Chapter 20 The Burning of the Strike
THE BURNING OF THE STRIKE
THE SUN WAS unusually bright, the kind of bright that bounced from one leaf to another and left glowing spots like white seashells along the forest floor.
The wind illuminated the world with movement, and sitting on the outcropping of rocks, Baker saw the city down below.
She understood why Peter had enjoyed this perch, especially on days like today.
She had been hesitant to leave the Bleeding Grin without Peter after he’d taken her in. With all of the Strike having eyes on her and all the slaves having known her, the world outside had felt less safe.
Lately, she’d ventured out, emboldened by her growth, her training, and her speech. Apart from Peter, she’d still maintain some semblance of strength.
It was only on this perch where Baker could reflect back on the world of the Bleeding Grin as if it were a separate part of her.
Every year her mind felt elevated, while her body submitted to another broken bone.
She felt stretched between torment and some kind of enlightenment that only Peter seemed privy to.
She felt most like herself here, in the woods, in a timelessness where her imagination took her into an ocean in the trees, the churning leaves like waves above, tossed by the gales.
Below it all, she was just another creature floating in the tide.
If life were an ugly wound, then nature was its golden stitches.
Baker once yearned to be a queen or a knight, now she knew it was a blessing to simply be a part of the earth.
She ate the last piece of an orange, coiling up the peels and cradling them up near her nose for a fresh breath before tossing them off. She eased closer to the path, feet silent on the rocks as her hair hung in a loose leather tie over her shoulder.
She crossed the road and slipped into the woods, following the path she’d made on her own through frequent visits to the perch.
With brown leather clothes and calloused hands, she looked like a farmer’s daughter and would blend into the path as such, but there was something sacred about the privacy of the path.
It was a thinking path, and as she walked back to the walled city, she felt her mind traveling back into a tunnel of thought.
After several minutes, a glimmer of alarm through her senses drew her mind back to the present.
She stopped and looked through the trees, realizing they’d gone quiet. She turned on her path, and behind her, idle on the road as if cut from reality, was the silhouette of a black cat.
Amiel.
Baker swallowed, watching with the eerie sense that this stalking was of a slightly different nature than the rest. Time stopped, not because of her panic, but because in some dormant sense in her brain there had been a watch, counting down, second by second, to this moment.
There were times she knew Amiel watched her from a distance, prowling through the trees, sitting on a branch, hiding beneath a rock. However, Amiel had remained hidden because under Peter’s purview, she’d never risk an attack.
They stared at each other on the path, Amiel appearing now in clear sight, and in a confrontational way.
This could be training. Sure. It had been before. Once before. Baker had the scarring to prove it.
Baker darted into the woods, drawing her knife as she dove from a nearby ledge and threw herself down into a dried riverbed, racing hard and fast for a shortcut back to the city.
One turn led to the next, trees racing by, knife flashing with each catch of the sunlight before a black figure pounced from the trees to her right.
She ducked and rolled, dodging the claws and picking up her pace.
The panther was chasing her, Baker spinning into a clearing with the knife drawn as she faced her enemy.
Amiel snarled as they both circled each other. What had caused Amiel to hunt her now?
Baker feared often that she would one day be prey.
No. Peter would never have that. Wounds perhaps, but he would never let Amiel kill her.
She was precious to him.
Amiel pounced again, Baker dodging and delivering a blow of the knife, cutting Amiel’s chest. The hate between them was palpable, the history and the pain palpable.
She knew Amiel had always wanted to eat her, eat her more than the rest the moment Peter had laid eyes on her.
Baker hissed and Amiel hissed back and pounced again, changing shape into a lion.
Baker managed to dodge, but as she turned, the lion was now a bear and the claws swept so quickly toward her head, that she could only bend her shoulder up to protect it.
The claws gnarled through her shoulder and hurled her into the closest tree.
The bear was on her with a crushing power, and as the weight settled over her body and Amiel’s teeth sunk into her shoulder, breast, and across her ribs, she screamed.
Every blinding second, she waited for Amiel to leave, or for Peter to stop her from going too far.
Baker could sense the lethality of the wounds, feel the hatred in every tooth.
The pain was so severe with every bite that all of her training now felt like one long joke. Her knife was useless.
Every weapon ever put in her hand, all of the training was only ever a misdirection, because as the teeth dragged through her chest, it seemed this had always been her fate.
Amiel had not been training her.
Amiel had been emboldening her to leave the city, to stray too far from Peter.
Baker’s bloodied hands gripped the bear’s head with futile resistance as with massive strength the teeth cracked her ribs and she screamed again, like an animal.
Where was Peter?
Amiel was torn off of her and cast back against the opposite trees.
Baker’s hands hovered over the wound, body propped up against the tree, blood pouring through her fingers.
A figure walked past her, another bear of equal size and Amiel roared.
The lighter bear roared back and they fought furiously, before Amiel’s animal burst into bees and scattered back into the air.
Baker stared into space as the scene began to feel fake and distant. The light bear morphed into the shape of a man she barely recognized. He walked up to her, knelt in front of her, and ran his fingers across her face, combing her hair back.
“Ella,” he whispered, “can you find your way out?”
She stared at his face as her mind tried to reach back for some recognition of where she was. The man was gone in a blink as a wave of pain swallowed her.
Somehow, she knew that no one had actually saved her. Amiel had eventually left her there to bleed a slow death.
Peter. She had to find Peter. He would help her. He could save her life.
Baker hoisted her body up, urgency surging through her and guiding her back to the path.
She leaned from tree to tree. Her body was soaked in blood by the time she reached the ledge, hoisting herself up against a pine and looking over the city.
She could hear the chaos in the city, smoke rising up around the edges of the gates.
Despite it being late afternoon, the gates were already closed.
Something was wrong. She had to find Peter.
She stumbled down the ledge back to the city. She knew a secret entrance. She could get inside.
She had to find Peter.
She was suddenly divorced from this frantic moment again. She knew she’d made it back to the city. She remembered walls of fire and panic.
The Bleeding Grin was rife with discord. She’d followed the yellow gates to Peter’s study, to the white table. But had she found him?
Ella. The man’s voice from before echoed again.
She was sitting in front of the tree again with her wounds, staring at the peculiar man with coal black hair and dark eyes. Rings of amber, like hot coals and honey, circled his irises as he watched her. Her memories rewound despite her trying to play them forward to the end.
His name surfaced on her lips. “Jackson.”
“Come out,” he replied.
She blinked and she was healed.
She blinked again and she was at the foot of a scorched, oil soaked Bleeding Grin.
Gasping for new breath in lungs free of pain, she searched the dark mire around them and remembered what had happened to her.
Lambspeak was kneeling beside her, his hand on her face again.
“You’re back, but you relived the worst of it, I’m afraid,” he said, searching her eyes. “It only took me a few seconds to find you, but the trappings of the mind are timeless, and you’ve been somewhere else for a while, replaying moments of your life at Amiel’s mercy. How is your head?”
She pieced her memories together, everything in her past so vivid it were as if it had never been forgotten. It seemed like she’d lived two separate lives, side by side, and they connected now like a disjointed puzzle. She was in pieces still, but now much less was missing.
“Ella was Marnie’s sister,” she choked. Perhaps she’d remembered it out of some fondness for the woman she’d left behind.
Before Lambspeak could answer, the earth caved in behind the Grin, forming a massive pit that spread as the surface imploded into the tunnels and caves below.
A monster of great stature crawled from the earth.
Like a thousand times before, she felt it was her time to face it, until Lambspeak rose beside her and placed himself between them.
He moved several paces ahead as the beast rose above them.
Its wings again spanned across the sky. In broad daylight this monster, feeding in the earth, rose and cast a black fog over the horizon.
“The past was your battleground, and you faced Amiel bravely, again and again. Now, think of nothing but the future, Ella. That battleground is mine,” Lambspeak spoke ahead of her as she saw the image of him flicker.
“Hold fast to it, and I’ll tether Amiel to her death there,” Lamsbpeak said before the monster’s great body lifted to the sky, and struck, jaws wide to eat them in a single bite.