Winds wailed, and a fire roared. It was as if monsters had come to hunt. Twigs, branches, roots and grasses sputtered and crackled behind us. Liquid-gold sap oozed out of stems and evaporated to a poignant stench or hardened as solid-black welts. Shrivelling in their husks, once-sturdy timber limped and drooped like people from old age. The scene terrified the children and unnerved adults.
"Ava," I mouthed into the carbon-clouded air, recollecting memories of a beloved younger sister. She was gone now, and so was Dina. I had left them both there, in the city, to suffocate on flames. That was a sacrifice I would not waste in regretting.
"Focus on what's ahead," an echo said from amongst the assemblée following me. I looked back and saw her but blinked and she was gone. They were all gone, everyone I loved and had loved. Though that no longer was important; those still alive were.
I did my best to calm them. We sang songs, shared laughs and played walking games. Even so, I overheard the occasional rustle of families roaming off into the woods, hoping to meet a natural fate in them. Others sought me, demanding we stopped for their swelling sores and tattered toes. We could not. The warm caress was too keen on our spines, it would purr us all to wakeless slumber.
We crossed familiar streets well-worn by bustling city-life, hills enclosing the plains most had never dared to venture past and the dirt and root path of an everlasting forest. My feet were coated crimson, stained by fresh and dry blood alike. Small stones and sprigs stuck to them like bees on honey. Worse though was that nothing told of how far we had come or how much further we had to go. Every tree growing along the twisting-and-turning path seemed of a homogeneous species.
Eventually dirt became loam and loam became sand. Our thighs still seared and toes still bled but at least we knew we were near. It was a great relief when the sound of crashing waves grew bolder than that of burning forest. The beach was here.
Remains of a once-great civilisation trickled in, becoming canned sardines packed on a coastal stretch of shore. Some watched me, waiting for an order or a word of what was next. Most weighed their gaze on the column of smoke. They worried, they fretted, they feared it dished up their end. Even the more vertically challenged ones, struggling to peer past an overgrown treeline smelled its scent on the breeze.
A murderer who renders its victims to ash and ash alone was after us.
Families wallowed in the shallows, parents distracting their young from all that caused alarm. "We can't have it," they reasoned. "Our children shouldn't have to bear the consequence of our mistakes."
"Watch the waters for a boat," they told their kids, whose hearts and souls were already adrift. "Imagine yourself the captain guiding a queen-of-the-sea over those waves."
Shouts of "batten down the hatches'' and "hunky-dory," resounded along the beach as the tender-aged raced about. Their gazes stared defiantly beyond ocean-bathed orange rays and to a horizon of sparkling starlets. They declaimed in awe, not of the fire which found no home with them but to decide which sea-skimming sparkle would be the saviour boat of ours.
"I see it, I see it. Look, daddy, mummy, a ship. Do you see it too?" The nippers pulled at their parents' clothes and pointed out to sea. Fingers flicked past the surf, they guided weary eyes to sights they could not see. But it mattered not to them. Wide grins and ardent eyes told no tale of fear. That meant a work well accomplished for every guardian.
"Hush. Stop that damn racket," elders chided the tikes, a teasing smile flashing on their lips. Though their life was already lived, they saw another through their grandkids. The old and addled wanted to part with at least a little tongue and cheek for those they cherished to remember them by.
Sometimes, amid stringing yarns and playing with their brood as if they were prized pups, uncoloured eyes questioned me. Though their mouths did not move, I discerned what they would ask for; hope and an explanation for our expedition. None to give, all I presented was a plastered-on expression of empathy. She had only revealed this much to me, Dina.