The Heartless

A dull sense of sorrow hung over Petra and I as we reversed course back to Verdigris, swirling like a black hole in my chest. The tree branches seemed to hang heavier than before, standing stark and gray despite their new growth. The air between us felt thicker than it ever had, and we spent many of our waking hours in tense silence. Petra’s aura had changed since we had last seen each other; she was more cautious, not so bold and brazen as she had been less than a year ago. Whereas in the past I always saw a glimmer of Basil’s childlike wonder and innocence when I looked in her eyes, now I could only see myself, and it made my stomach churn with guilt.

“Supposedly there’s some sort of provisional government in place right now,” Petra informed me glumly while we made camp one night.

“Yeah?” I glanced over at her from where I was preparing the fire. “You know anything about it?”

Petra shook her head.

“It’s only temporary anyway,” she lamented. “I’m sure that before we know it, things will be back to the way they were before. It’s not like anybody but us knows what actually happened.”

The pessimism was new, I noted. I chose not to press her for more information, and the conversation died out for the rest of the night.

Another day, Petra stalked through the woods alongside me with her shoulders hunched and fists clenched at her sides. She was noticeably on edge, jumping onto the defensive at every rustle of the bushes or passing shadow of an animal. The agonized way with which she carried herself was horrifyingly familiar. And again—there was that nagging pit of guilt swirling uncontrollably in my stomach that screamed “you caused this.”

“Petra,” I blurted at one point, startling her out of her own head. She glared up at me, but there was no fire in it at all.

“You know none of what happened is your fault, right?” I asked gently. “This is all on me. You did everything you could, and you saved a lot of lives that day.”

While it didn’t completely dissipate, the tension in Petra’s shoulders seemed to soften, if only just a bit. She kicked at a stray pebble in the dirt and shrugged.

“I don’t really think it’s your fault, either,” she admitted, “in retrospect. I was mad that you didn’t come back for months; I thought you just did your damage and disappeared, like you didn’t care.”

“I wanted to come back,” I insisted. “I had a gaping wound in my chest!”

“I know that now,” Petra shot back. “So, I’m not mad. I know who the real enemy is and has always been, trust me. It’s just a lot, for me to process.”

“Believe me when I tell you I understand that completely,” I huffed.

“You know…” Petra shoved her hands into her pockets. “After all this time you still never told me what happened. With Basil, when you were little.”

I shrugged.

“Well, it’s his story,” I pointed out. “If you want to know so bad, ask him yourself.”

“Do you think he would tell me?”

“Probably not.”

Petra sputtered indignantly and shoved me to the side, grumbling to herself with her arms crossed over her chest. But she didn’t press any further, and the silence that dropped into the gap was warmer than the one that had come before.

A beat passed, and then Petra teasingly asked, “So, can I see the scar?”

“Huh?” I did a double-take and glanced down at her. The playful smirk on her face and the faint flicker of tenacity in her eyes, however infuriating, soothed the swirling unease in my gut just a little.

“What? No.” I shook my head vigorously and turned front.

Petra bust out laughing, bright and clear. I smiled to myself.

Yeah, we’d be alright.

Unsurprisingly, Basil was stunned beyond belief to open the front door and find that I had returned so soon. He joked something like, “When I said you’d be back, I didn’t mean right away,” but something in the way he glanced between Petra and I told me he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Frida welcomed us both with open arms, and once we had introductions out of the way, Petra and I relayed the story over bowls of soup that we barely touched. The entire time, I felt like I was going to be sick with guilt—this must have been evident on my face, as I could feel Basil eyeing me from across the table even as Petra prattled on and her words turned to cotton in my ears.

“Ace?” Petra beckoned, jostling me out of my stupor with her elbow. “Are you okay?”

My stomach lurched. I sucked in a deep breath and looked over; her expression was tight, brow furrowed. My hands were shaking, so I quickly hid them under the table. Basil’s eyes bore holes in my skull. Frida was at the kitchen counter, cleaning up.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” I replied unconvincingly. “Don’t worry about me, Petra.”

“No thank you, I think I will continue to worry about you.”

“Hey,” Basil called softly from the other side of the table. I looked up to meet his eyes, soft with concern.

“I feel awful and we’re talking about people I don’t know. I can only imagine how much you’ve been bottling up,” he said. “It’s okay to grieve, Ace. I promise.”

Petra reached under the table and slid one of her hands into mine, and that was all it took. Something in my chest ripped open and everything came gushing out all at once until I was sobbing myself raw and ragged in the middle of Frida’s kitchen, with Petra squeezing my hand and Basil rubbing gently at the space between my shoulder blades. Frida wiped my face as I wept, and the three of them remained there beside me without judgment as the grief spilled out of me, until I finally stopped crying and asked Frida if she could make me some tea.

Petra and I returned to our old tricks, helping neighbors with chores in exchange for other favors, or sometimes for nothing at all. Our preferred pastime was working in the community garden, and that spring, we planted several new beds and committed ourselves to single-handedly repairing the weather-worn fence to keep the animals out.

“Do you think the others are okay?” Petra wondered aloud one afternoon, holding a fence stake in place while I hammered it into the ground with another piece of wood.

I paused my hammering and replied, “I would hope so.”

“I worry about them,” Petra mused. “I wonder what Amistadia is like now.”

“To be honest, I’d be scared to find out,” I admitted, straightening up and stretching my shoulders. “I guess I’m still a coward.”

Petra frowned, looking at me curiously.

Then, she said, “You were never a coward,” and did not elaborate as she walked away to grab another wooden stake from the pile.

I often wondered idly about Esther, and whether she’d found peace, and Knife Boy, and whether he’d found what he was looking for. Sometimes, I even thought about Swallow’s Point, and Carita and Marcus and the rest, and wondered if they, too, could change. The nightmares never fully went away, but they became more manageable, and the pangs of grief and guilt I’d been amassing for years slowly faded to a dull ache.

We planted a small herb garden at the back of the garden plot, and I privately dedicated it to Bertrand. It was an apology and a thank you all at once.

As the spring wore on, something akin to hope sprouted wings in my chest and refused to die. Petra and I could be happy here, in Verdigris. And in the summer, we could make raspberry pie, and we could learn to build a new home for ourselves from scratch, and some day, after we had long returned to dust, nobody would ever have to feel like we had felt ever again. It was a faint hope, but it was something, and it slotted itself strong and steady between my ribs.