Snow Heart (12 page)

Alric dropped the receiver and turned away from it like a child would do to someone who had stolen his favorite toy. He couldn’t stand the thought of her.

Why would she come now after all these years?

He took note that she hadn’t said the usual “I love you” as he’d seen other family members do with each other. In fact, through all the years of his life, only Aunty had ever said those three words. A pain in his heart shivered. Sailles hadn’t talked to Alric in over a decade and now she was coming to see him with a husband and daughter. It made him angry and disgusted.

Aunty was standing off to the side, shifting from one foot to the next. Her concerned expression explained something had happened. She slid her fingers through the strands of her hair, looking as innocent as possible.

“What?” Alric narrowed his eyes.

Aunty opened her mouth then stopped to smile.

Alric took a few daring steps forward in a way to show he wasn’t in the mood for games. His heart’s ache slowly faded as his mind focused on the new problem that arose. “Well?” his cold voice asked.

“Well,” Aunty said confidently, shrugging a shoulder. “Erika came and took Nieves. They’re planning on leaving to the city.”

The pain came again—Nieves was out of his control and out of his grasp. This bothered him more than his sister’s actions. In fact, it bothered him more than anything else had ever done. His parents abuse towards him was nothing compared to the empty space carving its way through his chest.

“Nieves,” he muttered as if hoping she would turn the corner to smile at him, and claiming it was all just a joke, but there was no sign of her.

†

“The city,” Nieves told her black shirt that she was now tucking into the luggage.

She’d slipped out of the kimono as soon as her clothes were in view. The kimono almost reminded her of someone but she pushed the thought aside. The idea of the city seemed to clutter all her being; a wall that was blocking out anything and everything else.

The gray spaghetti-strap shirt suited her well. The white skirt and the black leather jacket also felt like home again. She longed for the blackberry bushes outside of her grandparent’s house. She missed their smiles and the way they kissed her goodnight.

Nieves laughed, folding the rest of her clothes and stacking it inside the suitcase. She zipped it up after placing the few picture frames into its belly. The sight of her mother made her heart cramp.

“Mother,” Nieves whispered. “You’re so beautiful.” A tear slid down her cheek and splashed onto the luggage-frame. Angrily she wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “No use crying about it.”

Her bedroom door swung open. It slammed against the wall. Nieves jumped for her life, spinning around to see what had happened.

“Are you ready, yet?” asked Erika who was bitter about something which was the first time her sister had shown any form of emotion.

Nieves nodded her head and turned to her suitcase. She pulled it off the bed and rolled it to the door. “I’m ready.” Something about Erika had changed but she was still a lifeless shell. “Why are we leaving anyway?”

Erika didn’t reply. She left her little sister standing their confused.

“Alright then,” Nieves snobbishly replied in thought to her arrogant, snooty sister.

Erika grabbed her things and opened the front door then froze in mid-step. Nieves was too busy slipping into her shoes to notice the very irritated Alric in the doorway. She did happen to catch sight of the straw slip-ons—the ones he’d given her—which made her think of Alric.

The wall that blinded her earlier was now crashing into pieces. Alric. She couldn’t just leave without saying good-bye. “Sis,” Nieves blurted. “I think—” As she looked up her eyes caught hold of him gawking right at her. “Alric.”

His eyes moved from her to Erika who was still standing in the doorway. He was drenched from head to toe in rain water. His hair was flat upon his head, trailing down the side of his face—for once it didn’t look untamed.

“Excuse me,” Erika said emotionlessly. “We’re leaving.”

Alric’s body tightened with hate. “Like. Hell. You. Are.” His eyes narrowed as a snarl began to break from his lips.

Nieves lost hold of her luggage because she was leaping forward to hug Alric. Nieves’s grasp tightened around him. She could tell that his tense muscle relaxed. For some reason she calmed him inside.

“Erika and I are leaving to the city,” Nieves explained, pulling away from him. “I almost forgot to tell you but I remembered at the last minute. It’s good you came here so I could—”

“Erika?” Nieves looked at her confused. She’d just remembered the other person that had lived in that house—Erika’s husband. “Where’s Boris?”

Alric smirked, turning his head away. “I murdered him, of course.”

Nieves gasped. Her hands slid over her mouth as she tried to imagine it. Alric was cruel but she never thought he would sink so low as that. She wished Bartolemé was there to say “Oh. Boris is a Cursed-One. Alric can’t kill Cursed-Ones.” But there was no Bartolemé. There was just Alric and Erika.

Erika snatched hold of Alric’s arm—the same arm that was connected to the hand that had its hold on Nieves’s jacket. “Let my sister go. We are not staying here any longer.”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Alric replied. His eyes were becoming darker and his voice growing icy enough to make the air stale. “I own her. She is mine. She will remain here with me.”

Her head began to spin. Nieves wanted to pull away from them both. Her heart was being ripped apart—perfect halves that were being tossed onto the ground. “Stop it!” she screamed, feeling her lungs relax at the release of tension. “Just stop!”

Alric’s hold on Nieves loosened enough for her to pull away. She couldn’t stop herself as she ran out the door. The soggy woodened steps of the house felt like foam beneath her feet. Her legs wanted to go faster—faster until something happened. She wanted to run until she met the edge of the planet or until she met the edge of time. Nieves didn’t care where she was running to or what would happen when she got there but she knew she wasn’t going to look back.

Nieves had to get away from everything.

“Nieves!” Was that her sister or was that Alric calling out to her?

CHAPTER 16

Alric, in his rage, destroyed the shoji door of his bedroom. He’d swung it open too hard, snapping the wooden squares to pieces. Splintered wood crashed onto the floor, missing the confused and concerned Aunty by a hair.

Alric raised his hand and threw it about the air lifting objects and tossing them about, slamming them into walls: a vase, a chest of drawers, zabuton pillows…

He was just about to toss the meat-eating plant when it made him think of the one person he was trying his hardest to forget. He released a breath and crashed down onto his messy disarrayed bed.

She snatched hold of his upper arm and spun him until she could stare into his eyes. “You have to bring her back. You idiot, Wilhelm is out there. Since she’s not part of the family he’ll kill her.”

“It’s his night?” Alric asked.

Aunty was ready to slap him but he pushed her away.

“Why should I care?” barked Alric. “I was planning on killing her anyway!” He got to his feet and walked to the garden doors. “It’ll just be easier this way. If Wilhelm doesn’t kill her then I will.”

Aunty balled her fists. “You dumb-ass! She cares about you but… Ugh!”

Alric listened to her pounding feet as his aunt stomped out of the room. She stepped onto the broken shoji door then continued down the hall, grumbling and cursing under her breath. He didn’t mind at all. His aunt might want that girl back but he didn’t. Her presence was too much trouble.

“To think she was so concerned about you.”

Alric stared into the rock stained with a strange brown—the very rock Nieves had hit her head upon while trying to escape him the last time. The blood had dried up on her clothes, forcing him to find her a kimono. He had to admit it: he enjoyed picking out the perfect outfit for her.

He enjoyed the look of awe when he showed her the strange plant in the center of kontatsu table. She asked him, “Alric, tell me why you won’t let me go.” In all honesty he enjoyed her presence yet he hated her because she was so happy and so alive. He hated her because he was jealous. He hated her because he loved her. He loved her because she made his heart leap at the idea of a companion who wasn’t afraid of him.

“Tell me what I should do,” Alric said lowly.

Zeit gave a soft laugh too demonic to belong to any mortal person with a soul. His amusement was sickly and tainted that no one could understand him. “Go and find her, what else?”

“How do you know this? How do you know she cares?”

Zeit smirked. “I know everything that goes on around me.” He gave a laugh, throwing his head back. “Also, I eavesdrop on people’s conversations—sometimes on accident. I was sitting on the roof when Rusuto was talking to the girl.”

Alric took down a breath of air—he couldn’t believe what he was considering.

“She cried,” Zeit said, letting his lips widen into a smirk. “Cried for hours.” He remembered the sound and how it had excited him. He wished to hear the sound again if Alric would allow it.

Alric walked out onto the porch. “Enough. Your words are giving me a headache.” With elegant grace Alric made his way down the steps and into the rock garden. “I’ll find her.” He closed his eyes tight. The air around him froze in its place. The droplets of rain wavered upon the air stuck and unable to fall any further. A wind slithered around Alric’s neck, lifting his black as coal hair.

His eyes flew open to pitch black darkness. Arms, a thousand of them, reached out between the rods of bamboo among the forest. They flew faster, searching and expanding their search until they found it—bodies of unmoved bones that lay beneath the moistened earth. Their fingers wrapped around those buried bones just enough to move them from their awkward place.

Alric took down a breath letting the air fill not only his lungs but the lungs of those things beneath the ground. The bones creaked at the touch of oxygen, the touch of a heartbeat in their chest.

The ground moaned under the pressure—the movement within its womb.

The thousands of arms pulled and pried bone after bone free. Pointed and jagged hands clawed their way out to find the bleak darkness of night. Few stars could be seen through the mass entanglement of bamboo leaves above. Not even the moon’s light could reach the beings where they were forming.

Their bodies were composed of nothing but bone and few pieces of flesh that hung like vines to a tree. The creatures moved with impatience, snarling and howling lowly at the feel of life yet again swimming in their bodies. They were restless like horses ready to race the fields and test out their strength.

He simply blinked and Alric could view the forest. He looked out through their eyes and examined from one creature to the next the widespread area. Nothing—not a single sign of Nieves.

One of the creatures raised its head and sniffed heavily of the air around him.

Alric took in the information and recognized the scent. It was the same scent he had woken up to the day she’d been sleeping next to him. It was the scent of something indescribably beautiful.

“Nieves,” Alric told the beings. “Find her.”

The being that sniffed the air howled out the command to its companions—staking itself the leader of the bunch. It leapt forward, its bones bending like liquid and twisting in ways no humans could do. It was an acrobat while racing, leaping and jumping against the poles of bamboo.

†

Nieves fell against the trunk of the tree and slid down onto the moist, wet ground. Her body shivered from the cold, her clothes wet with rain. She was sure to catch a fever if she stayed out there any longer.

Her hands covered her face as the shock began to leak through. Erika hadn’t called out to her. No it had been Alric who called for her to return. She couldn’t imagine the coldness of her older sister to lead to such extremes. Had Erika really lost her heart? Had she really forgotten about Nieves?

“I’m so tired,” Nieves muttered to her hands. “So tired. I just want to d…” She shook her head telling herself everything would be alright in the end. There was no reason to whine about things.

She was just about to remember the soothing words of her grandmother when a twig snapped. It echoed up into the branches of the trees, shaking the few leaves that remained. Another twig snapped, this time closer.

Nieves gasped, dropping her hands to her mouth to shove back the scream into her throat. “Shush,” she told herself. “Just keep quiet.”

Across from her, past ten trees stood a black shadowy figure upon four legs. Nieves sighed, smiling weakly. “Sneeuwbal,” she said, almost trying to see if it were really him. The creature took a step forward allowing Nieves to see its bone-thin legs. The small amount of moonlight dappled its clean white ribs.

Nieves narrowed her eyes—believing surly her mind was tired and only playing tricks on her.

A low growl came from beside her; she turned her head jaggedly to find Sneeuwbal at her side. “If…” Her eyes moved to the creature in the forest. “Then… what’s that?”

Sneeuwbal lowered his head, snarling and snapping his jaws. His teeth clashed together to threaten whatever it was to back away. But it didn’t. The creature advanced forward, body as elegant and fluent as water moving over rocks. Its shoulders rocked back and forth, slowly to let Nieves know she didn’t have a chance to escape. No matter how hard she ran, it would catch her in the end.