The Heartless

For the first few weeks, whenever I would try to bring up the nearly eight years that stretched between us, Basil would go tense in his shoulders and quickly change the subject to something more mundane, like if I was feeling okay or what we were going to have for supper. He’d talk me in circles about life in the commune and the array of people who lived there, or reminisce on our early years when we’d play made-up games all day and sit speaking in hushed tones about our single shared secret by night—but the moment the conversation drifted too close to that fateful day or the many years that followed, Basil was quick to shut it all down.

I grew tired of the run-around late one afternoon, as I sat at Frida’s dining table watching Basil flit aimlessly around the kitchen, looking for something to occupy his hands in an effort to avoid confronting me.

“Basil, we have to talk about what happened.”

For the briefest of moments, Basil froze, before he resumed rummaging through the kitchen cabinets in search of nothing in particular. He said nothing in response.

“I told you everything,” I pointed out. “This isn’t fair.”

Basil turned and glared at me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I quickly swallowed my frustration. “How do you expect to bridge the gap between us, then? Did you just expect us to pick up where we left off? If you’re hiding something from me to protect me, don’t bother. I’m not a child and it’s not your job, as my friend, to try to shield me from horrors I know plenty about myself.”

“Fine.” Basil pulled out the chair across from mine and dropped into it roughly. I didn’t miss the wince when he sat down. “If you really want to know what happened, then I’ll tell you.”

“And I’m happy to listen,” I replied with what I hoped was a reassuring tone.

Basil breathed deeply and looked out somewhere into the middle distance. Then, he began, “Well, you remember the last time we saw each other. Eventually, I managed to scramble away. I don’t remember if someone intervened or if I just found an opening, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. I took off running into the woods, as best as I could with a broken leg, and I guess I ended up running in the opposite direction you did.” Basil snorted, though it wasn’t really funny.

“I didn’t stop running until the adrenaline wore off and I could barely move,” he continued. “I pressed onward, though, for a couple weeks. I had no sense of where I was headed or if anyone would ever find me, but I was afraid of what would happen if I went back. I barely ate, drank, or slept that entire time. Those were the most terrifying nights of my life, wondering if I would die out there. Eventually, though, I was found by some folks from Verdigris out hunting, and they carried me unconscious to Frida’s house. I guess that’s why I started taking walks into the woods from time to time as I got older; never thought I’d actually find anyone, though, until I found you.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? At first, I wouldn’t let anyone near me. If they tried to touch me, I’d start screaming. Frida was the first person I warmed up to, and after I was back on my feet she took me on as an apprentice. But in a way, the entire commune raised me. They all took me in as one of their own, this terrified kid they found in the woods, and I think they’d have done the same even if I wasn’t Heartless. In spite of everything that happened, I was lucky. I guess even us cursed folks get lucky sometimes, don’t we?”

Basil slid his gaze over to meet my eyes and smiled earnestly in spite of his words. I immediately felt a pang of guilt, and Basil must have noticed it in my face, because he quirked an eyebrow at me and let the smile drop into a frown.

“Basil, there’s something I didn’t tell you,” I whispered, biting my bottom lip. “It’s about the curse.”

As expected, my words sucked the air out of the room. An unnerving silence stretched across the kitchen table, threatening to widen the gap between us that we had only just begun to mend. But peculiarly, the look that passed across Basil’s face was not one of surprise or trepidation, but of something akin to shame, a sort of conflicted expression that took the confession from my lips and painted it across his own.

Before I could open my mouth, Basil stood up abruptly from the table and moved to stand by the kitchen counter so that I could not see his face. He leaned forward with his arms outstretched and palms pressed against the counter’s edge.

“You’re going to tell me it’s not real, aren’t you?” he asked, so quietly I could barely hear him.

“Something tells me I don’t have to,” I responded.

Basil said nothing. Instead, he merely bowed his head.

“How long have you known?” I demanded, keeping my voice low.

“I’ve known for years,” he admitted. “Everyone here does. I was afraid to tell you.”

My mouth went dry. Several seconds passed in tense silence; Basil still wouldn’t turn to meet my eyes.

“So you’re telling me,” I finally spoke, pausing as I tried to gather my suddenly spiraling thoughts into something coherent, “that you all know about this, and yet you let your own people suffer under those lies?”

Basil whirled around to face me, expression darkening. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why doesn’t anyone come back for us? Why didn’t you come back for me?”

The usual warmth in Basil’s eyes flared into raging fire.

“Why didn’t I come back for you?” he snapped. “I just spelled out every horror of my life for you—at your behest, might I add—and you have the nerve to think I should have come back for you? You wouldn’t have been there anyway!”

“But all these years, I thought we were monsters—”

“What does it change?” Basil shouted, throwing his arms wide in exasperation.

I swallowed my rebuttal, and his statement rang through the empty house for what felt like ages in the resulting silence. After a few moments, Basil shook his head and reached for his cane, and I realized belatedly that his hands were trembling.

“Gods above, Ace, this is why I didn’t want to talk about this. Try again when you’re mature enough to listen.”

With that, Basil disappeared outside, the back kitchen door slamming shut behind him. I stood up to go after him, but a firm hand came down on my shoulder, lowering me back into my seat. I swiveled to see Frida standing behind me, a somber expression on her face.

“He won’t go far, just give him some space,” she reassured me, already bustling about the kitchen as if she’d been waiting for our impromptu meeting to adjourn so she could go about her business.

“Were you eavesdropping?” I questioned. She nodded. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” was all Frida said. “Now, I’ll fix us all something to eat, you just stay there and calm yourself down.”

Startled, I looked down and realized my own hands had been shaking too, in plain view out on the tabletop. I quickly hid them from sight, pressing them between my knees to try and stop their anxious jittering. As Frida set to work lighting the stove, I allowed myself to consider what Basil had said, and a cold, heavy feeling settled into my chest.

By all accounts, I was a murderer, even if King Brutus had deserved it. I was also a thief, even if it was only for my own survival and even if it made me no different from someone like Knife Boy. I had left behind Petra, Bertrand and the others without so much as a thank you. And now, I had even hurt my best friend, the first person who had ever truly understood me, and potentially driven a permanent stake through our already complicated relationship. Would any of that have really been different, had I known the truth all along?

Eventually, Frida slid a bowl of hot soup in front of me and waited for me to take a few sips before starting in on her own portion.

“As you might imagine, all of this is a very sore subject for Basil. I don’t like to make him talk about it,” she told me, though it didn’t strike me as a reprimand. “He’s a very mature and optimistic young man. I think sometimes that causes me to forget he has seen as much hardship as many of the rest of us, and perhaps more so, given his young age.”

“He was the same way when we were young,” I responded, eyes downcast into my soup. “I looked up to him, I think, because he seemed so much more sure of himself than I was. I think a part of me always believed he was unshakeable, even up until the end. But I now realize how childish I have been for thinking that way.”

Frida hummed in response, and we remained silent for the duration of our meal. When I had finished, she peered out the kitchen window and tutted in disapproval before disappearing into the other room and coming back with Basil’s cloak draped over her arm.

“Here, why don’t you go bring this to him, and see if he’ll come back in to eat?” Frida suggested, passing the garment off to me. “I don’t want him catching a cold.”

I found Basil sitting cross-legged in the tall grass beside the house, cane sitting discarded at his side. He was flitting between staring at his hands in his lap and gazing out at the rest of the commune. I was cautious to approach, almost feeling like I was intruding on some kind of private moment. Basil jumped when I draped his cloak over his shoulders but quickly sobered up and turned away again when he realized who was suddenly dropping down next to him.

“Are you here to apologize?” he muttered when I was silent for a moment.

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry, Basil,” I said softly. “It was unfair of me to attack you like that. I was being insensitive.”

Basil shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not, I shouldn’t have pressured you to talk in the first place,” I insisted. “But if you don’t want me to push it, I’ll leave it be.”

He shook his head. “No, I appreciate the apology.” Basil pulled his cloak tighter around himself. “What you don’t understand is that nobody here wants to go out into the world and draw attention to ourselves. Even if I thought I could, I wouldn’t want to. That’s the very thing that got me—both of us—hurt before.”

I began yanking blades of grass from the dirt absentmindedly. “Why would someone fabricate such a cruel lie?”

Basil didn’t have to guess what I was talking about.

“People fear things they can’t understand, Ace.”

“But how could anyone believe it?”

“We did.”

My breath caught in my throat. “That… That’s different! We were only eight—we were victims!”

“Maybe so, but either way you and I both still believed it.”

“I’m still trying to make sense of this. This whole time, it’s just been a convenient lie for the higher ups?” I cried, finally turning to look at Basil. He was frowning at me, eyes sullen and brow furrowed deeply.

“You’re living proof of that yourself,” he pointed out. “If the Heartless were really dangerous monsters, then why haven’t the royal guard taken out your entire village?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s easier for them to blame some arcane curse and cast us aside to flounder on our own than it is to challenge everything they think it means to be human. Bigotry is for cowards.”

“That’s it? It’s really been that simple all along?”

“The cruelest explanation is usually the simplest one.” Basil sighed.

We both fell quiet, but this time the silence was a comfortable one, not so unnerving as it had been in the house. After a few minutes, I remembered the soup waiting for Basil on the stove and nudged his knee with my elbow.

“Do you want to come in and have supper?” I asked when he looked at me quizzically. “Frida has soup waiting for you.”

Basil shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

“I know, but you should try to eat something,” I urged. “Just a little. What do you say?”

Finally, Basil nodded, and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly. It wasn’t much, but I could see the faintest glimmer return to his eyes. I let Basil use my shoulder as leverage to push himself back to his feet, and we headed back into the house side by side, as equals for the first time in years, if ever at all. And though we said nothing, I felt as if we came to understand each other for the first time all over again.