Tower of Dove

Chapter 18: The Death of Beauty

Tower of Dove Chapter 18: The Death of Beauty

For the first three days of riding in the carriage, it rained on them. It wasn’t the pleasant kind of rain that only budded in the top strands of your hair and left light sprinkles on your clothes that were easily wiped away, either. It was the sort of rain that pelted you relentlessly and soaked your clothes so thoroughly that your skin was wet beneath it.

Chadwick had stopped to put a canopy over the carriage to repel the rain, but some still managed to slip through the sides and litter the carriage floor. It was cold, too. Posy had begun to shiver so furiously that Kissa finally just pulled her into a constant hug, but it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t long before the unrelenting rain and long carriage ride began to bring her mood down and yet again fill her head with doubts. She didn’t hide her distress as well as she thought she had, though, as finally Kissa asked her, “Why do you look ready to jump out the edge of the carriage? My reflexes aren’t that good—I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch you in time.”

Posy giggled, but it was a distorted sound that turned into a sigh and Kissa gave her such a bewildered look that she became embarrassed. She turned her face away and as another shiver racked her body, she said, “M-maybe this rain is a sign. Maybe it m-means we’re going to drown in our efforts to e-end the war.”

“No. We’ll end it,” Kissa told her, and the sureness which steadied his voice was so absolute that she found herself unable to argue.

For four more days they rode in that carriage, and Phil never once relented. Even when Chadwick told him to calm, the animal continued to shoot forward at a disorienting, headache-inducing speed which made Posy cling to Kissa’s arm with such a tight grip that she worried she were going to cut off his circulation, leading to a lack of blood flow through his limb and result in an amputation. When she voiced this concern to him, he only laughed and told her he was fine, so she continued to cut his circulation off and hoped no permanent damage would be done.

They rode through forest and grassland, stopping only for lunch and to sleep at night. Posy noticed that Kissa didn’t sleep as easily as he used to. Ever since they’d met those raiders and he’d—he’d killed one, he tossed around at night. Posy knew without even having to ask Kissa that she was the same, with the dreams she’d been having. On the last night before they were supposed to reach the Woodpecker, she woke from one of those dreams. In it, she’d stood on a mountain, holding hands with Lilyana as they watched a village burn below. Screams echoed from the orange flames as the smoke rose up to lick the night stars, and the heat had glowed with such intensity that Posy woke in a sweat.

She wiped her eyes and her bangs from her face and glanced around. The sky was cloudy, but there was no rain and she could even see the moon and stars through the cracks of grey. Phil whinnied with each sleeping breath, and she could hear Chadwick snoring slightly from the front of the carriage. Beside her, Kissa made uncomfortable sounds, the only type that could be drawn from nightmares.

Posy sighed, shivered with the chill of night, and curled into Kissa’s side. In the back of her mind, she realized this was something she never thought—as an eleven year old girl—she would do. Curl up next to a boy. But here she was, with Kissa, doing things she’d never thought she would do. That made her smile at the same time it made her sad.

He didn’t wake at her touch, but she felt his tense muscles loosen a bit, and after a few minutes his sleep seemed to become more easy and his breathing quieter. She hid her face in his shoulder, hoping to get warmer and fall asleep quickly, but she only ended up thinking of those raiders again. She remembered with fresh fear the feel of the tall one chasing her, of slapping her and twisting her ankle. She remembered calling for her dad, even though he wouldn’t come. And she remembered the look on Kissa’s face as the knife sank into the man’s back, the pallor of his usually bright skin and the wide panic of his usually collected eyes, and she felt a choke forming in her throat.