What’s Left in the End
by Frances Koziar
The silence grows until it is like a presence, like eyes watching me from behind. I hear it in my ears and feel it in my skin.
Being immune to the plague that rips through your city sounds like a good thing. However, as I stare out from a high window of the palace at a city that is silent but for the birds flitting through the trees and the wind hushing through their leaves, I do not know if that is true.
I don’t know how long I have sat with my legs dangling from the windowsill before I decide that I can sit no longer. I pull my feet in and turn to see the ruins of my life. The princess lies dead on her silken bed. The other servants lie dead too: some on the floor, others scrunched into corners. They do not look well in death, but neither are they disfigured or covered in the pustules one might expect, and I am glad for that. Perhaps it is a sign that the plague was, as some said, from the workings of the mages who died first, but maybe that’s only what you say when you can’t believe that something like this can just happen.
I had to realize one thing before I turned from the window: that it is over, and seemingly everyone is dead. But I have to realize another thing before I leave: that the order of the world has changed; that I am no longer a princess’ servant, and that there is no princess.
I arrange neatly the bodies of those who were last to die. I do so for no purpose but that it feels like what the last survivor should do but, as I do it, I take things from them: the beautiful necklace of onyx and lapis from the princess, heavy boots from one of the other male maids that are sturdier than mine, a shortsword from one of the guards at the door, after unclenching her hand from its hilt.
And then I begin to walk: out of the palace and past the bodies of everyone I knew, out into the streets of the city. Many died in their homes, but some folks litter the cobblestones of the streets and the alleys like garbage left forgotten. Outside, the silence is lesser and greater: lesser because I can hear the wind through the trees and the windows and the calls of birds; greater because the silence of everything else feels even more powerful because of it.
The plague hit not only humans but many similar creatures, too, including the dogs that once haunted the streets, fighting for scraps. It came quickly, without enough time to prepare. Though maybe, no time would have been enough.
I walk for a long time, through the main part of the city and then out toward its edges, the silence pressing down like a weight on my shoulders. I do not call out for survivors: if there are any — something I begin to doubt the further I go — then the sound of my footsteps is call enough in the midst of such desolation.
I pass beyond the cobblestones, onto the packed dirt road of the country, and still I walk, going nowhere that I can name. Away, perhaps, but I do not know what I head toward. I do not know what is left to head toward.
The trees build around me until I am walking down a wide road swathed by trees. The sun appears and disappears behind the fluffy clouds above, and its light speckles through the leaves of elm and ash and pine. Here, the quiet seems natural, beautiful. It is I who now feel unnatural: a man walking alone, carrying the truth within me.
A few wisps bob along the road: small glowing creatures the colour of moonlight that were created by the dead mages to light the roads at night, not in an afternoon like this. They look to me like memories, or dreams that are lost.
I hear a sound that at first I think is a cat, though cats died as well. Then I realize it is the wail of a baby.
I turn off down what looks like a deer trail into the forest, following the sound. For though I do not know what I should be doing, I do know this: that if I am the only one left apart from a baby, then I must care for that baby as best I know how.
In a clearing ahead in the forest, I see a cottage, a healer’s hut, I guess, for it is surrounded by an herb garden. The baby’s cry comes from within. I pass a fresh grave dug at the edge of a meadow and prepare myself for more bodies.
But then I freeze, and listen, not believing the sound the first time. I hear it again: a gentle lullaby in a deep voice.
I circle around, trying to peer through the windows of the hut. I will laugh at myself later, I think, if there is a later, for despite all I have seen, it is the sound of someone singing a lullaby that frightens me.
I hesitate half a dozen paces from the open door, sure that whatever is singing must be a monster, must be some inhuman creature to fear, for having survived all of this when no one else did.
“Hello?” I call, and my voice rasps the word to near silence. I clear my throat and say it again. I can’t remember the last time I spoke.
The lullaby stops as swiftly as death comes by a knife blade. There is silence for a moment, but it is a comforting silence to what came before: the silence of presence and expectancy. Not of death. Not of emptiness.
A giant bear of a man who looks about my age ducks out of the hut, holding what appears to be a one-year old in the curl of his arm. Tears streak his coal-black cheeks and vanish into his beard. We stare at one another. I stare at his tears and think, in a surprised, detached way, I should be crying, too.
But I hardly feel, hardly remember how to speak to someone else. Before, if I can still remember a before, I would have been tongue-tied in front of such a man; now, “attractive” seems like a word I cannot remember the definition of.
“They’re not mine,” the giant man clarifies, just as I say, “You’re not dead.”
We stand there for a moment again, until the child, who had temporarily been surprised into staring at me, begins to cry again. The other man instantly begins comforting the orphan in a crooning voice, his enormous hands gentle as he bobs the baby up and down a little. And despite everything, I think that the two of them there, cuddled together in the doorway, look like a family, and like home, to me.
“May I come in?” I ask, and the man does something I can hardly remember. He smiles at me, like the glow of a wisp against the darkest of nights, and then he nods and reaches out a hand for mine.
Copyright © 2021 by Frances Koziar
