Dark Ends by Clayton Snyder

Author:Clayton Snyder [Snyder, Clayton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whispers & Wonder
Published: 2020-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

I laid low for a while. But we had to eat.

Every time I went out, the feeling of being watched crawled over my back. Sometimes I even turned fast enough to see white hair poking out of a hood. I began to avoid our marketplace and instead walked all the way down to the fish markets. It was a lot harder to steal a big, slimy fish than it was to pocket a couple of figs, though. The smell always gave you away.

Soldiers roamed all over the city now. They wore their stern wooden masks, the strings of bells slung over their shoulders a clanging, jangling cacophony with every step. I barely dared steal anything, and what I did, I gave to my father.

Then one day, I found myself wandering the street in front of the Dragon Temple.

I didn’t know how my feet brought me there. Maybe I’d walked that direction to avoid a familiar brown hood or a flip of white hair—or maybe that was just a dream. My hunger had passed the point of pain and propelled me into a perpetual light-headed fugue state.

Eating cheese straight out of the pot with my fingers, I read from Vri’s letter, and I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Did cheese exist? Was there once a time when we could have it any time we wanted it, and sit at a table in the middle of the night, eating it with our fingers?

By some kind of hunger logic, I wondered if Frost had been herding me toward the Temple. Maybe he was an acolyte. After all, he’d ignored the suffering of the Seditionist in the tavern. If I found Frost at the temple, perhaps all our problems would be solved. I’d be fed until I failed the magic tests, Vri was safe in Eterea where the Temple couldn’t find her, and for the brief time they let me stay, surely the temple would take care of my father.

Hunger spins a dangerous rhetoric.

The thought let something loose inside me, though. Something that was holding me up, making me put one foot in front of the other. I’d found myself woolgathering in front of the Temple before, but this time an acolyte pushed open the big oak doors and stepped onto the portico. It wasn’t Frost, and for some reason this surprised me. I don’t know why I’d convinced myself it would be him. But this acolyte was Eterean, with that classic patrician nose that looked as if it had been broken in the middle, and curly brown hair and olive skin just a shade lighter than my own. The sleeves of his rich red wool robes were so voluminous he could run his hands up them, which he did.

“Can I help you, girl?”

Could he help me? My heart pounded in my chest. My ribs felt light as bird bones, and my heart skipped beats as its pace quickened.

“Is there a man here?” I said. “With white hair? A young man, not an old one?”

The acolyte frowned.

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