“It’ll take a right few grain falls, is all,” insisted the pile of clothes. “Now come here. That’s right. Hold it to the fire so I can see what yer suffering.”
I suffer more than what’s on my hand, thought Larkyra as the woman inspected her finger.
“This will burn, no doubt, but we gots to stop the bleeding.” The woman took a flat piece of metal from her small fire. Larkyra swallowed her hiss of pain as it was pressed to her severed finger. The scent of her burning flesh filled her nose, and a wave of faintness dizzied her surroundings for a moment. “There ya go. Worse part is over, pigeon, and ya took that better than most around here.”
Because I’ve taken a lot worse, thought Larkyra, tiredness weighing down her shoulders.
Today had not been a good day.
“I hope it was worth it,” tutted the woman as she set to work. “I know mine was.” Yellow teeth grinned at Larkyra as she displayed her missing pinkie. It was an old wound. Perhaps as old as the old lady. “Was the biggest pearl I ever saw,” recalled the woman. “And my stone of birth too.” She held out her hand as though she could still see the very jewel on her finger.
Larkyra smiled weakly.
“It really were a pretty ring,” continued the woman. “But I suppose so were my hands. Pretty things never do last. Best ya remember that, pigeon.”
Larkyra nodded, feeling a slip of calm settle into her tightly wound muscles, listening to her companion as she cleaned and wrapped her hand. Or did the best she could with collected rainwater and rags cut from her own worn clothes.
“There, as good as new,” said the woman as Larkyra held up her gauzed finger.
Despite her emotions, Larkyra forced every bit of restraint and poise she had into her next actions. Forced down her recent frustrations to remember all she had been taught in controlling her gifts. Keep steady, she commanded her magic as she breathed in and breathed out. Larkyra did all this so she could say two words: “Thank you.”
The old woman nodded as she sat back into her pile. When she closed her eyes, it was as if she were no longer there.
Larkyra made her way into the darker section of Huddle Row. Where pockets of shadow went from being cut with pricks of firelight to solid forms. Only the crescent moon above faintly lit the crouched bodies who muttered their thoughts against walls.
Here was where Larkyra found an empty alley, not even the moon’s light daring to creep toward the back, which was filled with damp garbage. Sliding to the ground, the cool stone a relief along her back, Larkyra curled herself around her injured hand.
She was finally alone.
And with this knowledge Larkyra allowed herself to make the smallest sound.
A sound that turned into a sob.
Yellow tendrils of her magic seeped from her, unchecked, as Larkyra cried in hiccuped gasps. Not for her missing finger, however. She still had nine others, after all, and knew there were souls far worse off than she.
No, Larkyra cried for every time she could not. For all the moments, and there were many, when she had to remain silent, quiet, controlled, happy, when she otherwise felt sad. She cried for the nineteen years of attempting to be good. Or rather, better than she had been. Larkyra cried because it was safer than to scream.
And it wasn’t until sleep took her that she stopped.
In the morning Larkyra would find the rats. The only creatures she had not thought of as she had sat alone in her alley. All sliced open, as though her ribbons of tears had been knives instead.
Larkyra found herself in a decidedly better mood three days later.
Not that she ever lingered long in melancholy.
But today was a special day. For after a month of living as she had, her Lierenfast was over! Or would be as soon as she reached home.
Plus, it was her birthday.
With a quiet melody in her head, Larkyra made her way from the lower quarters toward the outer rings of the city. As she walked the thin, packed lanes, sweat slipped down her neck as the humid air pressed against her. Summers were always intolerable in Jabari, but Larkyra found them especially so here, where the sun crept high in the early morning, baking the russet stone streets that barely a breeze dared enter.
As she turned a corner, the sweet scent of carts selling rice squares filled the air, as did the low murmurs and raspy coughs of residents living tightly, intimately together. Larkyra had become well acquainted with this part of the city, as she was meant to. And despite the hardships she had encountered, she found she would miss it. The lower quarters reminded her of sections of another city, very far from here, that she called home.
Gently scratching the bandage on her finger, the throbbing pain a continuous companion, Larkyra shifted in her well-worn clothes. What had started as a plain but pristine outfit of tunic and trousers had withered into a mess of splotchy strings grasping thinner threads in a desperate attempt to keep her modesty intact. Not that there was much to gawk at. Larkyra had always been the skinny one beside her two sisters. The frail bird no amount of pecking could plump, as Niya liked to say.
The thought of her redheaded older sister brought a wide smile to Larkyra’s lips.
The first since she had lost her finger.
Oh, how I can’t wait to be home, thought Larkyra brightly as she quickened her steps.
That was, until a wet, warm ooze squeezed between her toes. Glancing down, Larkyra found she had walked through a pile of horse droppings.
For a moment all she did was stand there, staring at her sandals, which were already on their last pace, now covered in manure.
And then she began to laugh.
With her magic a slumbering beast in her belly, the sound was free to float, harmless in the wind, a thrumming of hummingbirds. More than one passerby glanced at her as though her mind had flown away with them.
But nothing was going to impede Larkyra’s happiness this day. “I’m going home,” she said to no one in particular, doing a little jig on the pliable mound. Squish. Squash. “And when I do, I will go straight to Niya’s room and lie on her bed, under the covers. Or better yet, wrong way round, so my feet rest on her pillow.” Another twinkling laugh burst from Larkyra at the thought, and she continued on.
Her mind was bubbling with such glee that she momentarily forgot how she must smell and look and the fact that one of her hands had four fingers rather than five.
She was going home!
As she crossed a small bridge that led to the last ring of the lower quarters, a commotion brought Larkyra to glance down a side alley.
A group of people who looked a lot like her was surrounding a man who looked nothing like any of them. His well-sewn clothes gleamed with a higher standard of living, and his boots were waxed to shine with a glint that matched the sword in his hand.
While he was armed, he was surely outnumbered, and the crude shivs and iron-spiked balls resting in his opponents’ grips didn’t help matters.
Now, normally those who lived in the lowers learned to pay no mind to scuffles like these. Survival was not just for the strong but also for those who kept their noses clear from others’ troubles. But Larkyra was not “normally” anything, and the pang of empathy she felt in her chest at seeing anyone cornered pulled her into the alley.
“I do not want to fight,” said the man, his accent thick with well-bred education.
“Thens don’t.” One of the street dwellers, his shoulders broad enough for two men, smiled. “Hands over whats you’ves gots in yer pouch—”