9 – 3

We sit or stand in silence, as we had done before, and the lamp on the dining table casts flickering shadows on the walls as the lit wick dances. The only sound is that of five souls drawing breath, a stifling quiet that lingers in the moments after Milo agreed with me. Why did he? I wasn't revealing the beginnings of a sure and cunning plan, I was blurting the first thing I could think of! It might not even work! Maybe all that we accomplish is to make easier pickings of ourselves when we go out that door, one at a time. My eyes meet his in this stifling quiet, and I see in them the same doubt that I hold within me.

A small and strange relief, that. It would be worse if he had a whole-hearted belief in the idea's success. How and why, I don't know, just that it would.

Lavinia is the one who says it, who gives to word the greatest obstacle to all of this. She does it in four, saying, “The woodshed's outside, though.” and it ripples through us. I feel the edge of Clarke's nails through my clothes as her grip on my elbow tightens. A tremor touches my own on her shoulder. My fingertips flutter. I still them by doing as she has; curling them into the curve.

Adelaide's free hand tightens into a fist, a muscle in her jaw flexing with the grit of her teeth. She turns her face to glare at the stove and hides her paled knuckles in the small of her back, thus keeping her daughter from seeing sign of her mother's fear. “We're no safer in here,” she says to us all, though she must breathe deeply before doing so. On the floor, a puddle of blood slowly dries. On a wounded leg, a clean bandage slowly soils. In a little girl's eyes, a shadow slowly takes hold.

No matter how thick the walls of this home are, they will slow the bramble-beast no more than the glass pane of Lavinia's bedroom window. “We have to try,” Clarke murmurs.

They're right. Yet I can't find it in me to take that first step to the door, nor speak any words of agreement. It's not terror that holds me still and keeps me mute, I don't think. It did neither last night, when Clarke and I fled blindly through the trees. It lent me wings, if anything, and guided my steps clear of tangle and root as best it could. All but robbed of sight, it had sharpened my other senses to such keen edges I had heard the tree being thrown at us. It saved me, there. So it cannot be what threatens me now.

Or can it? Maybe now that I know better what the bramble-beast is, the pain it inflicts so joyously and with such torturous design, my terror has taken an altogether different form. I know better now, with my body a canvas of bruises and a-grumble with aches. With a long, thin scar stitching itself into the skin of my back, with a child's blood on her father's hands, I know better now.

Even though it was my idea.

Milo frowns at the dining table. Taps his fingers on its surface. A thoughtful gesture. Let it be a better plan. Let him take back his approval and create something that stands a better chance of working. I beg of you, O blessed sun, though I know you slumber the night through. Hear this prayer in your dreams. Please. He asks, “Baby, how much firewood do we have in the house?”

Adelaide blinks. She looks at the stove, then down the hall. Thinking. Counting. She doesn't ask him why, doesn't ask if there's a better idea. No one does. Not even Clarke. A magi, smarter and more learned than I will ever be, and she says nothing. It's not even a plan. Barely an idea. Why is everyone following it? “Eight for the stove, maybe,” she guesses with a small shrug, “Half-dozen for the hearth.”

I'm going to get everyone killed. I'm going to watch them die, one by one, as slow as the bramble-beast can make it. I'll be forced to watch it happen, carrying their hideous last moments with me into the hereafter. A family ended. A bright star extinguished. Because of me. Milo nods, mouth twitching as if he has something to smile about. “We're gonna make torches,” he says, “A line of 'em. Put some in the ground on the way to the shed, carry the rest with us. Should keep it off our backs while we –”

“No!” I shout, raw-throated and strident. I hadn't spoken since before Clarke calmed me, reminded me of that stupid promise, and so everyone startles. Lavinia grabs for her mother, who grabs for her in turn. Milo's eyes go wide, and one of his hands goes to his family. The other drops to his sword. Clarke releases me, lodging a bereft feeling in my heart, and her hands fly to the hollow of her throat. “It wasn't – I didn't mean – you weren't supposed to agree!” I protest. “I don't even know if it'll work!”

Milo steps away from sword and family. Steps around the table to come to me. His hand lands on my shoulder. It's too heavy, too warm, and there's blood in the lines of his knuckles and the beds of his nails. I shrug it off. He lets it fall. “We're not safe here,” he echoes his wife, “and it's not a bad plan.”

“You'll die!” I'm still shouting. The echo of my words bounce around the room. It's too small, suddenly. “If it doesn't – we all die!”

“Zira,” Milo stands tall and steady. There's no lingering uncertainty in his dark eyes. There's command in his voice. I fall silent. The once-soldier, here and now. “That thing'll rip through these walls like paper. You and I both know that. It's too fast for us to outrun. This is not a bad plan,” he repeats himself, and he's still lying. “We have to try. If we don't, we're all dead anyway. So...we're gonna do this. Okay?”

It's not. It's not, but I nod anyway. He sees it for the lie it is, says nothing of it, and nods back. Then, without another word, we get started.

- - -

Out into the night. Flame-topped torches crackle and spit in hand; ochre light wavering and casting shadows a-dance as their bearers run. Swift strides hiss through the grass, falling with care to be quiet. Milo leads, sword on his belt. Behind him, Clarke. She alone has a free hand and holds it close to the silver-trimmed piece of ice at her throat's hollow, ready to bring the star in its heart to life. Adelaide follows, Lavinia clinging to her back.

I am the end of this line of runners. Knife heavy on the bone of my hip. There was a loop in the sheath all this time, where a belt's length could be fed through. Never would've known, if not for Adelaide. It feels solid there. Real, in a way it wasn't when it lay in my satchel. It's no instrument of death, yet I should think its edge will cut nonetheless. I look blindly out past the bobbing circles of light. The bramble-beast prowls. I wonder what sounds it makes when it's in pain. When it's burning. When it's dying.

The ground's too hard, too cold to plant a torch in. We'll drop them instead. Milo goes first, leaving it to sputter and curl smoke in the glitter-frost grass. Too wet for it to catch.

Him dropping a torch means he's gone five paces. Five paces from that, Adelaide will drop one of hers. Then finally, I will. A road of light, of safety, for us to follow. If I'm right. If this works. If.

If.

Twenty paces from the house's front door to the woodshed. Twenty paces for something to come hurtling out of the dark. The second torch falls, Adelaide wrapping her now free hand around her daughter's knee; to help keep her steady, or to remind herself she's still there. Heat washes over my ankles, light in my periphery, and smoke in my nose. I start to count. Three paces gone by and two remaining. It happens. A whistle-whirl of sound, growing loud and large and tall. “Down!” I cry out. We flatten ourselves into the grass, faces pressed into the cold. Adelaide covers Lavinia's body with her own. Opened-sky blue spills from around the clench of Clarke's fingers.

It paints a stone, wide and large around as a wagon's wheel, spinning through the air at a height to take a tall man's head off at the shoulder. Or a child's, riding high on her mother's back. It punches into and through the wall of the house with a deafening roar of sundered wood and sharding splinters. I get lucky. They fall on me like rain, none finding purchase in my skin. Adelaide's hiss says that she did not. Her silence, that it's worth it. A moment passes, panting breaths misting in the night, before Milo shouts, “Up!”

Two paces more and one of my torches falls. I fill the empty palm with the animal-horn hilt of my knife. Don't draw it yet, not while there's running to be done. Five paces in the dark. Milo reaches the woodshed and tears open the door. He starts hauling out the drywood with sweeping drags of his arm. Adelaide passes Clarke by and reaches him next. She lets Lavinia slide down to stand on her own feet, then starts grabbing timbers, three and four at a time, to lay them out. When her daughter tries to help, she snaps, “Stay with your father!”

Clarke next, then me. We work heedless of splinters or torn skin. All the while, the bramble-beast prowls. The stone's throw was a reminder, of what it had done and what it could do. Once it figured us out, if it has not already, it will take more direct action. Then we'll find out if steel's keen edge can cut it, if fire's spar can catch it, and, perhaps, what sound it makes when it dies.

Until then, the wall.