Chapter 7 - Ruby

The tubers grow big and delicious. We are able to harvest most of them and replant the rest. Now we have tons of yummy root vegetables, and we still have plenty of wheat and pemmican from the pastor’s secret stash.

We make a big stew of tubers and wheat porridge, and it tastes so good.

I just wish more people were alive to eat it.

Pastor Blackwood has been officially demoted from being ‘Pastor Blackwood’ to just ‘Charles.’ Mom has lost all respect for him. Sometimes she gets really angry at him over little things that don’t matter, and her eyes glow red and I have to calm her down. Charles never fights back.

Mom’s belly is getting big. We feed her lots of food so the baby grows nice and strong.

Everything is going well, but it’s a bit lonely.

“Maybe we should journey to another town sometime,” I say one night over dinner.

“We just managed to get a sustainable food source. We can’t leave now,” Charles says.

“But we don’t have any friends,” I say.

Mom rubs my ears. “You’ll have a little sister soon. How about that?”

I hug my knees to my chest. “I know, but its lonely.”

“Better lonely than dead,” Charles says. “All the other towns around us must be completely overrun by the rot anyway. There won’t be anything there but walking corpses.”

“What if we go north?” I ask.

“There are no towns to the north Sweetie, just mountains full of monsters,” Mom says.

“What about on the other side of the mountains?”

Mom frowns. “Maybe. I’ve heard there’s a kingdom called Lorencia on the northern coast.”

“Even if the monsters and the weather wouldn’t kill you, crossing the mountain range would take years. The only way to reach Lorencia is by boat,” Charles says.

“Well I won’t go south. I don’t want to ever live under King Noriam,” I say.

“We must stay put, Ayla. Hopefully the rot will go away in a few years,” Charles says.

The months go by. I try to survive mostly on monster meat so that we are able to store up as much food as possible for next winter. At the rate things are going, we should have plenty of dried tubers saved up by the end of summer.

Then, one late summer evening, Mom suddenly starts screaming. For a moment, I think she’s being attacked by a monster, and I quickly run to her.

“The baby is coming!” She shouts.

Charles and I help her into the church. We lay her down on a soft bed of wolf monster pelts.

“Aaah!” She screams in pain.

“Breathe deeply,” Charles says.

“Fuck off Charles!” Mom shouts.

He respectfully leaves the room.

Mom takes deep breaths. She smiles at me. “Just hold my hand Sweetie. That’s all I need.”

I hold her hand. She squeezes it so tightly, and breathes in and out between screams.

This goes on for a really long time. Mom keeps screaming louder and louder, but the baby still isn’t coming out of her.

“No,” she eventually says, panic leaking into her voice. “Not that way. Not that way!”

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What can I do?”

Mom screams in agony, and a clawed hand bursts out from the middle of her belly. It’s followed by another, and a blood-coated face with glowing red eyes. The baby slowly pulls itself out from inside her, claws digging into her skin.

The baby crawls up to her chest and suckles on her breast. Mom smiles.

“Charles come in here! Bring thread! Now!” I scream.

I try to put Mom’s belly back together, but I don’t know how. Mom just gently cradles the baby as it drinks her milk. Her face is pale. She’s bleeding where the baby is suckling her, from tiny sharp teeth puncturing her skin.

“Her name is Ruby, because she’s precious. I want her to always know she is loved.”

“Mom you’re dying,” I choke out.

Charles comes in with thread, and gasps at the sight. He stands frozen with his mouth gaping.

I take the thread, and use my claws to poke holes in Mom’s skin. Then I put the thread through and sew her belly back together. I pull the threat tight and close up the wound.

The whole bed is covered in blood. Mom’s belly is bleeding less now that I closed it up, but she is ghostly pale.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it Ayla. You have to take care of her.”

“Mom! No you can’t die. Mom please!”

Mom holds my hand and smiles. “I think Ruby can drink blood. Maybe you can feed her?”

“Mom!”

“Promise me Ayla, promise to love her.”

“Of course I love her. But I love you too! I don’t want you to die!”

“I’m sorry Ayla. But you’ll be okay without me. You’re strong girls, both of you.”

“Mom!” I push my moonlight into her, begging it to heal her, but it doesn’t.

Mom stops breathing.

“Aaaaaah!” I hold onto her corpse. She can’t die. She can’t.

“Ayla.” Charles puts his hand on my back.

“Don’t touch me!” I fling my arm out and it hits his face. He stumbles back, then leaves.

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I hold onto Mom’s body all night long. Ruby keeps drinking her blood until no more comes out.

I gently pick Ruby up, careful not to hurt her. She’s beautiful. Her eyes twinkle like gemstones, and she has a bit of smooth inky black hair. She has black claws on her fingertips, and sharp pointy teeth. There are two small bony bumps on her head, which look like they might grow into horns one day.

My sister.

I hold her close, and she bites my neck.

“Aah!” I whimper. Her teeth are really sharp, but I don’t stop her.

“Drink as much as you want Ruby. You need to grow up big and strong.”

This child is everything. Every person I failed to save, Mom’s love, everyone’s hopes for a better future, they all lie in her. As long as Ruby gets to live a long and happy life, eat lots of delicious bread, and make lots of friends, everything will have been worth it. All the sacrifices, all the horrible deaths, all the lost chances and broken promises, they all mean something now, just because of her.

The next day, we have a funeral pyre for Mom. I hold Ruby close and let her drink my blood.

Charles seems scared of her. I realize now that he is a coward. He has always been a coward. That’s why he survived the soldiers, when all the other men died. That’s why he kept the food to himself instead of sharing it. He only shared it when it meant we wouldn’t destroy the farm.

He can have his farm. Luna once said this village started as a hermit in his hovel, and that is what it will become once again. It’s time for it to be abandoned by its guardian deity.

I am not staying here. I have to find a better life for Ruby, even if it means crossing mountains that are impossible to cross. We can do it, because we’re strong girls. Mom said so.

I am going to journey with Ruby to Lorencia. We’ll leave after the next harvest of tubers.

I don’t talk to Charles much over the next couple months.

As I wait for the tubers to grow, I secretly sew monster pelts into a backpack and a sheath for my sword. I also collect rope, cloth, a pot, a knife, a blanket, a flint and steel, and some other basic necessities. I also make a sling that will make it easier to cary Ruby as I travel.

Once the tubers are nice and big, I sneak out in the middle of the night with Ruby.

“We’re going on an adventure now,” I tell her.

She snuggles up to me, giggling softly.

“I feel a little bad for Charles. Do you think I should?” I ask as I dig up the tubers and carefully pack them into my bag. “I’m going to leave him some, just enough to replant the farm.”

“Bu!”

“Ssh, not too loud Ruby.”

Because Ruby asked nicely, I leave Charles a few less tubers than I was planning to.

“Well that’s everything. Shall we go?”

“Ba!” Ruby says.

I walk north.

We run into some giant spiders immediately. I dash forward, imbue my sword with moonlight, and cut them down in a flash.

Good, the sling is working. Ruby is nice and snug.

“Mu!” Ruby sticks her tongue out at the dead spiders.

“Yeah, they’re gross aren’t they?”

“Ba!”

The rot isn’t as bad to the north of town as it is to the south, but I still make sure to purify Ruby with my magic often. I don’t want her to get sick.

I want the supplies to last as long as they possibly can, so I eat nothing but monster meat.

The ground is gradually sloping upward, and I can see the mountains towering in the distance, their snowy tops piercing the clouds.

At night, we sleep bundled up in a blanket on the ground.

The mountains are farther than I expected. It takes a couple months of traveling before we even reach their foothills. As we get closer, the monsters we encounter get bigger and stronger. The spiders are as big as bears now, and the ram-horned wolf monsters come in packs of ten.

I’m eating lots and lots of meat, so I’m growing stronger, faster, and taller. Ruby is still only drinking my blood. I wonder when I should start feeding her mashed up tubers to get her used to eating normal food. She seems to already be transformed like me, so maybe she can eat monster meat too. I’m apprehensive about trying that though.

Eventually, we reach the rocky hills at the base of the mountains. Unfortunately, it starts to rain that day, and it’s cold, so I hold Ruby close and look for some shelter.

There is a shallow cave in the distance. I quickly run and hide inside it. A snake is living there.

I grab the snake, smack its head against the rock to kill it, and start munching on its tail.

The rain gets heavier, and it starts to thunder. The ground is all wet and there are no trees around this area, so there is no chance of making a fire. I just cuddle Ruby close at the mouth of the cave, making sure she’s warm.

She isn’t afraid of the storm. We both look out at the dark booming clouds.

Lightning strikes. It’s so fast, connecting the cloud to the ground with a surge of blinding light. The thunder inevitably comes a few seconds later.

The next lightning bolt, I watch closely, my eyes going wide the moment it starts. Time seems to slow down for a moment as I strain to perceive it.

It’s beautiful. The bolt starts from the cloud, but not as a single strand. There are a million tiny branching bolts that reach out along all possible paths toward the ground. Then, when the first of the branches finally finds a path, there is a blinding surge of light back up from the ground.

“That’s us Ruby. We’ll try everything, we’ll do whatever it takes. Then one day, we’ll find a perfect path that leads to a perfect place, and we’ll finally be able to eat bread again.”

“Ga!”

Within the thunderbolts, there is a pattern. Not a swirling one like what lives in the moonbeams, but a jagged one, a furious one, chaotic and unpredictable, yet full of determination.

With each lightning bolt, I memorize a little bit more of it. It doesn’t come nearly as easily to me as the moonlight rune did. I think Luna was still helping me back then. Now I’m all on my own.

“Bam!” Ruby says as the thunder booms.

I stand corrected. I’m definitely not on my own.

Ruby really likes the thunderstorm. She makes happy noises each time the thunder booms. When the storm calms down, she falls asleep in her sling, and I continue the journey north.

The sky is clear for the next few days. Up here on the mountainside, there is no rot anymore. The air is crisp and clean. When I look back south, there is only an endless ocean of grey rotting treetops, stretching all the way to the smoggy horizon.

“I’m happy we went this way Ruby. Look, that’s where we used to live.”

Looking at it from here, it’s like a wasteland. I can’t believe we survived. We should have all left the village sooner. The mountains aren’t so bad.

“Scree!” An ear-splitting noise rattles through me.

I look up to see a huge winged creature. It has white and grey feathers, four wings, a long beak studded with sharp teeth, and clawed legs with sharp talons.

It swoops down. I jump out of the way, moving as fast as I can. The monster’s huge feet crash into the mountainside where I just was, crunching apart the stone.

It turns towards me with a heavy flap of its wings, and snaps at us with its beak. It could swallow us whole!

I manage to dodge out of the way just in time. I draw my sword and imbue it with moonlight, raising it between Ruby and the monster.

“Yaaaa!” Ruby says.

Is she enjoying this? Does she not understand that the monster is trying to eat her?

Maybe she just trusts me.

“You’re right. I won’t fail you Ruby. I promise.”

The bird thing lunges at me again. I look into the future, predicting the path of its jaws.

“You won’t bite me!”

I jump over its head and plunge my sword into its eye.

It shrieks in rage, thrashing wildly. I pull my sword out of its eye and leap away, landing on a nearby boulder. It glares at me.

“Leave us alone, or I’ll stab your other eye too!”

It opens up its jaw. I can see what’s coming, so I dodge to the side just in time.

A ray of frigid blue light erupts from the monster’s mouth. The beam hits the boulder where I was just standing, and massive ice crystals erupt all over it, coating it in spiky glittering frost.

“Monsters can use magic too?! Wow, you’re dangerous!”

“Scree!” It blasts another ice beam at me, which I dodge. Then it ruffles its feathers, and dozens of sharp shards of ice form in the air from swirling snow.

The spears fly towards me.

My eyes widen, and everything moves in slow motion.

As I dodge the shards of ice, I breathe deep. I feel the storm’s fury, how it always finds the perfect path to victory. I follow the path. I see the jagged line, and another gate opens.

“But you’re slow.”

Lightning.

I move in a flash, crackling light trailing from my heels. I swerve around the ice spears and the monster’s snapping beak. I jump up over its head, then within a bolt of lightning, I change direction in midair, dodging an ice beam to shoot straight towards my promised target.

I stab my sword into its other eye.

It shrieks in fury, and I leap off it. I run away as quietly as I can.

The monster flails frantically. A blizzard forms around it, and it starts blasting ice beams in random directions. One of them almost hits me, but I see it coming and dodge out of the way.

I don’t stop running until I am over the next hill. I can still hear the monster firing off ice beams and shrieking furiously in the distance.

“Phew! Well now I understand why nobody lives here.”

The mountains tower in the distance. I can see more of the bird things flying in the clouds around their peaks, and many bigger shapes too.

“Mu!”

“Nobody except for us I guess! Haha!”

“Ga!”

We journey upward.