Unsent Letters: I

Father,

I think I would have been more comfortable in this mission if the rumors had been true — if it had been a haunting to exorcize and drive away. Unfinished business and old grief that we could put away at the edge of salt and silver and smoke. Something to fight. The only demon we’ve found was a pathetic thing pinned to a stump by an old farmer’s pitchfork. Ketsuron vaporized it with his moon-fire and that was it. There’s only one place in the world where slaying a fiend can feel like a chore.

House Spirits refusing to believe their families dead — I’ve seen that kind of denial before. I remember delivering the news to a dozen families during the war, after. Most of Irahai’s work is sorting the names of the dead from the living, gods bless her.

I learned then not to be cruel, and it took me a while to realize the same for these creatures, too. Even if we’re not alike. The others — they were better for it than me. More optimistic. Not willing to wield truth and likelihood like a bludgeon.

I don’t know how to talk with the spirits like Mother does, but I feel their ache in my bones. It feels like a healed break and the pressure before rain: only released by the weeping.

The cat on the Miklov farm said to me, “I hope you will learn to not see death everywhere you go.” I don’t know how I can answer him. I fear that I will always be stuck in the past, in the war, on the dying fields. Stuck thinking about Magda and Beonn. In my dreams I am never not fighting.

I feel the slow decay, like water on stone: what if I am never again as strong as I am right now, in this moment?

I can’t lead people like this. I can’t bring myself to weep.