"Chaos Lost- Chapter Four" by Johanna Holmlund

Ky stared at the moon in shock, amazed to see that already the light was half gone. Half moon. Tonight. The spell was tonight.

Kris hadn’t said a word, but she shouldn’t have expected him to. He was… he couldn’t handle the pain. Ky wanted to ask him if he had that spark, that tiny light to lend him strength, but somehow she knew that it was of a world he would never know.

Ky shook her head, ignoring the pain it caused her. It wouldn’t do any good to think of Kris. All she had to think of was the spell, and then she would never have to think about pain or worry about her brother again.

The tiny spark from the night of the full moon still kept her company, just barely a presence in the back of her mind. Just barely there, but with enough caring and hope to keep her going.

Ky climbed clumsily from the loft for the first time in almost two days. The pain had been too much for her to rise the morning before, and the only thing that kept Shainsa from beating her to death was the fact that such a beating would have killed her. Even Shainsa could tell that, and she didn’t want to offend the gods by taking away a life that they had granted, for what ever reason.

So Ky had been left on her own. She was sure the few meals that had come from the house were by order of her father, and they had been enough to keep her alive until the night of the half moon.

Now Ky worked her way slowly toward the house, holding desperately to the thought of relief, both from the pain and from this life.

She couldn’t manage to go through Kris’s window, and she couldn’t call him outside, so she did her best to sneak into the house. Silence wasn’t an option, but she did her best and prayed.

He was waiting by his door, which was open to her for the first time in a month.

“Are you ready?” His voice was stilted, raw. Ky nodded.

Kris pulled the paper from his bookshelf, hidden between to volumes that had obviously gone untouched since the onset of the curse.

As he did this, Ky took a tiny package from her pocket, containing a very fine dust. This was the dust of the dried and ground flowers she had suffered so much to retrieve. A faint scent wafted up from the powder.

At Kris’s instruction, she poured half of it into her own palm and half into the palm of her brother. She watched, mystified, as he breathed the powder into his lungs. He motioned for her to do the same.

It stung, at first, but the sting was hardly noticeable through the pain that was already there. The world dipped and swirled, leaving her momentarily disoriented. When she came back to herself, it was with the feeling that she was seeing from a slightly different viewpoint. It was as if she had stepped to the side, but without actually moving.

Slowly, the glow of the moon seemed to grow and brighten. The silver light seemed to flow into whirls and eddies with the breeze, and pool the cracks and knots of the floorboards beneath her. For a moment, Ky let herself float with the liquid moonbeams.

But only for a moment.

Kris began to chant, slowly enough that she could repeat the words. Something inside Ky hesitated to speak the words from Kris’s throat, something that was terrified and lonely.

It occurred to Ky for the first time that she was afraid to die. She began to repeat the words, choking down the fear, holding back the tears that threatened to fall for the first time in years.

Slowly, the chant took on a life of its own, weaving about in the silver swirls, harmonizing with the near-silent sounds of midnight. Soon the words were being pulled from Ky’s throat, saying themselves. Ky noticed with some part of her mind that she and Kris spoke in unison, but the thought was no sooner there than gone. Her entire being was entwined with the song and the radiant, whirling silver.

The moonlight was like an ocean now, crashing wildly about the two small figures, glowing brighter than anything Ky had ever seen. Even with her eyes closed, she could see every detail of the world around her.

The wild churning of the moonlight was dizzying, threatening to carry her away, and yet caressing her and comforting her at the same time. She was hardly aware of her body, so far away, so far from this world of silver and moonlight…

She could feel the end in front of her, she could feel herself stepping off the edge and into whatever abyss awaited her evil soul in the afterlife. She was afraid, but more than that she was relieved- the burden of life was finally being lifted from her shoulders, carried away on a silver-bright wave.

Finally, reluctantly, the moonlight calmed, wrapping itself about her, fading into blackness as she sunk into a dreamless sleep.