"Οὖτις ἐμοί γ᾽ ὄνομα: Οὖτιν δέ με κικλήσκουσι
μήτηρ ἠδὲ πατὴρ ἠδ᾽ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι."
"My name is Nobody. Nobody I am called by mother, father, and by all my comrades."
- Ὅμηρος (Homer)
Chapter Six
"That type doesn't roam anywhere near here," he pressed further. "Such beasts should be lands away."
Amalfi breathed slow, meeting his gaze again with a tight expression. "We do not know," she said shortly. "Yet, the tyrant is not the first challenge to give us a visit as of late."
Frustration was leaking into her words, and her chin rose again, but she did not say more.
He, however, had the feeling there was much more to that story, plenty she was keeping withheld behind tense lips and teeth. He would surely risk fingers if he tried to pry from her bite. He wondered if it would be worth it.
"It seems all we've done for weeks is fight beasts that should be lands away," Pistacia snapped, drawing his eyes. "Or shouldn't exist at all outside of legends, or the damn pits of Tartarus! That's why we should—"
"Taci, enough."
His head wouldn't stop spinning. Something about that felt familiar, some tidbit of knowledge that used be there but was gone. He stayed quiet, warily watching, wondering about the great plains of empty space in his memory. He observed Amalfi again as she yanked back the control they'd let slip; she looked away with a scowl as sharply carved as his had been.
Silence treaded on nimble feet to cast her spell. Silence pressed delicate kisses to his shoulder, his jaw, to Amalfi's hair and nose; silence held them close. But only for a few moments, because the third in the grotto was impatient and temperamental. Silence could not woo her.
"What is your plan, Amalfi?" Pistacia's arms were crossed; she still looked at him like a wounded animal better put down. Her words were spat and pulled tight. "He could be dangerous. He has no memory of who he is—for all we know, he was being pursued; for wrongdoing, for the sake of his life. Or, he could be faking his amnesia! You trust too easily."
"Pistacia—"
"She is right," he said, cutting in with a shrug. He wasn't afraid to admit her reason. "I could be running, or being pursued. I can't tell you otherwise; I have no idea who I am. Yet, I can promise I hold no ill will towards you. Rather, I..." He cleared his throat. "I am indebted to you."
His jaw had tightened like taut bowstring, but still he forced the words out, and pretended it wasn't. It pained him to admit a debt; he could tell how much he hated the burden without needing to truly know himself. Of the rest, he spoke the truth. He held no ill will or intention. Not that he knew of. And certainly not towards Amalfi.
Of course, there was little positive to assure of, either. Amalfi had saved his life, and still continued to offer him kindness, but his gratitude extended only to repayment. He wouldn't be swayed by another beautiful woman.
Another?
"You won't be going anywhere," Amalfi scoffed.
Whatever he'd managed to grab from the cosmos, pulled desperately from the unreadable stars mapping his mind's truth, dissipated. He focused back on the adamant, striking woman before him. Her voice gave no room for argument—but from what he could tell, he didn't think he was much of a follower. He had no intentions of sticking around.
"You can't even stand," she continued, as if reading his unchanged mind. She gestured to the weeping wound on his leg as her first point of evidence.
It was a convincing argument, he would admit.
The wound was a stomach-churning color, truthfully best not looked at, as it leaked not only liquid garnet but some clear wetness, too. The area around it was charred and cracked, dark black and sickly yellow all at once. It was a palette of contrasts. The liquid combination flooded the cracks of split skin and muscle; he felt his stomach bounce into his throat to see such grievous damage on himself. He didn't feel like a stranger to injuries—and even felt he'd regularly seen worse sometime, somewhere—but to see said hurt on himself? It was disorienting. It was nauseating. It was—
Amalfi pushed more. "What choice do you have? You will stay and recover. It is almost certainly your lone hope and only chance."
Pistacia opened her mouth to speak again, apparently as stubborn as he was, but Amalfi gave her a look. Surprisingly, Pistacia snapped her lips shut. She seethed, her cheeks red as her hair, and stayed quiet. He did, too. He was still staring at his leg, or at what was left of it, and trying to understand that it was his. There were many chunks missing. There were many veins ruptured, skin clearly ripped by sand, stone, and wreckage. There were many open gaps where blood oozed and dried on just-cleaned flesh, where muscle folded up and puffed through slits—
Gods. He was going to be sick.
A new overcast of uncertainty had crept over Amalfi's face. It was as shady as the clouds voicing the thunder of his mind. She appeared to struggle with her next words, tightlipped and hesitant before gently asking, "I know you don't remember, but until you do... what should we call you?"
He didn't look up.
"Might I suggest a name that honors one of the gods?" Pistacia sneered. She clearly shared none of her friend's sensitivity. "Maybe they'll take pity on him."
Amalfi didn't answer, and he couldn't stop staring at what kept him weak.
Pistacia's voice took an odd tone as she listed deities, exaggerating her aid too much to be sincere. "Let's think: Enyo, Deimos, Achelois, Eris, Hera—"
"No," he said, louder than necessary. He felt nausea clamber up his throat again, pressing close, as if to seal his airways. The throb in his head had reawakened with fresh vengeance.
"Why does it matter—"
"No," he repeated, looking up. Deep, dark, firm; there was no leeway offered.
Amalfi eyed him. He was forced to avert his gaze from her shrewd one, dropping back to his mangled body as if the sight was easier to withstand. His hand hovered over his leg as if to touch, but rose higher instead. He ran fingers over the wisps of tattered clothing, the bruises, the marks and open wounds.
"A regional name, perhaps," Amalfi said mildly.
Gratitude burned in his chest, beneath the fingers exploring the throbbing gash traveling from sternum to collar. He almost welcomed the grounding pain.
Pistacia huffed, waving her hand as if bored now. "Fine," she dismissed. "If he's from around here, he's probably from Lucania."
"'Luc'," Amalfi suggested. "What about 'Luc'?"
He shrugged. For good measure, he paired it with a careless tip of a bruised head. "Luc."
Rolling it on his tongue and repeating it once more, he tasted its simplicity, and nodded. 'Luc' would work. Truthfully, as Pistacia had said, it mattered not; he had no intentions of staying long enough for it to dribble much from anyone's lips. As soon as his legs worked, he would leave. He didn't know where... but he was supposed to be somewhere. He had to do something. Someone was waiting—
"Amalfi, I still want to continue our conversation from earlier," Pistacia said.
"Yes." Amalfi nodded, seeming distracted. She hardly spared a glance to her friend, still flicking her eyes over him and his bleeding vulnerabilities. "I'll find you."
Even Luc could hear how hollow it was. It was a promise, yes, but one made without much excitement.
Pistacia was clearly unhappy with this answer. She turned and exited without another word, but she didn't need any, she was armed with plenty of glowers and pointed displeasure meant to barb the other woman. If Amalfi had noticed, she would have felt them buried under her skin, hurting more to remove than it did to pull them in. But she didn't, and her friend was gone.
It was quiet after Pistacia left. Luc appreciated it.
Rising from where'd she'd knelt, Analfi turned her back to him. He watched her move to pat the wolf-like mutt on the head; Luc eyed the creature where it sat. He'd forgotten it was there. His throat hurt, but curiosity was a tight string; it demanded to be plucked, chafing too much to sit silent.
"What is that beast?"
Amalfi didn't turn. Her hands cupped the fuzzy jaw of the beast; one finger petting it between its haunting metal eyes.
"Aes."
"He is an aes?"
Her finger curled. "His name. Aes."
"I did not ask his name," Luc clarified, shaking his head, vaguely remembering her saying that before. He regretted the move when his spine twanged and his neck ached. "I question his type, his classification. A half-breed, I assume?"
Or, a type he had not yet encountered? A local species? Or, perhaps, a type he had forgotten. What else had he lost?
Amalfi was rigid.
"Aes is a fox." Her voice rang off the stone walls and splatted in every indent. The grotto amplified her even as it hid them.
Luc's brows shot up. His mouth opened before he could stop it, a strangled guffaw dripping from his lips. "It can't be," he denied.
"And yet," Amalfi commented lightly. She'd started fussing with some small blade, but still hadn't turned. It irked him more than he'd ever admit. This... this appealing for attention, it was awful and strange.
"The beast is the size of a wolf!"
He laughed—the quaking caused a feeling like falling sand in his chest—and enjoyed the absurdity. "No fox is that large," he continued.
With that, Amalfi finally turned. Maybe Luc should've been wary of the blade in her hand, or the tic in her clenched jaw, or the look in her eyes—but he only felt curious as he watched her. Curious, and intrigued, and thrilled she'd finally turned. It worried him as soon as he realized.
"Stop calling him 'beast'. You speak as if he is nothing more." Her hand tightened on the hilt of that small bound blade, but loosened just as fast. Luc watched Amalfi shake her head. The look she gave him was reproachful and layered. "You forget your manners."
Yes, he rather appreciated the glint in her eye; it matched her blade. He could marvel at the might. She appeared a force to be reckoned with, and though he didn't know, he'd always had an affinity for challenging forces others hadn't—or wouldn't.
"Amalfi, he is—"
"A fox," she insisted. "I rescued Aes myself when he was abandoned as a kit; the runt of his litter."
If that was a runt, Luc could only imagine how big the others were. He dreaded the thought when he could hardly pick himself up from her bed. As if reading his thoughts, a grin not too unlike her animal's pawed at Amalfi's mouth. She added, "He is larger than any fox I've ever seen, but he is a fox. I do not question his blessings."
Luc shook his head again, eying the bea—the fox.
Aes only glared back.
Luc had the rather unfortunate feeling it didn't like him very much. He clearly wasn't doing very well gathering good will amongst Campania's inhabitants; it seemed only Amalfi liked him, and that was doubtful at best.
Luc heaved his body up more. When Amalfi moved to help, he attempted to arm himself with another discouraging look aimed her way. Yet, she only deflected his protests and claims of independent ability again; like before, she rolled her eyes and helped him. It was awkward and uncoordinated, already difficult enough with his size but compounded by life-straining injuries. He was struggling more than he'd care to admit. Luc had to close his eyes a few times against the pain wracking every spot inside and out, but finally he sat, leaned against the stone walls.
Something about this all felt rather... odd. He couldn't put a finger on it. He couldn't put a finger on damn near anything anymore.
Unsettled, he gazed at her as she smoothed the bedding beside him. Her hair was loosely tucked behind her ears, and in the corner of her eyes was the faintest tinge of... green? It must've been the light. That, or some stained exhaustion. She looked much more relaxed than she'd seemed on the beach, but he could recognize the tightly strung nerves of one only stealing moments of rest amongst ongoing battle.
"Why are you helping me?"
He surprised even himself at his suddenness, baffled why he'd asked at all, but he didn't regret it. Not now, when the question tumbled between them; not now, when it seemed a good idea to gauge her answer. He could see if she'd lie, whether she'd be truthful, to examine how her words were crafted—a tool he could leverage to understand the woman who'd yanked him from the grip of an eager death and now insisted he stay. She was adamant on helping him, on being kind, enthralling his suspicion enough for it to prowl proudly through roads it usually only lurked.
Except, Amalfi hardly seemed to think on her answer. She answered immediately, her hands not slowing as she did. "Because you're a fool who doesn't value his own wellbeing." She pulled the furs straight. "After all the trouble Aes and I went through to get you here, the least you could do is not force open your wounds."
"I meant more than simply helping me sit," he pushed still, the rumble of his voice shaking those same agonized injuries. "Why go through the trouble of any of this? You could have left me as a lost cause. You injured yourself fighting a beast you should have run from."
Luc watched as Amalfi came closer. She didn't answer immediately this time. Instead, her eyes were kept down as she sat with her back against the wall beside him.
For a moment, it was silent.
She wordlessly offered him more water with an outstretched hand. He wanted to refuse again, but knew she would insist so he...
Except, he didn't remember her refilling the cup. He was sure he had emptied it. Oh, it mattered not; he had other, bigger gaps in his memory to worry about. He reached for the cup, fingers brushing her thin ones, his rugged hand so much bigger than hers as he accepted it. Her touch was mostly soft. Gentle, and still supple, of course, but he was surprised: he could feel the rough beginnings of effort's marks on her fingers. He recognized them immediately, they so reliably thickened his own hands. It was unusual. Most didn't bear a blade long enough to earn them outside of heroes and soldiers. He didn't see any tools in the cave to provide them, either. She surely didn't seem the type to frequently wield any of them—yesterday's actions excluded, of course.
Yesterday, or the day before, or however long it had been, was a story of its own. Her bravery with the odontotyrannos had been more than most soldiers, he knew, even if he himself hadn't witnessed most of the battle. Even if he wasn't sure if he was a soldier himself, or where he'd gained his own calluses, he knew she'd done what few would dare to consider.
He studied her again. He was taking every opportunity as it was offered, though she still avoided his gaze. Amalfi was beautiful; that was true. His mind was clearer than it'd been yet, and so was the view of her beauty, her features and fire. He knew beauty to be a fickle thing. It was mercurial and skittish, and yet it seemed so sure of itself as it nestled deep within her and shone through. Truly, he greatly admired how she'd stood her ground against the odontotyrannos, how she'd brought him to her home despite all the reasons she could've leveraged to leave him without fault. He admired the fabric of worn courage, the familiar foolishness of a good heart and stubborn morality. He respected the unreasonableness of empathy and the strength of those who wielded it. It took a will most didn't have, or didn't want, to die for others and do it gladly; to sacrifice anything at all for another.
Slowly, Amalfi met his eyes. He'd already forgotten the question. He couldn't look away, how could he? He noticed that faint tinge of green in the corner of her eyes again—how strange, how lovely, how wonderfully odd.
"I am tired of death," she repeated, her gaze holding him still.
Luc tumbled those words in his mind. He weighed them on his tongue and tested their strength with his teeth. He could taste their sourness, and it stunned him; he wasn't sure what to make of such a heavy answer. To declare such a thing, as if it could be changed, as if she had the power to ease that fatigue? So many carried the same thought, if not all, yet words were not oft given to it. Who was she to refuse such a thing?
When he searched her eyes with that new perspective, he was again left startled. He gaped at what burned there. The smolder that wore the tree to ash could be slow. It could be quiet as it fed, consuming until there was nothing left; loss could be lit by one single votive of destruction. With those types of grief, defined by its gradual onset, there came a resilience that bore fierceness—a refusal to lose any more than what was already doomed.
Luc could see shades of colors he didn't remember, hear lullabies he shouldn't have known, pinpoint turns he wouldn't take.
"What happened here?" he murmured.
His grip was tight on the cup, on the furs, on what answers he had. It wasn't much. He didn't have many answers. He was still searching. Whatever his life had been before, whoever he had been, now it was simply a great hunt for something or other, always searching and wondering. For truth, for explanation, for himself. Right now, he was looking for whatever answers she was able to give him.
But those storm-kissed brown eyes of Amalfi's slid closed. She leaned her head back, a half-cracked smile weary on her lips as Luc set the empty cup between them. He waited, ready to be as patient as she needed; something he felt rather awkward about.
"I don't know," Amalfi admitted. "It used to be peaceful."
Her throat was pale, exposed as it bobbed with her thick swallow. Luc pretended not to hear the depths, the wobble, the trickle of a storm into her voice when she continued, "Now monsters and beasts prowl, attacking day and night as if they hunt for someone. We..." her voice finally splintered, "we do not know what changed."
He mulled on that. On the stitches in his leg. His missing name, his torn flesh, his burnt clothes. He was in no shape to fight, yet he longed to. It was the licking of flames, the lapping of waves, the nibbles of the wind. He could feel his empty hands, scraped raw from tumbling on rocky beaches, but with a persistent itch deep in his palms; one that could only be dug out with a knife. He examined them, counting each callus and wondering what reason he'd had to gather them. Protection? Battle? Perhaps not even a sword, perhaps the grip of a tool. An oar, even. That would explain how he ended up on the beach. Had he perhaps been on a shi—
He winced at a sharp slash of pain behind his eye. Luc breathed slow through clenched teeth, swallowing the pain, still looking at his hands. "What..." His teeth grit the dry sand still plaguing his tongue. "What do you think happened to me?"
Amalfi peeked an eye open, tired as she took him in. For this answer, she seemed to think again; her waiting, thoughtful tongue unnerved him. Her mouth thinned, and her eyes looked away.
"You look like you were struck by lightning," she mumbled.
Immediately, a searing pain sliced from the center of his jaw to his brain, like a blade plunged through his chin. Gasping, Luc screwed his eyes shut, and thunked his rattled skull on the rock behind him.
"It's a miracle you survived," he heard Amalfi say softly. "But you did. You will survive."
How many of you read "weeping widow" instead of "weeping wound"? I did.
Death, loss, grief, they require so much. They take from us. Even if there is a light at the end, we must claw our way to it, and our fingers may tremble from the exhaustion of it all. Aren't we tired of grieving? Aren't we tired of death? I imagine how they must feel; the ones on the screen. Their worst moments are dangled for the world to see, as if bait, as if catching clicks was the intention instead of confrontation. The cameras were meant to expose the truth, not offer a lens for others to turn a blind eye to. It was to force us to see, not to cut off the full picture or simply churn up engagement. Not to spout content or open a window for the world to watch, like it's a finished movie. Their freedom is being held by the scruff and held over the edge. Now. That is happening now. This is history, right now. For them, it is more than thirty seconds of news. It is more than a banner at the top of your phone, or a clutter of words spouted by a reporter, who always looks either wide-eyed or blank-faced but never in between. This is war, and children, and homes.
And the worst part?
You don't know which war I'm referring to. There's too many to know.
For the ones we unevenly see flashing on the screen—and especially the ones off—grief is constant. Death is life. Loss is persistent. Spectators are silent.
I am tired of silence.
- H