Unforgivable
At the end of persecution, mockery, and ridicule—
"Thea, come out of the carriage already. We've arrived."
I hear the voices calling my name.
But I cannot find the courage to step outside.
His body is as cold as a slab of ice. The interior, slick and reeking of oil, and everything else about this place makes it so hard to bear. I just want to give up on everything.
Is there even any meaning left in struggling this hard? Just because I hold him dear, does that mean his rest will come any sooner?
"Open the door."
"Yes."
With a creak, light floods in. And at once the world outside grows loud.
"…Thea, bring your spouse out."
No.
I cannot let the others see him like this—this horrible state. I do not care if I am shamed. I am the woman who failed to protect Evan. But he is not. Evan deserved better than this. He should never have been left in a situation like this.
"We are not here to make you uncomfortable or to harm him. Thea, we have already been told everything that happened."
"…What do any of you know?"
Do they know what was done to him? Can they understand how desperately he tried to protect me? Do they know what those people who burst in on us did to me and to him—what terrible things they inflicted on him?
"We understand what happened to you. The injustice inside the carriage. We have postponed the rites, so you may come out without tension."
Why do they all crowd around the carriage, staring at his cold body? Because they are curious how horribly he died? Why can they not just leave us alone?
"All of you, go… go away! Why do you keep looking at us with those eyes!"
Beyond the small door stretches a world filled with nothing but endless gazes. Eyes. Eyes in every direction.
Eyes wide with fear. Eyes filled with disgust. Eyes brimming with the will to mock.
Among them, not a single pair that pities Evan. Not a single soul that truly mourns for him and for me.
Not one.
I cannot send him off in a place like this. I cannot lay him down in a place like this.
"…Close it. She seems to need time."
Again the murmur of voices. A crowd that will not leave.
"I said close it. To go against her wishes any further would be discourteous."
With a click the door shuts, and only the voices remain.
"Why in the world would God grant His grace to a short-lived one like that?"
"Was there any reason to bring an exile all the way here?"
"If I'd known she looked like that, I never would have agreed to bring her!"
"See? This is what happens when you fall in love with a short-lived one."
"Thea, was it? Ah, that insufferable… ha, it suits her, though."
"Typical freak. Just like a freak."
Every word was more terrible than the last. I wanted to cover my ears, but I could not. If I let go of him, he would fall. His stiffened flesh and ruined body were already scrambling my mind. Now the foul stench of oil joined everything else, turning it all to revulsion.
"Everyone, disperse! Whether she is an exile or not, she is a guest who has come at God's summons!"
A sharp crack as a staff struck the ground hard. Even so the voices did not vanish. They only drifted farther away, still murmuring.
"What did I do? What crime did he commit…"
I only wanted to love. I only wanted to be with him. I… he…
"They're gone now. Thea, that carriage looks good for neither you nor your lover. We will give you a room. Rest there for a while."
"I don't want to… I said I don't…"
I had lost the one I loved to someone who had once been of my own kind, and those who had once been my kind only busied themselves cursing me. Looking at his wretched state, they did not curse the one who killed him. They only condemned me and him.
That I was a fool. That I… I…
Why am I not even allowed to protect the one I love?
With the help of those whose faces were veiled, I managed at last to move him. I did not resist. I was far too weak for that. With a body that could not even lift him properly, claiming I would give him rest alone was impossible.
The place they led me to was a house built high in the treetops—set apart from the rest, where at least the eyes and voices of others could be avoided. Was giving me this room, even supporting me as they did, truly consideration? Or isolation?
No matter how I turned it over, only the darker thought circled in my mind.
"Spend as much time with him here as you need, Thea. He has given His permission, so rest without worry."
As the woman who said this turned to leave, I set down a question I had long wanted to ask.
"…Tolfen. The elf who stabbed Evan."
"Ah…"
In that instant I saw a ripple pass across the face of the only one who wore no mask—the woman who had repeatedly calmed the elves and commanded the priests to bring me here.
"What became of him?"
She lowered her eyes for a moment, then turned her back, set her staff against the wall, and began dismissing the priests outside.
"Will you be all right alone, High Priestess? She is…"
"This is something I must face. Go."
While she did so, I sat beside Evan and began carefully wiping his body. I had already cleaned away some of the oil to lift him, but he was still a ruin. A faint light still lingered near him. Yet it could not erase the marks left on his flesh. Nor the wound that had pierced his chest.
"…Thea."
"Speak."
I did not turn around. Thinking of how badly Evan's body had been damaged, I had to keep moving all the more urgently.
"I am Tolfen's mother."
But the words that left her mouth were enough to make me turn.
"What?"
"Please calm yourself. I am here today as the representative of the priests, to carry out God's will—and as his mother, to apologize to you—"
In that moment my mind went blank. No—blank was the wrong word. It was too heavy, too unsteady. Yes. It was more accurate to say my emotions had filled me to bursting, ready to explode.
"Thea, please calm down. You must listen if you are to understand—"
"Ca… calm? Do I look like I can calm down? No, wait… so, Tolfen—is he dead? He attacked someone outside the forest for no reason. By the laws, he shouldn't have walked away unharmed, should he?"
Silence stretched for a while. Of course it did. As a mother, a child's shame becomes the parent's burden—just like the parents who are no longer at my side, just like the others who once called themselves my kin and now treat me as a disgrace.
"He will never leave the forest again. He will not inherit my place, nor hold any other office in the forest. Forever. That is the sentence passed on him—"
"He should have died."
I cannot understand it. I cannot understand how someone who took a life still keeps his own.
"He should have died. He drove a blade into my husband's heart. With malice, seething because he could not harass me, he did this."
"Th-Thea, please calm yourself."
"Calm, calm, calm, calm!!! Do I look like I can calm down? Me? If your husband had died, would you have stayed so composed?"
I have no strength left to rise. Nothing has been done for him. Justice never reached the one who killed him, and all that came to me, who lost the one I loved, was the mockery and condemnation of others.
We who served God were not protected.
"That is why He Himself granted His grace, is it not? For you. For your dead lover! Common sense says a corpse does not remain uncorrupted for months, so intact—"
The words pouring from her mouth make no sense. This is grace? This is a miracle?
"How is dying a blessing!!!!"
I screamed. With every ounce of strength I rose and faced the one who stood before me, shamelessly speaking.
Priests rushed in and tried to force me down. I shoved them away and flung them aside. Every muscle and bone in my body screamed for rest, but I did not stop. If I stopped here, I would never be able to face him again.
"Restrain her, quickly!"
I could not accept it. That the son of the one closest to God among the forest folk had done such terrible things to me and then killed Evan. That every person in the forest—though I had once been their kin—looked at me with eyes little different then or now.
I could not forgive it.
"Give Evan back! Bring Evan back to life!!"
I struck those who tried to seize me, shoved them, overturned furniture. Whatever came to hand I hurled at the crowd before me, and with my back to Evan I swung my fists at those who kept coming.
But soon a snare of light stretched out, seized me, and forced my knees to the floor.
Countless eyes were staring at me once more.
"Thea, you… how did you come to this—"
In the eyes of the woman who barely held onto her clothes, supported by the others, fear had taken root. And it should have.
I cannot forgive her.
No—
I cannot even forgive God.
Because I have realized that all of this was none other than God's will—that the one he and I truly served had brought these things upon us.
"Did any of you ever know me? You who only busied yourselves laughing, who only sent sneers to my dead husband?"
Even as I said it, they looked at me as if I were something filthy rather than trying to understand.
"It's a waste even to say we were once kin. High Priestess, your orders."
"I no longer sense any blessing on this short-lived one's body, High Priestess!"
Again they laid hands on Evan as they pleased. His body rolled from the bed and fell.
"You—youuuu! You!!!"
The fact that I can do nothing. That even when I try to run to protect my lover, I am held tighter still and choked. All of this humiliation is God's will. This is the answer He gives to those who served Him.
I can admit it now.
"…I will banish you. Both of you. The forest does not seem a fitting place to hold Thea and her lover. Escort them both outside with due courtesy."
While my arms were seized and I was dragged out, while his body was roughly bound in a sack and hauled along the ground, I still could do nothing. Neither take revenge on those who had insulted him, nor deliver retribution to those who had persecuted me.
I had given up on all of it. As long as I had Evan, it was enough. I had tried to forget everything and live. And Evan had made that possible.
All the memories I had forgotten while I was with him. All the days of being ostracized, tormented, treated as a nuisance.
And now, those who mock even the dead body of the one I love—I can no longer forget them.
"Exile Thea, you are no longer welcome."
But before all of that, I had done things for which he could never forgive me. Because of me—because of me, hated by my own kind—he had died, and even in death he had found no rest.
For months he had remained at my side without ever being buried. He had wandered a long road, ruined by oil and cloth. And now, wrapped in nothing more than a sack, he was flung roughly onto the ground.
"Evan, Evan!!"
With trembling hands I gathered him into my arms and wept.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—for failing to protect you, for failing even to give you rest…"
Yet even that they mocked.
"All that over one short-lived one? Well, 'freak' Thea, you always were like that."
The laughter carried even beyond the closing gate. In the eyes and faces of the gatekeepers, mockery for me and for him was plain.
…I could not forgive it.
All of this. Everything that had happened to him and to me—I could not accept it.