Book of Water

Chapter 10

10

Fire poured over Michaela. She willingly stepped into it, wrapped her arms around a pillar of it, took it into her body and let it set her skin and her hair aflame.

The inferno roared around her. So deafening, she wouldn’t hear someone standing right next to her, shouting into her ear. So blinding, even when she shut her eyes tightly she still saw the dancing yellows and oranges, the black of burning flesh, the bursts of red as the flames found every injury in the dying warrior’s body and burned it into Michaela’s instead.

She hugged the pillar more tightly now, bracing as the fire seared the breath from her lungs. Her eyes burned and wept. Every nerve felt bare beneath the crackling surface of her skin. She only had to hold on a little while longer. If she stopped now, it would be worse.

It would be worse afterward, anyway.

She never cried out. Even when she was younger, she knew to keep the agony inside. It was safer to do it in secret. Safer to remain hidden from the world.

She had learned that lesson too well.

Michaela was only nine when the soldiers came. Hundreds of them against only forty unarmed men in her village.

Forty men, thirty-two women, twenty-eight children.

All of the adults dead in less than half an hour.

Some of the children dead, too.

The rest of them caught trying to escape to their homes or pulled screaming like Michaela from the bodies of their parents lying on the blood-soaked earth.

Captured. Lifted onto horseback. Stolen away.

Stolen away from the mother who could heal everyone but herself. From the father who had shouted to his two children, “Run! Hide!” but was killed before he could escape himself.

All dead: mother, father, brother.

Before Michaela had any power to save them.

A shudder ran through her as the flames finally began to subside. They rolled down her back, down her calves to her bare feet, and then doused themselves in the dirt. The air around her felt suddenly cold, and Michaela began to shake. All of her strength was gone. She clung to the pillar for support until finally her legs gave way and she collapsed on the cooling coals.

She regained consciousness on the floor of the tent. Astolpho had pulled the door flap closed to keep out the light. She was grateful for that. She could still see slivers of it coming through the bottom and some of the seams. But not enough to make her sick.

She blinked and tried to regain her bearings. She knew where she was. She knew why. Here was the man beside her.

Rinaldo. That was his name. Not that it mattered.

Michaela glanced at him for a moment with a kind of vague curiosity. He looked like all the rest of the soldiers, pale skinned, although even in the dim light she could already see a fresh rosy color flooding into his cheeks. His shoulder-length brown hair looked matted from lying in his own sweat for the past few days. Brown stubble grew above his lip and across his jaw. He had less hair and beard than Astolpho, and darker color, but otherwise they weren’t noticeably different.

He still slept, and that was good. Sometimes they tried to speak to her. It sent shards of pain piercing through her head. Already she could feel the ache building, from the base of her skull on its way to her eyes, and she could do nothing but let it come.

Why? Why did I agree?

You know why.

Michaela stole one of the blankets that covered Rinaldo. He wouldn’t need it much longer. She curled up beneath it and pulled the rough wool high enough to cover her eyes. The blanket smelled of sweat and grime. There was nothing for it. She would pass to oblivion soon enough.

Michaela closed her eyes and felt the darkness take her.