This is #2 of The Autumn Queen. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.
* * *
The only thing worse than my brother’s fury was his sadness. “What happened, Elodie?” Elias asked. He stood at his window, looking out into the eventide, without even a single candle to keep the light. He did not look back at me, even when I stumbled into the table and spilled a bag of chackstones.
I knelt, picking up the tiny spurs, collecting them in shaking hands, and put them back in their velvet.
The ball rolled across the tiles and laid against Elias’s bootheel. He didn’t glance down to see — he was too consumed by his grief to care. “What happened?” he asked again. “When they brought him here, Elodie, he was raving. I had to–” His voice broke, and he bowed his head, hands gripping the stone ledge of the window.
“He found out, Elias. Kellis knows,” I said, my voice shaking. “He would’ve told everyone,” I say, trying to justify it to myself. I crossed the room with sure steps, determined, but when I reached his side and saw his face, I faltered. “Oh, Elias–”
“Don’t,” he said, turning to look at me more fully — in the dark, he let me see his ruined eyes.
* * *
I had a dream once about being blind. It’s the only dream I can remember having twice. I was in a house, running from window to window, trying to understand why the light was such a blur. There was a spider squatting on the roof with its big hairy body, it’s spindly little legs dug into the packed earth, it’s little knees straining as it tried to get in. Years later I remember this dream, but I don’t tell anyone about it. I mean, it was only a dream. Just a dream. It was. But it happened twice.
Did it sound little, still? Or thunderous and roaring when it tried to get in?
I don’t remember… I think I have to write about this.