Dead Love (Part 2)

Her shoulders fell.

“Mira,” Kasian caught and turned her to him. “Who are you talking to?”

She looked at him, concerned. Should she tell him he can see ghosts? What would he think about that? If he were from their original world, where the magic did not exist, he would think she was crazy. Should she trust him?

She did not respond. Looking at the soul swirling around him, she racked her brain to remember if there was some kind of spell she could use. Necromancers were able to do anything.

Her eyes glowed red. Snakes of inky spells crawled across her skin, over her hands, over her neck, and face. She ignored the pain in her insides, reading the spells and texts written on her body. She did not understand all the incantations sliding over her skin. But the mana, which Severian poured into her, pulsated in her body, itching to activate the spell.

Seeing this, Kasian stepped back from her, surprised. Since being reincarnated here, he has been living only in this small town, trying to ensure his new family has food and a roof above their heads. It did not occur to him that magic could exist in this world, too. Seeing Mira's eyes glowing a deep crimson, he now understood why Anna was so afraid of her. She must have seen her like this.

The inky words on her skin disappeared, her eyes dimmed. Kasian stepped closer to her.

“What was happening just now?” he asked her.

Mira looked at him. It took her some time to focus. Rubbing her eyes, she refused to tell.

“Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“You will think I am crazy.”

“We both came into this world from a different one. Is there anything else more crazy than this?”

“I… can communicate with the dead,” she said after a while. “It turns out, dead souls like to visit their family members when death is near. To prepare them for the journey to cross to the other side.”

“Who is going to die?”

She lowered her head, unable to tell him.

“Mira!”

“It… will be your mother and the youngest.”

And you… by my hands, apparently.

“What? B-but… why?” Kasian asked. “They are so lively. Both of them.”

“Do you remember that fever they had? They were going to succumb to it within a few days. But I… I attempted to stop it. I prolonged their lives by a few months.”

“How? How did you do it?”

Another silence.

“Tell me, please. Did you do some kind of exchange? Like in old stories? Don’t tell me you traded your life for theirs.”

She looked at him, guilty and curious. Why was he not happy that she traded her own life for prolonging theirs? Surely he did not like her more than his own family? Well, technically, it was not a real family, but he formed bonds with them. She could see it in the way he talked to them, how he brought them food.

“I did,” she said.

He was staring at her in disbelief. “How many years?”

“Only a few months. There is another cost to pay. I am not sure how to handle it.”

He went quiet, not asking more. He paced around her, thinking. She could see he was distressed. Suddenly, he thought of something, stopping.

“Mira, when you came here, you were telling me people accused you of witchcraft. Seeing you now, I understand it was not a false accusation. What did you do?”

Her expression told him, he was asking her the right questions.

“What did you do?” he repeated.

“I… killed,” she said. “People who came to execute us.”

“Us?”

“I… was not the only one using magic in the Lindenod village.”

“You came from Lindenod? You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“That does not matter now,” he said, waving his hands. “I heard a story while being in the town a few days ago. People were gossiping that in the village next to us, they found multiple people dead in the same hut. But they did not know who did it. The person, who was the perpetrator, was also found dead in the same location. The doctor who looked at the corpses was not able to say how they died. They were all there, just lying dead, without any wounds on their bodies. No bleeding, no sickness. It looked like… they just all stopped living at some point.”

Mira bit her lips, not saying anything.

“They were also talking about the witchcraft, but because it is a small village and nobody really has any reason to go there, the news about the incident reached us quite late. I never connected the dots. I thought the magic did not exist, and they are just saying this because they are unable to find the real reason why they all died.”

Every other words, he said, she was feeling worse. The memories, she tried to lock in her own mind, were flowing out, the horrifying scene flashing before her eyes. Would the dead be interested in taking this memory from her and making her free?

“I would also never have thought you would be able to kill somebody.”

“It was an accident,” she finally said something. “We were cornered, and I panicked. I lost control of my powers, as I was using them for the first time.”

“We. Us. They said that a strange man used to live in that hut, where they found them all dead. A loner, always wearing black, kinda quirky. He was the one using witchcraft, I heard. But he was found dead, too.”

“He was my husband,” Mira said.

Kasian could feel his knees giving up. He grabbed a nearby tree trunk to stabilize herself. This Mira was full of surprises. What else will he find out if he pressures her today?

“We were not wed,” she said quickly. “We were just pretending to. He said it would be strange if a woman were living with him who is not his wife. People would be gossiping.”

He hid his face in both palms. Raising his head after a while, he looked at her. “Just why did you decide to live with him? You must have known this would backfire on you one day.”

Her guilt disappeared. He could now feel an anger rising in her. “You think I did that voluntarily?” she asked, her voice dripping with poison.

A strange feeling of nostalgia filled him. This was the Mira he remembered from his previous world. Not that cute and obedient girl, but the aggressive one, always ready to stab you with prickly words.

“That man,” she started, her voice deep and raspy, “summoned me here against my will and then spent weeks tattooing all his silly warlock spells onto my own skin, making me lose my mind out of pure pain. Then he poured his mana into me as if I were his personal power bank. He locked me in his root cellar when he was unable to control me.”

Kasian could feel his stomach dropping. Hearing what she had to go through was making him both uneasy and sad. Painful.

“And then, those people came, because one of the stupid girls from the village had a crush on him and was jealous of me. So she said I am a witch. And her father, who disliked him, added the same accusation to him as a bonus. I had no other choice if I did not want to be tortured into death.”

She was almost shouting now, her anger seeping through.

“I am sorry you had to go through that,” Kasian said. “I never knew.”

“It's fine,” she said, turning away from him.

She was pouting now, but she felt her anger dissipating quickly. She was not expecting an acknowledgement of her pain. Something wet glided through her cheeks. She was crying.

“So… to come back to the thing which started this,” Kasian said softly. “You are saying my mother and brother are going to die?”

“In a few weeks,” she said.

“Is there a way to prevent that?”

“If I find someone who will trade their lifespan for theirs, they can live longer. And I need to pay something extra for the souls making this transfer.”

“What exactly is this extra?”

“It can be an additional lifespan. Or in my case, the memories.”

“You gave them your memories?”

“From my previous world,” she said.

“H-how much do you have still left?” he asked her, his voice shaking.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember what I lost, so I cannot say how many parts of my memories were already traded.”

“I see,” he said. “I think we should return to the house.”

She did not protest. She just wiped her tears and started walking. They were both quiet the whole time, while returning. When they entered the hut, the children were already in bed, ready to fall asleep. His mother looked at him, wanted to say something about their long walk, but seeing their sore faces, she decided to retire for the night.

Mira disappeared to the barn again, even though she used to sleep in the same bed with his mother and youngest.

The darkness and silence fell over the hut, but Kasian was still wide awake. Listening to the slow breaths of his new family members, he was thinking about them a lot.

There were only a few options. Abandon his family and run away with Mira, letting two of the family die and the rest later because they were simply too young to care for themselves. This he would regret for the rest of this life.

Or if they would find someone who would be able to give their lifespan for their family, that would be the ideal case. But that was too dangerous. It would mean either a corpse will show up in this town, or someone will catch a whiff of Mira living with them, and there will be another witch hunt. Even if they were able to hide all traces of magic, sacrificing someone on behalf of his family would surely leave a sour taste in his mouth. And Mira would surely lose more memories in the process. They won't take memories from someone else, because she was the necromancer.

He did not want Mira to lose more memories. Was she not Mira because of her memories and experiences? If she loses more, she won't be the same person anymore. And what if she loses even more? If she loses memories about things she learned, about her morals and values, won't she turn into a monster?

He sighed, feeling hopeless.

He knew what was the right answer. She was not supposed to save them. She was meant to let fate run its course and let them die. That way, she would not be fighting against the natural order. All these things, which happened, were consequences of her bending the rules according to her wishes.

Looking at his mother and the youngest brother, as they were sleeping on the second bed, he had to turn his back to them. He cried the whole night…