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[Kikuyu_Black_Paws]

“What do you want?”

 

The question was simple. Aptly put. There was no hidden meaning, no question other than what was stated. But underneath he could smell a metallic hint of menace.

 

She pulled her legs up to her chest as she sat down beside him, eyes hooded. Beyond the cliff-face the triple, scarlet suns sank hazily into the dipping horizon with a thick shimmer. Dark purple clouds hung heavily, like ripe plums, a sure sign of dark weather in the morning.

 

The young man beside her did not answer the menacing question. He let his hair cover his eyes, hiding the distaste and annoyance at her presence.

 

She repeated the inquiry.

 

“What’s it to you?” he finally said after a moment’s silence. “We have nothing in common—is it a crime to sit at a cliff and watch the sun set?”

 

“It is to sit at this one,” she said solidly. “This is a place for the dead.”

 

“Then why are you here?” the boy asked triumphantly. He knew he had her now.

 

The girl turned her large, heavy eyes to his face and grabbed his gaze, despite the protective shield of hair. “Do you know what it is like to live to die?”

 

He didn’t answer, surprised by her question. “What?”

 

“To live to die. Your only purpose in life is to pass on, to make room for another. That is why this place is for the dead. The dead alone.” She looked back at the clouds as if to engrave their image on her memory, as if she had done this many times. “That is why I am here.”

 

The boy stood hastily and kicked dust. “You’re talking crazy,” he snapped. “No wonder you have no friends.” He stalked away, hands thrust in his pockets, already regretting his words.

 

The girl did not follow him, not with her feet, not with her eyes. She let her knees drop so that her feet dangled over the cliff and watched the furthest clouds release their rain. A leathery bird, perhaps not a bird, flew through the thick grey smudge of the rain miles away, a slight white sheen in the dark. Alone, she reflected that rain in her grey eyes until lightning sparked from the heavy clouds to the ground in a thundering shatter. The rain came down, drenching her hair and shoulders, and the silver raindrops looked like tears sliding down her cheeks.

 

 

“What does it mean to live to die?”

 

Mother nearly dropped the jar she was holding, her eyes wide and her face pale. She grabbed her son by the arm in her surprise, her shock making her voice harsh. “What did you say?” she snapped.

 

Her son jerked away, irritated by her anger. “Never mind, forget I asked.” By her reaction he knew now that there was something true in the little girl’s words he had heard earlier.

 

The mother gripped the jar very tightly and closed her eyes, anchoring herself to the earth with the feel of cool stone under her fingers. “Maryl,” she said, “there are…secrets in the world. Ugly secrets that have been kept to keep us all safe and alive. I don’t know where you heard those words, but you would do better to forget them. I don’t want my son mixed up in this.”

 

Maryl frowned and turned away. “Whatever. I’m going out.”

 

“Be home before dinner,” his mother called. “There’s a bad storm tonight. Stay away from the cliffs!”

 

Of course that was exactly what he wasn’t going to do.

 

The suns were setting again, and the clouds rolling in with a vengeance. Maryl looked up at the sky nervously and shivered, his bare feet pounding on the hot ground as he ran to the one place he knew he could find her. The place of the dead.

 

She was sitting there, as he had imagined her. She almost appeared from the image in his mind, taking form because he wished her there. The suns were an angry green, fire and sparks visible from their wavering sides. Maryl gaped—he had never seen solar flares before, not even when the hurricane had come. His father said they boded disaster and illness. Surely not now…

 

The girl looked up at his approach. She did not frown at him this time—instead she looked like she knew. She knew.

 

“Josa!” he gasped, out of breath. “You have to come away from here! Didn’t you see the flares?”

 

Josa smiled sadly. “I saw them,” she said. “That is why I am here. I told you—I’m only alive to die. And I won’t die at their hands, not as an appeasement to something that will happen anyway.” She looked out at the sky. “No. I will fly like a bird first.”

 

“What are you talking about?!” Maryl cried. The clouds were thundering, lightning spewing from peak to peak. On the plain he could see great fiery boulders falling from the sky, the dry grasses catching fire.

 

Suddenly Maryl heard heavy footsteps behind them. He turned; a group of men had appeared from the village. One held ropes, the other a small, child-sized white robe. They looked pale and uneasy, and sickened. But determined.

 

“What are you doing?” Maryl asked warily, his voice shaking. What were the nasty secrets and unpleasant truths? His eyes widened as he saw his mother’s pale face at the back of the crowd, her mouth covered in one hand as her eyes rested on her boy.

 

The men looked uneasily at each other. “The girl must come with us.”

 

“Why, what do you want with her?”

 

One of the men pointed at the suns and the burning plain fiercely. “Have you not seen the flares, boy?” he snarled.

 

“She was chosen at birth to be the Taker,” another said. “She must come with us.”

 

Maryl glanced between them, knowledge too terrible for him to understand crushing his shoulders so he crouched back towards the cliff edge and a long fall. “You’re out of your minds!” he gasped. “You’re going to kill her?!”

 

The men glanced at the ground, uneasy for a moment. One stepped forward, bearing a long sword. “If you don’t get out of the way now you can join her,” he grated. “Two sacrifices is better than one I say.”

 

There were uneasy but firm mutters of assent. Maryl’s face went pale and he seethed with rage and fear when he saw that his mother was not protesting. Her face was tilted towards the ground.

 

“Maryl!”

 

He turned towards Josa, eyes wide, face pale. The girl stretched her hand out, hair flying in the wind. A small, cynical smile twisted her lips and her heavy eyes looked like chips of violet in the dark light. “This is the place for the living dead,” she said softly. “Come fly with me.”

 

Without thinking Maryl took her hand and leapt towards her. They stood tilted on the edge. A single cry went up from the men, a wail from the mother, and then they disappeared as they plummeted over the side.

 

The group rushed to the edge, peering down in macabre interest to see their bodies fall and break on the bottom. But they were gone—no bodies white against the charred rock, no blood and from that fall they could not have gotten up to run. There was no trace of either.

 

As they stared two birds broke away from the side of the cliff, their white wings flapping fiercely towards the storm. They disappeared into the clouds, tiny specks of white to the very last. The suns spat their final sparks and sank beneath the horizon, drenching the landscape in silver and fiery red. The tiny white birds were vanished.