Lionheart

Part One: Chapter One

Twelve.

Twelve people, twelve survivors that stood on the shoreline, watching our village burn to the ground, the smoke raising tendrils shaped liked hands that reached towards the slate coloured sky. Hands that were offering up the sacrifice of burned bodies, of stolen lives. It was as if I was allowed to take one person with me for every winter I'd seen pass, as if every year I lived was a trial and the prize for passing was taking these twelve men and women with me as I was forced to leave the only home I'd ever known. As I watched, the landscape of my childhood vanished piece by piece as red flames hungrily consumed it, took my family with it, took my life with it.

"It's a shame it finally took the doctor."

Their voices floated across a hazy wall of pain and numb shock. It floated around me like a cocoon of emotion, and buried underneath it was the worst emotion of them all; the dull acceptance that I was now truly alone. An orphan. The word had scared me when I was younger, or rather the concept, but now it was my reality.

"I really thought he was going to save us all."

Finally it registered. Resounded through the snow covered silence, broken only by the evil crackle and hiss of the fire. They were talking about my father.

"Well after it took his wife, and then the boy...I think the fight went out of him then."

They were talking about my family.

And for one wild instant I was jealous of the three corpses that were now reduced to stacks of bones laid in a burning cottage because at least they were together. At least, in the throes of death, in whatever afterlife awaited them, they had each other.

A skeletal hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me away as the gossip, the speculation and rumors that were all that was left of my family, found a new target: me.

I let their words flow over me as the hand tilted my chin up and I looked into eyes that had seen far more winters than mine, that would probably never see another. It was a miracle he'd made it through the sickness in the first place.

His voice was quiet in the chaos, like the soft creaking of the wooden rocker he often sat in in the first days of summertime while he watched the girls and boys diligently perform the Maypole dance. I couldn't even recall his name, or ever having known his name. Us kids had just called him "Grandfather" and never thought anything of it. But now he was no one's grandfather, just another survivor, like me, stranded in this bleak sea of uncertainty and grief.

There was no pity in those aged grey eyes for the young girl who'd lost everything, just understanding and that, more than his words, was the impetus to make me move, to turn and leave the sight of my life being slowly eaten away by brilliant flame.

"It's time to go, Valerie."

As if on cue, a roaring ripped through the bitter air and I turned just in time to see the flames claw hungrily higher into the sky. The skeletal frame that was all that was left of my home screamed in the heat and then bent and broke, collapsing in on itself.

The stench was overpowering, it clogged my senses and stuck to my clothes and my skin and I knew that it was just another part of this nightmare that would never leave me. That was the problem with tragedies, they overwhelmed all of your senses until they invaded you and took hold and held fast. For a moment I was stuck with the scent of burning flesh and disease and fire washing over me, the heat running raced over my skin in waves. Then the wood began to scream as it bent to the flame's will, the accompanying soundtrack penetrating the noise of the yells and the screaming.

We were running then, all twelve as best as we could toward the shoreline. Only when I started moving did I realize that my feet were bare and raw from standing in the snow and tears flowed readily down my face as each step that I took away from home burned like the fire that chased us, like the flames that licked at our backs, taunting us, chasing us, warning us to never come back.