Firewalker by Josephine Angelini
For Pia
CHAPTER
1
Lily lay floating on a raft of pain. Terror kept her clinging to it. If she slipped off the side, she knew she’d drown in the smothering darkness that swelled like an ocean under the sparking surface of life. She wanted to let go, but fear wouldn’t let her. When the pain became too much to bear, she hoped that at least the fear would end so she could allow herself to slip weightlessly into the hushed waters of death.
But the fear didn’t end. And Lily knew she couldn’t let go. She was a witch. Witches don’t die quietly in the cold, muffled silence of water. Witches die screaming in the roaring mouths of fire.
“Open your eyes,” Rowan pleaded desperately. Wading her way back to the sound of his voice, Lily forced herself to do as he said. She saw his soot-smeared face, smiling down on hers. “There you are,” he whispered.
She tried to smile back at him, but her skin was tight and raw and her face wouldn’t move. All she could taste was blood.
“Do you recognize this place?” he asked, looking around anxiously. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He tilted her up in his arms so she could glance around.
It was nighttime. Lily felt pavement under her hand and realized they were lying in the middle of the road. She heard a jingling sound when she moved. The shackles and chains from the pyre were still bound to her wrists, the weight of them dragging down her arms. She focused her eyes and looked up the street. It was snowing. The streetlamps were few and far between. Woods surrounded them, but not the impossibly dense, old woods of Rowan’s world. These were young woods. Her woods.
The winding road and rolling hills were familiar. Lily knew this place. They were two towns away from Salem in Wenham, Massachusetts. She hadn’t realized her pyre had been that far from the walls of Salem. The battlefield in the other Salem must have been enormous, and she had filled it with blood.
“I think we’re on Topsfield Road,” Lily croaked. “There’s a farm up ahead.”
“A farm?” Rowan said, squinting his eyes as he tried to peer through the trees. There was a flash of light and Rowan’s head snapped around.
“Headlights,” Lily rasped, her voice failing. “We have to get out of the road.”
“You’re badly burned,” Rowan began hesitantly.
“Have to. We’ll get hit.”
Rowan reluctantly started gathering her up in his arms, but Lily screamed before he could pick her up. It felt like he was tearing off her skin.
The raft of pain rose up again, lifting Lily up and out of herself. The headlights grew closer, blinding her. Tires squealed. Car doors slammed. As she drifted away from it all on her raft, she heard a familiar voice.
“Go help him, Juliet,” the voice commanded. “Careful! She’s burnt to a cinder.”
“Mom?” Lily whispered, and then gave herself to the wet darkness.
*
Juliet stared at the charred girl lying in the middle of the road, momentarily unable to accept that she was looking at her little sister. The skinny girl was burned and bloody all over, but her raspy voice was unmistakable. It was Lily.
A frantic young man clutched her to his chest. Juliet had never seen anyone quite like him before. His hands and forearms were burned as well, but the rest of his leather-clad body was drenched in blood. Juliet got the sickening feeling that the blood was not his own. He was carrying two gore-tipped short swords strapped across his back and his sooty hands looked as if they knew how to use them. At his waist was what seemed to be a whole kit of silver knives arrayed from his belt and strapped down the side of his right thigh. He looked like an utter savage.