Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  “No.” The woman pushes gently at my shoulder. “My dear, you were injured and your Seer powers were threatening the stability of your mind when you arrived here. You still need to rest. Your fever may have broken, but you’ve been unconscious for nearly two days.”

  A fever? Two days?

  I stare at her and blink several times. I feel fine, just tired.

  “Our healers have been overseeing you. Do not worry, my dear, you are safe now. We are together. But you must rest. We know how important you are. Jana has told us everything, and you’re with us now. It will be okay. We have a large group of Untamed. There is no need to worry.”

  She sounds oddly like my mother, and I feel safe.

  “Where’s Corin?” I look around, but it’s just me and her in here. “And Taras? Elf? Are they with Esther?”

  “No, my dear. They are visiting the Great Stone River at the moment. The waterfalls are really magnificent at this time of year, and this is one of the last opportunities to see them before the ice comes. They will be back soon though. Corin has been sitting with you a lot. We did not think you would wake so soon for the fever has only just broken.”

  He’s been sitting with me? Of course he has. I blink, and I see him in my mind’s eye, and then he’s gone, and all I’m looking at are the walls of the hut: some sort of coarse-looking fabric stretched over a wooden frame.

  The hut is big, very big. Bigger than any we had at Nbutai. So big I don’t even know that hut is the right word. What looks like a wooden kayak sits by the opposite wall, and I stare at it.

  “Do not use your Seer powers yet,” Zara says. “You must rest, Seventh One, just rest.”

  I take another mouthful of food, feel the way its warmth seeps into me, makes my arms and legs feel heavier. Resting does sound like a good idea. I can’t argue with that. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to rest and be safe, with others around—a whole group who can keep watch.

  It’s only after Zara’s gone, and I’m not sure how much time has passed, that I realize I forgot to ask about the attack, whether the Enhanced injured any of us.

  Whether we lost any people.

  Whether any of us were ‘saved’.

  A baby’s cries pull me from peaceful sleep, and I open my eyes, groggy, disorientated.

  Esther’s face is in front of me.

  My head swims, then I remember. The baby. Her baby.

  Sleep lingers, but I fight it, until my eyes aren’t blurry. Until the baby’s staring at me.

  A baby.

  An actual baby.

  I sit up.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Esther whispers.

  I stare at her, don’t know what to say. I open my mouth, but I have no sounds. Zara and a man stand at the back of the hut. Both their faces are smooth like the hut walls. When they smile, the hut seems to smile too.

  “Oh wow,” I whisper, my gaze back on the baby. She did it. An actual baby. A life.

  He’s tiny, the baby.

  So tiny.

  “What’s he called?” I stare at him again. It doesn’t feel real. None of this does. It can’t be.

  “Toivo,” Esther says. “Zara said it means hope.” She smiles. “We have hope now. We’re with Untamed, we’ve got you, your powers—they say your mind is almost healed, and it’s stronger than it was before, so maybe this won’t happen again, that you’ll always be able to use your powers. It’s a whole new world beginning.” Her smile gets wider. “Do you want to hold him?”

  Hold him? For a moment, I freeze. Then I nod.

  She maneuvers him into my arms. Little Toivo. He’s heavier than I expected. Feels solid, so real.

  I find myself smiling as I stare into his eyes, see his soul. So pure, unmarred. He doesn’t know death like we do.

  He should never know death like we do.

  The war has to end soon. For him. For all the thousands of other babies to be born in the future.

  It’s a whole new world beginning.

  “He has Three’s eyes.” My voice is breathy, and I look up, see Esther nod.

  I stare at the baby again. My…my nephew.

  A bell rings out, a little distance away, and I jump, and then Toivo’s crying again.

  “The hunting team is back,” Zara calls to us. “Come.”

  Esther takes Toivo from me, and part of me feels strangely cold, empty without him in my arms.

  I get up, see my shoes and pull them on, then follow Zara and Esther into the outside world. I’m wobbly and walk slower than I’m accustomed to. A cold wind blows over me, and I shiver. A man hands me a blanket, then gives one to Esther too.

  There are a lot of people out here. A lot of Untamed, a lot of hunters. That’s my first impression. A lot of Seer energy too, but I can’t work out who the Seers are. I just know there are a lot here. And there would be. Jana said this is the place where the Seers who were marked as outlaws went. If their original Untamed group had no Seers left—if they’d all been kicked out—then new ones would’ve been made regularly. There’s usually at least one Seer in every group. Only they kept coming here. A production line of Seers. So many.

  I recognize a few from the Dream Land battle—or at least I think I do. My mind’s fuzzy, and I’m still tired, even though my head is clearing.

  I look around for Corin, but there are so many people here, and the land holds so much life. This is what it could be like: the future. Us.

  “We need to purify the meat,” a voice calls out, and then everyone’s parting, letting through four men carrying a—

  I go cold.

  A young bison. Upside down, all four feet tied around the wooden pole the men carry.

  The Stone Clan eats bison?

  Esther catches my eye, mouths something at me, but I can’t work it out. She’s on the opposite side of the parted crowd now, holding Toivo close, and I can’t reach her. Not until the men with the bison have passed.

  It’s just a bison, I tell myself, as they get nearer. It’s not the Dream Land bison. He’s gone. Gone with the Dream Land.

  Gone forever.

  I look around, try to catch someone’s eye—and I don’t know why. I just want to talk, hear voices, hear reassurance. But everyone’s silent, watching the hunters with their catch.

  I touch the back of my neck, then see a young boy looking at me.

  “All game has to be purified,” he says. He’s about five or six, and his eyes shine with delight as I step closer. All my attention is on him and not the hunters. “We thank the spirits, and they come to us to purify our meat and make it safe for us to eat.” He says the words like he’s letting me in on a secret.

  Then the men and the bison are level with me, and I take a step back. My head feels heavy as I watch them. When they’ve passed me and the crowds are starting to dissipate, and people are talking once more, I look around, see the boy is still near. I head toward him.

  “Spirits? They’re still here?” I ask. It wasn’t just those ones at Nbutai that Elf managed to summon? And where did they go when the Enhanced arrived?

  The boy gives me a strange look. “Of course.”

  “Is it being done now?” My gaze lingers after the men who carry the dead bison, just for a second. “The purification?”

  The boy nods, and then a woman ambles over, and he hides in her long skirts.

  “Can I watch the purification?” I ask her.

  “Of the meat?” Her eyebrows lift a little. “If you want to. Follow them, but don’t let them see you. A lot of children do it. Just don’t let the carcass make eye contact with you either.” Her voice is low, grave.

  I nod my thanks, not quite sure how I feel at being lumped in with a lot of the children, then follow the men and the bison. I don’t know why I need to see the purification—need to see if spirits really do appear, when I’ve already seen some—but I know I have to be there.

  I weave through more and more people. The men and the bison go to a flat area with gray-rock terrain and set the bison
down. In the near-distance, I can see a wooded area.

  I frown a little. There wasn’t a wooded area near the cave Jana took us to—though parts of the land here look the same. I turn, trying to get my bearings. We must be far away from that cave. Maybe they moved their village.

  Fewer people are here, but those who are hurriedly move when they see the party.

  I crouch behind a rock, peering around to the side.

  At first, the men don’t seem to be doing anything. Just talking, saying a few words to one another. But then the words turn into chants, and I feel the Seer power swelling. They’re all Seers, and they draw on their energies.

  The chanting turns to singing.

  The sky darkens.

  Then it’s there. As quickly as the ones Elf summoned, and I still don’t know why he could summon spirits when I couldn’t—and I tried. I tried to summon Three. I’m supposed to be the powerful Seer.

  There are thousands of different types of spirits, and this one is unlike any I’ve seen before. Its body is bat-like, but it has too many wings. What appears to be individual feathers cover each wing, but every time I focus on the texture, my vision blurs.

  Between them, the men hold the bound bison up to the spirit and continue chanting. Someone has a drum, and the steady beat of it dances in my soul. The spirit makes a high-pitched sound. Then it looks at me, directly at me, and opens its mouth, revealing long canines that almost glisten in the air of the coming night.

  A mouth of death.

  I don’t know where the whisper comes from, whether it’s the spirit or a Sarr inside me. I shudder.

  The sky darkens further, and I look up, see other spirits materializing, some like the bat-spirit, others not. I think I recognize a kavalah, and, for a moment, I’m too aware of my own breathing and the heavy sensations in my body.

  I close my eyes, blink, steady my breathing, and—

  The drawing I saw on the Living Rock flashes into my mind. The Untamed there, working with the spirits, fighting together. But the spirits in that etching were different to the ones here. They were humanoid, they listened, even if they were starting to degenerate.

  These ones haven’t degenerated, no, they’ve taken on new forms. Animalistic, not humanoid. Does that happen after the degeneration? Or do some take these forms right away?

  I press my lips together. The answer. It’s important, I know it is. I try to call to one of the spirits with my mind, my powers. But what if it can’t communicate with us? What if only the humanoid ones can? What if no spirits left can talk with me? How would we work together?

  I concentrate on one of the spirits high up in the sky. Birdlike with wings and red eyes, but a softer call. No tendrils or teeth.

  I concentrate as hard as I can, feel the Sarrs’ power inside me rising up, a guide in place.

  Move to the right. Sweat forms on my forehead as I concentrate on those words, on the message. I pull on my powers, wrap energy into the words, my eyes still on the spirit. The beat of the drum and the Seers’ chanting blurs into one long, continuous sound.

  The bird-spirit moves to the right, separates from the pack.

  My breath catches in my throat. I did it. Controlled it, just for a moment. That power’s still mine, even if I can’t summon them…yet.

  A lightheadedness fills me. Can I really command a vast army of Lost Souls, sustain all the dangerous spirits, use their numbers to match the Enhanced Ones’ own armies?

  I press my tongue against the back of my front teeth. The augury says my powers will save one group, Untamed or Enhanced. If I use my powers to command all the spirits in one final battle, get them to kill the Enhanced, so only the Untamed survive, that fulfills the augury.

  That shows a way this can end.

  It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve controlled a group of spirits, had them fight for us—but commanding them all will be so different to before, when a small group of spirits fed from us, got the energy they needed, so they could aid us when I summoned them—when I used my Seer power without realizing what it was, that I had powers beyond the Seeing visions. It would use so much more energy—and I’d need to feed them all, wouldn’t I? It would have to be me. I can’t subject my people to that. So much energy. But those numbers would make the battle fairer. Over seven billion Enhanced are out there. Our number is between three hundred and five hundred. Or it was—before the Dream Land battle. How many Seers did we lose?

  But the spirits… The Lost Ones, Untamed who were killed and didn’t make it to the New World, who became trapped in a world that can’t support or sustain them, there are loads. Are there many Lost Souls who were Enhanced too? Are they with us now? In so much pain and willing to fight for us, because their lifestyle meant they couldn’t reach the New World?

  Are there enough to beat the Enhanced?

  I reach up with my senses, with the whole Sarr power, and feel the spirit life across the lands, the world. So many of them, hearts beating as one.

  A smile brushes over my face.

  I think there are enough.

  I think we can do it.

  I can’t bring myself to eat bison, no matter how many times Zara tells me it’s okay.

  I just can’t. Not when I’ve seen the Dream Land bison, and that bison the men carried looked so similar, even if it was smaller.

  I push my plate away, my food untouched. A woman hands me a bowl of cooked grain instead, apologizes that there’s no salmon left from the catch. I eat the grain slowly, carefully, skeptically, as if expecting to find hidden chunks of bison meat.

  I’m in a small hut, a different one to earlier, and Corin’s not here. I saw him at one point, when I was returning from the Purification Ceremony, but he was in the distance, his back to me.

  I look around. Elf and Jana are here, along with Zara, and they’re the only people I recognize. Four men are here too—two are Seers, I think—but they don’t watch me with narrowed eyes like the Zharat men did. They smile and talk to all of us as equals, regardless of gender. The only person who doesn’t speak is an old woman whose skin hangs off in great sheaves. She sits opposite me, on the far side of the hut, and, every now and then, she glances at me and lets out an exaggerated sigh.

  One of the men tells me and Elf to ignore her. Apparently that’s just Oona.

  “Does your head feel fuzzy?” Elf asks me, setting his plate down. He ate the bison. In fact, I’m the only one in here who didn’t even have a little bit, and Oona, the old woman, is scowling at me.

  Fuzzy?

  I frown and pay attention to my body.

  I suppose it does a little, because I’m tired. So tired. Just acknowledging my fatigue seems to make it grow.

  “Fuzziness? Aye, it’s your powers finding the new way of the world,” one of the men says to Elf. I can’t tell which, because his voice melts in with the others. They all look very similar, most likely related.

  A strange kind of sadness fills Elf’s eyes. “I can’t hear Keelie.”

  “But that’s how it’s supposed to be,” Jana says. She touches Elf’s shoulder, and he stiffens, then clasps his hands together. He’s shaking.

  “Have your powers been cleansed for this world?” Zara asks, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, Jympalah’s silk,” Jana says, with an eye-roll.

  “Good.” Zara’s voice is low, sincere, and Jana leans back.

  I look toward Elf. My eyes widen. “Yours haven’t been, have they?”

  He doesn’t say anything, just stares at Oona, so I lean across to Zara, tell her Elf wasn’t with us then.

  Zara claps her hands, and, a moment later, Elf’s swarmed by Stone Seers, each asking him questions, wanting to know whether he cleansed his powers himself, whether the cleansing drink appeared to him. He doesn’t speak, just stares at them.

  “Get Alfredo,” someone says, and a moment later, an elderly man is pulled into the hut by frantic hands.

  Alfredo’s eyes are huge, but his eye sockets seem too small and part of me
expects his eyeballs to pop out as he assesses Elf, looking him up and down, his hands hovering. I sense the Seer powers radiating off him.

  “There are tendrils,” he says, his voice wavering.

  I glance at Zara.

  “The Dark Void is interested in him,” she says, then looks back at the man. His eyes are shut now, and he’s humming loudly.

  The Dark Void? Taras’s words ring in my ears. A spiritual realm, a bad one. It’s the reason we were at risk of getting stuck in the Dream Land. And it’s drawing Elf to it?

  A minute passes, and I’m very aware of my breathing. Zara presses her hands together, dry-washes them.

  Alfredo stops humming. He steps back. “It is not too late.”

  In one fluid movement, he pulls Elf from the hut with surprising strength.

  “It’s important every Seer’s powers are purified,” one of the men says, looking at me. “The Dark Void is more than just a realm. It has a sentient presence, it is alive, and it is always searching for new victims to feed upon. With no Dream Land to act as a barrier, the Dark Void will have more success in drawing some Seers to it, and the void is always hungry. We can’t afford to lose more Seers. Strengthened, purified Seer powers strengthen the mind and our natural barriers against it.”

  I think of Elf’s strange behavior, how he’s a different person to the one I knew. His behavior? Is it all down to that? Is he getting called to the Dark Void? Why didn’t Taras think of that? Why didn’t any of us? All this time….

  I touch my Seer pendant.

  “Aye, they can’t protect us now, lass,” one of the men says. “Such a shame. Still, best to keep it on though. Pendants are still infused with parts of their Seers’ souls, even now they have no use. The Dark Void can take us more easily now, if the conditions are right.”

  I shudder. “Has it taken people already then? Your people?”

  “Yes. My daughter.” An elderly woman steps forward. “In the Dream Land battle, at the end. The Dark Void leapt forward and consumed her.”

  Consumed her? My breath catches in my throat. Another death because of me.

  “Have we lost many to it since then?” Jana asks.