“Come on, Thom,” she pleaded to the empty chair where he usually sat after a long journey to take off his boots. “Where are you?”
The chair, of course, gave no reply.
Unease was brewing inside her; like a kettle put over a roaring fire, it could not be contained.
“What am I supposed to do?” shegrumbled to no one. When she came face to face with the bare shelves on the kitchen side of the room, Kestrel threw her arms up. “Just look at this. Almost every jar of pickled or salted anything is empty. Every burlap sack deflated.” She stormed over to the fireplace and peered inside the pot of soup she had left hanging there, only one serving remaining. “That won’t even last me through the night.”
“It’s called rationing,” she answered for Thom, mimicking his gruff voice to near perfection. After spending so much time on her own, speaking for him was a habit she had developed to make herself feel less alone. And now more than ever, she needed it. Neededhimto help soothe her.
Kestrel spun around to square off with Thom’s chair. “Ihavebeen rationing. For weeks. The whole reason you left was because we were running out of supplies—there wasn’t much left to work with before then, let alone now. I’m—” Noticing that the end of her braid was starting to get damp, and that this part of the conversation was one she would rather face with dignity, Kestrel spat out her hair, and straightened her spine— “I think I’m reaching the point where I need to make a decision...”
The stagnant air in their tower turned to ice.
Thom wasn’t even there, and yet she could feel his ire like she was standing atop hot coals.
Leaving wasn’t an option. It was one of Thom’s most adamant rules: remain inside the tower where it was safe, and do not leave no matter what.
The one time she had disobeyed him, she had almost gotten herself killed.
Thom still teased her about that incident. Last time her father had left, he’d jokingly said to her, “Don’t go making yourself cinder-food this time, alright, Little Fury?”
At the time, she had only dragged her eyes away from herbook long enough to glower and assure him that she had no intentions of leaving the book she was reading unfinished, let alone the safe confines of their tower.
Thom had chuckled and hoisted his pack over his shoulder before descending the stairs, neither of them knowing it would be the last time they would see each other for a long, long while.
Nibbling on the curled tip of her braid, Kestrel reached the top of the dimly lit stairwell. It spiraled downward, and for weeks she had kept the candles along the stairs lit for him, just in case he returned when it was dark out. All the candles had burned out by now though. She was rationing what was left of those too.
“How long am I supposed to wait?”
Even with the few small windows peppered along the outer walls, Kestrel couldn’t see much farther than the first few steps. Still, she peered down the dark stairwell, foolishly expectant. As if any second now Thom might hobble up those steps and?—
A horrible screech pierced her solitude. Distant but unnerving.
Kestrel’s wide eyes jerked to the nearest slit of a window. All she could see was the blue sky, but she knew something—or someone—was off in the distance, shrieking in agony.
“Thom!”
Kestrel didn’t hesitate.
She lunged for the walls and began scaling the uneven stones. It wasn’t the first time she had climbed the interior of their tower—after all, what else was there for her to do when she was bored and antsy for entertainment? As a child, she had spent countless hours scaling the uneven bricks until she could boulder all the way down the winding staircase and back up again. Over and over, she would climb until her fingers were blistered and her feet were scuffedand bruised.
So it took her no time at all to reach the first window.
She pressed her skull against the stone cutout, her head too big to fit through now that she was older, and she tried to peer through the small gap.
Nothing but sand and a lone tumbleweed were visible.
Kestrel shimmied to the next window.
This time, she spotted a commotion. Off in the distance, beyond the smattering of cacti and desert flora between her and a far away treeline, she thought she saw movement. Something darting in between the trees. She could hear someone shouting as well, but from this distance, Kestrel couldn’t tell if they were the one doing the chasing, or if they were being chased.
It sent her back to when she was younger. How frightened and doomed she had been, trying to evade a cinder with no one around to help her.
Her heart thundered fiercely against her chest. The palms of her hands had become so slick with sweat, she was starting to lose her grip.
Before she could fall, Kestrel took note of the direction the commotion was heading, and deftly made her way back down to the stone steps.
If ever there had been a reason to leave her tower, this was it.
