Sparks by E J Wenstrom

Author:E J Wenstrom [Wenstrom, E J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781949090635
Publisher: City Owl Press
Published: 2020-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Everything about the Host seems to stretch on with a sense of unending-ness, as if there is no time here, no sense of passing, only a stationary stretch of eternity. Without the cycle of days and nights, it is impossible to know how long we have walked. There is no sense of hunger, no need for sleep.

After a time I could not measure, a low humming chirp rises, like cicadas. Despite all we have seen, it is almost peaceful—it takes me back to the summers of my younger years in Haven, playing along the shore in lazy summer twilight with Avi and the others, back when he and I were still brothers. The feeling is more like what I had expected the Host to be. I take it in, enjoying the soft, warm light. Then something flutters past my elbow.

“A butterfly!” I turn to take a better look, eager to finally take in a small piece of the beauty I expected to find here.

Bastus stretches out his hand and guides the fluttering thing toward him for a better look. “No, a moth,” he says, tilting his hand toward me so I can see. The small gray wings flutter—he’s right.

How strange, I think. A moth in the Host.

Steps later, Xamson flinches, kicking his leg up and swatting at his calf. “I think something bit me,” he says. As we stare at his leg in disbelief, a small red welt forms on it.

Then, a sting flares on my bicep—a mosquito. Soon, the tiny pests are swarming in clusters in the air around us, and we must swat constantly to keep them off our arms, legs, necks. Crickets hop through the grass. Spiders’ webs stretch through the air, and as we break through them their threads stick to us. Centipedes slither near our sandaled feet. Bees buzz around our heads.

“Infestation.” Xamson calls back to me over the hum of the swarm. He slaps at his arm.

“What?” I hear the word, but do not grasp his meaning.

“Infestation,” Xamson repeats, turning to me and waving his arms through the air for emphasis. “The second plague. It’s infestation.”

Now I understand—he thinks this is my fault. My hand drifts absentmindedly to the hilt of the sword at my hip, and its soothing power sings through me.

“But—”

“Beasts. That’s what is coming for us next.” Xamson goes on, stomping through the swampy field and swatting clusters of gnats, his hands waving at them wildly. He looks like a madman. Under different circumstances, in different times, I would have teased him for it, and we would have laughed over it together. But those times are not these times.

“And infection,” he rants on. “Then—”

He stops to swipe again at the swarms gathering around us.

“Then drought,” Bastus says, picking it up. “And darkness—”

“Enough,” I say, cutting them off. I squeeze my hand tight around the hilt of Gloros’ great sword, trying to hide the way it shakes. I do not want them to finish. We all know what the plagues are. We all know what the final one is.

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