No, he guessed not. “Is this what you always thought it’d be like? You in my head, even though you’re not here to keep me warm?”
Something like this, yes.
“I hate it.”
Should’ve stayed with Jak, soldier boy. He could’ve kept you warm. I tried to tell you.
Hen snorted and curled in tighter on himself, hugging his shins and resting his chin on a knee. “You were wrong about everything else. What makes you think you were right about Jak?”
Not-Kass didn’t have an answer for that. Hen ached to think of one, to put words into his ghostly mouth, but every time he had to work for it, it felt false. Like even more of a lie. It left him cold, and he was already cold enough. So, he sat and watched the rain in the clearing as it washed away what was left of his first-ever wooden fire, and wondered if this was what it felt like to be alone. To reach out and have no one reach back.
*
The beach felt exposed, but the trees and their invisible-creature noises made his skin itch. Nevertheless, Hen couldn’t bathe in the little spring, and he was tired of sand in his ass-hair, so he settled for salt instead. A rocky section of the beach revealed itself every time the sea pulled back in the evening. The first time Hendrik explored it, he was fascinated by the isolated pools it left behind, each of different size and shape, each teeming with weird and colorful life all its own. Bright star-shaped things, round crinkly white things, things made of crooked purple fingers that clung to the rock. Plants flourished there too, dark and slippery. Hendrik grabbed a handful of them and yanked, and flashing striped fish shimmied away from the disturbance; he jumped back in surprise.
Scared of a fish! Not-Kass laughed.
It was a strange sensation, when he did that. Kass’s voice and laugh had always produced a sympathetic effect on Hendrik’s body and mood. Hen had inevitably smiled or even laughed with him when he did it.
That didn’t happen anymore, now that it was Not-Kass and not Kass. As if to remind Hen that he wasn’t real, that he was gone, gone for good, just like he’d always expected.
Not-Kass either didn’t hear that specific thought or chose to ignore it. Wonder if they taste good?
“Anything would taste good,” Hen admitted. There was some early, sweet grass in the clearing, but with the hard cheese from the murdered priests long gone now, it wasn’t enough. His stomach had hurt for a while, but now he barely felt it.
On the way back to the clearing, Hen tried to eat some of the water-plants. They tasted of salt and little else, which was alright, but the texture was like raw meat. He’d already set up a small rack of sticks near his wood-fire to dry his clothes and blankets, so he hung the rest of the wet plants on it. That night, he used his small knife to whittle down the ends of some sticks, like he had to pin the edges of his shelter-blanket to the ground.
The clearing had dried out quickly, thanks to the sunshine. Hen had gathered all the fallen twigs and branches he could from the ground between the clearing and the spring but hadn’t dared to explore the forest any further—or to touch the trees themselves. The sad little shelter had actually made things worse in the rain, though, so needs must.
So practical, my soldier boy.
“Not a soldier anymore. Never again,” Hen pointed out.
You’ll always be you.
“That me was a lie. Everything was a lie, Kass. You know that, now.” Hen reached up tentatively with his good arm, gripping a thin but lush branch at the edge of the clearing. When it didn’t snap his arm off in retribution, he broke it off. It came easily, its insides white and green around the edges, leaves fluttering almost musically.
Does that make me a lie? Not-Kass wondered.
“You are. I don’t know if you were, before. But now, yeah, you are.” Hen snapped off a few more nearby branches, tension melting from his shoulders when each new one didn’t somehow fight back.
After a while, Not-Kass piped up again: So, everything we did together, everything you loved about me, none of that was real?
“It was real,” Hen said immediately, eyes suddenly burning. “It was all real. But it was…” He trailed off and carried his leafy branches over to the shelter. If he could just settle them over the blanket densely enough, they might insulate him from rain a little better, like a proper roof.
It was…?
“It was based on a lie. And I always knew it was a lie. I knew you wouldn’t be with me after you inherited. I knew it, and I was right.”
I’m right here.
“No, you’re not.” Hen’s cheeks were wet, now. Had he cried yet? He probably hadn’t had enough water in him, he realized with a snort of a laugh that felt wildly out of place.
I told you I would always be with you.
“You lied.”
I would never—
“You fucking lied!” Hen froze at the sudden rise in his own voice and how it seemed to ring through the clearing, shiverbumps breaking out down his neck and sides. He took a deep breath, blinking away tears. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know. None of us really knew, especially me. But it was a lie. And part of me always wondered—or maybe it just feels like that now, but I swear, I thought when you were gone, you’d be gone for good. And I was right.”
Not-Kass didn’t reply, because of course he didn’t. He was wrong, and Hen was right, and he’d always hated that.
But not half as much as Hen hated being right, this time.
*
The next morning, the dried sea-plants tasted a little better, if still too salty. They were oddly similar to smoked fish, which Hen always liked in the Tavern District or when Alara got hold of some for dinner. Rather than being slimy, the plants now had a flaky, crispy texture that melted on his tongue. He finished covering his sleeping-shelter with leafy branches that afternoon, then headed back out to the rocky beach once sea retracted. He brought his sharpened twigs, this time, and used them to spear several little fish and star-things, and to pry some of the purple-fingered things from the rocks. These, he placed in the little bag from the priests, and then moved from pool to pool gathering handfuls of the dark water-plants.
It was just past dusk by the time he realized Not-Kass hadn’t said a thing to him all day. Rather, he realized that he hadn’t imagined his own thoughts using Kass’s voice. He had hardly been still all day, and so his thoughts had been bent on the tasks at hand: a dry place to sleep, a fire, a full belly. Now that these things were possible, it was easy to focus on them. It was good to focus on them.
Could anything be good? The thought was surprising, either way.
Hen sat on the edge of the rocks, feet dangling in the sea as the last, faded fragments of pounding waves lapped gently at them. If he waited too long, it’d get dark, and he might not find his way back to the piece of his right sleeve he’d left tied at the treeline on the beach. If he went directly inward from it, he’d find his camp without fail.
He wasn’t sure he cared. Or, if he did care, he wasn’t sure why he should. More than once, he’d felt the rush of saltwater being sucked back into the depths as it hissed down the beach, tugging at his feet. If he sat here long enough, through the morning, it’d take him, too. He couldn’t swim. No one in the City swam, because why would they? If he held still all night, the waves would take him, just like they’d taken Kass, Lyla, Kertu, Agar, Elvi, and Ilya. And nothing in the world would change. The dark forest would still be dark, the Stone City would still be a lie, and it would be as if he, Hendrik, had never existed.
What was the difference between never existing and never mattering? Were they the same thing? Or was there some nuance that was escaping him? Wouldn’t be the first time.
