Pretending she didn’t know of his imminent end killed her inside. Interacting with him and his family for that long, knowing his death was close and not being able to help him, broke her soul. She lost a little of herself every time she had to pretend again with someone new. Alissa sometimes believed this was the doing of some twisted force that found it amusing to warn her of the next victim as soon as the last one was buried, not even allowing her a single moment without the premonition of death.
Now, as she peered around to see all the faces of people she knew and cared about, those who had been her community when she was young and alone with a baby in her arms, people who were like family to her, she feared for the next one to be proclaimed a victim. It was extremely hard to accept the fact thatthey were all destined to die one after the other, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Alissa closed her eyes as they covered the last of Mr. Monlard’s coffin with dirt. This was always the moment she dreaded the most, the suspense, the tension before finding out who would be the next of them to die.
She was afraid to open them again and see someone else glow. She wished she could never open her eyes, never have a glimpse of the black and white sparkling threads. A sight so beautiful that had she never known its meaning, she would have considered it good fortune.
She took a deep breath, gathering the courage she needed to open her eyes again.
For a moment, when her gaze drifted through the crowd frantically, all she saw was black attire and sorrowful faces. Believing the glow had faltered to curse them at least this one time, Alissa breathed in relief.
When Alissa glanced down to her right, her smile faded, replaced by terror.
She saw Dhalia, her brown eyes and golden hair fixed in tiny pigtails, her cheeks rosy and lips pursed, her oversized black dress, and the rag doll she carried in her arms.
She saw her loving, five-year-old daughter, embraced by black and white sparkling threads.
They resembled wires battling each other, the black for the death that was coming and the white for the life that was vanishing. These were the same threads that had haunted her entire life and, a moment ago, surrounded Mr. Monlard and took him to his grave. They flew around her small figure as if it claimed her every breath, her every heartbeat from that moment forward. They claimed Dhalia’s life as their own, and there was nothing Alissa could do but feel like by claiming her daughter’s life, the evil would be killing her, too.
Dhalia is going to die.
The realization of her daughter’s imminent death made Alissa’s knees falter. She fell to the ground, kneeling in front of her child in utter shock.
She grasped both of Dhalia’s shoulders with urgency, her wide eyes anxiously tracing her small body, her mouth agape with despair. Her hands moved frantically toward the sparkling threads that embraced her daughter’s body, trying to remove them by force, to take them for herself, to give her life in Dhalia’s place, to save the person she loved the most in the world. The one she would give her life and soul to keep safe.
But she failed to do that, again and again, while the threads danced around her hand, not surrendering to her grasp, mocking her endeavor, the agonizing hope of saving her child’s life.
Alissa only realized she was crying when she saw tears stream down, forming little puddles of mud. It was impossible to tell if Dhalia had been glowing in front of her for minutes or seconds as time and space seemed to freeze. In her mind, it had been an eternity since she had learned her daughter’s days in this world were numbered.
A knot formed in her stomach so tight that she brought her hand to her lips to prevent the precarious meal she’d had from having an encounter with the mud. Breathing became too difficult, as if the walls of Bryniard were suddenly closing on her, trapping Alissa in madness. She wrapped her arms around her girl in an attempt to ease her agony.
Blinking away her tears, she released Dhalia, holding her at arm’s length. Looking at her daughter for the first time since the world began to fall apart, Alissa saw fear in her eyes.
How is she also afraid? Does she know she is next?
When she looked around, the same look of fear and bewilderment sparked in her neighbors’ eyes. She realized thenthat all eyes assessed her as she knelt on the cemetery’s dirty ground, frantically shaking her daughter’s shoulders.
None of them could understand.
None of them could ever really fathom what Alissa felt when she gazed at Dhalia, and all she could see was the damn glow reminding her that her beautiful girl had only half a year left to live.
Dhalia’s broken whisper brought Alissa out of her frenzied state. “You’re scaring me, Mommy.”
Alissa’s eyes were filled with too many tears for her sight to be anything other than a mess of blurred images. Wiping them off her face, she kissed her daughter on the forehead and stood up to gather her composure. Making it look like she wasn’t falling apart on the inside and her heart hadn’t been broken into a thousand little pieces was the hardest part she’d ever had to play.
As her gaze darted around, she saw a widow, whose eyes were bloodshot, and a young man who struggled to remain standing after the loss of his father. She saw her neighbors’ wary glances give way to disapproving scowls.
At that moment, Alissa grasped how pathetic this scene must have looked to the rest of the people. They didn’t see a mother grieving when she cried in desperation. No, in their skeptical eyes, she was a hysterical woman wailing on the cemetery ground, while someone else had just buried their loving husband. Her cheeks tinged red, and she rubbed the palms of her hands on her trousers to get rid of the dampness that had settled there. Immersed in her own little whirlwind, she had forgotten about her surroundings and been inconsiderate of others’ grief.
But how could Alissa blame herself for reacting that way?
Taking a deep breath, she mouthed an apology to the widow.
Later.Later, you can crumble to your ending world.
Later. When you’re by yourself, and Dhalia won’t see you hurt.
Holding hands that were half the size of her own, she buried the pain and squeezed soft, small fingers tight to ease the devastating pain in her chest. She centered her focus on the fact that Dhalia was still there by her side, and all she could do was enjoy every second of her daughter’s presence while she still could.