Burnswoman's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Burnswoman counted her days by the length of her own hair. The dried leaves hung past her knees, brittle and brown. When they fell out, she would die. She was made of dead wood, old bark, and crumbling leaves, and she lived in a forest that burned. Every morning she woke and told herself the same thing: last one more day. Any way she could. Her home was a pit of coals. Embers glowed under a thin crust of ash. One wrong step would crack the crust, and the heat would take her like a dry twig. She knew the safe path by heart. Flat stones, cold and gray, laid across the pit. She stepped from one to the next, slow, arms out for balance. Today a stone was gone. The gap showed red coals, breathing and hungry. Someone had moved it. She crouched at the edge and scanned the far side. Three stones short of the exit. She could not jump that far. Her joints were dry oak. They would snap. The air above the pit shimmered. A fedora drifted into view, a burning feather stuck in its band. Below it floated a head wrapped in flame, two hollow eyes, no mouth. Hands and feet hung loose around a soot-stained coat. He had no arms to join them, yet they moved as one. Lord Flamethrower. He was the reason she stayed near this pit at all. He kept the deeper fires at bay. He also enjoyed watching her shake. "You moved my stone," she said. His head tilted. One floating hand turned over, palm up, as if weighing something. He said nothing, because he could not. He only pointed, slow, toward a thick limb lying across the coals near the turret. The gun-shaped turret roared with living fire, its muzzle flickering, its heat enough to light her from across the pit. She understood. He wanted her to reach for the limb. To cross right past the turret's mouth. Help, or a game. With him she never knew. She had no choice. Her arc of life was short, and standing still cost her days. Burnswoman stretched flat on the stone. She reached for the limb. The turret's heat pressed her face. A dry leaf at her temple curled and smoked. She hooked the limb with two fingers and dragged it close. It was a branch, long and hard. She set one end on her stone and the other across the gap. A bridge. She crawled over it, spine low, breath held, while the coals hissed below. She reached the exit and rolled onto cold dirt. Her hands shook. She had lived another day. Then she saw the smoke rising from her own shoulder. The crawl had cost her. A patch of bark glowed orange, eating inward toward her core. She slapped it with dirt until it went dark. The damage stayed. She was smaller now, and the fire had found a taste for her.