She’s so young, so strong, so brave.
I should be the strong one. I should be the one saving her.
“Do you remember when we met?” she whispers.
How we met?I blink as I process her words. Of course I remember. It was only a year ago, but it feels like a lifetime. One by one, everyone I’d known died or left in favor of the desert.
Though I was nearly an adult, I wastrulyalone for the first time. I’d given up hope. There was no food. No safety. There was no one left to care if I lived.
I was wandering the wilds, my mind a hazy mess of fear and grief. It was almost dark, but I didn’t stop to find shelter. I just kept walking.
And that’s when I found her.
I thought all three of them were dead at first. Three bodies, laying limp in the pathway. Blood everywhere.
My sadness was sharp as I examined the dead child curled up in her father’s arms.
Then, the girl moved.
“I would have died there with them,” Astella says, “if it weren’t for you. I wanted to. I wanted to die with my mama. What more did I have to live for? They were my whole world.”
I sniff back my tears.
“You pulled me into your arms and everything changed.”
“It changed for me too,” I admit. I was dead in those weeks between loved ones. Living but not alive.
“In your eyes, I saw my first vision,” she says softly. “Before you, my parents had the sight, and I trusted them. I listened to them every step. I believed them when they said things would get better. But then, they were gone. The world was too big for me to travel on my own. I didn’t know the way.”
It’s always hard for a child to lose a parent. But I know what it’s like to rely on someone else’s supernatural wisdom, so that loss is an added layer that is hard to imagine.
The dark forest grows even darker until I can see nothing. I can only feel Astella’s arms and hear her shaky voice.
“I wasn’t just sad that they’d died,” she tells me. I focus on her voice, ignoring the fear. “I was angry. So, so angry. They lied. They—” She sniffs. “They betrayed me. They betrayed me by dying. They weren’t supposed to die. Or… that’s what I thought. Because you came and it all made sense in some strange way.”
Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t know how I could be her salvation when I was just as lost. She was only ten when I found her, almost a year ago now. I was eighteen.
I felt like as much of a child as she was.
But when I saw her trembling on the ground, curled up next to a man and a woman, clinging to their lifeless bodies, something snapped inside me. I didn’t crumble; I couldn’t.
I had to be strong for her.
A girl I’d never seen before that moment and suddenly, she was the center of my whole world. I needed to protect her. I needed to save that girl.
But she keeps saving me.
“I don’t remember what you said,” she continues. “But in your eyes, I saw my first vision. For the first time Isaw. It’s not a clear image. It’s far away, even now. But I know it; I knowit deeper than anything else I’ve never known. And I’ve never doubted a day since.”
I work hard to hold my sobs back, but my chest convulses. “How? How can you have such faith?”
“Because anything else would be death.”
Unnatural cold drops over us in an instant. For a moment, I think her words caused it. Maybe death came to claim us after all. But Astella’s comforting warmth still seeps into my limbs.
A chilling rattling call makes me wince. “It’s coming,” I whisper the obvious.
Astella begins whispering mumbled words I’m not familiar with. A soft enchantment heats the small space we inhabit.
