2 – A Father’s Love. A Mother’s Death.

Despite our best efforts to lay down more protective magic, the threat returned the next season, then the next, and the next. Each time, the effects grew more serious. The rains dried up, and it became cold. Disease spread among the animals. The nights grew darker and longer. My mother began to lose grip of her sanity, panicking at even the smallest disturbance in the night.

It was on the night that the fourth body slammed against our door that marked the end of the terror. My mother screamed at the loud slam against our front door. Father pulled us both into him, trying in vain to calm my mother as she went into hysteria. He slowly eased his arms from us, crossing one foot in front of the other as he silently crept to the door of our bedroom. He looked around the corner to the front door and continued his movement, inching toward it. Though Mother was sobbing and shaking, I slid out of her grip and went after Father.

The air grew heavy, and it became harder to breathe. the animals of the village cried out, both for fear and for warning. The darkness, which masked everything outside our cottage, somehow got darker, as if the nothingness itself could mask even sound: the animals in the village, the wind, even my mother’s sobbing. Yet somehow the sound of my father’s hand on the doorknob echoed through the air and into my ears. Just the soft brushing of skin against the smooth glass knob. My father tugged at the door. When his strong tug didn’t budge the door, he put his other hand on the knob and pulled hard toward him.

The door swung open, revealing the body of a young boy pinned to the other side with a spear. My father couldn’t hold his stoic demeanor, and tears rushed down his cheeks. It was an Arash child. Not from our village, but definitely Arash. Strong, unruly curls were weighed down by mud, and dark black eyes were hazy and lifeless, but nothing could hide the spirit that was still trapped within.

After a moment of surprise, I stepped closer to look, noticing the odd texture of the spear. It was made of paper.

Father calmed himself with a deep breath before pulling the scroll of paper from the boy’s back. He held the body lovingly, pulled him close, and sang quietly. The melody reached me, and I took a deep breath before joining. I couldn’t hear anyone else, yet I could feel others singing with me. Together, we lifted our voices in a collective spell to free the boy’s spirit from its prison.

But it was in vain. The flesh began to melt, and my father lost his grip. The body hit the hard earth and pieces cracked as if it was made of glass. Those pieces shattered, spewing crystalline flesh toward us. Father turned away and threw his body over me all at once. By the time we looked back, the body was dust. Each particle now trapped an infinitesimally small piece of the boy’s soul, never to be released.

Father turned toward me, eyebrows drawn tightly down in both anger and sadness, and clutched the scroll in his fist. His eyes lingered on mine before he cringed at the sound of Mother’s screech, back to haunt us. He opened the scroll and read it calmly. And then, with one deep, desperate breath, he stormed into his study.

I rushed after him, ignoring Mother’s arms reaching for me.

“Father,” I called as I entered the room. He was reciting a spell as he pulled out the enchanted paper. “What do we do now?”

He didn’t respond, and I couldn’t blame him. What was there to say? I looked over his shoulder at the words which signaled his surrender.

“So, you’re going?” I asked.

“I no longer have a choice,” he said. “If the Devil wants a Sanctuary built with Arash magic, it will have it.” He swallowed back as my mother’s cries lingered in the air. “But it won’t end this way. Our people will not be slaughtered any longer.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked again.

“You’re going to stay here and protect your mother until the Devil’s Sanctuary is built. I plan to destroy it from the inside.”

He turned to me and put a hand on each of my arms. He looked deeply into my eyes, making sure that I wasn’t daydreaming or avoiding the truth that he needed to say. But I was in the moment, fully immersed in his eyes and his words.

“This is going to be hard for you to understand right now,” he said, “but there is far more powerful magic than what we practice today. The ancient Arash magic can destroy the Devil. That’s why it’s afraid of us. And I know that a creature such as it, with its pride and haughtiness, most likely collects the ancient texts. I am going to learn what I need to know and trap the Devil in its own refuge.”

He was right. I did not understand. But I understood the seriousness and pain in his voice, and I knew what I needed to do.

Within two weeks, he was gone. On the day he left, Mother was inconsolable. She grabbed at him, whispered to him, clung to him. But he had to go. Elder Alon and several of the other mothers sat with her as I went to say goodbye.

I promised to do my best to stay strong, to help Mother, and to learn as much as I could, but I was a child, barely nine years old. I didn’t understand how far gone Mother already was. If my father knew, he didn’t let on, and he left after giving me a gentle kiss, a strong smile, and an even stronger hug.

Mother prayed for hours every day and talked to herself for even longer. The elders took over my schooling, and I spent quite a bit of extra time listening to and learning from Elder Alon.

Ze told me about the day the Levashka attacked zir village. Ze claimed to remember seeing the Devil, eyes glowing red, speaking words that made zir ears bleed.

“What did it look like?” I asked.

“The most terrifying thing you can imagine,” ze said. “Just a man. An ordinary man.”

“What?” I asked. “But you said it’s a demon.”

“It is a demon. The Devil appeared as a man to woo the hearts of the Levashka. It took hard-earned peace that our peoples had worked for over thousands of years and squeezed out any suspicions and mistrust that existed in their hearts. It held its hands over their eyes so that they focused on their doubts. And it spread those doubts until violence broke out.”

“But that’s not magic?”

“No. It’s primal. Magic is human. The primal power that creatures like the Devil have is very different. You’ve felt it when it sent its evil messages, right?”

I thought hard, tried to feel again what I had felt on those nights. I tried to hone in on how different it felt from the warmth of the lamps, the calm humming of parents to their children, and the songs that filled the air when workers tended the fields. It was like night and day. I wanted to understand it. Why was it different? I struggled and wrestled with my mind to find the words, but there were none.

“Yes, it’s different,” was all I could say.

“So you understand.”

“Yes,” I said.

“But it’s incomprehensible,” Elder Alon said.

“Yes,” I replied, more confused than when we started.

Conversations with the elders were often odd in this way. When I had questions, they pushed me to think hard. They rarely gave answers, and when they did, they were often muddy and vague. I often found myself wondering if they had the answers at all, or if they actually were hoping that I did. It was incredibly frustrating, but also a welcome distraction from home.

Home was devoid of love. Any hope that my mother had faded day by day until she was merely a shell of what she once had been. She slowly stopped doing her work, stopped eating, stopped speaking, and finally, after three long years, her body failed.

When I found her after my studies, her hair was suddenly ashen white and her eyes were open, as if struck by magic and anguish all at once. But I was not surprised or scared. I simply wiped a tear from my eye and went to tell the elders.

We sent word to Father about her funeral, not expecting anything. However, the day we put her in the ground, the sound of a lone horse echoed from a distance. I didn’t believe it at first. We hadn’t heard a word from Father since he left, and my mother and I had both considered that he may be dead. I rushed to the edge of the road, peering as hard as I could into the distance. I could see it, a horse. As if on cue, it sped up into a gallop. It was him. He was grinning widely. Just seeing him brought blubbering tears up from my belly and I ran as hard and fast as I could to meet him.

He barely came to a stop before jumping from the horse’s back and gathering me into his arms. We were both unable to find words as we lay kisses all over each other’s faces. I could barely breathe with the relief and sadness and wonder and terror of it all. We were joined by our people, who scolded him for not writing while holding and loving him dearly. When we were finally all satisfied, we made our way together to the cemetery that lay just outside of town.

A quiet ceremony surrounded Mother’s remains, and while everyone in the village attended, none could find words fitting such a horrible end. As some of our young men lowered her inch by inch down into her final resting place, my father clutched my hand. 

We each took a few shovelfuls of dirt and began covering her grave. Father sang his prayers rhythmically, but his words sent a chill through me. We stepped aside and began to walk back toward home. 

Father never looked back, as was our custom. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing back to watch each member of our community put a shovelful over my Mother’s grave. I suddenly understood how final death was. I would never feel my Mother’s stern grip, never hear her loving whispers, never smell her scented oils ever again.