Ashes of the Stars (12 page)

“You mean when I decided to ‘wake up’?” I clarified. When he nodded I looked away. I thought about refusing to answer for a moment, but he was being so honest with me and I had vowed to tell him everything because of his promise. I bit my lip for what felt like even longer and then, finally, I said, “When I first saw you it was weird for me.”

“Weird how?” Kai asked.

“I was just
shocked
by you. You just seemed so offended by my presence. I couldn’t look at you. I thought… I thought you were too beautiful and if I looked at you I wouldn’t be able to do my job. And then I woke up and you were there. You looked so sad and hurt and scared. You were the
only
person who so obviously wanted me to fight and, of course, your promise.

“Well, you came by almost every day. You read to me, you talked to me. You made me feel again and whenever I was around you I just felt… I don’t know. I felt like I was home. I felt comfortable and safe. And I felt like I had known you all my life,” I told him.

I didn’t know what to expect telling him this but I didn’t expect what happened. He scrambled towards me clumsily and, taking my cheeks between his palms again, he pressed his lips firmly against mine. I was so shocked that I didn’t react at first and then my feelings exploded inside of me. I felt like a fire was blossoming in my chest, spreading happiness through me. I felt complete. I felt so safe and unsafe at the same time. I felt my heart take flight and soar. By the time I could react after the shock wore off, he was pulling back from me.

“I’m sorry,” He said, looking down as if he were ashamed.

“No,” I whispered. I looked at him with desperation and threw myself into his arms. When he kissed me again I was ready. I let my lips move with his. I couldn’t contain my joy and I didn’t want to. He kissed me desperately and I kissed him back with the same fire. After a minute he slowed his kiss and then broke away from me. He rested his forehead against mine.

“You feel like home too,” He whispered to me, “I wish I could explain it.”

“Me too,” I whispered back. When I opened my eyes I saw his eyes were still closed and he was breathing shakily through his lips. I smiled to myself. Was this what love felt like?

“Not to ruin the moment but, um…” Kai groaned, pulling away from me but keeping his hands in mine. “We probably should wait to see what Kieran’s like before we, you know… flaunt anything.”

“What is there to flaunt?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows at him. “It was just a kiss, Kai.”

His mouth popped open audibly, his jaw coming unhinged. His eyes were so wide it was almost comical. I laughed and shook my head at him.

“That was
not
funny,” He growled at me.

“It was pretty funny,” I laughed, standing up. I grabbed my pack and threw it over my good shoulder. Kai and I were mostly quiet again as we headed back. He picked on me a few times, mocking his whining from the day before. It took us all day to make the journey back. When we knew we were getting close to home, he stopped and kissed me in the sunlight, his lips soft and unhurried. He touched his fingertips to my face gently, I was breathless by the time he broke away from me.

“Ready to face the firing squad?” He frowned at me.

“No,” I frowned back.

We kept a few paces between us as we climbed the hill back towards the camp. I wanted to walk at his side and take his hand and leech some of his bravery but I knew I couldn’t. He was right. I had left to save his relationship with my brother and I didn’t want to ruin it first thing upon returning.

We walked into camp as the sun was going down and from our vantage point we could see everyone was in the meadow, eating dinner and enjoying each other’s company. I looked to the area where we usually sat and saw Whitestrand on the ground with Pio, Finn and Wren were sitting side-by-side, and Kieran and Tali were sitting on opposite ends of the bench.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Kai said as we walked down the hill. Guards waved to us as we passed.

“What?” I asked grumpily. I didn’t know if I could take any more surprises.

“Tali was, uh, really upset that you left. She was really hard on Kieran,” Kai told me.

“Hard to imagine,” I mumbled.

“Even harder to see,” Kai shook his head. When we got close enough to them, I could see Tali’s lungs deflate as she exhaled for maybe the first time since I’d left. She sat bolt upright on the bench and stared at us in awe.

“Aili!” Pio yelled happily. He scrambled to his feet and ran for me. He launched off the ground when he got close enough and threw his arms around me.

“Hey, kid,” I said, hugging him.

“Daddy said you went on trip. Did you have fun?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I smiled at him, and in a mocking tone I said, “Fun.”

“
What
did you do to yourself?” Tali shrieked at me.

“What?” I asked, standing up straight and looking down at my body. My clothes were dirty and matted with sweat. I looked like a mess.

“That!” She pointed at my shoulder. I looked and saw my shirt was practically drenched in blood. She rolled her eyes and marched up to me, grabbing my arm painfully, and dragging me away from the meadow.

“Um, Tali, I’m kind of tired,” I said as she dragged me down the path.

“You’re going to get an infection if you haven’t already,” She snapped at me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered. It seemed fitting to say in the moment. When we reached the medical hut, she practically threw me inside. She worked silently and angrily at my wounds, cleaning them thoroughly.

“Look, I know you’re enjoying this and all but it really hurts,” I winced as she jabbed at my wounds some more.

“If you ever try to run away again, I will personally shoot you with an arrow and then you’ll get to deal with me treating that too, got it?” She told me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I hated apologizing and it was almost painful that it hurt to say anymore.

Tali smiled softly at me but it didn’t reach her eyes. I could tell that she would forgive me eventually. We didn’t talk again until she sighed and shook her head.

“I think you’ve got the start of an infection, you need a shot,” She told me.

“Fine,” I growled. I hated needles.

“Pants down,” She said, going to a cabinet to fetch the stuff she needed.

“What?!” I asked, shocked.

“It’s Penicillin. It goes in your butt,” She told me.

“Nope. Cut off my arm,” I told her.

“Oh fuck off. It’ll be over before you know it,” She told me, waving her finger at my pants as if to tell me to take them off again. I lowered my dirty pants awkwardly and turned around. She wasn’t gentle. When she stabbed me with the needle it seemed like she was trying to force it all the way through my hip bone.

“
Fuck! God damn it
!” I yelled. I punched the wall even though I knew it was a stupid thing to do with already injured hands.

“It’s over, calm down,” Tali told me in a tone that said she thought I was being a baby.

“You know, eventually, you’re going to have to let this go. I came back, didn’t I?” I snapped at her, pulling my pants back up as she was walking away.

“I’ll let it go when
he
apologizes to you,” She sneered at the door as if her husband were on the other side.

“Now, I know I am not the one to be giving advice to anyone,” I grunted at her. “But he was just trying to protect me, you know. Because he didn’t before when the Legion took me. And also, he doesn’t really know how to have a sister anymore. You shouldn’t be so hard on him.”

Tali looked over her shoulder at me and stuck her tongue out like a child. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine. Don’t listen to me. Your marriage, not mine.”

I walked out of the medical hut, glad that no one waited on the other side of the door. My house was just as I’d left it. I didn’t bother putting my things away. Instead I shed my clothes, feeling relief that I was free of that filth, and I took a long bath. I was too exhausted to leave once I was clean and in fresh clothes. I needed sleep more than food so I climbed into my bed and buried myself under the blankets.

I saw smoke on the horizon. The ice and snow was as bitter as it had always been. It ripped through my bloody flesh. I was so weak and small now. I felt the sting of the whip as it cracked against my skin. I knew my body reacted but I could no longer cry out. There couldn’t be anything left of me.
Just kill me,
I silently pleaded.

The whipping stopped. Everything was a daze to me. It felt like a dream. I summoned the last bit of my strength to lift my head. I knew he was out there somewhere. I knew he was crying, his screams being silenced. He could see me here. I knew it because he had told me once and I knew it because I could feel him there. Was this love or something else? Was it normal to feel the person you cared most about like they were part of your soul?

“Don’t take this darkness from me, stay in the light,” I whispered to him. When I was in the Legion, we would send people off by saying ‘give your darkness to me so that you may move into the light.’ I knew he couldn’t hear me but I had to say it anyway. I knew what came next. “I love you.”

I felt the blade touch the back of my neck and then I felt nothing and there was nothing.

I sat up in my bed screaming, gripping the blankets as if they would save me. I gasped as I looked around my dark hut. How could I have that dream, his dream? How? I saw it from my eyes, not his. Was it real? Was it an omen? Was that how I was going to die? There was something else there. Something I was afraid to even think but I had to. In my dream I had known that they were going to come for the camp and burn it to the ground after my death. I had told them nothing but they knew and they were coming.

I fumbled my way out of my bed and fled my house as quickly as I could. I couldn’t be in that place, remembering those things.

“Aili,” Kai said breathlessly from the ground as I was descending my ladder.

“I saw it,” I cried when my feet touched the dirt below. I spun around and faced him with wide and scared eyes.

“Saw what?” He asked, smoothing his hands up and down my arms as if to soothe me. I didn’t know that I could be soothed. My breaths were coming out in panicky gasps.

“I saw your dream. I saw it from my side. I saw myself die,” I whispered.

Chapter Twelve

There was nothing Kai could do to soothe me and I could tell that he was afraid too. His dream was one thing but now I had seen it, too, exactly as he had seen it, only it was from the platform. We went to the meadow and he cradled me gently. I could feel the tense set of his body.

“It’s going to be okay,” He mumbled to me. “It’s not real. You’re here with me.”

I didn’t want to disagree with him but in my heart I couldn’t believe his words.

Kai sat with his back against the tree, and I rested against him with my back to his chest. His arms were around me tightly and I gripped his forearms with my fingers. I stared vacantly into the air, still seeing the white graveyard, the smoke on the horizon. I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I didn’t notice that the sun had started coming up until Kai whispered over my head, “You should eat something, Ai.”

“Not hungry,” I whispered. My voice sounded dead, like a ghost.

“What happened?” Whitestrand asked, walking up to us. I couldn’t turn my head and look at him, I could only stare straight ahead just like before when I’d fallen apart. I wasn’t afraid for myself. There was such a big part of me that just wanted to die and the dream made me happy for that reason. I was so terrified knowing that they were coming here for
him.

“Bad dream,” Kai mumbled.

“It was
not
a bad dream,” I whimpered, pulling away from Kai. I stumbled to my feet, feeling the desperation flowing through my veins like white water rapids. I had to tell everyone I could. Maybe they could save themselves. I turned towards Whitestrand and grabbed his shirt into my fists. “You all have to get away from here. When they come for me you have to leave.”

“Aili,” Kai said, gently pulling my hands free from Whitestrand’s shirt. He pulled me back against his chest again and started rocking me gently from side to side. “Aili, it was a dream, that’s all.”

“No,” I whimpered again, feeling my face crumpling and the tears slipping from my eyes. “And you saying it was just a dream to make me feel better is what’s going to get you all killed. Tell him. Tell him it was the same and see if he thinks it was
just
a dream.”

“I told you all about the dream I had where she died?” Kai reminded Whitestrand.

“I remember,” Whitestrand was watching us calmly.

“She had the same dream only it was from her side. She said in the dream she knew they were coming for us all,” Kai told him.

I watched as Whitestrand reacted. His eyes widened for a moment and then they met mine. I could tell, from the one glance, that he didn’t think it was just a dream.

“I see,” Whitestrand mumbled.

“Listen to me,” Kai whispered, his breath hot on my ear. He was speaking only to me. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his cheek. “Even if there
was
a possibility that something might happen, it’s just a maybe. One possibility in thousands. I will
not
let them take you and they will not get the better of us. We have more fighters here than you could possibly imagine. It will
not
happen, do you hear me?”

“Okay,” I whispered. I didn’t feel completely better but I did feel a little calmer. I felt his palm caressing the other side of my face and I tried to breathe evenly.

“What happened?” I heard Kieran ask. My eyes snapped open and I remembered that I hadn’t talked to him since I’d come back. Kai let his arms drop and he stood up straight.

“Aili had a prophetic dream,” Whitestrand answered.

Kieran eyed Kai and then me, his eyes mistrustful but curious, not angry.

“Is it something to worry about?” Kieran asked me.

I nodded even though Kai said, “No.”

“Come on,” Kieran extended his hand towards me. “Come talk to me.”

I could see my brother was in schmooze mode and leader mode all at the same time. I could tell he wanted to talk to me anyway, but this was about my dream, first. He led me away from the group and without Kai there, I felt the panic returning full force. I tried to reign it in as best as I could.

“What did you see?” Kieran asked me. I told him everything. About how in the dream I had known what was happening, I had been aware that it was Kai’s dream made real. I described the pain of the lashings, and how it felt as if I’d been there for weeks being tortured and deprived of food and water. I described my knowledge of what would happen after my death. Kieran listened in patient silence and when I was done he nodded. “I think it would be unwise to pass that off as just a dream even though I have never heard of someone seeing the future before.”

“Only mine,” I whispered.

“We won’t let them take you, anyway. If they come for you, we’ll fight,” Kieran told me.

I shook my head. “That’s what Kai told me, too.”

“Smart man,” Kieran grumbled. He stopped walking at our slow pace through the camp and turned to face me. “Aili, I’m sor…”

“Stop,” I held up my hand to interrupt him. “I know you’re sorry but there’s nothing to be sorry for. Why do you really not like the idea of us together?”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Kieran told me. It seemed like the truth to me.

“Do you
really
think that he would ever hurt me?” I asked my brother seriously.

“No, actually,” He shrugged. “After you left and Tali wouldn’t talk to me, I did a lot of thinking and realized that Kai is probably the best person in the world for you to be with. He would sooner die himself than let anything happen to you. I’ve seen the way he’s protected you since you’ve been here, even in ways you don’t know about.”

“So everything is okay? No more fighting?” I asked.

“No more fighting,” Kieran agreed. Then we started back towards the meadow and breakfast, and he asked, “So there is an ‘us’ between you two then?”

“I don’t know what to call it, but if that’s what you want to label it as, sure, go ahead,” I shrugged.

I saw Kieran nod but neither of us said anything else. I could tell he was glad I’d come back and that was enough to forget about almost everything else. My dream stayed with me, even as conversation went a million different ways during breakfast. Everyone seemed to know I was lost in my head again and they let me be, even Kai. It was strange to be surrounded by people and yet feel so completely alone.

There was something soothing about it though. I didn’t let myself go completely, or so I thought. When I came back to reality I found that I was alone except for Whitestrand and Pio. They were sitting on the ground, marking up a book. I looked around for a moment for Kai but I knew he had left. I wondered if he’d said goodbye or if he had known better than to try.

“What’re you up to down there?” I asked.

Pio and Whitestrand both looked up at me in surprise. Had they forgotten I was sitting less than five feet away from them? That was a disturbing thought.

“My teacher is sick so Daddy is teaching today!” Pio told me happily.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, getting up from the bench. I took a seat on the ground beside Pio and looked down at his book. There were scribbles on the page, wiggly letters. Pio’s name.

“Hey, that’s pretty good!” I told him enthusiastically. I could see my compliment did wonders for him. He grinned widely, showing a missing tooth on the bottom. I nodded towards him, “And you lost a tooth.”

“Yep. The same night you left on your trip!” Pio told me happily.

“Well that’s cool. Did it hurt?” I asked him.

“Nope! It just fell out!” Pio said as he went back to trying his name again on a lower line. He was gripping the pencil in his fist, jamming the thick paper with the lead.

“Can I show you a trick?” I asked Pio.

“Sure,” He shrugged. I gently took the pencil from him and then adjusted his hand, placing the pencil between his first and middle fingers and over the webbing on his thumb. Then I guided his hand down to the page, tightening my grip where he needed to hold the pencil firmly, and I guided his name out on the page with him. It came out a lot smoother.

“Wow,” Pio said, awed. When I took my hand away I smiled at him.

“Why don’t you try it by yourself and see if it’s easier?” I asked him, motioning towards the paper. He nodded and tried it. It didn’t come out quite as smoothly as when I was helping, but it was still a vast improvement from what it had been before.

“That
was
easier,” Pio agreed. Then he tried out all of the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower cases.

Whitestrand and I both watched him in silence. He was so deeply concentrated on his writing, it was adorable.

“They’re having a meeting,” Whitestrand told me, somehow knowing I was wondering where Kai and Kieran had gone to.

“Oh,” I nodded as if I understood.

“We have more visitors,” Whitestrand said.

“Zeal… Um, Clashers?” I wondered.

“Mhm,” He agreed. “I think they know you.”

“Impossible, any of them I met are all dea…” I started to say and then I looked wide-eyed at Pio. He wasn’t paying any attention at all, fortunately.

Whitestrand shook his head. “It’s part of who you are, Aili. There’s no point in running away from the past.”

“Anyway,” I coughed a little. “Should I be worried?”

“Nope,” Whitestrand said simply, then he looked at Pio. “You’re good at that, by the way.”

“Writing?” I furrowed my eyebrows at Pio’s progress. Now he was trying to write my name. It was so cute. He was spelling it E-Y-E-L-E-E.

“No, teaching,” Whitestrand corrected me.

I shrugged. “I did a few sessions for up and comers.”

We fell back into silence as Pio kept working hard. He had his tongue sticking out as he concentrated. It made me want to laugh, but I didn’t want to distract him so I just smiled to myself and shook my head.

“Okay, okay,” Whitestrand said suddenly after Pio tried his name again a few times. “What else do you need to practice?”

“Fighting,” Pio answered simply.

“I’m sorry,
what
?” I asked, gasping.

“They have to learn how to fight, Aili,” Whitestrand told me.

I shook my head. I knew it but I didn’t want to picture sweet, adorable Pio fighting. It was even scarier after last night’s dream.

“You can show me something,” Pio shrugged, looking at me.

“I don’t think so, kiddo,” I told him, ruffling his hair.

“Why not?” He whined.

“I don’t want you fighting,” I told him honestly.

“But I have to know how and you’re the best, aren’t you? All the other kids would be so jealous!” Pio said, getting excited at the prospect now.

“Fine, I’ll teach you something about fighting,” I said, sitting up straight and wiping off my hands. I folded my legs under me and Pio mocked me. I put my palms down on my thighs and stared straight at him.

“What now?” He asked.

“Now you close your eyes and you listen to all the sounds around you. It’s called meditating,” I told him.

“But that’s not fighting! That’s sitting there!” Pio complained.

“And why do you think the best fighters
are
the best? Because they can hear something like an arrow flying or swords cutting through the air. Being able to listen clearly without getting distracted and being completely calm is a big part of fighting that only the best know,” I told him.

“Oh,” He answered. I watched as he closed his eyes and made an obvious effort at listening.

“You need to breathe calmly,” I told him. For a while, Pio continued fidgeting, scratching at his leg or nose, and then after a while his breathing slowed and he stopped moving around.

Pio sat so still and calmly, listening to the world moving around him, that it was almost like he was in a trance. I knew the feeling. Becoming one with the world around you, it could be peaceful. I could see that Pio was learning that important lesson now.

At first I wanted to make sure Pio was good and calm and really doing the exercise, but it was mesmerizing to watch him, to listen to the world around me so that I could hear what he would be hearing and wondering if the faint sounds were things he could hear yet. We sat there for so long in our silent meditation that it was a shock to the system when people started showing up in the meadow to eat their lunch.

“Hey buddy, it’s lunch time,” Whitestrand nudged his son gently. Pio’s eyes popped open and he looked at me with awe. Neither of them said anything else as they stood up and headed to one of the food huts.

As more and more people filtered into the meadow, and I got my lunch and returned, Kieran and Kai still didn’t show up. I looked at Tali, but she didn’t look worried so I tried not to think about it. I was trying to distract myself when a woman stepped up in front of me. I had seen her around the camp before but I couldn’t remember anything specific, like if she’d hated me before the arrow incident.

“Ms. Renault?” She asked me, her tone cautious.

“Aili,” I said, standing up and extending my hand towards her.