Scarlett Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

Scarlett stood over the open palm and tried to think. Fighting the hand would kill her. Walking away would kill her slower. She sheathed her sword. She stepped onto the palm and sat down in the middle of it, knees drawn up, half sure the fingers would close and crush her ribs against her heart. The fingers did not close. The palm was warm. It felt like sitting on a cloud that had been left in the sun. A soft light rose out of the skin under her and washed up over her arms and face. She squinted against it. Her hands stopped shaking. The ache in her ribs dulled. The sick weight the poison had left in her legs began to lift, thread by thread, the way a fever breaks. She told herself this was a bad dream. She had fallen in the junk and hit her head and none of it was real. But the strength kept coming back into her. She could feel her fingers again. She could feel her breath go all the way down. Around her the junkyard drew in. A pile of shoes near her foot blinked out. The wagon tongue was gone. The chickens were gone. The broken cart, the barrels, the door standing on nothing, all of it vanished in patches, as if someone were erasing the room she sat in. The hand did not move. It cupped her and held the light on her and asked nothing. She wanted to ask who sent it, and what it wanted, and where the palm meant to take her when the last of the junk was gone. She opened her mouth and closed it. There was no one to answer. The light grew brighter. The palm rose under her, slow and steady, and the barren floor fell away beneath the knuckles. Scarlett gripped the thumb with one gloved hand and let the hand carry her up.