Dragonfly Ignited Read online

  Through my ministrations, the Kraw didn't move. Not a single muscle flexed or bunched, not a twitch, barely even a whisper of a breath escaped the hulking beast before me. Not even when I traced my finger over a tattoo that reminded me of wind. This stillness in my cellmate, above all else, earned my trust. For the moment.

  When I got to his lip, which had stopped oozing blood much faster than my own, I hesitated. Hazel eyes penetrated mine, and my heart skipped a beat. No one had ever looked at me this way before. This was not hatred, not the loving look of family, or the guarded look of an acquaintance, or even the doting look of my dear Lonnie. This was different.

  This was an open look that seemed to read into my soul, like a candle illuminating the pages of a book in the darkness. This was a look without walls or defenses or ulterior motives. This was a look that truly saw me.

  I averted my gaze and cleaned at the Kraw's jaw, noting that facial hair didn't grow on these people, but this one's thick black hair was coming in on his head in lieu of a proper shave. Even his lips, lips that had probably feasted on human flesh, were soft and beautiful around strong, large teeth. I met the Kraw's eyes again, reminding myself that this creature could kill me with a single swipe of his fist. But there was no trace of hostility in the Kraw's eyes. Eyes that had begun to remind me of my world in the spring, when soft, velvet green brushed slumbering brown and gray.

  I stood and tossed the blood-soaked rag aside with a soft curse, pacing to the opposite end of the room and sitting. I drew my knees up to my chest and rested my head on them, avoiding eye contact with the Kraw. And in turn, the Kraw did not speak a word or move a muscle. I didn't even know if he was watching me. And I tried not to care.

  ✽✽✽

  It had been days since I tended the Kraw's wounds, and still we regarded each other with the same indifference that we had on the cart together. The humiliation of taking care of private matters in front of another was soon forgotten as I learned to tune the Kraw out. Food came more abundantly, though not enough, but answers did not come at all.

  I walked around the circle of the cell, tracing my finger over the same lines in the stone that I had traced hundreds of times by now, wondering why I was being held, and what they were to do with me. The Kraw in the cell with me would perform exercises in his solitude, and I tried to ignore him and his grunts of exertion as he bent and pressed this way and that.

  Sometimes I sang to myself. Sometimes I recited books or poetry. Sometimes I spoke to my family as if they could hear me. And at times, very rarely, I would catch the Kraw watching me. But he would soon avert his eyes as if I were an insect passing through his vision, and I would soon return to my own company as if he were a large rock in the scenery of my prison.

  The days became hotter and the cell became as an oven. The Kraw would lay across the stone, sweat beading off of his bare muscles to pool below him, and I tied my clothing up as high as I could bear. I paced, I swallowed, I wiped away tendrils of wet hair from my dewy skin. The pool offered only so much comfort when its waters were as warm as a bath.

  I sang to distract myself. I told my dead family of my troubles. I told Lonnie that he would laugh to see me exposing so much leg. I told my sister that I dearly missed our cold mornings making bread together. I closed my eyes and pretended that I could smell the yeast rising in the dough on those cold mornings when my nose and fingers were frosted. It only made the heat pressing into my skin that much more unbearable.

  “Lay,” the Kraw said.

  His deep voice rumbled into the chamber, and I stumbled in surprise before I turned to him.

  “Pardon?”

  The Kraw was silent, eyes closed as if he had never uttered the word. I went to kneel as close to him as I dared.

  “What did you say?” I whispered. Weeks had passed with only the ghosts of my family to keep me company, perhaps I was losing my mind.

  Still, no answer from the Kraw. Long black lashes fanned a strong cheek and his large body poured across the stones, muscles bunching over a strong frame as he took slow breaths. I had tried to avoid looking at him all of this time, but now, laying out before me as he was, eyes closed, I looked my fill and realized that this creature was a work of art. Statuesque perfection, adorned in perfect smooth black lines of flowing tattoos. If he wasn't Kraw then I daresay women would fall all over themselves for him.

  But he was Kraw.

  And I was human.

  I let out a sigh and looked away, frustrated with my solitude.

  “Lay, human,” he said in a nearly imperceptible murmur. “Stone is cool.”

  My mouth popped open as my gaze flew back to the strong face. This time, hazel eyes pierced me with a strange calm.

  “You can speak my language,” I said in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

  “Forbidden.”

  “Why? How long have you been able to understand me?”

  The Kraw closed his eyes.

  I huffed out an angry sigh. “Why are they keeping us?”

  The Kraw continued to take slow, deep breaths, as if in sleep.

  My vision blurred with adrenaline. I put a hand on the Kraw's arm and shook it. “Kraw; Dal, please. I must know.”

  The Kraw sat up with a sudden quickness that I had forgotten he possessed, and my eyes grew wide as I backed away from his hostile glare.

  “Never again,” the Kraw growled.

  I glanced at the fists as large as my head, balled and ready, then back to the eyes that held all the answers. “Please,” I whispered. “Dal, please tell me why they keep us.”

  The fists softened, and the Kraw's muscles unbunched as he relaxed with a sigh. “We cross paths, nothing more.” He raised one leg and rested his arm over it, watching me.

  I searched his face for more answers, but there were none, only the closed off observation of a stranger. I sunk down, looking away. “You probably don't know either,” I said, spiraling into my own hopelessness.

  After a time, the Kraw spoke. “Not my clan. I am alone.” Dal's low voice was barely touching the stone walls.

  I glanced back at the Kraw to see a look of defeat and shame cross the great features. “What are they going to do with you?” I asked in a whisper.

  Dal shook his head, never breaking eye contact.

  I tilted my head, not understanding the gesture. “You can understand them. Why am I here?”

  The Kraw looked away, brow furrowed as if searching the walls for answers. When he met my gaze again, his words puzzled me. “Fire is not yours alone.”

  I frowned, mouth open, before finding words. “Fire? Of course not, but just because I know how to make a fire doesn't mean I'm trying to, to... claim it.” The Kraw watched me without expression. I sighed and turned away.

  “Strong spirit. Weak control. Seraphine, a leaking dam.” The Kraw stumbled over my name.

  I turned a puzzled look to him. Was his handle on my language so tenuous, or did it all make perfect sense and I was just too dense to see it? “Call me Sera,” I said.

  Dal nodded.

  A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, and Dal withdrew and lay back down, closing his eyes. I opened my mouth to say something twice more, then reigned in the “weak control” that the Kraw had said I had. Sweat was pooling under his bulk again. I rubbed at the sweat on my own body that was dripping between my breasts and down my back.

  With a sigh, I did as he said, and lay on the stone floor. It was, in fact, cooler.

  ✽✽✽

  Months in isolation passed with little more conversation. Strange Kraw women would come to look at me, and some would even see to my more female needs with all the stone-faced indifference of a farmer handling livestock. Dal was a boulder through all of their visits, silent, still, and unaware. His dark hair was growing long enough to spill across the stone now, like black silk splashed across dirt.

  I was becoming so accustomed to my isolation and my made-up songs that I found the Kraw intrusions bothersome. And yet, I feared the da
y that they would take Dal from me. If, as he said, we have only crossed paths, then sooner or later one of us would be taken elsewhere for other purposes. He may have been a rock that I could neither lean on nor confide in, but he was my rock, and he was all that I had.

  The day that they came and hauled me away, I struggled and protested. I called for the Kraw, I begged for help. He lay there, unmoving as always, betraying the time we had spent together with total indifference. As the Kraw women pulled me around the corner, I yelled to Dal that he was a coward. Hazel eyes met mine as my prison disappeared from view.

  I found myself on that cart again, and a mixture of gladness and terror mingled within my stomach like bad soup. I wanted my safe cage back, with its strong stone walls and quiet solitude from these cruel people.

  As their children pulled at my hair and clothing, and the people pointed at me and barked their cruel laughs, I looked beyond them to the crumbling hills and the barren wastelands that unfurled into the distance, distorted by waves of heat. The blue sky was mingling with the soft glowing orange of sunset, and it was the most dazzling thing I had seen in months. Perhaps, I realized with a jolt of adrenaline, ever again.

  I gasped in shock when Dal was forced into the cart next to me. True to form, he barked harsh words at his captors, who punched him. Then Dal simply thumped his weight on the wooden floor of the cart when the bone door was bolted shut. For all I knew, he didn't know I was there while he lay about as if half dead.

  We traveled for weeks with scant food or water. This journey was different than the last. My cellmate’s eyes would meet mine more often, and there was a shared understanding that seemed to pass between us. A bond. As the land grew colder, our bodies became smaller from lack of food. A shorter female Kraw shoved dirty furs in with us when she saw me wracked with uncontrollable tremors.

  When I tried to thank her for the furs that stank like dog and feet, she snarled at me and moved away. I learned to ignore the keening cry of my empty stomach, losing myself in memories of my past life as I lay balled into my furs. I always came back to digging my fingers in soft bread dough, pulling and pushing and kneading until the cream-colored mass was stretchy and fluffy.

  When we came to a barren village of iced over dirt and thick hide huts, I was hauled from the warm furs in my cart with rough hands. I didn't have the strength to fight anymore. Dal’s gaze met mine as the world whirled past me.

  The Kraw took me to a large hut with a pyre burning in the center. The fire warmed my bones, and I trembled near it as goosebumps prickled my scant clothing.

  “What is your name,” a female voice commanded.

  I startled to hear someone speak my tongue with commanding fluency. Looking up, I was met by a Kraw female, adorned in shining silver and exotic pelts, sitting on a soft chair made of plush furs. She was pierced and armored, as large as the men and just as menacing.

  “You speak my language?” Hope pushed my scratchy voice through cracked lips.

  She gave a single nod. “I am Patroma, the Warlord's Eyes and Ears. I see you, and I hear you. And so you must hear me in return.”

  I shivered as the warmth of the fire soaked my prickled flesh. “Why am I here? I have been captive for months, no explanations, little food, less kindness.”

  “You expect conversation from people who cannot understand your primitive tongue.” She seemed amused by this.

  I glared. “Primitive? My people didn't live in huts made from animals, we lived in houses and reveled in arts and literature. Hardly primitive from any stand-”

  Patroma nodded to something behind me and my knees were whacked from behind. I cried out and fell to my knees, the welts behind them throbbing in white hot pain. Patroma raised her chin at me.

  “You will watch your tongue, human, or have it cut out.”

  I huffed a sigh, refusing to cower and rub the backs of my legs where the stinging pulse of welts cried for attention. My hopes for kindness were dashed. My will faltered under the crushing weight of hunger and cold and despair. The urge to crumple to the dirt and weep welled up within me, and I dug my nails into my palms and tried to straighten. I would not die showing weakness.

  “Why are Dal and I captive?”

  “Dal?”

  “The other Kraw with me.”

  Patroma gave a wicked smile. “He speaks to you?”

  The fleeting fear that I had betrayed Dal shot through my stomach. “No, that word has crossed my ears much and so I have named him that,” I said, forcing my starved mind to work.

  “What interest do you have in Dal?”

  “None, he acts as if I am not there. I assume that our fates are to be somehow intertwined, given the length of time we have been kept together.”

  Patroma gave a slight laugh and said something the Kraw standing behind me. Both of them shared a laugh before she addressed me again.

  “Tell me of your fire.”

  I blinked. “Fire?”

  “The fire you possess.”

  I gave Patroma a confused frown, thinking carefully over my words when I heard the rustle of the Kraw behind me. “You possess fire the same as I,” I said, gesturing to the pyre. “It sits here before me. I do not know why you think me different.”

  Patroma searched my eyes before leaning back and regarding me with bored disdain. “Then we have no reason to keep you.” She waved me away, clipping curt words at the Kraw behind me.

  Panic gripped me. “Wait!” I struggled against the hand that was wrapping around my arm.

  Patroma held a hand out to the Kraw who had my arm, and he stilled as she watched me.

  I searched the flames for something, anything to say that would keep me alive. What was special about fire to a human being? We cook with it, we forge weapons and temper metal with it, we warm our homes. Then the thought struck me with all the force of a Kraw backhand. The Gifted, some of them control fire.

  I met Patroma's eyes. “Some of my kind are... Gifted.”

  “With fire,” she said, bored.

  I nodded.

  “How.”

  I swallowed. “I'm not sure.”

  “You will show me.”

  “I can't.”

  Patroma waved me away again, and the Kraw nearly hauled my arm out of my shoulder.

  “Wait! I’m too weak. I need rest, and food.” And a miracle.

  Patroma's eyes narrowed as my captor halted again. “You are telling me that your Gifted cannot perform their magic if they are weak?”

  “I... I don't know about everyone else.” My arm was throbbing under the massive grip. “Please, I have done nothing to your people. Show me some kindness and I will help in the best way I know how.”

  And betray you at the first opportunity.

  Patroma smiled then, showing pointed teeth. “The Kraw do not know kindness, it is weak.”

  “What do the Kraw want?” I asked.

  “That is not your concern.” And with that, Patroma nodded at the Kraw holding me, and he hauled me away. There was no point arguing, I didn't have the strength to invent more lies. Starve to death or be killed, it was no different. Maybe I could convince Dal to kill me fast if I ever saw him again.

  I was dragged out of the warm hut, and the exposed skin on my body that was just getting used to the heat of the fire went rigid with shock, sending a harsh stiffness up my spine.

  The Kraw holding me barked harsh tones at me, hauling me around harder, but my throbbing legs refused to work, sloshing and dragging through the icy mud that was like thousands of burning needles. The other Kraw walking through the village were dressed in furs, laughing at my skeletal body exposed to the cold. I was still clad in a simple torn shirt and ripped skirt, hardly sufficient for surviving this frigid place.

  When I was thrown into a large hut made of charred wood, I was shocked to see Dal within, muscles bulging as he lowered himself to the ground with one arm, then pressed away from the earth, then lowered again. The Kraw that had been hauling me around slammed the door shu
t behind me. Dal stood, skin flushed from exertion, watching the door with a mutinous scowl.

  I didn't care. On trembling legs, I ran to Dal, my rock, and wrapped my arms around his warm chest, shivering as my body absorbed his heat. Dal did not say anything, did not shove at me or repel me with disgust or anger. He stood still, allowing me to listen to his heart beat, and I was grateful for that alone.

  When Dal's large hand came down over my back, a tremor wracked my body from the intense warmth. My eyes misted at the kindness I had not been shown in months.

  “Thank you,” I whispered in Dal's shoulder. The strong, steady rhythm of Dal's heart was all I needed in answer.

  After a few minutes, Dal pushed me away gently, and I knew that I was on borrowed time already. I looked up at the frowning warrior. He seemed to be considering my form.

  “You will die,” Dal said, his whisper of a voice barely scraping the air around us.

  I wrapped skeletal arms around myself, barely reserving any heat. “It's true then, they're going to kill me.” I wasn't sure if it was relieving to hear or terrorizing. Maybe both.

  Dal set his mouth in a grim line, huffing a sigh out of his nose.

  I ran my hands up and down my arms, shaking my head before meeting Dal's gaze. “Will you do it? Please?”

  Dal frowned. “I do not understand.”

  “Kill me. Before they do. I expected the Kraw to kill me as soon as they entered my village, so I should have died long ago. But I'd rather you do it than anyone else. Please, just make it quick and get it over with. I can't bear to think of how they'll do it.”

  Dal deflated and stepped back, shaking his head at me. “Cannot.”

  “Why? You're strong enough, just one good swing and it's all over. I'll be free at last, free to see my family again in the afterlife, free to smell the wildflowers and feel the rain on my face and the warmth of a fire in the hearth. Please, Dal.”