Clarity

Antigone looked down at the face of her mother as she lay dead in the street.

Her father was standing beside her. He wasn't looking. There were tears on his cheeks and snot on his lip as he searched up and down the city street and cried out for any witnesses to tell him what they had seen. But none of them would. Their reluctance, more than her own confused recollections of what had happened before her own eyes, was the most compelling proof that this was not an accident.

A wagon, loaded heavy and chocked in place, had somehow broken free of its pinned yoke, lurched across the street, and ended her mother's life in a sudden crunch of wood and cobble and bone.

Someone was berating her father for not taking Antigone away from this scene unsuitable for young eyes. Antigone ignored the woman, just as her father did; not looking is not how her mother had raised her.

Still, she couldn't move. She was fixed to the spot. She was crying - of course she was; her mother had just been killed in front of her - but the crying was distant, like a sound echoing from down one of the nearby alleys, and she could ignore it. She looked at an orange that was rolling down the street and past her. Rolling down the street. Down the street. Not across the street, as the wagon had done, but down the street. Not towards her mother's crushed body, not towards her and her father, but down the street, away from them. Not the way the wagon had gone. Not towards her mother.

The wagoneer was certain he had secured his wagon. Antigone was sure, too. She wiped away the tears and told her father. Her father looked, and then they talked to the city guard, who said there was nothing to investigate, that it was unfortunate but that accidents did happen, and that Antigone's mother would be prepared for burial by the temple priests who were patiently waiting a respectful distance up the street for the grieving family to move on. Her father said yes, it was probably an accident, and that he should take his daughter home. Antigone looked one more time at the way the cobbles curved away from her mother's body before her father led her away.

Antigone saw her mother every single night since then, but she never saw her mother again.

~

"I told her not to antagonise the mages. I told her.  I said, 'Lyn,' I said, 'let them say what they want.  So they're wrong; so what?  We know they're wrong, other people know they're wrong; why publish?'  I told her."

Antigone nodded as she folded her mother's clothes into a traveling trunk for storage.

"Why did your mother always have to be so ... so right all the time?"

"She was right."

Her father came over, took the clothes out of her hands and turned her to look at him as he knelt next to her. "Yes. Your mother was the most brilliant person I've met, and she was absolutely right.  And now she's dead because of it."

"And it wasn't an accident."

"No, Ani, it wasn't an accident."

"You believe me then?"

"Of course I believe you. Our eyes don't lie.  Except ... except when there's magic."

He stared into the distance for a long time while Antigone continued folding.

~

"Ani, what ... what are you doing?"

Antigone looked up from the bench. Her father sounded worried. She had a knife in her hand, and the rabbit they were having for dinner was splayed on the carving board, its legs stretched out and pinned to the wood. She looked at her father, but he seemed ... distant, like he was a different person, talking to a different Ani, unrelated to her or her work. So she turned back to the board and continued cutting, over and over.

"You cut the throat, so they can't speak the words. You cut the hands, so they can't gesture.  Then you split them open, and gut them, so there's nothing left to bring back.  You cut the throat.  You cut the hands.  You gut them.  You cut the throat ..."

Her father came up behind her, and put a hand tentatively on her shoulder. Then he whispered to her.

"But never look them in the eyes until you're done. That was ... that was your mother's mistake."