The girl, barely eight, staggered back in shock, drops of blood on her face. The dagger, soaked in crimson, slipped from her grasp, falling to the ground with a clatter. Part of her clothes was hanging loosely to her side; it had been ripped apart to reveal part of her chest and abdomen.
The man’s body lay, utterly motionless on the ground, as a pool of blood slowly accumulated beneath, fanning out in a flower of blood. A soundless scream tore from the child’s throat; she kneeled beside the lifeless body, staring at her bloodstained hands, her eyes widening in intense fear and pain.
You killed. I killed.
Death.
Life.
Live on…
No!
Someone was behind her; she instinctively reached out for her dagger – and realized it was out of her grasp. The stranger was nearing. Petrified, sobbing, she instead turned to the corpse, drawing out its dagger in a quick movement, turning around and pointing the blade straight at the neck of the stranger.
The stranger – who was clad in black from head to toe – froze; slowly, he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ he said carefully, as the girl’s hands wavered slightly. ‘I only want to ask you something.’
She shook her head. I did not kill him.
He waited.
A second passed, then a minute, and then several minutes… the girl finally lowered the blade, letting it fall to the ground. But her eyes, filled with guilt and sorrow, as deep as the untold depths of the sea – did not leave him.
‘Do you want to have a reason to live?’ he asked, lowering his hands cautiously.
A flicker of surprise crossed her features. She looked at him with wide, shocked eyes, almost as if asking how he had known.
‘Do you?’ he thought it safe to press.
Slowly, she nodded; a hesitant, frightened nod.
He smiled. ‘I can give you a reason to live.’ He extended a hand. ‘But I must have your consent.’
The girl looked up at him. How can I trust you? His smile was oddly unnerving. But it was everything she had left. Nothing could be worse than having killed someone, and walking around with the bounty of a murderer on her head. Yes. She extended her own, small hand, but that was as far as she went. She did not put her hand into his.
The man persisted, gently. ‘My name’s Moop. What’s yours?’
Silence. Then, the small hand touched his own, and a tiny voice spoke, for the last and final time. ‘Yrael.’ xXx
The young girl lifted the claymore silently, turning it around and observing its straight, inflexible blade.
No. She gave it a few swings in the confines of a small, rocky room with no windows whatsoever, lit only by small torches, where many other trainees like herself had gathered, each holding a claymore.
No. She did not like it.
It was inflexible. Hard. It would not dance around her, accompanying her in swirls, spins and leaps. If it did dance around her, it would mean her death. And this made her slightly disappointed, although she mentioned nothing.
Her lips were always closed; from the time she was infused with a Yoma’s flesh and blood, to now, she had never uttered a single word, or even cried aloud. While others screamed during the infusion, she bit back the cries and only let trickling tears speak unnoticed words. She swung the claymore again. Every action of hers spoke words. Only her lips never did, and all shunned her for her intense, brooding and uncomfortable silence.
But there was one trainee who always looked at her. She knew. She felt the trainee’s gaze trained on her. Again, the girl ignored it, as always. She tested the claymore again, against the wall now. Neither entity bowed to the other. Quite sturdy.
Suddenly, her senses blared in warning; the girl turned and parried the silver flash of a blade aimed at her shoulder. Her silver eyes met the ones that had always been looking at her, always. Yet those eyes did not have the depth of words that the girl knew hers did, and so the trainee was able to speak, for her eyes could not speak the words she wanted to say.
The trainee was shorter than her, and had short hair. Shortie leapt back, and charged towards her again, the claymore aimed at her belly. The girl waited, flipping backwards at the last minute, before using the momentum to jump and land on the flat side of Shortie’s blade. In a split second the girl had drawn blood; as she landed behind the trainee, the skin of Shortie’s shoulder split into a thin line of red. Shortie turned to face the girl. The girl herself, had been lenient with her slash.
Shortie growled, charging towards her again. But this time she leapt into the air at the last minute, just as the girl did the same thing. Surprise flitted across her features as Shortie’s face came into close proximity with hers, and Shortie brought her blade down, hard, scoring a diagonal slash across the girl’s chest. Both trainees landed, one astonished, one satisfied. Shortie flicked the blood off her blade with satisfaction as the girl knelt on the ground, panting quietly, blood dripping onto her blade.
Then Moop appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. He gestured towards Shortie, sighing. ‘I told you, you can fight among each other, but not so violently. We don’t need trainees to die before the test,’ he commented as he took the blade from her. Then he moved over to the girl and extended a hand, indicating he wanted the blade. She lifted it quietly, turning the blade such that its unstained side reflected her own unfathomable expression, before handing it to him. He shifted one blade to the other hand, patted her with his free one, and then walked away.
Shortie’s friend, a long-haired trainee, came over and asked loudly, ‘what did you do that for? You’re lucky that handler didn’t do anything worse to you than just reprimand you with a few lines!’
Shortie shook her head; her hands curled into fists as she glared at the girl, who watched her silently. ‘Because that girl there – she never speaks! How can one live in such a silent world and be happy?! Even if we are… no longer human, we still have a right to be happy! Why does she not express herself at all?! And those eyes…’
The girl listened no more. She hung her head, aware that Shortie was stalking over to her despite her friend’s protests. She grabbed the girl by the shoulders. ‘Open your mouth and speak, will you?! Probably every one of us here has had a traumatic past, but we don’t shut ourselves into a silent world like that! We can share our pain here, because when we go out there as Claymores, we won’t be able to! So… just…’
Tears fell onto the girl’s hands; she stared at Shortie in apprehension and surprise. Shortie shook her head and mumbled some incomprehensible words, still gripping her shoulders tightly. The girl’s eyes softened with tears; her lips parted slowly. ‘… If…’
Shortie stared at her, eyes widening in disbelief.
‘… If we go out as Claymores, and we won’t have anyone to talk to… then why… do we have to talk now?’ she asked softly, her voice sore from having not been used in months. ‘If it will all go back to silence… then it’s better not to speak at all.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Shortie replied, still astonished that the girl had spoken. But she was firm in her belief. ‘
Silence kills the heart. You have to understand that. Why do you want to kill your heart two times over? And it’s not like we won’t stand a chance of meeting again, you know? If you shut yourself up to everyone, when you go out there, when you team with others, when working together and caring is the only way to pull through…
what will you do?’
The girl did not reply, but a look of utter shock crawled onto her face and stayed there. She lowered her head, such that her fringe fell smoothly over her face, hiding the expression.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of opening up,’ Shortie said at last. ‘We have to help each other, because if we don’t, there’s no one else out there that will.’
Finally, she relented. Shortie could tell because her shoulders sagged slightly, and tears began to fall from her hidden eyes. She drew the trainee into a hug, which surprised her; no one had hugged her before, no one save for her mother. ‘My name’s Eclaire. What’s yours?’
A thin silence was broken by the girl’s voice. ‘Yrael.’
‘Yrael, let’s be friends, alright? We won’t hide anything from each other. The three of us,’ Eclaire said as her long-haired friend joined them. ‘She’s Lydia, by the way. Alright?’
A pause. And then, ‘alright. It’s a promise.’
xXx
Yrael stood on an open, rocky terrain, enjoying the gentle caress of the wind, reminiscing.
‘It’s been a long time since then, Eclaire,’ she said softly. ‘We have yet to meet, the three of us…’
‘Oi, so that’s where you’ve been,’ Moop said, walking over. She turned to look at him, the wind whipping her fringe into her face. ‘And I said I’d meet you at the forest there, not here in the terrain,’ he grumbled. ‘But that’s fine. Sorry to keep the work coming, but I’ve a new mission for you.’
Yrael shrugged and nodded. ‘I’m listening.’
As Moop outlined the details of the mission, she found her mind drifting back into the past. The vast sky seemed endless; she wondered, what sort of secrets lay hidden in its depths?
‘… And that’s roughly it. Were you listening to a word of what I said?’
‘Of course!’ Yrael said indignantly. ‘I’ll be off now.’
‘Good luck.’
The Claymore raised a hand, acknowledging she had heard him, before trekking off across the rocky terrain, to continue leading the life she now led, carrying a secret hope to fulfill their promise some time. Somewhere.
Someday.