The tearsmith, p.18
The Tearsmith, page 18
‘Never,’ he repeated forcefully. ‘Are you sure she knows you exist?’
‘She sure as hell does!’ Lionel hurled at him. The air between them was crackling with anger and tension. ‘She’s always messaging me, and when you’re finally out of the way…’
Rigel threw his head back in gruff, angry, contemptuous laughter, that ached with a black, all-consuming pain. It hurt like hell. Those words – her hatred, her closeness with this guy – shook with an undeniable truth that damned him for all eternity.
Rigel had always known it, that thorns would beget more thorns. That what he carried inside was so soiled and damaged that a soul as pure and gentle as hers would never want him.
He had always known, but hearing it spoken aloud destroyed whatever was left of him. It was stupid, paradoxical: he was disillusioned, but he could still find pricks of hope among the thorny bushes. It was those that hurt the most.
Among the ruins, the only light he could see was the one that haloed her.
It was a light that kept him awake at night. That made her glow in all of his memories.
She was like a shining star. A star that, in the devastating loneliness of that feeling, did nothing but bring him comfort.
It was even shining in that moment, that light.
A warm glow – her, she who always smiled. Rigel wished he could extinguish it, free her from his cruel love.
He would have if he could but, as always, there was nothing he could do to smother the flickering light of his feelings for her. He clung to it with all his might, grasping, desperate, unable to let go.
‘When you’re out of the way…’
‘Yeah,’ he sneered caustically, sheltering the memory of Nica within himself. ‘Keep dreaming.’
The first punch split his lip.
Rigel’s blood mixed with the rain. He couldn’t help but think that, all in all, the physical pain was more bearable than how he had just felt.
The second punch missed, and Rigel turned back to Lionel like an incensed beast. His fist hit Lionel’s jaw with a blood-curdling crunch, louder even than the thunder.
Rigel didn’t let up, not even when Lionel punched back, splitting the skin over his eyebrow. He didn’t let up when his knuckles were red raw, and strands of wet hair pierced his eyes like needles.
He didn’t let up until he was the last one standing, and Lionel was rolling on the ground grimacing in pain.
He looked down at him. Lightning flashed and an ocean of black clouds loomed above them. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the asphalt.
He didn’t want to think about what her face would look like if she could see him now.
‘See you, Leonard,’ he snarled and walked away.
He left him curled up in the rain, reeling from his own mistake.
* * *
—
He saw his wretched, miserable guilt in Nica’s always shining eyes.
It was more prominent than ever before, a dark stain on her beautiful, pristine purity. When she lifted her eyes, full of condemnation, from her phone to his face, it was like a wave violently hitting his chest.
He would remember the way he felt like he was dying for the rest of his life.
He looked into her Tearsmith eyes, and knew he would never be able to lie to her.
He couldn’t deny it. His knuckles were bloody and grazed, and Lionel had already told her it was him. Rigel understood then, that her disappointment was the price he had to pay for every single lie he had ever told.
For having lied and hidden, for having pushed her away before she had a chance to understand.
He smiled a thorny smile, but felt himself wilting inside. His chest tightened sharply, agonisingly.
He had only given her what she expected. He had worn the mask that was tattooed on his face. He only did what he always did because, deep down, he knew that that was how she saw him: irredeemably vile.
‘Oh, the boy cried wolf!’
What happened next, Rigel would remember only in part.
Confused, blurred fragments – her eyes, her light, her hands all over him. Her hair and scent, and her lips forming words he couldn’t hear. He was too busy trying to escape the sun-like heat she radiated.
Her Band-Aid-covered hands dug into his arms, and inside he writhed and growled and yearned. She was close, so close, so angry and close that it made him tremble.
And as he desperately, urgently tried to move away from her, Rigel couldn’t help but notice that even despite her burning rage and distress, Nica was devastatingly beautiful.
Even with all those Band-Aids and bruises on her fingers, Nica was devastatingly beautiful.
Even as she struck him, tried to hurt him, to scratch him, to return to him everything that he had only ruined, Nica remained the most beautiful thing his eyes had ever seen.
It was his fault, and the fault of the spell she carried unknowingly within her, that he couldn’t stop himself in time.
She had gotten too close, and when he pushed her away, the writhing within him spurred him on and his mouth landed on hers.
…And for the first time…
For the very first time in his life, he surrendered to all that beauty and pain. He let it consume him, died with an exhausted sigh of relief, threw himself into the abyss and landed on a bed of rose petals, after having spent his life among the thorns.
He surrendered himself to her warmth and could feel nothing else.
He yielded to her, to the peaceful light shining sweetly inside her, lighting up every corner of that endless battlefield.
Perhaps, our greatest fear
is accepting that someone can truly
love us for who we are.
* * *
I staggered backwards.
I had pulled away from him so abruptly that the room was spinning. My phone fell to the ground and I continued retreating, stunned, staring.
I couldn’t breathe. I shuddered as I touched my lips with trembling fingers.
I stared at the face before me with devastated eyes, the taste of blood, his blood, on my aching mouth. I felt a small cut on my lips.
He had bitten me.
Rigel had finally really bitten me.
I stared at his heaving chest. He wiped the blood from his glistening, red lips and I thought I saw a fleeting bright spark behind his veiled eyes.
In his eyes, for a moment, I thought I glimpsed a memory reflected back at me.
The same silent, accusatory way in which I had looked at him, one evening long ago:
‘One day they’ll see who you really are.’
‘Oh, yeah? And who am I really?’
‘You’re the Tearsmith.’
* * *
—
Rigel’s jaw clenched. ‘You’re the Tearsmith.’
His voice was sharp, he spat it out involuntarily as if it was poison he had held in his mouth for too long.
I was reduced to a heap of astonished shudders. He quickly turned around and disappeared up the stairs.
14. Disarming
There are some types of love you cannot cultivate.
They are like wild roses:
They rarely flower,
And their thorns are like tenterhooks.
I remembered her, my mom.
Her curly hair and her sweet scent of violets, her eyes as grey as a winter sea.
I remembered her warm hands and her kindness, how she would always let me hold the samples she was examining.
‘Be gentle,’ I remembered her whispering as she handed me a beautiful blue butterfly.
‘Tenderness, Nica,’ she said. ‘Tenderness, always…Remember that.’
I wished I could tell her that I had held her words inside of me, that they were the foundation upon which I had built my heart.
I wished I could tell her that I’d always remembered, even when the warmth of her hands had disappeared and mine were covered in Band-Aids, the only colour left in my life.
Even when my nightmares were tainted by the sound of creaking leather.
But in that moment…I just wanted to tell Mom that sometimes tenderness wasn’t enough.
That not all people were butterflies, and that no matter how gentle I was, they’d never let themselves be handled with care. That I would always be covered in bites and scratches, that I would end up covered in wounds I was incapable of healing.
This was the truth.
In the darkness of my room, I felt like a forgotten doll. My gaze unseeing, my arms hugging my knees.
My phone screen lit up again, but I didn’t get up to reply. I already knew what it would say, and I didn’t have the courage to read any more. Lionel’s messages were an unending sequence of accusations:
Look what he did to me
I told him to stop
He started it
It’s his fault
He punched me for no reason
I’d already seen it happen too many times. I no longer had the strength to question whether it was true.
Deep down, this was how Rigel had always been.
Violent and cruel, that was how Peter had described him. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to write him into the pages of this new reality: he would never fit there.
He would always crush me, defeat me. Day after day, I would end up losing more pieces of myself.
I wished that Anna and Norman had never gone away, that Anna was here, telling me that nothing was beyond repair.
This would have happened anyway, I thought to myself. Whether they’d stayed or not…it would have fallen apart, sooner or later.
I sighed heavily, swallowed and noticed I was very thirsty.
I decided to get up. I had been there for hours and night had fallen.
Before leaving my room, I made sure there was no one on the landing. Bumping into Rigel was the last thing I wanted.
I moved through the darkness. It was no longer raining, and the moonlight shining through the clouds and illuminating the shapes of the buildings outside allowed me to find my way.
Downstairs was immersed in shadows. I stumbled into something in the kitchen and almost fell over. I gasped, grabbed on to the wall and stared at the floor, blinking.
What…
I quickly reached for the light switch.
The light hurt my eyes. I took a sharp breath in and instinctively stepped back.
Rigel was lying face-down on the floor, his hair spread out over the parquet flooring. His white wrist stood out against the wood and the sides of his face were covered by a fan of black hair. He wasn’t moving.
I was so stricken by the sight of his immobile body that as I took another step backwards, I realised I was shaking. The vision before me clashed with the image I had of Rigel, his strength, his ferocity, his unshakeable self-control.
I stared at him, wide-eyed, unable to make a sound.
It was him. On the ground. Not moving.
He was…
‘Rigel,’ I uttered in a strained whisper.
Suddenly, my heart thudded against my ribs and reality crashed around me all at once. With a violent shudder, I came back to myself. Breathing frantically, I crouched over him.
‘Rigel,’ I breathed, grasping the fact that there was a human being lying at my feet. My eyes ran over his body, but my hands were shaking too much to touch him. I didn’t know where to put them.
Good God, what had happened?
Panic rushed over me. A flurry of thoughts crowded my mind and I stared at him weakly, my chest tight.
What should I do?
What?
I reached my hand out far enough to touch his temple. Feeling him through my Band-Aids, I jumped.
He was burning hot. God, he was burning like a furnace.
I threw him one last glance before running into the living room. I leapt like a cat onto the armchair and grabbed the house phone.
Never before in my life had I found someone lying on the floor like that. Maybe out of panic, or maybe simply because I couldn’t control my panic, I found myself dialling with shaking fingers the number of the only person who came to mind in that moment of need. The only person I knew I could count on, though I didn’t have anyone to compare her to.
‘Anna!’ I burst out before she could say a word. ‘Something’s happened…something…Rigel!’ I gripped the receiver. ‘It’s Rigel!’
I heard a groan and a rustling of bedsheets.
‘Nica…’ she replied sleepily. ‘What…’
‘I know it’s late,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m sorry, but…it’s important! Rigel’s on the floor, he…he…’
I heard Anna’s breathing suddenly closer.
‘Rigel?’ There was more worry in her voice. ‘On the floor? What do you mean on the floor? Is he okay?’
I rushed to get my words out. In a ramble, I explained that I had gone downstairs and found him there, lying in the kitchen.
‘He’s got a high fever, but I don’t know…Anna, I don’t know what to do!’
Anna panicked. I heard her throwing back the bedsheets and waking Norman. She said they’d take a coach, or get home any other way they could.
I regretted how scared my ineptitude was making her. Maybe, if I’d been able to keep my head, I could have called an ambulance, or I might have realised that it was just light-headedness from the fever that had made Rigel pass out.
But instead, I had panicked and called her, while she was thousands of miles away and could do nothing. I was so ashamed of my stupidity I wanted to bite my hands.
‘God, I knew we should have come back, I knew it,’ her voice trembled. ‘I could have made sure he was in bed by now…I could have been looking after him…and maybe, maybe…’
Anna seemed beside herself. I wondered if she was maybe overreacting, but then again, there had never been anyone who worried about me, so I had no standard to compare her to.
Maybe she wasn’t overreacting, maybe it was like this in other families. Maybe if I hadn’t been so rash…
‘Anna, the fever, I can…I can deal with it.’ I wanted to fix my mistake, to make myself useful in some way. I felt the need to try and calm her down. ‘I can try to get him upstairs and into bed…’
‘He’ll need an ice pack,’ she interrupted me anxiously. ‘Heavens, he’ll have got so cold on the floor! Medicine! There’s drugs for fevers in the bathroom, in the cupboard beside the mirror, they’re the ones with the white lid! Oh, Nica…’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, though it was clear that she was beyond worried. ‘Now…now, I’ll sort it, Anna! If you tell me exactly what I need to do, I…’
She rattled off instructions and I etched them into my brain. I hung up, promising that I’d understood and that I’d call her back.
I went back into the hallway, stopped a metre away from Rigel and took a deep breath. There was no time to lose.
I would have liked to say that I lifted him onto my shoulders and carried him in a dignified manner up the stairs. But this was far from the case.
I placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder blade and noticed my fingers were shaking.
‘Rigel…’ I lowered my face towards him and my hair tumbled over his back. ‘Rigel, now…you’ve got to help me…’
I managed to turn him onto his back. I tried, in vain, to get him into a sitting position. I put my arm around his neck and lifted his head. His black hair fell over my forearm and onto the floor. His head flopped backwards and his white skin was tense over his throat.
‘Rigel…’
The sight of him so defenceless knotted my stomach. I swallowed, and threw a nervous glance at the stairs before looking back at him. I was very close to him, and didn’t realise that I was gripping him tighter than I needed to.
‘We’ve got to get upstairs,’ I told him quietly, tender but determined. ‘The stairs, Rigel, that’s all…’ I pursed my lips and lifted his chest. ‘Come on!’
Well…these were fighting words.
I was used to tending injured sparrows and rescuing mice from traps – creatures of much smaller size.
I tried to convince him to put a bit of effort in, but he showed no sign he could hear me, so I started to drag him along the floor. I blew a strand of hair off my face and my feet slipped on the parquet flooring. Somehow, I managed to get us to the foot of the stairs.
I gripped Rigel’s t-shirt and managed to pull him up enough to prop his back up against the wall. He was terribly tall and powerfully built; I was miniscule in comparison.
‘Rigel…please…’ My voice strained with the excruciating effort. ‘Get up!’
It was a colossal task. With an exhausted groan, I nestled his head against my abdomen to stop him from falling to the ground again. I buckled under his immensely heavy weight, my legs shaking.
I gritted my teeth and we struggled up the stairs, Rigel barely managing to stay upright. His arm was looped around my neck and I felt his jaw against my temple.
I sighed heavily in relief as we approached the top of the stairs, but on the last step, I slipped. My eyes flew open, but it was too late: the walls spun and we crashed down.
My hip collided with the edge of one of the stairs and I bit my tongue in pain.
‘Oh God…’ I trembled, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
Could I really be this much of a disaster?
I crawled towards Rigel. I put a hand to the stabbing pain in my hip and anxiously checked his head for injuries.
I couldn’t get him upright.
Hobbling, I finally managed to drag him up the stairs and into his room, and with a superhuman effort, I heaved him onto the mattress and pulled the covers over him.
I wiped my forehead and allowed myself a moment to catch my breath. His arm was dangling off the side of the bed, his hair was strewn all over the pillow.
