4.
10 YEARS BEFORE THE WAR
Once, House Mistress had beat Lotte so badly the soft skin of her arm had torn, and blood trickled out. It was golden, with large flecks of luminous red that shone like rubies. When the droplets of Lotte's blood touched the carpet, they signed it, dissolving away the coarse fabric and revealing the rusty metal floor beneath. The air was filled with acrid smoke that smelt of burnt plastic, salt and a hint of iron.
After that, House Mistress took extra care never to break Lotte's skin in her beatings.
The other children weren't so wise. They did not like her silence, or how her eyes flashed crimson in the dark. They didn't like that she was a Lotte, with pointed ears and teeth and that she never cried and screamed.
When the boy named Amun pulled out the chair she was about to sit on and Lotte fell to the floor, they jeered like a swarm of bees. When, in the courtyard, someone pushed stinging nettles down the back of her dress, they laughed at her silent flailing.
When Lotte was seven, a woman came to visit the orphanage. Her dress was sleek satin and her brightly coloured hair was arranged into ringlets. She has straight white teeth and a nose the size of a thimble. She stared at Lotte for a very long time. "Why, aren't you the loveliest little girl I have ever seen," she said.
"Oh no, Mrs. Herbert, this one's a Lotte," said House Mistress.
Mrs. Herbert did not look taken aback. She stared at Lotte all the more intently. "A Lotte? But she's so pale. Are you sure?"
She winked at Lotte when she said this.
"Quite," replied House Mistress tartly. "A Lotte. A night one. Elf-spawn down to the gold blood."
Mrs. Herbert left with no child that day, but the knowledge of her interest in Lotte travelled among the children like wildfire.
That night, that same boy, Amun, who was older, tall and strong, had cornered her in the mess hall. His eyes, dark and far apart, brimmed with malice. "I hear you have gold blood," he said.
She shook her head and tried to edge away. If she could talk she would have told him that her blood could hurt him. His friend, Livev, barred her passage from the left, Simon loomed on her right and behind her was a wall.
She couldn't cry out to alert House Mistress. The dull pain came swiftly. Four puncture wounds in the back of her arm created by a fork.
Then Amun pulled the fork out, and her odd blood came jetting forth. It leapt on a chair, a tablecloth, the floor—and on Amun's hand. It ate away whatever it touched. Cloth, wood, carpet...skin.
He shrieked and shrieked as a single droplet of her blood devoured his flesh down to the bone.
Lotte was helpless. She couldn't do anything. She pressed her own hand to the wound. Her blood was quick to clot. House Mistress crashed forward, a raging hurricane. Amun was rushed to the hospital, but his fingers were gone.
Later, they blamed her for everything. Amun said that she had stabbed herself with a fork, that she had done it all. She was only seven when she learnt that even if she had a voice, no one would listen to it.
House Mistress called the constables to take her away. She had promised Lotte that the constables would lock her away forever, or, even better, execute her.
Then House Mistress, called away on some urgent matter, left Lotte to wait for them alone in her office.
Lotte didn't know what 'execute' meant, but even though House Mistress expected her to obediently wait for her fate, she had no intention to.
The moment the sound of House Mistress's footsteps faded away, Lotte sprang to her feet.
She found a bigger boy's jacket forgotten on the hook on the door, then rummaged through drawers, collecting pencils and scraps papers and stray change, several packets of biscuits, and an entire hoard of chocolate bars. She stuffed everything in the pockets of the jacket and then, simply, climbed out of the window into the courtyard.
After today's 'incident' none of the children were allowed to play outside. No one saw her go.
Lotte was thin enough to squeeze through the bars of the iron gate. As she ambled down the street, she zipped up the jacket, covering her head with the hood.
***
PRESENT DAY
Lotte had never known the world around her could be so silent. The dark battlefield was empty of all life.
Gradually, something began to change inside her. The pain didn't go away. It was there to stay. Sometimes magic hurt like that—at least, that's how it was for Lotte.
It was her ability to endure that changed. She was still tired, and more than a little scared. But life had taught her that, although the earth would always be unstable for someone like her, she might be fine if she just kept moving.
And now she had the power to move.
She swung her pack onto her back. Fintan twilled in relief, circling round her head and swooping through the air.
"Calm down, you," Lotte said, her voice strained as the pain in her leg pulsed with her heartbeats.
Fintan obeyed, perching on the top of her head. After all that wind, her brown hair was in such disarray it was fit to be a nest for flimsy little dragons.
Crossing the field wasn't an easy task. The moving elven forest had left massive trenches, a foot wide. They criss-crossed and overlapped, making Lotte's path a zigzag in which she searched for the narrowest places to leap over the trenches.
Sometimes she had to climb down in to deep, narrow valleys and up again.
There were the smouldering craters left by the bombs too. Those were somewhat easier to avoid.
What she couldn't avoid was the bodies.
The first one she saw at the lip of a crater. A tall, gangly elf with half its head...missing. It was one of the moments where she cursed her good night vision, her stomach summersaulting and a stark chill running over her spine.
When she moved away, her foot had caught on something cylindrical. It made a watery ping when it collided with her foot and rolled away.
She caught it before it rolled too far. It was a canteen made of some kind of dark glass, and had probably come from the fallen elf's pack. She uncorked it and sniffed the inside.
Water.
Without thinking, she drank deeply. She was so thirsty. Hungry too, but hunger was something she knew how to tolerate. The water wet her wind-torn throat. It was cool and fresh, as potent as wine. Just from a few long gulps, her whole body was...was brimming.
Oh. Oh.
She stopped drinking abruptly and spat out what water was still in her mouth. She hadn't been thinking straight. What had Poe said about food and drink from Lasuran?
"No human has stepped into the high cities and survived. Magic is in the land, the plants, the water and air. Magic, life to us, but toxic to humans. Never eat elven food, Lotte, it will kill you."
Wild magic was dangerous to humans just as iron was dangerous to elves. And Lotte? She was both dangers existing together somehow.
She stood there staring at the canteen for several moments, looking inside herself, waiting to see if she was dying.
No, not dying.
Actually, she felt particularly alive. The throbbing pain in her leg was a perfect reminder of that.
She screwed the bottle shut and tucked it in the side pocket of her pack.
Maybe some elven water was fine.
She moved on. She should've disposed of the bottle. The water had been so good that now it was a constant temptation. Would another sip hurt her? It wouldn't, right?
She nearly stepped on the man on the ground before her. There were mounds of debris here from a fallen aircraft. Lotte counted the bodies of at least three humans. None of them moved. They were all dead. The other half of the airship had fallen a few yards away.
A gust of wind blew the smell of gunpowder, fire and cooking flesh into her face.
All thoughts of water fled her mind. She hurried her steps.
In the distance, the far distance, she could see a mass of shapes. Perhaps trees, but not towering Solles trees, just normal trees.
She aimed herself towards them.
Distance was deceiving in this big open field. Lotte had known only Raidox all her life, where the horizon was always interrupted by buildings and streets and she'd never been able to test her sight this far.
Trenches, craters, debris...dead bodies. There was a mind-numbing rhythm to it. For better or worse, she thought of the room she had called home for three years, after Poe had abandoned her.
She thought of all the other Lotte who lived in those towers. Hundreds of them. Women, men, young, elderly, families with little children. They accepted her—at a distance—but they were the only community she had ever known.
Were they all dead? All of them?
It was easier to believe that they were still there. Old Fugra Lotte from floor 55 who, on occasion, used to come by with cakes in exchange for enchantments. Susu and Hill, a young half-elven couple who Lotte had often seen sneaking out at night and wished she'd have someone to giggle with like that.
And the little Lotte children who played in the murky fountains during summer, shrieking with laughter, water splashing all about them.
They were still there. They would always be there, frozen in time, but alive.
And even now, Lotte shouldn't be crying for them, and her heart shouldn't hurt the way it did.
She sniffed catching the few tears that escaped her eyes and stuffing them into her pocket. Her tears were mostly salty water, but they each had a tiny red gemstone inside.
Fintan stirred on her head and tooted questioningly.
"It's the wind," Lotte lied. "I'll be fine."
But that wasn't what was alerting the dragon. He sprang off her head and shot forward, circling round a mound on the ground a little way ahead.
It was another body, this one of an elf.
Why was Fintan excited about—
The body moved, emitting a faint groan.
Lotte quickened her pace.
The elf was alive.