phoenix rising {nekane + vasco}

[Cait]

n e k a n e

I couldn’t stop him, in the end.

I've lost count of the number of years spent lurking in the shadows, always ready to swoop down and pick up the pieces of another shattered vision of revolt. All that wasted time, tending to open wounds and sitting in a heavy silence, always letting him curse the stars. None of it mattered. He did what we always knew he would do, and I’m left numb.

Us Izars, we never go quietly.

And Sampson was the maker of that fate. He was the king of his own crumbling kingdom. A failed monarch, desperate to pave the way to a new life, and we were all too scared to follow him there. I ache, I sigh, I cry. I couldn’t do enough.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d stopped him, I’ll tell myself this until the end of time. It would have only delayed the inevitable. In the end, he didn’t really care who he had to burn in order for the world to do the same. Memories of homemade dynamite and mason jars filled with fertiliser pellets burn in my mind. Unmistakable. In his blaze of fire and liquid poison the riot he always wanted to commandeer began, short-lived as it was. Flames and heat were weapons he was all too familiar with, but the fallen king forgot to call the cavalry for back-up. So alone, the story ends, just how it began.

Was he looking for me? To join him? To stop him?

Why couldn’t I save him?

It was as inevitable as the sealed fate of two more Izars dragged away by the scruffs of their malnourished necks. I turned away when their heads snapped and the light left their eyes, because the pain is just as raw as it was 20 years ago. It never gets easier to watch. In a few days their bodies will be sent back to us, bags of rotting skin and broken bones. They’ll return home, and we will go to work once more, watching as the graveyard plots pile up around us. We live at the cemetery – ghosts, waiting for the next hole to be dug, because there’s always more to come.

We accept it. That’s the way life is around here.

Just not for Sampson.

And I admire that about him. Whether he just didn’t care what happened to him anymore, or if he actually thought he could make a difference some way, somehow, I’m not sure. I like to think he had something to believe in, even if it was at the cost of our sanity for a few weeks.

Because they all knew who started that riot. And when they couldn’t find their number one suspect, they turned to the rest of us. Innocents branded with the name of a guilty runaway. Chains at my wrists, tied to a chair and asked the same questions over and over and over again: who, what, why.

“I DON'T KNOW!”

But how I wish I did. How I wish I could have known what he would do. How I wish I could have stopped him.

How I wish he didn’t leave us to bear the brunt of his beatings. How I wish he hadn’t left me abandoned in a dark cellar for a week with questions piercing my skin that I had no answers to. How I wish I didn’t know what it felt like to sleep in a pool of your own blood.

How I wish I hadn’t needed to be saved.

But it’s over now. Two years comes and goes, even when the nightmares remain.

I thought we were free.

Sarina. Alfonso.

How foolish of me.

Where did you go, Sampson?

And god, I might just hate him for it all if I had the heart to hold that grudge. Instead, it remains as it’s always been – a bloodied organ, cracked down the middle, blood spurting from the valves, yet somehow still whole. Enough room in there for every last Izar and all their burdens. I know the feeling of alone too well to pass it on.

I wonder when I’ll stop trying to fix the broken fragments of this world.

Because really, I wish my blood would run icy cold and that the world could see it, frosted fingernails and a stone heart. I wish I was strong enough to fuel a revolution.

But I am not brave.

I have a weak heart and brittle bones and I give up far too easily when things get hard. I can’t stop the wheel; I live and breathe and sleep to its rhythm. I accept it, where Sampson never could. He despises us for it.

Vasco understands.

I’ve found myself seeking out the sanctuary of his home more and more, ever since he rescued me from those dark cellars two years ago. Where Sampson used to take up most of my time and energy, a void remains in his place. I’ve been struggling to fill it, but I shouldn’t be surprised.

Everything went downhill when Benat died. He left the biggest hole of all.

Where I feel I’m slipping beneath the crushing weight of existing, I see Vasco – the epitome of an Izar, and what it truly means to suffer. I’ve been tending to his gardens just to help in some small, insignificant way. If only it was enough to help, or repay an unpayable favour.

I come and go as I please; I don’t ask permission. We are family, and I’m not a child anymore, and where did that time go? I don’t expect company, prefer to be on my own most days. It’s better to live a life with no expectations. It makes disappointment harder to come by.

Footsteps approach as they always do, a cool glass of water set beside my hunched figure. This is the way things are.

From my position on the ground, crouched low and buried beneath a sea of coloured plumes, the world looks so grey. The dirt collecting under my nailbeds offers a stark contrast to the pallor of mottled skin. Greyscale.

I wait for the retreating footfalls to come.

When they don’t, I turn to come face to face with Vasco. A stoic silhouette against a black and white world. The portrait of broken.

Forming, a sad smile at my lips.

So, we’ll talk today.

“We lost a few daffodils,” I mumble regretfully, bottom lip jutting out in a small pout. The sun has been so harsh the last few days; I should have known better, spent longer watering them, done so many things differently, and not just here. I tremble, shake those demons off my back. “But the roses have just started to bloom again.” A fresh start. Deep crimsons and crisp whites line the flowerbeds. Blood and skin, shuddering.

Everything reminds me of them. All of them.

Change is slow, and we are patient. Things to ponder, as the Spring unfurls new petals on the bluebells, like tears of grief. They look so beautiful,

but alas,

Winter is just a storm away.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

Sunrise this morning like I’d never seen.

I was out on the porch swing I put in after the eighty-second, the one that creaks too loud (and that Emma worried I’d fall right out of), watching the sun come up over the fields. All those pretty shades painted across the sky like watercolor. Violet fading into fuchsia, then burning magenta piercing clouds that gave way to tangerine. I must’ve looked like old Gero those last few years he was with us, patched quilt across my lap, coffee cup in my hands to keep them warm. Cane tucked alongside the stone front of the house, between the door and the swing.

A far cry from the old photos hanging along the wall inside on the stair. One in the porcelain frame of me and Emma not a year or two past eighteen, still fresh faced. Aresti took that photo of us up against the tiles of an empty silo. Emma was laughing at something I’d said, and me looking at her with a grin, whiskers on my cheeks when I tried to grow a beard. We still had a glow about us, eyes that hadn’t dimmed with circles underneath, or been etched with all the depth years bring. Just a pair of kids who’d fallen in love, without the weight of grief to tie them down.

Time’s slipped away from us now.

Silver hairs have started to peek out at my temples and pop up here and there across my beard. Stiff legs at morning and aching joints by bedtime, feels like I’m falling apart when I try lifting my daughter Yani up off the ground. Makes me remember when Gero would say, his voice all soft and warm, where did the time go, mijo?

We collected all those memories, photos for the wall and scrapbooks, too. Markings on the kitchen doorframe with names and ages (Emmanuel, 4; Sofía, 9; Yani, 3; Raquel, 11). Second or third-hand jackets that’d been restuffed with goosedown, stitched up and darned to keep us warm in the winter still hanging in the hall closet. Stacks of bills on the kitchen counter that went paid with a mayor’s salary, past due notices becoming a stranger to us these past four years.

There’s something to the morning, then, when the world’s quiet hasn’t been broken. A dark sky ready to burst into color, with clouds to light up, alight from the sun. Another chance to hold Yani’s hand and walk to market or play cards with Druso. To fall asleep beside Emma, her head against my chest and arms across me.

I guess it’s what makes the sunrise so appealing.

We look out at that sky and could forget about all those days that disappear behind us.

I took to praying after the eighty-first. Head bowed and hands together, eyes closed and me a million miles away. It’s better in the stillness of daybreak. A time when I can be patient with myself, when no one asks a thing of me, or expects an answer. When I can let my thoughts wander down the road of grief a little while and pay my respects. They tell me to stay awhile and I do, not wanting to be rude. After all, most of what’s been done seems on my account, at least, nowadays.

By the time I break back to the porch, birds are calling and the sky’s a deep blue.

That morning I wiped my eyes and steadied myself along the side of the house. Pressure was low in the well and we could’ve used some more firewood for the wood burning stove, just in case spring brought a cold snap. Yani’d be up soon, too, stomping around and getting her nose into this and that.

Out the window of the kitchen there’s a figure tending the flowers. I pour another cup of coffee and watch her steady in the dirt, folding through the clay and topsoil.

Nekane comes through as clouds across the sky. Here and there, calm and steady, but sometimes a storm. She’s almost as old as Benat would’ve been. A year or two older than Sampson.

There’s a half-second when it hits at the back of my mind, the sight of her in darkness. Of the hours I’d spent pleading, begging, for mercy. Fleeting as it was, the cold of it lingers along the length of my forearms and crackles in my chest.

I filled up a glass with water and drop in an ice cube. She was too busy, or I too unassuming for her to move from her work on the ground when I set the glass beside her.

I wondered as she looked if she could see the dark circles under my eyes, or the way I balled my hands into fists at my sides to keep them from shaking.

“There’ll be more daffodils,” I crouched down on one knee, and winced, shifting from my right to left. “You just have to keep tending them. It’s a shame to lose some, but I’ve seen it before. Figure it comes with these seasons. Soil’s not what it used to be, I’m afraid.”

“But at least we have roses, eh?” A season’s poor weather and poor soil couldn’t keep them from blooming.

“It’s good to see you out here Nekane. I hope you know,” I shifted back to cross my legs and get comfortable in the dirt. I plucked a few rocks out of the ground and avoided looking back at her. I couldn’t, not today. I was too tired to force a smile. “I’m grateful for you. I’ve felt a little low lately and seeing you this morning has made my day.”

“You hungry?” I chose an easy question. Let me build up my strength, first.

[Cait]

n e k a n e

Back when I used to live under the same roof as Mama and Papa – back when my sisters and I still talked, when our family was still whole – I’d spend hours crawling up and down the stairs just to study the photographs that lined the walls. The Izar family tree spans what feels like a thousand lifetimes, and there was a place for everyone within it. Each new birth brought with it another newspaper clipping; I used to help Mama snip the notices straight from the papers and frame them with dried flowers from the garden. By the time I was fifteen, we’d run out of space along the walls. So many names to remember, and even more faces. My sisters and I would make games out of them to test our memories. It was a good way to pass the time, break up the days of our bleak childhood.

There’s something disheartening, then, in meeting the people you’ve grown up hearing stories about, when you come face to face with the gravity of modern poverty. Seeing long-lost cousins for the first time and realising their eyes didn’t shine quite as bright as I’d envisioned they would was something I grew to expect. That depressing knowledge that reality is a stark contrast to the portraits of still life, protected within our four Izar walls.

It happens again, now, looking into Vasco’s tired face. The circles under his eyes grow darker every time I see him, the wear and woe of this lifetime catching up to him. When he furrows his brows, the creases by his forehead deepen, making a permanent home there for themselves. He had the face of a god, once – so handsome and so sure – but that’s just a memory to me now. No longer is he the young man who used to chase me around the backyard at extended family gatherings. My heart aches for Yani, too young to know any better than the father he grew into.

Maybe it’s for the best.

It would have been all too easy to give up on it all. Even a child could read between the lines of age and struggle upon grey faces: nothing truly gets better for us; nothing changes. But folding ourselves in history is what keeps the memories alive. If it weren’t for them, who would we be? We deserve to be remembered. Izar: a bloodline so rich the district soil has inherited the grief.

I’d feel proud of those roots, if it weren’t for all the losses endured to reach this point.

Even though I don’t keep any photos in my own small hut, I won’t forget them. Us. Mama grew out of salvaging those newspaper clippings when the death notices began to outweigh the births, taking with her my own interest in those childhood games. But the names still stay with me. I can’t escape those, so embedded in my subconscious they remain. Haunting.

But it still hurts, when the faces of today don’t match up with those of the past.

I wonder if Vasco sees it, too, even in my own face. But I already know the answer to that. Evidence in the way he avoids my gaze as he crouches beside me, a sharp wince whistling past his lips.

Mine falters along with his.

I wouldn’t know what face stares back at him. I said goodbye to mirrors years ago, smashed them and spread shattered glass all over the floorboards. Legends say it’s bad luck to break a mirror; I screamed “fuck that” to the sky, challenged them to try me, and smashed another one. I don’t know how sunken my eyes are, or how brittle my bones have become; I don’t want to know. So I simply settle on the worst: I’m unrecognisable, just like him. Just like every other Izar I’ve memorised, and I’m destined to become another ghost of family portraits.

“There’ll be more daffodils. You just have to keep tending them. It’s a shame to lose some, but I’ve seen it before. Figure it comes with these seasons. Soil’s not what it used to be, I’m afraid. But at least we have roses, eh?”

I guess not everyone’s a pessimist like me.

And while I know his words were offered as a comfort – meant to make me feel better – I can’t help but think how all it amounts to is the knowledge that nothing is promised around here.

But I’ll try, Vasco. I’ll try this naivety on for you.

“I’ve seen them die too early before. But you’re right. We just gotta show them we care.” I shudder when I think how that premise has become the story of my existence, flowers and Izars alike.

But how do you live by that successfully, anyway, when everything you touch crumbles away before you?

Maybe I just wasn’t meant to save anything, anyone.

The air between us is peppered with silence, the reverie only broken by his rasping voice. “It’s good to see you” and “I’m grateful for you.” The forced niceties push on.

Skepticism creeping in. I try to stifle a laugh, but it’s already on its way. I can’t remember the last time someone told me they appreciated me. All I seem to do is drive the people I love away; all I’m capable of is reminding them of misery, no matter how hard I try to bring back the sunshine.

“I’m just grateful for something to keep me busy.” I was slowly going crazy before you saved me from myself. “You’re the one who deserves the gratitude.”

I can practically hear the cogs whirring in his head as he processes that statement. He’s always been too selfless for his own good, and he deserves to know it doesn’t go unnoticed. The word interrogation runs circles around my head, but that’s not what I meant. It’s so much more than the words could explain.

“You hungry?”

Selfless, always.

His question reminds me of the ribs poking at my skin. You don’t need a mirror to know when you’re nothing more than a skeleton. Despite the hollowness in my belly, I don’t think I could stomach anything. After all, it’s not hunger that widens that pit.

“I’m okay. I ate before I came over.” I force a smile, but it doesn’t quite fit on my face. “Thank you though.” For the offer, for the water, which I hastily gulp down. The cold is refreshing, wakes me up.

It makes me feel braver.

“How are you holding up?” My voice is soft, and far too light for the weight of that question. The Games are almost over, and once again, District 11 will be bestowed with the task of burying two more warriors. Two more fighters with the same last name as me.

“You don’t have to, but if you want talk... I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

I wonder if he realises: it’s been two years to the day.

We don’t even bat an eyelash.

There’ll be more daffodils.

Because even though we’ve lost enough already, there will always be more to come.

Take that how you will.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

It’s as though we’ve fallen into the briar patch, thorns in our skin, and we’re here, tangled next to one another, saying, (estoy bien) back and forth while the blood empties from us, smiles and all. Those thorns of grief pierce our flesh and we’re taught to think, this trauma’s going to purify us. But trauma’s what killed those daffodils. It’s the cold snap on a spring morning that leaves the tomatoes rotted. The crows nipping at corn. The lightning storm that strikes a silo and makes a mockery of harvest.

Maybe I should’ve prayed harder that morning. Make a fool wise, I’d ask, make my heart whole. Teach me what could make us better people. I could have used an answer.

But all I found was the wind drifting in from the east, and a robin’s call from the forest on the hill.

‘We just gotta show them we care.’

It started as a quiver in my cheeks, and then a swallow to bear down an upswell that was bound to bring out a bout of tears. Not for my niece and nephew that have fallen (I’d cry enough when their bodies came back to us, handkerchief over my mouth and eyes). A hopeful glimmer poked through the dust and dirt, sprigging upward, even as her words came out soft and unsteady.

I didn’t think they ever knew how proud they made me, time and again.

It would’ve been easy to get buried in the dirt after all the funerals we’d seen. Sink six feet down so you were far enough to not feel anything anymore. To take that righteous anger and burn away to nothing. Sampson bought into it, exploded his rage and left ash and dust as his legacy. Tempting, when justice means losing a cousin, a brother, your daughter – wasn’t it?

When the smoke had cleared, though, there sat the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Boys like Sampson saw us as expendable, much like the capitol, too. All for a greater good, one that left his uncle concussed and his cousin rotting in the darkness of a basement. Better not to feel, just as he’d been taught, or admit that real solutions took time. His outburst a tantrum that left the rest of us for dead.

I’d never found the same sort of strength wielding my anger. Maybe in a world that so idolized rugged loneliness, we’d forgotten how our kindness kept us strong. That in living for another person, I wasn’t taking a piece of myself apart. I was bringing together, and lifting up, the people that could’ve needed it most. That was what I tucked into my heart, what I returned to, when I saw my nephew’s chest run through, or my niece torn to pieces.

‘I’m just grateful for something to keep me busy.’

We stay put on the ground, her refusing my offer to go inside and take a rest. She had an energy that reminded me of Sampson’s. A need to burn through it or go to pieces.

I’d be more careful with this one, though.

I crouched closer, hands still shaking. I wrapped them around a set of weeds and gave a heave. Tremors had been coming and going since my sickness after the eighty-first. I brought a shaky hand across my brow, smudging some dirt as I wiped away sweat. Nekane never needed a reason to come to our porch, or keep the garden. But that she’d found a better purpose, however small, was all the reason to tend to it. Life was more a steady set of hands tilling soil, watering the roots, and plucking away weeds than some lightning strike or grand design.

‘How are you holding up?’ Nekane’s voice barely carries out over the rustle of my hands through dirt.

I focused on an unruly nub of a weed with my thumb and index finger. I dug my nails through the soft clay and pulled, only to slip, breaking a piece off into my palm. I steadied again, plucking at the root.

‘You don’t have to, but if you want talk... I’m here. I’ll always be here.’

“Gracias, mija,” I answered, just above a whisper.

Do I tell her that I felt their deaths were my fault? That I could’ve done something about Sampson two years ago, to stop him from tearing up the square, from Nekane being dragged and taken by peacekeepers, from a reaping bowl having names full of Izars? That every line seemed to connect back to me, seated in the mayor’s chair?

If I were another man, I’d have told her I was fine. I’d look at her and think, why burden her, look at how frail she is, she couldn’t bear it. But I’m not like other men and she, not like other women.

She’s an Izar, and that meant a mettle that burned through fire and flames.

I stopped pulling at the weed to bring my hand across the front of my overalls and wipe them down.

I found it harder to recognize myself these days.

No matter the smile I tried to keep, the way my hands twist across beads as I prayed on the porch, walking to Yani to market, cooking tostadas for Marisol, these things that are etched through me that routine couldn’t begin to explain, that man trudging along looked less like me than yesterday.

"Sometimes I think about how nice it would’ve been to have stayed asleep,” I found my voice as all Izars did, in honesty, “When I was sick, and dreaming. I saw Raquel, you know, and I thought, oh my god, if I could just be with her forever, entiendes? And sometimes I wake up and I think, oh, you could’ve been with her, and not here. Where it was so warm, and bright, and,”

I needed to breathe; the honesty too much too fast for me.

“And I think about how selfish that is, to wish something like that with all that I have but it’s… heavy,” I shook my head. “But it’s only for a little while. I don’t want to worry you.”

There are good days and bad days, even if the good ones seemed harder to come by.

[Cait]

n e k a n e

I’ve never thought much of what comes, after. I try to keep those demons at bay, for fear they’ll make me an offer I can’t refuse. Spin tales of another world with Raquel, and Sarina, and Alfonso, and all the rest to come.

And Benat.

Somewhere over a rainbow, does he see the mess he left behind? Does he see how tragically hopeless I am without them here? Maybe they’re watching with him, exchanging meaningful looks full of pity. Waiting. We’ll be joining them soon enough, and I have to push down the swell of emotion rising to the surface at that.

Would they be proud?

No. I don’t dwell on the make-believe, won’t. In all honesty, I don’t think there’s anything better after this life. We’re stuck with the here and now, hourglasses running through only to smash against the ground as a last grain of sand falls, falls, falls. The candles lit for prayer time are more for show these days; I just need something to keep my heart warm, when the world feels so cold.

If I had something to believe in, maybe I’d feel the same as Vasco. That longing for a warmer, brighter, better world – one free of pain, one filled with everlasting love. But there with it is the pain of something just out of reach. I shake my head. I don’t understand it, that beacon of light disguised as hope.

When he kissed Death, was he scared? Relieved?
When he awoke to the same broken world, was he scared? Relieved?

Do the feelings ever leave?

“I think about how selfish that is,” and I feel that guilt, too. Rooted in my heart, that longing for sleep, if only to escape the heaviness. “It’s only for a little while,” but oh, it’s always with us.

We’re all selfish for wanting an out. But we’re still here, even with our reasons for struggling to find the strength to wake up each morning. I wonder what that really makes us. Selfish doesn’t seem to fit the man in front of me, as broken as can be. He’s seen the worst of this world and its injustice, but he’s still here, putting his people before himself time and time again. I think about it, that heaviness, having to breathe through it. I wish the world felt as light as it once did.

I reach a hand towards him, let it settle on his own. Gentle, held over his heart, we’re encased in a shell of dirt that I’ve been trying to scrub away for decades. Just like a name that simply won’t die.

“I’m not worried about you,” I reassure him. “You’re the strongest person I know.” I find strength in his honesty. It’s nice to know he won’t humour me with lies. We’re better than that; I don’t need to be protected from the truth.

“I’m glad you’re here,” and I know it’s no consolation for losing a daughter, a nephew, a friend – more than I can count, a number forever climbing – but I’m one live wire girl running on misplaced love who needs him to know he matters to me.

I’m sorry it’s not enough.

Because I could have left. Not in a firestorm like Sampson, or with severed limbs flung across television screens. But quietly, in a home of my own with nobody to share a bed with except the silence of the night. I would have done it by now – feel certain we both would have, but we’re stronger than we think. A lifetime sits behind his 40-something year old eyes, and where does that time go, because we’re not the kids we used to be. That’s how I know we’re supposed to be here still. We're not dead, yet.

We stay around, for something, but none of it’s easy.

“I think we need you here.”

My voice rings out across the garden, the conviction behind my words surprising me. I hadn’t meant to speak at all – was content with head nods and hand holding and listening. But something in his shifting stature and tired eyes makes me heart ache. Sometimes, muttered sympathies and silent prayers simply aren’t enough.

“You’re doing good here. I hope you know. And I don’t think the world is done with you yet.”

But the words fall flat, and already I want to take them back, because he knows it by now, surely. He knows he can’t leave. He’s the one constant in so many lives – Izar or not, we’re all the same at the end of the day – and I’m terrified of the imbalance a world without him would be thrown into. But to carry that knowledge, that burden, all alone…

It isn’t fair. I’ll shoulder the weight I can bear; I promise myself to another soul to help.

But for now, it’s my turn to be the selfish one.

“I know it doesn’t help much,” probably makes things worse, “but I really think you saved my life.” I’ve been struggling ever since Sampson left – probably even longer before that, ever since Benat died and our family began to fall like dominoes. I wanted to do more, but when Sampson lit the world on fire and I couldn’t stop him, I finally realised I’ll never be able to control the world. It was easier to just give up. I haven’t been living for a while, but I think I’ve been brought back to life. “Without you, I’d still be—”

Lost.

If it wasn’t for Vasco, I might not have seen the last of a holding cell two years ago. With no voice to spare after pleading innocence for five days and five nights, I was ready to give up. I couldn’t live with the cold; I wanted the pain to end. But the words wouldn’t come.

Vasco did. He was there, and he saved me.

If he was gone, I’d be right there with him.

Selfish, selfish, selfish.

We share another moment of silence, and it’s so quiet here that I can hear the crack in his heart splitting open with every passing second. Little by little, he bleeds onto the ground in front of us, and he’d let it happen a thousand times over if he thought it would help. His heart is so full; he’s a better person than I’ll ever be.

But he is so sad. Maybe not all the time, but it’s there. It runs in our blood.

“Let the sadness fuel you.” It’s what I try to do, because I don’t want the rest of our broken family to know how deep that feeling can run. I’ll turn that negativity into something better for the world and leave something behind to be proud of, when it’s finally time to leave.

Vasco makes me want to believe in more. I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side of this life, but for now, that’s okay. I don’t need to know yet. I just need to believe.

I force a smile onto my face. Let the sadness fuel you, but don’t forget how it feels to be happy.

Maybe it’s futile, but we have to try.