Smoke and Flames and Screams

Smoke and flames and screams.  The contorted face of my love as someone pulled me away.  Then darkness.

Voices were coming from the other side of the wall, or was it an echo?  Who was speaking?  The man’s voice was unfamiliar, yet I felt I knew him; was it a friend?  I heard him say, “I’ll slit your throat if I catch you near her again.”  Was he talking about me?

Raf, Raf, Raf.  Back to back, our swords working together, and knowing you would never leave me, no matter what.  Are you dead?  If you are, how will I live without you?

As the fog in my mind cleared, the voices grew louder.  They were in the room with me.  I turned my head and saw the man holding an older woman against the wall.  He had a knife to her throat.  I remembered him, and now I knew who had pulled me away.  It was my Mouse.

He wasn’t a kid anymore, my Mouse.  The last time I saw him, we were in the village where Jon was born, and Mouse wanted to marry me.  He was a boy of seventeen then, but this was a man; how could that be?  Had so much time passed that he could have grown this tall?

The woman noticed I was awake and Mouse turned toward me.  There was love on his face, but I looked away.  Don’t love me, Mouse.  I couldn’t love anyone but Raf, not ever.  

He took the knife from her throat and came to me, stood by the bed and stared at me as though I might disappear at any moment.  Mouse, with his sad face and incredibly blue eyes.

“Get out,” he said to the woman, and she scurried away.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“A village in Leeds,” he replied.  “How do you feel?”

“I’m tired.”  I sat up, and Mouse backed away.  I was still wearing Raf’s tunic and pants.  “You’ve grown.”

He smiled and sat next to me.  “I’m twenty-seven  now.”

My, God, had it been that long?  Jon was four when I left him with Geezer.  He’d be – fourteen!

“Are you hungry?”  I heard him, but I was still thinking about Jon, my son, the child born from rape, the boy with the red hair whom I’d kept hidden for four years.

“Mia,” Mouse said.

I looked at his face.  He was still cute, never handsome, but I'd always liked his face. His brown hair had grown to his shoulders, and he wore a leather vest over his tunic.  I could tell he wanted to touch me – my hand, or my shoulder – but he was afraid.  He knew I loved Raf. 

“I can get you something to eat,” he said.

The scene began to play in my mind again.  Raf being dragged away and set on fire.  Smoke and flames and screams.  My throat hurt.  I’d begged them not to hurt him.

Mouse stood.  He paced back and forth as if he couldn’t decide what to do.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.  “I want to go home.”

“To Paradise?” he asked.

“No, not Paradise.  I want to go to Sung.”

“Mia, there is no Sung.  It died years ago.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.  That’s why you came here, remember?  You had to leave before…”

“I don’t care,” I said.  “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Where will you go?  And what about Jon?”  He stood in front of me.  “Will you just leave him here?”