In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

“Baby, you aren’t either. There’s just so much going on right now. I thought you would want some time alone to work it all over.”

  “Thank you.” The words were a hoarse whisper in my throat.

  Her hair tickled my cheek while she shifted to loop her good arm through mine. She smelled like sweat and smoke and mud and I knew that I must have smelled worse, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “Do you know what this was about? This… attack. Why they did it.”

  “They?” I spat the word out, and my hands curled into fists. “They, there was no they. This wasn’t an Empire-sanctioned purge.”

  “If they were in line with rebels—and they were—then he would, and you know that.” She spoke quietly, barely a whisper. “But if not that, what? What was it?”

  I stared at my fists and the white knuckles they created and I imagined a ring on my second finger from the left. The worst thing was that imagining it wasn’t hard. It was in my pocket, and I slipped it out and hid it in my palm.

  Roam wore one, and it occurred to me that she had always been married to my father, even so many years later, even though he tried to believe that she was dead.

  “We hid here,” I said. “Why?”

  She lifted her head, twisting to look at me. Her hand tightened around my arm. “You don’t have to worry about that. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I pulled away from her. “You want to know why this place was turned to ash, so tell me, because it has something to do with it. It matters, because these people have lost everything to it. We hid here. We destroyed it. What were we hiding from?”

  She looked at me with a stern set to her brows. “We were hiding from you.”

  I nodded. “From what I am.”

  “No. Who. It is who you are, not what, and if you start to treat it like it is as much a part of you as your own arm or the colour of your eyes, you won’t have to hide.” She waited for her words to grip me like life-altering advice, but they settled like dust in an empty room. She shook her head. “You would have faced it with a cold fury. You would have shown them regret. We left because of Percy. We wanted to keep him safe. And Clary, she’s so much like you. Full of fury and stubborn as hell. She became a rebel and talked Conleth into hiding us.”

  “Is she here? In this ruin?”

  She shook her head again and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “No. Of course not, she’s… she’s long gone. I don’t know where she is now. Finding fights someplace else.”

  I bit my lip and looked down at the soot. “She’s Jack’s sister. You said something about that. And James said something about it. Said he would kill him. I don’t know what’s happening but I think I’m connecting the dots but not as fast as he did. That… that’s why this place has been burned to the earth. Tell me the truth. Tell me what’s real.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed out. “You really should talk to him about it.”

  I breathed through my teeth.

  The words took a long time to find the courage to fall from my tongue, but I pressed a knife to the backs of them. “You’re my mother, and I am scared, and I do not want anyone else to tell me. Please.”

  Her chin quivered and her eyes welled up with tears. She shook her head and turned her face away, pressing her cheek against my shoulder again. I felt the quake in her frail bird bones. “What are you scared of?”

  “That it’s real and I don’t remember and this happened because of it.”

  “You remember.” Her denial came with a hardened tone. “It’s still there.”

  I hissed sharp words back at her. “I don’t remember anything! I don’t remember anything except what happened after, and that is terrifying, that is sickening. That is what scares me. James is giving Percy to Astra because I cannot and will not marry someone who is as vile a monster as him and the very thought of being near anyone else makes me want to scrub the filth from my skin until it bleeds because it reminds me of him and what he did. And I can’t—I can’t hurt anyone else. I can’t hurt myself. I want it to be real but I don’t want it to be permeated with the memory of that man, and it will be. It already is.”

  Roam sat straight backed against the charred wood and drew in a shuddered breath. “He doesn’t own you simply because he touched you. Don’t let him.”

  “How?” My voice cracked.

  She shook her head, and her elbow came up to rest on her knee, her fingers pressed against her temple. She didn’t look at me. Her muddy brown eyes stared straight ahead at nothing, her cheeks hollowed and weary.

  A lump grew in my throat to see her upset, but I was angry, and I was upset, and I was scared, and I wanted truth.

  I wanted real.

  “I’m so tired.” I pressed a hand to my mouth as a sob bubbled up, leaning forward. The ring cut into my palm with how tightly I held it. My arms and my hands and every aching muscle were tired and weak. “Mom, please, I—I can’t. I can’t, I just want… I want… I… I don’t want to remember that, but I want to remember—I…”

  I stared at the pub floor, clean and boot roughened and unburned. I wore clean boots. I wore clean clothes. I knelt in front of Percy who crawled to me from Clary, pushing himself up as wobbly as a newborn deer to his feet. His arms stretched out and a goofy smile grew on his face. I held my hands out to him, caught him just as he stumbled, and pulled him onto my lap.

  There was something on my hand that glinted around my finger. Small and thin and silver with a row of tiny diamonds that marched around the band, a dainty thing that sat perfectly and—

  “Soren?”

  It wasn’t gold and ruby. It didn’t remind me of a desert and a fire and the rage of a man. But it was there, held in my palm in place of that thing with the smell of heated gold that coated the back of my throat and the taste of silver in the air.

  “Soren? What’s happening? Your eyes—oh, oh no, please don’t—Ellie! Ellie—”

  ———

  Rich soil pressed against my cheek. The smell of it was earthy and cool, mixed with the sharp scent of pine. I laid in the hum of the earth, cradled in roots.

  A thick tree trunk towered above me—as wide as a building, the red bark peeling away in fibrous chunks. The trees were the size of giants. They made me feel small, like a seed in the lap of a god.

  Soft light twinkled through holes in the shifting canopy of pine needles. It danced over the earth and the twisted roots where it breached the blanket of leaves. Tall, sweet grass swayed in a breeze that was only a gentle whisper.

  I heard it clearly—the hum of the earth as it breathed. The magnetic resonance that waxed and waned like the phases of the moon, froze and thawed out again like a lake through the changing of seasons.

  It was warm here, warm and soft and calm. All I saw beyond this little nest of roots was pine tree after pine tree and the viscous sap that rolled down the cracks in the bark and the old orange needles and pine cones that littered the forest floor. Ferns and grass blanketed the soil in ocean waves, bright and green and waxy.

  My heart beat in a slow and steady rhythm. Breathing was easy.

  “Hello?”

  A sweet voice drifted between the trees, as clear and crystalline as bells, quiet but reaching. It echoed to me like a smooth stone across the still surface of a lake and created ripples in the air.

  “Hello, are you there?”

  I pushed myself up from the earth, the world tilted upright, my fingers dug into the rich soil.

  There was a ring on my finger and it wasn’t gold and it wasn’t ruby. It shone bright against the dark dirt, and I didn’t know how it got there. I didn’t know how I got here. Surrounded by tall pines and ferns.

  Mist snaked along the floor of the forest, getting closer and closer.

  “Hello,” the voice called to me. “I know you’re there. I can feel you.”

  My tongue tripped over my teeth. “Hello?”

  Silence answered me.

  The mist froze in place and the small breeze that played with the
ferns and the grass completely vanished. It felt like time stopped. It felt like everything ceased existing at the whim of this wind chime voice.

  “You aren’t who I thought. Have I… you look so familiar. Who are you? How did you get here?”

  “I can’t see you.” My words quaked and shivered. I stepped back against the tree trunk, pressed my back to it, arms held against my chest. My thumb twisted the ring around my finger. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know much of anything at this point in time. Come out and show yourself. Please.”

  “I’m right here,” she told me, “Right in front of you.”

  A nervous laugh bubbled out of me.

  I felt blind, searching the still air for a face only to find nothing but pine trees and ferns and fog that crept closer again, inch by inch as if it was being cautious. “I can’t see you. Why can’t I see you?”

  Something cold brushed up against me, and then a whisper in my ear said, “Open your eyes.”

  Open your eyes—they were open.

  I saw pine trees that towered above me and their roots that twisted out of the soft earth and the sweet green ferns frozen in time and the mist that moved despite the stillness of everything and it was closing in and I clutched my hands to my chest and twisted the ring on my finger in a nervous tick that I didn’t remember having and my eyes were open and this was what I was seeing and then—

  I blinked.

  Everything went black.

  Like a switch that was flicked off.

  Everything was black and hollow. My breath was ragged and echoed close in my ears.

  In front of me, a being of blue light stood patiently against a backdrop of mirrored stars with a pool of water for a ceiling. My own hands were made of white light, soft and glowing. There was a god in front of me, reflected infinitely, and infinity in itself.

  “I see you now,” I whispered, but there was no point in whispering when the words echoed in close quarters in my own mind. “What is this place?”

  “I see you,” the murmured chime of a voice answered.

  This was different from the pale figure in other dreams I had—the hand of this other god stretched out, fingers brushing against mine in this void space between mirrors.

  “It’s a place in the middle. Somewhere between one room and the next. You’ve been here before. You gave him a knife. You could have given him anything and it would have helped, but you gave him a knife, and in turn you gave all of us a knife. He has bought you time, for you, for him, for others, but not for me. There’s so much that I have to do. It’s never ending.”

  My heart pounded inside my chest where an ache ate away at it. “Who are you? What do you know? What’s happening to Percy?”

  “Listen,” the other god purred, and I did.

  My tongue stayed still against the backs of my teeth. I didn’t move a muscle except for this heart and these lungs. I wanted to listen. I wanted to hear every word that filled my mind so clearly, that trickled down my spine like water, to drink it in like a proverb.

  “These are things that you will learn in time, things that you will remember, things that you will remember how to remember.”

  “Okay. Okay, you know this. You know things. At least, you know more than I do. It’s still all riddles and vague answers. That’s all anyone ever gives me. Learn in time—I don’t have time!” My voice was hard against my throat. “Tell me something useful! Anything! Please.”

  This other god did not move for what felt like a century, didn’t say a word, just stood there frozen with a hand held out. The way it felt against my fingers was like static on plastic, only... thicker. Something solid, yet not. It was magnets held against like magnets. The force of simulated gravity slings.

  And then this other god closed its fingers around mine and took a deep breath and—

  The ceiling of water turned into a rain softened field of dirt and mud, lit by a sliver of a moon somewhere below me, and then everything snapped upright.

  I breathed sharply in the cold air. There was no cloud of steam formed by my mouth in front of me, but one spilled from Jack’s lips as he stood there and sighed long and hard, his chin tilted back. His eyes closed for a moment.

  He watched the stars, sweet green eyes hunting down the meteors that the Perseids brought, shiny with tears.

  He didn’t see me. I stood right next to him and he didn’t see me.

  I reached out, but I was still made of white light and all he did was shiver when I moved right through him. I was a ghost. I was a ghost and he was only human.

  “Jack,” I whispered, and his name was broken in my mouth.

  A muscle in his jaw jumped as he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. He swore under his breath, quiet and private, even though he was alone in this barren muddy field.

  The faint glow of electric lantern light from the camp being set up in the distance was behind him.

  This Redbird soldier stood there, an ache of pain tightening around his throat, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it as much as all of my being screamed to make it better, to fix it, that I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

  He tucked his chin down, squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His other hand was tucked into the pocket of his jacket, the collar turned up against the weather as he fiddled with something—I knew what it was. I knew exactly what it was because I did the exact same thing half an infinity ago in a forest of pine and fern and fog.

  I reached up cautiously, smoothed his hair out as much as I could with this incorporeal hand that I had, but it was just a slight wind to him that knocked the longer strands across his forehead.

  My voice was a strained, hoarse thing. “I’m just a ghost to you, aren’t I?”

  His hand moved to rough his hair, to shove it back away from where it had fallen, but a spark was left there that latched on and shocked him.

  He paused, looked around him, but then his shoulders dropped again and he breathed out a long and shaky breath with a small laugh at the end, tousling his hair anyway.

  “I’m losing my mind, Sparky,” he muttered.

  I stepped closer, carefully. “You’re not—”

  “Sorry? Where are you?”

  Percy’s voice snapped me around.

  I twisted and turned as I searched for him in this dark field under the stars that were just pin holes poked into the fabric of the universe. I didn’t see him. I heard his voice, small and frightened and quivering, but I didn’t see him. When I turned back to Jack, there was no one there.

  The horizon had a faint orange glow.

  “I’m scared.”

  I spun around again, heart racing.

  Where, where, where, where, where, where?

  I didn’t see him. I didn’t see him. I didn’t know where he was and I didn’t know what was happening and I wanted to know, I wanted him back—what are they doing to you, little bear? What are they doing to you?

  His cries echoed around me. He was somewhere close to me and I couldn’t get to him, I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t help him.

  “Mama!”

  Something cold dripped on my cheek. I brushed it away and leaned my head back to look at the stars above me.

  He was there—curled up on his side with his arms wrapped around his knees, small and bright against the universe. His sobbing cries turned his cheeks splotchy red.

  I reached up, jumped, tried to will myself back into the mirrored room, but none of it worked. I was stuck. I was grounded. I stared up at this bear cub constellation above me with my heart in my throat and my hands clutched tight to my chest because this was my fault too and there was nothing I could do and he was scared.

  “Please, Sorry, please, they’re coming, they’re gonna—”

  “Percy? Percy!”

  The stars were gone in the blink of an eye, and in another blink, I was staring at my room in the Manor. Its constellation ceiling and the cedar smell a
nd the bed with its dark red silk sheets and the sound of the Lumen as they marched down the hall that echoed in heavy vibrations—and my little bear, curled up inside the wardrobe, hidden behind clothes that I wore forever ago.

  “Percy,” I breathed out, “Percy, I’m here, I’m here.”

  He wasn’t listening to me. He didn’t know I was there, in the room with him, so close yet so damn far. And I couldn’t move.

  I watched him pull the door of the wardrobe shut and I couldn’t go to him and hug him and tell him it was okay. I couldn’t move, and the more that I tried the harder it got.

  The door to the room creaked open and the sound of whistling filled the static air.

  James waltzed in with lightning scars traced up the sides of his face, with dark circles under his pale eyes, with his hair a wiry and windswept mess. He looked like hell, but he smiled as he looked around the room, hands shoved casually in his pockets. Beneath the sloppily buttoned shirt he had thrown on, his fire suit peeked through.

  “I can hear you sniffling, little Io.” He swayed as he walked over to the wardrobe and tapped his knuckles against the wood. “Don’t you want to come out? I have some good news.”

  “You’re not allowed to be mean to me,” he mumbled through the crack in the door.

  No. No, he’s not allowed to be mean to you, Pers.

  James rubbed a hand over the fractal pattern in his skin with a grimace. I didn’t doubt that he was angry about it. He always hated scars. Shame about… that. At least it’s covered most of the time.

  His voice didn’t show a hint of what was on his face. “I’m not being mean, kiddo. I just wanted to tell you something about Soren, but I guess you don’t want to hear about it. I don’t talk to closets.”

  There was silence from Percy, and I knew he was thinking about it. He missed me, and then he had me for real, outside of his dream and my dream, and then he was torn away again.

  I lurched forward and only made it two steps before I couldn’t move again, before my arms were pinned down. I fought it with all my strength.

  I didn’t feel very strong right then. Even my voice was wavering and weak. “No, Percy, don’t… don’t.”