Page 19 of Fires of the Forsaken
Mama swayed and placed the tomato in the basket. “Remember…love… sunset…don’t…tarry…”
She could sense her life drawing to a close.
I could too. My fingers dug into the sharp edges of the basket while sweat pooled beneath my armpits. I began crying long before she collapsed.
And when she finally fell, after collecting only a handful of tomatoes, it was a traumatizing spectacle.
She vomited; spraying blood and bile over the vines, The Offering basket, me, and herself. Her chest made a strangeurk, urk, urknoise as she struggled to breathe. Her pallid cheeks reddened; a vein pulsed at her temple.
I held her, sobs racking through my body as she suffocated, choking on her own bodily fluids. She toppled backward, bringing me down with her. I laid against her breast, screaming for help. The humans who lived nearby undoubtedly heard my calls, but no one came. The Wraiths, of course, offered no assistance. Why would they? Mama’s death meant nothing to them. She was a human, indistinguishable from the rest, and entirely replaceable.
But the event tore my heart to pieces. I couldn’t move afterward. My own lungs seemed to have been afflicted with disease as they struggled to bring air into my body. I laid there, curled against Mama’s cooling corpse, while the sky above me darkened.
At sunset, the Wraiths came.
* * *
In the clearing,the frog croaked again.Raaapuh.
“Mama!” Tears streaked down my cheeks as I stumbled through the bushes. “Mama?”
It wasn’t her. And I hadn’t truly expected it to be. But when I saw that big, fat toad sitting at the edge of a small pond….
Raaapuh.
Rage gripped me. It chased the fear and the cold right out of my body. I’d never experienced such an emotion before, not even when the Wraiths grabbed my hair and tore me away from Mama’s body. Not even as I watched those humans cooked over a fire.
But now…
The toad was a portly animal with bulging eyes. It didn’t shy away when it saw me. It merely turned and leveled its gaze upon my face. Unafraid. Perhaps it was used to humans and had never been given a reason to fear them. Perhaps it thought me too young, too small, to do any harm.
The scream that burst from my mouth was raw and it clawed painfully at my throat. But I didn’t care. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Because there was a hot, uncomfortable sensation curled inside my chest. Like a snake. Coiling and coiling.
My skin itched.
The toad blinked but still didn’t move.Raaapuh.
“Shut up!” I yelled, clapping my hands over my ears. It drowned out the sounds of the toad, and the nervous twittering of the surrounding animals, but it didn’t stop the memories. Over and over, I heard Mama coughing. Over and over, I saw her lifeless eyes staring up at me, her face covered in blood, her chest unnaturally still. I heard the harsh babble of Wraiths as they dragged me to Varn’s home, theirskelatal—skeletalfaces glowing through the darkness while they talked and laughed and jeered at me.
Over and over, I heard my own wails of pain as the Celestial’s poisonous blood spread through my veins.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
A hot, burning itch rippled across my skin. The snake-like sensation coiling inside me was poised, ready to strike.
The toad’s bulging eyes were now fearful. Or, as fearful as a toad’s eyes were capable of being. But his realization came too late. Before he leapt into the safety of his pond, I caught him.
“Shut up!”
The toad was cold andslimey—slimy. I had no intention of hurting him. Truly. I’d only meant to give him a rough shake to quiet him. But it was too late for me as well.
Fire burst from my fingertips, consuming the toad.
I screamed again, this time in fear, and the animal slid from my burning fingertips.
He screeched and writhed as he hit the ground. Flames curled over his body, blistering hisslimey—slimy skin. I tried to put them out, but the fire remained wrapped around my fingers, and the more I touched him, the more he burned. In the end, I could do nothing but watch, helpless, as his body gradually stilled, and his cries tapered off.
The fire did not leave my fingertips.
