Do you know how to kill a man?
"Do you know how to kill a Neverhoodian?" De'Verro asks.Arig starts and turns to look at his companion. The sunset's golden rays frame De'Verro's unruly hair. He's making a flower wreath, hands deft, eyes calm. His question pierces the peaceful evening like a poisoned arrow.
Arig forces himself to answer. "I do."
"How?"
Arig gulps. The poison is spreading through his body, cold and numbing. He must respond. De'Verro's violent past is the darkest of corners. He speaks about it so rarely. Arig can't let the moment of candour pass by. Let him talk. He needs to talk.
"By sucking out their life energy," Arig says. "Neverhoodians have a lot of it, so I'd need to channel it somewhere lest I go crazy. But it's possible. And it wouldn't take more than an hour."
De'Verro hesitates. Then he nods.
"On Fhru," he says and there's love and contempt and painful longing in that word, "we learned many ways to kill a Neverhoodian. The cruelest one goes like this. First you get a box." He cups two of his six hands together. "The sturdiest you can get. One that doesn't dent when a boulder falls on it. One that doesn't melt in the hottest furnace. One that doesn't leak a single drop of water. Then you surprise the Hoodian and gauge their heart out." He opens his palms to stuff the wreath inside. "You put it inside your box and lock it. It will fill up immediately. It must not burst. It must not leak. You wait for five hours, until the brunt of the regeneration passes. You spend the time gathering firewood and stoking up a fire."
Arig gazes at De'Verro, who is gazing into the sunset. The golden light paints him afire. He squeezes the wreath so hard his knuckles are paling.
"You place the box in the heart of the fire. It must not melt. It must not crack. You must not take it out of the fire and you must keep the fire burning for five days." De'Verro opens his palms. The wretched wreath is crumpled, ruined. It was so beautiful... "On the sixth day," De'Verro says, "you take the box out of the ashes and open it. Inside you will find ashes. Sift through them very carefully and look for living klay." He tears the wreath to pieces and leaves only one, pale yellow blossom. "After you find the heart, lock it inside the box again and thrust it into the flames."
De'Verro looks peaceful. Calm. As if he was explaining a recipe or a game. Has he killed someone this way? Arig knows that if he did, he would never tell him.
"Clean the box every five days," De'Verro says, crushing the blossom in his fist. "After a month, there should be no more ash. Only the heart remains, as hard as a rock. Keep the fire going. Put the box into your fireplace and never let the fire go out. Let them burn." De'Verro smiles faintly. "Half a year later, it will be done. The heart will never regenerate again. You can plant it in the earth and it won't sprout."
De'Verro stops speaking. Arig is wondering how to reply when De'Verro says:
"But they say this isn't enough to kill a Neverhoodian. They say that the secret of immortality isn't regeneration. It's the link between the body and the soul. A best klay heart binds its soul so tightly that as long as it exists, it will remain alive. A scorched heart is unable to live and it is unable to die. They say it is a fate worse than death."
And finally, finally, De'Verro lowers his head and hides his face as his shoulders begin to shake.
"I could bring them back to life," Arig says softly. De'Verro looks up. There are tears in the corners of his eyes. For a brief moment, Arig knows De'Verro keeps a scorched heart in a small sturdy box somewhere.
"Or you could finally kill them," De'Verro whispers.
They look at the sunset together and Arig, who has never killed a person, feels too young and green compared to the worn man next to him.
