by Marlow York
“I’ve only been in the City a few times since I was placed here as a child,” Juliano said. “When I was being trained to become a teacher, and to gain new teaching materials. Normally the materials are brought to me. I didn’t see much of the City, but it is a large and awe-inspiring place. Like nothing the Fiero villagers could ever comprehend.”
“And?” my mother interrupted, tired of hearing of the City’s grandeur.
“And I have also found them to be some of the most self-indulgent, naive, dependent people I have ever known. They live under our leaders’ thumbs, and I suspect they do not lead as fairly as we might think. I’m happy here with the Fiero. This is my home. I want to protect it, not see it collapse into ruin or harm any of its people.”
His eyes shone with sincerity as he looked at my parents. Finally, my father spoke up. “What must we do to keep Valieri safe?”
“Never speak of the fire to anyone. The guards have eyes and ears everywhere.”
“You mean there are spies in the village besides the guards?” my father asked.
“I do not know for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the City officials had placed others like me here. We can never be too cautious.”
“Agreed,” my mother said.
“Also, you must not foster this power in her. If she believes it is fun or interesting, or if it is praised in any way, she will only want to become more powerful. It is best she does not use the power, and if she is lucky, the power will fade like it did with the Ancient Ones many centuries ago.”
I shook with silent tears as I listened to their conversation. I understood what sort of punishment would befall me if I used my powers. Eventually I forgot about spies and how Juliano didn’t like the City Dwellers or how the leadership ruled. It was easy to forget such things when the rest of the Fiero loved the City and its guards.
After the attack, the conversation took on a whole new meaning.
✽ ✽ ✽
By the time we had finished eating dinner—which I had to eat by myself outside the house under the watchful eyes of the wolf—I was almost too physically and emotionally exhausted to bathe, but Sarrenke took me down to the spring anyway. Khero trailed us, and I suspected I would grow used to his presence if he was always going to follow me around. It was clear he likely wouldn’t harm me without orders from Tarek, but he was still unnerving during those first few days at my new home.
Sarrenke immediately stripped off her clothes and left them in a neat pile beside the stream, not the least bit embarrassed to be seen naked in front of me or the wolf. I stood beside the shore and bit my lip. The only people who had seen me naked were my family, but that had ended many years ago. As Jenassa and I grew older, we respectfully turned our backs to each other when we were changing our clothes, easily embarrassed by our maturing bodies. Perhaps the Grakkir didn’t have the same standards about modesty.
Sarrenke looked up at me and grinned. “I will turn away if it makes you feel better, but Khero might not.” She nodded at the wolf standing atop the small hill as though they shared an inside joke. When I looked back, Khero had laid down on the ground and was resting his chin on his crossed forelegs, looking away from us. If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve said he understood exactly what Sarrenke had said and was attempting to give me some “privacy” while still obeying to his guard duties.
We’re both women, I told myself. For the Fiero, sharing a bedroom with your sibling, even in your teens and early twenties, was still considered normal if you hadn’t married yet. Perhaps mutual bathing was normal for the Grakkir, particularly since they lived mostly outside and probably didn’t have indoor baths, even within the village.
I slipped out of my clothes while dirt and ashes fell from my pants and shirt. The scent of smoke filled my nose and made my chest ache as I realized my people were clinging to my skin. I wondered if I’d be forced to continue wearing these old clothes, or if they would spare me some new ones that were in better shape. I didn’t want to dress like them, but I also didn’t want to wear the same reeking outfit until it turned to rags.
The stream had retained little of the day’s heat, but the cold didn’t bother me much. In fact, after working in the hot sun all day, the cool water was refreshing. As I washed my limbs and face and hair, the water around me turned dark. It was like I had been on fire, not the village. I stared down at the ashes as they swirled around my legs and drifted downstream, never to be seen again.
My eyes welled with tears for possibly the hundredth time that day, but I was almost too tired to cry. I splashed the cold water on my face, shocking the tears from my eyes before Sarrenke could see me crying.
“It will not be as bad here as you think it will be,” Sarrenke said suddenly. She still had her back to me as she washed the day from her arms and legs. She shook her hair free from its braid, the pale locks falling over her shoulders.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I retorted.
“It is now,” she said, but I didn’t ask what she meant by that. “The best thing for you to do is obey Tarek’s commands. Do not ever question him. You will find him to be much easier to deal with if you are not rebellious.”
It seemed like pointless, obvious advice, especially coming from someone who was also my captor. I was a slave, and he was a highly-skilled killer with a massive wolf who obeyed his every command. I had no choice but to do whatever he told me to do.
“If you stay here, I will get you some new clothes to wear. Your old clothes smell like smoke.”
My entire being smelled like smoke. My whole world was smoke. “Do you really think it’s a smart idea to leave a new slave alone on her first day as a captive?” I knew I was being bold, but I didn’t care if I made her angry.
Sarrenke didn’t seem the least bit flustered by my words or my tone. “Yes. Because you are completely naked and are under the watchful eyes of a wolf god. You are not going anywhere.”
She said it so pointedly that it frightened me a little bit. “Wait…wolf god?” I asked.
She merely smiled and stepped out of the stream, wrapping a towel around herself. She strode past the wolf, who now watched me closely. For some reason, I wasn’t embarrassed under his gaze, only astounded. So, he was a god.
✽ ✽ ✽
When I finally laid down to sleep in my bed of hay, I thought of my sister. Juliano said he saw Jenassa get out of the village during the attack. Although he could have been mistaken, I had to believe in my heart that he’d been right. Where did she go? Had the City chased people out of the village and continued to attack them in the forests?
Jenassa’s options were few. If she had survived the attack, then she was either a captive like me, perhaps somewhere else in the Grakkir clan’s village, or she was travelling with other refugees. She was strong and smart, and certainly capable of hiding until she could go somewhere or until someone found her.
She probably thought I was dead, and so it was unlikely anyone would come looking for me. I had no way of escaping, and no hope for rescue. This truth came crashing down on me like a bomb from the City’s airships, and for the first time all day, I allowed myself to cry. I cried for my lost village, my lost parents, my lost sister, and my lost self.
There were other villages and people out in the world, but from what I knew, it would take a long time to reach them. I had to question how reliable my knowledge was now. If Juliano had been right, if all the City’s teachings were a lie, then what could I really believe anymore?
I rolled onto my side and wrapped the thin blanket around my shoulders. It was so short I had to bend my knees to keep my feet underneath it. I was lucky it was still summer, but even if it weren’t, I seldom got cold. I never thought of it much when I was a small child, and Mother would insist I put a coat on, even though I protested.
“But I’m not even cold!” I would complain.
“You will be,” my mother told me, buttoning the coat up to my neck. She looked me in the eyes and said, “When it
is winter, we wear coats. Everyone wears coats.”
When I was a child, I thought she was just saying it so bluntly to instill the command into my head. Now I could understand she was really telling me, “You are unusual, and in order to fit in, you must do things this way.”
She was protecting me, I now realized, because it wasn’t normal for someone to not feel cold in wintertime. I could feel the bite of a harsh winter wind, but when the snowflakes touched my skin, they hissed and evaporated. Perhaps that was another reason I had to wear a coat.
“Does everyone get cold?” I asked my father.
“Yes, of course. Even you get cold sometimes, don’t you?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. I looked down at my bare feet, another thing I realized was not normal about me. I didn’t like to wear shoes and socks in winter, when other people hated taking theirs off. “Daddy, what’s wrong with me?”
Surely if I was not like everyone else, then there must be something wrong with me. I was sick or defective.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” he assured me. He picked me up and pulled me onto his lap. “You are special in your own way, but some people might not think being warm all the time is special. The guards might think you’re sick with a fever and take you into the City.”
“But I want to see the City!” I said excitedly. “I heard they have tall buildings and interesting people—”
“No, it won’t be a fun trip,” he interrupted. “You won’t get to do fun things because they’ll be too busy trying to figure out why you are different.”
“Will you and Mommy and Jenassa get to come with me?” I asked.
“No, you would be taken away from us and have to go alone.”
“Oh no! I don’t want that!” I cried.
“Which is why you must keep it a secret,” he told me. It must have been difficult to explain to a small child that there’s nothing wrong with them when you can’t explain to them why they are different. How do you get a child to be proud of themselves when the very thing that makes them special is something that could get them killed?
“A secret?” I asked. I’d never had an important secret before. We were taught that secrets were bad, and that we must not hide things from each other or from the City. My only secrets were minor, like how I’d gotten my sister’s favorite blanket dirty because I was playing a silly game outside in the dirt.
“Yes,” my father said. “The City doesn’t like secrets, but this is different. We do not want them to take you away from us, and so you must not tell people about your warm skin. You must try to fit in with everyone else, but here, in this home, you are still special to us.” He smiled then, his wide grin etching lines into his cheeks and eyes. A smile I would never see again.
I wondered now, wrapped up in a thin blanket I didn’t need, if keeping my secret had been pointless this entire time. We always thought that if we didn’t talk about what I could do, we would be safe. Maybe if I’d told someone, like one of the guards, or showed one of the other children what I could do, they would have just taken me away and disposed of me. My family and friends would still be alive, and my village would still be intact.
My mother, in her last words to me, made it sound like my survival was the most important thing in the world. She made it seem like my secret was worth dying for. But my world was gone. Did the old rules still apply?
I kicked the blanket off and placed it under me as a barrier against the prickly hay poking into my back. I lifted my hand and stared at where it must have been in the dark. Only the faintest light shone through the opening of the storage tent, but the harder I concentrated, the warmer my hand began to feel. I concentrated on heat and warmth and flickering light, all the things that make up a fire. I felt my arm shaking from exhaustion, but I kept at it until the faintest glow appeared around my hand. It was just for a few seconds before I had to relax and let it fade out, exhausted from the effort. I panted and tried to catch my breath.
The Ancient Fire was the only part of me that was still mine, and the only one who might still be alive to know about it was my sister. Besides that, it was my secret and my greatest strength. I had to learn how to make it strong.
If this was what my village was destroyed for, if this was what my parents gave their lives to protect, then I must not let it die. To do so would only make the City the victors, and the deaths of my people would be for nothing.
Chapter 6
Idreamt I was fighting a massive bull. For some reason, I had been thrown into a ring—perhaps as a prank—and I had to run in circles as the animal chased me. I tripped and fell on my face. When I looked up, Fiero teenagers stood on the other side of the fence, laughing at me and pointing. I turned, and the bull loomed over me. I tucked myself into a ball, but the animal rammed into me with its sharp horns. Every time I tried to stand and run away, the bull threw me onto the ground. Sharp pain ripped through my side as the animal gouged my ribcage. I turned towards the Fiero people, pleading for help, but there was nothing but flames towering around the ring.
I awoke with a gasp, and Tarek stood over me. He kicked me sharply in the side.
He said something in his language, glaring down at me. I tried to separate my dream from what I was seeing, but I was still half asleep. Tarek grabbed me roughly by the arm and pulled my staggering form out of the tent. I tripped and fell onto the grass, damp with morning dew. The sun was barely peeking over the trees.
I rubbed my eyes and tried to gain my bearings. As my drowsiness slipped away, the weight of the previous day’s events pushed down on my shoulders like I was carrying a great bull.
Tarek was saying something over by the house, but if he was speaking to me I couldn’t tell, and I really didn’t care. He ought to know by now that I didn’t understand his bizarre, guttural language, and he was a fool for continuing to speak to me. I looked over my shoulder, but only Khero was watching me. Tarek was speaking to Sarrenke, and neither of them paid me any mind. I was grateful and hung my head while I dug my nails into the grass, pulling up a fistful of dirt. At least the ground felt the same here as it used to in the Fiero village.
“Here,” Sarrenke appeared at my side and handed me a wooden bowl filled with cold water. I splashed it on my face, rubbing vigorously to get the weight of sleep to lift from my head, and then I rose to my feet.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice thick and hoarse.
Sarrenke chuckled. “We do not have clocks here, but I can tell you that it is early morning.”
I looked up as the sun inched higher on the horizon. A spider web glimmered with droplets of dew at the top of the tall grass. Nearly everyone in the Fiero clan woke up early, often before the sun had risen so work could be started before the heat of the day set in. If I had gotten a better night’s sleep, I would have had no problem waking up this early.
I turned and looked at Khero, who continued to watch me from his place just outside the house. I think the initial shock of learning Khero was a god was lessened by the fact that he had such an unusual appearance. He was unnaturally massive for a wolf, and his intelligence was like nothing I had ever seen in an animal. I knew well-trained dogs, ones that would do tricks for food or herd sheep without harming them, but Khero not only understood commands, he seemed to understand full sentences. Did he know how to speak too?
“It’s not polite to stare,” I told him.
Khero growled low in his throat in response. Perhaps he didn’t have a very good sense of humor, but he surely understood what I was saying. I never spent much time talking to myself, but I would remember to be careful about what I said around the wolf.
I repositioned my collar, which had dug into my neck while I was sleeping, and followed Sarrenke as she described my chores. Our chores, she assured me. “I did much of it by myself, so I am happy you are here to help me now.”
I crinkled my nose behind her back. The idea that I was here to “help” was ridiculous to me. I hadn’t volunteered to live with the Gra
kkir out of the kindness of my heart. I wasn’t concerned with how much I’d be helping, but I was also accustomed to physical work. It was in my nature to work hard regardless of who was benefiting from it.
Tending the garden was very familiar to me. The Fiero were primarily farmers, with acres of all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Our region’s weather and soil were known to be some of the best in the world, and generations of farming had created very hardy crops. I noticed immediately that Tarek’s garden paled in comparison to the Fiero crop. Even the tallest, liveliest plants had evidence of bug infestations and vitamin deficiencies.
As I plucked weeds and squished unwanted bugs between my fingers, I breathed in the familiar scent of the earth. If I closed my eyes, I could almost convince myself that a fellow Fiero Harvester would be beside me. Instead, when I opened my eyes it was just Sarrenke, smiling at nothing in particular. I restrained myself from saying anything that might be considered helpful. Out of spite, I didn’t want their plants to succeed. What did I care if they had little food to eat or sell in the village?
All I wanted to do was find Jenassa. I observed the forest surrounding us. Was she out there somewhere? Had she been taken captive and was also digging in someone’s garden? I looked in the opposite direction and locked eyes with Khero. The wolf stared right at me, observing my every move. I quickly ducked my head and focused on the weeds I was pulling.
However, I had to admit that I would be seriously affected by the success of their crops. If there was little to eat, I would get the least amount. If there wasn’t enough surplus to sell in the village, I wouldn’t benefit from whatever they might have purchased. I peered down at my thin summer shoes and dirty clothes. What would happen if we couldn’t afford replacements by the time these wore out? The Fiero were raised to understand how important it was to cooperate with each other. It was in my nature to be helpful, but here it was also a matter of survival.
