Storm of Ash

by Michelle Kenney

  ‘We aren’t here to hurt you, Lake,’ I forced out, so conscious of our vulnerability, and yet determined to reach the little girl inside, wherever she was. ‘We’ve come to help, and to ask for yours in return. Cassius is raising an army, waging a war on the outside … and we … Arafel, the Outsiders … we need your help.

  ‘You are Hominum chimera, mother of all mythical beasts, and the most ancient of all creatures described in the Voynich. But you are also Lake, a loyal friend with the bravest, truest heart I’ve ever known.’

  She tilted her head so suddenly, Eli and I had to jump aside to avoid a sharp stream of boiling acrid steam.

  ‘Cassius wants to control you,’ I continued stubbornly, ‘to use you as a weapon to change the outside world. But there is another way. A way to live freely, to live the life you deserve on the outside … Help us, Lake. Help us stop Cassius, help us free the Prolets – your people … and Max.’

  I finished on a whisper, and though Eli was signing fast, translating my words as swiftly as I spoke, I could tell she was so different from Brutus, the griffin and the vultures. Because for once, the only control in the world was standing right beside him.

  And I knew Lake understood every damned word, and not because of anything she was doing, but rather because of what she wasn’t doing. Her giant scaled head was still angled to one side and though her honey eyes were blazing, there was something else too.

  She was listening.

  Somehow it was working.

  Just as a new sound cut the air, a groan I only half-recognized as belonging to Unus it was so shot through with shock. In that moment we all shared the same instinct – draco, Cyclops and Outsiders alike – to turn our gaze upon the valley at the bottom of the North Mountain slopes. Towards Arafel.

  And I barely acknowledged Lake’s last violence as she shook out her draco wings, each one the length of three stallions, and thundered off the mountain shelf – because my sights were locked on a serpent much closer to home. A serpent that took the last of my hopes, and crushed them to ash before my darkening eyes.

  Arafel was in flames.

  Chapter 9

  I felt only the scorching jaws of a dark curse. As acutely as though it were slowly gorging itself on my own feral heart. Raw and bloody, bite by bite.

  Instinctively I slowed as the charred skeleton of Arafel’s forest rose up before us like a giant desiccated spider; its appearance as alien as Pantheon’s Eagle aircraft disappearing over the North Mountains peaks.

  Eli and I picked our way, among the handful of survivors on the outskirts of the village, in silent shock. The Eagle Stealth Sweepers had dived silently and without warning, using laser fire technology to obliterate most of our forest home within seconds. No one heard them coming, and for most, there was no time to escape their individual treehouse furnace.

  The air was dead, broken only by the splitting and cracking of disintegrating trees, hanging over what was left of our home village like a funeral shroud. As we entered the village community area, a handful of disparate people emerged from different directions – Komodos, Lynx, Eurasians and my people – their faces as mutilated as the landscape surrounding us. No one could give voice to the sudden and absolute devastation shattering our village home. It was too much like admitting it had happened; that somehow we had to process this horror.

  There were bodies everywhere, people and animals, limbs entwined, as the laser fire had prompted that most human of responses. Raven and Mathilda lay face down by the grazing ground gate, cut down in a desperate attempt to set the grazing animals free. To give them the fighting chance Cassius had denied them.

  And an ocean of blood was staining the earth beneath our feet.

  The ground was sodden, rivulets converging and painting my feet with the fate of so many innocents. My mind recalled the moment we glimpsed the vampiric eyes of the basilisk in the Isca Prolet, watching and waiting. A single drop of the basilisk’s acidic venom had reduced the ironmonger’s tool to nothing but a pool of molten metal. It was just the same now, only the acid was Cassius, and the molten iron my family and friends, children and animals alike. Nothing and no one had been spared. We were staring at a massacre.

  Eli regained himself first, breaking into a run that blurred into the splintered trees within seconds. It pulled me back into the moment, into conscious thought, and I flew after him, not needing to ask where he was headed.

  I tried to keep my eyes focused on the unrecognizable ground in front, conscious only of a dull thump in my ears as I sprinted. The communal buildings were just a series of dusty, blackened rises, their top layer already scattering to the wind. And as I willed the violence and destruction to blur behind my eyes, I was already aware of a muted resemblance to the Dead City.

  We entered what used to be the perimeter of the forest at a speed neither of us knew we possessed, but were then forced to slow. Because nothing was the same. And where before there was a network of treehouses, now there was only chilling, empty space. It was as disorientating as it was devastating. Most of the outlying homes had stood no chance against the intense heat of Cassius’s weaponry. My chest strained as though a vortex was growing inside, a whirling gut-slicing vortex. If I even gave an inch, there would be a storm to pay.

  With no trees left to run through, we were forced to keep our path on the ground, circumventing any ominous smoking remains. I kept my gaze locked forward, pushing my feet until we reached the scorched embers of Art’s treehome. It was where the Council held meetings on the last working day of the month, a tradition Grandpa started when he was Village Leader.

  Now I could only stare at the twisted blackened remains of a tree stump, with bile burning up my throat.

  We stood together dully. There was unrecognizable debris, and the same oppressive smoke everywhere. The guilt of survival volumed up from my core, threatening to swallow me whole as I turned slowly, trying to force my clouded brain to work.

  Then a voice, calling through the smog. It was a familiar voice, from behind the remains of a Norwegian fir. Blindly, I ran towards the sound, and skidded to my knees beside a trapped, skewed person. And even though she was covered in blood, and my senses were suffocated, I knew her instantly.

  ‘Ida,’ I whispered.

  She turned her glistening head, only now the tongues dancing around her fading eyes were choked with dust.

  ‘Tal,’ she whispered with the glint of a smile, as I pushed my arms beneath her soaking back and pulled her close.

  Then she closed her proud Komodo eyes and breathed her last.

  I cradled her tightly as though that could make a difference. But I was too late, far too late. It was only when Eli took her shoulders to lower her that I realized her legs were skewed because they had been severed by the indiscriminate laser fire. Numbly, we straightened her so the division was barely visible. Then she lay there, with as much dignity in death as she had in life, and I watched as the scorched ground darkened around her body, as though it too knew it wasn’t her time, that this warrior belonged to the sun.

  A quiver of her pared hand-darts rested against her still hip, and gently, I reached out to unhook the small weapons she always used with such accuracy. Each one had an immature Komodo tooth set into its tail, weighting it precisely, so it flew with the tribe’s honour.

  ‘I promise,’ I breathed, placing my palm over her cooling forehead the way she used to mark respect, before pushing to my feet.

  Then we flew as though our feet could defy gravity. And as the desiccated landscape blurred, all I could think was that if the Eagle Stealth aircraft had reached our white oak, I’d failed Mum in the same way I’d failed Grandpa. And that hurt was just too much for any one body to contain.

  Eli pulled ahead of me, his longer legs giving him the edge over the charred ground. We hadn’t spoken on our flight down the North Mountains, leaving Unus far behind on the slopes, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. We’d left Mum when she needed us most. She wouldn’t have u
nderstood what was happening, and she wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to run if there had been chance to escape. The thought stole my air, making my feet leaden as the silent forest blurred like a monument to itself.

  Then, suddenly, our feet were plunging into denser foliage, and I found myself holding my acrid breath until it hurt. Our treehouse was the first to be built in the middle of Arafel’s forest, whereas most of the newer treehouses had been built nearer the village centre, where the laser fire had been concentrated. Dare we hope? The foliage was definitely greener, though the indiscriminate path of laser fire was still visible. It was the tiniest ray of hope, but I clung to it fiercely until Eli slowed in front of a familiar willow bough.

  My chest thumped painfully as I approached, my brother’s silhouette looming through the dust like a dark angel. And then we were back, standing at the edge of our clearing, staring up at the old white oak that had sheltered Thomas and our ancestors through the worst storm mankind could devise.

  It was still there.

  Or at least most of it was. One of the large supporting boughs had been split off by passing laser fire, leaving the edge of our living room exposed, but the rest was there, its silver-white bark a beacon of hope among all the grey.

  ‘Mum?’ I whispered, my eyes streaming. ‘Mum?’

  My anguish exhaled forcibly as I scrambled forward, willing myself up there, willing Mum to be OK. Before a sudden, bruising grip on my upper arm yanked me back into the foliage.

  ‘What?!’ I hissed as I regained my balance, only to find his other hand clamping down hard over my mouth.

  Then I saw his expression. He was staring straight ahead, and there was something in his fixed stare that flooded my limbs with fresh dread. Yet I couldn’t not look. I forced my gaze to level with his, and scowled through the eerie, particle-choking air.

  And then I understood. Because she was there, just past the dust and devastation, just beyond the shadow of our treehouse. Mum.

  Mum was standing, unprotesting, as some kind of metal frame box closed around her, a box connected by a glinting silver cord to the open underbelly of an Eagle aircraft.

  They were taking her.

  The words repeated dully in my head before reality bit back. Then cold fury snaked through my limbs and I fought like a caged medusa to show I didn’t care, that I knew he was trying to save us, but that it didn’t matter any more. There was no way I could stand here and watch them take her the way they took Grandpa. I had to try to stop it. And somehow, whether it was a moment’s weakness, or some brief understanding that there was no survival worth her loss, his hold loosened. It was all I needed and I was away in a flash, pelting past our treehouse, across the open ground and towards her.

  ‘Mum!’ I grated hoarsely, as the cage swung just out of reach of my gut-twisting leap.

  I landed in a heap before turning my burning face skywards.

  ‘Cassius!’ I bellowed into the air. ‘Fight me! You goddamned son of a cowardly death-adder bastard! Do you hear me?’

  Panic was clawing up my throat, blinding me as Mum’s frail figure grew terrifyingly smaller.

  ‘Or are you too scared to face me after the cathedral? Cassius …!’

  A second grill was over my person in a breath, and it was only then that I realized the metallic frame was lined with a transparent material. It was a fortified box, much like the canisters in the research centre, and it sucked me in with intense force. Stealing my breath. Dulling my consciousness.

  ‘Mum,’ I moaned desperately.

  And as my senses dimmed, I was vaguely aware of a broken face far below, of a dark hole looming closer, and the mechanical clatter of a hatch closing. Then there was motion, but it didn’t matter because through my dimming eyes I caught a glimpse of her. Beside me. And whatever she was facing, I was right beside her. Facing it too. Grandpa’s eyes blurred before mine, he was smiling so sadly.

  ‘I tried,’ I pleaded, as the world dimmed to a faint pink spot, and all I could think was that, sometimes, winning wasn’t about fulfilling prophecies or defeating monsters.

  That sometimes, it was about knowing when to lose.

  Chapter 10

  It was the always the whirring that came first. Like the chirruping of a mechanical grasshopper, an alien sound compared with the soft hum of Arafel’s forest.

  I wasn’t awake. I knew that. But I wasn’t exactly unconscious either. It was a blurred world somewhere between. Like a forced daydream from which I couldn’t fully awake. And there were voices, thin laughter, before a thundering in my ears, like rain on metal. Then my arm was pressed hard, and a darting pain invaded my wrist, swallowing me whole as a succession of hollow clicks and footsteps faded to the edges of my dreams.

  ***

  ‘Who are you?’

  The voice was probing, disturbing me from my sleep. Who was I? Why wouldn’t they leave me alone? Who was I? Couldn’t they see I was tired? Who was I?

  There was a sharp pain in my head, making me groan.

  ‘I said … who … are … you?’

  It was her, the one who talked. She had a reedy voice, reminding me of someone I knew once. But it was so long ago. And her shadow clung to her like a Valkyrie.

  ‘How much did you give her? She’s comatose! Repeat the prompt.’

  Another sharp pain in my head.

  ‘Tell me who you are and the pain will stop.’

  Who was I? The pressure of thinking was almost as painful. I had to be someone didn’t I? And then the faintest scent … forest honeysuckle … like Mum’s hair.

  ‘Tal …’ I whispered.

  It was the only word that came to mind through lips that no longer belonged to me.

  Silence.

  ‘I thought you said she was batch 3,067?’

  The reedy voice rose. Like a lemur’s warning. And I knew I’d given the wrong answer. My confusion was brief, as my arm was claimed by another hard clamp and sharp, darting pain.

  And this time I felt my veins sag in response.

  ***

  There was no time. Only the dull acceptance of just being. And there was no memory or care, for which I was oddly grateful. I wasn’t cold. Or hot if it came to that. I just was.

  And if there was a feeling of elsewhere, a low-level knowledge that I wasn’t quite where I always had been, it was swiftly swallowed by my floating existence, a squeaking of trolley wheels, clipped voices and fading lights.

  ***

  ‘What is your name?’

  It was a repeated stimulus, and one I’d learned to respond to quickly to stop the pain.

  ‘MMDCL,’ I whispered. ‘2650,’ I repeated under my breath.

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘MMDCL,’ I repeated.

  The pain came anyway. Just less intense than when you got it wrong. It was the game – you had to learn the rules.

  And then something new.

  ‘What is the keyword?’

  White. Undefined. Floating. White.

  ‘Did she say something?’

  ‘No, she’s fried, I think. She was given batch 3,068 too. Her blood was the critical part. He’s got a vat full of that now so he authorized the new order code.’

  ‘… which also has an expiry time against it, so if you don’t mind?’

  ‘What is the keyword? If you do not respond there will be pain.’

  The voice paused to send an intense searing dart through my head, as though to confirm the point.

  Something like a whisper passed over my lips, but even I couldn’t recognize it.

  ‘I repeat. What is the keyword? You have until the count of three to tell me or the pain will come again.’

  ‘One …’

  My breathing escalated, and my body felt too tight as I fought a tidal wave of fear.

  ‘What is the keyword?’

  It was a familiar question, and I knew the answer. Didn’t I?

  Keyword? A key to operate it … to make the code work.

  Images floated randomly aro
und the edges of my consciousness, like stepping stones to the answer. I focused harder, the muscles in my face quivering with effort, trying to draw them in with an invisible net. Then one floated close, just within reach. It was a yellow page, a hand-drawn image of something I recognized. There were parts of animals, all joined up, and scrawled across the top were three faint letters: R-E-Q.

  I reached out … I was nearly there … just as the vice reached again and it all dissolved.

  This time the pain snaked down my spine and radiated out through my ribs and limbs. Dragging all my breath into the black. Into the void. And temporary bliss. Only to crash me back into grim reality without warning, tearing up my limbs and splaying each nerve with a searing intensity. My body buckled as I sucked in a gasp, lifting my head and feet simultaneously into the grey air. I moaned as the room spun around me like a vortex, a white vortex concealing the answer. Shimmering.

  ‘This is your last chance! Tell me the keyword or …’

  ‘R-E-Q.’

  The soft sounds emptied through my lips as though carried by my last breath.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘R-E-Q,’ I repeated, their echo merging with my failing heartbeat.

  ‘… Requiem …’

  ***

  The ceiling was different. The smooth white had been replaced with red ravined rock that was familiar somehow. My head strained. I knew this place. Think. But it was all so hard.

  ‘Your daily supplement, courtesy of the Emperor,’ one of the uniformed ones bawled. ‘Long live Imperator Cassius!’

  He was tall, dressed in some sort of military uniform. It looked Roman. How did I know? His gleaming helmet was decorated with a silver eagle inscribed with four words: Senatus Popules Que Romanum.

  ‘The Senate and the People of Rome,’ I translated effortlessly.

  How did I know?

  A bright blue feather danced away on the top of his helmet, snagging my attention. Like a peacock! A sudden irrational chuckle rose up my throat.

  Stop. He was looking at me. Stop.