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They cut his hair,
and strung him up by his ankles.
The air is thick with the smell of blood,
cedar wood, must,
and an oncoming storm.
I listen to them speak;
I look into his eyes—
cold where there once was warmth.
Vacant spaces
the color of dirt soaked by cleansing rain,
pierced by sunshine and yellow wildflowers.
My ribs feel empty, but they ache,
like they have been torn open.
Where my heart should be,
there is only hollow dark,
and where tears should fall,
my cheeks are dry.
How badly I want to cut him down, to mourn,
but my hand is stayed.
“We ride together,” they say.
“We ride to Bravil, to our Mother,
who will rebuild us.”
I feel that I am an orphan,
now.
This is a pointless journey.
We ride through the rain.
The others insist that we stop, to rest,
but I refuse,
and we ride together.
Every waking moment is spent on horseback,
obsessing over what I will do to Mathieu Bellamont,
exactly how I will cut the traitor open,
how he will beg for his life.
Every waking moment is spent imagining my Mother,
my dear Mother,
in flames,
burning down the Brotherhood,
and everything it stands for.
The tomb is silent, and cold;
our footsteps echo.
I am chilled to the bone,
my blood is near frozen in my veins—
whether from the rain that has seeped beneath my armor
or the involuntary awe that courses through me at the sight of the sarcophagus
(iron, gold, engraved with all of the familiar depictions of the Void and the willing, loving servants of Sithis),
my famed Mother,
I do not know.
All I can think of is how
I will never bury him in a place like this,
in a crypt,
man-made of unforgiving stone.
After it is all over,
fresh blood stains the floor of the sepulcher.
I stand over all of the dead,
some killed by the hand of the traitor,
others by my own.
Does that make me a traitor as well?
The only sounds are my own breathing,
heavy and uneven,
and my blade clattering on the stone as it falls from my grip.
The energy drains from me all at once;
my knees buckle and I fall.
Beneath me, the rock is stained red.
I can barely focus on what my Mother says to me;
I am falling, unwilling, into dark.
She wants me to run the Brotherhood,
to bend to Her requests,
to kill who She likes,
to hear Her voice.
I hand responsibility to Arquen without a second thought.
I leave the tomb,
I leave Bravil;
I will never return.
I cannot think,
I cannot feel,
until I have returned to Applewatch.
I do not stop in any city,
but camp at the side of the road, in the dark,
with no fire to warm me and no dreams for reprieve.
Suffering is all I know how to do.
My hands, still, are stained red with the blood of my once-brothers,
and the armor I wear still bears the insignia of the Brotherhood,
of my ‘family’—
the barely visible handprint in black.
When I arrive, the sun is shining,
cold, wintery, silver light,
though it warms the grass nonetheless.
He is there,
in the center of the old, faded barn.
It smells of his death.
All while I am cutting the rope,
cutting his hair to a straight edge
(his once long, beautiful hair),
washing the blood away with lavender water,
a smell so strong it eases the scent of rot,
and his smell,
of clove cigars and mint,
I sob.
There are not always tears,
but dry, heaving breaths,
sounds that I am not even sure if I am making,
that don’t sound human.
I bury him on the hill beside the farmhouse,
in soft, dark earth.
He is dressed not in the black robes of his order,
but in plain clothes,
symbolic of the life I knew he sometimes dreamed to have.
I mark his grave with a wooden stake,
where I decide I will one day plant an apple tree.
Time turns gaping wounds into scars.
I plant the tree, his tree,
and carve into it an epitaph.
I restore Applewatch from its ashes,
what he had told me he would have liked to do.
I name it after him.
Though I have planted an entire thriving orchard,
I only pick apples from his tree.
At first, the thought of them made me nauseous,
but now they are essential to every meal.
I never find another love, but I have children—
runaways, orphans,
children filled and aching with vengeance,
seeking the Brotherhood for a way out of their miserable lives.
I know that his fate will not be their fate.
I save them anyway.
I teach them the way of gardening,
of working with their hands,
planting seeds,
nurturing life.
I turn angry souls into kind ones.
Pain is healthy,
knowing that I can still feel it,
that I have not become numb.
Sometimes, still, I burn cigars not to smoke,
but to remind myself of him.
At least once every year, I cry.
It is like a memorial, a funeral,
a celebration of him.
I mourn him always.
Time turns gaping wounds into scars, and scars sometimes heal.