Page 20 of These Immortal Truths
For the first hour, they sit with feet between them. By the third, he has scooted close enough for their shoulders to touch.
When the summer sun kisses the horizon, he leans his head against her arm. Anna lets him, waiting until the sun’s last light before rising to gather wood and start a fire to chase away the shadows and warm the chill in her heart. Once she sits back down, she folds him into her arms and feels his grubby face press against her neck and shoulder.
Piers’ mother never shows.
Nor does his father, or the three older brothers he speaks so fondly of, and Anna’s hopes sink the darker it gets. Still, it’s not until late the next morning that she offers him her hand. It’s dirty and small, but his grip is firm in ways that break her heart. She’s not sure if it’s fear or trust that convinces him to follow her, but under the filtered shadows of the trees, Anna makes a silent promise. She has passed by so many starving faces, but not his. Not Piers.
Because he may be the only one she can save.
She retraces her steps, finds the tiny cabin she had spotted overgrown with brambles. Piers gorges himself on blackberries, hardly flinching when he pricks himself on the thorns and his blood mixes with the dark fruit. Anna cuts away at the worst of it, freeing the creaking door from its strangling grasp. The inside smells of moss and rot with little to nothing of value beneath its sagging roof. It’s enough to confirm her hopes of it being abandoned.
She knows Piers is too small to travel the rest of the way to Italy. Even if he wasn’t, he’s far too weak. The cabin is small and indesperate need of repair, but it’s enough to get them started. The walls are strong and there’s a hearth in the corner that looks solid enough. When Piers peeks through the doorway, his mouth stained purple, Anna’s answering smile feels like the most honest it’s been in years.
It is only the lessons she received from Eira lifetimes ago that get them through it.
Anna forages for all she can, even when the taste is bitter or tough to chew. She shows Piers what foods to search out and which ones to stay away from and lets him help fill their cabin with the supplies she knows they’ll need come winter. She removes the rotten thatch of roof and replaces it one layer at a time. It takes her longer than she’d like. The summer rains are merciless, but they are quick to show where her repairs are weak. By the time the weather turns crisp, she’s confident it will at least withstand the snow.
They stack firewood along the interior walls where it will stay dry. Anna stocks up on every herbal medicine she can find, just in case illness finds its way to their door. She’s not familiar with this part of the country, but when she asks Piers, he insists he’s lived through a snowstorm the previous winter. Anna’s not sure what a child considers a storm, but she’s not willing to leave it to chance. Particularly when abnormal weather has doomed an entire continent to hunger.
She prepares as much as she can—waking with the sun and refusing to sleep until long after it’s set. Piers seems to sense her worries, because he tries to help where he can and never complains even when Anna knows his belly feels far from full.
“Summer is forgiving, but winter isn’t,” she tells him, but the lesson has never felt this hard. She is terrifyingly aware that his life is in her hands, that his hunger is a direct result of her choices. She lessens her rations, just so his can grow. Her bones ache and she can never seemto rid herself of the fatigue, but it’s worth it to see his cheeks fill and his eyes brighten.
His smiles come more easily and with it, his speech. Piers, she learns, has no trouble filling the silence. He makes up silly songs as he fastens bushels of sticks into makeshift dolls and searches the forest floor for rocks to use in a game that looks suspiciously like something that might be found in a back alley gambling ring.
The day he notices the marks on her skin, that smile falls—replaced by a fear so raw it hurts. “Don’t be scared,” she soothes, voice soft despite the vicious pain lancing her heart. “You can’t catch it.”
The pale horror in his face doesn’t lesson, and when his eyes find hers—wide and rimmed with tears—his whispered words make her falter. “Are you dying?”
And Anna feels her heart shatter for an entirely different reason, because his fear isforher. Notofher. She opens her arms, relieved when he steps into her hug and wraps his tiny arms around her neck. “No, Piers. I’m not dying.” She murmurs the words into his hair, and fights the tears threatening to choke her. “You don’t ever have to worry about that, all right? I’m not going to die.”
It’s the one promise she knows she’ll always be able to keep.
The snow comes early.
Anna isn’t nearly as prepared as she’d hoped to be. It doesn’t help that they’d only had from midsummer to start. She knows it will mean a hungry winter. It means an uncomfortable few months for her, but she knows it could spell death for Piers.
Starving bodies do little to stave off chills, little to fight off infection.
Piers rests his head in her lap, asleep. The fire crackles in the hearth, keeping their small space warm despite the chill seeping through the cracks. Anna runs her fingers gently through his hairand tries to keep her head above the worry, but it feels as hopeless as treading water while dressed in chains. Sometimes, when Piers isn’t looking, she feels it crash over her. It’s in her lungs, drowning her with every choked breath.
She can feel it rising now; a tide rushing toward her with every intention of sweeping her out to sea.
Her breathing comes faster, chest tightening around every inhale. She looks up, eyes searching for something to distract her long enough to fight the current of emotion. She finds herself holding her breath instead.
They aren’t alone.
Khiran stands over them, his rich skin draped in vibrant cloth. There’s a headscarf wrapped expertly around his head, black curls loose and falling past the gold glinting from his earlobes and ending at his embroidered shoulders. There are shadows in his dark eyes, a frown under his neatly trimmed beard that speaks of disapproval as he looks around the shack they call a cabin. His lips thin when his eyes pass over their food stores.
Anna resists the urge to hold Piers closer. “Don’t wake him,” she murmurs.
Khiran spares the child a glance, but nothing more. He seems entirely too focused on her, his eyes catching every invisible ailment with an accuracy she finds terrifying. “You’re not eating enough.”
“There’s a famine.” A simple, painful fact. One she’s almost certain he already knows. “And he needs it more.”
He doesn’t argue, but there’s a tension in his jaw that makes her think he wants to. Eyes drifting down, he watches her fingers comb through Piers’ fine blonde hair. “This will hurt, you know.”
He says it as simply as one comments on the weather. Anna wonders if that’s what Time does—wears the humanity out of you until the promise of death pulls no more emotion than the promise of rain.
