“How is that possible?”
Eight flinches at Sylva’s tone as he asked the question. She shakes her head and stays silent. Still looking down, she listens quietly at the rustle of Seth’s uniform as he touches Sylva to calm the Magus down.
“I thought he killed him too,” Eight confesses. “When I noticed how different he would act sometimes and how forgetful he had become, I thought he had an illness, you know, mental illness or something.”
“So how did you know that he has two souls?” Seth asks, gentle but firm.
“I—I looked into him when he was asleep,” she hesitates. “When I was living with Auntie, I preferred necromancy over alchemy, so I checked the same way we check to see if someone is truly dead using the art. He had two, I’m certain.”
The atmosphere of the room is heavy as the three adults stare at the teenage girl; a mysterious teenage girl who came from the neighbouring country that caused destruction with the art they created all over the world for over a century. No one knows what to say and no one dares to move, and even Frans has stopped pacing.
It has only been a little over a decade from when the war ended, yet someone is already starting something again, Seth broods. A tiny voice from the back of his mind wonders what drives the Alkemians to keep trying to invent new arts. Is it dissatisfaction? Or can it be for the fame of it? Or is it something as noble as wanting to help people? The last one triggers a sense of repulsion within him, though, as he can’t find anything that would excuse resurrecting the dead.
“Can you tell us everything?” Seth asks after a while. Eight looks back at him, her blank stare is back on her face. “From the start. After you moved in with your auntie, what happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” Frans snaps, dragging an idle seat from the corner of the room beside Eight and sits on it, leaning forward with her elbows propping her torso on her laps.
Eight looks at the three adults who are looking at her expectantly, and sighs.
Auntie was waiting for the two of them outside when they arrived at her house at the edge of the city of Kenia, a city in the border of Alkemi and Arlinshill. The middle-aged woman liked to joke about how she always dined abroad since her kitchen and dining room is technically in the territory of the Kingdom of Arlinshill.
Auntie lived in the best house in the city. Her manor was huge and filled with treasures from all around the world, displayed proudly in every room. With the amount of shiny, glistening golden frames and vase, Little Eight thought there was no way she would ever run out of her riches, but she was wrong.
At first, they lived life as usual. They lived as if their country had never lost the war, as if the head of their families were never executed, as if scary men in uniform had never banged on their door to demand a large sum of money. They’d eat luscious meals for every meal, and then they would study, play, and then sleep. But that life—that play-pretend life did not last very long.
Little by little, Auntie’s treasure was disappearing. She brushed it off when she was asked, saying that she’s only putting them away since she’s getting bored of seeing them every day. Then, the meal lost its flavour. Again, she told them that they were healthier for two growing children and it would help them grow up faster and stronger. Next, her servant and maids one by one left the house. At that point, the house was a mess and the food was so foul that even the stray dogs refused to eat them. The final straw, though, was when their meal started disappearing.
Thinking back, Little Eight should have been more grateful for the foul food, because foul as it was, they were still food to fill her stomach. When the food disappeared completely, her hunger gnawed inside her body. The feeling of starvation was the worst feeling Little Eight had ever experienced. She would eat anything at that point, she was even considering eating tiny rocks and pebbles just to keep her stomach filled.
Sana is a few years older than Eight and like the responsible brother he was, he would always give his sister any food he could find from the forest behind Auntie’s house. Sometimes, he’d come back with mushrooms or berries, but most of the time, they were roasted insects, and since Auntie was terrified at them, she would always refuse to eat them. So, Sana would only share his delicious roasted grasshoppers with Eight, and they would sit together by a bonfire in the backyard where Sana would tell Eight of his adventure in the forest.
Until one night, Sana didn’t return.
He didn’t return for weeks, and Auntie was getting sick. She was losing her energy, and she could no longer speak. Even swallowing water was too much for her at that point. Eventually, she couldn’t even open her eyes.
On a sunny day in the third winter after the war ended, Auntie’s body turned cold and lifeless. Little Eight, whom at that point had learned necromancy to pass the time, checked on her soul chamber. Her soul was gone and refused to be summoned. On a sunny day on the third winter, Little Eight was truly alone.
Little Eight cried the day her auntie died, but she was quick to realise that crying made her even more hungry, so she refused to cry anymore. She was so traumatised by the feeling of starvation that she held back her tears and sadness.
Instead, she wrapped Auntie tightly with the bed sheet that she had used on her bed and pushed her sheet-wrapped body from the bed, making sure that she had landed as softly as she could. Then, grabbing the other end of the sheet, she dragged her body slowly using all of her might. She groaned at the sight of the stairs and squatted down, pushing and stopping the body as she rolled it downstairs, trying to do it oh-so-gently so the sheet wouldn’t unroll. She was heaving by the time they reached downstairs, fat beads of sweat rolling down her tiny face. The activity drained her energy and for a second, she was reminded of her hunger—she shook her head, quickly dismissing the thought and the rumble of her stomach, and began dragging towards the backyard again.
It was only when she had attempted to dig into the soil that she realised that the winter had hardened the soil and her body was too small to hold a shovel correctly. Little Eight didn’t know what to do to Auntie’s body that she had dragged to the backyard. She had planned on burying her there, in the backyard of her beautiful house, but she was too small, too weak to even dig a hole for her.
Her eyes stared at the road to the village. She remembered about a funeral of a distant relative that she had attended at the church, and couldn’t help but to wonder if the church would be willing to help her bury her Auntie. The church was located not too far from Auntie’s house, so she dragged back her body inside and set out to the church.
Just as she got halfway to the church, though, she heard a voice, a familiar voice calling her name-
“Ava! Yes, I remember!” Eight exclaims suddenly. The girl jumps from her seat, looking at the three adults who looked surprised by her sudden outburst in front of her with a huge smile on her face.
“Ava?” Seth repeats, returning her smile but raising his eyebrows at her.
Eight nods. “My name! It was Ava before Father gave me a new name. I just remember that’s how Sana used to call me. I think it might be a nickname, or short for something, but it was my name. My real name.”
The girl’s smile was contagious. Seth looks at both of his colleagues who were also smiling slightly before looking back at her. “So it was Sana who called you?”
“Oh, yes, it was Sana. Sorry.” Eight—Ava—sits back down. She opens her mouth, but pauses for a moment, looking every bit hesitant. Sighing, the girl reluctantly continues, “it was Sana, and he was with Father.”
“So let me get this straight, Sana did not come home for weeks, and when he came back, he came back with Father?” Sylva asks and Ava nods. “Do you know why?”
“He was found by Father when he was taking a nap in the forest. Father took him home, he fed him and everything,” Ava paused to look at Seth in the eye. “Sana wanted to go home, but Father would not allow him to. He tried to escape, but he was caught and locked inside the time-out room for a whole day.”
Seth takes a sharp inhale and leans forward. He asks her carefully, “So he kidnapped Sana?”
“He did, yes.” Ava nods, now back to her emotionless face again.
“Then why did they suddenly appear in front of you?” Sylva asked.
“Because Sana told him that he has a little sister.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sylva shakes his head, his tone harsh and his eyebrows furrowed. “Why would he want you to be kidnapped with him?”
Ava glares at Sylva. “Because he knows that at least Father would keep us alive.”
The young Magus did not explicitly say that Sana is a bad brother, but Ava heard the implication. “It was winter, sir. What animal, what tree, what insect lives in an aspen forest during winter?” she asks, challenging. Her face scrunches with anger and her voice trembles as she continues to berate the Magus. “It was our first winter without food in our pantry, without anything to harvest or hunt in the forest, and I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to afford anything. Father would feed us, at least we could live.”
The room is silent after. Ava glares at Sylva who shifts his gaze somewhere else, looking uncomfortable.
“Of course, I understand. It might be a very desperate attempt on his part, but Sana was just trying to keep them both alive.” Seth agrees. Then he slaps Sylva’s shoulder lightly and nods to Ava. “Sylva, that was very rude of you.” Apologise, he implies.
Sylva looks sheepish for a second, but he rises from his chair and bows deeply. “Forgive me. I wasn’t thinking.”
Ava snorts, but nods at his apology.
Sylva offers her a weak smile as he sits back down, but the girl looks away and refuses to look at him. She looks at Seth, instead.
“So, after you saw the two of them, what happened?” Seth urges her to continue.
“Then, they took me to the school.”
“And what happened to Auntie’s body?”
Ava doesn’t reply immediately. Her eyes are focused on her own hands, her eyebrows drawn closely together. After a few moments, her complexion turns pale and ghostly. She looks at Seth with her eyes wide opened, her eyeballs looking right and left with horror as she puts her hands on her cheeks.
“I, I don’t, I don’t remember.”
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