Smoke and Bone

There was a new body hanging from the oak tree outside the village.

    Amahle’s forearm smoldered at the sight, the usual odorless smoke turning acrid and dark. She was far enough away that the tree was nothing more than a speck, but what the figure was was clear. She hadn’t seen one in years, but she knew without a doubt what it was. The body dangled from the tree like a spider choked by its own web, swaying listlessly in the autumn breeze. This far back it looked almost innocent, as if it were nothing more than a tablecloth or apron, stolen by the wind from a farmwife’s clothesline and tangled up in the branches. Up close, though, would be a different story. The body’s skin would have lost all color and blood would have pooled in the hands and feet, staining them with bruises, as if they had been berry picking when they’d fallen dead. Sometimes their eyes would be closed, but other times they would stay open, the eyelids cemented in place by death. She used to be afraid that they would blink, that as the body spun slowly in circles it would come back to life and grab her. They never did, though, never moved more than the breeze allowed them to. This body did seem bigger than normal; she wondered who in the town had been able to hide a Demonborn child for so long. She thought she had been the oldest, but this one was bigger than even she had been. Their Token must have been easy to hide.

    Amahle’s mother had always told her that her arm was beautiful, that her Token was a gift she should never be ashamed of. She always told her this just before she’d walk up the cellar steps, locking the door behind her and leaving Amahle alone below. It was dark and wet and full of spiders and roaches and shadows. Her father didn’t visit nearly as often. It wasn’t because he didn’t love her or care about her; even at a young age she could see the guilt in his eyes, the way he wouldn’t ever really look at her, the way his gaze glazed over and past her arm. But still he would come and sit next to her, far enough away that there was no chance they could touch, and tell her stories while looking out the one small, barred window the room had.  Stories about what the outside was like, about people that had come into the bakery, about how him and her mother had met. That one was her favorite. And at the end of every story, before he left to go lock the door, he would finally look at her, grab her face in both of his hands, smelling of yeast and sweat and a world she had never known, and tell her, “You are not a monster. And even if you are, you don’t have to act like one.”

    Amahle’s eyes started to well up and, without thinking, she wiped her eye with her left hand. Soot smeared across her cheek like warpaint, an inky dark gash underneath her eye. Her left forearm was black and shriveled, little more than bone and burnt flesh. The skin was cracked like a dried riverbed, a pulsating red glow emanating from between the cracks. That’s where the smoke came from, too, a constant stream of wispy haze. Amahle grunted, scrubbing her cheek clean with the sleeve of her tunic and pushing away the memories. This was no gift, and she knew it. It was a curse, a Token of evil. But even curses come with benefits.

    Amahle turned her back on the oak tree and the lone body on it, focusing her attention on the hives in front of her. She was headed into the village later and she’d have a chance to look at the body then, but right now the bees were getting impatient. With a mental effort, she reached into her shriveled arm, past the skin and into the bone, full of smoke and fire and shadow, and pushed. Like embers from a fire, her body dissolved, starting from her Token and creeping throughout the rest of her body, as if she had shattered and fell into the wind. Only her left forearm and her hair stayed solid, the rest of her moving in and out of the shape of her form in lazy swirls. She floated towards the beehives, crude mounds she had built out of river mud. She had found little use for this peculiar power the Token had granted her, but the smoke seemed to calm the bees, and this way she could just walk straight into their hive and harvest the honeycomb herself. Using the ragged claws on the end of her blackened fist, she carved out a few plates of honeycomb, then stepped back out of the hive. With a sound like hissing steam, she coalesced back into a solid form, the smoke rushing back into her arm. She put the honeycomb into the bag on her back, then set off into the woods, heading the opposite direction of the oak tree. Her mother would appreciate the beeswax, but she needed to change before she could enter the village.

    Deep in the woods, past the bend in the river and just a hundred paces or so behind the ravin, lay Amahle’s house. House was a generous word for it; it was more of a shanty, cobbled together by Amahle with fallen wood she had found around the forest. It wasn’t much, but it kept her dry and warm and hidden from people who might want her up in that tree. She went inside, taking off her tunic and breeches and reaching for a bundle of deep purple fabric in one of the corners. She used a long strip of black fabric to bandage up her left arm, then slipped on a purple robe, cinching the waist with a black sash. It was too big for her, but it’s what she had. The mask was next, nothing more than a smooth black oval with a painted golden eye in the center of it. Amahle had carved out two narrow slits for her eyes with a sharp rock, but it was still hard for her to see out of it. She tightened the mask to her face, then grabbed the metal censer and left.

    It had been nearly a year since she’d stumbled on the body while searching for more bees. It had been wearing the robes and mask and clutching a still-smoking censer, propped up against a tree by the river. She’d seen people in the robes before through the narrow window of the cellar, parading up and down the streets of the village, waving their censers and muttering prayers. When Amahle had asked her mother who they were and what they were saying, she scoffed. 

    “‘What the Eye sees, the Eye judges. And the Eye sees all.’ Bunch of rubbish if you ask me.”

    “That’s it? They walk around town all day doing that? Why?” Amahle had asked.

    “They’re doing what they see is best. They happen to be wrong, but they think they’re right, and that makes them dangerous. They think they’re protecting this land, and all they’re doing is making its people live in fear. But don’t you worry, you’re safe here.” She’d smiled, patted Amahle’s cheek with a glint in her eye. “Now don’t tell your father I said all that. He and I don’t share the same opinion when it comes to the Maidens.”

    With her mother’s words in her mind, Amahle had pillaged the body. It had felt wrong, disturbing the dead in that way, but the woman underneath the mask had looked happy and content. The smoking censer was the perfect coverup for her smoking arm, and the mask let her retain her anonymity. Everyone in the village avoided the priestesses as well, both out of fear and respect, so it let her get in and out of the village without incident. 

    It was a long journey to the village, but even more so in disguise. Her bag was tied against her back underneath the robe to give her a stooped appearance, and she walked with a cane to suggest age. The censer incense was pungent with burning herbs and stung her nose; she was used to the odorless smoke from her arm. The walk was uneventful, though — there was nothing between the woods and the village besides open grass and wildflowers. It was quiet, too, the type of quiet that Amahle enjoyed. A soft wind through the underbrush, distant songbirds chattering away, the babble of a small stream next to the path. When the oak tree got into sight, though, the sounds seemed to change. The wind picked up speed, becoming an unpleasant hiss, and carrion birds perched on the branches drowned out the songbirds with their mocking caws. The body hanging from the tree swayed back and forth, the rope rubbing against the branch it was tied to with a raspy sigh.

    Amahle slowed down and stopped in front of the body. It was the appropriate thing to do, especially as a Maiden. Witness the shame of the village. She bit the inside of her cheek until it bled as she looked up at the body. It was a little boy, probably six or seven years old. He was wearing a loose nightgown, as if he had been stolen straight from his bed. A long, barbed tail hung down from behind him, swinging below the feet. She was surprised he had lasted this long, with a Token that noticeable. The body still had color to it and the crows kept their distance; Amahle reckoned that it must have happened only a few hours earlier.

    “Forgive us, Maiden, for our sin.” The voice had come from behind Amahle. She turned, squinting through the mask. It was a younger woman, ruddy cheeks and eyes stained red. She’d obviously been crying, and Amahle realized, as tears streaked down the woman’s cheeks, that she still was. It was the mother, then, or older sister. Someone close to the boy. She wasn’t supposed to be here, wasn’t supposed to show remorse or sadness or any type of emotion except hatred and disgust toward the Demonborn. To be caught by anyone, yet alone a Maiden… Amahle dipped her head in acknowledgment, hoping that would be enough to assuage the woman. The woman walked forward past Amahle until she stood in front of the boy. She looked at the boy, then back at Amahle, and then back at the boy. With obvious effort and a tightness in her shoulders, she spit at the foot of the tree and walked away. Her quiet sobs echoed back to Amahle.

    Amahle’s insides roiled and churned and black smoke began to seep out from her bandaged arm. She thought she had become deadened to it all, numb to the horror and inhumanity of the world, and then a mother mourning her little boy had brought it all back. And here she was, dressed like a woman who thought it was righteous. Who thought she was doing a favor to the world by killing this child. She felt angry and sick and turned away from the tree before she did anything she might regret. This was the world she lived in, a world where little boys and young girls were seen as monsters. She needed to accept that. 

    Every year on her birthday, she had asked a question: why was she like this? It was a question that her mother had refused to answer. Her father did the same, if only to appease his wife. On her fourteenth birthday, however, they both came down to the cellar. Amahle immediately knew that something was wrong.

    “Honey…” Her mother’s voice had trailed off, and she turned to her husband, obviously expecting him to continue. Her father sighed, then sat down next to Amahle.

    “Amahle, we’ve always told you that we keep you down here for your safety. We mean that, truly. There are people out there that wouldn’t hesitate to harm you because of your…” He glanced down at her arm, then quickly looked away. “Because you’re different. We just need you to know that we’re not being cruel, okay?”

    “What happened?” she responded. She doubted that they had come down here to ease their conscience.

    Her father looked at her mother, then back at her. “The village down the road from us, about a day’s ride away? It’s gone.”

    “Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’”?

    He sighed. “It’s still there, in a sense, but there’s no one left alive in it. Everyone there, even the Maidens, is dead. They were killed by…”

    He had let his voice drift off, but Amahle knew what he had been about to say. “By someone like me.”

    “No, honey, not like you,” her mother chimed in. “You’re not like them. You’re nothing like them.”

    “Except I’m exactly like them, aren’t I?” She looked both her mother and her father in the eyes. “Why else would you keep me locked down here? It’s because I’m dangerous, right?”

    “No! It’s because the people out there are dangerous. We want you safe,” her father said.

    “Whatever happened in that village, that’s not you. That could never be you,” her mother added in.

    “I wonder what made that person snap in that village,” Amahle said, her voice bitter. “I wonder if it was because everyone hated them, or because or Maidens never stopped talking about how evil they were. Or maybe,” she paused, knowing full well what she was doing, “maybe they were sick of being trapped in a cellar like a dog.”

    She immediately regretted saying it, watching with remorse as hurt spread across her parents’ faces. She turned away from them, watching the world through the small cellar window.

    “I’d like to be alone.” Her voice was small and quiet now. Her parents had left her alone, locking the cellar door behind them.

    The anger Amahle had felt before had turned to sadness. She shook her head, trying to clear away the memory. The village was not too far away, now. The Elders had chosen a tree that was close enough to be easily seen from the town, but not so close that the smell wandered. She was just to the first row of houses and shops (her back protesting against her awkward posture and the weight of her bag), when she noticed something was wrong. Smoke drifted up from further on in the village, and screams echoed down the main path. The voices were angry and threatening; it sounded as if they were searching for something. Or someone. She was just about to head to her mother’s house through a back path when a small child ran out from behind a corner, head turned around to look behind them. The child careened right into her, falling backwards onto the hard dirt. The child looked up at her, face dirty and terrified, curly hair a disheveled mess.

    Her heart froze for a moment. The boy from the tree was in front of her, sprawled out on the grass, eyes full of fear. It was the eyes that snapped her out of it, eyes full of fear and terror and life. The other boy was dead, but this one was very much not. He was just a boy that needed help. She realized that they must be twins. She knelt down in front of him, outstretched her normal hand. He cowered backwards, looking like he was getting ready to run again. Amahle wasn’t sure how far he would make it; he looked exhausted. She sighed, but it was a sigh of sympathy, not annoyance.. This could only lead to trouble, but she knew that she had no choice.

    “I won’t hurt you, I promise,” she said to him, her voice muffled by the mask. She noticed the tears now, carving paths down his dirt-covered cheeks. With a glance down the road in front of her, she took a deep breath and untied the mask from her face. It fell to the ground between them.

    The boy noticeably relaxed when he saw her face. She was only fifteen, and she knew the boy recognized that she wasn’t actually one of the elderly Maidens.

    “We need to get out of here, and fast. I know a place where we’ll be safe. Can I pick you up?” He nodded, weariness winning out over fear. Amahle reached down and picked him up, and he pressed himself tight against her body. She could feel his heart against her chest, fluttering like an angry bee. The screams were getting louder, and she knew that people would arrive at any moment. She needed to get herself and the boy out of there before anyone saw her. As she bent down to pick up her mask, she felt something sharp and hard dig into her shoulder. She looked down and saw, just barely peeking up out of his curly hair, two small horns. The boy was Demonborn.

    She had hesitated, and the hesitation was a moment too long. Villagers flooded the road in front of her led by a pair of violet-robed Maidens. They carried torches and pitchforks and looks of murder on their faces. One of the Maidens was slowly, methodically wrapping a thick rope around her forearm. The other one was chanting.

    “What the Eye sees, the Eye judges. And the Eye sees all.”

    “The Eye sees all!” the villagers cried back.

     Amahle knew she couldn’t run, not carrying the little boy. There was bound to be someone in the mob that could catch up to her. If they caught them, they’d both be dead. They wouldn’t even have to prove that she was Demonborn; impersonating a Maiden would be enough cause for them to hang her up. 

    “You are no fellow Maiden, maskless and alone,” the Maiden with the rope called out. They’d spotted her, mask in the dirt and child in her arms. “To impersonate a Holy Sister is beyond reproach, and you will be punished. Unhand the boy and accept your fate! The Eye sees you, and you will be judged!” At her words the throngs of people started to advance.

    Her choices were limited, but Amahle knew she had already made her decision. She’d made it as soon as she’d seen that mother, forced to spit at the body of her own son. She’d made it when she’d looked into the eyes of the child she now held, seen the fear that his own people had caused him. And she’d made it after years of being locked away in a root cellar, hidden away from the world. She set the boy down, looking him in the eye.

    “I need you to run, okay?” She pointed towards the woods, towards her house. “Run towards the trees and don’t stop until you can’t run any more. Run until you can’t see the village anymore, and then hide. Find a tree or a cave and wait for me.” He looked lost and confused, even more scared now than he was before. “You’re going to be alright, okay? I promise. I just need you to run.” He nodded, hesitant. She took a deep breath, then stood up. She stepped in front of the boy.

    “Go.”

    He took off running and it seemed to inspire the mob to follow suit. They screamed and yelled and brandished their weapons as they charged straight at Amahle. She closed her eyes, steadied herself. They rushed at her and she stood still. She reached deep inside her Token, past the flesh and smoke and bone, deeper than she’d ever tried before. Past the fear, past the worries, past the overwhelming loneliness made of damp earth and low ceilings. Past what she thought was possible, and into a deep, fiery core of anger and fury and a bitterness that surprised even her. And instead of pushing at the Token this time, she shoved.

    The first time she had used her Token she’d been about the same age as the boy, old enough to understand that something was wrong with her, but not old enough to understand what that something was. Her mother had just barely locked the cellar door again; usually she would have stayed with her for a while, but someone had knocked at the door. She could hear her father upstairs rushing through the kitchen, pots clattering as he hurried haphazardly for something. She would later find out that whenever someone visited the house, he would burn whatever he was baking, the house filling with smoke and making whatever smoke was still coming out of the cellar door inconspicuous. 

    Whoever had come didn’t leave. They stayed for hours, talking with her parents while she sat alone in the cellar, hungry and cold and scared. She’d started to cry and her arm burned and she instinctually pushed back at it. She wasn’t any good at containing herself back then, and the entire cellar flooded with her and her smoke. The visitor upstairs was convinced that the house was on fire, and her father had to run to the cellar with a bucket filled to the brim with water. He was scared when he saw her. That’s what she really remembered about the experience, after all these years. His face, the echoing clang as the bucket fell from his hand, the way he instinctively stepped back, away from her and towards the stairs. But then she’d begun to cry again, and it seemed to shock him into action. He’d ran forward and tried to soothe her and held the only thing he could: her shriveled, black hand. When she’d finally calmed down and turned back, he pulled away. His hand was a bright red and blistered to the point where it made her nauseous to look at it. She’d burnt him, and still he held on.

    But this time, the change was different. The mob rushing at her stopped in their tracks as smoke began to pour of out her arm. The violet robes were the first to go, the expensive fabric burning away as if nothing more than paper. Her flesh evaporated like steam, wisps curling off of her form and circling back as a thick, dark smoke. Her forearm burst into a searing flame, her hair following suit, each strand becoming a lashing tongue of fire. Wings made of an even darker, blacker smoke burst from her back, unfurling like billowing flags. Heat rolled off of her like she was one of her father’s ovens; the air around her distorted and rippled from the temperature. For the first time in her life, she felt truly alive. Full of anger and hate and resentment, but alive.

    She laughed.

    The sound seemed to break whatever spell was holding the mob still. Women screamed and children were running and men were cursing and all three alike were readying whatever weapons they could find.  Amahle had promised the boy that she would keep him safe, and she planned on keeping that promise. She planned on enjoying that promise. She lunged forward, her wings closing the distance between her and the crowd in an instant. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, and yet, filled to the brim as she was with hate, she didn’t have it in her to care.

    She plunged her first into the first man she reached, his chest sizzling and clothes bursting into flame as they came in contact with her Token. She recognized him, now, closer up, his face twisted in screams of pain. The night of her tenth birthday. It was the Harvest Festival celebration, and her parents had left her to go join the festivities. They promised to bring her back a treat so she could enjoy it as well, but that wasn’t enough. Not for her. So she’d shifted into smoke and squeezed out through the tiny cellar window, donning a cape and gloves once outside. It was her first time out and it was everything she had hoped it would be. There was dancing and singing and colored lights and so many people that she could see faces of instead of just feet. 

    She’d wanted to try and find a candy her mother had brought her once, sticky and sweet and filled with nuts. It took her going to a few stands, but she eventually found it. The man behind the stand reminded her of her father: large and soft with calloused hands and smiling eyes. He had stacks upon stacks of the candies, each wrapped in colored paper. He’d asked her her name, but she hadn’t responded, just reached out and grabbed one of the candies. His smile had immediately dropped and his eyebrows raised. She looked down and realized that her glove had slipped, exposing withered black flesh. He had reached below his stand and pulled out a piece of thin rope, the kind he had used to help wrap the candies. He handed it to her.

    “Here you go, girl. This will help the bandages from slipping again.” She hadn’t taken the rope at first, had been scared about what he would do. “Go on, take it. But do be careful. There’s Maidens here tonight.” She had taken it and he instantly went back to hawking his wares, as if the entire conversation hadn’t happened. She quietly thanked him and he had passed her a candy with a small nod.

    And yet, here they were again, her pulling her arm out of his chest, him gasping in shock and pain. He fell limply to the ground, his eyes glazed over. The air rippled with heat and the smells of burning hair and cooking flesh. Villagers were crowded around her, swiping and stabbing and lunging with weapons, all of the attacks simply going straight through her smokey figure. She swung out in a wide arc with her arm, leaving a trail of lifeless bodies behind. A boy roughly her age ran forward, cradling one of the bodies in his arms. It was Garen.

    At least, that’s what she’d named him the year before, when she’d first seen him walk past her window. He was tall for his age and he filled out that height. His father was a blacksmith, her mother had told her, and he was apprenticing for him. It showed, and his arms were wider around than Amahle’s legs. He was always smiling and laughing, his eyes aglow every time he passed the window. Amahle had decided that she was going to marry him someday. Her mother had laughed at that, but not in her usual way. It was a laugh tinged with sadness and worry and regret.

    Amahle soon learned his schedule and would wait by the window just to catch a glimpse of him. One day, a few months after she had first named him, he was late. It wasn’t like him and she worried, pacing the small interior of the cellar. It was the screaming that made her run to the window. Garen was outside, but something was wrong. A small crowd had gathered and was steadily growing larger. In the midst of them was a small girl, no more than nine or ten. Garen stood by her side, not touching her but refusing to leave. The crowd seemed unsure of what to do: some taunted the little girl, others held them back. They were still gathered around the crying girl when the Maidens showed up, forcing their way through the crowd. They had quickly made their decision, holding the girl up in front of the crowd. The back of her dress had split, a line of spikes now visible that went down the back of her neck and back. Her Token. Garen had rushed at the Maiden, screaming and crying, but someone in the crowd had grabbed him and clamped their hand over his mouth. He struggled and kicked while the Maidens took the little girl away. They had walked in the direction of the oak tree.

    Amahle had spent the rest of the night crying, her left arm aching and filling the cellar with smoke. She had ran out of tears by the time her mother had told her that the little girl had been Garen’s little sister.

    Now she stepped forward towards Garen, ignoring the woman in his arms and grabbing him by the throat. She lifted him up, ignoring his screams and the crackling of flesh. She looked him deep in the eyes, made sure he looked back. She wondered if he would have protected his little sister if she had been like this. Like her. Would he have fought and kicked and committed heresy for her? There was nothing in his eyes now but terror. With a sharp crunch she crushed his throat, tossing him to the side. The mob of people still kept coming at her from all sides. Stray embers from her hair had started the surrounding houses on fire, and the flames lit the scene in an eerie, flickering light. She used her wings to throw people away from her, clearing out a space around herself. They came and she slaughtered. They came and she destroyed. They came and she exulted in the sense of being in control, and then, eventually, they stopped coming.

    Only one man was standing now. The Chief Elder. Smoke from the censer of one of the Maidens drifted up lazily by his feet. Corpses lay around him like they had been scattered there like birdseed. He was panting, sweat dripping down his face and blood pouring from a gash on his thigh. Some part of Amahle realized that she had stopped herself from killing him. That she had saved him for last.

    He was the one that had issued the orders to raid the root cellar. He was the one that had killed her father.

    She still wasn’t sure how he had found out about her. In a village as small as this one, it could have been anyone. Her father had been down in the cellar with her, her mother upstairs readying dinner. She had asked him to tell her the story of how he and her mother had met, again. He had pretended to be exasperated, but she knew he loved to tell it, and she loved to hear it.

    “Fine, fine. So you see, your mother always thought I was stupid. Head as thick as that bread of yours, she told me once.” That’s how he always started. Her mother hated it, but it made Amahle laugh.

    “And you still liked her?” Amahle replied. It was basically a script by this point.

    “I still loved her,” her father said. “Always have, always will. Your mother can’t say the same, at least for that first part. But the day she fell in love with me—“

    With a sound like thunder, the upstairs door had splintered open, cutting her father off. Footsteps clattered against the floor like stampeding horses as men flooded into the house. Her mother had started screaming and men were yelling and throwing things around. Her father had looked at her, then at the cellar door. The footsteps were getting closer and closer.

    “I love you, Amahle. I need you to know that.” He sounded desperate.

    “What’s going on?” Her voice was panicked. “What’s happening?”

    “I love you, okay? Do you understand me?” He had grabbed her face, looked her in the eyes. “I need you to do whatever it is you do and get out of here, okay?”

    Before she had a chance to respond, the cellar door was thrown open and men rushed in. They grabbed her father, pinning him against the floor, then moved towards her. She was frozen, paralyzed by fear and confusion. Her father had fought back, attempting to break free, buy her some time. One of the men had pulled out a dagger, a small, wicked thing, and stabbed him firmly in the chest. He’d fallen to the ground, blood pooling around him, still. That had woken her up, seeing her father helpless, and she had barely needed to concentrate to activate her Token. She’d slipped out of their grasps and through the window and she ran until she couldn’t run anymore.

    Her mother found her in the woods a week later, hungry and shivering and scared witless. She’d told her that her father was dead, had died at the house and then later burned at the stake by order of the Chief Elder. Her mother was safe, though — she wouldn’t tell her what she had done, only assured her that she was safe, that they weren’t going to kill her. But Amahle couldn’t come back. She could never come back. Her mother had held her and they had both cried until the sun had set and stars dotted the night sky. 

    And now she stood in front of the Chief Elder, towered over him as he whimpered, held his fate in her hands. She grabbed him by the arm, ignoring his screaming. With a powerful beat of her wings, they soared into the sky, flying over the village and towards the woods. She descended quickly, landing in front of the towering oak tree. The boy’s body still hung from its branches, and with reverent carefulness, she loosened the noose and guided the boy to the ground. She picked up the Elder, forcing his head through the loop of the noose. She let him go, watching him squirm as he tried to loosen the rope, his fingers clawing at the fibers, his feet kicking wildly in thin air. His breath came out in reedy gasps.

    “What the Eye sees, the Eye judges,” she said. “And the Eye sees all.”

    She plunged her blackened arm into the tree and it burst into flame.

    Amahle fell to her knees, exhausted. Smoke rushed back into her arm, the wings the first to fall apart, followed by the rest of her personage. When it was finished she was left alone, a small girl lit by the fires of burning men. A sound behind her caused her to jerk into motion, pivoting around to see what had caused it. One of the two Maidens stood behind her, her arm firmly around the scared little boy. The boy hadn’t made it very far before he was captured by one of the Sisters.

    “Let him go,” she said, trying and failing to inject force into her voice. Instead it was more of a harsh whisper, made ominous by the scene behind her.

    “Amahle?”

    She froze. Had that voice come from the Maiden? The figure in purple clothes reached up to her mask, sliding it off and letting it fall to the ground below. It was her mother, face lined with age and eyes full of fear and anger. Her mother glanced at the tree, then at the village behind them. Piles of corpses lay in the streets as the houses burned to the ground.

    “This was you, Amahle?” Her mother’s voice quavered. It was both a question and an accusation.

    Amahle struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. Her mother in those purple robes, that mask, the lifeless boy on the ground behind her, neck covered with a rope tied by her hands. She turned her head to look at the boy, then without looking back at her mother, raised her voice.

    “And this was you?” There was no questioning in her voice.

    Her mother stepped forward and Amahle snarled, her voice a hiss and a roar all at once, the sound a fire would make if it could talk. Her arm had begun to smolder again, black smoke thicker than it had ever been.

    “Give him to me.”

    “Amahle, please, I did what I had to to survive. I was just trying to protect you, protect this village —”

    “Give him to me, Maiden.”

    Her mother stopped mid sentence as if she had just been slapped. Amahle stepped forward, her arm billowing plumes of smoke and burning a vibrant orange. The boy cowered backwards, unsure which of the two, if not both, were his enemies. She stopped in front of her mother, her hand held threateningly close to her mother’s chest.

    “Go tell your people to stop hunting these children. Tell them that a demon told you. Tell them that your own daughter told you. And tell them that, if they don’t, all Hell will hunt them down instead.”

    Her mother opened her mouth as if to speak, and Amahle shoved past her towards the boy. The boy was shaking, visibly terrified beyond belief, and Amahle pushed down the guilt and regret. She grabbed him with her normal arm and headed off towards the woods. Behind her, her mother collapsed, sobbing, as the village turned to smoke behind her.