Chapter Four #3
The screams fade. The sobs too. My body still moves, but I am no longer inside it.
A scent reaches me, familiar in a way I cannot place at first, something that might have once meant comfort, food, a hearth at dusk. It wraps around me gently, almost tender, and for a moment it does not feel wrong.
Then it settles, and I understand.
It is me.
The thought passes without shock. It does not strike the way it should, does not tear anything open. It simply is, and then it drifts away like the rest.
Voices reach me, distant now.
"Why does it take so long—"
"She should be gone by now—"
"Is it not enough—"
The words falter, swallowed by the same heaviness that takes everything else. I no longer try to understand them.
The fire is everywhere. It is constant. It has no beginning, no end. It is not something happening to me—it is something I exist within now, something that holds me in place where nothing else remains.
My body slackens against the rope. My breath slows. The panic that had clawed at me, that had filled every space inside me, loosens its grip. It fades, piece by piece, until there is only a quiet left behind, a stillness that settles deep and unmoving.
I do not call for her again. There is no need.
The darkness within the cloth is no longer suffocating. It is soft. It closes gently, like something meant to hold rather than trap.
The world recedes. The fire continues.
A sound cuts through the dark, a broken note dragged across the sky.
Then again. A croak.
It reaches me as though through water, distant and warped, threading through the haze that has swallowed everything else.
Something strikes me, sudden and solid.
It hits against my chest, my shoulders, pressing down with weight where there had only been heat.
For a moment I think it is another blow, another hand, another punishment I no longer have the strength to name, but then another impact follows, and another.
The sound surrounds me, chaotic, relentless, as though the sky itself has fallen.
The flames falter as air moves, and the heat changes.
I drift, caught somewhere between breath and nothing, and a thought forms slowly, gently, without fear.
This is it. I have gone.
I am no longer there.
But the world does not fall away.
Sound returns instead.
Gasps, rising through the square like something torn open. Voices overlap, startled, no longer certain of anything.
Then light presses against my eyes. The cloth is gone.
Air rushes over my face, cooler now, carrying smoke but not the same consuming heat. The world returns in fragments—smoke first, thick and curling, then shapes moving through it, dark against the brightness. My vision struggles to hold them still. Everything flickers, breaks, reforms.
Then I see what moves above me. Around me. Black wings, dozens of them.
They descend in a storm of feathers and motion, landing against me, their bodies pressing close, crowding the space where the fire had been.
Their wings beat and fold, layering over one another, smothering the flames beneath them.
I feel the shift of it—the fire dulled, forced back, its bite lessening, its reach broken.
They cover me. They hold me.
The heat recedes in uneven waves, still there, still burning in places too deep to fade, but no longer rising, no longer devouring with the same hunger. Smoke curls upward through feathers and air, thinner now, broken.
I lie beneath them, their weight real. I am still here.
"What is this—"
"Drive them off—"
"Get them away—"
Hands wave, stones scatter across the ground, but the birds do not break.
Wings lash outward, striking with sudden violence, claws catching cloth, skin, forcing the nearest men back with startled cries.
A beak snaps close to a face. A man cries out, stumbling back as one tears at him, another shielding me with its body, pressing closer, tighter.
The air fills with the violent rush of feathers, a living wall that does not yield.
"Back—back—"
"They are mad—"
"No—leave them—"
The attempts falter. The circle breaks. The fear shifts, turning outward now, away from me, toward the thing that has claimed me in their place.
I lie beneath them.
Their bodies cover mine, a living weight, warm and insistent, pressing against the places the fire has not yet taken, shielding what remains, shifting only to strike again when anyone dares come near.
Feathers brush my face, my throat, settling there as though I am something to be hidden, to be kept.
"She is already dead," someone says, lower now, trying to steady what cannot be steadied. "Let them have it. It is only a body now."
A pause.
"They’ll tear it apart by nightfall," another adds, uncertain, glancing toward the mass of wings. "We can come back later… when it’s done."
"If she lives—" someone else begins, then falters.
A man answers, quieter, almost to himself, "She will not. Not after that."
"Better not touch it now, anyway" a third murmurs. "If there is… anything left in her—if it lingers—"
Another voice, rough, uneasy, "If there is anything left… they will finish it."
The sound of shifting feet begins.
Boots scrape against the dirt. The weight of the crowd loosens, pulls away in fragments. No one steps close again. No one tries to reach through the wings that guard me.
"We will return at dawn," someone says, low. "When the birds are gone."
"And if they’re not—"
"They will be."
The square empties.
The sound of them fades—footsteps, voices, the scrape of movement dissolving into distance—until nothing remains but the soft settling of disturbed earth and the low, steady rustle of feathers.
The ravens do not move.
They remain where they have landed, pressed close, a living cover over me, their bodies rising and falling with small, quiet shifts. One brushes its head against my shoulder. Another tucks its wings tighter, sealing the last traces of heat beneath them.
I lie there, unable to move, barely able to breathe, the world reduced to darkness and the sound of them.
But I am not alone anymore.