“How many did we lose?” Aelia fought the prickling behind her eyes. She would not cry in public. She would not.
Moira’s eyes flicked to Aelia’s, before dropping to the floor.
“All the humans are gone, either taken or burned,” Moira said. Aelia pressed her lips together, not trusting herself not to vomit as she looked over to where several people were shovelling the smouldering remains of the fire into wheelbarrows. “They didn’t burn the artemians they killed, leaving us fifty-three of our own to bury, with several more Peregrinians on top of that.”
Fifty-three. And every single human was either dead or missing. Aelia felt numb, her shattered heart unable to take any more.
“Do we know where they’re taking them?”
Moira shook her head. “No, they filled the cages to bursting and left. It wasn’t just humans they took either, if they could restrain the artemians who resisted, they took them too. If not, they killed them.”
Pain lanced through the deadened numbness Aelia was clinging to.
“They took Fenrir,” was all she could manage to say.
“Oh child,” Moira reached over and placed a hand on Aelia’s arm, squeezing gently. “I’m so sorry.”
“Where are they taking them?” Aelia asked, almost rhetorically, but Moira answered anyway.
“Everyone’s asking the same thing, but no one knows the answer.” She smiled, sympathetically, rubbing up and down Aelia’s arm a few times before dropping her hand.
Aelia nodded, not trusting herself to speak, blinking furiously at the tears that she refused to let spill.
“Do you want me to take you to Otis?”
It was like ice water had been thrown over her. No, no the last thing she wanted was to see him. She didn’t want her last memory to be of him lying there, white and rigid, his skin waxen, eyes already turning opaque. Moira seemed to sense her panic.
“He’s been wrapped in the burial shroud already,” she added. “And you don’t have to see him, there is no right and wrong here. It’s whatever you need.”
Aelia lost her battle with her tears, and they trickled down her cheeks. She wiped at them furiously.
“When are we burying them?” Aelia squeezed the words through her constricted throat.
“Later today, as soon as the last grave is dug.”
“Where?”
“In section fourteen, the one we cleared last week.”
Aelia nodded. “Thank you, I’ll head straight there then.”
“You don’t have to, Aelia, we have people on it.” Moira was only trying to be kind, but Aelia shook her head.
“No, I want to be the one to dig it for him.” If she couldn’t stand to visit him one last time, she would make sure she gave him that.
“Alright. Come find me if you need anything, won’t you?” Moira pressed her lips into a hard smile and Aelia nodded, thanking her as she turned to leave.
It was a relief to have something to do, and her broken mind clung to the task like it was the last lifeline to her sanity. If she thought about how alone she was for a moment longer, she felt like her grief might swallow her whole, forcing her into a ball on the floor to suffocate on her loneliness.
Keeping busy was the alternative, and she grabbed onto it with both hands.
She walked through her pain, her breath wheezing slightly as she limped away from the forest and towards section fourteen.
Sweat trickleddown Aelia’s back, her clothes already soaked and sticking to her with the exertion of digging the grave.
Her entire body screamed at her, some parts burning with a bone-deep ache, other areas treating her to a sharp, stabbing pain with every swing of her shovel. It was the end of summer and the ground was baked hard, the roots of the trees they’d recently felled slowing her progress. She’d borrowed tools from the other families nearby, turning down their offers of help but exceptionally grateful for the saw she was using to tackle the roots she couldn’t break with her shovel.
Aelia dug until she was throwing the soil up and over her head to hit the pile she’d created next to the grave, and then she dug some more. She hadn’t even noticed the failing light until a tentative cough from over her head made her look up.
