Lucidity by Stephanie Thomas

Author:Stephanie Thomas [Thomas, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The sky is the color of pinks and scarlet, bathing Aura in a crimson light. As I walk through the streets, everything is hauntingly quiet, and there is no one, absolutely no one anywhere. I decide to head for the Citizen Settlements. I haven’t been back there since we rescued Fortuna, the Seer baby now in the care of Jamie and Irene. An invisible string tugs me in that direction, and I go like the puppet I am, one foot after the other, to the Settlements.

When I get there, the guards are not at the watch station, and the gates have been left open. The wind is the only thing that moves, brushing the dirt up from the ground and swirling it into tiny funnels that dissipate soon after. The tiny shacks that make up the Citizen houses are all shrouded in silence, and when I decide to peek inside one of them, I am met with the most horrible sight: a mother holding her child, both of them rotting and covered with maggots and flies. From the skin that they have left, I can see dried blood under the mother’s nose, a sign of the plague.

I reel away from the window and check the next house, hoping to find survivors. How could it be that so quickly the plague could claim so many lives? We’ve only been gone for a couple of days …

The next house is no better, and the people inside, four of them, are in worse shape than the mother and child in the previous house. Some of their bones are showing from the rapid decay, and the flies in the house have grown bored and stick to the walls, their wings buzzing some sick melody. I turn away and clutch my stomach, sure that I’m going to vomit, but somehow I manage not to. I need to keep myself pulled together if I’m to find out what is going on here. Obviously, the rest of the Settlements aren’t going to be in much better shape, so I turn to head out. It’s still not clear if the Seers can also catch the plague, and I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

I decide to go back to the palace to check up on Echo and his mother, but the silence of the streets equals to a deafening warning, as if screaming at me to turn around now and get out of here while I can. But again, I am being pulled along, somewhat against my will, toward the palace in the center of the kingdom. Something moves to the right of me, and when I turn to try and catch it, it is gone, and I am left alone with the quiet once again. Something is definitely not right here. It’s the calm before the ambush, though I have no idea what is waiting for me … if it is anything at all.

As I trudge down the streets toward the palace, that something runs by again, and I barely catch it in my peripheral.

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