EMELADE NOCHTER's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Emelade Nochter had spent twenty-two years learning to feed this village, and now she watched it burn. She stood in the inn's doorway with flour still on her apron, staring at the flames leaping from the roofs of the houses she had cooked for. She had always believed her hands were meant for the kitchen. Tonight her hands shook, and she knew the kitchen would not save anyone. Smoke poured down the stairs. Her father was up there. Keene ran the inn while she ran its ovens, and he had been fixing a loose beam in the top room when the fire started. "Father!" she screamed. She grabbed a wet rag, pressed it to her mouth, and climbed. The old wooden steps groaned under her small frame. Heat pushed against her like a wall. She found Keene pinned. A fallen beam had trapped his leg. He was a tall, heavy man, gray and balding, and even now his face stayed grim instead of afraid. "Go," he said. "You can't lift that. Get out." "I'm not leaving you." She shoved the beam. It didn't move. Her arms burned. She was too short, too light. She thought of her ovens, useless now, and hated them. Boots hammered the stairs behind her. Isle burst in, chest plate scorched, honey hair stuck to her sweaty face. Isle was the only friend Emelade had, a woman taller and stronger than any man in the village, and she never softened her words. "You'd both die like idiots," she snapped. She jammed her shoulder under the beam. "Push with me. Now." They pushed. The beam lifted an inch. Keene dragged his leg free. Isle hauled him up by the vest and pointed at the window. "Roof's going. The stairs are done." The ceiling cracked. Emelade looked at the drop below the window, then at her father limping, then at Isle. "There's a hay cart under the side window," Isle said. "Move." They half-carried Keene across the room. Fire ate the far wall. Emelade shoved the shutters open. Cool night air rushed in. Below sat the cart, small and far. Isle went first, then caught Keene as he dropped. Emelade jumped last. The hay swallowed her. She rolled off and stood in the dirt, coughing. Behind them, the inn folded inward with a roar. The timbers she had leaned against her whole life collapsed into a pile of orange coals. The kitchen where she had built her entire life was gone. Keene sat in the mud, gripping his ruined leg, silent. Isle stared at the ashes with her permanent scowl. "Whole village is gone," she said flatly. "Nothing left to cook for." Emelade looked at her burned hands. They had failed to lift the beam. Something else had saved her father. She didn't know what she was meant to do now, only that it wasn't this. The fire had taken her old life and handed her an empty road.