Aftermath

I couldn’t have been more than knee-high to the woodpile.

Father stood with his sleeves rolled up, splitting logs beneath the afternoon sun. The axe rose and fell with effortless precision, each swing landing exactly where the last had.

Thunk. Half a log spun off into the pile.

On the porch, Mother gently bounced Isabelle on one knee, the little girl giggling as she reached for strands of my Mother’s hair.

Thunk. Another.

I watched from a safe distance, chin up on the fence rail, utterly mesmerized.

“Can I try?”

Father didn’t even look up. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this axe weighs more than you do.” He steadied another log on the stump, squaring it with two fingers.

I climbed over the fence anyway and marched straight to the chopping block, folding my arms with all the determination I could muster.

“I want to try,” I said.

“No.”

“When will I be able to?”

Father resting the axe head near the stump.

“When you’re grown. When your arms fill out, and your shoulders stop looking like a coat hanger.”

I stomped on the ground. “That’s unfair! That will take too long.”

“It’ll come faster than you’d like.” He crouched down to my face, resting his broad hand on my shoulder. “Besides, an axe isn’t something you swing because you want to. It’s something you swing because you have to. There’s a difference, Cal. You’ll understand it when you’re older.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But when I grow up, I’ll split logs way faster than you.”

That earned a laugh from my father, who rustled my hair with a hand still dusted in bark. “Atta boy. I’ll hold you to that.”

Father’s smile lingered.

Then sunlight turned brighter and brighter. The yard blurred. Isabelle’s laughter in the distance dissolved into silence.

I jolted awake with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat, cramped inside a dark closet.

***

Despite everything that had just happened, the first thing I noticed was how painfully hungry my body was. My stomach twisted violently. It was the kind of hunger that took a day to build, not the couple of hours that I guessed had passed.

Slowly, carefully, I reached for the closet door, and eased it open a little. A sliver of warm, orange light slipped through the gap.

Sunset.

I remained crouched in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. If they were still inside the house, the smallest sound could give me away.

So I waited.

And listened.

A minute passed.

Then another.

But there were no footsteps. Nor any voices. Only the faint chirps of birds and the soft whisper of wind through the window.

The silence was terrifying.

But slowly, it began to feel like proof. That they were truly gone.

And after a few more moments, I found the courage to move.

My legs protested as I unfolded myself from the cramped closet. They were stiff and numb, my muscles screaming after being locked in the same position for so long. I nearly collapsed when I tried to stand, having to brace myself against the wall until my body remembered how to move again.

Then I stepped into the hallway. And into the living room.

The bodies lay exactly how I remembered them.

Initially, my mind had refused to accept what my eyes were showing me. It kept waiting for Father to move, for Avalon to cough, or for Theresa to stir, murmuring that she’d only dozed off.

But the room remained still. And the people who had filled these halls with hospitality and warmth only hours before were now gone.

Then it hit me.

Barrak was still out there.

I threw open the back door and stumbled into the yard.

“Barrak!”

No answer.

The forest stared back at me. I pushed forward into the depths of the trees, branches tearing at my clothes as I searched between tree trunks.

“Barrak!”

Still nothing.

My stomach lurched once more. My body begged me to stop, to rest, to give in to the exhaustion that threatened to pull me under.

I ignored it.

I kept running.

Because somewhere was a frightened child who had trusted me to come back. And I promised him that I would.

***

Dusk turned to night as I laid back against the wooden deck behind the priest’s house.

Barrak was nowhere to be found.

I had searched every corner of the property. Beneath the trees. Along the hillside. Behind every fallen log and patch of bush where a child his size could have hidden.

I had called his name until my throat burned. Again, and again, and again.

I dared not think what may have happened to him.

The cold of the evening slowly seeped into my clothes. My body had long since stopped protesting, too exhausted to care. I held a loaf of bread I found in the pantry and tore off small pieces to chew.

It felt wrong. I shouldn’t be alive. I had been caught.

So why had he walked away? Did he pity me? Had he looked at me, all curled up and shaking, covered in tears and snot like a terrified child, and decided I wasn’t worth killing?

I replayed the moment over and over in my mind. There was no mistake. He had seen me.

Unless my prayer had something to do with it.

The thought came quietly. Almost unwillingly.

Had the Great One actually listened? Had I truly been spared?

But the more I thought about it, the more bitter I became.

Because I had not prayed to survive a massacre. I had not prayed to wake up alone in a house full of lifeless corpses. I had not prayed to have a child go missing and possibly be abducted.

I had instead prayed for something simple. Something ordinary. A peaceful life. A family that stayed together. For a tomorrow that looked like today.

If this was the Great One’s doing, then what kind of cruel joke was this? Why had I only been saved? 

The question sat like a stone on my chest.

My thoughts still felt slow, tangled. I hadn’t been able to hold onto anything beyond this house, beyond Father, Avalon, Theresa, and Barrak, since I had woken up.

But then finally, a piece of it resurfaced.

Alder.

My eyes widened.

Their attack had not ended with this house. It had only begun.

And if those monsters had done anything to my village… to Mother or Isabelle…

I needed to find out.

I needed to go home.

I tossed the bread and ran.