#39 1000-Word

TITLE: Steady in a Firestorm
GENRE: YA (15+) Fantasy

She was dead. Her eyes, once vibrant and soft, stared at the wood and stone ceiling like the glass eyes of a doll. Long hands, smooth and tan with short fingernails, hung at the side of the bed. They rocked back and forth in the gentle wind blowing in from the harbor. Blood trickled into the pool that had formed around her thighs.

Behind the bed stood a large midwife clutching a wriggling bundle of blankets. Tears fell past the woman’s clenched eyelids. Her hands, covered in drying blood, shook.

The room was small but well lit, the window on the far wall opened so the breeze might clear out the stink. Not a cloud littered the sky, and a few bright stars already twinkled in the fading light. Iolanthe’s gaze drifted over homes and gardens, across the harbor and the dozens of ships swaying at the dock, until her eyes met the sea.

Iolanthe’s hand, copper, large, with shorn fingernails and rough calluses, seemed to move of its own accord—stretching forward to caress the woman’s cheek. Their skins seemed to blend together.

She is so beautiful, a part of her mind thought. So perfect, so pure. Iolanthe knew the yearning was wrong, but she yearned nonetheless. It’d become second nature.

She glanced at the midwife. The woman hugged the bundle of blankets to her chest as she cried. That ugly, unclean thing inside had killed the most perfect being in the world. A tiny animal, not even worth the label of human, had ruined everything.

A fierce anger scrambled through Iolanthe’s muscles. She imagined strangling the thing, throwing it out the window so she could hear it smash, split splat, into the road. But her feet, frozen to the floor, would not obey. Gritting her teeth, she brought her attention back to the woman lying on the bed. With her Iolanthe could never be upset.

An ache blossomed from the tips of her fingers, spreading through her arms, up her neck and down her chest. Come back, that part begged. Please, please come back to me.

Iolanthe bent to kiss her forehead, and as her lips connected with flesh, a sound pushed out of the woman’s lips, like an echo of life.

“Vidar.”

Iolanthe straightened, outraged, her lips tingling. The body, that beautiful, perfect body, erupted in flames. She gasped, then bit back a yelp. The room disappeared with a blink, sound swallowed into emptiness. She reached her man-sized hands to pull the woman from the inferno, but it was too late. And then the flames caught onto Iolanthe's sleeve and licked up, up, up her arm, crisping, burning. This time she didn’t hold back a scream, didn’t stop it from becoming a laugh. The pain, harsh and searing, was wonderful.

Finally. Finally, finally.

#

Iolanthe jerked awake. Her right arm was numb. She clenched it under her blanket, gritting her teeth as the sleeping muscles awakened. Her breath skittered cold and heavy over her nose, making her shiver. Staring up at the popcorn ceiling, she made herself calm down.

Just a dream.

She pulled out her hand from underneath the covers and examined it. Pale and slender, it was nothing like the hand from the dream. No marks had appeared from some phantom flame, either. Stuffing it back under the blanket, she turned onto her side, her eyes wandering over to the clock on her bedside table. Only a dream, she reminded herself again.

Her body tried to lull her back into sleep, but Iolanthe stayed awake, afraid that when she slipped into unconsciousness she would return to the heat and obsession, the murderous thoughts, the voice of the dead. With slow, measured inhales and exhales she cleared her mind of every image.
And in the way of dreams, for good or no, when she woke later that day, all she remembered was a terrible feeling: a nightmare that had faded in the silence of sleep.

#

“Get up, you stubborn lump of pasty white flesh!”

Amy Moore’s voice pierced through Iolanthe’s sleep like a fog horn. She’d always marveled at Amy’s perfectly enunciated screeches, though the admiration dwindled when the almost mystical power was used against her. She responded in the only way that seemed appropriate. She rolled over and yanked her pillow over her head.

“No, thanks,” she grumbled, keeping her eyes clenched tight against the coming day. She was so not in the mood for school. Not that she ever was.

Her foster sister jerked the large comforter off of the bed and flipped Iolanthe to the ground with it.

“Ouch,” Iolanthe said, pulling herself to her feet. She could almost hear her body creak and groan in protest. She rubbed her butt, glaring at Amy’s cheeky grin. Unlike her, Iolanthe didn’t have much in the way of padding there. “What the heck is your problem?”

Amy rolled her eyes and pointed to the alarm clock.

It beamed back 7:04.

“You have got to be joking,” Iolanthe whined.

“Hmm…” Amy pondered aloud, tapping her chin with her index finger as she watched—not helping one bit, the jerk—Iolanthe scatter clothes and books across the room as she scrambled to get ready for school in less than three minutes. “That would be a rather cruel joke. Ingeniously cruel, one might say. By golly, I think I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Iolanthe ignored Amy. She threw on pants and a shirt, tossed other articles of clothing about the room, settling on a beleaguered green sweatshirt with holes for her thumbs. Stuffing her books into her backpack, she rushed out, pausing only to rap Amy on the head while swinging her backpack onto her shoulders.

“Hey! What was that for?” Amy rubbed the side of her head, chasing after Iolanthe.

“For saying ‘by golly’.”