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Adain kept walking, the Boy’s body sagging between us as we raced toward the tub that was near to overflowing.
“Should we take off–?” She cut off my sobbed question with a nod, gesturing again toward the tub.
Water splashed over the edge as we lowered him in, the tepid water soaking the front of my dress and shoes. He lay in there as though there was no life in him, his body limp and frail, his cloaked and covered face lolling over the side. I could only stand and cry, my heart exploding out of my chest as the water turned a color close to indigo. Everything in the world felt as though it was bleeding,
“Boy. Please be okay. Please…” I begged as Adain gasped and rushed into the other room.The Boy didn’t stir. Not that I would expect him to. It was just water. Water would not cure what my brother had ordered done to his back.
My brother.
The golden smiling prince.
The one person I thought would protect me. That cared for me.
He did this.
“Boy,” I sobbed, dropping to the side of the tub, reaching into the water that was barely above warm to grab his hand. “I’m so sorry. I never should have done that. Please come back. I didn’t even get to know your name. I… What can we do? What do we do?”
I yelled behind me as Adain rushed back into the room, book in hand. She held it out to me, the tiny volume open to the back pages. It took me only a second to recognize what she was holding. The Boy’s primer.
On one side was his stuttered writing, the careful words printed perfectly on the lines.
‘Is it so bad to love what you cannot have?’
On the other side, in a completely different script were written other words. Words I had never seen before. The looping handwriting was not his, the swirling letters and marks in a language I had never seen.
“What is this?” I asked, looking from the book to the Boy and back again. “What are you doing? We need to help him!”
Adain said nothing, just continued to shove the book with the confusing words before my face, gesturing from me, to the book, to her mouth.
“We need medicines! We need–” She cut off my sobs with the same gesture, her shaking hands holding the book only inches from my face.
“I don’t know what this says, I don’t know what you are asking.” I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t stop that hole in me from ripping open, all of the heat that was vibrating through my bones from exploding.
She made the motion again.
“I don’t know what you need. Ask me. Tell me. I know you can talk. He can talk... He...” Whatever I was about to say was cut off as she opened her mouth, revealing the hollow cavity and the stub of what remained of her tongue within. My stomach lurched as though it was trying to drop to my toes. Her tongue had been cut out. She wasn’t mute as I had thought, just as the Boy wasn’t mute. The Boy could talk, just as I was sure she had been able to before someone had cut out her tongue.
My stomach flipped, and again she gestured.
“You need me to say it?” I whispered through tears, finally piecing it together as she nodded, shoving the book against my chest.
“I don’t know what this says.” Not that it mattered. “How is this going to help him?”
She gestured again and, leaving the book in my hands as she removed his tunic, careful to leave the shroud over his face.
The heavy leathers fell off him as though they were made of paper, the leather armor thrown to the floor in ribbons, leaving him in what was left of a shirt. The stained fabric shifted and moved in the water, the large gashes revealing a strong chest lined with muscles and scars.
So many scars.
The marks of so many beatings, so many whippings.
My throat knotted at the long lines of white, the lifted skin crisscrossed everywhere, accented by two long angry lines of red that ran straight down his neck, right from those scars from his ears.
Adain made a sound like a moan, pulling my focus as she nodded frantically to the book. To the words that meant nothing to me.
But clearly meant everything to her.
My throat was dry as I stared at the beautiful script, the words gibberish as I tried to move my mind around them.
