Alisiyad Chapter 24 ~ Love (Part 3)

A shadow loomed over them, and Russ looked up.  He saw Alisiya standing above them, looking down.  Liseli twisted to see, but then curled up and hid her face against him.  Something was very wrong here, he knew, but couldn’t figure it out.  Liseli didn’t do things like that.  But he just shifted to cover her with his arm and glared at Alisiya.  She looked more than ever to him like something from the grave, skin paste and eyes nearly white as if all the life had drained out of them.  Her hair dangled like shadows reaching to them as she stood with arms crossed.

Leeton stepped up and put a hand on her arm, turning her toward him.  “Listen to me when I’m talking to you,” he said, but she didn’t answer, jerking away and tossing her hair as she stomped a little ways off.

Russ sat up, pulling Liseli with him, and watched as Leeton followed.

“You have completely ruined any trust I had in you.  This is why I keep you with me, because you don’t understand the first thing about life in the real world,” Leeton spoke to his daughter’s back.  “When we get home you will stay down in your rooms all day long — no more visits to the kennels, and by God I’m going to board up your skylights for the next ten years and see how that suits you!”

She spun around.  “Do you think I care?  Everything in this world is a dungeon!  I will not go back with you, I don’t even want to stand here looking at you for another moment.  I hate you!”

“Oh!  You hate me.  How shocking; I hadn’t known,” Leeton retorted acerbically.  “I’m just glad you still feel something, Alisiya.  Hate me all you want, consider it my way of keeping you somewhat human.”

“Human!  You’re the one who did this to me,” Alisiya stomped her foot.  “You have never even given me a chance to live in the ‘real world,’ you—”

“You did this to yourself.  And I’m ashamed of you for it.”

She ground her teeth together, eyes flashing violet.  “That’s why you lock my up in the tombs, your embarrassment, your monster.”  She shook with anger.  “I’m nothing to you but a freak and a mistake!”

Russ shook his head.  Liseli still had her face buried against him and would not look at Alisiya, but he almost felt like laughing.  “She’s a drama queen,” he said in wonder.  “Just a fucking little drama queen.  I can’t believe this.”

Leeton turned his back on Alisiya, and looked at Russ.  “Do not use that language when talking about my daughter,” he said harshly.  “I will deal with this issue myself.”

Liseli lifted her face.  There was something cold and hard in her eyes when she looked up at Leeton that surprised Russ, but Leeton didn’t seem to notice.  Alisiya had stalked away into the midst of dogs.  They swarmed about her, jostling each other for a chance to touch her, and she absently spread her hands out to brush over them.

“This isn’t the end of it,” she said, seating herself on a rock by the waterfall.  “You’ll see.  One day, you’ll regret everything you have done to me.”  She tilted her chin with wounded pride, eyes glinting a steely gray-blue.

“Regret.”  Leeton bit at the word.  “I regret you.  Daily.  Hourly.  Every minute.”

Her gaze didn’t waver.  “Your greatest mistake.”

He ran a hand over his face, emerging with less ire, more pain.  “Yes,” quietly, “my greatest mistake.”

“Greater,” her voice gave away an unsteady hint, “than killing my mother.”

“It was one in the same,” he said, then, seeming to regret its coldness, added, “I should have left you alone, instead of trying to make you . . . better.”

“Better?” she cried out, breaking her composure, “How is this better?” she struck her chest with both hands balled into fists.

“Alisiya.”  He nearly moved toward her, but stopped his feet and closed his hands.  “You know what you are.  What I . . . we . . . made you.  You are the closest thing to a goddess this world will ever know.”

“Don’t try that sweet talk on me!” Alisiya leapt to her feet.  “Don’t.”  She hid her fists in the folds of her cloak, fixing her father with eyes mirrors of his.  Silence stretched between them, taut and bristling.  Russ watched in uneasy fascination, breeze tickling grass in his face as Liseli, watching too, barely breathed under his arm.  Finally Alisiya spoke again, voice strained as the silence; “All my life you have told me how special I am.  How gifted.  Lies, to hide your own guilt; to pretend that your creation is not a monster . . . a monstrosity.  A mockery of . . . life.”

Blue ran from her eyes onto her pallid cheeks.  It took a moment for them to register as tears in Russ’s mind.  He felt Liseli twisting his shirt in her hand again; her fingers dug into his side unthinkingly, but he ignored the pain, watching for Leeton’s response.

The King was frozen, as if his daughter’s eyes — or tears — could turn his blood to ice.  The dogs whined low in their throats, seeing their beloved mistress’ distress, not knowing how they could serve her.  They edged closer as one, trying to touch her.  Leeton seemed adrift in the sea of them, unable to move, speak, think, feel.

Then in a sudden burst, like an icicle breaking, he said, “I made a child, you made the monster.”

Alisiya lifted her hands from her cloak.  Something dripped out from between the fingers of her fist, then rivers of red trickled down her arms as she spread her palms over her face.

“Stop,” Leeton said, with a sudden note of fear.  “Stop that right now.  Alisiya, don’t.”  He moved, trying to forge through the dogs.  They fell into confusion, torn between master and mistress, but parted at Leeton’s insistence.  He took hold of Alisiya’s wrists and pulled her hands down from her face.  It was smeared with blood, livid handprints staining the white.

“You are the monster!” she screamed into his face, trying to wrench her hands free.  He was immovable, his grip not even slipping on the slick blood that seemed to flow too freely down her arms.  Russ couldn’t understand how so much blood could come from digging her nails into her palms; that was all it seemed she had done.

“Alisiya, stop.”  Leeton’s voice became amazingly calm.  He repeated “stop” over and over, then, in a whisper near her ear, ignoring the screams she returned.  The dogs mulled restively about them, sensing danger in Alisiya’s distress, but still unable to attack their maker.

Russ got to his feet finally, pulling Liseli up with him.  He still ached, but it didn’t seem safe on the ground with the dogs so restless.  He watched as Alisiya wore herself out, quieting her screams if not her tears, and stopped her thrashing.  Leeton still held her wrists as she sank down to her knees, lowering her head, sobbing blue mingled with red.

Russ glanced at Liseli, standing beside him now without touching him, and he was surprised at what he saw.  She watched the scene without the barest hint of pity, green stones for eyes, face almost as white as Alisiya’s.  He touched her shoulder but she didn’t notice.  He was confused, worried, looked back at Alisiya to see what Liseli saw, but couldn’t.  What he saw was pathetic in the extreme.  He didn’t forget that she had killed Eliasha and Currun — how could he? — but Alisiya was obviously mentally ill, he found it hard to hate an insane person.

Leeton let go of his daughter, and the dogs swarmed in, eagerly licking at her hands, arms, and face.  She lifted her face to them, letting them wash her.  Leeton stepped back, crossing his arms as if to stop himself from trying to touch her, though he looked, in that unguarded moment, as if he would give all the worlds to be allowed to hug her trembling shoulders and quiet her tears.

Perhaps he never had.  Probably he never would.

The moment passed, and the face he turned to look at Russ and Liseli was grave but composed.  He shook his head slightly before announcing, “We’re leaving.  I trust,” he added stiffly, eyeing Liseli, “that the girl is unharmed.”

Russ stared between him, Liseli, and Alisiya for a moment, speechless.

“I’m fine,” Liseli said, reaching up to remove a grass blade from her bangs.  “Fine.”  She watched the blade as she twirled it between her fingers, then let it drop.  “And that is just it?  She’ll go back with you, without a fight?  A real fight, anyway.”

Leeton watched her for a moment, as if, like Russ, he was searching for the meanings behind her words.  Then he sighed.  “If Alisiya wanted to kill me, she would have done so long ago.  I don’t know why, frankly, I’m still alive.  But she has only two choices: come home, or kill me.  I won’t give her any other option.”

Russ found his tongue.  “What does she want, then?  What the fu . . . why did she kidnap Liseli?  I want to know what’s going on.”

“Russ . . . ” Liseli reached for him again, pulling on his arm as if in warning.

“I told you before.”  Leeton lowered his eyelids, looking down on them.  “She is trying to escape me, the only way she can; by leaving this world.  But she needs a Key to do it.”

“But Liseli’s not a Key!” Russ waved his free arm at Alisiya.

Two things happened then:

First, Liseli slapped a hand across his mouth with a squeaked, “Russ!”

Then, Alisiya lifted herself from the dogs, face licked clean and white again.  “You,” she said simply, and her eyes lit up, awash with a sudden realization.