Then I heard Milly.
She was slow at the best of times, but after she’d been lying down in bed for more than a few hours, her achy joints stiffened up and made it even worse. And yet, I heard her hurried shuffle, her walking cane scraping against the tile floor.
Panic surged through me. It was one thing for me to take these kinds of hits, but Milly couldn’t sustain that. Her brittle bones might very well shatter. I heard her scratchy voice calling my name. Heard the fear in it.
Her fear added to my surging adrenaline. It made it swell. Made it snap. Made my fingertips ache and burn and then bleed.
I felt the liquid dripping down my palms, but I barely paid any mind to the red-hot blood seeping from my fingers. Because Milly was getting closer, and the man was swinging back his foot to kick me in a crushing blow, and I launched myself at him.
Like an animal, I snarled as I jumped at him. Clawed at him. Raked my bleeding fingers down his face. Not Milly. He wasn’t going to hurt Milly. I wasn’t going to let him come into her home, steal her hard-earned coin, and hurt us.
The man stumbled as I attacked him, tried to pry me off, but I slammed my hands against his head and pushed. And the blood on my palms smeared and gushed, and I was too frantic to even care.
And then, his snarls turned to gurgles. His prying fingers left my body to instead claw at his face.
The slick blood pouring from my hands made me lose my hold, and I landed on the floor again, but then my feet were wet too, like I was suddenly standing in a puddle of my own blood, or maybe it was his? But that didn’t make sense, because I’d only scratched and hit him, and he’d hit me, and why was there so much blood? Was it raining? Was the roof leaking? But why was it so warm? So thick?
My frenzied mind couldn’t come up with a single explanation, but the air held the metallic clang of blood, and the liquid was warm. So warm.
Milly tore through the doorway. Eyes wide, hand spasming over her hold on her walking stick that she held like a weapon. She raised her cane, ready to hit, but then she jerked to a stop, good eye taking in the man.
“Felton?”
“You know him?” I asked, but my voice felt strange. I felt strange.
“He’s my brother. Comes every few months. What—”
The man made a strangled noise, and then his knees hit the floor. There was a splash on impact. I flinched back when some of it splattered across my face.
“Felton!” Milly cried, and I knew. Knew I’d made a mistake. Knew it by the way she turned, uneven steps hurrying away and then coming back, this time, holding a lantern in her hand to help the dim dawn to light the room.
When the light hit the room, I couldn’t make sense of it.
The amber hue that drenched everything. The shine reflected from the lantern. The man was on his knees, clawing at his throat, making the most disturbing noises. But he wasn’t marked with streaks of red. The floor wasn’t puddled with rain. My fingertips weren’t bleeding. It wasn’t the metallic warmth of blood I was smelling.
It was...gold.
Milly’s hand flew to her mouth. The cane she was holding fell to the floor, splashing as it landed. Her expression was horrified. “Felton!”
The cry tore out of her as another burbled noise came from him, and my eyes went wide when she held the lantern closer to his face. His face where liquid gold had scored down his cheeks where I’d hit him, and wrapped around to his mouth. He was trying to cough as it drained down his throat, trying to get the viscid liquid away from his neck where it strangled and squeezed.
“What did you do?” Milly shouted at me, looking from me to him. “Look at what you did!”
He struggled for a moment longer, and then his kneeling form crashed to the floor with a splash.
Milly wailed.
She scrambled forward, but the slippery floor made her go crashing down. I lurched forward to catch her.
I shouldn’t have.
I shouldn’t have, because as soon as my hands caught her arms, the gold spread to her. Like a conscious, intentional thing, it moved and encased, staining her clothes, blotching her skin, pooling in her mouth.
She couldn’t even scrabble and fight like the man did. And I was in shock. Utter, horrifying shock, as I watched this terrifying gold so viciously attack the one person I loved.
I tried to pull it away. Tried to claw at it where it poured in her mouth and dripped down her neck, but that only made it worse. More gold rained from my palms, surrounding her in a hostile downpour, making me snatch my hands back. I stared at them, watching more and more stream down, and I couldn’t stop it.
What did you do?
Denial tried to beat through my chest, but as I knelt over her, saw her one wide, milky eye, saw the way the gold was squeezing her and her brother against the floor…
There was nothing but panic then.
I scrabbled up, slipping on the wet tile, and I ran. I screamed. For help, for someone to come, for anyone else in the village to fix her, for this to all be a nightmare, despite the hot sun peeking over the horizon.
But as I screamed, as I ran out of her house and into the yard, my gold came with me. It followed my feet, nipping at my heels like a feral dog.
The first person who ran out of their house at my cries took one look at me and stopped dead in his tracks. I stumbled at him, hands gripping his arms, begging him to help me as tears poured down my cheeks. Tears that were no longer clear but the same gold that wept from my hands.
I shouldn’t have touched him. Shouldn’t have grabbed him. Because the gold pounced on him too. He fell, just as they had. Landing at my feet with a violent, panicked pitch, dying right there in front of my wide eyes, all because of a touch.
Shouts rose up and down the village. More people came out. I was shivering, crying, screaming, and this curse just kept rolling out of me in waves, flooding from my feet, pouring from my hands, more and more and more.
“She’s cursed! She’s come to curse us!”
“We need to burn her!”
No no no no
I was already burning with this nonstop cascade, and Milly—
When a group of men came running at me with lit torches, I knew they were going to hurt me. I knew I deserved it. But I needed them to go see. Needed them to help Milly.
“Please, please.”
They ran at me, eyes lit with fire, flames reflecting off the gold that gathered around me. With a spike of my fear, I tried to turn and run away.
But my gold didn’t.
It streamed out of me, poured from Milly’s doorway, gushing down the street like a flash flood, swallowing up the village in its wake.
It didn’t even take long for the gold to inundate the cluster of houses. For it to stream into every doorway and window, and drop from the rooftops. For the screams to rend the air. And then choked gurgles and running feet to abruptly halt.
It should’ve taken longer to murder an entire village.
I was stuck in shock, bare knees on the molten road, eyes blinking around the destruction I’d wrought. There was just a puddle left at my feet, the entire village splotched and blotted and dripping.
The flame from the torches littered on the ground mocked me. The dawning sun shone in accusation.
What did you do?
The gold didn’t dry up until my tears did.
And by then, everyone was dead. Men, women, children.
Milly.
Not even poor old Sal was spared.
My palms were a mess of congealed, tacky gold I had to scrub off, and my feet were the same. I could feel the thickly dried tracks on my cheeks as I ran through the village. Splotches of gold were everywhere, smothered against faces, fisting around chests, staining doorways and window panes like splatters of blood.
I killed everyone in Carnith.