Ash Eater

by Emerson, Joanna

  Cool, damp cloths drape across my face and arms. Soothing voices fill the edge of my waking. Shrieks and screams fill the edges of my dreams.

  I’m back in my bed at home. Daryl and Greg stand at the other side of the room laughing at me. Their faces fade into lipless clay masks. The girls who always pushed me into lockers at school shove my body back and forth as if I’m the ball in a game of four-square. Ryan and Nate hurl giant stones and laugh.

  I wake screaming, covered in sweat. Sleep tugs me back. I fight, thrashing, sobbing.

  Dreams claw at me, biting the edge of my waking.

  I want to wake up. Help me! But who can help?

  I force my eyes open. Seething, I grit my teeth against the urge to sleep again.

  “Help me,” I moan. “I don’t want to sleep again. I can’t.” I don’t even know if there’s anyone around to hear me.

  Drops fall against the corner of my lips. I lick away the sweet fluid.

  Sleep claims me again, but I’m not so frightened. These dreams are filled with light and lovely things. Meadows. Flowers. I’m no longer thrashing around.

  “Good morning.” Selah’s voice urges me awake.

  I open my eyes to a quaint bedroom with the sunlight pouring in from one window. My body is weak, but I’m no longer utterly exhausted.

  I swing leaden feet to the floor and sit up. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Almost two full days. The brownies’ poison is gone from your body, so you shouldn’t sleep like that again.

  “I’m sorry if I thrashed about.”

  “We’ve never seen someone fight the poison as strongly as you did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Your willingness to fight inspired so many of us. But you need to wake now. Take your sword and eat your breakfast. Your new shoes are in the kitchen.”

  “New shoes?”

  “Stronger ones. You have a long day ahead of you.”

  “Where must I go now?”

  “To the garden.” She tries to lift my sword from where it leans against the wall in the corner of the room. “We’re training you how to use this today.”

  If anyone needs to learn how to use a sword, it’s me. I should have killed that kitsune when I had the chance.

  I grab the sword and make my way downstairs.

  After a breakfast of mangoes and bananas, I find my shoes. Boots, rather. They’re leather lace-ups and reach almost to my knees. But they’re not clunky. I could run in these boots.

  When I’m finally ready, I meet Selah in the garden.

  “The first thing we need to work on is stance. Your feet need to shoulder width apart. And turn your toes out, not in.”

  We practice form without a single swing of the sword until lunch time. The faeries have set out a picnic of watermelon and honey-dew melon. I eat ravenously, pangs of sorrow still rocking my heart.

  The faeries express how glad they are that I’m feeling better. But beyond that, hardly anyone talks.

  After lunch, there’s more training on how to stand and how to hold my sword. I don’t know how I’ll get a real practice anyway. Selah demonstrates, but she’s the size of my hand.

  We stop in the late afternoon, exhaustion overwhelming me.

  That night I sleep soundly, hardly a thought of a dream touching me.

  The third day away from the forest and my second day of training, I practice lunges, upward, forward, downward.

  The afternoon light wanes and my fear waxes, sword or no sword. I don’t want to be outside at twilight. Frankly, I’d prefer to never leave the safety of this yard.

  “Shall we call it a day?” Selah asks after my seventh mistake in a row.

  “Sure.” I don’t know how I’ll ever stop being afraid of twilight, of foxes, of forests.

  When we get inside, the table is set for dinner. More fruit. I’d like a cheeseburger at this point, but after six hours of lunges and thrusts, I’m starving for anything. Even pineapples and coconut milk.

  All the way up the stairs, I hug the wall, keeping as far away from the windows as possible.

  I’m sore, but I still rush into bed, quickly unlacing my boots, pulling them off and throwing the blankets over my head.

  “What’s wrong, Miya?” Selah asks.

  I shake my head, even though she can’t see it. “Can someone stay close tonight?”

  “I’m sure several of us can.” I hear her light a match. She must be lighting the candles.

  I poke my head out. I’m almost fifteen, I shouldn’t be this afraid of anything. But I am.

  Several faeries camp out on the night stands telling me stories. They’re so sweet, but I’m so needy. I hate being this needy. It reminds me of how I’d always grasp for attention back home, never knowing how to be alone without fear.

  Trembling rocks my body as I slip into sleep.

  *

  I stand under a bridge on the edge of a highway late at night. It’s somewhere in the heartland of America, but I can’t tell where. I smell crops and cows and exhaust from the passing trucks.

  Rain starts to fall in torrents. It streams off the sides of the bridge in a curtain of water. Cars, trucks and buses rush past, their wipers swishing frantically against the onslaught of water. One of the semis on the other side of the median begins to fishtail and slides sideways. It rolls over the median toward where I’m standing. Stunned and paralyzed, I stare at this vehicle. A van on my side of the highway drives through the wall of water, and blocks the semi from rolling into me. The vehicles smash. I scramble out of the way, screaming, as the van rolls against the wall of the bridge with the semi crushing it.

  Then I recognize the van. It’s the one my brothers took on tour. No one could have survived that.

  I pull at my hair, screaming, staring at the tangle of metal and bodies.

  *

  I shoot up in my sweat-soaked bed, screaming. I can’t calm my tears. It was so real. It was all so real.

  “Shh,” faeries whisper soothingly in my ear. They sit along my arms as I hug my knees and sob.

  Twilight fills the room. A still, calm twilight, not a cruel twilight. It’s morning. Birds chirp outside in the garden.

  My mouth is dry. I lick cracked lips. My whole body is dry. Salty tears drip onto the blankets curled at my feet.

  How could that accident not have been real? I can’t imagine anymore, one way or the other. I pull at my hair, trying to extract the images from my mind.

  “Miya.” Selah’s hand rests against my taut knuckle. “Miya, I saw what you saw.”

  “How?” I lift my head. “Was it real?”

  “It was just a vision. I didn’t mean to invade, but I saw how fearful you were on your way to sleep and I didn’t want you to be subjected to the wiles of a nightmare on your own.”

  “So it was just a dream?”

  “A vision. Something that could happen, but hasn’t yet.”

  I push the tears away from my face. “So it hasn’t happened yet? Does that mean I can stop it?”

  “I don’t know.” She looks around the room, sadness washing over her face. “That’s the sort of thing the lamb would have known.”

  My shoulders slump. “I’ve been a coward. I need to go back into that forest and find his body so I can bury him properly. It should have been me. It was my fault.”

  Selah gives a stern stare with her hands on her hips. “There was no way you could have defeated that kitsune on your own. The lamb saved your life.”

  “I know, but shouldn’t the lesser one protect the life of the greater?” I shake my head.

  Leellah flies through the open window and alights on my knee. “You won’t believe it, but it’s true! Kitta and I have just come back from the meadow, the one just before the forest. We were going to go into the forest to look for the lamb’s body, but he was there in the meadow! The lamb met us in the quiet of this dawn, even as the dew fell upon us!”

  The gladness splashed upon their faces is undeniable, even
as the first rays of morning sun pour into the room.

  I bounce up and run to the window, wiping my face with my hand.

  “He told us to give you a message, Miya,” Kitta says. “He says he’ll meet you in the city, on the mountain. He’s going ahead of you. He says you must continue on, and in continuing you will fight the battles that will save your family from the destruction that yearns to prey on you.”

  “Continue on…where do I go?”

  “You must go to the mountains,” Leellah says.

  The faeries exchange looks of worry and sadness. Strange, after such good news, that they should feel sad.

  “What is it? What mountains? Why are you so sad?”

  “There are the Mountains of Rejection,” Leellah says. “It will not be easy. The road to get there goes through the Pit of Shame and the Desert of Self before you get to that mountain. And on the Mountain of Rejection there is the City of Despair”

  “Beyond that mountain, we’ve heard, is a mountain of beauty and glory unequaled by anywhere in the universe,” Selah says. “It’s the lamb’s mountain.”

  “The cords of death entangled me,

  the anguish of the grave came over me;

  I was overcome by distress and sorrow.”

  ~ Psalm 116:3

  Chapter 20

  The Pit of Shame

  We leave before dawn, and I trudge away from the peaceful cottage. If it’s mine, I hope I can come back here. But I hope I don’t have nightmares the next time I’m here.

  With faeries fluttering all around me, I wander over a landscape of crabgrass and wild wheat. I’m glad my little friends are here to keep me company. There’s no way I can face this lonely moor on my own.

  The faeries chatter and laugh and play silly tricks on one another. Now that two of them have seen the lamb alive again, they show a totally different side to themselves. No somber or serious moods weigh them down anymore.

  I want that cheerfulness. But I keep trying to figure what the Pit of Shame will be like, and why it’s the only route I can take.

  A pit is usually small and preferably avoidable.

  The faeries bear toward the range of low, treeless mountains on the southern horizon.

  “Don’t forget to practice your lunges,” Selah says as we stop for a rest.

  The mountains are closer, but I doubt we’ll reach them before nightfall.

  I practice with my sword as instructed. I’m better at it today than I was yesterday, but still clumsy.

  We sleep on the moor. A clump of ankle high grass serves as my pillow. I curl on my side and the faeries sleep in a heap against my belly.

  By midmorning on the following day, we reach the mountains. They aren’t tall mountains, but they’re jagged and barren and stretch for miles east and west. It reminds me of pictures of the Badlands of South Dakota. But this is far less wondrous and quite a bit more hostile.

  I climb, fighting scree that threatens to make my foot slip.

  It’s midafternoon by the time I crest the top of the sharp hill to see the other side.

  A barren black wasteland dips far lower than the moor did. It expands to the horizon southward, east and west. No wonder they said there’s no way around it. But it’ll take several days at least to cross that apocalyptic stretch of land.

  Do I have days to spare?

  “I don’t think I want to go there.” I shake my head and crouch until I’m out of sight of that pit.

  “But there’s no way around it for miles and miles,” Selah explains.

  “Where will I sleep?”

  “I have heard there are springs with fresh water. We can sleep near some of those. Around those springs there are oases of grass.”

  Where are these oases? I don’t see anything but desolate land. “You are coming with me, though, right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Then let’s do this thing.”

  I climb the rocks once more. A wave of sulfuric air blasts my nostrils. I turn my face toward the north and take one last gulp of fresh air, then swing my legs over the crest of the jagged hills.

  Not many steps down, my foot catches scree and I slip.

  Gathering speed, I scream.

  I grip at rocks trying to slow down and dig my heels into the scree. My body stops several feet from the ground.

  I hold as still as I can and try to catch my breath. It’s almost impossible to breathe this air.

  “Are you okay?” Selah hovers close to my face.

  “She’s bleeding.” Kitta points to my hands.

  Sure enough, I’m covered with scrapes and scratches. My left sleeve is torn, and there’s another scrape on my forearm. Nowhere is the bleeding cause for alarm. Still, the faeries flutter about, applying ointment to various wounds. I lay my head back, thankful to have made it through that alive, afraid of ever doing that again.

  “It’s time to go,” Selah says. “If you’re ready, that is.”

  I prop myself up and look around.

  The landscape isn’t just rugged, it’s jagged like teeth, like it’ll devour me. In the distance there’s either a shimmering mirage from the stifling, stagnant heat or something slithers across the ground.

  I gulp. “I’m ready.” My voice wavers to a squeak.

  “Um, do all of us need to go?” Leellah asks Selah.

  “Miya might need us, but I suppose not all of us. Who else wants to go back?”

  All the faeries aside from Kitta, Selah and one other named Ilsa decide to head back.

  I don’t blame them.

  After brief farewells, I slide the last few feet and dust myself off. There’s nowhere to go but forward. “How long until we reach a safe place to sleep?”

  Selah flies higher then swoops back down to eye level. “I don’t see anywhere yet. As soon as we find one of the fresh water springs, we should try to make camp.”

  I put one foot in front of the other. Scree and sudden dips in the path make the footing precarious, so I keep my gaze on where the next step is. It’s better than looking up and imagining what it is that’s slithering in the distance. I’m fairly sure it’s not a trick of the eye.

  After a few hours, as the sun sinks toward the west, Selah finds a spring. The waters taste awful, but she assures me they aren’t poisonous.

  “She can smell poison,” Kitta tells me as I shake off the bitter taste. “I’ve never known her to be wrong.”

  Ilsa makes a funny grimace. “It won’t kill me, but I feel as if it might.”

  “Are you sure it’s healthy, even if it’s not poisoned?” I ask.

  Selah drinks straight from the bubbling fountain and sighs contentedly. “There may not be many potable springs in this pit, but I’m sure about this one.”

  I force myself to take one more sip before we begin walking again.

  Nothing in the landscape changes as the day wanes, and we don’t encounter any living thing aside from a few odd looking rats. Their whiskers and claws are unnaturally long. But twilight plays tricks on my eyes and I imagine other creatures in the shadows of those jagged rocks that stick out of the ground like teeth. Everything I imagine slithers.

  Kitta, flying at my shoulder, points to the east. “The moon is rising.”

  It’d look beautiful in a painting, but the moon casts an otherworldly glow and a pale silver light on the fangs of this landscape. It sends a shiver up my spine. I’m sure, now that the sun has gone down, that those slithering things in the distance were not mirages.

  Selah stops us at a second spring. “Let’s rest here for the night.”

  This area looks as desolate as anywhere else. None of the faeries drink from the spring, and I’m not going to be the first to try.

  I prop my head on my forearm and try to find some comfortable position, but there isn’t one. The faeries fall asleep rather quickly, but I can’t. I’m homesick. And this awful air makes it worse.

  I miss Mom and Abbie. When no one else would talk to me, they would listen. Mom always had
a response that left me feeling loved.

  I miss the lamb and the way he welcomed me and made me feel pure.

  I miss Nate and how he always saw the best in everyone.

  I miss Ryan. Even though he hurt me, he never lied about it, even in front of his friends. That takes quite a bit of strength. Some days I don’t want to admit even to myself the things I’ve done.

  There is no comfort to be had on these rocks. What sleep I do find is fitful. I awake with a seizure gripping me. I’m trying so hard not to shake. How can I control this? Eventually my muscles calm.

  Dawn brightens the hazy world around me.

  A fog descended during the night. It wraps the teeth in a mist as if the mouth of this pit foams. The rising sun tints the fog reddish. I can’t wait to get out of here.

  I feel so dirty here, and not just my clothes or my ragged hair. My heart feels like it’s covered in irremovable spots, like Lady Macbeth’s hands. Like my past is written all over me and soon not even pity will keep the faeries close.

  “The sooner we start, the sooner we can get out of here,” Selah says.

  She doesn’t have to tell me twice. I press my sore legs after her, trusting she knows the right way to go.

  We stop midmorning to eat some of the dried fruit and oatmeal raisin cookies Leellah had stuffed into my pack.

  Several feet from where I sit, a snake as thick as my leg and more than twice as long as I am tall slithers away from us in pursuit of one of those strange looking rats.

  I jump, wishing the faeries were big enough to hold me. “Did you see that?” I look around for my tiny friends. All three of them are shaking and hiding behind my back.

  “I don’t like snakes,” Ilsa whimpers.

  “Me neither.” My legs shake so badly I can’t stand on my first try. I brace my body against a rock and look around. “Let’s go. I don’t want to run into another one of those.”

  As we walk along, I keep my hand on my sword hilt.

  We don’t stop for lunch, but eat as we walk.

  “How much farther until we reach the other side?” Kitta asks the question I don’t dare ask.

  “Maybe two more nights.” Selah looks back and forth at Kitta and Ilsa. “If you think you can’t make it, you’ll be able to fly out of here by nightfall.”