When the light leaves Natasha’s eyes, the tumult around me vanishes. My heart, aching like a raw open wound, is ripped from my chest and replaced with something on fire. Something maddeningly hot. My whole body lights aflame.
I grip my sword.
I see blood. I feel it on me. The splash of it. The heat of it. But it is nothing compared to the burning inferno within.
Raiders fall at my feet. New Haven men join them. I kill without thought. Anyone in reach goes down to the grave. Isn’t it what we all deserve? Every one of us guilty—deserving of death. Except for Natasha. She didn’t deserve this.
Natasha.
I let out a roar. Deep and guttural, like a raging wildfire. The kind that tears free your very soul. Tears blind me, but I don’t need to see to kill. It is second nature. Since the very first day I woke up in this world.
I blink.
Before me is a man.
Ivan.
He has collapsed, his back against the bell tower’s balcony wall.
The red mist clears from my eyes. I don’t remember climbing any stairs, yet somehow, I am here above the battle. I don’t remember getting here.
The edge of my sword rests against Ivan’s throat, the tip drawing a trickle of blood. His eyes hold defeat. But not just defeat. I wasn’t the one who defeated him. Natasha did. The moment she died she took his fight from him. I can see it. He wants me to end him. He waits for it. Invites it. He knows what he did—knows his mistake. His hatred for me killed her, and he deserves to die.
I want to. I’m about to. I lift my sword.
You kill too easily.
I hear her voice clear as day in my head. The fire in my chest shrivels into a wisp of smoke. This is her brother. Her flesh and blood.
Then I see them. Tears in his eyes. Streaking down his face, lost in his beard.
Two of us, lonely men in this world built on strength. In one move, she broke us both. I take a step back. Then another. And another. I kill too easily. Why am I killing? Not for survival. Not for her. Just for myself. Taking what I can because I can. Because I want to.
But does it fix anything?
It doesn’t bring her back. In the end, I would be giving him what he wants. And hurting her memory in the process. Destroying the last of her blood on this earth.
She loved him.
But she loved me too.
And I love her.
I drop my swords and walk away. Leaving him to his broken world as I rejoin my own. I kneel before Natasha and stare. She looks happy and content, if not a little sad. Sad for us. For what could have been. For what we would have been.
I gently close her eyes with a trembling hand. I pick her up, carrying her like I once did when I saved her from Jol. Back then, her frail body clutched my shirt tight enough to keep the world from turning. Now, she is limp. Her head does not rest easily against my chest and her body feels cool against my skin.
I take a horse and ride with her cradled in my arms, taking her back to the place where she was happy. Where we were happy. To the cove. It’s a days journey, but it feels like forever. Or maybe like nothing at all. Time doesn’t seem real. Nothing seems real.
I set her on the sand. It is cold now where it once was warm. Winter has overtaken summer. Icy water laps across the shore and I hear her laugh as she plays with Little Wolf. The breeze stings my eyes.
Little Wolf whines beside me. He nudges her arm and then licks her fingers. Something about the sound of it—no, the sight of it—breaks me and I shout at him.
“Stop that! She’s gone!”
Little Wolf yelps and barks, backing up before breaking down into more whines, pacing some before lying down some distance away.
Everything is raw. Empty. In my chest is nothing at all. No heart. No soul. Nothing but disbelief.
I kneel before her body. Her porcelain white skin looks like a doll and her yellow hair tugs about in gusts of ocean wind. I take her hands and place them on her chest. Her fingers have already grown stiff.
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Her fingers.
I must protect these fingers at all costs.
I choke at the memory. My heart squeezes tight and my lungs forget how to work. My breath comes in jagged gasps. My hands tighten to fists. I bend over her, every muscle tight as a rubber band pulled thin, near snapping. Then I throw back my head and scream.
I scream until my insides boil over and my strength dries up. Until my lungs strain and give out. Until a trickle of blood appears in the palms of my fists beneath my nails. Until I have nothing left. Nothing but one thing.
Pain.
Pain remains. Unyielding. Merciless. Cruel.
How can anyone survive it?
Whatever happens to me it isn’t your fault. Life is unpredictable, death even more so. Don’t be angry about things beyond your control. You just have to accept them as they are, let go, and learn to move forward.
Move forward? How? This world, it takes and takes until you have nothing. And then it takes some more. Just when I imagined happiness might be within my reach, it gets snatched away—but not before giving me a taste of its deadly poison in return.
I rest my forehead against her shoulder, my hand burying itself into the sand beside her head as my chest heaves out whatever bit of soul remains inside me. I have no cure for this poison inside. I am alone. Now and forever.
I look up in the distance, at the cliff’s edge. It would be so easy. Just one step.
There may come a day when you think you cannot go on. Know on that day that I believe in you, Eli. You are not alone. When you reach those impossibly high walls in life, you must wait. Wait, and someone will come to take you through them.
Tears swell with the words. My sister’s words.
How long? How long must I wait for this pain to fade? Because it feels like it never will. It rips me open like a knife with every glance downward, and every intrusive memory, every passing moment tears me open a little more. I hear Natasha’s voice. Her laugh. See her eyes alight with a smile. The tug of her teasing lips and the curve of a dubious brow. The touch of her skin.
I wrench myself away from her body. I can’t make them leave—the memories. I can’t escape them. I fear they will kill me.
You must wait.
I stop.
I need to bury her.
I cling to the thought like a blind man clinging to the edge of a cliff. I can’t see where I go, up or down, but I can hold on. Even if it’s one second at a time.
And so, for one second after another, I cling. For one shovelful of dirt after another. For one intake of breath after another. For one blinking tear after another. Then I stare at the hole. It’s dark. So I fill it with flowers. Little white ones that look like stars called snowdrops. They bloom in late winter, pressing through snow and ice. A lot like her. Finding a way to bloom in the harshest of conditions.
I set her into it, wrapped in furs. Her golden hair frames her face. She looks peaceful. Happy. Asleep.
You never belonged with me. Or maybe you did, just not forever.
I bury her at the top of the cliffs, close to my sister’s tree. I don’t think she would mind, either of them. They would have gotten along well. Perhaps they do now.
Standing here at the base of her grave I can only stare. Her body now lies beneath six feet of earth and a pile of stones.
She is gone.
The sudden reality of it tightens my spent muscles. It quickens my heart. Fresh grief strains every fiber of my body against the truth.
Something soft and wet touches my wrist.
Little Wolf nudges his way beneath my hand, leaning against my leg. I frown. He’s touching me; he never does this. Not with me. Natasha was the one he would lean against. He slept with her, curled up in her lap or sprawled across her feet. The two were practically attached at the hip. But he’s never so much as let me pet him.
I crouch down and Little Wolf pushes his way into my chest. Before I register what’s happened, my fingers are buried in his fur, my face lost in the enormous animal’s black coat. I wrap my arms around him and slowly, a trickle of something finds its way into my emptiness.
I stay by her grave. Waiting. For what, I don’t know.
The sun sets and then rises and sets again. I’ve never seen a sunset so dull. Every day the sun dims. It no longer brings warmth. The nights are biting cold and the days are just…numb. Horribly numb. It’s like the world is dying.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I look over to see a dead rabbit laying there beside me. Little Wolf sits beside it, watching me with sad eyes. My stomach hurts, the hunger pains having appeared a couple days back. It’s nothing compared to the pain in my heart.
I eat. It’s all I can do. Eat. Sleep. And stare as the days change. I lose track of time. It means nothing after all. I have nowhere to go. No one to miss me and no one to miss. No one except one person but she’s already here.
My sleep is rare and comes in fits. But when I do sleep, I see her. It’s a special kind of hell. In my dreams she’s alive. Smiling. Laughing in my arms. I can touch her in my dreams, her soft hair sifts through my fingers and I touch my lips to her neck, kissing down toward her collarbone. She holds me close and I breath deep—
Then I wake to a world without her and my breath snags. With every breaking sun, I am ripped open anew like the dawn shredding back the night. Leaving me to grieve her all over again. In all my years, I’ve never known such cruelty as this. Sometimes I wonder if I’m losing my mind. It feels like I am. Like a part of me is fracturing. I wish so badly for those dreams to be the truth—wish for this world to be the lie.
The seasons change from winter to summer and back again in an endless cycle. At some point I start to wander. In this world of numbness, something about the earth beneath my feet reminds me I’m still here. I go into the woods without aim or care, but I always manage to find my way back to Natasha’s grave. It’s like my body can’t forget even if my mind tries to. Eventually, I take my horse. I thought for sure it would have left by now but it’s been here the whole time, wandering the woods. The slow, steady gate lulls my mind into a quiet place where I can be with her again. Even if it’s not really her. It’s all I have.
When I hear the scream I’m only five miles out from her grave. Maybe ten. It’s a woman’s scream—the desperate kind. Curling up at the edges and dragging out far too long to be filled with anything but pure terror.
She’s close. Maybe less than a mile away.
It can’t be her.
Even still, I turn my horse toward the source and I kick it into a gallop.
Author’s Note
Goodbye Eli sparked from a dream before being molded into the story that exists today. But long before that, I knew I wanted to write a story from the perspective of the hero’s friend—a side character. And not just any side character, but one which gives their life for our hero. Natasha is that. Eli is our main character. The journey and lesson was his all along and while this is the end of Natasha’s story, it is only the beginning of Eli’s.