Ashes of the Stars (8 page)

“It’s really the best, isn’t it?” Tali asked after a long time of silence. I looked up at her, trying to ignore the eyes watching us from all around the meadow, and I nodded. She was looking at me with worried eyes for what seemed like the first time. Of all that had happened,
now
something was causing her nervousness.

I saw a small group had formed around us. Kieran was sitting with his empty breakfast bowl on my other side. He didn’t look angry anymore, just curious. I had to remember that he didn’t know me either. Whitestrand, with who I knew was Pio, was sitting on the ground still eating his breakfast, and when he saw me notice him he grinned from ear to ear in the way that only children can. Finn was sitting closer, but also on the ground and his eyes spoke of a joy that his words could never describe. I finally smiled. It felt wrong, the turning up of my lips in the corners, the stretching of the dry, cracked skin. Finn laughed at me and shook his head, returning to his breakfast.

Kai wasn’t here. Kai was the only one of my caretakers who was missing. There were other people in this group that I had never met. One of them I vaguely recognized as the guard who had saved the girl on my team from my wrath. He also smiled at me. Though most people’s gazes were friendly or curious, others throughout the meadow looked at me with pure hatred, some with fear. They looked nervous, jittery, as if my presence alone was enough to set their world off kilter. I looked, not to Finn or Tali for guidance, but to Kieran. He was their leader.

“They’re afraid of you,” Kieran answered my unasked question. “Some of them think that letting you stay here will only bring war down on us.”

“Kieran!” Tali hissed.

I shook my head, “It’s okay. They’re right to be afraid.”

“No,” Kieran shook his head at me mournfully and patted the back of one of my ruined hands. “They’re not. You’ll see… one day.”

The group was silent and I could almost feel a sigh of relief escaping Tali although I didn’t hear it. I was still pondering his words when we all looked up a minute later at the sound of pounding feet.

“She’s gone. Aili’s…” Kai was gasping for air as he reached us. When he saw me sitting, wedged between Kieran and Tali, he locked his muscles in place. His eyes widened and he continued breathing heavily but he was in too much shock to move or comment. And then, when reality finally sank in, his eyes went back to normal size and he straightened his spine. I saw his eyes dart towards Finn for a moment and then he nodded at me. “Good to see you, Aili.”

He’d recovered as if nothing had happened but we were all still trying to recover from his strange reaction to me. He had turned cold in his body language and it made no sense. Where was the sweet man who had fed me, who had spoken promises and stories? This wasn’t the same person.

“I’ll just go get breakfast then…” Kai said, drifting away again.

“I’ll take that,” Kieran said, shooting to his feet. He grabbed my bowl and Tali’s and jogged after Kai. I wondered what that was about. I looked questioningly towards Tali who just shrugged her shoulders and leaned back against the bench.

“Well, I guess I have more free time now. Wanna go do medical shit to your hands?” Tali smirked at me.

“Not really,” I wrinkled my nose at her and she laughed at my expression.

“Too bad, it wasn’t really a question. Come on, mitts,” Tali said. She jumped to her feet and waited patiently while I weakly got to mine. The walk was slow and as we passed the food huts, I didn’t see Kai or Kieran.

“I wonder if Finn knows that we know he’s gay,” Tali wondered absent-mindedly as we walked along the path.

“Probably not,” I shrugged. “He said he… um, well… He’s trying to be secretive.”

Tali surprised me by laughing and shaking her head. “We’re not the kind of people who would be upset by something like that.”

“Maybe someone should tell him before he gets hurt trying to climb trees in the middle of the night,” I said. Tali laughed, her voice echoing off of the trees and the buildings. I smiled faintly, annoyed again at how strange it felt, and surprised that I could be funny.

Back at the medical hut I’d been ‘living’ in, Tali unwrapped my hands and I finally looked at what I’d done to myself. My hands were red and blistered. My skin looked as if it had melted away in places. It was a disgusting sight to see and I wanted to throw up breakfast. I looked away from them as Tali was dunking them into a clear, stinging mixture.

“They won’t look like this once they’re healed,” Tali told me with a soothing tone. “They won’t be the same but they won’t be too noticeable either.”

“How?” I mumbled, still looking off to the side.

“This treatment burns away the scar tissue and promotes healthy cell growth. Of course, it can’t get the worst of the scars but most of them will be gone, I promise,” Tali told me.

I nodded once and no more attempts at conversation were made by either of us while she treated my hands. When she was done with the clear liquid, she wiped a thick white cream all over them and then she wrapped them in gauze. When she was done with my hands, she set to work on other parts of my body that I didn’t want to look at. I hadn’t realized that I had been so damaged but the longer it took, the worse my mood became. I had not only forced evil on the world but I had ruined myself, my body and mind, in the process.

“I don’t mean to pry but can we talk about what happened?” Tali asked softly, carefully. I had known it was coming so I didn’t react as poorly as I thought I would.

“I think,” I whispered, staring at the wall. I chose my words carefully so they came out right. “I made a promise to someone… and, I think they should hear what happened first.”

Tali didn’t ask who and didn’t seem upset or hurt in any way by my deflection. She simply nodded and kept working. When she did finally finish working and asked me if I’d like to go back to the meadow, I begged off, claiming to be too tired. I was tired, but that wasn’t why I didn’t want to go back out. I was waiting for
him.

Chapter Eight

Time moved just as strangely as it had before. Sometimes it felt as if years were passing when it was only minutes and other times it felt like seconds were passing when it was hours. I sat on the bed with my knees pulled up to my chest and fiddled with the gauze wrapped around my hands. There was a small bit of corner piece that Tali hadn’t tucked and taped all the way, and pulling at the strands seemed to help with my fidgety feeling, but it didn’t distract my mind.

I wondered what I would say to him. How could I tell him
my
story without falling back into the black abyss that had so wholly consumed me before? While I let the thoughts eat away at me, I didn’t notice how much time was actually passing. It was only when the door opened and Finn poked his head through the gap that I realized how late it was. Kai wasn’t coming and I couldn’t wait any longer.

Finn escorted me to dinner with his big, heavy arm wrapped around my shoulders. He talked almost nonstop about everything he could. When he talked about his love interest, Wren, he spoke quietly and quickly. Apparently I had met Wren before, he was the guard who had saved my team’s girl and the one who had smiled at me at breakfast.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Finn told me quietly after we got our food.

“I’m not,” I told him honestly, looking down at my feet as we walked into the meadow. I didn’t want to see the angry stares this time. Not after Kai hadn’t shown up.

“You’re not sitting all alone staring at walls and refusing to look at anybody or speak. I’d say that’s closer to okay,” Finn said, patting my shoulder.

“Closer to it but still pretty far away,” I told him. This was dangerously close to that conversation I didn’t want to have.

“Aili,” Finn stopped walking and turned to face me. I was forced to do the same but I looked down at his shoes. He tucked his finger under my chin and lifted my head so I had to look at him. He smiled softly at me. “We all thought you were gone for good. We will take any part of you that you have left to give us, okay? You’re not alone anymore, not here.”

I felt tears burning my eyes and streaking down my cheeks. I didn’t want to do this. This was the wrong person. Finn had been there for me all my life, he deserved the part of me that I was waiting to reveal too. But
he
had thought I was gone for good. There was someone who knew I wasn’t. It wasn’t fair. I had stepped out of the easy life I was living, being taken care of and never having to respond to anyone or anything, and forced myself into a brutal world where no one cared what your ghosts looked like or how they got there. All they cared about was making sure you never forgot about the blood on your hands, your shoes, covering your clothes.

“I’m not hungry,” I whispered harshly, pushing my bowl into Finn’s hands. I walked away from him and though it wasn’t a fast pace, he didn’t try to follow me. I walked down the path until I reached the hut but for the first time I didn’t want to be back inside. I wanted to keep moving, run away from Finn and his painful words. I was alone. There was no part left of me to give to anyone.

Just as I was about to start climbing the hill that led away from the camp, the voice I had been waiting for called out to me. “That hill is deceptively steep, you know.”

I froze where I was in disbelief. How could he act so cold that morning and say something so casually to me now? When I turned around slowly, I actually expected no one to be there, just a figment of my imagination whispering through the trees. But he really stood there. His shoulders were tense but he was otherwise relaxed, his expression bordering on worried.

“I can probably manage,” I told him, trying to keep the acid out of my tone.

“You think so?”

“What do you want, Kai?” I mumbled, looking down at his feet. I couldn’t see his expression and that suited me just fine.

“I saw you get upset and leave, I thought… maybe…” He trailed off. I didn’t try to fill in any gaps for him or even to read the rest of his words in his face. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

I shook my head slowly. “No.”

He started towards me silently and when he reached me he sat down on the ground. I sat down beside him and stared at the path worn between a few of the trees leading into town. I kept waiting for Kai to interrupt our silence with questions about my craziness or anything and the longer I waited the more it drove me crazy in a different way than I was used to.

“Well?” I twisted my head to look at him and he looked at me, startled, as if he’d forgotten we were sitting there together.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to ask?”

His eyes darkened with seriousness. “I promised you I wouldn’t ask.”

I nodded. “That you did.”

“Did you forget?” He asked me. “That I promised that?”

“Briefly,” I nodded slowly. I looked away from him and stared back at the worn pathways. Kai made me feel comfortable. He made me feel like there was actually hope for another day instead of just darkness ahead. It was why he was the one I had responded to. It was why he was the one who deserved my story more than anyone else. Also, because he was the only one I knew wouldn’t ask for it.

“As long as I can remember,” I said with a deep, shaking breath, “There have always been two people inside of me…”

“Aili, please,” Kai whispered. His tone sounded pained but I couldn’t look at him. I wouldn’t, I would lose my nerve.

“There was one part of me that did what I was told. I learned how to be the best because I didn’t want people to think I was weak. I thought that meant being the biggest part of the war that I could be. Then there was the other part of me. That part was afraid and hated all of it, hated herself for taking away all those innocent lives. Part of me knew I was evil and it always felt like a rock inside of me that lived and breathed on its own that I could never get rid of,” I told him. “I’m not sure anymore if… if I… Well, there are just so many pieces of me that have shattered and I don’t know what parts belong to which side of me.”

We were silent for a long time. I could feel the stiffness in Kai’s body language. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, but at the same time I felt a heaviness in my heart for the knowledge that I had put the weight onto his.

“Why are you telling me this?” Kai whispered, his voice tight.

“Because you’re the only one who won’t ask,” I answered, finally looking at him. He wasn’t looking at me and his jaw was stiff. I shrugged and then stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of my pants. There was so much else to say but now wasn’t time to say it. I had gotten the hardest part over with, the first words were always the hardest to get out and it seemed like there would be plenty of time to tell the rest of it later.

“You can’t tell me this stuff, Aili,” Kai called after me as I’d started walking away. I stopped and turned around to face him. He was still sitting on the ground, his forearms propped up against his knees, and he was looking off to the side as if looking at me would break him. Maybe it would. He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Go tell your boyfriend. He deserves to hear it, not me.”

“Finn is
not
my boyfriend,” I mumbled, not caring if he could hear me. “He’s gay.”

I went back to the meadow to have dinner because it was the ‘normal’ thing to do. I could feel eyes burning into me from all around the meadow, I could practically feel the weight of hatred that these people had for me. Still, I didn’t look at them. I couldn’t brave it yet.

Finn still had my food although it had gone cold. It was very good regardless of the temperature. Some chicken, rice, and tomato mixture. My stomach filled up and bloated long before my bowl was empty, and Kai showed up before that. He ate in silence, ignoring Kieran’s attempts at conversation. He seemed lost in another world that no one could touch. I tried to ignore him, to only look at him if conversation bounced off of him, but I found my eyes gravitating towards him. When I couldn’t take anymore and my yawning was blurring my vision, I left the group long before anyone else was leaving the meadow, and went back to my hut to sleep.

Of course, I woke up feeling rested before the sun rose, but I knew that dawn was still too far off to go get breakfast. I paced around the small medical hut, picked through medical supplies out of curiosity, and then I finally found some stuff that was familiar to me. My swords sat untouched in a box along with some pieces of paper. One was a folded up picture, the same one that I knew Whitestrand had forced upon me before I’d left this place the first time. I tried not to look at my swords and picture the awful things I’d done with them. I didn’t want to block out the images either. I deserved them and not just that, if I tried to hide from them, the force with which they crashed into me might be worse than the last time.

I fingered the picture gently, curiously. Part of my heart yearned to see what it was. It had helped Kai when he’d vowed to find me and it had been the reason why, when he’d first seen me, he knew who I was so quickly. I felt something burning inside of me, something I couldn’t place at first. After a few emotions filtered through my head, none of them correct, I finally landed on one that hit the mark. It felt right. Bravery. It was something that, through all of my evil deeds, I had never lacked.

I lifted the picture away from my other belongings and walked back to my bed. I wanted to be sitting for this. I held the folded picture in my lap for a long time. I rode the waves back and forth between panic and bravery until, with one final burst of courage, I opened the photo and forced my eyes to it.

The group of people were both standing and sitting around a bonfire. It was almost nighttime and the group looked content and full of joy. On one side of the picture there was an older man with an older woman. There was a little boy standing just in front of them. The older man had one streak of white through his short hair. I could tell this wasn’t Whitestrand but I could see the resemblance to his father. There was a little girl, younger than Whitestrand, standing right beside him. She looked just like her mother.

On the other side of the photo, smiling happily, was taller and fuller version of me. Her eyes were untouched by the insanity that I constantly felt, her smile was blindingly beautiful. I had her long, straight, red wine hair and her icy blue eyes. A man had his arms wrapped around her; he looked like Kieran but he also didn’t. His face was longer, his hair not quite as golden, he was bordering on pudgy. The little boy with the golden hair, the one from my dreams, who was younger, stood beside his mother with his arms crossed and a goofy, lopsided grin on his face. It was not a grin I’d ever seen on Kieran’s face. And then there was the little girl. She was not standing still, not waiting for the picture to be taken. Although blurred, the unfiltered sense of freedom and joy on her face could still be seen. She looked like a miniature version of her mother, her happiness shining like a beacon that called everyone home. Her arms were reached out in front of her, towards Whitestrand and his family, although you couldn’t tell which one.

I stared at the picture for a long time. I realized that I was looking at ghosts; almost everyone in this picture was dead. There were only two left alive and I was not one of them. The little girl in the picture? Maybe that was me in another life. Now, I’d seen and done too much to be her. When the sun rose, I folded the picture back up and put it in my pocket. I wanted to return it to its rightful owner now. My heart hurt for these people, but not for me, never for me.

When I reached the meadow, my breathing loud in my ears, everyone was already in their places like a puzzle. They all looked up at me as if surprised to see me another day. And just like the flame blowing out on a candle, Kai deflated when he took in my mood. The others’ reactions weren’t quite as noticeable as his. What was his deal?

I walked straight up to Whitestrand and his son, Pio, and I pulled the picture out of my pocket, “Here.”

“Keep it,” Whitestrand said as soon as he realized what it was.

I shook my head sadly. “I am one of those ghosts and they are your dead to mourn, not mine.”

“What does that mean?” Kieran narrowed his eyes at me. He dropped his utensil back into his bowl and looked at me expectantly, they all did.

“Which part?” I asked.

“You’re alive, you’re here. How are you a ghost?”

“Look at me,” I told him as if it should be obvious.

“I’m looking,” He said impatiently.

“The girl in that picture could never turn into an animal like I’ve become,” I told him honestly. It was the closest to an answer of what happened that anyone here would get besides Kai and I could tell they knew it too.

I didn’t want to sit with them today. I wanted to be alone. I gripped my bowl of breakfast tighter and walked to the edge of the meadow, not too far away, and sat under the shadow of trees.

I couldn’t have been alone for more than five minutes before a small person walked up to me. Pio looked a lot like his dad did in the picture, only much younger. Pio was only five, with shoulder-length brown hair and long eyelashes. His skin was the same tan tone. His eyes were curious as he stood before me in silence. He just watched me and waited. Just when I was about to have another anxiety attack, he sat down in front of me and started picking at a blade of grass.