Flint
It’s happening again.
Every muscle in my body seems to tighten, shrink, then spasm out of control. Tremors ripple in jagged waves up and down my arms and legs. My heart hurts, beating too hard, too fast, my chest heaving, lungs screaming out for air – because I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
My skin is slick with cold sweat, and I wish I could just rip it off. I’m squeezing the nightlight so hard I’m surprised it hasn’t shattered into pieces in my hand.
I can’t explain what happened back there. The desire to save my sister must have overpowered my terror, for in all these weeks I haven’t been able to summon so much as a single spark. I tried my best to hide it. I made excuse after excuse, avoiding Blaze’s many questioning glances – all to keep my secret. Because how could I ever confess the truth?
I don’t know how much time passes before my heart rate gradually begins to slow. Hours, days, an eternity – it’s hard to tell. But slow it does, and I come to as if waking from a nightmare, curled on my side, light-headed and trembling.
That was the worst it’s ever been. I sayitbecause I can’t find the right words to describe what’s been happening to me almost every day since Ember –
My stomach roils with nausea. I exhale through my teeth and begin to count.
Seconds. Heartbeats. Pebbles skittering down the smoking pile of rubble. Even the bones lying littered around me. It helps, I’ve found. Counting things.
And when I emerge from the haze a second time, just as shaken but more alert, my first thought is –Blaze.
I heave myself into a sitting position and hold the nightlight aloft, illuminating the dust motes clinging to the stale air. The centre of the ceiling has caved in.
There’s no sign of my sister.
I crawl over to the towering pile of rubble, trying to find a way through. But this only dislodges more rocks. I jerk backwards as they tumble down, my spine slamming into the wall.
I think of those last moments before the explosion. It all happened so fast. One minute Blaze was wedging a bone inside the mouth of that snake, and the next she was entirely disoriented, barely able to hold herself up. If I hadn’t pushed her out of the way, she’d have been crushed. But what if I pushed her too hard and she hit her head? Or what if I didn’t push her hard enoughand she’s now buried underneath all this stone? What if she’s …
‘BLAZE!’ I scream her name over and over until my throat is raw and my tongue coated with dust, but there is no response.
She’s not dead, I tell myself.She’s not dead. She can’t be dead.
My face is wet with tears. The salt stings my burns, and the pain, which was temporarily suppressed by panic, comes flooding back. My skin feels as though someone is rubbing it with sandpaper. My good eye smarts and streams, and as for the other …
I lean over and vomit on to a mound of tiny, delicate bones. Finger bones, perhaps.
When I’m empty, I reach for my satchel, then see that my belongings are strewn across the ground. I gather them up, counting as I go.
One – burn salve.
I yank off my shirt, turn it inside out, and use it to gently wipe my face. Then I take a glob of the cool, smooth gel and apply it to my burns, letting out a low groan as the jagged heat subsides somewhat.
Two – painkillers.
I rip the stopper out of one of the vials with my teeth and tip the contents down my throat.
Three – my waterskin.
Saliva pools eagerly in my mouth as I pick it up, but my insides turn to lead as I realize there’s barely more than a drop left.
No Blaze. No water. No way out.
Between the wall at my back and the debris in the centre, I have little more than a few feet of space. A tomb – that is what this is. I am literally sitting in my grave.
This time, when the panic descends, no amount of counting can stop it.
