Ting.
The figure on the road was alone. Close enough now that she could make out more detail. It seemed to drift toward her, its arms hanging straight down in front of it, pressed in tight and rigid to its emaciated body, the black robes that drowned it making it appear as though its torso was wider than its shoulders. Its face was indistinguishable—a corpse-pale smear.
Ting.
The lantern.
Uta's heart hammered. Without looking away from the drifting figure she reached for the handle of her lantern and gripped it tight. Then she was on her feet and running for the gate. The bodies heaved against the barrier, not strong enough to break through into the safety of the palace grounds.
"Climb!" The lantern rattled against her leg as she ran for the gate. "Climb the gate!"
But no one listened, and the stone was circling round and round in its metal bowl, and behind her, the black figure screamed with a voice like a horn.
"Climb!" Uta thudded against the first wave of bodies.
She would die here, pressed against these faceless strangers. They'd all die here.
Uta climbed, using the bodies like a bridge and then a ladder, clawing her way to the gate.
Ting.
A voice like a thousand laughing voices rattled from behind her.
Uta threw herself at the gate. The bars burned where she gripped them, but she pushed through the pain, hauling herself up and up. Her muscles screamed.
Around her, the others started to climb.
Uta hauled herself onto the top of the gate, her lantern still gripped in one hand. With barely a glance at the ground below, she dropped. Standing on the garden path, Uta grabbed the bar that held the gates closed. With bodies still cleaved to the other side, Uta lifted the bar with all her might.
As the wave crashed into the lower city, the great gold gates swung open.
The drifting corpse screamed from directly behind her.
"Moniqa!" Uta jerked upright in her bed, skin clammy and gaze spinning.
It was too dark in her room. Was she still in the dream?
Uta pressed her fist against her chest—
and let out an audible breath.
She was still a grown woman, not a child. The dream's hold on her wasn't gone, but it was fading, and as it did her eye began to adjust to the gloom, picking out the shape of the brazier that ought to have still been burning and which had been allowed to go out. Barely an ember glowed from inside, the shadow of some cylindrical object nearly invisible beside it.
"Madaula?" Uta called.
No one answered.
Uta must already have shoved her blankets off in her sleep, because when she rose to her feet there was nothing to fall off. Her bare legs were perishing cold. Naked, a full-bodied shiver forced her to pause before she approached the brazier.
She clucked to herself—in part, if she were honest, for the comfort of sound in the quiet of the darkened room, but on the surface because it would take time to rekindle the flame.
"Madaula?" Uta called. Instinctively, she reached for her lantern sitting on the table beside the brazier—
Her lantern.
Uta's fingers were already almost closed around the lantern's handle when she realized her mistake.
Warm breath ghosted against Uta's left cheek, as though someone were standing beside her. As though she were not alone.
Chapter 1: Orphans: Section IV: Uta
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