“Am I to take that as a yes?” he said with a laugh again, pulling me out of my reverie.
I didn’t know what the man found so joyful, but he certainly did smile and chuckle a lot. It was as if he kept all the joy of the world inside of him, and he alone was responsible for distributing it. From the way my body was already feeling light, the dread that had escorted me into the room seeping away, I would have to guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Yes,” I finally answered him, my mind moving too fast to make much sense. “She took the Zánik curse from my body.”
“Ahhh,” he sighed, his body sagging down into the bed. “My little girl is growing up.”
It was said like an overjoyed parent with a subtle hint of mockery like those TV families always had. I had heard the phrase enough that it left me wondering how honest he was being, but looking at the slight smile that lit up his face, I would have to say he was being as honest as they came.
Silence seeped over the room with his comment, his body sinking farther into the piles of blankets that surrounded him as he stared up to the rafters. His eyes were hooded in such a way I couldn’t be sure if he was awake or a sleep. Right then, I wasn’t about to ask, despite knowing I should. I had come to this room for a reason, after all. It wasn’t like me to lose my gumption.
Saber tooth tiger or not.
Of course, it wasn’t like me to start any kind of conversation with, “Hey, I’m sorry I killed your wife and your kids … and well, everyone else, but can we powwow about these awesome dreams I have been having?”
Well, it wasn’t like either of me.
The murderer wouldn’t care. The rocker wouldn’t kill anyone for fun.
“Can I ask you something?” I took another step as he turned to look at me, his face so kind and understanding that some of the tension left my over-taut muscles, my chest deciding it was okay to breathe normally.
“You came here for a reason, after all. But I will not give you sight, little girl. Not because of our past. I just cannot.”
At the mention of our past, everything tightened up again, but not in the dread of what was coming kind of way that had been wrapped around me; in the heart wrenching guilt and vehemence kind of way.
Guilt.
The emotion was so strong I couldn’t stop everything from flowing out of me in a mad rush, as though that one emotion had lifted the floodgates all on its own.
“I’m sorry.” The words weren’t enough. They weren’t powerful enough. They weren’t deep enough. “For what Edmund made me do. For what I chose to do.”
The silence came back as though it lived there. It sat on my chest and sucked my breath away. It made it hard to breathe, hard to look anywhere other than at the kind, old man who lay before me.
His bright eyes focused so intently on mine that they were all I could see. The room evaporated into nothing except smoke and silence and air that was too thick to breathe.
“We all make choices. Every day, we make new ones. And all of those choices are based on what we know to be right and true. It truly is a miracle that our knowledge within this life gets to grow and change. Otherwise, we could keep making the same choices, the same mistakes, thinking they were the right ones.”
“What are you saying?”
“You killed my family, Wynifred.” His words were harsh, and they cut through me like the blunted knife they were. Slow, painful, caustic. I let them. After all, I deserved it.
It didn’t help that the brightness in his eyes had left, the softness of his face hardening to steel. “You massacred my wife right in front of me. I felt her soul disconnect from mine as her blood sprayed over my face, and it has haunted me for centuries.”
I couldn’t say anything. There were no words. If sorry was not enough, then there was nothing within our language that would cover the sins I had committed, that could seek forgiveness and hope to receive it.
I didn’t deserve it.
It was more than that, however. It was the way he spoke, the words he chose. It was the same as my own little love that had been destroyed right before me, the warmth of her blood haunting me for nearly as long if not longer.
“I know.” It was only two words, and it was not enough, but it said so much more than he could ever guess.
“He did the same to you.”
I could only nod, trying to keep the memory out of my mind even though it was already there, playing on repeat.
“Is that when you knew? When your knowledge began to change?”
“It was before. When I felt her move inside of me for the first time.”
“When life became something real.”