A Consuming Fire, page 3
“Will we be protected by a faulty offering?” Arbiter Thorn asked. “Will we be spared the judgment of our god, if his sacrifice no longer lives? His wakefulness and displeasure will surely spread across Albion as he wanders from the mountain, and one day, he will reach this village. When he does, how great and terrible will be his coming. How many lives will be lost as he visits righteous judgment on the world and our wood. Unless…”
The Arbiter paused, and in the silence, Anya watched. Despite the hesitation, there was a certainty about him, and for the first time she realized that his words were never improvised, but always rehearsed. Behind him, Ilva stood impassive, eyes withering in their sockets and skin sloughing from her bones at a preternatural rate.
“… unless another brave girl will step forward, and offer herself for the good of Weatherell, and all of Albion besides?”
There it was, the request spoken as if it pained him, and as if it had only just occurred to him to ask. But Anya was sure he must have spent weeks planning for another departure with the selectmen. There were provisions to assemble, a new leather band to be made, travel alms to collect. Sending a Weatherell girl out from the wood was no momentary decision.
No one seemed willing to move, or speak. Only Anya found it in her to glance about, for she was an empty shell in the wake of her wild grief over Ilva, impervious to pain or fear or shock at the sight of her sister’s ghost. But she saw pain and fear aplenty when she scanned the faces of the people of Weatherell.
Every family with daughters huddled closer to one another, their gazes haunted, their lips pressed into thin, anxious lines. They’d all been able to breathe in the months since Ilva left. The shadow of this year, the eighteenth year between sacrifices, had passed over. Ilva had taken it with her, wrapping it about herself like a shroud.
Now the shadow had fallen again, and for the second time in that cursed year, the unimaginable happened.
First, Ilva had gone to the mountain and died for her trouble.
And now, when the Arbiter spoke, no girl stepped forward.
Silence washed over the clearing. Never in Weatherell’s long history had an Arbiter called for a sacrifice and failed to find a willing offering. But never in that history had a girl gone out to the god and lost her life for it, either.
Anya knew why. She knew it with a deep, heartsick ache. It was not Ilva who’d been found wanting and failed. It was Anya herself, who had both the temperament and virtue necessary for an offering, yet through conviction and cowardice had not gone in her sister’s stead, and had lost her as a result.
Arbiter Thorn shifted his weight from one foot to the other as the silence dragged on and grew agonizing. Even Anya’s heart, torn to pieces in her chest, began to beat a little faster. Then the Arbiter spoke again and confirmed her suspicions, that he had planned for this moment, that he had known the girls of Weatherell would need a push. Behind him, Ilva had begun to speak, her half-skeletal mouth moving in a soundless refrain.
“Selectman Callis?” the Arbiter said, his voice little more than a murmur. “Would you step forward and read the account you brought back last week, from out beyond the trees?”
Selectman Callis did as the Arbiter asked. He was tall and burly and served the village as a blacksmith. No one had thought anything of it when the week before, he’d vanished for a few days—the selectmen were always coming and going, maintaining the ties between Weatherell and those of the Elect who served in the world outside the wood.
Now Callis drew a folded and smudged sheet of parchment from his pocket and smoothed it out. Anya could see the unreadable marks marching across the page—it had been written in Divinitas, just like Arbiter Thorn’s holy book and the strange words inked into Sylvie’s skin. As such, not a girl or a woman in Weatherell could read them. They spoke only Brythonic, and from childhood learned instead the branching runes of plainscript, which were used elsewhere in Albion and might be of service if they were to become one of the offertory girls.
“ ‘From First Arbiter Thelon of Banevale,’ ” Selectman Callis read, “ ‘the city in the shadow of the god.
“ ‘Dearly beloved brothers and sisters of the wood, we received your living sacrifice this spring with joy. As we’ve done for centuries, we offered her whatever hospitality she required and treated her honorably. We found her acceptable, if a little enamored of the world and her surroundings. But it is no surprise that a spotless lamb from Weatherell would find much distraction beyond the borders of your wood. In spite of that, your offering stayed the course and climbed the mountain, and presented herself to the god.
“ ‘But there she was found wanting, and the terrible and righteous divinity we serve refused her. We can only assume that in the course of her journey, your lamb fell afoul of some temptation and sullied herself in a way the god could not abide.
“ ‘Since then, we have lived stricken with fear. Our god grows restless now, without the accustomed sweetness of self-sacrifice to maintain his rest. His fire can be seen on the mountaintop nightly, and unless a fit offering is made, the last of his bonds will surely be loosed before long. I fear we cannot bear the full weight of his impending judgment, and beg of you to send another sacrifice. A pure-hearted girl, who will not turn aside from her task.
“ ‘Make haste, brothers and sisters. The god’s anger builds and his righteousness is a consuming fire. Should he go unsated, none will be able to stand before his touch.’ ”
The last words of the letter seared into Anya like a brand as she stood far away from the fabled peak of Bane Nevis and the dreadful god who dwelt at its summit. She thought of Ilva, dying before her very eyes, and of the things her sister had said.
He touched me, and I knew it was the beginning of the end.
I gave him nothing, because he took from me instead.
Inside Anya, the fire that had flared to life as she broke up her sister’s bones grew brighter, hotter, unendurable. It licked at her insides, until she was sure she must go up in smoke. All around her, the people of Weatherell still stood, ashamed but immoveable.
For centuries, they’d sent their girls to the god. But it seemed that even in Weatherell, there was a limit to what could be endured, and while the village could bear up under living sacrifices, death was a step too far.
“We will draw lots,” the Arbiter said at last, impatience and frustration creeping into his voice.
A firestorm raged beneath Anya’s quiet exterior as she looked from one face to another, at the grief and fear, the resignation and remorse awakening among the villagers of Weatherell as they realized that they were on the cusp of breaking with age-old tradition. Of separating themselves from generation after generation of girls who’d gone willingly to the god.
Echoes crowded Anya’s fevered mind.
None can stand before his touch.
I gave him nothing, because he took from me instead.
Be brave, little moon. I know you’ll find your courage without me.
A whispering grew audible in the clearing. An eerie, cold sound like wind in bare branches, and it took Anya a moment to realize that the words Ilva’s watching ghost was speaking had become audible.
Don’t go, she repeated, over and over, desperation in her plea as she twined her skeletal hands together. Don’t let anyone else go.
Ilva’s words fell on the fire blazing in Anya like lamp oil, burning away the constant chill of fear. For the briefest moment, she felt a flash of courage and clarity, and saw the path ahead—a way to honor the last request Ilva had made. To put an end to the wrongness Anya had always felt when she thought of the god of the mountain and his long line of tormented girls. Without hesitation, Anya took a step forward. Leather and iron brushed against her sleeve, but Willem’s mechanical hands were powerless to hold her. She took another step.
Every villager had fixed their eyes on her, and though under other circumstances, their attention would have mortified Anya, this day she did not care. This day, she’d already swallowed her ration of shame.
Crossing the clearing, Anya knelt before Arbiter Thorn. Behind her, a collective sigh went up. A letting out of the breath, in relief over being spared yet again. Before her, the Arbiter’s face was unreadable, and beyond him, the graying strands of Ilva’s flesh were knitting back together in a gruesome semblance of life.
“I will go to the god of the mountain,” Anya said softly. “My sister was meant to serve us as a living sacrifice. But as she was unable to satisfy the god, I will serve in her stead. I will finish what she began.”
Inside Anya, the firestorm still raged—a bitter inferno of sorrow and trust betrayed. It slicked her palms with unspent fury. But she bowed her head before the Arbiter, knowing what was required of a Weatherell girl. To be strength clothed in meekness, determination bent on brokenness, purity tempered with self-destruction.
When the villagers applauded her bravery, the sound was muted and uncertain, muffled by the pines. Anya got to her feet and turned. She searched for her mother in the little crowd, unsure of what she’d find in Willem’s face. Grief. Anger. Relief, perhaps, to be freed of her weakest daughter.
But she found none of that. Willem had gone.
And when she turned back to the Arbiter, Ilva’s ghost had gone too, leaving her bereft once more.
* * *
All the rest of the morning, Anya wandered in the trackless forest. She carried those unholy flames inside her that had lit when she grieved so fiercely over her sister. They burned harsh and hot, and Anya feared that if she touched another living soul, she might set them ablaze.
At noon she settled under a spreading oak near a stream. She still carried Ilva’s last bone, clutched tight against her skin. Now she took it out and turned it over in her hands. As she did, the fire in her burned hotter, until she thought it might send sparks snapping from her fingertips.
There was only the faintest whisper of Ilva in this fractured, yellow-white thing. It had been a part of her, yes, but she was in it no longer. And Anya’s desire to keep it whole dissipated, going up like smoke before the heat inside her. Scrambling over to the stream, she chose two river rocks and retreated to the base of the oak tree. Then she began to work.
She broke up Ilva’s final bone with care and precision, shaping it into a strong, pointed shard. Then she ran it over the rock time and again, honing the shard to a cutting edge. With each careful stroke, a little of the fire in her burned lower and became more manageable. She did not stop until she’d fashioned herself a long, slender knife that gleamed like pearl, with a dull end that could be wrapped in cordage for a handle.
Only once night had fallen and the moon tangled itself among the branches of the trees did Anya pocket her bone knife and turn for home. She slipped through Weatherell’s village proper and in at the door of the cottage where once upon a time Ilva had lived with her and Willem.
It was pitch-black and cold inside. Anya knelt before the hearth and began the task of laying a fire. She’d done it so many times before that she’d no need of a lantern—her hands easily found what was required.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Willem said from somewhere in the dark. “I swear to the god, Anya Astraea, handless though I may be, I will smother you in your sleep if you spend the night under this roof. Your sister leaving was bad enough, but I will kill you myself before you go to him.”
Anya struck sparks from her patch box. With a small, serpentine hissing noise, the tinder she’d laid out caught the sparks, and light flared in the darkness. Quicker than ever before, the fire took. Anya waited patiently until she was sure the flames would not die out. Then she got to her feet and turned, facing her mother.
Willem stood with an all-too-familiar anger etched across her face. Firelight picked out the white network of scars that spread across the bare stumps of her wrists.
“I will kill you,” Willem said again, and it wasn’t a threat, but a promise. Was it the god’s influence working in her, Anya wondered, that made her say such things, or was it only her own implacable nature?
“You won’t,” Anya answered quietly. She went to one of the cottage’s back corners and took out the canvas pack Ilva had brought to the mountain. Anya set to work filling it with provisions that had already been left at the cottage for her: hard cheese and apples and dried mutton. From among her own belongings, she added a length of twine to wrap the handle of her knife.
Willem watched. As she saw the deft way in which Anya moved and the certainty in her posture, confusion grew in Willem’s eyes.
“What is it you’re doing, child?” she asked, with something like hunger in her voice.
Anya smiled a faint, bitter smile. She’d known it wouldn’t be long before her mother sensed the thing that had flared to life within her.
“What are you doing, little moon?” Willem asked again, taunting Anya with Ilva’s old endearment.
Anya stuffed a blanket into the pack. “You tell me, Mother. What am I doing?”
Willem stared at her, dark eyes following her daughter’s every move. “I don’t know. But I do know this—there was sacrifice in your sister. There was righteousness in her. I could see it, no matter her faults or her foolishness. I see none of that in you.”
Anya stopped her work. She let her hands fall still and turned to her mother, so that they stood face to face in the ruddy firelight.
“I’m going to be a Weatherell girl,” she said. “Like you were. Like Ilva. Like Philly and Sylvie and all the girls before us. I will leave the wood, and walk the length of Albion, and journey to the god on his mountain.”
“And when you get there?”
“When I get there,” Anya continued, blood and bones aflame inside her, “I will kill him. Because he cannot be righteous after what he did to Ilva and you and all the others, and I can’t find a way to feel guiltless, not so long as he lives. If I’d been brave or good, I’d never have let Ilva leave here, but I couldn’t have let anyone else go either—I need a way to make that right. I need… a penance, to take this guilt from me.”
For a moment, Willem was silent. Then she took a single step back.
“Are you certain?” she asked. “Because in Weatherell or beyond the wood, folk will string you up for blasphemy if they learn the truth behind your going. The Elect will kill you, and make your very name a curse.”
“Vengeance is mine,” Anya said, quoting the Arbiter’s holy book. “I will repay.”
There was a sound of burning in her words, a taste of fire on her tongue. “I’ve never been sure of much, but I’m sure of this. I swear it on Ilva’s bones.”
Silence again. But when Willem did speak, her voice caught Anya short. There was something in her tone the girl had never heard there before.
Approval.
“Good,” Willem said. “Very good, my little moon.”
This time the endearment was no mockery, and tears stung Anya’s eyes to think that this was what she must do to earn her mother’s regard.
THREE Out of the Woods and into the World
Anya’s departure from Weatherell was as unlike Ilva’s as it could possibly be. There were no long weeks leading up to it as the last of the spring flooding receded, leaving dry forest earth in its wake. Nor was there a gathering of villagers to see her off, as they’d done for Ilva. Instead, Anya stepped out of the cottage door before dawn with her sister’s pack on her shoulders and called to Philomena, who was up and crossing the open ground of the village proper, returning from the distant shared privies.
“Philly.”
Philomena stopped, raising the lantern she held. She smiled at the sight of Anya, but it did not reach her eyes.
“Anya, my love. What can I do for you? Surely you’re not off already? It’s not—it’s not too late to change your mind.” Philomena’s gaze faltered, as if she was ashamed to be suggesting such faithlessness but unable to keep from speaking the words.
By way of an answer, Anya held out her hands. In one, there was a strip of thin crimson leather embossed with Divinitas script. In the other was a needle and thread.
“I’ve no one to sew on my band,” she said simply.
At a gesture from Philomena, Anya knelt on the forest floor, feeling the knees of her trousers growing damp as Philly stitched the ends of the leather strip together at the back of her neck. Before her, Ilva’s ghost wavered into visibility bare inches away, kneeling just as Anya did, with small white worms crawling among the hollow places between her fraying skin and bones.
“They told your sister, but I’m not sure if they reminded you—this band will mark you out to others,” Philomena said, her voice and her hands both gentle. “It will speed you on your way. You need never stop to earn your keep while you’re wearing it—people out there will know you’re for a sacrifice. They’ll give you shelter, and whatever you need for supplies, so that you can hurry on to the mountain. And the Elect will be able to keep watch over you—to ensure your safety until you reach journey’s end. There are unscrupulous people beyond the wood. Lords and their lackeys, all hungry for power, but they’ve never yet proved a match for the Elect.”
Anya stared down at the ground, the back of her neck prickling with discomfort beneath Philomena’s fingers. No matter where she went, she’d be lying about her purpose from the moment anyone laid eyes on her. The thought rankled—Anya had always been more scrupulously truthful than Ilva. Her sister perpetually landed the pair of them in trouble, only to talk herself back out of it again with charm and wit and half-truths. It was Anya who quailed at deception, and if a lie would save her, she’d bite it back and take her punishment in silence.
But Anya was still angry and it burned this newest twist of guilt away. She let the anger force her upright, onto her feet. With a faint choking tug, Philomena severed the thread and left her band whole, a bright red circlet around her neck.
“I’ll look after your mother,” Philomena promised Anya. “You won’t have to worry about her while you’re gone.”
