Dust to Dust: A Tale From Andra

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My heart beat fast in my chest as I tried to steady the shaking of my hands. I wasn’t the first to do this. I wouldn’t be the last.

Protect them.

I stabbed the knife downward. Cracks split through the tiles of the floor, where it was buried hilt-deep in the Dustone.

“I can’t.” My voice was barely a whisper. Tears threatened to fall down my face.

My grandfather was right. I’m not strong enough.

“What?”

“I can’t do it!” I shouted now, the words torn from my throat.

My tears finally fell.

The droplets hit the Dustone tiles.

I watched in horror as the palace returned to dust.

The salt of the sea of sorrows returns all to what it was.

Dust to Dust.

For a moment, there was quiet. A beautiful quiet. A terrible quiet. The shock stretched it.

The noise came back.

Then there was pain.

My world went dark.

It was quiet once more.

... --- --- -.

I groaned. My head felt like someone had taken an awl to my skull, using the stars as inspiration to create some intricate pattern.

“Finally awake?”

I startled. Just to my side sat a girl.

She wore a tattered red dress of simple design. Her tawny hair was woven into a braid, and her eyes were a yellowish blue. Had it not been for the ugly purple, yellow, and blue bruises lining her scarred face and arms, many might have thought her to be beautiful. I know I did.

“W-who are you?”

“Noone of interest. Noone so interesting as you, anyway. You are the newest mystery here after all.”

“Mystery?”

“Would you prefer the longer description as someone who hasn’t told me their name, I’ve never met before, and was dragged in here unconscious by two very angry Monks? You also have a nasty headwound by the way.”

“I don’t have a name.”

She tilted her head, “Oh? You’re sure you haven’t just forgotten it?”

I shook my head.

“You really are a mystery. I’ll call you Ata then.”

Ata?

“Why Ata?”

“There is a collection of city states in Lunaria where the word ‘Ata’ means name.”

“Lunaria? I’ve not heard of this place.”

“It’s what I call the lowlands.”

My brow furrowed, “But those lands are uninhabited. There can’t be a language if there aren’t people.”

“There are people! Their calendars are based off of our trade days! They have folk songs! Some of them eat a flatbread called Lafe! Once, there was a famine that ran throughout the entire west half of one of the continents, except for one place that happened to have a magical fruit tree that sustained the kingdom.”

I raised an eyebrow, “How do you know this?”

She bit her lip, “I dreamt it.”

“And you believe it to be true?”

She lifted her chin, “I am not mad, and I know for certain that these dreams are true.”

“I believe you.”

Her eyes widened in shock, “You do?”

I nodded, “I do not believe you are any more mad than the world itself is.”

Quicker than I could react, her arms were wrapped around me in an embrace.

After a moment, she released me.

“Sorry, I got carried a…”

She gasped, “I had a dream about you…about this.”

She ran her fingers over the bricks of the wall behind her, and several of them came out. There was darkness where the bricks had been.

“Come on, help me widen the gap.”

I knelt beside her. The bricks crumbled as we pried them from the wall, making a hole. Through this hole, there was a dark, narrow tunnel, just wide enough to crawl through.

I looked at her. She looked at me. We smiled.

“This might be our ticket out of here.”

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We crawled through the pitch brown tunnel. Tiny, sharp rocks dug into my forearms.

Why does this exist?

“Stop.”

The girl’s voice was a whisper.

I stopped, “Why?”

“We’ve reached the other end of the tunnel.”

“It’s a dead end?”

“No, we’re almost outside.”

“But if we’re almost outside, shouldn’t there be light.”

“It’s night.”

“Oh. Then why did we stop?”

“There are people outside. Official looking people.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“We’ll have to time this well, listen to me, and stay quiet.”

“Got it.”

.- ..-. - . .-. / . ...- .- -.. .. -. --. / - .... . / --- ..-. ..-. .. -.-. .. .- .-.. …

The silver water of the pond was frigid, and plants clung to me like grasping arms, but we continued our slog onward, making as little noise as possible. Even the slightest splashes of water sounded incredibly loud in the quiet of the night.

- .... . / ... .... --- .-. .

I collapsed onto the shore, rolling onto my back. The girl did likewise. For a moment I closed my eyes. In the distance, I could hear the faint call of an Oʻahu ʻakialoa in the distance.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen the stars.”

She laughed. A quiet, sad, almost broken sort of laugh, “Last time I looked at the sky, it started raining fire.”

My eyes snapped open and I turned my head to look at her, “What?”

She kept staring at the sky, “One night I went out to look at the stars, and the sky started to rain fire. The air crackled with it. It burned me. Burned my home. My family died in their sleep. Noone else was affected by it. The people of my village called me mad, they put me on trial for murdering my family, and they locked me in jail.”

“That’s terrible.” I had no other words.

“If it weren’t for the scars, I might have thought I was mad as well.” She let loose a bitter laugh, “The thing is, I had a dream about it. I had a dream that the sky had rained fire. But I didn’t think it possible. I warned noone, and my family paid the price.”

Her eyes were glassy, and a single tear slid down her cheek. I grabbed her hand. She looked at me.

Suddenly, she stiffened. Then she tackled me, pressing her lips to mine. Shock kept me from disengaging.

“Oy! Get out of here! This is no place for love-making!”

She scrambled to her feet, as did I. Near us stood a middle-aged woman with dark brown hair streaked with grey, annoyance obvious on her features.

“Sorry ma’am, I swear we were just on a walk but we… got a little carried away.”

The woman snorted, “Well, get “carried away” somewhere else.”

“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am.”

We made our way to the road, though I could hear the woman mumbling something about “teenagers and their love affairs” as we left.

As soon as we were out of earshot, I turned to the girl, “What was that?”

She tilted her head, wet tawny hair covering her right eye. I resisted the urge to brush it away from her face.

“That, was me winning our freedom.”

I had to admit, she was right.

We were free.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

She swallowed, then spoke her words slowly and clearly, “My name, is Miste.”

I could sense power in those words.

It would be many years before that power was truly revealed to me.