by Terina Adams
“Wait.” I ran to catch up but was slowed by the fog at my feet. “Please, wait,” I yelled, but the harder I pushed forward, the stronger the resistance on my legs became.
A fist appeared out of nowhere and smacked me in the side of the head. I staggered sideways and collided with a tree, bumping my head on the trunk. The pain reverberated through my skull and dulled my senses. I blinked to clear the fuzz swimming in my head, which had no effect. The ground rushed up to meet me, and I landed with a jar up my spine.
“Get the pack,” a harsh voice cried.
Someone was behind me, yanking the pack from my shoulders.
“I’m having the sword,” came another voice.
I lashed out, thrashing around on the ground as hands clawed at me, grabbing at my supplies and all the other treasures Cerac had given me. With my head dizzying around, I flailed my arms out and found nothing but air.
“Hey, what’s this?”
In my thrashing, I must have revealed the hidden dagger, for rough hands were now yanking and ripping at the leather around my calf. My vision blurred. The energy was lagging from my body, but if I didn’t fight, I would lose everything, and I hated the idea of those men robbing me of the sword—Cerac’s gift.
I punched out. My fist connected with something boney and I was rewarded with an oomph only to have the favor returned with a punch to the side of the head. I collapsed back, dazed. My head increased spinning.
My mind was a scrambled mess. I couldn’t determine if I was standing or lying down, if I was all right or wounded, if I was home at the arena or lost on the street. A pain in my head was what I got whenever I tried to force the memories through, pain and a mental cry of anguish that said, Not safe, not safe, not safe.
25
I was curled in a ball, my body racked by violent shudders. When I tried to move, an ache throbbed around in my head. I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. Blackened lifeless trees stared back at me, their branches reaching down toward me like scorched arms and fingers. Behind, the laden sky hung with dark, roiling clouds, flashing silver streaks across it.
I unfurled and what little heat I’d managed to gather rushed out. My clothes were covered in the soot that painted the ground charcoal black. I sat up and ran my hand over the ground, surprised that I could see it. The fog had rolled away, leaving the dead forest as desolate and ugly as when the fog had blanketed the ground. But I could see the ground, which meant I could see the flowers.
All I had to do was look around me, and my heart, which had swooped up in hope, crashed down. At every turn I made, the view was the same, an endless distance of gloom, nothing but hues of black and gray. It was as though my heart was the only heart that beat in this place, but within days, that would stop and I would become another dead thing to inhabit the dead forest.
How could I find a single flower? They’d not given us any hints, probably because they had no idea themselves. Using the tree for stability, I rose and only then did I remember the most vital thing. I had nothing. The other three had attacked me and stolen everything, my food, my blanket, my sword. I swooped down to feel for my dagger, but with my head still not right, I pitched forward off-balance and landed on my hands and knees.
The tears I’d held back for Cerac flooded out, dripping onto the sooted ground. I punched the earth and sent soot flying up into my face. Coughing, I sat up and wiped my eyes with my sleeves, which were no better than my hands.
“Stupid, stupid fool. You guessed they would betray you. Why did you stay with them? Stupid trusting fool,” I berated myself through my tears.
I was scared. That’s why. I didn’t want to face the ragool alone. And now I was alone, and I had none of my weapons, food or warmth. I fisted my hands and screamed at the sky. But that didn’t do anything, so I stood, a little dizzy at first, but once I was up, my head straightened.
I had to get out of here. I would leave even if I had no flower. Cerac would be there with the soldiers and he would give me more to eat, another blanket, another weapon and then I could return. But how many days would that waste and how many days had I already wasted? I held my hands out, fingers spread, to see if I had developed a shake, which would indicate I was sick. They held steadfast. Neither did I feel sick, which meant I still had time.
When I looked at the trunk of the closest tree, I found none of the marks I’d spent time gouging into the bark. The one alongside it was also clear of my etchings. How far had I run away from the last mark, chasing those thieves? I walked around each tree, and the trees beside them. “Where are they?” I gasped, spinning in a circle. “No, they have to be here.”
I ran to the next tree and the next but saw nothing. I spun in more circles, my clenched palms at my mouth. They were gone. The marks were gone. And all I saw through the trees was a cloak of gray reaching into the distance.
Alone, frightened, angry, I walked with no direction or purpose except to be moving, my mind spiraling, empty of possibilities. That’s when I saw glimpses of a stone bed amongst the trees. On the bed, a motionless figure draped on his back with one arm flung over the stone headrest. The other lay across his body. I peered around the trees, then moved to position myself better to see. I heard nothing and saw no movement.
My first instinct was to run the other way, but since he was the only person in the dead forest apart from me, I felt a strange fascination to move closer. Slow, deliberate steps inched me nearer without making a noise. With a few more steps, I realized I was holding my breath.
Closer now, I stretched my neck to the side and looked around another tree. There it was, just ahead. The person, the thing that lay prone upon it looked in a terrible way. Its arms were charred black, its abdomen gashed and torn, oozing a black liquid, which ran onto the stone bed, then over the edge and trailed to the sooty ground. Its pale gray skin hollowed around its hips, under its rib cage, across the shoulders and the cheeks. Its feet were curled and deformed and large lacerations crisscrossed its bald head and down to its temples. One side of its face was burned black, the cheek caving inward because there was no substance underneath.
Emboldened by its vulnerability, I maneuvered around the tree and stood beside the bed. The creature rolled its head to the side and trained its one black eye on me. My breath hitched as I took one step back, for although the creature was in a terrible way, my body quivered with the danger emanating from its one-eyed glare.
“You’re a wraith.”
It turned away as if dismissing me.
“Are you dying?”
“Does that make you happy?” Its croaked voice was nonetheless deep and threatening. Destroyed as this creature was, I could tell it was male.
“Yes.” Did it? There was something about death that made everyone look innocent. “But I feel sorry for you.”
The wraith’s skin mottled in places across his wasted abdomen as dark lines like veins spread across the skin, turning his body into a patterned landscape of decay.
“Why would you feel that?”
“Because I want to live, so it makes me feel pity for anyone who is dying.”
“Humans are strange creatures,” he drawled as he raised his arm in slow motion from the back of the headrest to shield his face as if to shut me out.
“What happened to you?”
“The same thing that happens to everyone who loses a fight.”
“Who were you fighting?”
“Humans are inquisitive creatures.” He sounded bored.
“I thought wraiths were immortal.”
“Everything can be killed.”
“Are you afraid to die?”
He turned his head and focused his one black eye back on me. Even wretched and near death, his eye still held the power of intensity I’d witnessed in another wraith I’d met.
“Are you?” it said.
“I fear death, yes.”
“Then why are you wasting your time bothering me?”
“I’m lost, and I have no supplies or weapo
ns. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I blurted the truth because the wraith could not hurt me, so I could stand here without fear. Like the wraith, I was also vulnerable, and in some weird, twisted logic of mine, that united us. It also meant I wasn’t alone.
“If I could ease your pain, I would somehow.”
“Because of your pity.”
“Because I can’t bear to see anyone’s pain. Regardless of who you are, in death I think we are all equal. I would like to help you make your dying hours more bearable.”
The wraith removed his arm, inched his head to the side, leveling his gaze on me, his black eye staring out of a destroyed face.
“I do not understand humans. That they should care for the weak, show pity for the dying.”
I approached him and crouched down in the soot around his stone bed. Up close, there was no denying the devastation that had been wrought on his body. There was nothing I could do to help him. Both of us knew that.
“I know a good deal about herbs. They are plentiful in the fields and forest around my home. I would pick them and prepare them for market and also keep enough for myself and my family.”
The wraith stayed silent, his eye locked on me.
“My sister was good in the garden. Her name was Nellene. She’s only ten, not that you would know. She’s smarter than a fox. And my best friend is going to have a baby, something she’s wanted for so long.”
“What are you doing?” His tone was flat but not harsh.
I did not avoid his eye when I told him the truth. “There is nothing I can do for you. You are going to die. Humans don’t like to die alone, and so I thought I would fill your death with useless chatter so that you would not feel alone.”
“Why?”
“Because I am foolish.”
“I know I’m dying and I do not need chatter to send me on my way.” He closed his eye.
I was not needed here. I made to rise when he asked a question. “Why did your friend want a baby?”
“Babies remind humans that life is eternal, even if it’s not your own.”
“Of course, your lives are short.”
“They make you love in a way that brings joy every day.”
“And reminds you that joy can be taken away and replaced with pain.”
“Without love and joy, there is no pain, but both emotions are such a great feeling to have that everyone wishes to feel them, even at the risk of experiencing pain.”
“Have you known both of these?”
“I wouldn’t be human if I could say no.”
He opened his eye. “What is your name?”
“Rya.”
“You make it sound as though humans are such honorable and loving creatures.”
“Few are some of the time.”
“And what about you, Rya? Are you honorable and loving?”
“Not always and only to those worthy of my love.”
“And I would not be worthy of your love, but am I worthy of an honorable act?”
“That depends on what it is?”
“Would you save your enemy?”
Would I? “I don’t know.”
“If I told you how you could save me, would you do it?”
The emotions that swirled around in my heart silenced. The wraith looked at me. “It is a simple ask. I am not questioning your morality.”
“What is it you want me to do?”
“Is that a yes?”
“It depends on what it is you want me to do.”
“Ah, yes, conditions.”
“I do not want to make the wrong choice.”
He nodded to himself with a smile. “Of course, honorable, loving and cautious. But the latter is a better trait to have. Will you let me touch you?”
“That depends,” we both said in unison.
The wraith smiled again. “I’m beginning to believe you are not so naive and gullible as I first thought. I will not hurt you, for I need you to save me. But in order to do that, you must be able to see.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but I believed him when he said he needed me. I reached out my hand. The wraith looked at it, then into my eyes as if surprised I was offering. He slowly, gingerly, with pain etched on his ruined features, took hold of my hand, then let go straightaway, hissing.
“I’m sorry, I forgot. Wraiths can’t touch me.”
His body slumped back farther into his stone bed. “It seems you have very recently known love.”
For some stupid reason, my cheeks heated. I was about to make some excuse when I noticed color behind him. A small tinge of blue amongst the black trunks. “There is something there,” I said half to myself as I rose off my knees. The wonder in my voice matched the need I felt to move closer. I forgot the wraith, moving around his bed and through the trees, drawn by a mysterious fascination. It wasn’t until I was upon the blue that my breath hitched. A blue flower. The blue flower. I had found one. Here amongst the endless sea of black and gray, I’d found what I was looking for.
The small flower grew from the base of the trunk, a single flower with three petals of dazzling blue that shimmered even when there was no sunlight. I crouched, afraid for a moment that picking it would diminish the color and ruin its beauty. When I bent low, a waft of perfume filled my senses, a strange, heady smell, unrecognizable from any perfume I’d ever smelt, but beautiful all the same. I inhaled again, savoring the delicate fragrance, and found myself drawn to smell again and again, the smell so compelling. As soon as I picked it, the fragrance softened until pressing my nose up against the petals gave me nothing. I felt strangely bereft at its disappearance.
Remembering the wraith, I headed back to his stone bed, only to find he looked worse than before. His skin was caving inward, creating great grooves in his body.
“You allowed me to see this.”
He slowly opened his eye, the only thing he could do to register my presence.
“This is what can save you?”
He was too weak to nod.
This was what could save me. Why should this be a difficult decision to make? I had the flower. All I had to do was turn and leave. I closed my eyes and saw Cerac’s face the moment he made me promise to come back to him and Morick’s face the moment he proposed to me. All these reasons to live. All these reasons to save myself. But if not for the wraith, I would never have seen the flower. His touch, however short it was, had removed some blanket that covered my sight. He allowed me to see the flower so that I might help him live, not because he wanted to help me. It was a selfish act, but my act would be worse. It would mean thinking only of myself and betraying him. Why should it matter? He was my enemy, the enemy of my people. I owed him nothing. But in order to save himself, he was the one who gave me the ability to save myself. We would both be dead if not for him.
I knelt in front of him. “What do I do with it?”
I had to lean close to hear his weak mutterings. “Feed it to me.”
So I did. One fragment of petal at a time until there was nothing left, and all the while a piece of hope faded from my heart.
I followed the swallow of the petal as it ran down his throat. The last fragment of blue flower, my only hope. What had I done?
Once it was gone, his hand slipped off the bed and draped in the soot. I waited but he did not move. Was he dead? I leaned closer to his face, listening for sounds of breathing. I did not see any movement over his heart. Had I given it to him too late?
I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe with the tightness in my chest. I’d given him the flower too late. The single flower, the one thing that would save me, save us both, and I’d wasted it. And now it had saved no one.
Palms over my face, I cried the rage I felt inside. The wraith was dead. I would soon be dead. I’d been so stupid. Why had I given it to him and not rescued myself? He was dying. I should’ve let him die. I bent forward so my forehead rested on the sooted ground and made horrible strangled sounds of anger, fear and anguish.
Once depleted, I sat up, my mind vacant. I had nowhere to go. It felt like my heart had been scooped out, leaving an empty cavity void of emotion.
I wobbled as I tried to rise from my knees. They ached from having sat like this for so long.
“Stay,” the wraith mumbled.
I gulped in a breath with my surprise. “You’re not dead.”
He opened his eye, looked at me, then closed it again. “Stay. You’ll not regret it.”
I slid back down, but instead of going to my knees, I fell to my bottom, then farther, until I was lying in the soot, my eyes staring up at the gray sky. Then I couldn’t even keep my eyes open anymore.
26
I woke on my side, breathing in the fine dust. I lifted my head and rubbed the soot from my eyes, then stared at two perfect feet resting on the black dirt in front of me.
The wraith sat on the edge of his stone bed, watching me out of his fathomless black eyes. I scrambled up to sitting and shuffled back on my behind, creating the distance I so desperately wanted.
“Rya.” He said my name like he was practicing to speak for the first time.
“It was you.”
The last time I’d seen the wraith, I’d been huddled by a fire on Hallow’s Eve. He’d been so powerful, fierce and unforgiving. He’d also been so achingly beautiful. The blue flower had restored him, but not yet to his former magnificence. His face looked drawn, dark smudges circled under his eyes, his lips were a deathly blue and the luster of his skin was drained.
“Why did you save me?” His voice was raspy as he panted the words. It took effort for him to speak.
“Because I’m a fool.”
With his hands rested on the edge of the bed, his shoulders bunched as he sunk his head. The breadth of his chest seemed immense. Like the first time I’d seen him, my eyes followed the thick, ropey veins as they snaked up his hand, wrapping around to the inside of his arm, then fading into his bicep.
“What happened to you?”