A freak accident at Chloe's seventeenth birthday party reveals her psychic abilities, and the community responds by condemning her as a witch who must be burned alive. As she attempts to escape across the dystopian, war-ravaged territory of her home...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHLOE HURRIED ACROSS THE MARSHLAND toward where she believed the figure had fallen. It was hard going, sloshing across the soggy peat, covered with scraggly bushes. The trees seemed to be ancient. They had a grey, scaly bark, broken limbs and were covered in moss that trailed down from the branches like enormous cobwebs. Yet despite appearing half-dead, most of the branches still had a smattering of leaves.
There were so many dead branches and sticks on the ground that Chloe nearly tripped and fell several times. Finally, through the trunks of the trees she saw a large lake with moonlight reflecting off of it. As she approached, the water also reflected the final few blasts of lighting of the battle above. The two cloud realms in the sky diverged, floating back toward whence they came. She stared up into the sky and could see distant shadows of bats and dragons flying back toward their respective clouds. The battle had been indecisive, at least that's how she interpreted the events above.
She was so intent upon reaching the lake where she might get a clearer view that she almost fell into a small depression and had to grab onto a tree trunk to keep her balance. At her feet was a small pit, filled with broken branches. And within the pit, a nude man lay splayed across the branches, pierced through numerous parts of his body.
Remarkably, there was almost no blood coming from his wounds, and yet it appeared as if no one could ever survive such a plight. He had clearly fallen from above, but Clara couldn't help asking herself, Wasn't he a bat? If so, not anymore.
It wasn't his nudity that shocked her so much as his pale skin, his beautiful physique and his perfect features. He had shoulder length hair and a belt around his waist with a small sack attached. Oddly, with the exception of the stubble on his chin, he seemed to lack any body hair, but this only accentuated the perfection of his muscular and lithe form. Despite his pitiable state, there was something powerful and proud about this being who had fallen from the sky. Chloe felt touched by the aura of this tortured figure—a perfect synthesis of beauty, agony and ecstasy. Then she remembered the illustration of Michelangelo's Pietà in the book Sandra had given her. She had found her own Pietà.
As she hovered at the edge of the depression debating whether to examine the dead man, she heard the beating of wings. And from the corner of her eye, she spotted two enormous shadows approaching fast. These serpentine forms were coming straight toward her, and sensing danger, she fled without further hesitation.
Stumbling through the dark marshy wood, she aimed to find a darker place where the trees and bushes grew close together. It wasn't easy dodging past drooping branches and hopping over tree limbs, but she rushed toward an area which appeared more heavily wooded.
Once there, Chloe fell to her knees panting. Her heart was beating so fast, she thought it would burst from her ribcage. She heard the flapping of wings as two shadows passed overhead. She cowered against a tree trunk and tried to refrain from breathing loudly, all the while attempting to regain her composure.
