Hope in Ruins Book III: The Fountain and the City of Salt

Chapter 9: Midnight in the Garden

ANDA

Anda dreamed of the end of the world in color and sound and a stench like... blood.

She awoke in the dirt cold and sweating and shaking. After crashing into a field and fleeing the Windrose soldiers and Watchers, she, Ben, and Stephen had collapsed and slept under the trees among wet and rotting leaves. And Anda dreamed of kilns and the end of the world.

She shuddered as the more-than-a-dream visions faded, like frost melting from a windowpane. These visions, the little graveyard and the kilns, were so different. The one with the ruined farm had been strong and sharp and bright, like a strong whiskey, gold in the sunlight. And it had burned. But the one with the kilns had been cold and hard and smooth, like frozen stone. The two vastly different visions felt inexplicably connected. Anda shivered.

All her visions had happened exactly as she had seen.

Well, not all.

She could not explain why the baker had not offered her Honey that day in Windrose or why Jason had appeared in the hallway. All of her other visions had happened exactly as she had foreseen, even if she didn't understand what she saw at first. And then there was the end of the world. But that was too big, too terrible, and too red to face. How do you face the end of the world alone?

The snap of fire caught her attention, and she rolled over the dirt. Ben sat hunched over a small fire. Maybe she wouldn't have to face the end of the world alone.

Stephen huddled close to the flames and looked up at her when she stirred, but he did not say anything. His eyes were ringed red and purple, and his jaw was slack. She wondered what toll he had suffered for guiding them through Watchers. Anda joined them to warm herself. Her fingers felt stiff and tight and cold as she extended them towards the flames.

"Are we... are we safe?" she asked.

Ben glanced at Stephen. He closed his eyes for a moment, tilting his head this way and that way, searching in the ghostly realm around them for Watchers, then nodded.

"Yes," Ben said. "For now. But Stephen will warn us if that changes."

"What... what now?" she asked.

"We go to the City of Salt," Ben said.

"The... what?"

"Where the Unseen City makes its' Seers," Stephen said, looking into the fire.

Sadness laid a bare hand on her shoulder, and Anda realized that she was alone. She knew that she would have to leave them before they reached this City of Salt because she could not go there. She could not face a people whose city she had destroyed, whose friends and family she had helped kill. No, enough was enough. But maybe she could walk with them a ways as she decided where to go. Besides, they didn't need her. They had Ben. They had Perseus. Let him go to this City of Salt. Maybe there he could stop the end of the world.

In the silence that echoed between Ben and Stephen, Anda noted the way he had said the Unseen City. His voice went up just a bit and caught, like a butterfly taking flight and catching in a spider's web.

"What is it?" she asked, looking from Ben to Stephen.

Ben gave a quick glance at Stephen, who stared into the fire. "The Unseen City is gone," Ben said.

Anda blinked. "What... what do you mean? How can it be gone?"

Ben shifted. "Loraine attacked it. Destroyed it. As far as we know."

A stab of fear slid through her heart like a thin blade. "How?"

"Jason." Ben looked down into the fire.