Across the Huron Sea: Lust For Life

"Come here," Reynold groaned, his face contorted in pain as he struggled to lift his head.

Mira fumbled for an extra pillow from a pile of bedding stacked against the wall atop a lounge with cabriole legs. She slid it gently beneath his upper back.

Reynold grabbed her wrist. His thin hand, withered and cold, trembled under the sunlight stabbing through the ruffled drapes like a blade. His drab eyes, earnest and pleading, locked onto hers.

"Don't bother," he rasped, coughing out the words. "And listen to me, child. Leave the Commonwealth now and head east."

Mira gripped his hand, tears welling up and spilling over her cheeks. "I won't leave you!" she cried, her voice breaking."

"Foolish child, what do you have here now?" Reynold scolded, huffing a weary sigh, his hollow cheek pressed against his shoulder. "It's my fault. I should have left you in the foster home after your parents' accident so you wouldn't be dragged into the mess now."

Mira shook her head with force. The car crash nigh on ten years ago felt like yesterday. It left her an orphan at the age of twelve. Her world fell apart until Reynold Barca came to build it back up again. Keeping her under his wings, he taught her rhetorics and verses, philosophy and history, strategies and calculation. While her memory of her father slowly faded, Reynold became her friend, her father, her mentor. 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. Now I see the wisdom in it. I should never have made you my prodigy. I'm sorry, child." A fit of cough made him pause. "That said," he continued, a frail smile hanging on his lips. "With or without me, you'll always shine. I'm sorry 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 made a better judgment about how the wind had shifted, and not picked a side in this idiotic revolution. I should have known better that there is no winning arguing with the senseless. And I should have taken you and left when it all began. Now I'm beaten, I can't protect you anymore, and they will come after you. You must leave now, my child. The sooner the better. And don't write again. Practice the art of keeping your mouth shut, and lay low. People won't listen to the truth you tell when you are a nobody. All the facts they cull are only bent to fabricate lies." His voice trailed off to a snort, his eyes half closed. He drew his hand to Mira's face. "Cross the Huron Sea to the Republic. Take an apprenticeship with a doctor there to study medicine. With your asthma, you need to know how to save yourself if needed, not to mention a practical skill to trade for a living."

Mira brooded over his words, her weeping ceased, her front teeth deep in her bottom lip. Growing up in the Commonwealth, she had been indoctrinated with the idea that the Republicans on the other shore were sexists who denied the education of the most sought-after subjects to women. 

Many judge, few think – and like many of her own people, she had judged them. But Reynold wouldn't have counseled her as such had he not intended for her to think. A few years back when she was still a teenager, Reynold admonished her to take a job as a busboy in disguise under the fake name Evan Ginsberg. At a high-end bar that ducked her pay, she saw the real world with her own eyes and learned how the world saw her once she was stripped of the prestige of the name she inherited but didn't earn. She glanced down at her flat chest, indeed a blessing in disguise. A sneer narrowed her gaze. "I can go back to playing Evan Ginsberg," she said, her voice steely and dry. 

A proud smile passed across Reynold's clouded face like the last bit of the setting sun burning with its last breath to seep through the thick of a storm. "I'll miss that disdainful smile," he croaked, sagging into the pillows. 

Panic returned, wringing her like a wet cloth. "No, no, you don't have to miss anything!" She gripped Reynold's hand, her voice a flustered cry. "Don't say goodbye, please…" 

"You must let me go now, my child," Reynold murmured. "It's been an honor…" His breath waned, his pulse fading, and the last flicker of light guttered out from his eyes refusing to close. 

Seized by an inconsolable sob, Mira kneeled by the bed and kissed Reynold's hand. "Please, please, Reynold. Don't leave me. Don't leave me, dad…" Tears scalded her eyes. She wept and wailed 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 Mira that the world had stopped. Her heart frosted. She squeezed the asthma inhaler at her throat and scrambled to her feet, her hands balling. Before the mirror of a beeping interface with columns of news on display in the corners, she stared into her deep green eyes big and swollen, her body shaking, her lips pursed. Refraining from another fit of grieving, she pulled out a drawer. In the veil of the dawn, the silver scissors brought swishes to the wavy, chestnut hair she took after her mother. They dropped by her feet like the curtains brought down. 

Reynold told her no funeral, as it would only draw unwanted attention to her. But she couldn't leave him like this. The Reds 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. 

Mira 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… Mira could not dare imagine. 

Holding the scissors in her left, she stabbed her right palm. Blood dripped onto the bedding that wrapped 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 so to speak. Be it Reynold's pen, his watch, his checkered scarf, their violins on which they had played together every note from every octave... 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 left behind.