Chapter Eight. An Evil Comes for Me and Thee.
Eight
An Evil Comes for Me and Thee.
As I scramble forward, my soft shoes struggle for purchase in the sand and my cloak slows me down even after I grab its folds and yank them out of the way.
The high-pitched sounds of yelling get louder as I track them along the face of the Fulcrum, and I worry about the women, whoever they are.
Who would be out this late and this far from the village?
At least here in the open, there is a little more light left—
From the corner of my eye, I see a shadow coming at my head, and I duck so that the bird of prey doesn’t get me.
Except it’s not a bird. Stumbling off balance, I pitch face-first into the loose ground and roll over just as a black arm-like extension from one of the Fulcrum’s bands swipes at me and then retracts into the swirl.
Whatever it is comes at me again, and I shove myself back farther, kicking up sand, not knowing how far the reach is.
Fates, the contamination is alive and prescient, a predator made of black magic, and it throws off more of the black snow, flurries of evil falling all around.
“Forsake thee!” I shout as I make the sign of the crescent moon over my heart.
I glance at the ragged tree line, but then the screams pierce my consciousness again. Bursting into more paddling movement, I refuse to give in to my own fear as I go round the curvature of the Fulcrum—
The tableau that’s revealed makes no sense, and the components become apparent in a series of focal points—the first of which is that it’s not women or girls. It’s a trio of young boys, aged about ten and two. And they’re not in danger.
They are the tormentors.
A dragon is down in the sand, its iridescent scales dulled to a sickly white, one wing twisted at a bad angle, its long snout open and gray tongue lolling as it struggles to breathe.
“Again!” one of the boys shouts. “Throw another!”
The blond-haired of the three goes over to a dead cangjas, tears off a branch, and advances in a kind of dance, bouncing on the balls of his leather boots. His friends cackle as the dragon jerks back and its muzzle twitches.
“Do it! Do it—”
The boy moves fast, rushing for the great beast’s head. With a savage blow, he hits at its eye. There is a wince of pain, a groan, and the dragon paws weakly at the sand—
“Stop it!” I yell. “Right now!”
The boys wheel toward me, and instantly the guilty shock on their faces is replaced with the disdain they’ve been taught to have for me.
“She’s no bother,” the blond one says. “She’s just poxed!”
The other two fall into a singsong taunt I’ve heard before. “Poxed, you are, poxed, you are, ugly and poxed, you are, you are—”
I march toward them, rage making me forget who I am in the hierarchy. “If you hit that dragon again—”
“You’ll do what?” the blond boy taunts. “Give me the Pox? My father will put you in the stocks!”
Flushed with excitement, he dances around the dragon, hitting the creature again and again with the stick, until it no longer flinches or twitches. It just lies where it’s fallen from the sky, dying slowly, circled by a fly that degrades its last moments.
“Stop it, right this moment—”
“You can’t make us!” one of the others says as he goes for a branch and joins his friend.
The two run laughing around the dragon, the magnificent beast closing its eyes with resigned exhaustion—
Riding a piercing fury, I put my right palm out. “You will leave him alone or I will curse you!”
All of the boys freeze, even the blond instigator who’s by the dragon’s wounded wing. And as they stare at me in total shock, I lower the tone of my voice, some other part of me breaking free and attacking.
“You know who I am,” I growl. “You know what I do. Leave the dragon alone.”
The branch falls from the blond boy’s hand—
From out of the Fulcrum, one of the contaminated bands whips free. Before I can warn the child, before the other boys see it, the blond tormentor is wrapped in a fist of black sand and plucked from the ground like a weed.
With a high-pitched scream, he flails against the hold, his arms and legs spinning in the air, the sound he’s making akin to what had called me to him and his friends, except now it’s what I’d thought it was:
He’s in mortal danger.
And he continues to beg for help as he’s drawn higher and higher, not as the miniature man he was trying to be, mimicking the worst expression of male aggression, but as a bairn of his rightful age—
“You’re a demon!” the boy who’s stayed at the tree line yells at me. “I’m going to tell them all! This is your doing!”
As he runs off, the other friend tries to help and gets too close. He’s caught just as the blond boy is swallowed into the black sand like a meal, those rippling screams fading into the roar as the next victim’s start.
Bolting forward, I skate by the dragon, and jump up to grab the remaining boy’s foot. Locking on with both hands, I hold on for everything I’m worth, and am slung around like a fish on a line, my cloak blooming out as it catches air.
“Heeeeeeeelp!” The boy’s tortured pleading is the stuff of nightmare. “Help me! Help—”
“I’ve got you, Fergus!”
We have history, he and I, even if I’m the only one who knows this. After he was born, he struggled for his breath, and I’m the only reason he’s lived long enough to die here at the Fulcrum.
And die he’s going to.
I lose my strength and his shoe comes with me. In the instant we part, my eyes go straight to his, and the electrical bolt that sluices through my body precedes a pain I’ve never known before. Searing, tearing, penetrating— I writhe as I plummet to the ground and he’s pulled into the black band.
My landing is hard, the breath knocked out of my lungs, my head kicking back such that there’s a ringing impact at the base of my skull.
There’s no time for recovery or to try to race off.
The evil comes for me next. A black spool of sand licks out at me, and I kick at it as I crab-walk backward for the tree line, my hood sloping forward so I can’t see.
If I can get among the dead cangjas, I’ll have those trunks to hold onto—
My leg is snagged and I’m dragged toward the Fulcrum. I paddle for any kind of grip on anything, but sand slips through my grasping fingers and then I’m off the ground again.
That’s when I see the horned face in the black band.
Something horrible stares at me like it knows me.
Sorrelllllllllllll …
As my name wafts out, I scream and know there will be no getting free of this.
The evil is claiming me as if it’s been waiting for the chance.