Legion's Arc

Chapter 10 of 22

The fire climbed the barn walls while Diana crawled away. Her hands dug into the dirt. Her knees scraped over roots. Each pull sent pain up her side. She reached a tall pine and turned her back against its trunk. Moss hung from the branches above her. She watched the flames chew through the old boards where she had almost died. She let herself go still. The book was ash. The shirt was ash. Mark was free of the swarm, but Mark was gone. She had not saved him. She had only ended the thing he became. That was all the book allowed. She thought about their wedding. She thought about his hands, warm and whole, before the woods took him. The memory made her smile even as tears ran down her face. No one would believe any of this. There was no proof left. Only her, and the fire, and three dead brothers in the trees who had only wanted the killing to stop. Her eyes grew heavy. The heat of the blaze warmed her face. She let her head fall against the bark. Sleep pulled at her like water. She stopped fighting it. Then she heard boots in the leaves. Diana forced her eyes open. Lights bobbed between the trunks. Lanterns. Voices called to one another, low and careful. Men from the village had seen the fire and come to find its cause. They moved toward the burning barn in a loose line. One of them saw her first. He raised his lantern and stopped short. "There's someone here," he called. "A woman. She's hurt." The others gathered around her. Rough hands, worried faces. An older man crouched close and looked at the blood on her jacket. "What happened here?" he asked. "Who did this to you?" Diana opened her mouth. The truth sat there. A swarm of rats with her husband's face. A book that changed men into beasts. She saw how it would sound. She saw the man's kind, tired eyes waiting for something he could hold onto. "I got lost," she said. "The barn was already burning. I fell through the floor." The man nodded slowly. He did not believe all of it. She could see that. But he let it go. "Can you walk?" he asked. "I don't think so." Two of them lifted her between them. Her boots dragged over the roots. The fire roared behind her, and she did not look back at it. She kept her eyes on the dark line of pines ahead. Somewhere under that ground, the last of the swarm had gone quiet. Mark was at peace, or he was nothing. She would never know which. The men carried her out of the woods. The village lay ahead, with beds and questions and a life she had to build again alone. She let them take her toward it.