Prologue
Sapphire S. Valdawell
Five Years Old
I was five when mylittle crush on him wasextinguished.
I was five when I gave him a wooden carving I made from a red oak tree, a beacon, just like the ones my father made for my mother when they were young.
I was five when he held it in his hands during class, examining it while I said the carefully rehearsed words.I’m gonna love you until hell freezes over.Again, just like my mother and father would say to each other long ago.
I was five when hell turned to a solid block of ice in the bed of my chest.
I was five when he looked at me with those cold, ocean-blue eyes and spit in my face. The act itself was too vicious and cruel to be from another five-year-old. It was thought out and intended to wound. It was followed by a smirk sharper than a Vexamen sickle.
I was five when Niklaus Demechnef broke my heart.
Letter #86
Skylenna
Dear Dessin,
I can’t soothe my own babies.
It’s only been three days since I’ve given birth, but I just feel…lost. My heart wilts when I look into our son’s sleepy eyes, and I see Kane. Or when Sapphire sleeps, it reminds me of the concentration on your face when you solve a problem. These similarities make me yearn for you in the time I lie awake to breastfeed every two hours.
Chekiss helps me around the clock. Niles and Marilynn are in the trenches with their own baby boy, Niklaus, but still make time to help when they can.
Ruth and Warrose are here often too. But it’s not the same. We were robbed, weren’t we? These moments with our newborns we will never get back. Sometimes I imagine you changing Sapphire’s diaper in the nursery. Sometimes I picture Kane sleep deprived with me, cracking jokes about the hardships of having twins.
When I do sleep, I see your face, and when I jolt awake, I can still smell your clothes. I can’t stop crying. Please come back. I need you. Your babies need you. How am I supposed to go on without you?
My love for you doesn’t fade, it only grows more painful.
Sincerely,
Your Soulmate,
Skylenna
1: The Wolf Beneath the Silverware
Sapphire
Twenty-One Years Old
Grief is no stranger inthe Valdawell house.
It lives down the hall in my father’s room. It sleeps on the right side of my mother’s bed on a cold night amid a winter storm. It haunts the pages of our family photo albums.
And we let it reside here because there is nowhere else for it to go.
I think on that as I trace the uneven edge of the wooden table. The imperfect carvings of a wolf sprinting through a mass of trees along its perimeter. I admire the careful details and the precision it must have taken the artist to draw the lines with the pointed end of the knife. It must have taken days to complete.
Though I’m careful not to let my mother see how my index finger caresses the paws of the wolf. Any time she sees me giving this table the slightest bit of attention, she starts to explain how my father built it himself. Carved it from a red oak tree and spent all night drawing those designs of DaiSzek running through the forest.
I’ve heard it as a child.
