“Hey,” Hilde said. Her voice was weaker than I remembered it, just as it had been last time, and the time before that.
“Hi, Hilde,” I said, and squeezed her hand tighter instead of dropping it. Not just as a reproach to my own revulsion, but warding off the lingering feeling of Mom’s disapproval.
“How’s the outside world?” she asked, and I smiled at that, just as I did every time I came to see her. “Still in one piece?”
“Oh Hilde, you are not going to believe the shit that went down this week.” I unloaded all the high school drama I could think of, a saga that lasted nearly an hour if I remembered it all. As I spoke, I tried to focus on my story, recounting every detail of Kaitlyn’s botched self–wax and Madison’s nip slip. I tried to pour sincerity into each indiscretion and relationship faux pas, mocking Brittany’s whining tone and Jake’s pretentious manner.
Had I made up some of the stories up? Had I invented nearly all of the specifics? Were at least two of them completely fictitious, relying on relatives and boyfriends that my friends didn’t actually have? They might have been, but what did my sister care? She had no one to dispute my version of events, and it wasn’t as if she could walk into our high school tomorrow, demanding to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If poetic license had the power to make my sister smile, then accuracy be damned. I wanted her to feel alive.
As I talked I gestured wildly, drawing Hilde’s eyes, so she wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t looking at her. She’d lost even more hair. She had another sore on her lip, and it looked like one might be forming on her nose. Her face was so pale that the bruises on her delicate skin stood out like storm clouds in summer. The red scabbing across her cheeks was called a “butterfly rash,” but every time I saw it I thought about the Viking practice of “blood eagles.”
Every time I made her laugh, she gasped for air, and the oxygen machine next to her bed whirred to keep up. The little tubes looped around her in every direction, taking care of all the things she couldn’t do herself. They breathed for her, ate for her, and took a shit for her. At least she could still laugh for herself. Eventually I gave in and laughed with her.
Was my laugh a little forced, maybe faked? Was I hiding the knowledge that I was no longer friends with Kaitlyn or Madison, and that Brittany had died from taking ecstacy cut with no–one–knows–what? Or that Jake’s parents had moved away from this slowly fading town in a shit county, along a highway that connected only barely more affluent places? Of course. But I would die before I let my dying sister know that.
Hilde giggled and gasped herself into silence, and only then did we hear Mom arguing with the doctor in the next room.
“What do you mean it’s no longer an option?” her voice had gone shrill, the way it always did when she was on the verge of crying. “Are you even trying to help her?”
“We’re trying everything we can, Mrs Kanta–”
“It’s Miss, actually, and I don’t think you can be! People don’t just die of Lupus anymore!”
“More than ten percent of Lupus patients don’t respond to treatment, Miss Kanta, and although I have no idea why, your daughter is one of them! She seems prone to every manifestation of SLE, from the rash to shrinking lungs! Nothing we’re doing seems to help.”
Mom started going off then, about doctors and hospitals and the state of the world in general. Once she gets going she doesn’t seem to stop for breath. Hilde looked at me, fear and resignation in her bloodshot eyes,
“Don’t listen to her,” I said. “She’s just worried about you, that’s all.”
Hilde nodded, obviously not reassured. “I’m tired of talking about school,” she said. “Do you remember the elk?”
Do I remember the elk? What kind of question is that? Of course I fucking remember the fucking elk. That particular taxidermic relic shaped my childhood and budding psyche. If I was patient of Sigmund Freud he could have written a whole fucking thesis on the elk. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I think about it, and wonder if it’s the elk’s fault, that Hilde is dying and I’m fine. Before the elk, Hilde and I were close. And now… well now she’s a cyborg of rubber tubing and I’m studying for the SATs.
“Yeah, I remember it,” I answer. I don’t know why I’m so surprised. She brings up the past sometimes. I guess dying people do, they want to go over their lives, the good and the bad, and be sure they had an impact. Making sure they’ll be remembered. “Why?”
She shrugged, and settled back against her pillows. “I’ve been thinking about it. I remember the nightmares it used to give me. That it would eat me.” She started to laugh, but had to stop when it hurt her. “I know how silly that must sound. But I woke up more than once, thrashing like wild, trying to claw my way out of its stomach.”
For once, I was completely speechless.Those were my nightmares. I used to wake up, slick with sweat, having been swallowed by an elk. For a second I thought it must be her sickness, since it could eat away at the brain, and that she was confused, taking some of my stories as her memories. But I never told her about those dreams. They were too strange.
“Astrid?” Hilde said. “Are you okay? You look weird.”
“I look weird?” I replied. “You’re the one with tubes in your nose.”
“Don’t say that to your sister,” Mom said. Shit fucking heaven, she was right behind me. I hadn’t heard her come in, I hadn’t been paying attention.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Hilde said. “I don’t mind.”
“I didn’t mean it,” I said, already rising from the chair, “I only meant–”
“You’ve worn her down enough for one day,” Mom said. “Go and wait for me. I’ve got to talk to your sister.”
“Sure, Mom,” I said. “I think we covered pretty much everything I needed to say.” Then I sulked off to the waiting room and started my homework.
When we were younger, Hilde and I looked so alike we were frequently mistaken for each other, and everyone thought we were twins. I used to love that, running around together, pretending to be one another sometimes, teasing our poor parents constantly. But when we hit puberty, Hilde first and me not long after, it changed.
I got interested in boys, and Hilde started spending more time with Mom. Hilde kept the faith, and I broke it. Then all the shit went down with Dad, and Hilde and I almost stopped spending time together at all. We moved in entirely different circles in high school, and she got sick right before graduation. She should have started college this fall, but by August she could barely get out of bed. Now it’s almost November and if we visit her more than once a week we’ll tire her out.
I looked up at the doors to the ward, but since I knew I had at least an hour before the doctors kicked Mom out, I reached into my backpack and pulled out the other folder.
I have been working on college application letters in secret for months now. Mom doesn’t want me to leave, not with Hilde so sick, so she can’t find out. I’m going to college whether she’s okay with it or not.
I found a letter from Dad in the trash a few weeks ago. She’d torn it up, of course, but I could still read the return address. He’ll help me go to college, I know it. He’d want me to get the hell out, just like he did.
* * *
Mom was very quiet that evening. When I was little, before I knew better, I relished her silent phases. They were the eye of the storm, a little peace and quiet for Hilde and me, when no one was shouting and we could just play. I’ve grown up a lot since then, and I know that the silences are just a build up for something worse than shouting: the well–reasoned argument. It meant that she was planning, tending to her defenses. That it was almost time to do battle.
She spent hours kneeling at our makeshift altar in the back room, hands clasped tight, whispering the prayers that her grandfather had brought over from the old world. I tiptoed around the kitchen as I made dinner, trying not to disturb her. I knew what she was praying for, what all of us were hoping for, and I didn’t dare interrupt. I had mostly given up any belief in Mom’s God, but I still wanted Hilde to get better, and just on the off chance that he could help, I wouldn’t interfere.
When someone knocked on the front door, Mom blew out the candle and closed the door on her secret temple. No one needed to see the altar. It wasn’t that the worship of her God was illegal, it was just odd. I had never heard anyone outside of our family mention him, and as a child I was worried that we might be the only ones. So we never brought it up. We just said “Thank God,” and omitted to mention which one.
I listened from the dining room as she talked to our next door neighbor, Mrs. McKinnon, who passed on hopes and prayers and flowers for Hilde. Mom thanked her, but there was a tightness in her voice I’d never noticed before. We had been hoping and praying for six months now. Hilde was only getting worse.
Mom finished her conversation and said goodbye to Mrs. McKinnon. I hurried to set the table and act like I hadn’t been listening in. Mom didn’t say anything, either reproach or recognition. She just sat down.
Hilde and I had learned how to do a lot since Dad left. I was used to making dinner for us, and clearing up the dishes. Mom had never been much of a cook, and now she spent most of her time worrying about Hilde.
She said another of her grandfather’s secret prayers, and lit the candle that stood in the center of the table. I had always loved that candle as a child, and even in adolescence held it in a kind of reverence. It stood over a foot tall, and was a deep purple wax. When I was little I thought that it renewed itself every day while we were at school, to stand tall and ready each night. I was eleven before I realised that Mom replaced it with a fresh one every day.
The holder it stood in was marvelous too. It was carved from an antler, and had intricate patterns worked into it. Some of them were symbols from a long dead northern language, but some were faces, human and animal, alive and dead. I used to stare at it for hours, walking around the table to see every part of it. I never dared to touch it.
I served us, and poured glasses of water. I had been brought up to dine formally, and I wouldn’t let standards drop. In spite of everything, I am my mother’s child.
“Astrid,” Mom said, as I took my first bite, “Your sister is not getting better. As I can see it, there is only one thing that can be done.”
I groaned through the mouthful of hot stew. “Mom…”
“To save your sister’s life, Astrid,” Mom said. “Or, I’m sorry, is that too much to ask of you?”
“Look, what’s happening to Hilde is super lame, I agree,” I said. “But we don’t even know if it will work. Besides, I can’t do something like that, I need to be taking my SATs and shit, you know?”
“Language, Astrid!” Mom’s pale cheeks had dots of red. She was pissed.
“Sorry, sorry. But… I really don’t like knives, and blood, and – and– you know, stitches…”
“These are pathetic excuses, Astrid. You know that. I’d deal with all the stitches. All of the bloody bits would be over in less than a night, and then your sister would have a real chance at recovery, the first one she’s had.”
“Mom, I don’t–”
“Maybe we’ll discuss this in a month, when your sister is fully bald and weighs eighty pounds, would that be more convenient?”
“The doctors are doing everything they can for her, and I don’t see why I should–”
“You don’t see why? You always were blind, Astrid. It is your duty to protect your sister, as it is her duty to protect you! Why, if my father could see you now–”
“Pity he’s dead, then.” I said before I could stop myself.
My mother’s face drained of colour. “How dare you. Leave. Leave my table. If you won’t help your own sister, maybe you should leave this family.”
“I have helped her! I go and cheer her up! I gave blood samples and shit! I did everything you asked me to, and none of it helped! You heard the doctors, there’s nothing–”
“There is still one thing we can do.” She looked at me and her eyes held me. They were like glass. Cold and hard and lifeless. They were a disgustingly resplendent shade of emerald that shouldn’t exist outside of YA novels. Finally she looked away. “Finish your soup.”
* * *
“Mom just wants me to do it so she can bring me back into the fold. I’m sick of living in a fucking cult.”
“It’s not a cult, Astrid. And you shouldn’t swear.”
“You sound just like Mom,” I said.
“Maybe Mom is right, did you ever think of that?” Even at death’s door, Hilde had Mom’s reproachful look down pat.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said. “Can you blame me for not wanting to go through with… with something like that?”
Hilde didn’t speak, and neither did I. I stared blankly at the many machines around my sister, and Hilde started at the ceiling. The moments crawled by, and the silence seemed to develop physical pressure, like being too far under water. If I didn’t break the silence, it would break me.
“It sounds selfish, doesn’t it?” I said resignedly. “But we have no guarantee that it would work! And it’s kinda iffy, scientifically, pretty high risk–”
“They’re experts, Astrid. They probably do this kind of thing all the time.”
“Do they? Do you really think that anyone does this procedure all the time? That anyone is an expert at this?”
Hilde rolled her eyes. “No, but–”
“Hilde, one or both of us could die!”
“I’ll die for certain if you don’t,” Hilde murmured.
“Exactly!” I said, regretting the word instantly. “I mean, I–”
“I know what you mean.”
“Hilde–” I began, but my sister turned away from me.
“You can go now,” she said, her voice both raw and muted. “I want to see Mom.”
I sat alone in the waiting room, thinking about the elk head. Hilde and I had hardly left each other’s sides before that. We were inseparable. Then a new kid moved in, only a few minute’s walk down the narrow country road from our house.
He was a nice kid, his name was Dave, or something. Hilde and I went to play with him once, a few weeks after they’d arrived. We walked down the street, unattended and without permission. It was a sinister offence, one that we knew we would be punished for if caught, but Mom was in one of her quiet phases and we scoffed at authority. I was a dangerous rebel of twelve, and Hilde, less than one year my elder, was still susceptible to being led astray.
Their house looked pretty much like ours, but over his dad’s chair in the living room was an elk head. It was huge, especially to someone who stands just over five feet tall. The antlers alone were nearly as big as I was, and the huge glassy eyes started implacably forward.
It scared Hilde. Hell, it scared me, too. Even at thirteen she was sensitive, and she started crying. Dave’s mom did her best to comfort Hilde, but nothing helped. Usually I was the one who could get her to calm down, but that day I didn’t care. I just wanted to look at the elk.
When we walked home that afternoon she was still sniffling. Mom demanded to know what had happened, and I told her. That brought her silent phase to an abrupt halt, and she launched straight into shouting. She ranted at us, (me in particular), at Dad, at Dave’s poor parents. She went on and on.
The next day I snuck out and went to Dave’s house again. We watched a movie, ostensibly, but most of the time I was facing away from the TV set, looking up at the dead face of the elk. Oh, the irony of Bambi reflected in those glass eyes. It gave me nightmares, of course. Recurring dreams of being impaled, trampled, or even swallowed whole. But I kept coming back and staring at it. Hilde begged me not to. She wanted me to come and play with her, to come home. I chose the elk head every time.
Then, in an act of ultimate betrayal, Hilde told Mom. I got chewed out worse than ever before, and she told me that anyone who gloried in the death of an elk instead of honoring them was a sinner, and she listed all the ways that Dave’s family would be horribly punished. Mom’s God has a thing about elk. When I asked her how shooting an elk and hanging its head on the wall was any different than using one in a sacrifice and keeping the skull, she smacked me across the face.
Dad tried to intervene, but Mom slapped him too. That was the beginning of the divorce proceedings, the legal upheaval that would shape my teenage years, and Hilde’s too. And of course the custody battle, which Dad ultimately lost.
I had just sunk into a state of Olympic level self pity when Mom came into the waiting room. She didn’t look at me or speak to me for the whole drive home, or dinner. She had written me off, and Hilde with me. Because I was too scared to save her.
* * *
I wandered around after dinner, looking at trees hung with lichen and a thick fog seeping between the trunks. I thought of the few muttered prayers and sermons I remember from childhood, back when I believed. That fog might go with Mom’s God too, as well as deer and elk. He might have something to with stars, too, I thought vaguely, as I looked up at them. By then the cold was too intense, and I turned back to the house.
I took off my muddy shoes and my jacket in the hall, and wandered into the living room in my stocking feet. The whole house looked empty, but I knew where Mom would be.
Knocking carefully on the door to our spare room, I waited for her response.
“What?”
I opened it, and spoke to her back as she knelt before the candles she had lit. “Mom? I changed my mind. I’ll do it. For Hilde.”
I saw a tension in Mom’s shoulders relax, a gentle slumping, as if a string that held her taut had been released. She rose gracefully to her feet and came over to me. “Oh, Astrid,” she whispered, hugging me tight. “I knew you would make the right choice.”
* * *
Hilde is lying on a folding gurney. She looks frailer than ever, and far too cold in that flimsy hospital gown. Mom is standing with her hands clasped, smiling through her tears. I am cold too, no undergarments, in the same kind of papery white dress. I feel exposed. My feet are bare and I don’t think that is sanitary.
The men in long sterile coats are talking in solemn voices, looking at my sister and me, making complicated gestures in the air. It is almost time. I brush gently against Hilde’s arm, but she doesn’t stir. She’s too weak.
One of the men shushes the other two and they stand in a line. They will do the first part of the procedure, the rest is up to me. Their voices rise and fall, words in a language I do not know or want to. Words that seem as old and cold as the stars that are just beginning to dapple above us. Words that probably are that old.
I hear the snap of a breaking branch behind me. Of course it came from behind me. I turn slowly, not wanting to startle it. The bull elk is standing a few yards away, looking warily at this odd congregation. His breath steams white in the air. I reach out to him, gently, with my empty hand, my left hand. He walks towards me softly, neither of us wanting to startle each other. I feel like I should say something, but I cannot think of any words that would bring meaning to him or to me.
The singing is gone now. I don’t know when it stopped, but when I turn to look back at the priests of Mom’s God, there is no one there. My mother, my sister, and I are the only humans in this clearing. There is no moon, the only light comes from the stars. A heavy coastal fog seeps between the trunks of old–growth trees. I am shivering, and the elk continues to approach.
He is bigger than any creature than I have ever seen. His antlers are enormous, far more so than those on any of the elk that roam through this area. My head does not even come to his shoulder, I would have to stretch my arm up to touch his back. He looks down to see me, and his eyes look nothing like the glass eyes of that dead elk. These eyes can see me, and I do not know if they like what they see.
He is standing beside me, and I lift my knife. This is wrong. I look into his eyes and he seems to understand. He drops to his knees before me, still hulking and enormous, even reduced so. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, as I sink the blade into his shoulder and drag it back beside his spine. I have to hack through his ribs, lifting his lungs out of the way, making a blood eagle of the elk. “Cut from the top, never from the bottom,” I say to myself, repeating the instructions Mom’s priests had given me. “If you cut from the bottom everything will fall out.”
The elk is bleeding on me, on my knife, on himself, on the ground. I am crying. I turn to the gurney and lift Hilde. She weighs so little. I place her inside the opened flesh of the elk. I think that there isn’t going to be enough room, but there is. This is not the normal kind of elk, I think.
I feel a worried presence at my shoulder, Mom is looking at me intently. She isn’t supposed to speak during this part of the procedure. Luckily for both of us, and for Hilde, I remember. I grab the knife from the gurney and slit my sister’s wrists, and then my own. “Blood to my blood,” I say, and it comes out as a pained squeak. I know that this is supposed to allow the strength of the elk to flow through me and give Hilde new life. I also know that elk and deer have all kinds of illnesses that humans don’t, and I think that my sister’s immune system is already shot to hell. I do not know what to believe.
I climb up into the elk beside my sister. I worry again about space, and again about my dirty feet. I remind myself that the elk is part of the sacrifice, and will die regardless, giving my sister his life, his strength. I remind myself, even if I cannot quite believe it, that all is as the God wills it, and there will be enough space. There is enough space.
From inside this red, wet, hot container in which I find myself, I look up at the stars so far above. I see Mom’s face, smiling and crying as she stitches the wound back together. We fall into darkness and silence, and the elk stands and walks.
As my sister and I jostle together in the belly of the elk, it occurs to me that this is the very thing I had nightmares about. And suddenly I know, with the same certainty with which I know my name, that only one of us will emerge, still breathing, at dawn.
* * *
Author's Note: This is the second (and probably final) draft of a story written, again, for the Kidd Tutorial. The first draft included a younger brother, who will never exist again. (RIP Magnus.) Astrid (or Hilde?) will return in The Dark One.
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