Chapter 42: Maëlle – Real Dragons Don’t Die
If Maëlle tried, she could reach her son, who disappeared slowly in the south. She didn’t try. A heavy silence chained her feet. To kill a dragon, he said. Real dragons don’t die.
‘What should I do?’ she asked.
‘Why would a dragon destroy a human city?’ asked the Eslarian.
‘You know why,’ said Maëlle. ‘You’re the one who told the stories to our children.’
‘And to Robert.’
‘Robert was also our child. You told them all those legends of the Dark Age, every adventure of Yukari Nakamura and Nastassja of Sátiron. Why does any magic creature become chaotic?’
‘Darkness,’ said the Eslarian.
‘What should I do?’
‘We’ve done everything we could. If there really is darkness in Franária...’
‘You still doubt it? My son has become a body without a soul, all of Franária is grey, and this,’ she opened her arms to devastated Fabec. ‘This grey stomach that digests us.’
‘We can’t save Franária, just like we couldn’t save Baynard. I am going to find my daughter and run away from this forsaken country. What is this?’
The Eslarian found something under his foot. He felt dizzy when he lowered his head, so Maëlle took it for him. It was a piece of stone, the detail from a column’s base representing a frog and a paw, probably from a fox.
A soldier came to tell them that the others were ready to march. The Eslarian put his hand on Maëlle’s shoulder. Her bone was visible under her skin, but her shoulder remained firm. A few months of slavery had not been enough to bend it.
‘I don’t feel well,’ said the Eslarian.
He had a temperature. Neville’s soldiers were waiting to march as fast as they could to Debur.
‘He won’t keep up,’ said the soldier.
Maëlle agreed and looked around for an option. She saw the Skeleton decisively walking away, which meant he had somewhere to go. She called him.
The Skeleton turned around slowly, like someone who notices a rope tying him down. A rope to be cut away. He had, yes, a place to go, and Maëlle delayed him. She held the Eslarian’s arm.
‘He shared his food with you,’ she said. ‘He gave you water.’
‘It might have been better if he had let me die,’ said the Skeleton. ‘It might be more human now to let him die.’ He smiled. ‘But it so happens that I stopped being human a long time ago. Do not delay me and keep in mind that I spent twenty years in Anuré. Many things will have changed. I might have no place to go after all, then we’ll all be dead.’
Maëlle turned to Neville’s soldier.
‘We will join you as soon as we can.’
The soldier gave them blankets and as much food as he could spare.
‘We will gather everyone in Debur who is still loyal to the captain.’
Maëlle put the Eslarian’s arm on her shoulders and followed the Skeleton away from Fabec, around the Mouth of War. The Skeleton walked slowly and he looked even more sick than the Eslarian. Twenty years in Anuré should have killed that man but he moved on, never slowing down, never stopping for food or drink, to Deran. Maëlle helped the Eslarian all the way. She almost lost the Skeleton three times, but she had already guessed that he was going to Sananssau, Deran’s fortress in the Mouth. She found him at the north of the city, looking at a crack in the wall.
There were no guards on that part of the wall. No Franish city had enough soldiers to man the whole wall and here everyone was watching the Mouth.
‘Twenty years,’ said the Skeleton, ‘and the crack is still here. Twenty years and still no one watches the North. Deranian soldiers watch the Mouth like vultures, but nobody looks to the Wave.’
Sananssau’s wall was not all made of stone. It was built in a hurry when the war began on top of a city that had died during the Dark Age. There wasn’t enough stone so they filled the holes with dirt. When the Skeleton was young, he dug through one of those holes and made the tunnel that he, Maëlle, and the Eslarian used now. Inside the city, the Skeleton halted. The streets weren’t paved, not even the main roads. The houses were low and large, the white walls were reddened by dirt.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ said the Skeleton. ‘Twenty years and nothing’s changed. Franária has no future. We’re mired in the war.’
The house he was looking for was in the center of Sananssau. The streets were narrower there, the houses smaller, the walls dirtier. The Skeleton stopped in front of a small door. He hesitated. Maëlle thought she saw something like sadness flap quickly on his dark face. It didn’t last. The indifferent skull was back in place. The Skeleton knocked.
The door cracked open and a woman’s dark face peered through. She widened her eyes and was going to close the door.
‘Jaqueline,’ said the Skeleton. ‘It is I. Your father.’