Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

1. Yaroslava

✧ ✧ ✧

Nothing changes when you are dead. Yet, something has changed for me.

Shadows retreat, and mud squelches under my back as I'm dragged across the wet ground.

But I have no back, no body, do I?

The air smells of rain and rotten leaves. The air. Did I manage to escape? Was I rescued? No, no one rescues those like me. No one can save the dead. Yet, spending a millennium in oblivion, my hope has somehow survived. I want to live. Desperately. I want to see the stars with my own eyes, I want a touch on my skin, a taste on my tongue.

"Wake up."

I don't move, don't dare to open my eyes, don't know if I can without seeing the fire blazing around me, melting my flesh. What if it's just hope turned into a dream? That's how madness begins.

New voices echo above me, laced with panic.

"...she dead?"

"Shit. We're screwed, we're so so--"

"Shut up, you both."

Silence.

A different kind of shadow flicks behind my closed eyelids, and I realize he leans closer to look at my face. "Come on, girl," he says, carefully, as though looking for support in his own words. "You have to wake up. I trust you."

He presses something cool against my wrist, a swish of air follows, and lightness fills my hands. Instinctively, I clench and unclench my fists, enjoying the motion. He cut the ropes at my hands. Why? Why was I bound at all?

I'm coming to my senses slowly, as if remembering a long-forgotten day. It's almost an alien feeling, the one of having a body, tight, but also comforting. It shields me from darkness, it's good. My fingertips are cold, my heartbeat arrhythmic, struggling to adjust to my thoughts once again. I still...have a...heart.

For a split second as I open my eyes, I think it's just a nightmare for everything around me is still black. But then the memories fade, my vision focuses, and I see a young man crouching over me, his eyes intent.

I trust you, he said.

Having been lied to so many times in my life, by people who believed their lies so strongly, I don't trust the words anymore. I know how to lie. My thoughts still burning--with fire or darkness, no matter--I twist away, and rip the knife from his hands, backing away in a sitting position.

I don't recognize his face, but he doesn't flinch when I point the blade at him, doesn't fight back. He watches me, his dark hair, tousled and sweaty, matches his tired expression but doesn't match his lips pursed in a thin, determined line.

"Holy fu--"

"Alive!"

The voices startle me. I jerk my head up to see a boy and a girl standing beside us. The night hides their features, but the girl's covering her mouth with her hands, fighting the urge to shriek again, and the boy's posture is tense with dismay. They stare down at me like I'm a ghost. Am I?

Using the moment of surprise, my rescuer yanks at my wrist, and the knife tumbles to the ground. He snatches it up before I comprehend what has happened. A second later, I'm defenseless again.

I want to scream, but I don't. I realize I'm shivering--not a shiver of trepidation or cold--a pleasant one. I haven't felt anything for so long, especially the fresh chill of the night, I want to scream because I can breathe, because I'm alive.