Chapter 1
1027 Words
1
CODY
Cody is running. Running against the heat. Running against the sun. The day is early, but it’s sweltering at the peak of summer. She blinks, and wouldn’t be surprised to find herself plunging forward into a blaze of Fire Scale breath.
She has nothing but porridge in her belly, but she’s not slowed by hunger pangs. She’s too used to hunger. It doesn’t make her dizzy anymore, or leech her sun-stained face. No, she is swift.
Her feet know this road. Her father won’t meet her at the end of it; what an easy sprint that would be! Once, when she was small, she only had to run as far as the butcher shop. Every week for fifteen years, her father has made her run farther, till all of Ithil was too small. Till she didn’t cry, or vomit, anymore.
He waits for her now, beyond the gates of Ithil, at the edge of the surrounding wood, resting his horse, counting the minutes that pass. He won’t let her dally long when she arrives. He won’t let her ride back into Ithil with him. She’ll have to run again. But she doesn’t think of that now.
Now, she thinks of her feet - bare, calloused feet. Feet that know the town grid as well as a pair of hands may know a harp. She thinks of her legs - hard, lithe, launching her forward. She is faster than she was yesterday. She is sure.
She breathes, even and slow, and counts the minutes, too. She’ll let her father make his report first, and won’t argue if he brandishes his cane. Sometimes, if she’s too fast, he lies. So she’ll be just fast enough. Just a little bit faster than yesterday.
She can’t be too slow, either, else he’ll whack her well. And if he’s in a foul mood, he may whack her for no reason at all.
She winces. He has been in a foul mood these past months. The last rungs of her spine are yellow and black with bruises. Even her mother has dared to say, softly, that he likes his cane too much. But Cody knows why.
The next Emerging approaches. The Fire Scales will take to the skies, as they do every fifteenth year, breathing fire, stomping cities to dust, mating in flight - in full, unabashed view.
Cody stumbles, and loses three seconds. She swears. Three seconds and a half. She rights her feet. Breathe in, she says. Breathe out. Don’t think about the Fire Scales.
All around her, the town is in disrepair. Has been in disrepair for fifteen years. No money comes in anymore. This town was for vacationers once; it subsisted on the pockets of wealthy travelers, even royalty. It has no industry of its own, and neighboring towns and tribes, even faraway cities, are peppered now with deserting Ithites.
Her father stayed in Ithil after the scorching. The taverns re-opened, and the brothels, the butcher shops. The worst parts of Ithil stayed, and the worst people.
Once, the aroma of sweetbread swirled through the streets. Now the bakeries are gone, and there are only dingy, soiled, sweating smells, like the armpits of pigs.
The library is nothing but the crumbling, mortar stumps of pillars and columns. Every singed shred of paper has blown away.
The boutiques are long-since looted, stripped clean. The market’s a shanty town. There are no green, flowering things. No window displays. No pretty dresses. No prettiness at all.
Once, Ithil was a pretty town. Now, it’s an eyesore.
Cody darts through an ally between two leather shops. The spongy, rotting smell of stripped flesh coats her nostrils and she wrinkles her nose. The stench is as putrid as anything in Ithil, but it can't undo the measured rhythm of her breath. In and out. In and out. One long breath after another.
There’s a shorter route to the wood where her father will be waiting, but the day is so hot. The roofs overhead seal out the sun, a quick, stolen moment of shade, but Cody will pay for it.
Too fast, or exactly fast enough, she’s out of the alley. The sun strikes her face like a frying pan fresh off the stove and popping with oil.
A high, iron fence stands ahead, boxing in the town. The Fire Scale didn’t damage it, not entirely. There are places where the bars are crumpled or poorly patched, low places that are easy to hop over. But she’ll lose too much time, darting left or right for them, now she’s gone the long route through the alley. So she blasts straight ahead, toward the highest stretch of fence, and launches herself forward like a cricket.
She catches the bars six feet high, and laughs out loud - six feet is a record, to be sure. But there’s still fence overhead.
She yanks herself up, fist over fist, her coarse palms burning against the sunbaked bars. She swings her legs over the weathered heads of iron spikes. One nips at her trousers and tears the seam wide open as she drops to the ground on the opposite side.
Cody groans. Her father will notice the tear, and her sisters will have to mend it – she’s so lousy with a needle and thread. But she can't worry about that now.
She lets the torn flaps of her pant leg slap together in the wind as she runs, runs, runs, runs. Harder, harder harder. Away from Ithil, into the trees.
Overhead, the yellow morning sky is replaced by canopy. Black pine scents the air, and Cody breathes deep – a fast luxury.
She finds the beaten path. Her feet remember every root, every slithering slip of a river, and she skips, she leaps, she runs and runs and runs.
Her skin is slick with sweat when she skids to a halt at the edge of the wood. Her father’s dusty mare is tethered to a tree. She whips her head back and forth, but she can't spot him anywhere.
She swears. He could be hidden, watching her. A new game. All she wants is to double over, to huff and heave and dunk her hot, red face in the nearest river. But if her father is watching…
She won’t do it. Her father hasn’t given her permission to rest. So she won’t rest. Not yet.
Not until he says so.
- Writer
