Under Twin Suns

The soldiers would come for the girls in the morning. As they always had.

Malaham explained this to Tallis while she sat in her sinking cot, her arms hugging her knees. The father sat in a chair beside his daughter as he spoke. His hands, clasped out in front of him, fidgeted nervously throughout. He told Tallis that the soldiers would come for her and he would do everything that he could to stop them.

“It will not work.” He told her, “They will hurt me and—”

“Maybe it will work.” She interrupted. The girl did this often. Always interrupting. She could not help herself, always so excitable in conversation.

Her father looked at her solemnly, revering her innocence but at the same time mourning it. She was so small sitting there, her eyes shimmering in the dim candlelight that illuminated the cramped room. She did not yet know the word ‘fragile’ or know yet how very fragile she was. This would be the end of that. After tomorrow, she would never be the same again. Nor would Malaham. Her birthday was teaching him that he, too, did not know how fragile he was either. But in that moment he realized his heart was as easily broken as a twig. He remembered what the girl’s mother had told him: When the time comes to tell her, be gentle. Be soft.

As his eyes began to well, he feigned a smile, “It will not work. It never does.”

“Maybe it will. Maybe this will be different.”

Malaham nodded. She would not bend on this. He knew how her imagination worked. He loved the magic of her thinking. She had been too clever for her age. It was a gift that he had long envied. The man had never considered himself intelligent. If his mind had been a well than his daughter’s mind was an ocean that had no end.

Or did it? Would that, too, end tomorrow?

“Maybe you are right.” His hands broke from their restlessness long enough to reach out and softly pat her knees, “Maybe it will work. Maybe I will be able to stop them. Let us be prepared in case it does not, though.”

Tallis sat and listened to him. He told her about the soldiers, how they would come and how they would hurt him. He told her that they were going to take her away and that she needed to go. And then, as painful as it had been for him, Malaham explained to his daughter what they were going to do to her that morning.

When he was finished, she was a child broken. He was no less broken than she. A soul now disfigured. He did his best to console her, then gave her a cup of water—one he had spiked with riverleaf—from which she drank only to fall fast asleep shortly after. He did not like that he had deceived her, but he knew she needed to sleep. She would need the energy. In the morning, he would deceive her again. He would slip her some blackroot. It would help dull the pain. That would be the last of his deceptions. He would allow himself no more in her lifetime.

As she slept through the night, Malaham watched over her. The hours were filled with his crying. So many dark thoughts he had. One of his hands stopping up her nose and mouth. He was a monster no better than the men who would come for her in the morning. Perhaps, he should have dosed her water with finstone powder instead? She could have closed her eyes and dreamed a way out of this world. It was too late now. Instead, Malaham sat with his daughter and sobbed into his hands. He would spend each moment of the rest of his life trying to think of a way back into this night, this room, this moment and then try to think of a way out of it for them. Should he take her and try to run? No. How far could they go without a horse? The soldiers would track them within the day. Even if they managed to evade them, how long could they last all on their own, beyond the boundaries of the village? A day? Maybe two? Would the fate that awaited them out there be any better than this? He honestly could not imagine it, but he also lacked his daughter’s gift for dreaming up possibilities.

Still, he sat and tried to think of a way to save her.

The morning came quickly.

Of course it had.

And the soldiers came for his daughter quickly after.