It hurts; there’s no glossing over that fact. Everything in my body shouts at me that I should have found a way not to let the tree bang atop my body. My arms and thighs quake with equal amounts of agony and determination. The wind whips around me, warning that the fight is nowhere near over.
My best friend’s green eyes are wide as he clumsily struggles to squirm out from under me. Though Avet has been hit twice, he makes his way to his feet, his hands going under the fallen tree angled across my back. “Hold steady, Keran! We’ll get the tree off you!”
Now that Avet is safe, my body feels less motivated to hold firm. If I let the tree crush me, I wonder if that will be so bad.
But my travelling companions don’t pause to consider that option.
Sevan darts to the spot opposite Avet. The two growl at the effort of lifting the burden of nature off my back. All I need is a solid inch and I can crawl out. Zagiri shrieks incoherently as I ignore the pain and trust my friends to get me out of this mess.
I don’t know how trappers do it alone.
“Go, Keran! Move now!” Avet shouts through his clenched jaw.
I comply, but my body groans at the effort of any movement that involves my hips. Still, I am grateful as I clear the space enough for them to lower the trunk away from my body.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” Avet yells at me above the wind. “You could have been killed!”
I don’t bother responding because I could very well say the same thing back to him. “We’ve lost the thread of the chant!” I warn the two while Zagiri struggles unsuccessfully to flee the scene. If we don’t hurry, she will break away from the hold the Ararat basil extract placed on both her spirit and her body, tethering them to the spot. If she breaks free, we will have to track her spirit down all over again.
Sevan picks up the chant where I left off, calling out in a triumphant voice that rattles my insides. “Hangstanal, hangstanal:”
I am so grateful we have a third person in our group who can pick up the slack when Avet is holding his head in his hands and I have had the breath knocked out of me. Sevan is victorious and without apology as her voice rises above the fit nature is throwing on Zagiri’s behalf.
In the mayhem, Zagiri’s journal was cast to the forest floor, forgotten until the hovering girl nears the pages, staring down at them while they flip in the wind. Zagiri’s translucent form floats over the pages, panic twisting her features when she realizes her time on this earth is coming to an end a full year after it should have. She clung hard to this life for reasons that are altruistic in nature. She wanted to undo the vampire’s curse so there wouldn’t be any other children orphaned in so cruel a manner. Though her mission isn’t possible, the optimism she held for the future is admirable.
Zagiri’s hope that the world could be better led her to action. My hope that the world could be better led me to check out and hide myself away.
She has a better, purer soul than I do.
And I’m about to light her bones on fire. On my knees, I strike the match mere inches from the accelerant, not caring when the hairs on the backs of my knuckles burn after the flicker finally catches on the bones.
Zagiri screams as if she herself feels the agony of the burn that will not go out, now that the end has come for her. She doesn’t seem angry, like most, but more scared that we will snuff her out before her work has been completed.
“What is it?” Avet calls to her, also seeing her struggle as being different from most.
Zagiri bends down. Though she doesn’t touch the pages with her hands, she moves them with her internal focus, screaming in fear that she will be taken away too soon.
Sevan calls out the ancient chant as the wind pelts us, tearing our shirts sideways as more branches break off, now aiming themselves at her.
I bolt for Sevan, my arms snapping themselves around her because this time, she is the one who needs the shield of my larger body. My back aches as the branches beat me in lieu of knocking her to the ground.
Avet stumbles toward us, hemming Sevan in from behind. We use our bodies to form a barrier between her and the elements.
Sevan’s fists bunch in my shirt. She clings to me and shudders with each lashing I endure on her behalf.
“You’re taking the brunt of the beating again!” Sevan protests, pausing the chant that needs to come to completion. Her big brown eyes are tinted with worry as she looks up at me, scared not because we are in the presence of a dead body and a burning spirit, but because nature has decided to take its anger out on my back.
“It’s okay.” I keep my focus on her face, schooling my features so my pain doesn’t distract her from the job at hand. The sooner she can get through the chant, the quicker the beatings will stop. My eyes lock in on hers, bolstering her as much as I can with my fortitude that, after all this time away, still hasn’t managed to fade.
Once I am in the thick of a job, I will see it through to the end.
A solitary tear streaks down her cheek when Avet grunts behind her after a particularly determined rock bangs him in the back of the shoulder. Her voice is tremulous but determined, even as I lift my arm from around her to swipe at the tear, keeping the secret of her bleeding heart just between the two of us.
Avet calls to me over Sevan’s shoulder. “Zagiri is showing us a page, Keran. Get the journal and mark the page!”
I make sure Sevan is secured in Avet’s arms as much as possible before I dart to the spirit, who is now beginning to burn more thoroughly. The fire from her bones leaps onto her spirit, catching on her translucent clothes. The embers become pure flame that can only consume the spirit, and no longer the flesh. This entire forest could be soaked in gasoline, and the flames wouldn’t cling to it now. The fire has transferred itself from our world to the next, burning away the bits of Zagiri that would cling to this life well beyond her expiration.
Sevan’s voice trembles with emotion as she nears the end of the chant. Even as I kneel and pick up the journal, folding the edge of the page Zagiri left for us, she races through the syllables until the last one cracks out of her red lips. “T’vogh Metak’si mets chanaparhy dzez tane tun:”