Chapter 24: People (Final)
My words, faded in color, had sought refuge in my silence. They tried to form sentences within me with fear, but my tongue couldn't turn, I couldn't say them to him. My feet had become crippled on the roads; I wanted to run to him crazily, but I couldn't take a step. Even if I wanted to take a step, I didn't have the heart to go to him; my heart was buried with him in Avar's magical land.
I wondered if he wanted it? Did he want my heart, which was buried with him, by his side? If I could stand before him now, would he look at me, for instance? I swallowed. I wanted to cry, but my tears were estranged, tired, and had aged.
I had killed a man who always held my hands, with my own hands.
Our last conversation was etched in my memory. I closed my eyes tightly. My shoulders were tensed, my face was already rigid, and I hoped I could breathe.
"We'll get out, just stay calm. Ankh can't do a sudden spell."
"It can't?" I asked with a trembling voice.
"It can't." he said kindly.
"Çağın, I don't want to die."
Çağın, I don't want you to die.
Çağın, I haven't been able to live for weeks.
Çağın, I can't tell you all this.
How could I? I didn't even have the face to go to his funeral.
I needed it. I needed a tiny excuse to soothe my conscience. Maybe if I hadn't pulled him, he would have jumped in front of me anyway, maybe anyone would do what I did. I didn't do it on purpose; it was a reflex, an impulse. I've been hearing this for weeks, but my wound hadn't even scabbed over. I needed to be with him. I needed his advice, his rather logical sentences when I disagreed, his patient smile. I needed to hear his voice, to apologize to him.
Now I agree with everything you said, Çağın, you were right. My weakness wasn't in the World, it was in the blood running through my veins.
"My ruler?" The voice I heard made me jump up, opening my eyes suddenly. Seeing Arel before me, I wanted to roll my eyes. I had been in Avar for weeks and he hadn't left me alone for weeks. I had been in Avar for weeks and hadn't managed to visit Çağın's side for even a few seconds. Would he accept me, really? Would he allow me to touch his soil?
"My ruler, you must return to the palace now, your absence is making everything an unsolvable mess..." he started and sat down next to me, talking for hours. Shrinking at the base of the tree I leaned on, Arel talked and talked...
"The people of Elysian, after wreaking havoc in the World, fled from the responsibility," he said. "As if they were not the ones who sowed emotions, they acted recklessly saying, 'What happens in the World doesn't concern us, we are happy in Elysian!' Your great, great grandfather intervened in this situation very cleverly."
I didn't know what he was telling me, nor was I eager to listen. I came here to escape from the palace screaming with every brick, maybe to convince myself I wasn't a murderer, but Arel had followed me again and again, never ceasing to talk. I sighed with annoyance, showing I didn't want to listen, but he continued: "Walking on the streets of Elysian, he picked up a piece of trash, raised it high and said loudly, 'I can't believe it, you've started acting like humans. You mistreat the nature that shelters you. Since when have you started behaving like these cheap creatures called humans, my people!' reminding them they had forgotten they were human."
My indifferent glances wandered aimlessly until the last sentence made my gaze stick to a tree. My brows furrowed, and that last sentence echoed in my mind several times.
They forgot they were human.
They forgot they were human.
They forgot they were human.
My gaze returned to Arel, and my tongue was practically paralyzed. I raised my eyebrows, looking at him in astonishment, and he smiled at me kindly. If I could open my mouth, I would ask what he meant, if it was a metaphor, but my worn-out body was crushed under the weight of astonishment.
Everything I couldn't say, he understood from my silence. "Yes, my ruler..." he said with a fatherly smile. "We are actually humans, just with a longer lifespan according to the beliefs in the World, and some of us are taught magic at an age they can't remember."
I had opened my mouth to speak, but since I couldn't make a sound, I pressed my lips together and swallowed. Thoughts about humans and my arrogantly stated opinions about them made me feel breathless.
"People are strange..." Bilun had said. "For instance, they become stingier as they get richer," she added, looking into the eyes of her power-hungry sister.
"We've named many forms of discrimination in the World," I had said, during my initial days of incompetence as an heir.
Referring to justice, we had said, "Well... Because they are irrational beings, a bad person can see themselves as good, justify their wrongs," yet we tailored excuses for our mistakes, chasing only the truths that pleased us.
I sacrificed a human without thinking to save myself.
These and many more thoughts lined up in my throat, turning me into a dam about to burst, but since I couldn't open my mouth to say a single word, I was drowning in my own water.
"There's something stranger than how easily our people believed they weren't human," Arel said. My interest in what he was saying had increased. "After hearing they weren't human, not a single person from the people of Elysian asked, 'Then what is our race called?' Because that's how people are, it's more important for humans to learn they are superior to anything else and to live with that pride. We see Eva as the culprit for all this, but in reality, it's all the fault of us humans! Eva is not uncontrollable, she never was."
Finally, I managed to utter a sound that turned into a word after a while. "Yes..." I murmured to myself thoughtfully, a meaningful smile blossoming on my lips. "After ruining everything, we blame everyone but ourselves. We are definitely human."
This was our life. We were in a battle for supremacy, but in essence, we were all human; all of us were sacks of flesh and bones, made of two hands, two feet, and a bag full of organs. Çağın was my first loss in this battle, for reasons I didn't understand, and if I continued to swing my sword in this senseless cycle of ambition and revenge, he wouldn't be my last.
We all had wrapped the rope of our cause around our wrists, but none of us realized the rope had turned into shackles.
I stood up. Arel, understanding what I was about to do, smiled proudly as he rose. I could make at least
one right decision in this life. I removed the crown from my head and handed it to the chief scholar, recalling the moments I fought to acquire it. The whisper of Hesna, with a dagger pressed against her chest, "My love is not an excuse; my love, your excuse," the tear Bilun shed looking at her own daughter, the admission of Eva, once a timid girl, "I am not filled with hate; I am hate itself," the child in my womb used as a pawn, and the throne, a mere chair for which all these had happened.
"If you abdicate, things will return to the old order, and the eldest..."
"I don't care." I interrupted him, raising my hand in the air. The tears I held back made my nose sting. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm myself. Lowering my hand to Arel's, I said, "Thank you, Arel."
When my fingers grasped his warm hand, he too smiled. I wasn't sure if I should really do this, actually, I didn't care, but I could tell from Arel's gaze he was congratulating me. Rising to my feet, he bowed to me one last time and took the crown.
We didn't talk further. I turned my back, severing our gazes, and started walking into the forest. With my head bowed, after walking for about an hour, I heard Arel's voice echoing throughout Elysian, perhaps for the last time: "Our former ruler, Afel, has abdicated the throne. The throne's new owner is Afel's oldest and wisest sister!"
As I walked on a road with an unknown destination, I didn't even think about what would happen in Elysian or the World. After all, the end of a universe trapped in a cycle of pointless ambition and revenge was quite predictable.
To be continued...
