Page 8 of Starside

I can’t deal with his disappointment. Not yet. So, I use all the excitement and celebration as a cover to slip away.

The roads are crawling with the king’s guard. Their presence isn’t unusual, given how close we are to their training grounds. Still, seeing them never fails to fill me with rage.

Four years ago, in the worst of the drought, I turned a corner with a bucket of water I had carried for three hours from one of the remaining working wells, only to see a guard leaned against the wall, high on hemdrake. He took one look at my dry, dirt-crusted face and straining white knuckles and said, “Here. Let me help you with that.”

“No, I—”

I tried to turn, but he lunged forward, ripped the bucket from my hands, and poured the water out, little by little, right in front of my face, onto the broken cobblestones. He smiled the entire time, my horrified expression reflected in his marred silver armor.

He threw the bucket to the ground and passed me by.

I learned to take better roads. This one is usually clear.

The group I encounter now steps in front of me, and my bones clench. Fury alights in my stomach.

When they see the ash arc on my brow, though, they back away. They must have been instructed not to mess with the king’s Questral challengers.

“Good luck,” one says, his voice full of whispered mirth. I hear something else, a murmur about how many challengers Raker will kill within the first hour, but I scurry away before I can hear anything more.

Choking on hot air, throat rough with thirst, I weave through the lines of caravans and carts that have been hauled from distant villages. I don’t stop until I reach the familiar patch of light brown soil at the base of the hill I visit almost daily, and then I begin to climb the weathered stone stairs.

Panic still bleeds through my chest like my body doesn’t know it’s not in danger anymore. My heart stutters. I stumble, before catching myself, blinded by flashes of the bloodshed—metal shattering, bodies going limp, blood turning the soil crimson, skin melting from bone in the flames. I grit my teeth, forcing the images into the dark corners of my mind as I focus on not twisting my ankle. I didn’t survive all of this to be taken down by some half-crumbled steps.

As a distraction, I start undoing my pins, slipping them into my pockets. My hair gets in the way in the forge, so I always part it down the middle, then make two braids against my scalp at either side that merge into a big one at the back of my head. It usually hangs loose down my spine, but today I curved it into the gap between braids, like threading a needle, around and around until I could pin it all against my scalp. Now, I unravel it, releasing some tension as my braid hangs down again.

When I finally reach the ruins at the top of the hill, the full weight of what I’ve just done crashes into me. My knees buckle, and I collapse onto what’s left of the white marble floor, heaving, hands trembling. Only when I can breathe normally again do I fully press myself against the floor, then turn onto my back to squint up at the storm-gray sky, what’s left of the ceiling in pieces around me. My pulse drowns out all my senses, beating loudly, as if declaring, I’m alive.

I did it. I can’t believe I did it.

I made it past the first step. I’m … going to the Culling.

I sit up. A breeze hisses through the columns of the ruins, prickling the ash arc on my brow.

This place is too broken to know what it once was, but a temple makes the most sense. Other than the Great Houses, the only structures built from materials this valuable are to honor the gods.

I found it years ago, while scavenging. At first, I wanted to try my best to finish the process of turning it to dust, because fuck them. But when the stone proved too hard to even make a dent, I tried to loot it. Everything of value was taken long ago … but there was one flash of color behind a massive rock. The border of what looked like a painting.

The idea of art, in a world of ruins … it seemed ludicrous. But it reminded me of finding wildflowers with my sister, years ago—a rare bloom in a wasteland. A spot of hope in a dark place.

So I came back every day for weeks, moving the stone blocking the color just inches at a time, until finally it was out of the way, revealing a landscape.

I instantly recognized the jagged horizon, formed by a mountain range like a serrated blade. I’d seen it multiple times.

Here.

I craned my neck past the wall and saw the same outline. This … was an ancient painting of this same view. But it might as well have been of another place entirely.

Because whereas this illustration was full of greens and blues, of forests and rivers and flower-brushed valleys—

Now I look out at endless dirt and ash.

“Why does the other side have all the magic?” I asked my mom when I was eight years old, while she combed through my hair, our nightly routine.

“We have our own magic,” she said, as she gently worked through a knot.

“We do?” I asked, eyes wide as I looked at her through the mirror.

She nodded. “We have the magic of warm socks, and nights playing cards by the hearth, and laughter, and love.”