CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 30

AUREN

I was lucky.

That’s all I kept thinking, over and over again. I got away from Derfort Harbor. From Zakir. From Barden East. From being the painted girl, the harbor’s most expensive saddle.

I got away, with a wayward leap into an unknown boat, captained by a no-nonsense woman. Captain Mara was true to her word. She took me aboard, and I earned that passage every day by scrubbing the salt-stained boards, and coiling rope, and emptying chamber pots, and peeling vegetables.

But I didn’t mind it at all. Because it meant freedom. It meant escape.

I was lucky.

So although I slept in a swinging hammock with blistered hands and a capsized stomach, I was happier than I’d ever been during my entire time in Derfort Harbor. And after weeks of sailing, when the blisters had started to become calluses, and my stomach had learned to stop heaving for every chopped wave and blown-in storm, the ship arrived at Second Kingdom.

Captain Mara put me on a boat and paddled me right to the docks, and even gave me a coin to go with the others I had in a pouch sewn into my dress. She stood in front of me on that dock, where the call of gulls competed with the shouts of sailors, and she tucked the coin right into my shirt pocket that she’d given me and said, “You’ve got terrible sea legs. Best stay steady on solid ground, okay, gold girl?”

She left with a pipe in her mouth, already shouting to her crewmates over the bustle.

And I...I was in Second Kingdom, where the sand was white and the sun was baking, not a single cloud in sight to dump on the city in a flood of fishy rainwater. It was so unlike Derfort, but it was still a harbor, and I had no desire to stay anywhere near one of those.

So I found the first safe-looking passage I could with a family in a cart, and I was lucky, because they were happy to take me with them if it meant a little extra coin in their pocket. They had two young babies who I could help with on the trip, and I didn’t have to worry when I closed my eyes at night.

When I left them, I found a trio of sisters to travel with next, and that’s how it went, my luck staying with me from city to city, always finding women to travel with. I was gawked at, whispered about, some people came up and asked me why I’d painted my skin, but other than that, I was left alone, and I made sure to buy a cloak with a deep hood the first chance I got.

The landscape dried up the further I went into the desert, beaches and palm trees changing to sand serpents and cacti. But I kept going, trying to get as far away from the sea as I could. So long as I was near the ocean, it felt like I was still too close to Zakir West and Barden East.

My luck started to run out with my coin. The further I got from the harbor, the leerier people were of a strange golden girl traveling with them. I had to pay more for them to agree to let me hitch a ride, and that was if I could even get people to talk to me. The further I traveled, the more brutal the desert landscape and the heat became.

I thought it was hot before, but that was at least with the cold ocean air carried in from the beach. Out here, the sun was relentless, the wind hot. Despite the delicate appearance of the silky soft dunes, the sand felt as if it could burn through the soles of my shoes. Water was so expensive that a single bloom sliced off a prickly pear ate up my reserves for both water and food.

Despite all of that, I liked the sun. The way I could tip my head up and feel as if the warmth was soaking into my pores, cleansing each clogged up sodden year I’d spent drenched in Derfort.

But in the desert, though the sun blazed during the day, at night, temperatures plummeted. It didn’t matter that I layered every piece of scant clothing I had. My clothes were no match for the chill that came every time the sun set.

In such desolate terrain, there was nothing there to hold the heat, nothing to block the stripping wind, and it seemed to be an entirely different place when the sun went down. I’d woken more than once with scorpions creeping over my skin or sand serpents slithering in my hair. I’d woken with coyotes yipping in a frenzy as they went in for a kill or with other travelers shouting in a way that made me want to steer clear.

And then, the problem was my back.

I thought it was some kind of sunburn at first, the powerful rays baking right through my shirt and burning the length of my spine. It itched, and my skin peeled layer after layer, leaving me feeling raw.

After the itchiness came the pain. It throbbed from just between my shoulder blades all the way down to the very bottom of my back. It was gradual at first, then it became constant. So bad that I couldn’t even lie on my back to sleep or walk without wincing. And while it continued to peel and itch and hurt, I had to keep going. To try and ignore the pain as much as I could, even though I’d usually collapse into a wrung-out heap by the time I stopped traveling each day.

When the sun set, I got the relief from the burn. The night sky was so clear, its dark face freckled with stars. Those were the nights that I could forget about the pain and remember that I was free.

Free of Derfort Harbor. Free of Zakir. Of what went on at The Solitude.

But I had no idea what I was supposed to do. The only thing I’d ever focused on was getting away. I’d gone as far as I could go. I’d crossed a sea and left the shore to wade through dunes the color of ash, feeling my skin peel away beneath the brutal beating of the sun.

I knew I needed to find a place to stop, but every village I came to, the people were wary and I wasn’t welcome. So I kept going. The severity of my situation truly set in when I slept against the back of a shop, shivering all over, stomach grumbling, mouth parched, a layer of sand gritted over my skin and hair.

I knew no one, had nothing. I’d spent my last coin on filling up my waterskin and a sack filled with nuts and dates. I was tired. Scared. Alone—I had never felt so utterly alone.

And that’s when I found Milly. Or really, when Milly found me.

She jabbed me awake with her walking stick. Stared down at me with one milky eye and told me to come with her.

I was going to bolt. I knew better than to just trust someone, especially when you had no money or items to barter your safety with. But even though she was blind in one eye, Milly must’ve seen that on my expression, because she said, “Run off if you want, but I got rabbit in the kitchen and water in the well. Don’t have a building to sleep up against, but I’m sure the bed will do.”

I sat there, stunned, taking in the silver gleam of her hair, the way her shoulders stooped so that her body was in the shape of a teapot—bent elbow leaning on her cane just like a handle.

“What?” I asked, wiping the tangled hair out of my face as I looked up at her, my knees bent, worn boots tucked beneath my dress.

“How old are you, girl?”

“Fifteen.”

“Hmm.” She leaned even more on her cane, the cheeks of her lined face making little C shapes on either side. “You break some kind of law? Steal something?”

I shook my head while she glowered at me. “Well, alright then. Let’s go.”

I gaped at her, trying to think of all the ways she might be tricking me. Before I could figure it out, she turned around and started to hobble away, skirts swishing at her calves, silver hair tucked into a tight braid.

When I didn’t move, she looked over her shoulder at me. “Well? You gonna sit there on the street all night and get pecked at by vultures? Or are you coming? Because I got a bad hip and worse patience.”

I’d like to say I had some gut instinct telling me I could trust Milly and that’s why I went with her, but the truth was, I just really wanted that rabbit and water.

Milly led me to a mule hitched to a cart on the dark street, and I sat beside her as she took the reins and plodded us away. When the street ended, when the cluster of village buildings was left behind, she still guided us on, tired hooves clomping through the sand, just a sliver of a crescent moon lighting up the way.

Thirty minutes later, when I was about ready to fall over in exhaustion, my whole back screaming in itchy pain, the first signs of Carnith came into view.

Most of the villages and cities I’d passed had oases or rivers, low as they may be, and Carnith was no different. It was a quaint village curled around a tiny oasis, date palms propagated around the water.

Milly’s house was right in the middle of the cluster of buildings. They were all nestled between sand dunes, a mountain far off in the shadowed landscape. Each home was curved and short, looking like it was molded from clay and left to bake in the sun. Hers was set a bit further back than the rest, a short clay fence surrounding it. The slightly angled tin roof shone silver as she led the mule through the gate and then to a small stable whose ground was littered with straw, while a trough and stall were visible through the archway.

Still leery, I waited at the front of the building, watching as she clumped down the cart’s steps. “Well, don’t just gawk, girl. Come over here. You’re going to learn how to unhitch Sal and to feed and water and brush him. Tomorrow, when I go do my deliveries, you’ll learn to hitch him back up.” She eyed me, one brow raised higher than the other. “You’ll learn to ride him too.”

All I could do was stare wide-eyed at this strange woman until both she and the mule seemed to tsk at me.

So, I learned how to unhitch Sal. And how to brush him. Feed him. Water him.

When I was done, Milly gave me fresh, cool water from her well that tasted earthy and crisp. I could’ve drunk forever, except she knocked me with her cane again and told me that was enough because she didn’t want me vomiting all over her front yard.

Then I helped her polish off the rabbit that had been drying over her fireplace, and my mouth watered the entire time I ate it. She squinted over at me from across the fire as I ate and said, “Huh. You’re shiny.”

And that was that. She didn’t seem to mind that I was gold, didn’t even seem that surprised by it, as if she’d seen so much in her old age that nothing fazed her much anymore.

After I’d eaten my fill, she shoved aside a drape hanging from a doorway and showed me a room with a small straw bed with a small square window, and told me to get some rest.

I didn’t sleep at all that night because I was too wary, too nervous. I was still wondering what she was going to do, because in my experience, people didn’t help or give anything away for free.

But Milly did.

So I stayed that night, and the next, and the next, until I started to actually sleep, and my wariness turned into gratitude.

Despite her advanced age and being blind in one eye, I quickly realized that Milly was hard to keep up with. She worked from dawn until dusk, and sometimes even later when she had deliveries to make or markets to go to.

The back of her house was cultivated with desert wildflowers and pallets of wood flush with beehives. She taught me how to gather honeycombs from them. How to make jelly from prickly pears. How to sew my own clothing, lay snares for small game, build a fire, ride Sal.

Over time, my gratefulness merged into warmth. Milly was tough as nails and quick of tongue, but she was kind. She taught me to be self-sufficient, and she gave me a roof over my head and food and water in my stomach, and in return, I threw myself into helping her as much as I could.

For a time, everything was great. We lived together in this small clay bungalow, and I was content. Milly was the first person I loved in Orea. She was like the grandmother I never knew. Brisk and weathered and exacting when it came to how to do things and do them right.

Yet there was a softer side to her too. Like when, that first morning, she took one look at the dark circles under my eyes and said we were having a down day. How, with knobby knuckles and arthritic hands, she brushed out my wet and hopelessly tangled hair. How, when she was combing and noticed me flinch, she demanded to know what was wrong with my back.

She found me sleeping outside and took me home. She saw my gold skin and shrugged it off. And then, as she tended to my raw, peeling back, she discovered my ribbons sprouting out of it, and she didn’t even bat an eye.

“Got ribbons growing out of you,” she’d said. So matter-of-fact there wasn’t even a note of inflection.

I was panicked.

She was pragmatic.

“Best not pluck them out. I think they’re meant to be there.”

Practical as always, she tended to the sore skin every night and told me to leave them be, told me not to fuss my head about it. Because people grow hair all over their bodies, so it wasn’t that strange to grow this. Said she had chin hairs longer than what was growing from my back, though that wasn’t true for very long.

It was her deadpan, unruffled attitude that kept me from having a breakdown. It was her quiet care as she tended to them every night that had me crying with the acceptance she showed me.

So I kept working alongside her in the garden or scrubbing the bricks in the well or taking care of Sal or helping to mend or wash or cook, and I was content, yes, but I was also safe. It felt like living out there with Milly, at the edge of a small village, in the middle of a desert, I was finally safe.

Until one night, everything changed.

I fell asleep the way I usually did. Curled on my side, watching the thin fabric of the curtained doorway as it ruffled from the breeze through the open window. Moonlight streamed in, the same soft, milky color as Milly’s eye, and I listened to her rasping, dried-up tenor as she sang while she sewed.

Her singing reminded me of my mother.

It wasn’t until hours later, when dawn had just barely crested, that I jerked awake. I think it must’ve been the sound of the front door shutting or maybe just a disturbance in the air. I sat up in bed with a start, heart already pounding before my mind could catch up with the danger my body was warning me of.

But then I heard it. Footsteps. Steps far too heavy and steady to be Milly’s limping hitch. There was the sound of something landing on the floor, a loud sniff, a shuffle, a cough. And that’s when I froze on the bed. Because that was a man. A man who must’ve broken in—a man who was going to hurt Milly, hurt me, steal what wasn’t his and abuse us because he could.

Because that’s what men did. They took and they hurt and no one ever stopped them.

My back itched. My fingertips ached. My heart continued to hammer.

I couldn’t let anything happen to Milly. She was too old, too frail, and that wicked tongue of hers would only make things worse.

It had to be me. She protected me, so I had to protect her. This surging need to keep her safe was all-consuming. I looked around the sparse room for anything that I could use as a weapon, creeping off to grab my boot from the floor.

As I crouched against the wall, watching the flapping drapery on the doorway, my adrenaline surged. I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt Milly. I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me.

But as the heavy footsteps started to make their way closer, my fingertips prickled. Pricked. As if little needles were suddenly pressing into them and threatening to splinter.

As soon as the curtain was moved aside with a callous shove, I leapt forward and slammed my boot across his face. He cried out with a curse, whirling on me, an enraged, weathered expression lit up by the moonlight. He shoved me so hard that my sore back hit the wall with a crack, stars bursting in front of my eyes, and this time it was me crying out, the sound magnified in the dim lighting.

“You want to try and attack me?” the man shouted, enraged, spittle landing on my cheek. His breath reeked of alcohol. “I’ll show you what happens, girl.”

He didn’t even hit me with his hands. Instead, he yanked off the heavy sack from his back and swung it at me. Hard. I don’t know what he had in there, but it felt like an anvil crashing right into my head. My shoulder. My ribs. Tucked against the wall, as if I could sink right through it, I tried to raise my arms to protect my head as the man snarled and swung.

Then I heard Milly.

She was slow at the best of times, but after she’d been lying down in bed for more than a few hours, her achy joints stiffened up and made it even worse. And yet, I heard her hurried shuffle, her walking cane scraping against the tile floor.

Panic surged through me. It was one thing for me to take these kinds of hits, but Milly couldn’t sustain that. Her brittle bones might very well shatter. I heard her scratchy voice calling my name. Heard the fear in it.

Her fear added to my surging adrenaline. It made it swell. Made it snap. Made my fingertips ache and burn and then bleed.

I felt the liquid dripping down my palms, but I barely paid any mind to the red-hot blood seeping from my fingers. Because Milly was getting closer, and the man was swinging back his foot to kick me in a crushing blow, and I launched myself at him.

Like an animal, I snarled as I jumped at him. Clawed at him. Raked my bleeding fingers down his face. Not Milly. He wasn’t going to hurt Milly. I wasn’t going to let him come into her home, steal her hard-earned coin, and hurt us.

The man stumbled as I attacked him, tried to pry me off, but I slammed my hands against his head and pushed. And the blood on my palms smeared and gushed, and I was too frantic to even care.

And then, his snarls turned to gurgles. His prying fingers left my body to instead claw at his face.

The slick blood pouring from my hands made me lose my hold, and I landed on the floor again, but then my feet were wet too, like I was suddenly standing in a puddle of my own blood, or maybe it was his? But that didn’t make sense, because I’d only scratched and hit him, and he’d hit me, and why was there so much blood? Was it raining? Was the roof leaking? But why was it so warm? So thick?

My frenzied mind couldn’t come up with a single explanation, but the air held the metallic clang of blood, and the liquid was warm. So warm.

Milly tore through the doorway. Eyes wide, hand spasming over her hold on her walking stick that she held like a weapon. She raised her cane, ready to hit, but then she jerked to a stop, good eye taking in the man.

“Felton?”

“You know him?” I asked, but my voice felt strange. I felt strange.

“He’s my brother. Comes every few months. What—”

The man made a strangled noise, and then his knees hit the floor. There was a splash on impact. I flinched back when some of it splattered across my face.

“Felton!” Milly cried, and I knew. Knew I’d made a mistake. Knew it by the way she turned, uneven steps hurrying away and then coming back, this time, holding a lantern in her hand to help the dim dawn to light the room.

When the light hit the room, I couldn’t make sense of it.

The amber hue that drenched everything. The shine reflected from the lantern. The man was on his knees, clawing at his throat, making the most disturbing noises. But he wasn’t marked with streaks of red. The floor wasn’t puddled with rain. My fingertips weren’t bleeding. It wasn’t the metallic warmth of blood I was smelling.

It was...gold.

Milly’s hand flew to her mouth. The cane she was holding fell to the floor, splashing as it landed. Her expression was horrified. “Felton!”

The cry tore out of her as another burbled noise came from him, and my eyes went wide when she held the lantern closer to his face. His face where liquid gold had scored down his cheeks where I’d hit him, and wrapped around to his mouth. He was trying to cough as it drained down his throat, trying to get the viscid liquid away from his neck where it strangled and squeezed.

“What did you do?” Milly shouted at me, looking from me to him. “Look at what you did!”

He struggled for a moment longer, and then his kneeling form crashed to the floor with a splash.

Milly wailed.

She scrambled forward, but the slippery floor made her go crashing down. I lurched forward to catch her.

I shouldn’t have.

I shouldn’t have, because as soon as my hands caught her arms, the gold spread to her. Like a conscious, intentional thing, it moved and encased, staining her clothes, blotching her skin, pooling in her mouth.

She couldn’t even scrabble and fight like the man did. And I was in shock. Utter, horrifying shock, as I watched this terrifying gold so viciously attack the one person I loved.

I tried to pull it away. Tried to claw at it where it poured in her mouth and dripped down her neck, but that only made it worse. More gold rained from my palms, surrounding her in a hostile downpour, making me snatch my hands back. I stared at them, watching more and more stream down, and I couldn’t stop it.

What did you do?

Denial tried to beat through my chest, but as I knelt over her, saw her one wide, milky eye, saw the way the gold was squeezing her and her brother against the floor…

There was nothing but panic then.

I scrabbled up, slipping on the wet tile, and I ran. I screamed. For help, for someone to come, for anyone else in the village to fix her, for this to all be a nightmare, despite the hot sun peeking over the horizon.

But as I screamed, as I ran out of her house and into the yard, my gold came with me. It followed my feet, nipping at my heels like a feral dog.

The first person who ran out of their house at my cries took one look at me and stopped dead in his tracks. I stumbled at him, hands gripping his arms, begging him to help me as tears poured down my cheeks. Tears that were no longer clear but the same gold that wept from my hands.

I shouldn’t have touched him. Shouldn’t have grabbed him. Because the gold pounced on him too. He fell, just as they had. Landing at my feet with a violent, panicked pitch, dying right there in front of my wide eyes, all because of a touch.

Shouts rose up and down the village. More people came out. I was shivering, crying, screaming, and this curse just kept rolling out of me in waves, flooding from my feet, pouring from my hands, more and more and more.

“She’s cursed! She’s come to curse us!”

“We need to burn her!”

No no no no

I was already burning with this nonstop cascade, and Milly—

When a group of men came running at me with lit torches, I knew they were going to hurt me. I knew I deserved it. But I needed them to go see. Needed them to help Milly.

“Please, please.”

They ran at me, eyes lit with fire, flames reflecting off the gold that gathered around me. With a spike of my fear, I tried to turn and run away.

But my gold didn’t.

It streamed out of me, poured from Milly’s doorway, gushing down the street like a flash flood, swallowing up the village in its wake.

It didn’t even take long for the gold to inundate the cluster of houses. For it to stream into every doorway and window, and drop from the rooftops. For the screams to rend the air. And then choked gurgles and running feet to abruptly halt.

It should’ve taken longer to murder an entire village.

I was stuck in shock, bare knees on the molten road, eyes blinking around the destruction I’d wrought. There was just a puddle left at my feet, the entire village splotched and blotted and dripping.

The flame from the torches littered on the ground mocked me. The dawning sun shone in accusation.

What did you do?

The gold didn’t dry up until my tears did.

And by then, everyone was dead. Men, women, children.

Milly.

Not even poor old Sal was spared.

My palms were a mess of congealed, tacky gold I had to scrub off, and my feet were the same. I could feel the thickly dried tracks on my cheeks as I ran through the village. Splotches of gold were everywhere, smothered against faces, fisting around chests, staining doorways and window panes like splatters of blood.

I killed everyone in Carnith.

I’m not sure when I collapsed, but when I woke up, night had come. The shadows of the gilded dead surrounded me. Houses far too quiet, not a single fireplace lit. I ran back into Milly’s house, sobbing, exhausted, walking over the streaks of gold on the floor that felt as sticky as the honey Milly harvested.

I knew I couldn’t stay. Knew I had to get away. So I stripped off my syrupy clothes and washed up, dressing in a clean shirt and pants, along with my cloak. I found Milly’s knapsack and filled it with as much food and water as I could carry, and then I fled.

I couldn’t bear to stay in that house. In that village. So I ran to the next one over. That was as far as my exhausted feet could carry me. Stayed in a hidden alleyway, unable to sleep, because all I saw was that splash of gold glinting across Milly’s mouth and cheek and good eye, the milky one untouched, staring ahead, unseeing in a completely different way.

The next night, that village was raided. With men who brought torches and threats. I thought they’d found Carnith and they’d known what I’d done. I thought they’d tracked me down to kill me, that they were going to punish this village for unwittingly harboring a cursed girl.

Of course, I didn’t know then that it was him. Didn’t know that he’d followed me across the ocean on a hunch and that he’d found Carnith, where his master plan morphed. He didn’t need the clout or wealth from being Derfort Harbor’s east-end crime boss. Not anymore. So he shed the false name and had his men burn Carnith to the ground and bury the gold, hiding the evidence entirely.

Then he tracked me down, had half his men attack the village to make it look like a raid, while the other half swooped in to save the day. He had his own men killed not long after that. No one was allowed to know who he was or where he came from.

No one was allowed to know about me.

And I followed him. With newly-formed magic and a miserable, terrified heart, I followed him, looking at him like he was my savior. My protector. With his prodding, I learned how to use my magic when he said we’d run out of money. For him, I had to learn how to use it, but more importantly, how to hide it.

When I first got to Second Kingdom, I thought I was lucky.

But it turned out the villagers were right.

I was cursed.