by Kaelyn Ross
“No more fire,” she gasped.
Their hands reached, but they did not reach so much as stretch, growing thin and long, like strands of cake batter. Their faces began to ooze and drip.
Kestrel howled. And when those sticky, clutching fingers touched her, she thrashed and clawed, but could not drive them back. They caught hold of her, and she knew there would be no waking after this. No blinking away the nightmare. No retreating into the darkness. She was going to die.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You’re awake.”
Kestrel started. Until her mother spoke, she had not been consciously aware that she had been awake for some time, watching in a dreamy daze as a spider stalked a fly across the rough slat boards of her bedroom ceiling. She did not feel ill—a little weak, but otherwise well—and it was obvious she had not been devoured by the walking horrors that had found her. It was all a fever-dream, she thought, relieved.
She rolled her head on the pillow and looked at her mother. “How long have I been here?”
Tessa stopped a stride from the bed. She held a steaming stoneware cup in one hand. Using the other hand, she pushed her dark hair over her shoulder. The sunlight coming through the window flecked the loose strands with copper. A worry-line formed between her eyebrows. “Four days.”
“Four!” Kestrel flung back her blankets and sat up. A bandage under her nightgown shifted on her hip, but other than a slight tightness in the muscles, there was little pain. The same held for her shoulder, belly, and calf.
“The flesh-rot wasn’t too bad, was it?” she asked in a worried voice. “You didn’t have to … cut anything away, did you?”
A hesitant smile crossed Tessa’s lips. “There was no flesh-rot. Your wounds needed cleaning and fresh poultices, but no more than any others I’ve tended. If anything, I’ve never seen such wounds heal so quickly and cleanly. Of course, you’ll have scars. There’s no helping that.”
No flesh-rot? “But what about the fever? I didn’t imagine that.” Kestrel shuddered as hazy memories paraded across her mind. She saw Aiden slaughtering the Stone Dogs, the old city where he had found the firelance pistol, and the river at dusk.
“Your fever had nothing to do with flesh-rot,” Tessa said, taking another hesitant step closer. The worry-line on her brow deepened. “Perhaps you drank some bad water, or ate a poison berry.”
For the first time, Kestrel truly noticed how her mother was behaving, not just concerned, but hesitant. Kestrel could guess why. Aiden must have gone back on his word, and told everyone he helped her.
It took a moment for Kestrel to find the words to express her regret, which sounded inadequate in her mind, and somehow offhanded, despite their sincerity. It took a longer moment to get them out in the open.
“I’m sorry for bringing shame upon our family.”
Tessa blinked. “What are you talking about?”
Kestrel appreciated her mother’s kindness, but sometimes the woman refused to accept the truth before her eyes.
“If I’ve been here four days,” Kestrel began, “then everyone knows Aiden brought me home, and that I—” she closed her eyes against a sudden, burning sting “—that I failed.”
“You didn’t fail. Far from it.” Her mother edged closer, lifted a comforting hand, but stopped short of laying it on Kestrel’s brow. The hint of trepidation Kestrel had noticed had become more evident.
“Aiden should’ve left me to die,” Kestrel said, “but he didn’t. I’m surprised I’ve not been banished already.”
Despite her obvious reluctance to do so, Tessa came closer and placed her wrist against Kestrel’s forehead. She pulled back, frowning. “You’re cool … but then, sometimes the worst fevers leave people confused long after they have run their course.”
Kestrel ground her teeth together. “It’s not the fever. I failed!”
After that, everything spilled out in a bitter flood. “I killed the lion, but then Stone Dogs chased me. If it hadn’t been for Aiden, they would’ve cut me to pieces. Then we….”
She trailed off to silence. Aiden had warned her not to say anything about the old city, the firelances, or his intention to attack the Tall Ones. As murky as her memories were, she remembered all too well how he had looked into her eyes, as if she were an enemy. More than anything in the world, she wanted to avoid crossing her brother, out of both love and fear. As to the hovering, mirror-like sphere that had poked her, a quick brush of her fingertips informed her there was not so much as a bump on her forehead, so there was no question in her mind that it had been part of her fever-dream, much like the vision of the villagers melting before her eyes.
“Kes … what is it?”
“We escaped to the river. By then, my fever was worse, and Aiden must have carried me home.”
Tessa shook her head with bemusement. “If that’s what you think happened, you were sicker than we all thought. Lie down and rest.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better!”
Tessa’s face hardened. “Sick or not, you will not raise your voice to me. Now, lie down!”
Chastened, Kestrel obeyed. Aiden had suggested their mother was weak, and that being a farmer was a disgrace to their family, but Tessa was no night flower that would wilt under the sun’s first rays. When she gave a command, there was no defying it. Kestrel was sure that if her mother had chosen to become a warrior, she would have succeeded. But Tessa had always quietly disapproved of the needed brutality of a Red Hand’s life. It was one thing for the son or daughter of some other villager to become a Red Hand, but quite another for her own children—especially Kestrel—to choose that path.
Tessa pulled the blankets back under Kestrel’s chin. “You did not fail,” she said firmly. “Nor did you bring shame to our family,”
“A Potential can have no help,” Kestrel said woodenly.
“You didn’t have any help to do … what you did.”
Kestrel laughed bitterly, knowing now that Tessa was only trying to protect her, as she always had. “If Aiden didn’t help me, then I must’ve lost my mind somewhere up in the mountains.” She glanced sharply at her mother. “Maybe I’m still there, and you are not real?”
“I’m as real as you are.” Tessa pulled a stool closer to the bed and sat down. She smoothed her earth-colored roughspun dress with the hands of a much older woman. A lifetime of working the fields had left her fingers cracked and calloused. They looked hard, tough as old leather—far more so than Kestrel’s. When Tessa spoke again, she did so in a lowered voice.
“None of the Elders believed you needed an observer, but after scouts reported finding signs of a raiding party, I convinced them, with One-Ear Tom’s help, to send Aiden. He told us that by the time he reached your chosen battleground, you had already come and gone. He found the evidence of the Kill, and trailed you to the village. He almost caught up with you, but the guards found you first, after you staggered up to the River Gate.”
Kestrel lay there, hearing Aiden speak in her mind. Once you hang the bones of your Kill around your neck, Aiden spoke from within her mind, you’ll be counted as a Red Hand. And if there’s one thing all Red Hands are expected to do, it is to fight our enemies. When your first battle comes, and you begin weeping and shaking like you did over that lion, everyone will know that you are not a true Red Hand, and never were.…”
So he had kept his word after all, but that did not keep a wave of anger from washing over Kestrel. I will prove him wrong!
Only if you go along with his lies, a different voice countered. And if you do so, you will become a liar, the same as him.
Guilt replaced anger, but she promptly crushed it down. She had made a blood sacrifice to the Ancestors, and they had responded by putting the lion into her hands for the Kill. If they had done that much, why would they have taken it all back by letting the Stone Dogs capture her?
They wouldn’t have, she thought, growing more sure of that the longer she mulled it over. The Ancestors would’ve given me a
way to escape my enemies, or they would’ve helped me overcome them.
In that light, Aiden’s meddling did not matter. Considering it all together, Kestrel found only one conclusion: I am a Red Hand, and soon everyone will know it—even Aiden!
Filled with a new sense of determination, Kestrel once more flung her blankets aside.
“What are you doing?” her mother demanded.
Kestrel dropped her feet to the floor. “I must prepare for the Bone Tree ceremony.”
Tessa pushed her back. “You’re not strong enough to endure the trials of the ceremony.” What she did not say was plainly reflected in her gaze. Moreover, you cannot even remember what happened to you.
“I feel fine,” Kestrel said. And while her wounds were still tender, she felt strong and alert. Besides all the rest, the worst part of the Bone Tree ceremony had nothing to do with strength of body, only of the mind. Just thinking about that part sent a shudder through her, and heated her cheeks.
Tessa, still holding Kestrel’s shoulders, abruptly flinched back and clutched her hands together in her lap, that uneasy expression of meeting a dangerous stranger back on her face.
Kestrel frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”
Before Tessa could say anything, Kestrel’s father burst into the room, followed by Aiden.
“Kes!” Elder Matthias boomed, his voice far larger than his slender frame suggested possible. Displaying none of his wife’s caution, he wrapped Kestrel in a smothering hug. His dark beard—short, bristly, and streaked with white—tickled her cheek, and his long hair momentarily obscured her sight.
“Careful,” Tessa chided. “You’ll tear her wounds.”
“Nonsense, woman!” Matthias said. “Our daughter has proven she’s far stronger than any of us ever imagined.” He cast a sidelong glance at Aiden. “Isn’t that right, son?”
Aiden lowered his head. “She made a liar out of me,” he said in an abashed tone so sincere that Kestrel almost believed it. When he looked up, however, the familiar teasing light danced in his eyes. It seemed that only Kestrel noticed. “Had I known my little sister was so fearsome, I would’ve demanded that the Elders allow her to perform the rite of the Kill two years ago.”
Matthias arched a quizzical eyebrow. “And risk losing the honor of being the youngest Red Hand?”
Aiden offered a shrug and a modest half-smile.
“You’ve grown much, my son, from the boy you were. I’m proud of you.”
Tessa turned to her husband. “We must let her rest.”
“I’m ready for the ceremony,” Kestrel said.
Matthias stroked his chin. “If you feel as well as you say, then tomorrow is soon enough—after all, there are preparations to be made.”
Tessa shook her head. “Even that is too soon!”
Kestrel’s father glanced at his daughter. “You have proven yourself already, so there is no need to hurry things.”
Kestrel looked to Aiden’s smirking face, and her anger flared. “I will stand beneath the Bone Tree tonight,” she announced.
“So be it,” Matthias said, chest puffed with pride. “Now, daughter, while the day is young, get some sleep. You will need it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kestrel tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she thought about the Bone Tree ceremony and all the people gathering to watch her, and they would pop back open.
Eventually she climbed out of bed, dressed herself in the unadorned doeskin dress her mother had made especially for the occasion, and a pair of soft leather slippers. Last, she brushed and braided her dark hair.
It felt good to move around, but the pull of her stitches when she turned or twisted worried her. Kestrel decided there was no changing her mind. By now, her family and the rest of the villagers were already preparing for the festivities that would follow the ceremony. Soon, they would begin looking for her arrival.
Knowing what was required made her skin crawl. Tonight everyone you know will be there watching—
Kestrel closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and banished all thoughts about what was coming.
For now, it worked.
When she opened her eyes and glanced around the bedroom, she felt as if she was forgetting something. Her father would bring the weapons she needed, along with the bones of her Kill, so other than her clothes and herself, there was nothing else to take.
“You’re stalling,” she told herself, and almost laughed.
When she had left the village as a Potential, she had done so with much more enthusiasm, and certainly no hesitation. She told herself she had nothing to fear now, but she could not quite believe it. What she would have to do at the Bone Tree ceremony had always terrified her more than anything else about becoming a Red Hand. Until recently, though, those requirements had always seemed distant, trials that were far beyond tomorrow or the next day.
Now she was speeding toward the final moments, and she felt more scared than ever. Her heart had not beaten so hard, nor had her hands shook so much, when she faced the lion or run from the Stone Dogs.
Before panic drove her to dive under the bed, she took a steadying breath and walked purposefully out of her room, passed through her family’s dim but cozy cabin, the air fragrant of the venison stew bubbling in an iron pot atop the large cook stove, and stepped outside.
A squirrel shucking seeds from a pinecone eyed her from a sunlit branch, and in a coop set away from the cabin, chickens clucked and scratched to the disinterest of a pair of nanny goats sharing an adjoining pen. Out behind the cabin, farther up the hillside, four pigs rooted and grunted nosily in their slop troughs.
That wasn’t so hard, was it? Kestrel thought, letting the sights and sounds of familiar surroundings calm her. Taking another deep breath, she imagined she was only going for a stroll through the forest. Before the serene illusion had a chance to break apart, she set off.
The wooded path she followed began in the shadow of the protective cliffs soaring above the village, ran by her family’s home, and then snaked its way down the mountainside, passing several timber-and-stone cabins tucked deep within stands of fir and pine. If she had not known they were there, and if the owners’ dogs had not barked at her passing, Kestrel would never have noticed them. Within each cabin resided a Red Hand and their family, or a hunter and theirs. For several generations the loose, well-hidden perimeter had thwarted many surprise attacks that befell the village.
Of course, when raiding parties came howling out of the forest, one need not be a Red Hand or hunter to fight. From a young age, everyone in the village learned how to use any weapon at hand. The difference between a common villager and a Red Hand was that a Red Hand spent their lives learning the tactics of warfare, going on raids, and launchings counterattacks in defense of the village. Becoming a Red Hand was a choice few made, and fewer achieved.
Kestrel lifted a hand in greeting to the people she saw ghosting through the woods. All waved back. Some were other Potentials, young men and women like her who would one day make this very same walk. They were her friends and family, but after tonight, their paths would separate, until they either became Red Hands themselves, or failed and were sent into the Dead Lands. Of all the people she saw, only her mentor, One-Ear Tom, spoke to her.
“Are you ready, young Kes?” The grizzled warrior was leaning against a tree with his arms folded across his chest, as if his only task in life was to watch the world grow older, one day at a time. His long white hair hung over his shoulders, contrasting against his black roughspun shirt. He had seen many and many years, but still had a warrior’s powerful bearing.
“Only because of your training,” Kestrel said evenly. Skittish as she felt, she was just happy she had not choked on the answer. “Are you ready?”
One-Ear Tom grinned, showing the scant handful of lonely teeth left to him. “My part in all this is far easier than yours. Though, after what you did,” he said with that same glint of approval in his eyes that she had seen in her f
ather’s gaze, “I suppose the ceremony will be easy for you.”
Kestrel’s smile felt brittle. In that moment, she almost told One-Ear Tom the truth about everything. For many years, she had spent more time with him than anyone else, and she trusted him as she would a relative. Aiden’s voice spoke up from the depth of memory, and her smile hardened into a rigid slash. Say nothing about any of this.
Kestrel waved stiffly and moved down the trail.
On the outskirts of the village, the smell of hot metal and the ring of hammers filled the air. She paused beside an area filled with bristling mountains of rusted iron, twisted steel scrap, and weeds. No matter if you were a farmer, a hunter, or a Red Hand, the villagers collected anything that had potential use and brought it to the blacksmith, Fat Will, and his son, Short Will. Between the two of them, they could transform almost any sort of junk into useful tools or weapons, of one sort or another.
Behind the heaps of rusty scrap rose the cedar-shingled roof of Fat Will’s forge, and from its wobbly brick chimney climbed an ever-present plume of smoke. If habit held true, Fat Will would be late to the ceremony. Of all the people in the village, no one worked harder, except for farmers, but even they had the winter months to rest before the next year’s planting.
You’re stalling again, Kestrel told herself, and left Fat Will to his labor.
The sudden and violent need to vomit coiled through Kestrel’s belly as soon as she saw the village wall, a sheer bulwark of stone and earth rising twenty feet in height. In her mind’s eye, she imagined the villagers standing watch for her, their faces calm, but their eyes alive with doubt. Far away, in one of the lower summer pastures, a calf bawled for its mother. The sound was at once urgent and forlorn. Kestrel felt a kinship with the poor beast.
“You are a Red Hand,” she told herself in harsh tones, and the greasy twisting of her insides slowly eased. She strode through the Mountain Gate and entered the village.
As soon as Kestrel saw how deserted the village was, she felt like a fool. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have known this was what she would find. The real show, after all, was at the Bone Tree.