Together We Bleed

“Only the wounded truly understand the healing power of other people.” This is what I tell my daughter as I brush her hair back from her face. She had been crying in her sleep, hands clenched around the sheets in front of her chest as though she were scared her heart might be trying to leap from it. 

What I neglect to tell her is that these words are for me as much as they are for her. 

Once she’s asleep, I let myself leave, but not before lingering in the doorway. I look back and let my eyes fall about her room: the drawings hung up, gorgeously imperfect, on every wall; the toys piled up by the foot of her bed; the little books cluttering the floor, filled with rules to survive the world.

I think about how every life amasses objects and wonder if these count as hers or mine.

•

The doctor breathes lightly on the stethoscope before placing it in the centre of Jula’s torso. He holds it there for a second, one hand keeping it in place, the other hovering with a pen over a form. His face is blank as he starts to take notes. 

I keep watching his face while I pace the room, and he conducts further tests. Now tapping her knee. Now measuring her lung capacity. I know what he’ll say.

“She’s the picture of health!” He declares with a polite smile, looking at me as if I care.

“Oh, that’s great.” I muster a smile, unfolding my arms from where they had been. “Thank you.”

Julia hops down off the examination bed. It’s too much energy for such a small body.

“Thank you!” The doctor says, bending down to smile kindly at her my daughter. He’s produced a sticker from his pocket, Good Job, which she eagerly accepts. Then he turns to me. “As I said, I’m not worried, everything seems perfectly fine. Nightmares and night sweats happen, it’s nothing to cause any alarm. But if you’d like to pencil in another check-up in six months or so, and obviously if anything major happens in the meantime let me know, that’s all do-able.”

I nod. A lot can change in six months. 

A lot can change in one month.

“I’ll, um, keep you posted. No need to book anything in, as you say, these things happen.” I look down at Jula, who’s latched herself to my arm like it’s a swing, so that I don’t have to look the doctor in the eye.

“Excellent! Well, Jula, it was lovely to see you again! Get yourselves home safe.”

•

There’s a buzz about the village as we walk back. It started up at the beginning of the month and has only been growing. The Cinquainery is approaching: another five years of peace and prosperity. My neighbours have started putting up bunting and constructing platforms in the square where the festivities will take place. Peace is a good thing. It is. But I can’t stop myself from begrudging it.

Nothing ever happens here. Nothing ever happens. Apart from the ceremony.

How long has it been like this?

I cast my mind back but come up short. As long as I’ve lived, I’ve never seen anyone fight. Not really fight. Not like they used to. Twenty-nine years without conflict in the Collective. It’s impressive. But what does it amount to? A stagnant existence, rinse and repeat. And then:

“Hela!” Someone calls to me. I turn and find Krey, the village butcher, carrying a crate full of white paper parcels.

“Oh, hello!” I see he won’t be satisfied unless I talk a little, so I stop and indulge him. “How are you?”

“All the better for seeing you, my love!” He beams. “Yourself? Couldn’t help but notice you looking a little lost in thought there…”

“Oh, just a lot on my mind. Busy! Especially with this little one.” There I go again. I wonder if she’ll ever know how grateful I am for her at times like this.

Krey’s chuckle puts a twinkle in his eyes: he’d always loved Jula. “Of course, of course!” Then he bends down to address her. “Big day coming up, too! Isn’t it, little one?”

I tense. Perhaps a part of me had thought no one else would notice. I school my face into something passive, inscrutable, and peer down at Jula, who looks back up at me tentatively. People keep addressing her these days, but she still doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the right response. I don’t know how to respond to this either, don’t have any social cues for her to mimic, not today. The pair of us remain silent and Krey looks between us. 

Eventually Krey clears his throat, shifting his load. “Well, hem, I’ll be seeing you round.”

He walks away and I nod, forcing a smile, trying to claw back some normality. The blood of the meat had started to colour the parcels.

Jula waves him off with one hand, the other is curled up in her skirt. 

•

A memory surfaces.

The ceremony starts. I look at the seven children gathered on the platform with me. We are lined up in a neat little row, eldest to youngest. I am third, and I am eight years old. To my right is a boy I know from class, he is nine but only a few months older than me. To my left is a girl I don’t know: she seems impossibly small standing next to me, but she must be older than five. That’s the youngest anyone can get Marked. Her little hands are wrapped tightly around themselves.

The Marker stands behind us, shrouded in an outfit that contorts their shape beyond recognition. It is a rich brown edged with gold, in three pieces: the dress, the cape, and the hood. These pieces rest their immense weight on the bones of the Marker, distorting their identity not only through sheer size, but through the physical effects of the heavy load. Arched back, bowed head, great sweeping steps.

All of us are asked to look ahead, to face unafraid the proud, nervous faces of our townsfolk. But I can still feel the weight of the inhuman figure behind me. Can still hear the brush of metal against fabric.

Then it moves.

The Marker has no footsteps, instead it glides across the stage, dragging its new body with it. The audience is silent, but the girl to my right begins to tremble and I swear I can hear her bones rattling inside her skin.

The Marker comes to stand in front of the eldest boy. The audience cannot see what happens next, though they know. 

The great, pendulous sleeve of the cape rises to the height of the boy’s chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, but my eyes are open, fixed now on the gaping cavern of the sleeve and the glistening blade that emerges from it.

I had never given much thought to flesh before then, I am sure. A child of eight has little need to consider such things. But in that moment, I realised I at least had some concept of its durability, its structural integrity, because in that moment all the beliefs I held about flesh were shattered. 

The blade pierces that space in the middle of his chest as though it is made of butter. It does not go deep. And yet it is altogether too deep for a boy of his age, whose frame is half that of a man’s. And though in reality it must only last for a second, I feel as though my eyes are trained in that spot – that tender valley where our ribs fail to protect us – for an eternity, while the metal stretches them further apart… further apart… further apart... 

Then the blade slides back out…

The boy stumbles forward and onto his knees as though his blood were tethering him to the knife. Nobody comes to help him. The girl beside me starts to cry, but it scares me because these are silent tears, the kind that belong to my mother in the dead of night, not the kind that a girl, smaller than I am, should know how to create yet.

I hold my hand out to my side. She registers the movement and her eyes lock onto mine. We watch the next boy get marked with hands held tight. Somehow, he bears it better, does not stumble but slowly acknowledges the pain. Still, he is hurting, more than he could have ever hurt before.

Then it comes to me.

I release my grip on the young girl. I have no clue how I will react to the process, and I don’t want to crush her hand in mine should the pain get to me. She looks at me, at what is about to happen, and I want to tell her to stop, to turn away before this irreparable damage is done. But there isn’t enough time.

The robed figure stops in front of me.

The blade emerges from the shadows.

And then it all goes black.

•

Three days. 

I look up at the calendar and it captures me. I can’t help but stand in front of it. How did it get so close? How did I let it get so close? I should have been planning, preparing, praying…

The sound of childrens’ shrieks wrenches me back to reality. It’s Jula’s birthday party. Her fifth. She’s chased around the kitchen and into the hallway, disappearing before I even have the sense to tell them off. I look away from the calendar and the house seems dark suddenly, though I was sure it hadn’t been a moment ago. As I start to register reality again, I find a toy in my hand: Jula’s lamb. I had been going to get it for her.

I should find her, make sure she’s being safe, revel in her amusement. I should be with her.

Instead, I do something I definitely shouldn’t do.

I call my mother. 

“How did you do it?” I ask, as soon as the call connects.

My mother sighs. It is deep and damning. “It won’t help, Hela.”

“Don’t –” I have to stop myself from shouting down the line. I start again. “Please, mum. Please, help me.”

“I can’t. I can’t let you repeat my mistakes.”

“It wasn’t a mistake, mum! You saved –”

She doesn’t let me finish. “What I did was selfish. And it did more to harm you than you know.” 

She’s wrong. She’s wrong! But I don’t know how to tell her this, I don’t know how to make her see the good she’s done.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” I ask.

“You watch.” She says, and I heave against the thought.

“And if she doesn’t make it?” 

“Then you mourn.”

I had already known the answer, but somehow the words still have the strength to send a tremor through me. 

“No.” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore.

“If you want her to live a happy life, if you want to be able to face yourself, you’re going to have to let it happen.”

“You’re – you’re wrong.”

“Hela, my sweet one, have courage, have trust.” She waits for me to respond but I don’t. 

Julia runs back into the room beaming. She crashes into me, and I let the receiver fall from my hand.

•

It is hot here, I feel the sweat roll down between my breasts, imagine it tumbling over the smooth, unmarked skin that lays there. The weight of the garb is immense on my frame. My cue comes to Mark the first of the fifteen children lined up in front of me.

I have to steel myself.

“Only the wounded truly understand the healing power of other people.”