On her way into the library the next morning, Addy heard voices coming from the door that was cracked. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but once she realized who it was, she couldn’t walk away.
“Gage, listen to me. I know it seems harsh, but it’s the best way,” Fate said. It sounded as though he was struggling to keep his tone neutral.
“You don’t understand. It’s not that I’m refusing to do it. I can’t do it—not anymore.”
She heard footsteps, so she took a few steps back and then slowly walked up again. Gage opened the door all the way and walked directly into her.
“Sorry,” he said, grabbing her shoulders to steady her.
She felt a flash of heat that made her face flush. He glanced down at her for a split second, then let go and walked away.
Addy entered the library and studied Fate. He looked bothered, but seemed to snap out of it at the sound of her voice.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, gesturing to the door Gage had just exited through.
“Difference of opinion,” Fate said, slowly opening a book on the table front of him. “He’ll be fine.”
He put her right to work retrieving books for him from different shelves. As she tugged one of the books free from the shelf, she noticed the one next to it had a much newer looking binding than most of the books found in the library. Typically the ones Fate had her get for him were old and worn out.
Addy pulled it out also and carried it over to the table with the others. She placed it down in front of her grandfather and tapped her finger on the spine. “Why does this one look so much different from the others?”
“Sit down,” he said, sliding the book over to her.
Addy dropped into a chair and studied the cover. Oddly, there wasn’t even a title.
“Open it up—read it,” he said, giving her a little nudge. “Out loud…”
“Alright…” It was becoming more common for Fate to have her read to him. She wasn’t sure if it was because his eyesight was deteriorating, or if it was to make sure she was actually reading the books he told her to.
The church in the center of the village was always his final stop yet Oren still felt uneasy. The smell of the charring human remains did not register to him anymore, but stepping onto the holy ground after what he had done moments earlier made his stomach churn.
The methodical way he had learned to pile them in the hastily dug holes, and stoke the flames just right until the flesh was melted from their bodies, was not the way he had been raised to tend to the dead. These dead received no funeral, no prayers, and no flowers. Only a mass grave and some quickly scribbled notes about who was where.
In the beginning, he had arranged them by family, but that was not possible anymore. Too many bodies to deal with had resulted in mass graves. First burning them, and then covering the smoldering pile of bone and ash with dirt. Finally, a wooden marker was placed at each site with the date that corresponded to the list he made for the day. When it was over, he hoped that someone would prepare proper grave markers for the people he was disposing of so crudely.
Most of the remaining villagers locked themselves away—Oren did not blame them. He had wanted to do the same, but his wife Anna insisted that they go on with life as normally as possible, helping when they could.
Oren and a few others were all that remained to remove the dead before the rats could get to them. They burned down entire homes after the last family member died, in a failing last effort to stop the sickness from spreading. The village was a blackened smoldering shell of what it was before the plague. He struggled to remember what it had been like.
The quarantine had not stopped the sickness from spreading, and nearby villages reported similar devastation. Unimaginable sickness was ending the lives of his neighbors, and had taken his family. His parents and brother were the first to go, then in the spring his brother’s widow and niece died. Last month he lost his wife Anna and their son Jon. He had no more family living.
Oren volunteered to tend to the gravely ill and dispose of the dead. It was a gruesome task, but he had no hope or desire to make it through the nightmare he found himself living in. He tried to take solace in the fact that each body he disposed of saved another person from living with the memory of watching their loved one burn.
He did not understand why he had not become sick himself. Before she died, Anna said it was a blessing to be spared, and he should be grateful. She believed there was a plan for him. Perhaps she was right, but it seemed to Oren that he was suffering more than the ones who had become sick. They were at least given a speedy death. Once they became feverish, they seemed to be pulled into a daze, unaware of what was happening to them. By the time the blood oozed from their orifices, they were unconscious and quietly slipped away. Oren, on the other hand, was left to suffer through their sickness and loss acutely aware of what was going on around him.
As much as he desperately wanted to, he knew that ending his own life wasn’t an option. Many others he knew chose that path and he held no ill feelings toward them. He had promised Anna he would continue even after she was gone. If he had known what that promise would mean, he doubted he would have made it. Instead, he prayed for an end.
In the front of the church stood a beautifully carved statue of an Angel holding a golden book. It had always been his favorite part of going to church. Its eyes were expressive and its lips were curved slightly.
Kneeling before the Angel as it looked down on the rows of empty pews, he once again begged to be taken away. When he was finished, he made his way to the pallet on the floor in the back of the church that had become his bed. He could not go to his home—it was stained with blood and death. Oren knew it should have already been burned to the ground like the rest, but it had proven easier to burn down his neighbor’s homes than his own. Closing his tired eyes, he drifted off to dream of better times.
A woman’s voice speaking his name startled him from his sleep. Once he cleared his mind, he assumed it would be one of the few remaining villagers there to ask that he remove one of their newly dead loved ones. It happened frequently. But looking up, he was met with the piercing gaze of bright green eyes. Her long blond hair was pulled back tightly, making her face look harsh. She was like nothing he had ever seen—definitely not one of his neighbors. Her skin had an unnatural glow that outshined the candles lighting the small stone church where she looked down on him.
The man beside her wore a slightly more pleasant expression, almost amused. He was tall and slender. The same strange glow shined from him, but his golden eyes and unruly dark hair made him less intimidating than her.
They were both dressed in gold colored robes tied neatly at the waist, and carried strange marks on the top of their hands that glowed with blue light. They looked like layers of wounds that healed into blue scars in a curvy lined pattern. He tried not to stare, however it was almost impossible not to. He reasoned that it must have been a vivid dream, therefore it was inconsequential if his long looks came across as insulting.
When he did not speak, she spoke his name again in a softer voice, perhaps sensing she had startled him.
“Oren Sanders.” She tipped her head down, making eye contact with him. “My name is Eva and my companion is Andrew—we are Akori. You will come with us, we need your help.”
As if he was being willed to do it, and thinking perhaps he would wake up any moment anyway, Oren got to his feet. Normally he would have questioned her odd request, but he did not—he had no desire to.
Leaving with them felt like the most normal, reasonable thing he had been asked to do recently. No part of him felt any danger as he obediently followed them from the church past the cries in the night of the sick and suffering.
Oren watched as Andrew reached over and took Eva’s hand, whispering in her ear. Eva simply responded with a nod.
Addy turned to the next page, but it was blank. “Where’s the rest?”
“You already know the rest
,” Fate said, nodding his head to her. “That’s the story of the Sanders Family’s first encounter with the Akori.”
“Oren Sanders didn’t write that,” she said, dragging her fingers along the cover. “This book can’t be any more than a hundred years old.”
Fate placed his hand on the book and pulled it over to him. “It was written by my great grandfather.”
“Oh.” Addy pushed her chair out and slowly got to her feet. “So basically it’s just a story that was retold in our family through the years?”
“Yes, but that’s exactly as it happened,” he said, handing her another list of books to pull. “Every detail is historically accurate.”
“Really…” Addy looked down at the paper in her hand and sighed. She was about to question him on how a story like that could be shared through the generations and still be accurate, but she knew better. Debating with her grandfather was never something she came out on the winning end of.
She worked with Fate until lunch, when he told her he was going to be leaving the estate to meet with some old friends and she could have the rest of the day off. Addy was super excited to have a free afternoon and headed to the dining room to meet Kim.
“So what do you think they were talking about?” Kim asked.
Addy shrugged as she finished chewing. “Probably about Gage not wanting to babysit me anymore.”
Addy was telling Kim about her encounter with Gage and the conversation she’d overheard between him and Fate in the library. The girls were seated on the terrace eating lunch in the hot sunshine.
“After last night, I can’t blame him,” Addy said, picking up her water and taking a sip.
She was seriously embarrassed about what she’d said to him, but if the end result was not having him outside her door at night, then she could live with it.
“It couldn’t have been that bad.” Kim suddenly smiled at her mischievously. “Here he comes with Mattie. Should we ask him what he thought about it?”
Addy looked up, catching Gage’s eye. She quickly looked back at her sandwich and her appetite instantly vanished.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered to Kim, who just kept smiling.
Matt pointed to Kim’s plate and scrunched up his face when he got close enough to see it. “What’s that?”
Kim didn’t eat meat, so her plates were always full of some strange mixture of odd colored veggies and non-meat, meat flavored items. Addy and Matt were always grossed out by her food concoctions.
Kim smiled at Matt. “Taste it and find out.” She scooped up a fork full and aimed it at him.
“That sounds awesome, but I’m gonna pass.” Matt pretended to gag as he took a seat next to Kim.
Gage pulled up a chair and gave Addy a nod. That’s how he usually greeted her when they were in a group, which made her relax a little. She hoped what happened between them wasn’t such a big deal after all.
Addy pushed her plate over to Matt, who picked up her sandwich and took a bite of it without even acknowledging the fact she’d put it there. He’d been eating her leftovers since right after the day she met him when she was about four years old. It was just their thing after so long.
“I wanna go down to the beach after lunch,” Kim said. “Are you guys free this afternoon?” She caught Addy’s eye and smiled.
Matt glanced at Gage and answered for both of them. “Yeah, we were talking about heading down.”
Kim smiled at her innocently. “What about you?” she asked, taking a bite of her mystery meal.
Addy thought about saying she had to get back to the library, but remembered she’d already told Kim she was free. “I guess I’m in too.” She decided some sunshine would be nice, and that she was going to kill Kim for putting her in a potentially awkward situation.
Chapter 9