Standing Steady in the Storms Ch. 63

The Motivation of the Enemy

Notes:

Just a little devlopement on the why. The weirdest part about this chapter was that I really started empathizing with Amrah through it, and suddenly she seemed less evil even though she really is terrible. The main goal of this is to show that there is a person hiding inside of her.

And Lergillial is pronounced LER-gill-ee-al

*****

After Janner came back from the ledge, his heart frustrated beyond words regarding their scope of options — deny the Maker or be placed on the ledge of an abyss that was waiting to swallow them as soon as their legs gave out — Amrah produced a length of rope from out of nowhere and quickly bound both his and Kalmar’s wrists, keeping a firm grip on the other end. She clearly had no desire to allow them to escape without getting something from them. 

What irritated Janner more than anything was that now he was forced to watch Kal shiver from the cold and had no way of giving him his cloak as he had intended to. Well if I can’t do that then I’ll at least try to do something for him. That led to his second-best, which meant moving closer to his brother and pressing against his side so he could at least get some of the warmth. Kal smiled gratefully, and even though his shivers did not stop, Janner felt less guilty because he was doing something and even a little something was better than nothing at all. 

As they walked behind Amrah, occasionally slipping, nearly falling flat on their faces in the snow, and being rewarded with a harsh yank of their bindings, Janner found himself wishing more and more that they could just run away right then and there. He knew Kal had been thinking that, most likely even before they left the cell. Probably even before Amrah showed up. 

Janner guessed they could have wrenched the rope from her hands and run, but that was unwise for a number of reasons. For starters, the consequences of acting spontaneously without any plan never ended well. And of course they needed to account for the fact that their wrists were not only bound, but they were bound with the same rope. Janner and Kal would essentially become a walking tripping hazard for each other. Well, a running tripping hazard, he decided. 

All things aside, running and escaping would be delightful, but if they were caught by Amrah, or more likely one of her Fangs that still lived at the castle, who knew what punishment they would get. Not to mention that it was an idea that Kal would have had when he was much younger and was mostly likely having at the moment. All of these defined running as the worst option.

“I will give you two days,” Amrah hissed as they walked back through the dungeons, speaking for the first time since they had left the ledge. The glowing star around her neck now shone brightly, but it was still a cold light. It had been nonexistent out in the brightness of the snow-covered landscape. Once again, it shined brighter than a thousand stars, setting the foreboding stone corridor aglow. “You will have two days to decide your fate. If you agree, then I am victorious because I will have swayed you to believe what I believe. If you do not agree, I am still victorious because Gnag and I will have our vengeance.”

Were she and Gnag in love? Janner mouthed to Kalmar, not daring to say the words aloud. If he was right, it meant whatever relationship they had had was a pressure point, and a dangerous pressure point at that. 

Kal nodded in response, and all of a sudden everything that had happened to them because of Amrah made sense in a way it had not before. 

Of course, she’s driven because the love of her life was killed, Janner thought, irritability and empathy flowing through him at the same time. In one way, he understood Amrah just a bit better than he had, but he also now knew that she was a hundred times more dangerous than they had ever thought. Her purpose flowed from passionate love and burned in her veins, and that could be deadly. Even more deadly than raw anger.

After she opened the cell door and took a small dagger from what must have been a pocket in the folds of her thick, black cloak and began cutting their bonds, Janner couldn’t help but ask about the familiar beauty that hung around her neck. She had already freed Kalmar and let him go back in to sit among the filth and had moved onto Janner when he said, “Why is the holoré around your neck?”

She looked up at him, and the dangerous anger in her eyes made Janner wish he had never spoken. “I do not need a ‘why,’” she shouted, unexpectedly launching him into the cell. He landed in a painfully twisted heap, tangled in his own limbs, cloak, and the rest of the rope that still held his wrists together. “Get free on your own time,” she hissed angrily as she tossed in something that landed like sticks on Janner’s back before slamming the door shut and locking it once more.

*****

Amrah came as near as she could to racing to her bedroom after leaving the upper dungeons. There were many reasons why she left, one being the putrid stench of human waste that was disgusting and certainly couldn’t be helped. And then, of course, the larger, much more important one: she felt burning fury towards the Wingfeather boys, and she knew her anger was dangerous and needed to be cooled somehow. She happened to know of one way only.

When she reached her room, she rushed in, shut the door and turned the key in the lock, sat on her bed, and grabbed her only friend: Lergillial. She clutched him tightly, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his head as best she could, pouring her anger out to him through words, telling him what was wrong and why it was all wrong, but never hurting him. When her grief and fury were spent, when she had finished crying because of how much everyone hated Gnag, when she had stopped pounding her fists on the because of how blatantly the Wingfeather boys dared disgrace his lovely name, she looked up and gazed at her room, now actually seeing it through a mind not clouded by burning anger.

She looked at the head of her bed and saw all her flowery pillows, frilly and beautiful — the kind the luckiest sort of little girl would have. Amrah loved the pillows and the bedcovers — embroidered painstakingly by her mother, who, while not Gnag’s most willing servant, had loved both of them with all her heart — but most of all, she loved Lergillial, her scruffy, old stuffed animal who was nothing in particular, even as he was everything. 

Amrah cradled him in her arms for a second before hugging him close to her heart, whispering to him. 

Her precious Lergillial was made of her mother’s extra sewing scraps — the “cast offs” — she always used to say and sewn together with the broken needles she no longer needed — the blunt, dull, and cracked ones — and the fraying thread that never seemed to go through with the needles as it was supposed to — thin, weak, spineless, and useless, Murgah had said many times before.

That was what Gnag had made Lergillial from. He had made Lergillial from the cast-offs, from the dull, the cracked, the broken, from the thin, the weak, and the useless. He had taken all those bits and pieces that had been left behind and pieced them together into something that, while still heart-wrenching to look at, could be loved.

Just like him.

And Amrah loved him for it. She loved him first because he was rejected by all and second because though he knew he was rejected, he did not want to reject others. He wanted to instill life into the lifeless, hope into the hopeless, joy into the joyless, purpose into the purposeless. He wanted lives to have meanings. He wanted people who walked around abandoned, bruised, rejected, humiliated, and hurt to have a chance at a better life that he could give them. 

“Remember, Lergillial,” Amrah whispered in his single, crooked ear. “Gnag wanted to bind up the broken and give them the healing the Maker refused. He always said he did it because he had never been given healing himself, but that was no reason to keep that wholeness from others. He was a good man. A great one. He was a man worthy of ruling the throne of the Shining Isle.”

“‘But no one else is,’” she deepened her voice a little and moved Lergillial’s misshapen, patchwork arms to indicate that he was the one talking.

“I know,” she replied in her normal voice, sighing. 

“‘So overthrow the Wingfeathers,’” She, as Lergillial, said gruffly.

“Now, there is no reason to take over the Shining Isle,” Amrah said, borderline chastising him. 

“‘That’s not what I suggested,’” Lergillial (Amrah) growled, his black, broken button eye glinting angrily while his blue, threaded eye stared into nothingness.

Amrah shook her head. “I do not want to overthrow them. Kalmar may not be as refined in wisdom as Gnag was, but he is better than many others would be. I have no desire to rule. I want to spend my days here in Throg, with you and Gnag and Mama’s memories to keep me company. And my little light. He gave it to me. Like he gave me you. You both are so precious to me, too precious for parting.” 

She fingered the holoré as it shone around her neck. It had always been near her when she was in the Phoob Islands and had only left it behind once: when she came to help her love as he destroyed the Jewels. It turned out it had been for the better. If she had had it with her, the dragon — Hulwen, she thought. As Leeli, the little dear calls her — might have killed her as well. 

Since Gnag had fallen, Amrah had grown accustomed to the holoré’s closeness and loved how it made sparkles dance around her room, especially at night. It was evening now and with only one candle lit, it made her room look like a winter wonderland of beauty. 

“Just the five of us,” Amrah whispered, stroking the top of Lergillial’s burlap head that abruptly became soft silk on his face.

“‘But you will be hurting the boys, right? You promised me you would hurt them,’” Lergillial spoke up unexpectedly and Amrah glanced at him.

“Yes,” she replied sweetly. “I see something that neither of them do. Well, perhaps one sees it, but he is the one who would see it. The one who does not see it is the one it should be concealed from. No matter what the brothers choose, I will still pit them against each other.”

*****

Notes:

Yes, Amrah is talking to a stuffed animal. Did your heart break just a tiny bit when it was from Amrah's POV? Personally, I feel bad for her (though that may have been because I semi-projected onto her 0.0).