Except—no, it can’t be. Who would be insane enough to use elemental energy—the energy of the stars—as a weapon? But the shards of elements, crashing through all organic life in this world, are huge cell killers. They are the product of this kind of energy, and no other. You can’t see the elemental shards in a spirit walk, but now I understand. That’s what makes a cinder world. That’s what destroys what life remains on those worlds after the initial firestorm has cooled. I never understood until I came and saw the cause with my witch’s eyes.
I have to find unburned wood or I will be stuck here until I die of thirst. Or worse. I could be found by someone ruthless enough to survive in this place for however long it’s been since the holocaust. The longer it’s been, the more animalistic the people here will have become. I’ve seen things on my spirit walks, even though the shaman told me not to dwell on the cinder worlds or wonder what caused them. I’ve seen what the survivors do to one another in the years of never-ending winter that follow the great burning.
Enough.
Stop crying.
Pull yourself together and find fuel for your pyre, Lillian …
Lily felt herself being evicted from Lillian’s memory, despite wanting to see more. Whatever happened next, Lillian either didn’t want to share with Lily or didn’t want to relive herself. Lily looked across the raft at Lillian.
What happened, Lillian? How did you find enough fuel in that cinder world to build a pyre?
The answer to that is what made me who I am now. You think I’m a monster, but I think if you could see what made me who I am, you’d agree that my choices, as ruthless as they seem, are justified. The only question is, are you sure you really want to understand me?
Curiosity dug at Lily, but so did distrust. There was a reason Lillian had only showed her a fragment of a memory, and a half-truth could be more manipulative than any lie. Lily knew this, but she still couldn’t say no outright because to understand Lillian’s story would be to understand something huge inside herself. They were, after all, the same.
I honestly don’t know, Lillian.
*
Juliet turned her head to the side, gagging.
“Easy,” Rowan said in his low, steady voice. He reached out to brace Juliet by her elbow and stopped. His hands were covered in the charred skin he had just peeled off Lily. “Do you need to go outside and get some air?” he asked kindly. Not that there was any difference between the outside air and the air inside the living room at this point. Rowan had insisted they keep all the windows open and it was colder than a meat locker in there.
“No,” Juliet said, shaking it off. “I got this.”
Rowan narrowed his eyes for a moment, weighing Juliet’s resolve, and must have seen more strength in her than she was feeling because he nodded once and bent his head over Lily.
The jewel at his throat throbbed with that eerie dark light and he went back to his task. He directed a tendril of light under a small patch of necrotic skin and even though his burned hands were bandaged, he used the light to ease Lily’s skin away with a precision that no scalpel could ever match. She barely even bled.
It had been a full day since they’d brought Lily back home, and Juliet had seen Rowan do amazing things. Things Juliet could not explain in a rational way. All she knew was that these things Rowan was doing were keeping Lily alive.
“Spray the tincture here,” he directed.
Juliet misted Lily’s exposed muscle and sinew with the combination antibiotic and analgesic potion they had made that morning in Samantha’s second-best copper-bottomed pot.
“Good,” Rowan mumbled as Juliet sprayed the proper amount of tincture, and then stood back to survey the gruesome landscape of Lily’s body. He went to the fire, over which hung Samantha’s best copper-bottomed pot, and deftly lifted out a strip of something that looked like a thin film of gauze about three inches square with the flat of one of his silver knives. This was not the first time Rowan had done this kind of surgery, of that Juliet was quite certain.