Chapter Two: “The Snow Finds the Clod of Earth” — Part Ten
All of them wore similar smiles, all the same colour eyes, all watching me at once.
I wanted to run before Kai even had to tell me to.
“Her mother is currently occupied with the rest of us, so she’s unable to come.”
“…What does that mean?”
Neither sentence carried meaning I could actually grasp.
“It means exactly what it says, so anything further would only be more direct. Would you like to hear it plainly, guest?”
The words ended as a question, but before I could answer, the man continued anyway.
As if he wanted, more than anything, to tell me.
“Put delicately, all of us here have sexual relations with the woman who bore Kai.”
“…What.”
If there’s such a thing as being struck speechless, this was surely it. I found myself scanning every face in the room.
Every single one shared Kai’s eye colour, and for some reason that fact alone filled me with violent revulsion.
Every face smiling. At me.
My husband’s words finally surfaced in my memory.
The ones shut up inside the Chitaira mansion.
The ones you’d do well to have nothing to do with.
“Which is why none of us can determine which of us is Kai’s father.”
The men announced this revolting fact, smiling pleasantly.
I understood, in the worst possible way, what Kai had meant by saying there were no parents here. I finally understood why her voice had risen that day. I was beginning to grasp, in full, why she dreaded this house.
I spoke to the one man who still seemed to be operating in a language I could follow.
“Kai has clearly been the victim of violence. From people in this house.”
“Ah, Kai. Yes, Kai is certainly excluded by us.”
Us, us — what was it about that word, repeated like that, that felt so revolting.
“Why would you do that to her.”
I asked, knowing it was pointless. The man recited something that sounded like a meaningless incantation.
“Kai cannot merge with us. Among our pure lineage this is exceedingly rare. But rarity holds no value for us. Anything foreign to us, anything that isn’t us, is simply classified as inconsequential.”
“…………………………………”
All right, that’s enough, was about where I landed.
The idea of parenthood, the idea of abuse, none of it would translate into terms these people actually used. I understood that now.
These people were simply, plainly, wrong in the head.
Two minutes facing them and I felt close to losing my own grip on things. The men behind him said nothing at all, only smiled, and the absence of anything resembling a self behind those smiles was genuinely unsettling. And they seemed to be closing the distance between us by degrees. I put my hand on the armrest, ready to stand at any moment.
“So. What is it you intended to say to us about Kai?”
“Ah, that. …Never mind. I was wrong to come.”
A useful lesson, learning just how pointless what I’d intended to do really was.
I’d be taking my leave now.
Small running footsteps stopped outside the door, which was then kicked open hard.
Kai, school bag clutched to her chest, ran in breathless, eyes on nothing but me, and took my hand. Between ragged breaths she forced out a voice like packed snow gripped tight in a fist.
“Run.”
What came through Kai’s hand in that moment was raw desperation.
Manners, propriety, every constraint I’d been holding myself to, all of it fell away under the weight of that promise, and I was kicking the chair aside and running.
Two sets of footsteps, and immediately more joining behind.
A man came after us from the drawing room, his smile something purely physiological revulsion, reason entirely discarded. Not the one I’d been speaking to, but one who’d been standing closer to the door, closing the gap at full speed. Disgusting was the first honest thought that surfaced.
Should something like this even be allowed to exist. In the same town. In a house this beautiful.
And the instant his hand closed on my hair, something snapped faster than the hair itself.
A sharp jerk backward, then a sudden drop.
A keepsake on a shelf tilted, fell, and struck the man.
I’ll kill you, someone screamed, hard enough that the hinge of a jaw threatened to crack.
It was me.
And the man was rolling across the floor clutching his side. I had turned and kicked him as I spun around. It had landed cleanly, by some accident, the same way I’d once landed a kick on someone, long ago, and watched them writhe the same way.
Sweat broke out across my forehead and down my back all at once.
Don’t worry about him, Kai said, pulling at my hand, and I too abandoned every shred of common sense and ran. No one else followed; we made it straight to the entrance, guided by Kai.
At the entrance, our shoes were lined up neatly waiting. And the man who had greeted us was standing there too, somehow already ahead of us. He didn’t block our way, only stood off to the side.
“Ah, don’t worry. None of the rest of us intend to chase Kai.”
“What is wrong with you—” The man kicked Kai. What?
With a logic that no sane mind could connect to anything that came before it, he drove a kick into her stomach. Kai’s feet left the ground entirely, lifted into the air, and her back struck the floor hard. There was a delay before I understood what had happened, what was even happening, and in that delay the surge of blood was too much, and something at my temple split with an audible sound.
Why he’d kicked her, what it could possibly mean, stopped mattering. Blood vessels kept rupturing over the act itself, my vision staying red with what might have been internal bleeding, and my foot was already moving forward to strike him.
“Just leave it! Let’s go, hurry.”
Kai, still on her knees, gripped my hand with her nails digging in, clinging, holding me back. The pain of those nails was what finally let the blood drain back down from my head. It wouldn’t have surprised me if blood had come through my pores instead of sweat. A ragged hiss escaped through my clenched teeth, over and over, excess and rage with nowhere to go.
I kept my eyes locked on the man while putting my shoes on. If he moved again, I couldn’t promise what I would do.
“Marvellous use of violence. Even among us, that kind of precision is rare.”
“If you touch her again, here, now, I will kill you.”
I pulled Kai against my side, refusing to let go of her shoulder. The man had Kai’s exact eyes and they were nothing alike, these were filthy eyes, nothing like hers. Die. Die, die, die, spilled out of me between gritted teeth, pure curse.
“Kai, the unworthy child who cannot merge with us. Even so, won’t you—”
“Shut up and die, you piece of shit!”
I spat it out, supporting Kai, and ran us both out of the house. I had nothing left in me to spend on these people.
“I’m fine, this happens all the time.”
“It’s not fine. I’m not fine with it. It’s disgusting, it makes me sick.”
By the end I was carrying Kai almost entirely, one hand pressed to her stomach, running without sparing my back a single thought. Splashing through standing rainwater, I got her to the car and set her down, and Kai was smiling, satisfied.
While I felt like my insides were boiling, my stomach burning through itself.
My breathing gave out entirely, a stitch tearing through my side from the sudden exertion. Not caring about the mess, I leaned my arm against the car and tried to steady my breath. Every delayed reaction I’d been postponing arrived at once, nausea rising, and with no room left for dignity I doubled over, breathing hard.
Oh, enough, I thought, my vision blurring as if my face had been pressed beneath the surface of water.