Tim Lebbon - Dawn

“I don’t know how much farther I can carry her,” he said. “She’s lighter all the time, but she feels heavier with every step.”

“If you weren’t craving that fucking drug you’d be stronger.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, hating his appealing tone.

“Fledgers are all the same, useless without their fledge.”

“Hope…” But Trey trailed off. There was no arguing with the witch. She had never liked or trusted him, and her brief talk about them being on the same side now seemed ages ago.

“I’m going to look around,” Hope said. She stood and walked away, staring at the ground and kicking at the grass as she went.

“She’s not safe.”

“What?” At first Trey thought he was hearing things. Perhaps desperation for fledge was putting false echoes in his mind, talking to him from the shadows of his need. He turned left and right, listening for a voice but hearing none, then he saw that Alishia’s eyes were open. They were glazed and creamy like ruptured eggs. Open, but vacant.

She was still asleep.

“She’s not safe,” Alishia said again. Her jaw moved strangely, stiff and mechanical.

“Alishia?” Trey leaned in closer and waved his hand in front of her eyes. She did not blink, but her eyelids drooped slowly shut. A tear ran down one cheek.

“Her book speaks volumes of danger,” Alishia murmured. Her mouth kept moving but soon the words became distorted, and the sound drifted away to a mumble, and then to nothing.

Trey moved closer to the librarian and held her hand. It was cool, like the hand of a doll. His mother used to make dolls for children in the home-cave, heads carved from light snowstone, bodies woven with reeds brought down from topside. She had painted the faces herself, and Trey had always been amazed by the life she could bring to those things-eyes filled with light, simple smiles that gave away so much. It was as if his mother saw real potential in every doll. They all attracted their own name and personality purely through the expressions she gave them, and different children preferred different dolls. But that had been years before, back when his mother could still work with her hands.

Alishia’s expression was less lifelike than any doll Trey had ever seen.

He leaned over her and turned his face, feeling her stale breath tickle his cheek. It was cool and shallow. He touched her skin, turned her head, smoothed the wrinkle between her eyes, touched his finger to her lips and felt their dryness. Her cheeks were filling out, nose flattening, and she seemed to be turning into someone else.

Growing younger, Trey thought. How can that be? He lifted the front of her dress and let go, and it settled down onto her slight frame. When he first met her on the slopes of the Widow’s Peaks, she had filled that dress. He’d thought she was a young girl at first-the way she spoke, the things she said-but when he’d become used to the sun, he had seen that was not the case. Now she was turning into that girl he had first imagined.

“Hope,” he whispered into her ear. “What about her? What book? Does she have it in her bag?” In the poor light, with birds fallen silent and the breeze pausing every few seconds, his whispers seemed incredibly loud.

Alishia’s eyes opened a crack and she muttered something.

“What?” Trey leaned in closer, unable to hear. He pressed his ear to her mouth, and felt it grow cool as she took in a breath to speak again.

“Hope’s book…not yet scribed…new, bad chapter…”

Trey frowned, straining to hear. But Alishia said no more.

He sat up, closed his eyes and felt a sickening punch to his stomach. Mage shit, he so needed some fledge.

“Did she speak?” Hope asked.

Trey jumped. He hadn’t heard the witch approaching, and now she was standing just a few steps away. “No,” he said. “Where have you been?”

The witch patted her pocket. “Harvesting.”

“We need to move on, Hope,” Trey said. “I don’t think she’s well.”

“Are you up to carrying her again?”

“I’ll have to be.” Trey stood and bent down for Alishia, lifting her into a sitting position. She was not as limp as she had been before, and he thought maybe she was trying to help. Her eyes were still closed, though, and her head rolled on her neck.

Hope helped him lift Alishia and then she led the way, walking ahead and looking left and right, down at the ground and up at the sky. Trey liked to think that she was watching out for dangers, but he thought it was more likely that she was searching for things she did not want him to see.

Her book speaks volumes of danger, Alishia had whispered. If only Trey understood what that meant.

HOPE FELT MOVEMENT in the deep pocket of her coat. She slapped it hard, stunning the spider into immobility once again. As soon as she found some hedgehock she’d be able to dope it, but in the meantime she was doing her best to avoid being bitten. It was a risk, but she needed to arm herself. And there was no harm in having an advantage that the fledger did not know about.

She should be able to smell hedgehock before she saw it, but her senses felt strangely numbed by the darkness.

Over the past few hours, Hope had been looking everywhere for the light of dawn. This endless twilight had started to feel heavy, squeezing her heart, crushing her lungs so that she could barely draw breath, and she was so desperate to see a sliver of dawn that she felt like running at the eastern horizon until it appeared. As a witch and a whore she had spent much of her life conducting business at night, and she had only just begun to realize how much she missed the daylight. The landscape was silenced by what had happened. It was as though Noreela was in shock at the Mages’ audacity. Several times she had to close her eyes and breathe long and deep to prevent panic from settling in.

Hope had spent so long with nobody in her life but herself. Since her mother had died decades ago, she had been on her own, a witch without magic, and anyone who did come into her life went out of it just as quickly. Following Rafe had given her a purpose, and someone else to care about. In him she had seen the possible realization of her own potential. Magic would have brought much of what was missing from her life. She had lived her whole life craving to fulfill the promise of the name “witch.” She had the ways and means, the knowledge and experience, the hexes passed down through her family line. She had an open mind, and the understanding of the land that would have allowed magic to embed itself comfortably in her life. Many others would have been scared of it, and some would have run from its influence. But in Rafe, Hope had seen her entire future.

Now he was gone, and Hope had another child to follow.

Alishia carried something different, but whatever it was had come from Rafe. Hope felt her own life drawing to a close-this darkness seemed like a precursor to her own light fading slowly away-but there was still one chance, in Alishia. And however unlikely it may be, all she had left to believe in was this girl.

The obstacles were beyond measure: the Mages, with magic twisted to their perverted use, and the Mages’ army that was undoubtedly readying to assault Noreela. And Kang Kang. But Hope had nothing left to live for. Alishia, and whatever she carried, was all that mattered to her now.

The spider in her right pocket jumped and squirmed. Hope flicked the outside of her coat and the creature fell still once again.

Hedgehock! she thought. Where’s the Mage-shitting hedgehock? She walked faster, pulling away from the fledger and Alishia, and then that familiar warm, herby smell hit her.

It was as though Fate had guided her this way.

She knelt down, plucked the shriveling leaves of the hedgehock plant and proceeded to tear them into tiny shreds.