Page 3 of Runes To Rain
The demon called Malam is here, but his back is to me, and after the last dream, I hesitate. Before I can decide what to do, he turns to me. His eyes are bloodshot and dark, and his face is wet with tears. His arms are full of the body of a tall young woman.
She hangs limply, her only movement coming from him. Her light, curly hair hangs from her head, some of it sodden with blood that leaks from an open wound at the center of her face.
He looks straight at me and says, “You have failed.”
The moment he finishes speaking, a crow flies directly at my face with a scream, before this dream too pulls away.
There are many more, countless more, and although I seek to remember them and what they try to tell me, it is like trying to hold water.
PART II
LIFE BEGINS
Iwake slowly, pulling myself from a heavy darkness. The air is thick and smells of smoke. Thankfully, there is no pain other than what I remember. My mouth is filled with the taste of blood, which seems to be from a bite on the inside of one cheek.
I rise slowly from a flower-print-covered couch. There is a boy lying on a couch across from me. I consider trying to wake him, but he sleeps the sleep of the dead, his mouth slightly open and his sides rising and falling slowly.
Looking around the room, I see two other boys deposited on a couch and an armchair, both deep in sleep. Deciding that even if I could wake them, I don’t really want to. I examine the room instead.
The ceilings are high, and the entire room is painted in pastel shades that are highlighted by the dim light filtering in from the large window. My eye is caught by a painting on one wall of the room, and I walk closer to it. Examining the painting makes me feel unexpectedly sad. I don’t know exactly why, but the trees, animals, and landscape depicted in the picture seemforeign and like a utopian idea in the middle of this garish room.
As I look at the painting, I find myself experiencing a very different type of pain than what plagued me the day before. I have lived for such a short time that I don't know where this feeling comes from, but it makes my chest hurt. My eyes sting with tears, and I try to understand the feeling.
Even as I look at the painting, I hear stirring behind me. Then I begin to hear voices.
“Where’d tha girl go?” asks one slurred voice.
“She’s right here,” says another clear, quiet voice.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and he guides me to turn away from the wall. Seeing my tears, he directs me to one of the couches, sitting me down upon one of the other boy’s legs. As my eyes meet the bright blue of his, he says kindly, “Are you ok? Why are you crying?”
All I can respond with is a slight shake of my head.
His expression as he looks at me is soft and slightly concerned. “I’ll leave you here to talk with Fem; this is more his area of expertise than mine,” he says kindly. Then the blue-eyed boy rises and roughly punches the shoulder of the boy beneath me.
To the side of the room, I hear the third boy rising. He was sleeping sitting up in a large brown armchair. His face is narrow with high cheekbones and a dark complexion. Long black hair sticks to one cheek. His eyes are still squeezed shut as he runs a hand over his face. Then, groaning, he pulls himself to his feet and stumbles from the room.
I turn to look at the boy underneath me, and he looks at me through half-closed eyes. His hair is brown and cropped short to his head. He turns his head away from me, but I can see that he wants to say something.
Suddenly, I believe I understand what it is, and I pull myself up off the couch, freeing his legs as I walk to the window.
As the boys rise, I keep my back to them and look out at what I can see of the city through the thick smoke in the air. I again wonder how I know what any of this is, but that knowledge seems unimportant, and so I decide to ignore the thought for not the first nor last time.
After a few moments pass, a hand touches my shoulder again, and the boy who led me from the painting is at my side. He offers me a cup of something, and after a moment of hesitation, I take it.
“Did you talk to Fem?” he asks.
I shake my head, not sure what or who that might be.
As he sees me looking at the cup in my hand, he says, “I brought you coffee. Good, strong coffee.”
I examine the liquid in the cup. It is dark and looks like mud. As I try to decide what to do with it, he touches my arm, and without consciously meaning to, I look back up at him.
“You don’t need to worry,” he says quietly. “We know what you are, and there is no need to be ashamed. One of my friends was addicted for a time and was without money or a place to stay. We have found those without support in the past, and now that our circumstances allow, we try to help.” He nods slightly, still holding my eyes, and then, dropping his own, walks back toward the couches.
As I hear him speaking to the others behind me, I try to decide how to tell him I don’t know what he means. Deciding that now is not the time or place, I look worriedly again at the cup in my hands and then, not knowing what to expect, take a small drink. My concerns, it would seem, were entirely granted. Coughing and spluttering against the taste of whatever poison this is, I badly wish I hadn’t tried it.
Hearing surprised exclamations behind me, I turn and see three faces looking at me. The tall one looks at the blue-eyed one and, laughing, says, “We always told you that you make awful coffee! Are you trying to poison her?”
