Instead, I chose to think that you were merely slipping away from me, that you were allowing yourself to become cruel. I am sorry, Brynna.”

  “I should have told you. I wanted to. There have been so many times over the years when I have wanted to tell you, but I know how angry you get, and if James knew what he said to me right after he found out I had told Tyre, he would try to kill him, so please don’t tell him. Please.”

  “If you do not want him to know, then it will stay between us. He will help me in speeding up our escape plan, but besides that, he will know nothing unless you tell him. Alright?”

  I nodded and said, “Alright.”

  “Your strength knows no bounds, my love.” He whispered, as his hands began to rub my back, “You are so strong, to have sacrificed so much for those of us you love for so long. Truly, your strength and your capacity for love boggle me.”

  I shook my head.

  “I failed the second I told Tyre.” I whispered, and the shame in my voice sounded foreign to me, though I felt every bit of it in my heart. “I just wanted it to stop, but now I have put your lives in even more danger, and if something happens, I will never be able to live with myself. I will want to die, too, but he said he might not just let me die… He might…”

  “You have not failed.” He told me firmly, “And you do not have to worry about anything that he said, nor do you have to worry that anything will happen. I will end this, Brynna. I promise you. Now, come.” He placed an arm under my legs and lifted me into his arm, “I know how you love your hot baths when you are tense.”

  He carried me into the bathroom, undressed me and himself, and then washed me once we were in the bathwater together. I began to doze against him as he massaged my shoulders in the steaming hot water, and when he took me out into his chilly room, I fell almost completely asleep as he dressed me again.

  “Tell me.” I whispered as he covered me up. “Hold me, and tell me again.”

  His lips pressed to mine very gently, and just as gently, his tongue slipped into my mouth. After we had kissed for a good long while, he pulled the covers up and slipped into bed beside me.

  “We will go far from the cities, to the villages at the base of the mountains, where the forest is not bathed in shadow, and the rivers run shallow and clear.” He told me gently, “There in that sunbathed, country land, I will build you not just a house but an entire farm, and together with our girls and Idan, and James and Janna, and Illa and Tony, we will raise crops and animals. Violet, Quinn, Alice, and Eli will be there, and Lucy and Macie Miletus will be there for Illa. We will hide away from this war, from these people who want to cause us harm. We will fish on the river, and we will drive canoes down its banks, and the children will grow up so happily, and they will forget all about these dark times as the years go on. The sun will shine each day, and when it does not shine, the rain will cleanse and nourish our land, and all the while, the wind will smell like all the trees of the forest, and for all eternity, we will stay there, safe, and happy, and over time, we will become whole again. Every sadness and darkness we have ever endured will be so far into the past, we will scarcely remember it.” My eyes closed as he talked, as he stroked my hair slowly with his hand. “I promise you all of this, my queen. I promise you eternal happiness. I promise you one million years of peace. I promise you that all of this will be gone. Now rest, my beauty.”