What Remains

Death was never something I wanted to understand by scent, yet it enveloped me in fire and cinnamon. Blackened blood clung to its feathers as its red-hot, harrowing eyes held mine.

I sat paralyzed in the cold dirt as a realization settled in. I often prayed to the gods and once asked for a life rich with experience. Looking back, I suppose they had granted it well enough—pain had been the one constant they never failed to deliver. Let them rot up there.

After all these years of avoiding omens and the silence of the gods’ absence, I laid my palms upward in front of me and rested on my knees–like a habit–not once glancing away from the bird of flame perched before me in what remained of the village.

A red-brown haze hung in the air between us as I used the language of the gods to petition the stars strewn across the sky.

By my will,

I send you from this life.

You have no power here.

The melodic hymn pulsed euphoria through my veins. The spices I had cast at the bird of flames glowed as it still fogged the air between us. The bird chuffed as my prayer ended and the last of the screams of its massacre died out—the families and village engulfed in its flames and feathers. An empty cold settled in my core as it cocked its head. Its unsettling eyes followed a tear as it escaped down my chin, and dropped onto my shaking fists. I hissed in pain and dared to look down. The tears landed in the small cuts of my palms where my nails bit into them, the scarlet stark against the pale white patches on my tawny skin, while it dripped onto my lap.

A large, black talon shifted a step closer. The cold in my core quickly turned into a hot, unrelenting rage. I had to act quickly—for what?—I didn’t know. Everything I had ever lived for was nothing but a living memory in the smoke and char of familial homes.

I grabbed for the dirt, only hoping that enough spices settled in it. Something ancient, a melody, a deep and resonant drone wept out of me as I threw the dirt at the bird of flames. The remnants of the spices cast a brilliant iridescence—nearly blinding us both. Through the light, I caught a glimpse of a shadow of a wing, and tar dripped from its feathers as it made its way toward me. All I could do was scream.

I screamed and screamed until air sputtered out of me, and only ash remained. My shoulders relaxed, and when I felt the tears cake into the spices and dirt on my face, I opened my eyes. A man lay bare and motionless across the ashes. His hair contrasted with the paleness of his soot-covered skin, bright like the flames that would haunt my dreams for a lifetime. If it weren’t for the feathers that enclosed him and stuck to him like an array of wooden splinters, I’d never have believed him to be the creature he was moments ago.

I don’t know how long I held myself up on my knees in that spot or how long I watched his bare chest to see if he released a breath of life, or for a sign that this was all a terrible dream. He lay so close I counted his long, full eyelashes ten times over, and when he sputtered a breath, I pushed myself up. My knees ached, and my skin pulled when the air nipped at my bare feet and fingertips.

I cursed the sky as the stars shone their brightest and the ground quaked beneath my feet while I walked back toward the mountains of ash without paying the stirring man another glance.

Through ashes I walked until I reached the end of the sludgy cobblestone that brought me home. In a habit, I reached for a brass doorknob that was no longer there and collapsed on my hands and knees the moment a cry rumbled from my throat.

Through tear-filled eyes, I looked around the ruins of the stone and timber building that is home—was home. I huffed when I dragged myself up and leaned against the arched opening of the threshold, left half-standing. My weight caused a rumbling of popping noises that sent me running to the large alcove on the left while the entrance crumbled with an overwhelming roar and sent a fine cloud of ash into the air. I quickly covered my mouth with the high-neck of my handwoven blouse and took note of the blacked, tattered, once-puffed sleeves.

A gaping, anesthetized wound built a void where my heart should be as I scan the destruction. My home, once vainly decorated, is now in charred bits strewn throughout the room. A glimmer caught my eye near the curved staircases at the back. I took in a deep breath and held it until my lungs screamed for release before tiptoeing over to it.

My throat constricted, and small bumps covered my body as a blade with a crescent curve forged from a silver metal sat in the ashes. My body reacted to the ancient magic that pulsed through it without a thought and reached for the knife. Along its spine, delicate carvings of wispy swirls spiraled downward, etched in as if they grew from the metal. Red moonlight slid across it in quiet power—iridescent patterns rippling through every inch.

I gripped the handle—fashioned from a smoothed antler—and whispered a thank you as the knife throbbed in my palm. Where I planned to go, the ancestors knew I’d need it, and I was finished asking anything of the treacherous, dominating, rotting gods above.

A root of bitterness entangled its way through my veins when I rose from the ashes. I turned back toward the entrance and stopped only to pick up the few thick and stout glass bottles filled with spices and herbs that remained scattered throughout the room.

I left with nothing else but the clothes on my back, and with one last glance, I looked back at the alcove. Through an opening where a colorfully patterned window once would have been, the blood moon bled a fading scarlet light into the sky and watched my back as I headed toward the southern woodland with the coming season’s cold whispering behind me.

I don’t know how long I walked for, but a chill set deep in my bones, and I wasn’t entirely sure if I still had any of my fingers or toes. My cropped cotton pants, though comfortable, did nothing against the coming and going of sharp winds. I took shelter in various cabins and small structures, sparse throughout the woodland, but I avoided staying in one place for too long; something at the back of my mind urged me to keep moving, and I knew better than to ignore it. For fear or whatnot, I had no plan on becoming carrion.

The sound of distant laughter drew me out of my mental glaze as I sat propped up against a large stone wall of a ruined temple, of what god, I didn’t care to know, but the bits of crystalline matter spread throughout the stone told me I sat on the steps of the mineral goddess, Nyn. An ancient and unsettling woman described in myth and legend as having cool gray-brown skin and sharp, reflective eyes. If only she could see her temple now, I nearly rolled my eyes to the back of my head as my feet led me toward a break in the woods where a river flowed sprightly through.

A boy at a tender age with short midnight curls that bowled around his head and star-kissed skin squealed at the edge of the river as a woman with matching deep brown doe eyes, who could only be his mother, sprinkled water from her fingertips onto him. A colorfully patterned headpiece wrapped around the woman’s head, tilted as she pulled the boy toward her affectionately, planting short, soft kisses on the top of his head.

The weight in my chest caused my head to throb, and my limbs felt sluggish as I started to turn away from the scene. My eyes widened with a start when the boy tugged at my hand behind me. His small calluses grazed against the raw nail divots in my palm, but the warm gleam in his eyes caused me to hold on tighter as he brought me down to the river and sat me next to his mother.

“Would you pass me that soap there, Hun?” The woman’s voice sounded like a distant echo in the woodland as she pointed at a worn basket near my legs, full of small, rough brushes and colorful bits of soap.

I couldn’t help but let the soap linger under my nose for a moment before I handed her a piece that was oblong and smelled of fresh rain. Anything to get rid of the scent of spice and decay.

She scrubbed at a stain on a piece of damp cloth as the boy, unable to stay still, hounded me with an onslaught of questions and comments.

Where are you from? Cordala. I like your hair. Thank you. Can I touch it? Fine. What happened to your shirt? I fell. Are you a traveler? Yes. Did you see the fire?

The last question passed through me with a sharp gasp, causing his mother to strike him softly over the head, “Leave her be now.”

“Ow, mama,” he rubbed at the spot, but grinned after her. My mouth twitched upward, but the ache in my core only grew.

“Hun, you’re looking a little pale.” She reached into the pocket of her smock and pulled out a roll of bread, holding it in the air between us.

“Can you believe it! We got it from a hearth bringer in the nearby village. They’re delicious, I already ate three of them!” The words flew out of the boy as if someone is going to interrupt him at any moment.

Hearth bringer. Nearby village. The realization came to me between heaves and retches as I released my insides beside the river. I turned in time to hide the brunt of it from their view. They must have eaten honeyed bread to be that cheerful doing laundry this deep in the woodland, I thought. Only the firm hand of a hearth bringer kneading the bread and lathering it in spiced honey could have this effect. I’d know. I made it.

I took a few deep breaths before I rinsed my mouth with the river water and turned back, only to see the woman still holding the bread between us. The boy sat cross-legged with a smile that stretched nearly too far across his face, showing each of his teeth.

“Oh, eat it, Hun. I know it’d do you good. Y’know, with all those burns and all.” My heart begged for release as I slowly followed her eyes pointing to my arm. It lay at my side, red and blistered.

Tears pricked in my eyes, and my insides dared to escape again. I jumped for the roll and jammed its entirety in my mouth, barely chewing, and forced it down. The boy snorted a laugh, and my breath became ragged. I stared down at my arm again and hissed. Within seconds, the blisters retreated into my skin, leaving only a haze of deep red that I was sure would dissipate in due time.

I looked out of the corner of my eyes through long, tight, brown curls at the mother and son as they continued to beam at me. I cleared my throat at the discomfort that thinned the air, and the woman went back to scrubbing at a rust-colored stain in a beige apron while the boy began stabbing sticks into moss in the ground.

I released a hot sigh that left me aching for relief. I reached into the river for another drink, but it was warm. Too warm. I looked up stream and debris floated down like pollen from the ash trees during budding season.

My core settled like stone as the red haze of the blood moon began to clear the woodland while it set and left behind a dull light reflected in the water. The natural world—a truth—had set in.

The creak of my body echoed in the silence when I turned slowly toward the mother, still happily scrubbing at the stain that would never come out of the apron. Beige it may have been, but it was burned skin. My throat constricted when I turned to look at the boy. It wasn’t sticks he played with, but bone.

I threw myself back in a panic, my arms half-dipped into the warm waters. They looked up at me, their eyes no longer welcoming, but sharp and hollow. Whatever magic the blood moon carried no longer lingered here, and I knew they were already dead at the moment a sweet-sickly smell filled the air around me.

I picked myself up and hurried across the river; their laughter chased after me. I chanced one last glance behind me—clothes floated empty. The river boiled once. The voices stopped, and my mouth tasted like ash.

My feet were irritated and raw. I wasn’t used to walking this long and deep in the woodland, and the soft grass of my village ended sharply as if something obstructed its entry into the forest. I was left with the comfort of stones, dirt, and crisp leaves on my soles.

I had walked far enough that I began to feel the shift of seasons in the air, the cold winds yet to have reached this far south. The scent of moist, dusty air settled in my nose and clung to my skin while I shifted through an onslaught of ash trees tightly grown together, and in the middle of a whispered conversation. I hurriedly wove through the nymphs while soft branches reached through my curls and caressed my face.

The inside of my mouth felt like cotton, and my lips burned as I dragged my tongue over the cracks. I released a loud sigh and continued on my path, only to run face-first into a large, rough trunk I was sure wasn’t there before.

The pain reverberated through my teeth and caused a colorful aura to flicker throughout my vision. I stumbled around while I used my hands to feel my way through the woodland, and felt as my body began to give way. I collapsed to my knees, holding myself up against a tree, when I suddenly felt cold, although a sweat broke from my hairline.

My lips numbed, and I only began to see what was directly in front of me. That is when I saw a short, shadowed figure limping toward me. A woman—no, a man—no, a woman’s face came into view. An old and gravelly voice filtered through the pounding in my ears. A man. My mental state must be poor because their faces kept changing.

My shirt ripped some more during my attempt to lift myself using the tree as a crutch. “Gods, I’m tired.” I heard myself say before the ground rushed up to meet my face.