Ashes of the Stars (9 page)

“I heard you eat children, but that doesn’t look like children,” Pio said solemnly. He nodded at my bowl once and then went back to staring at the green, green grass between his fingers.

I was stunned into silence by this little boy. Someone said I ate children? The absurdity of such a statement brought laughter rolling like boiling water up from my belly, through my lungs and out of my lips. I tilted my head back and let the laughter climb high into the sky until tears were streaming down the sides of my face. Gasping for air and wiping at my face, I finally looked back to the shocked little boy and said, “I don’t think children would taste very good, do you?”

“Prolly not,” He grinned and it was a heartbreaking smile. I felt my heart reaching out towards that kid and it scared me.

“Yeah, don’t you roll in mud and dirt and play with bugs?” I asked him.

He gave me a funny look and shook his head, “Prolly the mud. My name’s Pio.”

“I’m Aili,” I told him. And then, just as quickly as the laughter came on, the panic set in. What was I doing here? I couldn’t spend time around this or any child. What I did… I let my bowl roll off of my lap and I made a run for it. I sprinted, weakly, away from the meadow with my lungs burning from the anxiety. The large animal was back on my chest. I felt the sobs working their way up through my lips and the tears began blinding me.

“Aili, wait!” Someone yelled from behind me. I didn’t stop running, I couldn’t. I had to get away.

“Aili,
stop
!” The yell was like a boom through the air, a burst of thunder. I pulled up and then stopped, breathing hard. I knew I couldn’t outrun myself. I heard feet pounding behind me but only one set moved to stand in front of me. He put his warm, rough hands on my shoulders and then pulled me in close.

“Listen to me, okay?” Kai said softly by my ear. I closed my eyes and let my ear rest flush against his chest. I could hear his heartbeat thumping, could feel the pulse under my cheek. It calmed me enough to listen.

“I know I promised you no more speeches, okay? But you have to listen to me… Pio is a good kid and you are not a bad person. You would never hurt him or any other child. I know that,” Kai whispered in a rushed voice to me.

I shook my head against his chest and let out a little sob. “I did. I have.”

“I know,” He whispered to me. He rubbed the top of my back with his rough palm and tried to soothe me but his words hurt.

“What?” I asked incredulously as I pulled away from him. I looked through my blurred vision at his face which was a mask of fear.

“I, well… Finn and I talked…” He told me nervously.

I felt the rage that I had been so afraid of explode inside of me. My vision was covered in red, everything I looked at had the hue.

“You promised you wouldn’t ask,” I growled at him. My throat hurt, it was sore from forcing the words out. They felt like poison burning me. I tried to back away from him but he gripped my arms tightly and forced me back into his chest. He squeezed me tightly and though I struggled against him, I wanted to be free, he held me as still as he could.

“He
talked
. They’re
his
demons, too,” Kai said gruffly to me.

“Demons,” I snorted as I tried to worm my way free. My voice came out as harshly as it felt. I wanted to spit and claw and pound my fists against him but it wouldn’t do any good. I was weak now.

“Kai,” Someone said as if a warning from behind me. I could feel him shaking his head and he didn’t loosen his grip on me.

“Breathe, Aili,” Kai told me as gently as he could. “Take a deep breath.”

“Go fuck yourself. You’re a liar like the rest of them,” I hissed at him.

“If you want me gone, fine, I’ll go,” He told me, his voice now as harsh as mine. “But you will calm down first. You are in
my
world now and in
this
camp we do not run off and terrorize people.”

I let my body still at his words. They were a harsh reminder for me of who I was and what these people sacrificed by having me there. They were just as afraid of me as the enemies I’d destroyed. Just like that, my anger dissipated in an invisible cloud of smoke. I could hear the huff as my shocked breath left me. My tears were no longer flowing angrily but streaming in shame. I was horribly ashamed. Though I had tried to run and hide, I was still and would always be the Reaper to everyone else.

“Aili, he didn’t mean that,” I heard Tali say gently behind me. I was trembling and I still wanted to be free of Kai’s grip but there was no use in fighting. I knew that rationally then.

“I’m sorry,” Kai’s tone was desperate, pleading. “I’m so sorry, please. Please, don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered. I didn’t even know if he could hear me but he loosened his hold on me. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned over so his eyes were level with mine. His eyes were even more pleading than his words.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Kai said, searching my eyes for something. His frown told me he wasn’t finding it.

“You should have,” I whispered. I steeled my spine and looked him right in the eye and said, “I don’t hate you but you will
never
stop me from hating myself.”

Chapter Nine

I spent the rest of the day in ‘my’ medical hut. Tali went with me when I first left. She tended to my hands again and I let her without complaining as easily as I did when I was having my mental breakdown. She tried to talk to me again and again but her attempts bounced off of me with no effect. Finally, after she tended to my wounds, she gave up and left me alone.

Finn knew to leave me alone this time so he didn’t stop by all day, not even to berate me about not eating lunch. Kieran must’ve known it was useless to try talking to me, either Tali told him or he knew enough about me to know better. Kai didn’t know better, he stopped in. Even without an answer to his knock, he pushed his way inside and sat down at the table beside me. He talked, he pleaded for me to talk to him, and after he realized I wasn’t going to respond, he stopped talking. I fully expected him to give up on me, to walk out and carry on with his life as Tali did. Instead, he sat there with me in silence.

When I had enough of him staring at me, I got up from the table and lounged on the bed. I was tired of this bed, tired of always sleeping in a medical hut. This place was for the sick and the dying and I was neither dying nor was the sickness in me one that could be cured here. I felt a flare of annoyance when he got up from the table and sat on the bed right beside me. He threw his legs straight out across the bed and crossed his ankles, staring at the door as if waiting patiently for a visitor. I took a deep breath and tried not to give into my irritation.

When it was time for dinner, Tali came knocking on my door. She looked at Kai with confusion at first and then annoyance. So I wasn’t the only one who was finding his presence irksome. I threw my legs over the edge of the bed and followed Tali more eagerly than ever just to escape the atmosphere in that room. Of course, I knew that Kai would shadow me.

“Has he been like this all day?” Tali whispered to me, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“Yep,” I said, popping my lips.

“I have never seen him acting like this. What did he want?” She asked, talking like we were conspiring.

“Forgiveness, I think. I don’t know, I wasn’t listening,” I shrugged.

Tali gave me a look and opened her mouth like she wanted to say something but then she closed it again. That happened a few times before she finally said, “He makes mistakes like all of us, Ai. He’s been waiting for you all this time and I think he just doesn’t know what to do now that you’re here.”

“Either that or he’s just as crazy as I am,” I smirked at her and she smiled back at me. Her shrug made me think that maybe both of us were right.

All through dinner, I sat quietly and thought about what Tali had said. Kai had supposedly looked for me and yet I’d only been a week’s hike away all along. If Kai had wanted to find me then why did it take me finding them to get here?

Once everyone was finished eating, I still couldn’t figure out an answer. Kai had planted himself right beside me and was sitting just as silently as I was. Was he mocking me? I turned my head to him, not sure I wanted to ask but I knew that I needed to.

“How is it that you never found me?” I asked him. The small crowd immediately surrounding us fell silent instantly and Kai shifted uncomfortably on the bench.

“You’re not the only one with a shitty past, Aili,” Kieran finally spoke up for Kai.

“That’s fine, I get that,” I told Kieran. I looked back at Kai. “But I was asking him, not you.”

Kai cleared his throat and looked down at the ground, clearly nervous. Finally, after what seemed like a lot of deliberation, he said, “I came from the stone city, too. And I was afraid to look there.”

“Fear,” I narrowed my eyes at him. “So you break promises for fear.”

Kai cleared his throat again and when he looked up at me his eyes were glassy, tears nearly spilling over the lids. “I saw you die. That’s why I never found you.”

Any smartass retort I’d come up with preemptively flew out of my mind then. You could hear the wild noises of the jungle screaming into the night and I was no longer sure I knew how to close my mouth. Everyone else was just as silent, processing what he’d said.

“I’m sorry,
what
?” Kieran asked, the first of us to recover. None of us could look away from Kai’s face and his eyes didn’t stray from mine. A rogue tear slipped from his eye and snaked slowly down his cheek. He looked at me for so long that no one thought he would respond. And then he did.

“I had a dream one night that I went to the city because I had heard word that they had taken you there. I was desperate to get to you in the dream, it was crazy. It was like all of my fears and hopes and failures came crashing down on me and it felt even more real than this right now. I didn’t eat and didn’t sleep, I ran almost the whole way. I knew I had to find you, and of course I wasn’t alone. I had a group of people that followed me wanting to save you too,” Kai told us. His voice was haunting in the moonlight and we were all mesmerized, no one more than me. We had an audience but I knew that this was
our
conversation and I had a feeling they knew that too.

“I ran there and they had set up this platform out front of the south gate. They had you up there on it, shackled and hanging off the ground. You were so bloody I couldn’t tell if they had skinned you alive or not. You looked like a skeleton or a ghost, something dead. You couldn’t even lift up your head. There was a crowd outside to watch you, and the Commanders were punishing you, whipping you.

“Some guys had to hold me down and gag me so that my screams didn’t reach the city but all I knew was that I was failing. I had to save you but I couldn’t. We would try to save you and then we would all die. I would be the one responsible for wives and children never seeing their husbands or fathers again and I didn’t really care. They let go of me enough that I could lift my head and when I wasn’t crying, when I could see clearly, I saw one of the Commanders take one of their swords and they cut off your head.”

When Kai finished no one could speak. I didn’t even realize I had been crying and by the sounds of sniffles all around me, I wasn’t the only one. Kai smiled sadly and reached out to take my hand. I let him.

“No one has ever known that I made a candle for you and burn it the same night every single year, the night you ‘died’. I never thought I would find you alive and I didn’t want to look for a dead woman to bring back to my best friend, my brother,” Kai said, looking over my shoulder to where I assumed Kieran was. He sighed. “So maybe I did break my promise, my vow that I would find you no matter what and I would bring you back. For that I can never atone. But for you… well, for you, I will give my very last breath to make sure that you come back, all the way, not this halfway bullshit you’re in right now.”

I heard a nasally chuckle behind me and I knew it was Tali. I couldn’t smile or laugh, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Kai and he wouldn’t look away from me either. He squeezed my hand gently and bowed his head to look at me through his eyelashes. “I know that dream wasn’t real now but every time I see you it feels like a gift, like a second chance. And I don’t want you to get pissed off at me again but you have to know, I only said what I did because you
have
to learn how to control your emotions.”

Finally, I did look away from him. No one had ever called me out of control before and I didn’t know how to handle it.  I felt anger simmering low in my belly but I bit my tongue.

I felt a hand come down hard on my shoulders and I jumped, looking back to see Whitestrand standing behind me protectively but with a gentle smile on his face. “Okay, I think that’s enough for tonight. Will you come with me, Aili? I want to show you something.”

Kai let go of my hand before I even agreed to go with Whitestrand and I didn’t look at him again when I stood up to follow Whitestrand away from the meadow. Pio walked on my other side down the path. Halfway down and with no idea where we were going, Pio tugged on my hand. I looked down at the little boy, his eyes wide and sad as he gazed up at me. His expression was so serious that it frightened me for a moment.

“I’m sorry I scared you this morning. Daddy told me it was okay but I wanted to tell you anyway,” Pio said. His sincere apology brought tears to my eyes. I stopped walking and tightened my grip on his hand.

I didn’t know what I was doing but I found myself kneeling to match his height. I could feel the mildly damp and too warm dirt soaking into my pants but I ignored it and focused only on the little boy who waited expectantly. I tried to smile but it probably looked more like a wince. “Pio, I… Well, I haven’t been a good person in my life. I’m trying really hard to be better for everyone here but I’m sick. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

He nodded once and asked, “What kind of sick?”

“Well,” I looked over my shoulder at Whitestrand who was watching with a raised eyebrow but wasn’t protesting. I looked back to Pio and sighed. “I’m sad a lot and a lot of things scare me.”

“Like me?” Pio asked.

“I don’t know,” I winked at him. “I’m sure you could be pretty terrifying if you wanted to be.”

“Rawr,” He clawed the air in front of me and scrunched up his face. After a brief pause of silence Pio and I burst out laughing, his was the high-pitched giggle of all children.

“The point is, Pio, I appreciate what you said but you will never need to tell me you’re sorry for anything, got it?” I shook my hand through his long hair, messing it up and he laughed, ducking away from me.

I stood up and felt the anxiety hit. I was friendly with a child. I gritted my teeth against the pain, the knocking of my heart against my ribs and the burning in my throat and lungs. I could taste bile in my mouth again but I ignored it, or at least tried to.

“Ready?” Whitestrand asked us both. He was trying not to let any emotion show, trying to appear normal I guess, but I could see a small smile playing on his lips.

“Yep yep! Let’s go!” Pio said loudly.

I followed Whitestrand, and Pio held onto my hand as we continued on. I didn’t have an idea of where we might be heading. When we headed outside of the camp, I realized that I hadn’t thought this was it. It was the same hill that Kai had told me was steeper than it looked and he was right, I was nearly breathless by the time we got to the top.

We didn’t go much further than that. Maybe a five minute walk. With the thick trees and the lack of fire, it was darker than I would’ve thought. Pio kept a tight grip on my hand the entire time.

Whitestrand, walking ahead of us, paused where the trees seemed to stop in a perfectly straight line. I hesitated then kept walking with Pio, who was practically bubbling over with excitement now. It seemed like he was having trouble keeping himself contained. As soon as I stepped through the line of trees I was awed into silence by the vision that was laid out in front of me. There wasn’t a big gap between the line of trees and where the cliff face jutted down sharply. It just stopped. Beyond that there was jungle as far as the eye could see. The jungle below was so far down that even the trees looked small, though that wasn’t what had amazed me at first. What stunned me so deeply was the beautiful sunset. The sky was on fire with orange and red and pink. The sun was too bright to look at directly, but the
colors
of the sky were mesmerizing. It felt like it was setting my own insides aflame from the beauty of it.

I was awed into silence and I didn’t want to shatter the most perfect vision I had ever seen with words. I wasn’t even aware of Pio and Whitestrand’s presences anymore as I stared out over the end and beginning of the world.

I didn’t know how long I stood there silently, staring open-mouthed at the sunset but the colors were starting to fade to darkness when I finally moved again. I could feel that my hand was empty now and I turned to look for Pio. He was standing silently watching me as if he wasn’t sure how
he
should be reacting. I smiled at him and then turned to look for Whitestrand. I was surprised to find that he had stepped up to my other side and stared out over the jungle.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, still feeling like I shouldn’t speak. It almost seemed like the world stood still here and I should too.

“That it is,” Whitestrand agreed.

“Daddy used to come here a lot when Mommy died,” Pio said in an offhand manner. He didn’t seem like he cared much one way or another about his mother and how could he? He didn’t remember her, it was as if she never even existed to begin with.

“He barely remembers her,” Whitestrand said so quietly I was sure Pio couldn’t hear him. I was going to tell him that I knew that, but it didn’t matter.

“I can see how this place would be peaceful,” I told Pio. I sat down on the hard and smooth rock that was the top of the cliff.

“Have you ever lost anyone?” Pio asked, walking over and sitting beside me.

“No,” I answered as I kept staring at the rapidly fading sunset. It was a lie but I hadn’t lost someone the way his dad had lost his mom. I thought of Kai, his dream about my death, and I shuddered silently.

“Oh,” Pio said. He sounded so disappointed that I had to glance at him.

“What’s wrong? Isn’t it a good thing not to lose people?” I asked him softly.

“Well I just thought we were coming here so you could say goodbye to someone who died,” Pio said.