King of Darkness and The White Flame

Chapter 4

As we near the next town, I see someone walking towards us on the adjoining road. Dressed in all black, a slim figured woman with dark hair. The closer she comes the harder my heart pounds. The butterflies do backflips in my stomach as I realize who it is. How did she even find us? She sees me but smiles instead at Jessie. Walking directly up to him and hugging him around his neck. My anger flares. 

“Lilith!” Jessie says, hugging her back. “What are you doing so far from home?”

“Hi Jess,” she responds “you know me, I can’t sit still.” They both laugh and I’m still enraged at their affection, yet relieved that they had broken apart finally. 

“Oh! Where are my manners?” Jessie says and touches his head with his palm “Lilith, I’d like you to meet Jo Bones, King of The Skulls.” he gestures to me. Lilith looks directly at me for the first time since she arrived and there’s no recognition on her face. “Nice to meet you Jo Bones, King of The Skulls.” They both laugh but she holds out her hand to shake mine. I must look confused but her eyes flash for a moment and I realize she’s hiding that we’ve met before. This makes me furious and I want to expose her out of spite until Jessie says “Jo, this is my sister Lilith.” Lilith smiles at me, her hand still held out for me to shake. I take her hand and feel my stomach flip.

“Nice to meet you Lilith, please call me Jo.” I smile back and she knows that I’ll keep her secret. She releases a barely audible sigh. 

“Where are you guys headed?” she asks. 

“North. Mole City.” I respond, still unable to really take my eyes off her. My anger dissipates and the butterflies return in full force.

“What are your plans in Mole City? Isn’t that deep in The Wild?”

“Yes, we have business with their leader.” Jessie simply responds, and gives me a side glance. I guess that’s all he wants to tell her. A lot of secrets between these two. I shrug and we walk in silence for a while. 

“Sir,” one of the guards approaches us, “we have a problem.”

“What’s happening, Silus?” I ask.

“We’ve run out of water.” 

“How can that be? We’ve just come from The Chosen, did you all not fill your canisters there?” 

“We did Sir, but the air is much drier here.”

“We’ve barely made it to The Society wall, how can we have run out of water already?” He just looks at me with a blank expression, a little fear in his eyes. “Send a scout ahead to look for a pond or stream for some water.” I command and he immediately runs back to the rest of the crew. 

Jessie snickers beside me. “What? Think it’s funny that we’ve already run out of water? And that these people are so irresponsible as to not save and drink the water sparingly?”

“It’s not that.” Jessie doesn’t look offended in the least. In fact, he doesn’t look like anything can really make him mad. “You just look a lot like your mom when you’re angry.” This shocked me.

“You knew my mother?”

“Well yes, of course. I might have been really young but everybody knew your mother. Everybody was afraid of her.” Jessie turns his head slightly to look at me. “You don’t look very happy at that revelation.” 

“I am happy.” I say

“Right. That was very convincing.” He rolls his eyes for emphasis. I give him a small smile. He’s right of course, it isn’t a compliment for me to hear about how much I look like my mother. Especially when I’m angry or irritated. As hard as it is for some to believe, I don’t want people to always be afraid of me. But if people know that it’s how I feel, I’ll lose a lot of respect from a lot of people.

Suddenly, a strong gust of wind blew out of nowhere and in the distance we could see a tornado closing in. “How far away do you reckon it could be?” Jessie asked calmly. “Around 50 miles if we’re lucky.” Thunder clouds rolled in above and the wind blew stronger. “It’s still possible it could miss us.” He sounded hopeful. I didn’t. Lightning struck a nearby tree and the tree fell. Some of the women volunteers screamed in the crowd and some soldiers went ahead to gather the wood from the tree for fire and shelters. “Doesn’t seem like we can go any further now.” Jessie says. 

“No, we haven’t even come that far. It will be another few days before we arrive in Mole City and we’ve already run out of water. If we stop and make camp now, we will be a day behind. We need to keep going till nightfall.”

“The women are too scared to walk further because of the impending storm.” Lilith says, joining us from the back of the crowd where she’d joined some of the women. 

“If they are so scared, why did they come along? This is the cost of the journey. I’m not losing another day. We forge on. That’s an order.”

“I am NOT one of your soldiers you can boss around Jo.” Lilith says sternly. 

“Well I wouldn’t have to if you were a good little girl and listened the first time.” Wrong move. Her face goes red and she moves in so close I can smell her breath. Her nose barely touches mine when she says “Watch. Your. Step. Jo Bones. You DON’T want to get on my bad side.” I forgot how feisty she can be, but I like this side of her. “Or what?” I challenge her.

She simply backs up slowly but doesn’t take her eyes off mine. It takes everything in my willpower to not grab her by the waist and pull her back, to feel her soft lips against mine. She licks her lips and it almost has me undone, I take a gulp and squeeze my hands into fists to restrain them. 

“Like I said,” still looking her in her eyes “we move forth.” 

The tornado is fast approaching and the wind whips the trees. It takes everything we have to walk against the wind. The horses are squealing and the carriage's wheels threaten to come apart. The mountain says the whisper in my ear. I look around to see who said that but no one is nearby. It would be impossible to hear anybody above the shattering of the thunder, the wildness of the wind or the roaring of the tornado which has just uprooted the last row of trees in the forest just ahead of us. We are over a 100 people in a clear field and if that tornado remains on that trajectory, we’re all toast. I look to my right, where the mountain is. It is still in the line of the tornado and straying from the path we’re on might lead us right to it. 

“The mountain!” I shout to everyone and point toward it. “There’s no time!” Asher argues “We won’t make it and it won’t give us shelter!”

“Just trust me!” I shout back. But he’s already led half of The Skulls straight ahead with him. The rest of the Skulls followed me, including Jessie's men and all the volunteers. As soon as we came close to the mountain, I noticed an opening at the foot. The tornado was on us and the roaring was too loud, if I shouted, they wouldn’t hear me anyway. I waved my arms in the direction of the opening and prayed they’d understand what I meant. We ran as fast as we could. Many made it inside, many others that were far behind were swept up into the whirl of the strong wind. There was no sight of Asher and The Skulls anywhere.