A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,131

once.

A question hovered on his lips – the question – grim and hesitant. I did not have the heart to answer it, though, and so I retreated into my bowed canopy and spoke of another;

"See to Victoria," I said, for she lay a ways away, toppled from the hillock. She could have any number of injuries as well, but surely nothing that compared to breaking a pillar's fall, and I did not have it in me to flit from Ombri's side so inconsequentially.

Tanen responded and found his way around the mound, locating Victoria in the mess and going to her side, and, left to it, I sank back into my grieving. He said something, a moment later, but I wasn't of a mind to note what. The tone was positive, however, suggesting Victoria was going to be fine.

Then Tanen was ascending my pile again, looking down at us where I was folded into a vigil on Ombri's behalf.

"Is she...dead?" he inquired gently, a shard of empathy lodged in his voice. And he was moving closer, crouching at her feet for a closer assessment.

I surprised even myself with the vehement reaction that struck out from my inner self, then, screeching at him, "Don't touch her!". I pulled her farther into my lap, assuming a more protective stance, awkwardly crowding closer over her as if I could shield her from him. "Get away!"

He froze, taken aback, his eyes flashing in quizzical surprise to mine.

Mine had turned furious.

"Vant..." he said uncertainly, but ruefully – evidently assuming my strong reaction was some product of denial, of not wanting the bubble of my little denial-fantasy popped, not wanting another to intrude and shed light on the truth or take her away. But he didn't understand. Not by a long shot.

"Don't,” I insisted hoarsely. Raw pain and blame coursed through me as surely as the blood that ran hot in my veins. "This happened because of people like YOU!"

The accusation dripped with conviction, fierce and pain-filled and tragically enlightening. He stared at me, there on his knees in the rubble, and a look of confusion and caution passed through his gaze.

"What?" he asked quietly, not understanding, and it was then that I couldn't hold it in any longer.

F o r t y –

Matters of Higher Justice

“That's why the mischief is here, Tanen. Don't you see?” Of course he didn't, but in that moment I felt as though he should. “It's blamed on the darkskins, because it coincided with their arrival in these lands – and it's true; they brought the disease. But they brought only the conventional illness. The kind of thing that passes from person to person. There's another side of the story.”

He stared at me, where he had risen to his feet, a grave and guarded look on his face as I delved into what I knew at last. And I stared up from my place in the rubble, Ombri's lifeless head in my lap, and told him.

“It would have devastated as any disease, had it been given the chance,” I admitted. “But it wasn't. It wasn't given the chance. Because those darkskins – all darkskins – were shunned from the circles of the Darathians. Enslaved and given a wide berth, avoided like the plague for their inferiority. So what do you think was left for the disease to infect? The land. The houses. The country itself. This cruel, godforsaken country of barbaric hosts and hostesses.”

A cool wind washed in from the fields, stirring over the rubble. And Ombri, dear Ombri, grew ever colder there against me on that ground. Tanen's hair stirred over his eyes.

“Refugees, Tanen. Enslaved and tortured. What god wouldn't be angry with a people who demonstrated such unwarranted hostility toward another faction of equally god-breathed children? And one in need. Where they sought refuge they were punished. Granted hell instead of haven. The gods are angry with Darath. And so justice is playing out in the most poetic and chilling of ways. The Masters have quarantined themselves on their superior pedestals, but this land is dying. The mischief, the strangeness... It's all symptoms. Symptoms of destruction that are bringing everything the white man has built to its knees around him. Many, so very many of them, are becoming casualties to the turmoil. Countless more whiteskins than dark have been the victims of this age. The tables are turning. This strange disease will wreak havoc, catching the white man where he thought he had risen above other things on this earth,