#ft maja

⸻ MAJA GRIMHJARTA & IVAR GRIMHJARTA

They died, and came back. Together.

Port Leiry, OR.

The night before the Grimhjarta Circus Opening

Bones chilled to the marrow. Icy breath that tasted like salt, and sandpaper. Blue lips on a mouth clogged with mud and dirt. An endlessness to the suffocation as hands clawed through the darkness and grappled with wet soil whilst too numb feet kick through the tension. It’s no longer water they’re fighting with, but a sludge of what the ground is made of. They cannot draw breath, without tasting the slime of worms and an arachnid’s fast moving legs tickled between a set of desperate fingers.

A water-loggedhand bursts from the ground, coated in dirt, trembling in the cold of the late night. Pale, wrinkled skin shrivelled loose. Voices can be heard in the distance — a thump, thump, thump of footsteps above ground. A rogue heartbeat either side, stuttering organs that cry to take gulps of air so they might know oxygen again. Noises incoherent in burst eardrums as though they are still beneath the waves. A body feigning life as muffled sounds that echo through the soil, and whisper between blades of grass.

Maja groaned as she hauled her body up through the surface. A pair of legs were already there; bare, blue and still thawing from the cold, drawn tight against a naked chest. Her vision speckled with black spots, eyelashes heavy with mud as she dragged herself up and out of what could have been her grave. His body rocked slowly, impatiently waiting for her to claw her way out of the dirt. To join him on the shore of the dead, where they had met before. Only without the tight lungs, and the pipe water spilling from mouths and nostrils. Hands reach for the femur bone that marks the head of the circle; a ring of blood and offerings of the dead encapsulating their rise. Fastened in place by nothing other than magic, immovable, no matter how much she used it as a handle to pull herself out of the earth.

She lay on her stomach, sucking in urgent breaths. “Drittsekk.” She hissed, voice raspy as she spit out crushed ants and bugs with distaste. Eyes searched her surroundings. White and red pinstripes arched over her head. The Revival tent. Where the Grimhjarta circle had always been formed, at every new stop. Maja wondered if they were the first damn fools to have to use it in this city.

"Maja." He breathed, with mouth and eyes still stained with dirt, heavy on his lashes and knotted in his beard. Wet strands of hair streaked through the patches of mud like dark rivers. She was cold, shivering as weakened limbs push herself from the ground. His wary gaze never wavered from her dirt-smeared frame, writhing through the soil like a naked snail.

Bare of her jewellery; she’d remembered it crumbling from her fingers, from her wrists and her throat and lost to the lake. Metal that had turned ashen on her chest; as bare as the day she were born. All but the waistchain that was wrapped around both their stomachs. Talismans they've had since childhood, laid beside them. A wolf tooth — split down the middle, its ivory tip gone. Hers was missing a piece too. Already a phalange lost on that chain of fingerbones that rattled, as she gathered the strength to sit up and stare at the large, gaping hole she and her brother had just fought their way out of.

His stare was unnerving, annoying. Forced breath, croaked: “You know how to swim.” Her dirtied stare burned into his. She expected an explanation as to why he’d cost them their lives.

Ivar shook his head, like a wet dog. "I don't know what happened, Maja, I swear."

He knew death carried a price — a cost, they had both been paying since the day they were born. "How many do we have left?" A silly question, blurted in haste. She'd call him reckless for not keeping count. His eyes slid from hers, unwilling to meet the disappointment she wore so well and dropped to his calf. No proof of claw marks on his skin. His foot hadn't snagged on fishers nets or sharp, metal spikes. What he remembered was the pain of a muscle spasm. Pins and needles first in his right leg, then his left, until his whole body locked and refused to move.

No matter if they took turns dragging the other through the throes of death, Maja could never do anything but love her brother. He was what was left of their parents; a final death which Ivar and Maja had yet to meet. She didn’t need to look at the bones to know — and Ivar should too. “Mikael happened.” She did not know that, but his abandonment had spoken volumes. His sudden decline in attitude had left much to be desired about his company. Edda? Too weak to pull off a stunt like that.

Grimhjarta’s dealt with their own, they brought nobody else in. There were rules.

Brynjar would hear no tattling, or tales of treachery without proof and they had none. Ivar would not lie to Maja. Even if she were hostile about coughing up foul dirt, and aged seawater from a drowning she didn’t cause. “Six.” She muttered, before correcting herself. “Four, because of yours.”

Ivar hacked out the worms still crawled up his throat, refusing to keep such nasty souvenirs from his time dead at the bottom of a lake. Last time they were here, it was her fault. Now, this was all him. They had yet to figure out a transference spell, but they know Garnett has a foothold in this city which they can pluck at.

The tent flaps open suddenly, and their uncle stands there looking unimpressed at the pair of them. Clothes are dropped at their feet, and a back is pointed at them whilst Maja slips into harems, and a bandeau. Ivar does much the same with a loose white shirt and a pair of jeans. Brynjar doesn’t turn to address them, stares out of the tent to the Circus whilst the siblings look knowingly at each other.

“You two treat this like it lasts forever."

Talismans didn't grant immortality. And the siblings knew that. There was no point arguing or defending their case. But Ivar, ridden with guilt, opened his mouth to speak. He was quickly cut down: "Spare me your excuses, Ivar. Mikael filled me in on last night's disaster."

Maja just glared at the back of the ringmaster before conceding an eyeroll. They were caked in dirt, with death still on their tongues. They could be spared the lecture.

junji listening to soa and maja stream