Chapter 7
The village’s fiercest warriors assaulted the mountain. They battled the beast with fire, with arrows, with swords. And while they fought for Naia’s hand, they also fought for themselves, because as the weeks passed, the wells shrank to sluggish puddles. The villagers grew sallow. Desperate.
But not one man returned with a song. They came back trembling and bloodied, and every time, the beast roared from his mountain. His outrage echoed across the burnt valleys.
Naia stuck to her hut, her tongue as dry a frayed rope, her blood like syrup in her veins. The fruit and butter kept her belly from rumbling, but her family saved all the water for the baby. Even then, Kano’s cries weakened. No one had come up the hill in weeks.
Naia cursed herself daily. Her moment of selfishness had cost them everything.
On the evening Kano swallowed the last dusty drops of water, Naia took Granger’s Fairytales down from the shelf.
She laid a fire and hurled the book into the flames.
The words inside amounted to nothing but lies.
Stories meant for children. They’d brought her nothing but pain, and now her family teetered on the brink of starvation. Because of her.
Because she’d believed in this fairytale nonsense.
Her mother came to stand beside her, Kano in her arms.
“I’m so sorry, Mama.” Naia’s voice broke as she watched the pages blacken and curl. “I never should’ve used that salve. I should’ve had you save that money for food. Water. Something.”
Her mother made a soothing sound. “No, my sweet, I wanted you to have it.”
“But it didn’t actually change anything. Elias never saw past my face, in the end. None of them did.” Naia choked back a sob. She hated herself for her next question before she even asked it, because it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. Yet somehow, it did. “Who will ever see me for me?”
“I will,” her mother said fiercely. “Your father will. Kano, too.”
Naia loosed a bitter laugh. It wasn’t the answer she wanted.
“And,” her mother said, “whoever defeats the beast.”
Naia pressed her lips together. She knew what that meant. No one.
They stood in silence, and outside, the beast roared. The echoes reverberated from the sunbaked hillsides.
Her mother shuddered. “He sounds angry.”
Naia cocked her head. Maybe she’d never listened before, or not in the right way, but she didn’t hear anger. No, that bellow held something else. Something she recognized, because she’d lived with it all her life.
Loneliness.