Ashes to Ashes

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Alas, the mind of man makes its own monsters.

Man is more beast than he gives himself credit. Man is good at stories, vicious in meaning, precautionary in moral, tales of shadows and the unseen. Men make walls of all kinds, in brick, stick and word, to barricade their kin, to shelter, ultimately in the shadows themselves. But a whisper of red, an ember, a comforting flame, and from it can burst forth their undoing.

The room had no windows. Purpose built. Round and smoothed. Huge oak beams, swollen by storms over countless years, strengthened by smoke. The small fire in the middle of the floor was surrounded by a dozen buckets, all filled to their brim, tilted towards the licking flame by a small rock on the underside of each one. Each bucket needed but a nudge to spill and spoil that wisp of heat.

On each wall, far from the flickering light, in a child’s hand, patterns had been scratched in the soft mud bricks. Tendrils from a dozen flames reaching out and beyond, hieroglyphs of their own kind, a continuing mural that each person in that room tonight sighted knowingly and glanced at with unconscious repetition before their eyes returned to the fire on the floor.

The air reeked of stale breath. Two score of pressed bodies, steam spilling from their lungs in a collective exhale, carrying countless molecules of fear betraying their purpose, seeping from their blood. The cadence of beating hearts was the only rhythm in this space. They wore leather tunics, soaked through from the stream outside, cold and swallowing of their shrivelled forms in the night air. A pool of water gathered at each of their feet, toes crunched into saturated boots, every muscle from their sole upwards tensed and ready to trigger. It had already been a long wait.

Smoke seeped into the corners of the roof. It hung in quavering layers, slowly sinking lower and lower. As the pale grey mass descended so to did the mood that only hours ago had risen in defiance.

There were only a few logs burning. It wouldn’t have mattered how many though. Fallen trees and chopped timber lay stacked and rotting just outside, by every building, by every hearth, by every barn for as far as whispers were traded. Kindling lay in mats feeding the soil, shrouding the herbs and grasses from any progress. On the roads no flints were carried, no pits were found. By night the sleeping bodies lay hidden, many frozen to their last rather than face a cruel glow upon their skin.

Tonight, in the valley where trees now stood tall and splintered with buckling branches left to weather’s mercy, no one had dared provoke a flame. Yet here, on the floor, as fear rose steadily, uncertainly, they all watched the sparks of red and orange swell and subside under the small pile they now guarded. Nobody had bathed in this wash of warmth for a time now. How they were urged to draw near yet cringed to retreat from that smoke.

Their eyes were heavy and sunken. Someone staggered on the far side, perhaps as drowsiness took hold. Dawn would come soon and shrug the night off like a loose shawl. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe in a few hours time they could open the big oak door, let the smoke clear and forget this stupidity. But in this moment no one would falter. No one would admit their misgivings despite the trembling fingers they all clenched in an effort to hide.

The smoke was down to their waists now. A woman somewhere in the mass sobbed silently. A older man puffed uncontrollably.

No one knew just what to expect, how this was to begin. All they had were their stories. All they had were the blackened rubble of villages who had succumbed. Their message, vicious in meaning, precautionary in moral.

There was a rasp in the burning wood. Almost imperceptible. Those nearest recoiled, eyes widening. Adrenaline pumped once again as they regained themselves, standing a little further away than before. The youngest of the men, boys, were still in their teens. They were low and ready to scramble to the logs, but with every passing second the smoke neared ever closer to the floor, and right now they were almost flat to the boards.

A spark.

A crack.

Each sound shaking the group looser.

Something was happening. They knew it now.

None of them had seen it before. None knew what to expect.

“Don’t look, don’t look,” one of them whimpered.

“Shudup!” Another cursed.

Hands went instinctively to their belts, grasping for tools and weapons that served no purpose tonight. They were not worn.

There was a whisper, a laugh, almost silent, almost malevolent.

An eruption of black smoke burst upwards and swung through the group. In its wake three bodies fell flat, lines carved through their tunics and flesh as if slashed by swords.

The group was taken by surprise as sparks of flame traced the wounds, drowned by the wet leather, and in its unfolding almost forgot their purpose.

One of the boys drew his breath in place of blade and scrambled frantically towards the closest bucket. Before he could reach it he was beset by a clasp of smoke around his legs. The black shape, fluid in its curling upon his skin, ripped him away, his neck cracking before a scream permitted itself free.

Others now dashed to the flames in numbers meant to overwhelm, but without sound bodies buckled, a red wash of life staining the floor, the walls and each other.

Sparks scattered and died as most of the group pressed, others screaming as they edged as far back as they could.

Someone reached for the door. Feeling its weight tethered by metal locks on the outside they pleaded with a terrifying urgency as bodies collapsed around them, the sight of something black but without shape tearing pieces from their limbs.

-

Outside the door, the rest of the village felt tears freezing on their cheeks. They were gathered a few feet from the steps, shivering and huddled for a little warmth in their nerves, numbers sufficient to stop any one of them from opening those locks. They couldn’t let the smoke out. To be in the beast’s grasp was to be dead.

Crashes from inside the room sent palpable shockwaves through their minds as they could only imagine what was unfolding.

The fist pounding the door did so uncontrollably. They all knew who it belonged to, and hours ago when every voice inside that room was united in cause, that fist had been raised high in solidarity.

Then, the pounding stopped, there was the start of a scream, one quickly muffled as something heavy crashed against the frame.

Everybody shuddered.

Another crash came. Then another.

Someone looked down and saw a curl of smoke dribble out from below the boards. Before they could raise alarm the smoke turned black and the door twisted in horrible fury. The boards creaked in agony, the bricks cracking where the locks were bolted. Everyone screamed and pulled back as the door broke open.

A child of ten stood frozen as the crowd peeled away, staring as the smoke drifted out and a faceless shape floated as if a bat or a bird, tendrils of black smoke somehow sharpened and bold. It made no sound, imprisoned by the slow flow from the door. Through it and behind the child saw the light from the flame obscured by piles of what she knew to be people. Her eyes taking in everything and freezing images upon her mind. Yet there was the slightest movement.

The black tendrils could only reach so far as the smoke travelled. She had heard that, and in her fear now forgot everything that had been told.

The black shape pressed to its extent, wisps of movement aching to claim her. But inside that room, an arm, belonging to who though was unknown, reached in a final movement of muscle that it seemed incapable of controlling. A reflex perhaps. But it neared the flames, jabbing clumsily at one of the buckets.

As fingers came to rest on the edge of that bucket, the figure of black smoke sensed something too.

The child was not drawing breath and would later be unable to say what she had seen. The sight would come to her, but not the words. She saw the black smoke as it ripped through the air and dove into the flame, the tumbling bucket extinguishing the embers and the night with it.

-

The child remained staring into the void. The villagers around her were gone into the night, scattered into hasty groups that knew not where they went. The child slurped her first breath, hungrily, coughing at the taste of smoke and something else. Something else she knew to be beyond that door littered with empty vessels of life. It had not worked. Tonight had not worked. Despite all the yelling, all the anger, all the resolve, it had not worked.

As she drew furiously at the air, lungs squeezing in panic, the thought of a flame caused the blood to drain from her head. She felt her body drifting, and just before it collapsed, in the void she knew that when you can’t gather around a fire how easy it was to gather around dark thoughts.