1-5

The Mother’s Moon had begun to see its first flickers of change. Its rich golden glow was fading. The bright warmth would turn, and the gloominess of the second moon was looming. The Spatial Moon. In remembrance of the god of space. The first of the Mother’s children, Subar. A mimic of the moon crept behind the original in a faded copy, indicating that the days and nights would soon grow longer.

The mob came and went. And the door to her father’s bedroom was gone. The bed was empty. Not even a sheet to cover it. There was a thick, iron-like smell in the house. That was added to the rot smell that never went away.

The Kotters were sat at the table, except for Kreo. He had gone again, but only for a few hours, to pick up some things for them. When he was gone, everyone in the house felt it. Reba hadn’t realized how much they had relied on him over the past weeks, with their mother still out. She found herself looking forward to his arrival instead of dreading it, as she used to. He felt like the only adult who would actually speak to her. Though for the brief moment she saw him this morning, he was silent.

So was her father.

He barely managed enough movement to wipe the decrepit old man from his face. It would always take him an extra second to respond to something. And even then, it would only be passive grumps and disinterested nods. It was like he was off in a desolate world of faraway dreams, and he dreaded it when his children’s cries pulled him back from that land.

Krisa was crying. She wanted her mother.

Kayleb was crying. He wanted his mother.

Reba wanted her mother. But she whined for hunger.

Eventually, the combined agitation made Koji emerge from his seat—a great giant planted in the earth, standing for the first time in years.

“They're just hungry,” he thought. All the noise would be solved if he just made them something to eat. That was the main thing children needed after all. Food. That was simple enough.

He looked into the icebox and saw that there was nothing there. Kreo’s food had gone, and whatever he’d bought when he last went to the market had spoiled days ago. He didn’t recall the last time he went to the market. It was Ruby who usually went because he was so irresponsible with money, he remembered.

He kept an old box of rice and beans as an emergency kit. It was covered in dust and eroded metal. That’s what they would have to eat. At least until Kreo got back. He went to spark the fire underneath the cooking stone in the hearth with two sharp rocks. He slammed the two rocks together, forgetting his strength. They shattered.

Koji growled. It was just another obstacle. He shouldn’t be so angry. But his frustrations had marked him. Another pair of spark rocks. Gently this time. But he did it so gently that no sparks would loose into the hearth, so he would hit harder. Then, harder still until one final time, he struck the rocks with all his might, and the only thing that sparked was the pain in his knuckles as they collided.

To his left, Reba handed him a piece of flint and a metal rod. Ah. He had been using normal rocks.

“Thank you,” he said. It only took him a moment to find the fire after that, and the rice and beans lay in a pot of heating water.

“Where’s Mama?” Kayleb cried. “I miss her.”

“It’s alright. I’m here. Don’t worry,” their father said.

Reba sat herself, feeling a sense that he deserved this. After all she had been through, the agonizing whining of children every day for the past two weeks. If she could figure it out, then so could he. But he seemed too content with sitting still by the hearth, repeatedly mouthing the words, “Don’t worry. I’m here.”

The pot steamed, and moments later, the rice and beans were poured into a family-sized wooden bowl. Koji placed it on the table like he just expected them to eat from that.

“Well...” he posed.

“It looks hot,” said Reba.

“It’s fine. It’s rice. It won’t hurt.”

Kayleb stood on the top of his chair, reaching a hand to grab a handful of rice. Koji jumped to stop him, but instead banged his leg on the table. He and his son sang a symphony of pain together as Koji had connected bone with metal, and Kayleb’s hand was burned by sticky scalding rice. The child’s yell, though, was far more elongated than his father's.

Koji tried to relieve the situation by grabbing his hand and blowing on it with his hefty, hot breath. It didn’t fix it. He then grabbed a spoon from the table, scooping some of the rice and beans, and blowing on it the same. Kayleb resisted it, but the food was nearly forced into his mouth, blocking the noise of his cries. He tried to do the same with Krisa, but she was a bit more combative. Her screams rattled the walls, and she threw her arms at the incoming spoon, knocking it to the floor.

“You’re not supposed to feed her like that. You have to do it like Mama does it,” Reba said, having finally seen enough.

“Well, your mama ain’t here to do it, so we’re doing it my way.”

Just then, a smell burned through the air, and Reba’s own eyes began to water. There was a scalding smell, like something was burning.

“Ew. What’s that smell?”

“What smell…” Koji looked back to the hearth and immediately realized his error. He’d put the pot back over the flame, and the remnants of food that hadn’t fallen into the bowl were now burning, causing the house to smoke. He sprang towards it, grabbing the handle to take it outside so the smoke wouldn’t suffocate them. He ran towards the door, but it was locked. There was a rushed attempt to craft the key before the smoke grew too much, but he gave up, unable to concentrate.

“Scaaa!” he yelled. He then rushed into his bedroom and threw the burning pot through the open window. The hard metal exploded against the neighbor’s wall. “Holy Mother!” Koji yelled. “Holy Mother! Holy Mother! Reba, will you please shut the baby up!” he snapped.

“She won’t shut up cuz you keep yelling!”

“I’m not yelling!”

The cries and screeches only got louder.

“You stink at this!” she yelled back. “Everything since Mama’s been gone, everything has been miserable, and it’s all your fault!”

“My fault! I just needed you to give me peace for a moment! Was that too much to ask!?”

“Yes!” She turned in her chair, mumbling. “I wish Mama and Romy were back already, and you would leave.”

“YOUR MOM AND BROTHER AREN’T COMING BACK!” His voice shook the ground. The children cried. Reba crumbled. Her father imposed his body over her, surrounding her in his dark shadow. He puffed out his chest, standing over a wounded animal, and he would deliver the final blow even if it killed him.

“THEY ARE BOTH DE—"

Koji Kotter cleared his face in the waters of the city's canal. The water was light and shallow, rippled by the weight he carried. The dim night mist sprinkled across the sky like a dark rain. Koji knelt and brought the water to his face, finally washing away all that he had kept inside. All that he had hidden.

He was full of regret. His daughter didn’t deserve what he had just done to her. He could see it in her face, in a moment without warning, everything in her world came shattering down. Her eyes broke immediately, but she was silent. The silence was what concerned him most. It left her only to speak with her eyes, and the unbelievable sadness and betrayal was something a father should never have to see in the eyes of his little girl. And they were aimed right at him.

It was his mind that thought to keep Reba from the world. Her mother argued that they should tell her about her brother. That he went off to war, but the war had ended, and he never returned. It was so much easier to let her believe that he was some great hero protecting the commoners from evil men and spirits. It was happier. It allowed him to forget himself. But she was still just a child. Exploding on her, like he did, wasn’t the correct answer either.

Ruby was always better at these things. He felt lost. Strained. He had watched her slowly die over the past weeks. A wrath. Who would’ve thought that she would become a wrath. They were supposed to be safe in this city. But that was a lie. The unity was a lie. The charmed walls and the king and knights. They were all lies.

Humans weren’t built to live without a mouth. She squirmed at first, figuring out a new steady way to breathe through her shortened nostrils. Koji had to keep them unrestricted, elsewise… But still, they couldn’t feed her. He tried what he could. Everything he thought he could. But he had always known that she was a goner and that what he was doing—harboring a wrath was the worst taboo.

 He supposed he held out some hope that she would be able to speak to him. A prayer to their god, Selpil, a prayer to the All Mother that at least she would speak once more, or she would find a way to send him a message on what to do, of how he was supposed to live without her. But she couldn’t see him, nor could she hear his pleas and prayers.

And then the mob came. What little dignity he kept for his wife had vanished, and the city had taken one more thing from him. But she was a wrath, and so it was for the best. So he held his sobs as he watched them extinguish her life’s flame, telling himself that this was what the Mother had planned in her unyielding dream. Yet she was still once his wife and the mother of four beautiful children.

He threw more water at himself, waiting for the refreshed feeling water was supposed to provide. The cold splashes only shrank him.

He had to pull himself together. He still had a family, and he had done enough damage by crumbling in his own despair. So this would be the last time that he cried anywhere near them. He would hide his tears in the clear waters of the Armonian canals. But the gods would see him. He looked off into the full moon, which was looking back down upon him with the sweet eye of the All Mother.

And he cried.

—

Kreo could do no more to help his brother than to help him get rid of the sheets of dry blood in his bedroom. It didn’t appear his presence would be needed much longer. Reba had run away from the house. He would find her while Koji cleared his head.

She was far from the Scrappers’ District, near the port overlooking the gift of the water goddess and her endless oceans.

She wasn’t alone.

A dozen Havi, dressed in rags, surrounded her. Silent. Too afraid to get close and too worried to back away. But she was not their child. The mother was gone, and what little they did to try and re-instill her spirit into her fell upon pink, wet eyes. They knelt around her. The loose archaeac specs of pain glowed around them.

She threw a fist at them. “Get away from me!” Reba screamed. “I don’t want you! I don’t need you here! Why won’t you leave me alone!?”

Her audience gasped, each holding their hands close to their hearts. Then they bowed. “We are sorry.” One of them extended a hand towards her.

“I don’t want your sorry!” Reba picked up a rock of malice and threw it at him. It skinned the man’s arm, drawing blood. The others then surrounded him, quick to pray and make the wounds go away with the weaving of their fingers.

Looking back at the girl, they saw that there was no healing that could be done here. Before another tried to speak, the Havi man shook his head. “She is with her.” The group bowed again and retreated.

Kreo stood watching from behind as each Havi flowed around him like a river around a rock. Some of them would lay a hand on his shoulder before parting. They were hands that he was far too familiar with. He knew that they were where they were needed, as they always were. But it was too late for his niece.

And so he approached her himself. When she saw him, there was no reaction at first. She was trying to make it look like it didn’t affect her. Like, she would be okay. And he sat next to her on the pier.

Osiedi’s Gift was beautiful, dark, and shining. Its gentle waves crashed on the shores of Armonia, filling the air with a soft salty breeze.

Kreo didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say to comfort a young girl in grief. But after a while, Reba gave up the act. She pushed her face into his stomach and wrapped around him, still crying. He pulled away at first, but she clung to him.

“The spirits took my mother, didn’t they?” she said, “I should’ve known it. They changed her and took her. Why couldn’t anyone save her? Why didn’t they fight to protect her? Why didn’t anyone protect Romy? Why did they both have to go?”

“Unfortunately for us. The gods are dead,” he said. In a moment, it sparked to him as clear as a spot of color on a pure white wall. He said those words errantly, like he’s said to many people. But for the first time, he felt as if the person he said it to understood him. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t even look up at him. But her sobbing had stopped.

“Ok,” she said. “What about my father? Why didn’t he tell me what she was?”

“He thought what he did was best, and you shouldn’t blame him for that.”

“I hated it. Every second, it felt like he was lying to me. It made me want to scream my insides out… I hate lies. Promise you won’t lie to me.”

“I can’t possibly.”

“Promise, Uncle Kreo.”

“Ok…”

“Good.” She wanted to hide her face from him now. He had seen too much of it, and she was ashamed of the mess she had become. She had spent too long trying to prove how adult she was. And adults don’t cry. “I don’t know what we’re going to do now.”

“You want to protect them, right?” her uncle asked.

Reba nodded.

“Then you must be strong. You are already strong, but it will take a stronger mind to revive your family. A body without a heart cannot pump its lifeblood. Your siblings need you. And your father, maybe even more so… I must leave soon. I’ve already stayed longer than I can. It is not my place, but I want to entrust them to you.”

“You can’t leave. I don’t know what to do.”

“I know even less than you.”

Reba’s eyes fell to the ground. This was one of the few moments when she felt like she wanted to be a child. He had placed far too much responsibility on her, and there wasn’t a universe where she was ready to handle it. At least not more than her father or her uncle, or anyone.

Though she knew it was something her mother would’ve told her to do. It was her one great mission, and if she rested where the gods rested as the stories said, she would be watching. And she and Romy would protect them from spirits from now on. But Reba knew they were gone, and her Kreo was right.

The gods were dead.

“You’ll come back, right?” she asked with a tint of desperation. “Say you will.”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh… Where are you going?”

“To ensure this doesn’t happen anymore.”

“Then I’ll be strong like you said. I’ll become strong enough to take a spirit by the throat and show them what they’ve done. And I’ll make them all regret it…”

As the Kotters embroiled themselves in deep sorrow and regret. The two children, Kayleb and Krisa, slept soundly, temporarily alone and not at the same time. In their home, stood a lone statue. It was expertly carved with the unimaginable beauty of pure titanium. One of the rarest of Selplian metals, said to have come from the lifeblood of Selpil’s heart. It would never break or crack, and it would shine like still candlelight even in the blackest of nights.

The image was of a mother. She walked, tied by sharp constraints of white, nearly glowing chains wrapped around her neck, her waist, her hands, her feet, her eyes, and her mouth. The chain pulled her straight down to the depths of the earth, where her god lay. The face was thin and weak, marked only by a single teardrop running from the left eye. Clothed in rags with all her riches held in two chained hands. An egg. Its oblong shape was perfectly smooth and glistening without a dent or imperfection.

The statue stood in the bedroom where the faceless woman once lay. It watched over her bed. It was watching as she lay to her final sleep. It was the last lump of beauty created by the dying.

Through the pain and toil surrounding her. She could not see. She could only feel. The blindness. The deafness. The disorientation without proper thought or mental reprieve. It was empty. But emptiness can be a boon. It can leave room for hope, for love, and for all things perfect. But emptiness cannot be filled without first a dream. One is irrelevant without the other.

The Mother was always the dreamer, and the builder was her child—Her precious hands that would shape the world.

—

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is Ulysses Simon. This story has been building inside me for a very long time, and it's taken a lot of mental effort for me to share it with you. I'm very glad I was able to take this big step in showing others my work. And it elates me that anyone would take the time to read it. So from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for reading Archas Knights and hope you stick around for this very emotional journey.