The rumors were a poison, seeping under the door and through the cracks in the window frames. I heard them in the market, hissing between the stalls. Cursed. Unnatural. The fire followed her. The villagers' gazes, once pitying, were now sharp with suspicion and fear.
That night, long after supper, the door creaked open. Father stood there, outlined by a sliver of moonlight. He was a ruin, his tunic torn at the shoulder, a dark bruise blooming around his eye, and knuckles split and raw. The sharp, sour smell of ale clung to him like smoke.
My heart didn't sink; it cracked. "Father!" I cried, scrambling from the chair.
He didn't shush me. His legs gave out, collapsing him to his knees, bringing him to my height. His bleeding hands cupped my face with a terrifying tenderness.
His breath hitched. "They... they said things about you, my star," he slurred, voice thick with drink and something heavier. "Old Man Hemlock called you a blight. Said we'd be better off if you'd…" He couldn't finish. A tear cut through the grime. Then another.
He pulled me close, shaking with the force of his sobs. "I told him to take it back. I made him." His whisper tangled in my hair. "You are not a curse. You are my girl. My Elsbeth. I just wanted to protect you."
And I finally understood. The distance, the clenched jaw, and the warnings, it wasn't rejection. It was love in armor, flailing at the world sharpening its knives for me.
He wasn't cold. He was broken.
***
The next morning, Father was silent and heavy-eyed, the shame of his breakdown warring with the throb of his hangover. Mother shooed me out with her to the market, a quiet understanding passing between them that he needed the silence of the empty house.
At the market, I lingered by a stall of polished river stones, their smooth surfaces a silent, simple magic. The normalcy was a lie, but a comforting one. The sun was warm on my back.
The light dimmed.
An old man stood beside me, thin as a shadow. His face was all lines, like a map to places no one visits anymore. But his eyes, clear, grey, and too awake, found me and didn't let go.
When he spoke, his voice sounded like paper crumbling.
"Sayaka."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement. A key turning in a lock I thought was lost forever.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. My breath froze. How? The question screamed in my mind, but my voice was gone. I was paralyzed, trapped in that piercing grey gaze.
"Who are you?" I finally managed to whisper, my voice trembling.
"Elsbeth! Come, darling, we're done here!" Mother's voice, bright and normal, cut through the strange stillness.
The spell broke. I instinctively turned toward her call for just a second, a single, human heartbeat.
When I spun back, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, he was gone. Vanished into the shifting crowd as if he were nothing more than a trick of the light. But the name hung in the air, a secret that was no longer mine alone. The world around me, the market, the noise, the light—it all seemed to sharpen and tilt on its axis. Nothing was what it seemed. And for the first time since the fire, the feeling wasn't entirely one of fear. A tiny, treacherous spark of hope flickered to life.