After the Fire (After the Fire: Book the First)

by J. L. Murray

  She turned back to look at her friend. “I am sorry,” she said. “I am very tired.” When she got to the gate she threw the large bundle of polecats and ermines on the ground.

  “Is that all?” said a high male voice from above. She looked up to see Rastin.

  “Make sure my mother gets as much as she can eat,” said Eleni. She walked to her box and, surprising even to her, she pulled the door closed. She just wanted sleep. The door still hung open a finger's width across. It would only lock from the outside, so she couldn't lock herself in, but she wanted to. She didn't understand it, but she wanted seclusion tonight, even from the wolf.

  Eleni was startled from sleep by a sound grating on her ears. Metal against metal. She blinked, sitting up. It was midmorning, she could tell by the feel of the air around her. But something was wrong. She rubbed her eyes, trying to make out what it was. She was groggy from sleep and her head ached. She hadn't eaten the night before and she was lightheaded.

  The birds weren't singing.

  Eleni's eyes opened wide as the thought burst forward in her mind. The birds were always singing. Something was always making a racket in the forest. She listened for a long moment. Nothing. No sound at all. But then she did hear something. The crunch of a footstep. A muted growl. And then she smelled it. The scent of almost-wolf, almost-man. A mixture of wildness and the stink of sweat and the smell of meat. Reivers. The same scent she had smelled last full moon when she had come back late from a hunt. They had taken the sheep and Cosmin had blamed her.

  She sprang out of bed and pushed at the door. It wouldn't move. The sound that had woken her must have been someone pulling the iron bar against the hatch.

  “No!” Eleni cried, pushing harder on the door.

  She heard the first scream, then the soft thunking of arrows being unleashed. A second scream. The smell of blood.

  Eleni clenched her fists, feeling the power build inside of her arms. She placed her palms on the metal and let the fire go. The metal grew hot, smoking as it turned red. Another scream, then the shriek of a child followed more alarmingly by a silence. Then chaos. Women were screaming, men were shouting threats, men were screaming. Children were crying. It sounded as though they were being chased. The smell of blood was so strong that Eleni was sure she would choke on it.

  Her hands started to melt into the metal. She tried to fuel more fire into the metal, but she couldn't make it go any faster. Her hands were halfway through the thick iron now.

  The screams echoed in the box, filling up Eleni's head. There was a sickening wet thud above her. The shrieks were growing fewer at an alarming rate. Eleni's head was swimming, her stomach roiling. She had to get out, had to stop them. Her mother was in that village.

  Then with a final surge, her hands burst forward to the other side. She felt cool air and pulled her arms in, looking out through the holes she had made. The white raven sat just outside, nibbling on something. With a wave of nausea, Eleni realized it was a finger. The raven watched her without a sound, its eyes unmoving. The smell of Reivers and blood was thicker outside. She put her arm in the hole and tried to reach the iron bar, to pull it up so the door could open. She touched the metal with her fingertips, but could not grasp it. The hole was too small to let her shoulder through and the bar seemed wedged somehow.

  Using everything she had, she pushed on the edges of the holes she'd made, using her fire and what little strength she had left to melt and push and melt and push. The screams slowly abated. Eleni felt cool tears running down her face. She had to get out, had to help, had to save her. She put her arm in the hole again and pulled up on the bar. It wouldn't move. Peeking out, she looked down to see that the metal had been bent around the latch. Eleni pulled her head back in and worked feverishly on the edges again. She would have to make the hole big enough for her whole body. Finally, with one last shove, it was finished. She pulled herself through the hole and fell heavily onto the ground outside. On the ground next to her was the sound she had heard on the top of the box. It was a head that had been ripped from its shoulders. Cosmin.

  The raven was gone, along with the finger. It was quiet, so painfully quiet that it hurt. Eleni walked toward the gate. The smell of Reivers was fainter now than it had been, but the smell of blood was far stronger. She knew the Reivers were gone. They had worked fast.

  The gate was bent open, as if someone – or something – very strong had just forced it open. The edges of the metal were bent outwards, leaving a gap big enough for a large man to pass through. Eleni could hear her blood pumping in her ears and smell her own bitter sweat. She slipped through the gap in the gate.

  The dead lined the path through the village. Eleni stepped over a woman she recognized as Agata, a girl she had known as a child. She used to throw rocks when Eleni tried to play with her. Eleni stepped over her unseeing corpse. She saw women, men, children, all dead, their throats ripped or bitten out, limbs lying nearby, guts sliced open. The Reivers had been brutal. A small high voice whispered when she got to the center of town.

  “Please,” it moaned. There was a desperate whine to the voice. Eleni looked around and finally saw where it came from. At the side of a house, in the shadows, someone was sitting propped against a wall. Eleni stepped over a small boy she had never seen before, his head caved in.

  “Rastin,” she said as she looked down on the man. So large before, and so small now. He shivered under her gaze. There was a wound on his neck that he grasped at with one hand, trying to stop the blood that flowed between his fingers.

  “Why did they not kill you?” said Eleni.

  “I...” Rastin stopped, swallowed, caught his breath. “I hid,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  “While your people were being slaughtered?” said Eleni. “You are no man.”

  “Please, help me,” he said. “I apologize. I know I have made things hard for you.”

  “You tried to have me killed,” said Eleni. “I was only a child.”

  “I...sorry...” Rastin's eyes were growing glassy. “Please...cauterize it. I beg you.”

  Eleni looked down on him, cowering under her, begging her. There were tears in his eyes and he was covered in dirt and blood. He was a coward. He had let children die, women die, to save himself.

  “No,” Eleni said.

  “What?” said Rastin, his expression uncomprehending. “Help me,” he said, his voice weak but demanding. “Cauterize my wound or I will die.”

  “Yes, you will,” said Eleni. “I will let the gods judge you.” She took a step back.

  “No!” said Rastin, wincing at the pain it caused him. He swallowed again. “Come back and help me.” Eleni took another step back. His face changed to an expression of loathing. “You whore! You bitch! I should have killed you when I had the chance!”

  Eleni snorted. “You could not have killed me, small man. Die in your own filth.”

  “You are the reason your mother left, you whore,” he snarled. “She left because of you.”

  Eleni stopped. “You lie. She is here.”

  Rastin coughed, his eyes rolling up for a moment. He focused back on her. There was blood spurting through his hand to the rhythm of his heart. “She is not here,” he said. He spat the words. Then he closed his eyes and went limp. His hand fell away, the blood no more than a trickle now. Eleni stood staring at him, at his corpse, for what seemed a very long time. Then she felt herself take a step back, then another. Before she knew what she was doing, she was running. And then she was standing in front of the house that she and her mother had shared.

  The door was caved in, splinters of wood littering the mud outside. And in the mud, just outside of the door, her mother's door, was a footprint. A giant clawed thing, neither man nor beast. Eleni forgot to breathe. She almost hoped that her mother had run away as Rastin said. Fin had said it too, though in a much gentler way. Her mother was not here. But she didn't believe it. She had to see it with her own eyes. If she were still here, and she wasn't an immortal a
s Fin had said, then she was surely dead. Eleni stepped through the door.

  A woman lay sprawled face-down on the floor just inside. She had long hair, as Eleni's mother did, though she couldn't tell the color. It was matted with something wet that was probably blood. It could have been red or yellow. Darkness soaked into the dirt floor around her. Claw marks sliced across her back, three curved lines that had gone through her dress, skin, and most of her muscle. Eleni crouched down next to her. She grasped her shoulder and flipped her over.

  A slurping sound, wet and thick, pierced the air, until now completely silent. Eleni gagged on the smell. The woman's stomach had been sliced open and her organs spilled out onto the floor. Eleni looked at the dead woman's face.

  It wasn't her.

  Eleni stood and backed away, the woman's dead eyes seeming to follow her. She stumbled and almost fell on something soft. She looked around to see it was the body of a boy-child, his neck broken and twisted. And by the fire pit in the center of the room, a man, separated from his head, just as Cosmin had been.

  Eleni straightened. Her mother was not here. She should rejoice in that fact. But instead she felt empty. She had been fooled all these years. She had stayed for her mother. She had been a prisoner, a slave. And the entire time it had been for nothing. Her mother must have left long ago. Left her here to rot. Eleni looked at the bodies again. Then she raised both her fists in front of her. She released the fire in a great cloud of flame, her power increasing with her anger, her frustration, and her grief.

  She stood and watched the flames engulf the old wood of the walls, in the place she had felt most loved. It traveled quickly around the circular hut, crawling over sleeping mats and shelves containing tins and bags of grains and spices. When it reached the woman, Eleni could feel it lapping warmly around her feet and legs. When she smelled hair burning she turned and walked out the door. Her dress had burned mostly off and Fin's coat was in tatters, but she barely noticed.

  She walked through the village, raising her arms at every home and freeing the fire to gorge greedily at the shoddy houses. She let her rage wash over her like an intoxicating poison. She let it fuel the fire, making the village into a raging funeral pyre that would destroy every trace of this place that had made her life unbearable. She had told Alin she would burn the village to the ground, and now it was happening.

  Eleni stopped. Thinking of Alin gave her pause. He had been kind to her. Even if he had participated in the facade, he had at least showed kindness to her, and shame about his role. She turned, looking toward the corner of the village where he lived. She hadn't burned it yet.

  The smoke billowed around her and formed a column in the sky. She burned as she went, but stopped at Alin's hut. The door had been torn off. Eleni entered. Alin was lying on his cot, where it looked like he had dragged himself, a smear of blood left on the floor. He looked just as dead as the rest of them. Eleni looked him over. His arm had been ripped off at the elbow, but Alin had had enough sense to tie a cloth around his bicep. One of his legs was broken, too.

  Suddenly, Alin coughed, a wet spluttering thing. Eleni recognized the cough, and knew somehow that he was bleeding inside. He had been struck, probably.

  “You are dying,” she said.

  Alin turned his head toward her very slowly. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. His eyes were pained, but there was something behind the pain. Something that reminded Eleni of her mother for some reason. “I am happy you are safe,” he said. “You do not look injured.”

  “I was locked in my box,” Eleni said coolly. “It took me time to get out.”

  Alin laughed, but it turned into the wet, sickly cough. “To think,” he said. “Cosmin put you in that damned box to keep the village safe from you. It turns out, when danger came calling, you were the safest of us all.” Alin closed his eyes, exhausted. He opened them again slowly. “I suppose you know,” he said. “Judging by the smoke. I assume the Reivers didn't do that.”

  “I did it,” said Eleni. “You lied to me.”

  Alin sucked in a rattling breath. Despite the tourniquet, he was bleeding quite heavily from his arm. It wasn't spurting, but it flowed in a thin rivulet from the shredded meat and white bone that Eleni could see sticking out through the blood. The rough weave of the mat beneath him was dark with blood. Eleni reached out to touch the wound, to burn it into stopping, but Alin held up a hand, stopping her. She took her hand back.

  “I lied,” Alin said. “It pains me. It has always pained me. I love you like family.”

  “That is not how families should be,” said Eleni, her teeth clenched.

  “But that is how they are,” said Alin weakly. “We lie to each other because of the love we feel.”

  “That makes no sense,” said Eleni. She was angry and confused now. “How could lying be for love?”

  “You have so much to learn, child,” said Alin. He blinked slowly at her, almost drowsily. “It is my fault. I should have taught you more. I thought I had more time.” He coughed again and blood flecked his lower lip and chin. He closed his eyes and for a moment Eleni thought he was gone. But after a few heartbeats he opened his eyes again, heavily, as if the lifting were a labor. “I made a promise,” he said, his voice weak. He was so pale he was almost blue. “To your mother.”

  “My mother?” said Eleni.

  “I failed,” he said. “I was supposed to keep something for you. A bauble on a chain. Most outstanding. But a Reiver took it. He ripped off my arm when I wouldn't give it to him. Then he threw me across the room.”

  “What kind of bauble?” said Eleni.

  “I do not know what it was,” said Alin, closing his eyes. He opened them wide again, as if starting awake. “Full of lightning, it was. Extraordinary.”

  “Your promise,” said Eleni, “was to save a piece of jewelry for me?”

  Alin swallowed with effort, his throat muscles working. “My promise was to keep you here as long as I could.” His chest heaved. His eyes rolled up, then back down. He looked as if he was trying hard to focus on her. “Safe...in the village. Something...get you.”

  “Why did she leave?” said Eleni. “Why did she leave me here?”

  “She left...to save...you,” said Alin. “Something...get you. Far worse...than living...iron box.” Alin closed his eyes then and exhaled noisily. And then he was gone.

  Eleni knelt down and touched his face. She closed her eyes and listened to her own breath for a moment. When she opened them again she looked at Alin one last time. Then she set the cot on fire. “May your journey to the Underworld be a pleasant one,” she said under her breath. She walked out of the house and looked around.

  The buildings she had set alight were burning to ashes. She suddenly had no wish to continue wasting her energy on this place. Except one more. She walked to the blacksmith's workshop. Metal sheets were propped up against the meager shack. Tools lay strewn about, probably by the Reivers. Eleni looked at it for a long time. It hadn't been the blacksmith's fault. He was only following Cosmin's orders. She remembered being led away as a child, out of the gates that had been so recently finished. She remembered how they shone so brightly in the sun it had hurt her eyes. The wall was brown with rust now. She had looked back over her shoulder to see her mother crying, being held back by several women. They were cooing comforting things to her. No one had cooed to Eleni. They had yanked her this way and that when she locked her legs into the earth. The two men had hauled her through the gates and moments later she had her first glimpse of the box that would be her home and her prison for many, many winters. They had pushed her in. She wanted to burn them, to make them stop, but her mother had always told her that was so terribly wrong. When the door latched for the first time, she had cried until she fell asleep on the mat they had given her.

  Eleni wiped her face angrily with the heel of her hand. She looked at the blacksmith's hut, her eyes clouding with anger and sadness and loss. As she turned her back on it, she sent out a burst of fire from her hand, still d
ripping with her own tears. She walked away without looking back as it erupted into flame.

  As she walked out of the gate, she saw a figure standing in the field. The sun was bright all around him, but he seemed to be somehow in shadow. She knew him then, not as Fin. She remembered another name.

  “Alaunus,” she said to him when she had walked to him. “Do they call you that? Alaunus?” She didn't realize how weak she was until she spoke to him. Her voice was raspy from the smoke and she felt as though she might fall over.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at her, his face serious.

  “How did I know that?” said Eleni. “How do I know so many things when I have not yet lived a true life?”

  “Because you are extraordinary,” said Fin. “Are you all right?”

  “The Reivers...” Eleni looked down so Fin would not see the emotion on her face. Her dress was blackened and burned up to her knees and elbows. And smeared with blood and dirt. She looked back up at Fin almost defiantly. “You were right. She was not there. She has not been there for a very long time. She left. Alin said it was to save me. I...” She trailed off and looked away from him. He just watched her, his eyes studying her.

  “Eleni, I'm sorry,” he said finally. He reached out a hand to touch her, but she shrank from him, stumbling to the side.

  “Tell me a truth,” she said. “What could there be that was so bad that a mother had to abandon her child? What could there be that was so dangerous that being locked in a metal box was better than leaving?”

  “There are a great many things you do not yet know, Eleni,” said Fin.

  “But you will not tell me,” she said. “Just as Alin would not tell me my mother was gone. So many lies and half-truths. You tell me one reason that I should go with you. One right reason and I will go.”

  “You have no village,” said Fin.