A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

And Benuck didn't know what he would do.
She had given him life. She had fed him, held him, kept him
warm. She had given him words to live by, rules to help him
shape his life, his self. She wasn't clever, very, or even wise.
She was just an average person, who worked hard so that they
could live, and worked even harder when Da went to fight in
Pale where he probably died though they never found out either
way. He just never came back.
    Benuck sat wringing his hands, listening to her breathing,
wishing he could help her, fill her with his own breath, fill her
right up so she could rest, so she'd have a single, final moment
when she didn't suffer, one last moment of painless life, and
then she could let go . . .
    But here, unseen by any, was the real truth. His mother
had died eight days ago. He sat facing an empty chair, and
whatever had broken in his mind had trapped him now in those
last days and nights. Watching, washing, dressing. Things to
do for her, moments of desperate care and love, and then back
to the watching and there was no light left in her eyes and she
made no sign she heard a thing he said, all his words of love,
his words of thanks.
    Trapped. Lost. Not eating, not doing anything at all.
Hood's hand brushed his brow then and he slumped forward
in his chair, and the soul of his mother, that had been hovering
in anguish in this dreadful room all this time, now slipped
forward for an eternal embrace.
    Sometimes, the notion of true salvation can start the eyes.
    Avab Tenitt fantasized about having children with him in his
bed. Hadn't happened yet, but soon he would make it all real.
In the meantime he liked tying a rope round his neck, a damned
noose, in fact, while he masturbated under the blankets while
his unsuspecting wife scrubbed dishes in the kitchen.
    Tonight, the knot snagged and wouldn't loosen. In fact, it
just got tighter and tighter the more he struggled with it, and so
as he spilled out, so did his life.
    When his wife came into the room, exhausted, her hands
red and cracked by domestic travails, and on her tongue yet
another lashing pending for her wastrel husband, she stopped
and stared. At the noose. The bloated, blue and grey face
above it, barely recognizable, and it was as if a thousand bars
of lead had been lifted from her shoulders.
    Let the dogs howl outside all night. Let the fires rage. She
was free and her life ahead was all her own and nobody else's.
For ever and ever again.
    A week later a neighbour would see her pass on the street and
would say to friends that evening how Nissala had suddenly
become beautiful, stunning, in fact, filled with vitality, looking
years and years younger. Like a dead flower suddenly reborn,
a blossom fierce under the brilliant warm sunlight.
    And then the two gossipy old women would fall silent, both
thinking the same dark thoughts, the delicious what-if and
maybe-she notions that made life so much fun, and gave them
plenty to talk about, besides.
    In the meantime, scores of children would stay innocent for
a little longer than they would have otherwise done.
    Widow Lebbil was a reasonable woman most of the time. But
on occasion this gentle calm twisted into something malign,
something so bound up in rage that it overwhelmed its cause.
The same thing triggered her incandescent fury, the same thing
every time.
    Fat Saborgan lived above her, and around this time every
night – when decent people should be sleeping though truth
be told who could do that on this insane night when the mad
revelry in the streets sounded out of control – he'd start running
about up there, back and forth, round and round, this way and
that.
    Who could sleep below that thunder?
    And so she worked her way out of bed, groaning at her
aching hips, took one of her canes and, standing on a rickety
chair, pounded against the ceiling. Her voice was too thin, too
frail – he'd never hear if she yelled up at him. Only the cane
would do. And she knew he heard her, she knew he did, but did
it make any difference?
    No! Never!
    She couldn't go on with this. She couldn't!
    Thump thump scrape thump scrape thump thump – and so
she pounded and pounded and pounded, her arms on fire, her
shoulders cramping. Pounded and pounded.
    Saborgan should indeed have heard the widow's protest, but,
alas, he was lost in his own world, and he danced with the
White-Haired Empress, who'd come from some other world,
surely, to his very room and the music filled his head and
was so sweet, so magical,