by Jill Cooper
Tarnish Rose
I gasped as the crystal’s glow dulled. It was more than just a crystal, it was a memory stone, and the woman I had just become while entranced, I now had her memories and knew what I had to do and where I had to go, but it’d be anything but easy.
Parts of what she knew were now with me. I saw a piece of a map, and the beginning of our long journey was finally underfoot. I was frightened by what I saw in the crystal. The last curator looked familiar. Older in the memories, but her cape and her hair… could the last curator also be Temptress?
I was too afraid to voice my suspicions.
Sebastian shook my shoulder. “You were talking but made no sense. About a staff and hunters, rising against them and stemming the flow of evil coming from the center hearth. I’ve been trying to wake you.”
Gazing at him, I smiled. “I’m related to her. She’s in my bloodline.”
“Who?” Sebastian asked, a curious but confused scowl on his face.
“The curator who hid this remnant. I know where the next one will be. I saw the map.” I wrapped the shard back up in rags as I quickly got to my feet. “We have to get moving. It’s far from here.”
“Where? Tarnish, you have to give me more than this to go on.”
“A few hundred years back, there was a slave labor encampment. It was used to exhaust and kill the non-believers. They mined salt, how’s that for irony? Those who would speak out against the hunters and the rising power of the ministers, the ones who banned knowledge and then books. The next remnant will be there.”
“How do you know this?”
I nodded my head toward the remnant I held in its cloth. “The crystal is a memory stone. It passed everything the curator knew on to me. She’s the one who hid the shards. The more I find, the more I’ll remember, Sebastian.” I smiled and felt a great wave of hope for the first time since I left home. “She left these memories for me, or well, for someone in her bloodline. Someone might be strong enough to stop the hunters and restore knowledge and color to our world.”
Sebastian glanced at the wrapped shard at my hand and back up at me. “You believe it entranced you? Passed knowledge to you directly?”
Excited, I couldn’t stop myself from going on. “I know it did. I saw the library and stood in it as sure as she did. I felt and saw everything. I could even smell it. The books, oh the glorious books!” I couldn’t contain the rush of adrenaline as it colored my cheeks and heat fanned out over my skin.
Sebastian grinned wildly. “Then I believe it, too. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you there, and I’ll stand by you the entire way.” He offered me his hand, and I squeezed it with a laugh. Nothing about what we were doing was comical, far from it, but what we were attempting to do?
It was out of this world. I had already faced a dragon, what could be waiting for us as we ventured further away from civilization into the war-torn world left behind? For the first time, I couldn’t wait. The library was real, it waited for me, and I couldn’t wait to take it.
“We’re going to need supplies,” he said softly, “and possibly something to defend ourselves if we’re going deep into the lost country. I have a small crossbow and a sword, but it might not be enough.”
The lost country. Sebastian understood more than I did about where we were, but since I found the newspaper clipping in that old book, and since I had the first curator’s knowledge, I was beginning to piece it together. Like a puzzle, I had memories with missing gaps. I hoped to fill them in.
One day, I hoped to know and understand what happened to this world so we could stop it from ever happening again.
“You’re also going to need a heap of new brains to boot.” The stairs squeaked behind us as Ella made her way down. She was freshened up from the night before. Now her face sparkled with rosy cheeks. Two long blonde braids flowed down her back, and her welder's googles sat atop her head.
She crossed her arms as she got to the bottom of the stairs, a steamy glower pinched her eyebrows together. “I thought for sure you’d come to your senses this morning, but this…”
“Ella,” I stepped forward and offered her my hand, “if you could help free the world of the hunters and the ravengers, wouldn’t you do it?”
She merely glanced at my hand before swatting it away. “You know what’s left in the encampment? Ghouls and ghosts. The haunted souls of those tortured and killed by the hunters. For hundreds of years, no one has ever gone there.” Her wisp thin voice shuddered as she gazed at us with a newfound intensity. “If you go there, you’ll end up dead. You’ll roam the encampment forever.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Ella raised her eyebrow. “But you believe in magical shards giving you memories from the dead?”
“Do you always eavesdrop?”
“Only when it suits me. The both of you were suspicious before, but now I think you’re downright daft!” Ella stomped back up the stairs, and I started after her, but Sebastian caught the hem of my cloak.
“If she wants to stay here, who are we to stop her? She’s afraid, Tarnish.”
“She’ll die out here alone. She’s almost out of food.”
“You can’t choose what people believe or what they want to do, it isn’t for us to decide. We’re not ministers.”
Maybe not, but I had to try, at least one more time. I couldn’t just let Ella die alone in this city, either of starvation or by the ravengers—or even worse, the dragon.
I headed up the stairs into the former bookshop. The old shelves were bare, and Ella was sitting against one with her legs crossed. As I approached, her eyes never left me. Instead, they stalked me as if I were a predator, ready to pounce on my prey.
“Why do you distrust me so much?”
Ella took a breath, leaning forward to play with the laces of her boots. “You do stupid things. You touch dragons and talk of magical crystals. You have no common sense, and it makes you as dangerous as an imp.”
I raised my eyebrows. “An imp? Are those at the old slavery camps, too?”
“Don’t mock me. It’s not very nice, but if you go there, you’ll see.” Ella stuck her chin out and gave a shake of her head.
“Do you know how I came here?” I asked and sat across from her.
Ella shook her head. “Can’t say I do, other than trying to pet a dragon.”
Maybe it wasn’t my best move, but I had a connection with her—the dragon—and it wasn’t a feeling I could shake, even if the dragon had tried to hurt me.
“The man I was to marry was to be executed by the hunters, and I knew I had to save him. I also knew if I stayed at home, the hunters would eventually realize I could read and it would lead to my parents' death, so I fled. That’s when Sebastian found me and we started this quest together.”
Ella’s eyes slow blinked several times as she processed what I said. “What happened to your boyfriend?’
I swallowed hard and couldn’t keep the flashes from our time on the mountaintop from my mind. “We were surrounded by hunters. He… sacrificed himself to save me. Now he’s captured by Temptress.”
“Temptress?” Her voice ran chill, and Ella snorted. “Sorry, but it just proves how dangerous you are. I’m not sacrificing myself to save you. Or anyone. I take care of me.” She thumped her chest with her finger. “Only me.”
“I didn’t want him to do it, and I wouldn’t want you to, either, but you have to understand. Living here alone with the ravengers circling, eventually they’ll find you. Eventually, they’ll be hungry. Even if they don’t, you’re almost out of food. If you come with us, you could tell us what areas to avoid. You know the area and all the local stories.”
Ella snorted. “And what does all that get me other than a big fat ‘dead’?”
“I don’t have much, but I can pay you. And when we’re done, we’ll get you to the other side. The place your parents wanted to take you, where you’d have a fighting chance at a real life. Hiding in an abandoned city isn’t life.�
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“Surviving sometimes is life enough,” Ella mumbled.
I stood proud and tall. “Think about it, and if you decide you want to come, maybe you can help us out of here. If not, maybe you could at least point the way.” I turned down toward the stairs, pausing at the foot of the steps, hoping Ella would say something, but she didn’t.
Defeat deflated me and my ambitions. Sebastian was right. I couldn’t save a person who didn’t want to be saved, but I really wanted to. After what had happened to George, I really wanted to.
****
We packed light as we prepared to travel north through the city. Sebastian grabbed some water canteens, and I sharpened my knife and slid my staff into its holster on my back. As we readied to leave, I glanced at the few remaining canned goods Ella had access to. Maybe there were other cans in the city, and I hoped she’d be able to find them before she went hungry.
“You can’t save everyone,” Sebastian said as we climbed the stairs.
“I know.” I had to try, but it was a conversation I wasn’t ready to have again. When we reached upstairs, there was no sign of Ella. I sighed in frustration. So, we were just going to disappear on her, was that it? Maybe she didn’t want to say goodbye, and I didn’t even know what I’d say to make a difference.
Knowing Ella, she was watching from somewhere.
We left through the front door, and it dumped us out onto a street reduced to little more than rubble. Navigating it was precarious as my foot slipped off the ruptured rocks and street pavement. Sebastian helped me across, and once we reached an area of solid ground, I gazed over the horizon. The sky churned grey with thick clouds, as if a mighty storm was coming. The city’s skyline seemed to stretch on forever, broken and disjointed as the remains were, it seemed majestic.
How many people once lived here? It felt haunted, as if we were walking through a grave site. “How did the hunters cause so much destruction?” I looked to Sebastian for answers. If he was a historian, he had to know.
“The first minister, the one who kept the pursuit of knowledge for the elite, controlled the country. Armies, weapons, airplanes, tanks, everything. Once he banned education and books and art, other countries rose up against him.”
My eyebrows rose high. “They did? What happened?”
“Once the world fell under one rule, he waged war. He launched weapons the world hadn’t seen. They were from darkness and evil, not metal. Countries joined him, or they were destroyed. Once a few countries were destroyed, people joined him whether they wanted to or not, and that’s when…” Sebastian gulped, “he changed. He became Dark Lord Creighton.”
I shivered violently. My head fell, and I sighed with deep mourning. No one really had been able to stand against him.
“It was like a plague,” Sebastian said quietly. “Cities began to fall, and the hunters came. The sky opened up, and portals just like the one over this city popped up all over.”
“Where do they come from?” It was a question I had never asked, and maybe it was the most important question of all.
Sebastian shook his head. “Where they come from, no one knows. The ministers control them and keep them from killing every last human on Earth. They’re supposed to bring order, but they did this. They caused this destruction alongside the minister’s army.”
“If the dark lord once had airplanes and tanks, where are they now?”
“I don’t know.” Sebastian gazed off. “No one’s ever found even a single remnant, and if there’s a map or book that describes it, I’m sure the ministers burned it a long time ago.”
I scowled and gazed off.
Sebastian clenched his fist and gave it a good shake. “They don’t want us to know how great we once were and once upon a time we built machines. We danced to stories about love and life. They want nothing more than a work force of drones to cement their power. The ministers only care about the ministers,” Sebastian said with great power and vitriol.
I swallowed hard with a nod. The hunters might’ve been monsters who chased me down in the night, but it was the ministers that scared me above all else. Once, they were mortal men, but now with their glowing eyes, they controlled the hunters. They could bring death to anyone just by willing it. Controlling us was the name of the game.
“Here we are, free of them. No minister would venture this far into the Lost Country. They pretend this war-torn part of the world no longer exists, and this is where we’ll find what we need.” Sebastian smiled warmly, and I returned it.
“You’re never going to find it if you go that way.”
I turned at the sound of Ella’s voice. Back wearing her goggles on her head and her long trench coat, she came up beside us but wouldn’t look me in the eye. She pointed down a narrow alleyway. “We head this way, then cut across south. We’ll cross the bridge and head toward the tunnels. That’ll get us out of the city and toward the old encampments to the east.”
So, she was coming with us. Elated, I smiled and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what changed your mind, but I’m glad you’re with us.” So happy, I wanted to hug her!
Ella held up her hand to stop me. “You’d get yourself killed if I didn’t. Decided I couldn’t live with myself if I let you civilized folk just up and die of your own stupidity.” Ella said it with a slight smile as she took the lead, showing us the way through the alley.
“Hope this turns out well,” Sebastian said with a sigh.
I patted him on the shoulder. “Luck will be on our side. You’ll see.”
I just hoped I was right.
Chapter Ten
Haven Homestead
GONG! GONG! GONG!
With a start, Rebecca awoke in her bed. Rolling over, she threw off her covers and jumped up to her feet before fully awaking. The warning bells rang out loud and clear, and it meant trouble, but trouble hadn’t breached the Haven walls in years.
Decades.
She coughed, slowly coming to and realizing smoke filled her lungs. Rebecca ran to her closet and grabbed her shotgun. From her drawer, she hurried to grab the box of shotgun shells. She had never fired old Betsy and had no knowledge of if her parents did, either.
A family heirloom. Nothing more. Passed down through the centuries, but they were taught how to oil it. How to keep her steady if a battle came.
Throwing on her bathrobe, Rebecca raced to her window to see what was going on. She expected bandits had breached the walls, but instead, her eyes were struck with the sight of fire and flames.
The fence posts were on fire, and the crops had been burned. Ash floated up through the air, and thick smoke stuck in Rebecca’s throat. She coughed and covered her mouth with her bathrobe, but already her throat felt sick and hot.
The horses neighed from their posts as people rushed to free them, but who had done this? Who had destroyed their home?
Then Rebecca saw a black horse with unnatural red eyes. A rider in a thick, long black robe commanded it, a flaming mace in her hand. The horse charged for the pub, straight for where Rebecca stood.
She took aim at the rider and fired a shot. The blast kicked the shotgun back, and smoke drifted from the barrel, but the shot missed the mark.
The rider looked up, and the flame from its mace lit up her face. It was a woman but no longer human, with death in her eyes and skeleton teeth. She still wore two long blond braids that framed her face, but she was soulless.
Had to be.
The rider growled, a medallion swinging from her neck as the horse neighed. It went up on its rear legs and charged toward the pub.
Rebecca screamed at the sight of this female rider. She held her gun tight and took off running from her room. She avoided going down the front steps into the pub and instead charged through the rear hall.
The staircase down the back creaked and groaned under her quick steps. When Rebecca reached the bottom, she pulled the false wall up to slow the rider down, to buy her some time. The dirt basement floor dampened Rebecca’s bare feet as
she snuck behind the shelves and rows of cases of dried food and bags of grain.
When she got to the row of kegs in storage, Rebecca felt safer. She exited the building using the escape hatch through the soil. On the other side, she grabbed the iron spear and stuck it through the door handle.
The rider wouldn’t be coming out that way.
“Becky! Becky!”
She turned, hearing her name, and quickly scouted the area. The voices came from the well. Rebecca joined them and grabbed her own bucket. “John! What happened? Who is that rider?”
“She didn’t stop and introduce herself!” John handed her a full bucket of water. “Crops and the barn come first. We can rebuild the fence.”
Rebecca shook her head. “The scavengers will just walk right over us. They’ll take everything!”
“One step at a time, Beck.” John leveled his voice. “Our lives and our food storage have to come first, or there’ll be nothing left for us to save.”
He was right. Rebecca ran the bucket over to the small barn and tossed her water onto the smoldering slats. Barely made a difference, and the smell of burning wood was thick. When she heard the call from the animals inside, her heart came to life with fear.
Oh God, the animals were still inside. The horses, the goats….
Rebecca grabbed the handle of the door, and her flesh burned. She screamed and pulled her hand away. Wrapping it in her robe, she grabbed the metal handle again and pulled the doors open.
The horses and animals charged, and Rebecca could barely get out of the way in time. Back toward the well, Rebecca glanced. The female rider sat up on her horse but bent down. Her hand squeezed John’s face, and she bent down to blow directly into it. John dropped his bucket, like he fell under her spell.
“No!” Rebecca screamed and flipped her gun around. She walked toward this she-devil and fired a round.
The female rider faced Rebecca, grabbed the reins and started toward her at a full gallop. Rebecca took a few steps forward and fired again. This time, the bullet impacted the female rider’s shoulder and it was thrown back.
