The Dragon Bearer {ON HIATUS}

Chapter 5 - Smoke and Screams

Five years before the arrival of Eleri, there was fire. The world crumbled to ash and dust and plumes of acrid smoke turned the sky black. The sun and moon were blotted out, casting a blanket of suffocating darkness over the city. Screams and cries rang in the air for days.

Mothers lost children, children lost parents, sisters lost brothers.

A boy stumbled back and forth between his home and the Town Square. Home. He snorted at the word now. He didn't have a home anymore. A house, yes, but Home was filled with laughter and light and family.

He had none of those anymore.

Instead his world was filled with grey and his days were spent sitting in the gloomy darkness of his house or watching a thick layer of ash settle on his boots outside. He had nothing now.

Ahead of him a child squealed with laughter and he closed his eyes. No, he thought. No, stop it. Why are you laughing? Nothing is funny anymore.

Nothing was funny when every cry of joy made him think of his sister. His sister, a tender girl of eight, who found beauty in the smallest things. His sister, who danced instead of walking, who kissed him on the cheek every night before bed. His sister, who he could not save.

He glared at the ground, cursing every god who had burdened him with this awful fate. He cursed Balder and Agni and Bayou and Tierra. He especially cursed Eleri, the very person who was supposed to help them in their time of need. She hadn't arrived, despite what the legend said. She hadn't come to save them. She had let them burn.

"Why didn't you help?" the boy asked. "Why didn't you do what you were supposed to?" Angry tears carved lines through the muck on his face, but he didn't wipe them away. It hurt to move now, with bandages covered his arms, one of his hands and half of his face, but if he didn't move he would fall apart.

"Tyrron, I found another one."

The scrape of the body cart against cobblestones echoed up the street. The past few days had been spent retrieving bodies from the buildings. Survivors, too, if there were any. But that was rare now, and nine times out of ten the workers had been finding blackened skeletons in the wreckage. Anyone alive they did find was dehydrated and starving, and they weren't long for the world either.

"No – no! That's my son! THAT'S MY SON!"

The boy turned to see a woman screaming, trying to reach the corpse. She was held back by another man, and he recognised her as the apothecarist.

"That's my son!" she cried. "Why won't you let me near him? I have to say goodbye!"

"Ma'am, you mustn't touch the bodies. It's restricted to only workers. It isn't pleasant, and the King has said it's only in your best interests that you don't touch him. I'm sorry, ma'am, I really am," one of the workers said.

The woman stopped fighting and glared at him. "If that was your boy, you would want to say goodbye to him as well. You'll just toss him in a mass grave, just like you did with the others. If that was your boy, how would you like that?"

The boy turned away, feeling sick. He hadn't been able to say goodbye to his family either. He had been too weak, and the orphaned children weren't allowed to see the corpses. It wasn't right, the King had said.

The boy kept walking, following the cobblestone paths and avoiding the streets he knew were the worst. He knew he should feel grateful. Some people had lost everything, whereas his house was still standing. He had his family's riches and could afford good food.

But that night, when he watched that building collapse and heard his family's screams, something had clicked inside him. He was bitter and angry, and he despised the people who were going about their days like everything was all right. He hated the sound of laughter, because nothing was funny. Nobody should be happy anymore, not when everything was so completely wrong.

They should all be crying. Mourning for their village. Wearing grey ribbons on their arms for those they had lost.

The boy turned back towards the edge of town as the sun was setting, turning the sky pink and orange. The walk back was no longer pleasant. The lush grass that had stood on either side of the road had been replaced by awful, scrubby brown stuff. A stray flower blew across the ground in front of him, and he wondered how anything so pretty had survived such carnage.

He set his boots by the door and locked it firmly behind him. Not that anyone would try to break in.

He walked straight past the fireplace, not even sparing it a glance. If he was cold, he had plenty of blankets.

As he made to go straight to bed, something in his parents' bedroom caught his eye. He hadn't stepped foot in there for days, hadn't even looked at it since he'd returned home. So he wondered why, then, a small wooden box peeking out from beneath their bed had attracted his attention.

It was quite small and unassuming, closed with an ornate latch. Perhaps his parents had tried to rescue important documents, but hadn't had time to take the box before they fled.

Slowly, carefully, the boy undid the latch and opened the lid. Sure enough, several sealed envelopes and an array of folded papers were scattered on top. He picked up one of the papers and unfolded it. His breath caught in his throat.

A crudely drawn picture of his family, with pencil smudges and ink splattered across the page. I did that when I was six, he thought. Why would they keep it so long?

The other papers were somewhat similar. Portraits of his mother sitting in the garden and his father reading a book, landscapes with wobbly trees and scribbly green grass, a letter by his sister saying that she had the best family anyone could hope for.

The boy choked on a sob, pressing a bandaged knuckle to his mouth. He reached into the box, expecting to find another paper, but instead his hand closed around something hard and cold. He drew out a glass bottle of dark liquid. Memories flashed in his mind of his father pouring out a tiny glass of it once a year. He had never been allowed any, not even a tiny sip.

He uncorked the bottle, inhaling the sweet, fruity fragrance. He stood, headed into the kitchen, and took a swig. Liquid fire trailed down his throat and he gasped. It felt good. It warmed him more than any blanket and though sharp and metallic, he didn't care about the taste.

Before long, half of the bottle was gone and his head throbbed. "It doesn't matter," he muttered. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore."

All of a sudden he lashed out, sending several plates crashing to the floor. He stooped down to pick up the broken crockery, not quite sure of what he was doing. He was just doing things, trying to blot out the pain that coursed through his body.

A shard of pottery sliced through his palm and he let out a howl. It didn't hurt, really, but seeing the crimson bead up on his skin was oddly surprising. He slid to the floor, bringing the bottle with him, and hastily patted the blood off on his shirt. Tears streamed down his face and the glass clinked against his teeth as he took another gulp of the liquid.

"Nothing matters," he sobbed. "Nothing... nothing matters. Nothing matters. Nothing matters."