“It’s not something you did or saidnow,but the way you treat her sometimes. I think you forget she is a child.” Freyah let out a sigh. “She spent the whole day by herself in this cabin before she met you downtown, Alissa. I came by whenever I could to see if she was okay, but she shouldn’t be alone for this long at such a young age.”
Alissa sat down. She leaned her elbow against the cold wood, her fingers digging into her own hair. “I know, Freyah. Do you think I enjoy leaving her here for hours alone?” she asked. “If I don’t go out hunting every day, we will starve! I don’t know if it’s because of the wall, but hunting becomes more difficult every year. The only thing I got today was a stupid rabbit Mr. Namir refused to pay me for.” Alissa’s breath hitched. The struggle to feed her child was a weight too heavy for her shoulders to bear on her own.
“I am all she has, Freyah, and if I don’t do this, she won’t have food on her plate the next day. I don’t know what else you expect from me.”
Freyah reached out to hold her friend’s hand. “You have my parents and me. You know we are here for both of you. All I’m saying is that someday, you will regret not having spent this timewith her, Lissa. Children grow up fast, and before you know it, she won’t be the same little girl anymore.”
Alissa released her friend’s grip from her hands. “I think I know how to raise my own child, Freyah. I don’t need your advice.”
“I only want for you two to be happy, Alissa. And I know you haven’t been for such a long time, you don’t even remember what it feels like. I know your life is tough, my friend, but sometimes I think you unconsciously make it harder. You can’t keep living a life where all you do is wake up, kill, sleep, and repeat.”
Alissa didn’t say anything; instead, she opened the door of the cabin, an invitation for Freyah to leave.
Her friend chuckled and shook her head. Freyah left the cookies for Dhalia on the counter and walked to the door.
“Someday, all this stubbornness will be the death of us, Alissa.”
Alissa awoke to the sound of the siren, one as familiar to her as the singing of the nightingale that visited her windowsill every dawn without fail. She opened her eyes, still adjusting to the light of her room, startled by the little shadow standing by her bedside. Dhalia’s big brown eyes, wide and bright with fear, were the only part of her face illuminated by the daylight invading the cabin through the small window of her room.
“It happened again,” Dhalia whispered with a heavy breath.
Alissa could sense the unease in her voice.
“I know, sweetheart. Are you okay?” Alissa pulled her daughter onto her lap to comfort her. She kissed her cheeks and swiped the sweat off her small forehead.
Dhalia’s hand trembled in anxiety.
The days when the siren rang were never easy. Although Alissa had heard the siren countless times since she could remember, she still mourned it the same every time. However, since Dhalia was born, the siren days felt terribly worse. Dealing with the constant reminder of death would be hard for any adult; imagine how it felt for a child.
Dhalia, however, didn’t answer Alissa’s question. “Who do you think it was this time?” she asked her mom.
And although Alissa had known for six months that the kind gentleman who owned a shop two streets down from her cabin was the victim, she replied, “I don’t know, honey. We’d better get ready and head downtown for the service.”
Alissa wore an all-black outfit, a simple tunic paired with dark trousers and polished boots. Her cloak hung quietly at her shoulders. Her light-brown hair was braided, and her boots were muddy from her walk back home on the previous rainy evening. Dhalia also wore black, as was tradition every siren day. Her plain, long-sleeved dress was twice her size, and the corner of Alissa’s lips twitched up almost unnoticeably to see how it draped off her.
It was the only one Alissa could afford to give her daughter. It would be the one she would wear for as long as it fit her. The luxury of owning more than seven different pieces of clothing each was one Alissa had learned to accept she would never have.
Alissa and Dhalia walked to the service hand in hand, their heads nodding in greeting to the neighbors who did the same mournful walk to the cemetery.
She would never get used to the heavy atmosphere that took over the town on those days, to seeing her neighbors’ swollen red eyes and desperate sobs. She would never bear the silence that took over the town on those dreadful marches, how the only thing that broke the quiet were the screams when people learnedwho had been afflicted by Senectus this time. The city seemed drained of color, its streets dotted with mourners dressed in black. And still, when the day was over, they would all go back to living their lives as if nothing had ever happened.
Alissa always wondered if the community acted with such detachment, with the belief that if they simply kept going, the evil would forget to curse the next of them, or if it was a desperate craving for the slightest sense of normalcy before they had to take the same walk down the cemetery six months from then.
She glanced into the open coffin, at the sweet man who sold her spices and grains lying inside. His eyes closed for eternity.
Mr. Monlard was only forty-five years old. He was the brightest man she had ever met. He still had many years left to live before old age could frail his bones and his mind, but while she stared at the coffin, she noticed his hair had gone completely white since she saw him thirty-six hours before. The deep wrinkles around his eyes, which anyone would think had been formed by decades of smiling, and the pronounced lines on his forehead weren’t there only two days before.
His skin, once firm and unblemished, had sagged and was covered with little dark spots. Alissa watched Mrs. Monlard bent over the coffin, sobbing over the death of her husband, not even the ghost of the smile she had seen the day before on those same lips remained. Their son, who was only two years older than Alissa, held his mother by the waist. His support was the only thing keeping her standing. The young man’s semblance was vacant, but the way his body shuddered demonstrated he needed all his strength not to collapse with her.
Senectus Subita—that was what they called it, the evil that had plagued the people of Bryniard for generations. The name, meaningsudden aging, was no coincidence. For everyone in Bryniard, the symptoms arrived with a twenty-four-hourwarning. But for Alissa, it was different. She could still see the faint glow, flowing with black and white threads, surrounding Mr. Monlard’s body, even as he lay in the coffin, lifeless.
The glow that warnedher—and onlyher—of upcoming death was still there.
Alissa could still remember how, as a child, she would ask her mother why people were suddenly glowing. Mrs. Kriegen never understood it, nor had anyone Alissa ever asked. Eventually, she stopped asking. Feeling misunderstood and judged by those she had ever dared ask made her realize that people simply couldn’t see it the way she did.
As she grew up and those that glowed died one after the other, she finally understood it to be a warning, a sign. As if their souls knew life was fading away, drifting from their fingers before their bodies could ever comprehend.
That was how she knew Mr. Monlard would be the one the siren rang about that morning. She had seen him glow every day for the past six months. She had seen the threads encircle him since the last service happened half a year ago.