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The orcs had already arrived at Abigail’s dwelling and had made the library inside her living quarters their main focus. They had already managed to make a pile in the front yard as Demi and I watched with utter horror.
We ran to conceal ourselves on the side of the house as the orcs tossed books onto the large pile. Two of the orcs were holding torches and grunting madly. I looked at Demi, and she was shaking her head with dismay.
“Don’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s not worth it, honey.”
I shook her hand away from mine while, at the same time, the orcs holding the torches began to set the pile of literature ablaze. I watched the pages singe, little licks of fire crawling across beautiful pages, the pure color of bone.
“I can’t just watch,” I seethed. “This is a complete abomination.”
My heart pounded in my chest as Demi half-heartedly tried to hold me back from rescuing a few, heck, even one of the treasures that have kept me going while living in this pit of brutality and despair. The orcs snorted as the fire grew larger and then began to walk away, satisfied with the destruction they’d committed for the day.
I took my chance. I pushed Demi off me, and she softly called out my name. Then I made a run toward the growing bonfire.
I desperately tried to reach for the books at the bottom of the pile, which had yet to catch fire. But the inferno moved as fast as lightning. As I pulled two or three books from the bottom, a line of tangerine pain danced across my knuckles, and I instinctively launched backward from the searing pain.
“TESSA!”
I landed on my bottom for the second time today as Demi came to my aid. The pain was sharper than the few wandering snaps of flame I’d felt in the past, and the scent of burning flesh rose to my nostrils. Maybe it hurts more because the pain resides so much deeper inside me.
Demi yanked me backward with her hands underneath my armpits, and I noticed that I had managed to save one book from a scalding demise. It’s leather bound, sleek, and wonderful.
“Gods, Tessa,” Demi heaved as she helped me to stand. “I hope it was worth it, honey! Look at your poor hands.”
I barely heard her as I rushed to open the book. She ran her fingers over my knuckles lovingly, her touch as tender as a lover's, but I didn’t care. I flipped the book open with my un-injured hand and felt my heart drop into my stomach like a stone into a well.
“It's blank,” I muttered.
Demi looked over from my singed hand and touched the blank pages with a look of shared disappointment on her face. I flipped through the pages, just in case there was any hidden scrawling, but I came upon nothing.
I dropped the book against my thigh, and Demi kissed my knuckles with her plump, reassuring lips.
“I’m sorry, love,” she whispered. “Let’s get you home and bandaged up.”
The rest of the books burned like a tragic inferno, a burst of color over the range of bleak fields. Demi helped me home. In my dazed state, I washed up, and she helped me wrap my burned hand in dressings. The burn pulsed a bit, but I didn’t really notice or care.
Soon it was time for her to return home. She left me on the couch in the living room with a kiss on the forehead. She’s an expressive woman. I often felt guilty about remaining cold toward her, but that is her way, and this is mine.
“I’m sorry about everything, Tessa,” she said softly. “I wish there was a way we could get rid of those damn orcs. Alas, it’s only a dream.”
After kissing my hand, she said she would be back to check on me tomorrow and departed. I thanked her and fixated my eyes on the single victim I rescued from its demise.
The book sat on the table before me, and I lifted it with both hands, grunting a bit with the pain from the stretching of the burned skin. I opened it up, found my ink and feather, and began doing one of the few things I know how to do to cope in the face of soulless annihilation, I write.
I write a quick little tale about a knight who comes and vanquishes the orcs from Protheka. It’s graphic and angry, but it’s something that I needed to do in order to be able to get even a few winks of sleep.
Once I finished, my hand was stained black, and I was drained. I placed the book down and curled up on the couch, letting my body give in to the exhaustion from the emotional purging.
Tomorrow is another day … another day I will spend wishing in the form of daydreaming.
TWO
TESSA
I was sleeping, dreaming in one of my most preferred landscapes of wonder, when a striking reality woke me from my slumber to the sounds of agonized cries.
I shook myself awake. I had forgotten that I hadn’t gone to my bed. I sat up, my heart was rattling in my chest, and I jumped to my feet, the haze of sleep still dwindling from my mind as I ran to open the curtains of the front window.
The screech of the curtains opening blended with the squelches and bursts of firelight as a cataclysmic scene is presented before me. The soil of my farm is soaked with the blood of orcs, looking nearly black in the moonlight, with limbs and heads dispersed all over the fields like broken scarecrows.
