Page 47 - North Star Magazine 2022

in their blood were guaranteed to haunt her dreams until the day she died. And what of the children? What would the little ones have seen as they died? Their own parents, reaching out to hold them again for the first time in as many months? Perhaps they had seen only the rushing flames and collapsing rubble around them, no maternal embrace to ease them into their eternal rest.
The heaviness of the thought proved too much to bear, and she shook it from her brain even as tears soaked into the neckline of her filthy white dress. There was no use in speculating for the dead.
It took a special kind of cruelty to force parents to watch their children burn first. Even more so to make as much noise with their cries and clashing weapons as possible, so that the parents couldn’t be heard telling the screaming young ones that it was okay, that they were loved so much, that soon it would all be over and they could rest with their families again.
Or, well...
If the raiders bothered to check the ruins, they would find no remains tied at the fourth post, no body to be found anywhere in the charcoal and burnt moss.
She did not squint, and she did not let the flames catch her gaze and draw it closer—not with her mother’s last wish ringing in her ears.
“Fly, my dove, and do not look back no matter what you hear. Our love and our grace go with you.” Her head is bleeding and her eyes are unfocused, but she looks at her daughter with so much love that it is almost unbearable to leave. “Live for us. We will be with you no matter what.”
Laena turns to try and untie the others, coughing hard from the smoke and heat, but the knots are too tight and the rope is too strong. Two of the Faelings are already unconscious, dead or alive she does not know, and the third smiles faintly as he tries to keep his head upright. “You must leave us, Laena, or no one will escape to warn the others. Go, now!”
“But Mot--”
“Go, Laena! For the love of Gaia, go!”
She runs, keeping as quiet as she can, and escapes through a fallen portion of the wall unseen to the human raiders. She swears she can hear the faintest “I love you” through the flames as she reaches the tentative safety of the trees and collapses.
She took a deep breath and dried her tears, trying not to gag on the scent.