Aethendan

The Ash and the Amber

The scent of bread baking was the last thing Karliah remembered of home.

Their treehouse stood at the edge of the Southern Green, nestled into the trunk of a great oak whose bark always smelled of sap and warm afternoons.

“Ama!” Karliah squealed happily, snatching the other heel of the loaf her mother had just cut into.

“No more bread for you, Little Bird,” her mother scolded, swatting at her but smiling despite herself. “Go find your Apa before I must make another batch.”

Her mother’s laughter followed as she scurried down the trunk. Her feet were moving before they ever touched the ground, free as the birds that scattered in her wake.

The clearing where her father worked was empty. A topiary stood half-finished.

Where is he?

Then weightlessness.

She yelped as her feet suddenly left the ground. “If I were a wolf…” her father murmured into her hair, laughing as he held her aloft.

“You scared me, Apa!” she giggled, squirming as he put her back down on her feet. She turned then, looking up into a smiling face so much like her own.

“You are getting so tall, sunshine,” he murmured, tugging on one of her stray curls. “Walk with me.”

She grinned, nodding quickly as she followed him into the brush. The moss was soft beneath her feet and the sun was warm. They paused for a moment, admiring a doe and her fawns as they moved gracefully through the trees. Her ears twitched at every tiny sound as she watched them in awe.

“Beautiful,” she breathed, catching their scent.

“Why must they always stop to listen?”

Apa smiled, glancing at her before his gaze returned to the small herd.

“Because the Green is noisy.”

Karliah laughed, startling the doe into fleeing.

“It sounds pretty quiet to me, Apa,” she giggled, covering her mouth.

He shook his head, dimples deepening as he smiled at her. “Only dead things are ever truly quiet, sunshine.”

By the time they returned, the first lanterns were glowing among the branches. Neighbors drifted back into their homes as darkness slowly swallowed the Green. Sleep came easily, wrapped in the warmth of Ama’s stew and Apa’s stories. Karliah never heard how that night’s tale ended.

But the fire did not scream.

It hissed.

Karliah woke coughing.

For one confused moment, she thought Ama had burned something. The room was dark, but not with night. Smoke rolled beneath the rafters in thick grey folds, swallowing the familiar curve of the walls and the little shelf where Apa kept the wooden animals he carved for her.

Her eyes burned.

“Ama?”

The word scraped out of her throat.

Something cracked below.

Not a branch. Not thunder.

Wood.

Heat climbed through the floorboards beneath her bed, pressing through the blankets and into her skin. Karliah kicked them away and stumbled onto her feet. The room tilted around her. Smoke filled her mouth before she could take a full breath, bitter and dry, and she doubled over coughing.

“Apa!”

The door burst open.

Her father came through the smoke with one arm over his face. The fire behind him turned the edges of his curls orange. He crossed the loft in two strides and caught Karliah before her knees sank to the floor.

“There you are.”

His voice was calm.

Too calm.

Karliah clung to the front of his nightshirt. “Apa, what is happening?”

“We are leaving.”

“Where is Ama?”

Another crack split the house. The great oak groaned around them, deep and wounded, and somewhere below, glass shattered.

Her father pulled his wool cloak from its peg and threw it over Karliah’s head. The heavy fabric swallowed her whole. It scratched her cheeks and smelled of rain, woodsmoke, and the crushed cedar leaves he kept in his pockets.

“Keep this over your mouth.”

“I cannot see.”

“You do not need to see. Hold on to me.”

He lifted her against his chest.

Karliah buried her face beneath his chin as he carried her through the loft. The air grew hotter with every step. Sparks landed on the cloak and vanished into the wool with tiny, hungry hisses.

Through a gap in the fabric, she saw the staircase.

It was gone.

Flames climbed through the opening where it had been, devouring the vines Ama had trained around the banister. Karliah stared at them, unable to understand how the same orange light that warmed their winter evenings could move like that—fast and eager, licking its way toward everything she knew.

“Ama!” she screamed.

“I am here, Little Bird!”

Her mother’s voice came from below, nearly lost beneath the groaning wood and roar of the flames.

Karliah fought against Apa’s arms. “She is still down there!”

“I know.”

“We have to get her!”

“I know, sunshine.”

He carried her toward the loft window.

Cold night air slipped through the frame, impossibly clean against the smoke. He shoved it open with his shoulder. Smoke rushed toward the opening as if it wanted to escape with them.

Karliah looked down.

The ground seemed miles beneath her.

“No, Apa.”

He set her on the ledge. Pulling the cloak tightly around her shoulders, he cupped both sides of her face. His palms were rough and warm. Soot darkened one of his cheeks, but his eyes were steady.

“You remember the soft patch beneath your window?”

Karliah shook her head even though she did.

“The moss,” he said. “You are going to jump into it.”

“No.”

“You are light. The branches will slow you.”

“No.” Her voice rose, thin and panicked. “You come first.”

A flame rolled across the loft behind him.

Apa flinched as the heat struck his back, but his hands remained gentle against her face.

“I will be directly behind you. I must get Ama.”

Karliah searched his expression for the smile he wore whenever he teased her. It was not there.

“You promise?”

His thumb brushed beneath one of her eyes.

“I promise that I love you.”

That was not what she had asked.

Before she could tell him so, he lifted her beneath the arms and pushed her through the window.

Karliah fell.

Branches tore at the cloak and scratched her bare legs. One struck her shoulder hard enough to spin her sideways before the moss rushed up beneath her.

She hit the ground with a breathless thud.

For several heartbeats, she could not move or even breathe. The night wheeled above her, stars turning between the leaves. Her lungs opened with a sudden, painful gasp, and smoke chased the air back out again.

Karliah rolled onto her hands and knees.

“Apa!”

The window above her glowed orange.

His shape appeared through the smoke.

For one wild moment, relief surged through her. Karliah scrambled to her feet and reached toward him, though he was still high above her.

He looked back into the house.

Then he disappeared.

Karliah waited.

The fire climbed through the loft window, replacing him.

“No. Apa!”

She ran toward the base of the tree.

Heat struck her before she reached the roots. It pressed against her face and hands, driving her backward. Burning leaves spiraled down through the branches like red stars.

Karliah lifted the cloak over her head and tried again.

“Ama! Apa!”

The front doorway was a mouth of flame. Beyond it, she thought she saw movement—two shadows crossing through the smoke—but the heat folded the air until nothing held its proper shape.

Then Ama appeared at the kitchen window.

Her amber eyes found Karliah through the dark.

The same eyes Karliah saw each morning when she leaned over the washbasin. The same eyes that had crinkled with laughter when Karliah stole the bread. Now they shone through the smoke, wide but steady.

“Run to the trees,” she called.

Karliah shook her head so hard her curls struck her cheeks.

“Come out!”

“Run, Little Bird.”

“Apa said he was coming!”

Ama’s expression broke.

Only for an instant.

Then the roof groaned.

It was a deep, splintering sound that traveled through the trunk and into the soles of Karliah’s feet. Ama looked upward. Behind her, a burning beam crashed across the kitchen in a burst of sparks.

“Karliah.” Her voice cut through everything. “Run.”

Karliah ran.

Not because she wanted to.

Because Ama had used the voice that allowed no disobedience.

She stumbled through the clearing with the cloak dragging behind her. Brambles caught the wool and nearly pulled her backward. She tore free and kept moving until the heat no longer burned her skin.

At the edge of the thicket, she stopped.

She did not go deeper.

Apa had promised he would come behind her.

Karliah crouched beneath the low branches, gripping the cloak closed with both fists. The shadow-woven fabric shifted where it touched the moss, brown bleeding into green and black until she nearly vanished beneath it.

She watched the house.

Any moment, Apa would come through the doorway with Ama in his arms. He would cough and complain about the smoke. Ama would be angry that the bread had burned. They would spend the night beneath the trees and laugh about how frightened they had been once the danger was over.

Karliah waited for the door to open.

It did not.

She counted her breaths.

Ten.

Then ten more.

Then she started again because she had forgotten where she was.

The great oak shuddered.

Its branches writhed against the night sky, scattering embers into the darkness. The lanterns among the nearby trees flickered awake one by one as distant voices began to rise, but they sounded impossibly far away.

Someone shouted.

Another voice called for water.

Karliah did not move.

The grown people would know how to reach them. They would bring Ama and Apa to the trees.

The roof folded inward.

Karliah felt the collapse through the ground before she heard it. The earth jumped beneath her feet. A tower of sparks rose into the canopy, bright enough to turn the whole clearing into day.

“No.”

The word barely left her.

She stood.

“No.”

She took one step toward the house.

An older Elven man caught her around the waist before she reached the clearing.

Karliah screamed then.

Not words. Not names. Just one raw sound torn from somewhere beneath her ribs as she kicked and clawed against the arms holding her.

“Let me go! They are still in there!”

“I know, little one. I know.”

The arms tightened.

Then a scream cut through the trees above them.

Not from Karliah’s home.

From another tree.

She twisted beneath the heavy cloak in time to see flame rush along one of the suspended walkways. It did not creep across the wood. It raced beneath it in a thin orange line, following the woven vines toward the neighboring oak.

The lanterns there burst all at once.

A woman shouted a name.

Someone yelled for the bridges to be cut.

The man holding Karliah went still.

Across the clearing, another treehouse caught.

Then another.

The fire moved through the Green as though it knew the way.

“No,” the man whispered.

A child cried somewhere beyond the smoke.

The arms around Karliah vanished.

“Do not move from this place,” he ordered, already backing away.

Then he turned and ran toward the voice.

Karliah never saw him again.

She crouched beneath the thicket, gripping the cloak around herself as the night came apart.

Voices rose between the trees.

Water.

Axes.

Names shouted again and again.

The heavy snap of severed bridges.

The groan of branches burdened by flame.

Karliah pressed both hands over her ears, but the sounds came through her palms. The earth beneath her seemed to pulse with heat. Orange light flashed between the trunks as fire climbed homes that moments before had been dark and sleeping.

It should not have spread so quickly.

Even at twelve, she knew that.

There had been no wind.

Yet the flames leapt from oak to oak, following something she could not see.

She waited for Ama and Apa.

She waited for anyone.

But no one came.

One by one, the voices stopped.

Karliah did not know how long she remained in the thicket. Long enough for the screaming to end. Long enough for the branches overhead to split and fall. Long enough for the orange glow to dull to red.

When she finally lowered her hands, the Green was quiet.

Not peaceful.

Hollow.

Karliah crawled from beneath the thicket.

Every lantern was gone.

Where homes had rested among the branches, only blackened frames remained. Walkways hung broken between the trees. Ash drifted through the clearing, soft as snow.

She called for anyone who might answer.

Her voice traveled through the ruined Green and returned to her as an echo.

Dawn found her still wrapped in her father’s cloak as she sat in the clearing, her bare feet black with soot. The air smelled of wet ash, scorched sap, and something she would spend the rest of her life refusing to name.

The forest stood around her, green and indifferent.

It did not reach for her.

It did not mourn.

It did not turn away.

It endured.

Karliah looked at the place where her home had been and understood, for the first time, what her father had meant.

Only dead things were ever truly quiet.

She pulled his hood over her curls and walked deeper into the trees.

And in that silence, something inside her stilled to match it.