Rami

Chapter 33

I fly through an abyss of lightning and hail, frothing waves, darkness and the fury of the storm.  Frozen tears trail from my eyes.  My chest heaves.  Every wheezing breath is painful.  My harness straps chafe against my shoulders.  Shivers wrack me.  My mind wanders to strange dark places, and sometimes I refuse to believe I'm awake.  Maybe I'm trapped in another nightmare.  My motor growls.  I try to steer, but my limbs are so numb I can barely jerk them to life.

The water slips closer and closer, a vortex of sea and foam and shadows.  I can't concentrate.  My struggles lose all meaning amidst this chaos.  What if I charted the wrong course?  What if I've been swept hopelessly out to sea?

My fingers start to slip.  I howl in terror and squeeze my wingstraps.  If I let them go, my glider will crumple and I'll fall to my death.

Focus, I command myself.  Focus.  Please.

Lightning flashes in the distance, silhouetting the dark crags of buildings.  A city.

It fades with a rumble of thunder, but I saw it.  I'm certain I did.  I reach out to adjust my course.  My hand slips.  My fingers scrape against emptiness.  I slump forward in my harness with a sickening lurch and the water rushes past, closer and closer, out of control.  The wind jabbers in my ears.

Am I going to die?  My pulse roars.  The world spirals out of control and I cough up salt water.  My head cracks against something hard.  I feel nothing more.

*        *        *

I dream of a plateau in the mountains. The sky is blindingly bright. I'm one of many people standing around an oak coffin.  I'm sitting on the damp earth, silent and still.  A tear slides down my cheek.

"She's all alone," a voice says.

Then someone grabs my hand. I turn to see an eight-year old girl with red hair and crooked teeth. She smiles at me, but I just sob and suddenly I'm desperate to be alone. Electricity ripples through my nerves, into my fingertips.

Meg screams.

And the world breaks apart.  I'm falling.  I reach out to her, but it's too late.  She's gone.

Wake up, somebody says, Wake and forget. There's no time left for sorrow.

*        *        *

Where am I?

I groan and try to move.  Pain stabs at my skull.  I'm awake, I realise.  I'm lying in a bed.  The smell of clean sheets and woolen blankets fills my lungs.  Rain hammers on the roof.  Memory rushes back: I was flying through the storm.  I crashed, didn't I?  

I force my eyes open.  The baherst is curled up by my head, its fur fluffed, ears twitching as it dreams.  I search my memories again and find nothing, only a dim afterimage: it burrowed into my cloak to escape the cruel bite of the wind.  Did I forget about it?  I shake my head, saddened, then stop when pain claws through me.  My hand shoots up to my forehead and finds blood matted in my hair.

I wince and take a slow, rattling breath.  My vision swims.  I almost sink back into unconsciousness, but a wave of panic overwhelms me.  I sit bolt upright.

Lantern light pours in through a window, casting feeble light into the room.  I'm wearing a long nightshirt.  My cloak and pack are nowhere in sight.

I scoop up the baherst stagger to my feet.  My head is throbbing again and darkness pricks at the edges of my vision.  I twist the doorknob with a shuddering hand.  Beyond is a tiny kitchen with a fireplace hunkering in the far corner.  The smell of bubbling stew wafts through the air.  Two people sit at a table, a girl and a woman who's likely her mother.