1. Deathbed
"Come here," Reynold groaned, his face a grimace of pain. Putting an arm under him, he tried to lift his head in bed.
Elyssa fumbled for the extra pillow from a pile of beddings stacked against a wall atop a lounge on cabriole legs. She lay it under Reynold's upper back.
Reynold grabbed her wrist, his thin hand withered and cold under the sun stabbed through the ruffle drapes like a blade, his drab eyes earnest, gazing into hers.
"Listen to me, child," he coughed up the words. "Leave the Commonwealth now and head east."
Elyssa wrung his hand with hers, tears bulging fat in her eyes. "I won't leave you!" she sobbed.
"Foolish child, what do you have left here?" Reynold scolded, huffing a long sigh, his hollow cheek tucked to the shoulder. "I guess it's my fault. After your parents' accident, I should have left you in the foster home."
Elyssa shook her head with force. The car crash six years ago felt like yesterday. It left her an orphan at the age of nine. Her world shattered until Reynold Barca came to build it back up again. He took her away from the foster home. Keeping her under his wings, he taught her rhetorics and verses, philosophy and history, strategies and calculation. While her memory of Father slowly faded during the six years, Reynold became her friend, her father, and her mentor, the best one could ask for. And she couldn't bear the thought of losing it all over again.
"Don't say that!" She gave into a paroxysm of weeping, her head buried behind her arm.
Another guttural sigh came wheezing out of Reynold's throat. "It's safer to be ordinary," he scoffed. "How I used to despise that when I was young. Now I see the wisdom in it. I should never have made you a prodigy, so my downfall wouldn't have affected you. I'm sorry, child." A fit of cough made him pause. "But I don't regret it," he continued, hanging on his lips an anemic smile. "You're such a talent. Your flair with words is something one could only wish for. With or without me, you'll always shine. I'm only sorry because I'm weak, and I have failed. I have failed you."
"You can never fail me! And you never have!"
Reynold shook his head. "If only I had been shrewd enough, cunning enough, realistic enough, I would have judged the shift in the wind a little better, and not picked a side in this idiotic revolution against reason. I should have realized sooner that there is no winning arguing with the senseless. And I should have taken you away with me and left when it all began. Now I'm beaten, I can't protect you anymore, and they will come after you once you're no longer a minor. You must leave now, child. The sooner the better. And don't write again. Practice the art of keeping your mouth shut. People won't listen to the truth you tell when you are a nobody, and all the facts they cull only to tell their lies." His voice trailed off to a snort, his eyes half closed. He drew his hand to Elyssa's face. "Leave for Konstinbul, and take an apprenticeship with an eastern doctor to study their medicine. They don't have the bureaucratic requirements as we do here. You need a practical skill to trade for a living."
Elyssa brooded over his words, her weeping ceased, her front teeth deep in her bottom lip. Growing up, she had heard on multiple occasions that the easterners were sexists, who refused women's rights to education. But Reynold would never offer her such advice if it wasn't attainable. She glanced down at her flat chest. Never before had she appreciated the meaning of a blessing in disguise. "You want me to pretend as a man," she sneered, her eyes narrowing. "Those easterners may forbid women from learning the craft, but they still have rich women who need doctors and find men inconvenient. Who knows, once I become good enough, I'll have a market no man can compete."
A smile spread from Reynold's lips. "Smart girl," he croaked, sagging into the pillows, his breath waning. "I'll miss that disdainful grin."
Fluster returned, widening Elyssa's eyes. She gripped Reynold's hand. "No, no, you don't have to miss anything! Don't say goodbye, please…"
"My body is broken," Reynold continued, his voice barely audible. "You have to let me go now, child. Leave, leave now…"
Seized by an inconsolable sob, Elyssa kissed Reynold's hand. "Please, please, Reynold. Don't leave me. Don't leave me, dad…" Tears scalded her eyes. Kneeling next to the bed, she cried and cried until she was out of breath.
Seconds into minutes, and minutes into hours. Time elapsed as the sun crested the meridian and sunk into the west, bruising the sky purple and red. Yet it felt to Elyssa that the world had stopped. Her heart frosted. She wobbled to her feet, her hands balling. Before the mirror, she stared into her deep green eyes big and swollen, her body shaking, her lips pursed. Refraining from another fit of grieving, she pulled the drawer. In the veil of the dawn, the silver scissors brought swishes to the wavy, chestnut hair she got from her mother. They dropped by her feet like the curtain falls.
Reynold told her no funeral, as it would only draw unwanted attention to her. But she couldn't leave him like this. The Red Cadets had pilloried him on the street in the blare of winter for months, making him wear nothing but a tall hat of steel heavy enough to break his neck. They called him a scum of a scholar. They called him a corrupted pig.
Elyssa bit her lip.
No, she thought. If she left him like this, the Reds would desecrate his remains like they did the art, the books, and the buildings from antiquity. They would lynch what was left of him. They would… Elyssa could not dare imagine.
Holding the scissors in her left, she stabbed her right palm. Blood dripped onto the bedding wrapping his emaciated body.
"Reynold," she pronounced. "I vow that one day, I'll clear your name."
Around the house, she poured gas. Lighter flicked. For a splinter of a second, she thought about taking something from the house with her as a reminder. A souvenir. Be it Reynold's pen, his watch, his checkered scarf... Anything she could hold onto. She shook her head at length. The risk was too high should she get caught. And none of the meanings attached to those things would mean anything if she didn't survive.
She tossed the lighter, sending it to a spin. Air wheeled into a roaring flame. Against the bright light that torched the dawning sky, she walked off. Everything she knew, everything she held dear, and everything that made her who she was, all turned into ashes in the shadow she had left behind.