Page 11 of Red Demon
A Dirt Path Between Worlds
Jesse
Heartache is not a metaphor. I’ve since learned not everyone knows sadness can manifest as actual pain. Although I tried to keep my head clear, I wore my despair with every breath, and that sadness tried to pound its way out of my chest when I’d lie under the stars.
I knew I’d live to see better days, that I had the power to make that true—or die before I caught the lie in it. That belief kept me going every lonely morning and every frigid night. Grief wouldn’t fill the hollowness that echoed between every beat of my heart, a good hunt would. Despair wouldn’t return feeling to my hands or stinging face when I couldn’t stay dry and warm, a better shelter would. Tears wouldn’t bring back my mom or siblings because nothing would, ever.
Iden hurt most of all, the last pillar of my life, fallen.
To get through it, I’d go to bed thinking about what I needed to do next to stay alive. And by bed, I mean a pile of leaves under an arrangement of branches that I’d crawl into the middle of for insulation. On a clear night in deep forest, I’d build that shelter by a campfire, bulking the blanket and tarp with whatever I could find. The wet days were the hardest, when I couldn’t get a fire started, when my fingers and toes would start to freeze. The numbness would last for days, but I always managed to heal back to normal—for a time.
Those stars were beautiful, though. I could see deep into the void on those nights: the milky trails of gas between solar systems, people like me deep in the black spaces in between. Other people overcame that hollowness, the nothing in between the pinpricks. I’d do the same. Step one: survive the night. Step one thousand: kill the Red Demon. Somewhere in between, I’d do what Iden suggested: find other Chaeten, avoid Asri, get help from the empire.
I knew if I stayed on the road where any empire vehicles could see me, anyone else might see me too. Yet I saw only hoof prints in mud beside those roads rather than imprints of truck wheels, and those horses were most likely owned by Asri. So I traveled near enough to the road to hear a passing vehicle driven by other Chaeten, but not near enough to be seen, sticking to deer paths and streams. Days bled into weeks as I avoided the patchwork of settlements along the roads. Thus far, they were all Asri, and I’d yet to hear the rumble of a single engine by road or sky.
I assumed Asri enemies were always near, creeping with the same quiet steps I used while hunting game. Hiding my bag outside of camp while foraging proved insightful, after I found my shelter destroyed and ransacked one day. I kept moving, which meant I could not process big game and struggled to hunt enough to keep my muscles full and strong. Fish, snared rabbits, snow-buried greens, and winter berries kept me alive.
Chaeten settlements like mine were few and far between on Noé. Most of us lived in the inner empire: in Thebos, our first foothold as refugees, or the cities on the islands of Iyad or Meyit. But we’d won our right to breathe the Nara’s air long ago, and I knew I’d find a sign of my people soon. Maybe over that next ridge, I’d see a wall painted in ochre red for the empire’s Z’har, and beyond it wooden houses in a rainbow of colors. I’d smell cooked meat over a fire and hear words I recognized. Day after day I’d try to wish that into being, finding only ruins from the decades-old war, or Asri towns with millennia-old stone cottages. Between lines of snow lay brown harvested rows of lentils and vegetables, or hills piled with compost and straw for their mushrooms.
I lasted about a month before I developed a cough that racked me throughout the icy night. The next morning I felt weaker, and the morning after that, I barely found strength to rise. That afternoon, I found myself too close to town to light a fire without giving myself away, and I was afraid I’d die in that snow unless I risked it.
So I risked it.
The woods thinned as I walked the main road, revealing a sprawl of smoke-stained rooftops within the Asri town. I thought back to all of Mr. Gell’s lessons I could remember, all the foreign phrases I pushed rather than rolled off my tongue. He wasn’t the only Asri who didn’t want to kill me, I hoped more than believed. At that point, I figured I wasn’t long for the void either way. I wondered if we were at war, if my queen was dead.
A coughing fit overtook me as I approached the town gate, fear sour in my throat. A guard manned the perch above the gate, wearing a thick swirling robe of glittering black. I dared not meet his ringed Asri eyes for more than a moment.
He scowled, but didn’t stop me. The snow crunched as I stepped under the arch. Worn cobbled streets edged in moss snaked between weathered stone houses, their windows glowing with a warmth that my rasping lungs dearly missed. I walked past a cluster of people loading up a horse cart. No drones or machines anywhere that I could see, just animals and people wearing folded robes in muted colors. Heads of braided hair swiveled under cloaks that looked nothing like my once bright blue coat. Whispers pricked my skin like dry leaves skittering down the cobblestone.
On the next street, a long-haired boy no older than five pointed a stubby finger, his eyes wide. I walked with a slight limp—bedraggled, colorful, and Chaeten. A smile from me was enough to make the poor kid scream and run off. I wondered if that was my grime, or something I’d never be able to wash off.
I kept my chin held high as I studied the swirling scrawl of Asri script on the signs above the building, hoping to find the word for healer. My smile felt brittle, but I plastered it on my frost-cracked lips when anyone walked close. Mr. Gell always told me if you can’t remember how to say something, a smile is universal. I hid my shaking cracked hands in the pockets of my cloak, borrowing Mr. Gell’s optimism, because I only made out bits and pieces of the rapid murmurs around me.
The smell of spices and baked bread assaulted my senses as I found an open air market. Crossing under carved stone awnings, I looked around booths and shops selling clothes, housewares, and warm drinks. I only had a little coin, but now seemed like the time to spend it.
“Do you have coffee?” I asked a man at the drink stand. The word for coffee was the same in each language: they stole ours.
“No,” he said.
How the Asri live without coffee after rediscovering it remains one of the things I will never understand about them. I made out the word for tea among a string of other script I didn’t recognize, but I tried to hide my unease. He was barely a man, a little older than me, with bright blue in the center of his ringed amber eyes.
“How much for tea?” I asked in Asri.
He frowned, replying with a slow cadence. Nodding, I handed over a couple coins. I didn’t remember how to ask for honey, but he pointed at things for me to nod to. He gestured down the road and said something I could only smile at, catching the words for “temple” and “walk”. I brushed off some snow on a nearby bench, the stone cold under me as I sat. The tea tasted milky, sweet with ginger and turmeric. I savored it as long as I could.
A wizened, white-haired woman, hair spun up in braids, caught my gaze from where she arranged clay pots and kitchen supplies a few booths down. Her gaze pierced the street between us, questioning. When I was done, I walked her way.
“Good afternoon,” I said, my voice raspy from disuse and the cold. “I, uh, I need a…” I couldn’t remember the word for a pot. “I need to cook.”
The woman’s expression flickered, surprised but not unkind. “You need this?” she said in Asri. I recognized the word when she used it. “Komaldi, na. Pot,” she repeated in Chaeten.
“Thank you.” A nervous laugh escaped my lips after I stifled my cough. “I need a small one.”
A hint of a frown graced the woman’s lips as she pulled one down from the wall across from her booth, folding the handle down. “Why small? A boy cooking alone in winter, why?” She chose small Asri words, her voice rough and warm. Still, I wasn’t an idiot. I couldn’t admit I was vulnerable, that I had no one to avenge me if they killed me outright in that market.
“How much?” I asked, smiling.
She told me, then asked her question again with a few other words I didn’t understand, her brow furrowed. “You here alone? Why this?” she asked again in Chaeten.
