17 – 6
Every step I take is a slow, careless drag of tripping toes and scraping heels. My hands, skin torn and nails broken, curl into loose fists that I hold close to my chest. No longer held at bay by mortal danger, my fever rushes its return. Stone streets pass in a fever-fog blur as the dry, sickly heat beneath my skin burns brighter and brighter still. I don't know how I made it this far, nor how I'll meet Clarke on the hilltop; though I know I must.
I promised, and what worth has a Royah who breaks her word? None, I would say; as would my mother, and hers before her. That girl may as well lay down where she stands and wait for the creature in the tunnels to catch her; to strip the life from her body and the flesh from her bones. It would be a fitting end for such a worthless girl: sating the gluttonous appetite of a blind, bloated worm. I won't be that girl. I refuse.
Need to keep moving. Don't think I'll start again if I stop. Slow steps, careless and dragging, down the empty streets of an empty town. One foot in front of the other.
Need to find north. Hilltop's that way. Clarke's that way. I blink the fog from weary, uncooperative eyes and turn them on the sea of peaked roofs that surround me. Miss it on my first pass. I find it on the second. Must've blinked. Take a moment to stare at it, beautifully away from this curse of a place, and wonder: did it work? Did she make it up there? It must have. She must have. It was me the creature in the tunnels was after, and me alone.
I keep my eyes on that hill and follow it through the streets as they wend and weave through this accursed place. It's here that should've burned, not Valdenwood; and to the ground, not just half. If the creature breathes air, maybe it would have suffocated in the smoke. If it doesn't, maybe it would have been buried alive in those tunnels and starved to death. Either fate would be fitting for something so vile.
Where is it, anyway? What's it doing? There's been no sign of it, nothing at all, since the well. Did it give up? I truly hope so. These slow, careless steps, all tripping toes and scraping heels, are taking everything I have left to give. Every time I close my eyes it becomes harder to open them again.
The hill grows to fill my blurry sight, its features grow ever more defined. Gray, misshapen splotches become screes of bare stone, formless blobs of autumnal color become the canopies of seasonal trees, and there, just below the summit, a flash of wintry blue.
Clarke.
Her name leaves me in a sigh. I stagger 'round a corner, bouncing my shoulder off the white, rough-plaster wall of an empty house. It hurts, of course. What's another scrape when everything already hurts? Nothing, I would say, and I would know. I'm more harmed than hale.
I've forgotten what it feels like not to. I've had little else since the very first hours of my walking road, starting from the heartbreak of leaving my family and ending here, with this. Is this what it means to be grown?
There was supposed to be wonder, somewhere along the way. There was supposed to be beauty. What happened to them? Where did they go?
Dirt underfoot, now. I'm on a path, surrounded by trees instead of houses. Don't know when that happened, where the hill is, or even where I am. I stumble to a trunk and lean on it, breathing slow and deep. Wind rattles bare branches, cools the fever-flush in my skin. My head swims and spins. I close my eyes. It helps. Trouble is, they won't open again. I don't try very hard. This is as far as I go, I think.
Slide down the trunk, falling slow into a tangle of battered, bleeding limbs. Fallen leaves crunch and crackle under me, around me. Their brittle stems poke and prickle. I smell them and the rich earth beneath, hear birds sing and squirrels chatter. Somewhere in the distance, an elk gives a high, fluting call.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
It had been so quiet in that accursed town, so still. All the life had been stripped from it by the creature in the tunnels. I hope it starves down there. I hope it takes a long, long time. I hope no one else goes there, stumbles onto it like we did.
Maybe I do.
Maybe I should bring Merigold here, and Pike, too. I should bring them all: Pike and Hull, Turner and Vance. I'll make the introductions, let them be afraid for once, let them bleed. I've done enough of both for a lifetime.
There's that call again. Louder this time, closer. World starts to pull away, taking everything with it; and into that space comes unconsciousness, draping over me like a warm, thick blanket. Time to sleep, I should think. Rest. I've earned it, haven't I?
Then I hear my name. In her voice, I hear my name.
- - -
My name's echo lingers in the air, the ground thrums with the drum-beat of hooves, and I find a smile; just there, in the corner of my mouth. She got away. It worked. I don't know how she found me or what steed has borne her here, and I don't care. She got away, that's all that matters.
Clarke screams my name again, her ragged voice raw with fear. Oh, beloved. I'm sorry, I know the sight I make: filthy and bloody, crumpled at the base of a tree. I'm alive, I swear it. I'd show you if I could. “There!” She cries hoarsely, “She's there! Hurry!”
A snort and the renewed rhythm of hoof-beats answer her. Their drumming through the ground gets stronger, louder; a soothing sink into my weary, weary bones. A pleasantly equine scent, dust and lather and must, fills my nose. The gallop slows to a trot, then to a halt. Clarke dismounts, sliding off her steed's back. “Please,” she's saying, begging, “Please, Zira, please don't be –!”She stops there, cuts herself off with a choked-in sob.
Oh, beloved. I'm alive, I swear it. Here, let me show you.
I groan.
Her steps stutter, slip on the bed of fallen leaves. There's such fragile hope in the way she breathes, “Zira?”
My finger twitches.
She sees it, of course she does; she's brilliant, brighter and more beautiful than the star she wears at her throat. In a heartbeat she's at my side, pulling me into her arms, and guiding my brow to fall into the crook of her neck. I feel her mouth press to the mat of my hair and breathe me in.
I feel her weep, the way relief makes her gasp and shudder, makes her hands flutter over my filthy skin. “I thought you were –” she confesses, rocking me, “I thought –!”
Oh, I know, beloved; and for a moment, so did I. It was just a moment, though, I promise.
I do what I can to show her, to let her see that I'm alive: press a kiss into her skin, lean in to her palm on my cheek. When she takes my hand to kiss my fingers, I try my best to curl them around her thumb. They twitch a little. It's enough, I feel it in the smile she presses to my split, scabbing knuckles. It's as small as the one I wear, as fragile as her hope, but it's there. It's enough.
Her steed comes to join us, hooves crunching through fallen leaves. I can smell it: dust, lather, and musk. It paces behind me, then lowers itself to the ground. Thick, coarse fur presses into my back, powerful muscles as it folds its legs beneath it. I feel the rise-and-fall of its ribs as it gusts a warm, grassy breath over us. It should be frightening, I should be wary, yet all I feel is safe. It rests its head on my hip, its snout shorter and thicker than a horse's. It's the safest I've felt since the Port.
“I know,” Clarke says suddenly, “I know, she needs it as much as I did, but...it's different, it's – her –. What if I make another mistake?”
Somehow, the silence that answers her sounds like you won't.
“You won't let me?”
No, it seems to say, you simply won't.
“Alright,” Clarke takes a deep breath, centers herself, “Alright.” Then, wryly, “You must tell me if something feels wrong.”
After days languishing in the dormant-dark, the star at her throat ignites.
Coda
It waits in patience, musing on the path of its favored chosen. Her lover seats them both on the back of its favored shape, and only once they're settled does it rise. Much has happened to her since it brought her from the depths of its woods. It will be interesting to see what she becomes.
Her lover asks it to carry them to the human settlement called Amberdusk, which it knows not. She speaks of hills, laden with fields of golden grain. This, it knows; and thus it sets out, heading north and east through its trees.
It leaves the ravening one behind, trapped in its warren, and knows of its frustration. It would seem that the bottomless stomach thought a favored chosen and a worker of fell-winter would be easy prey.
Fool. It did not idly choose its favored. She did not fall to the Yrh, so what chance did the ravener have? None, it would say. Thrice none and done.
But an insult to its chosen was an insult to it. That cannot go unanswered, and so it reaches out with its mind. Starve, it commands, no, better yet: devour yourself, and rid my demesne of your filth. I tolerate you no longer.
It would but laugh if its favored form allowed, this lord of the woods; as back below that human settlement, so unwisely built, the ravening one began to feast.