Page 68 of These Godly Lies
He’s right—she knows he is—but she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something sinister hiding behind the smoke. She shakes her head, changing into her dress. It must be the painful echo of the past poisoning her present. There’s no reason to believe Marcia would have traced them to this little corner of the bush. Khiran’s ring is gone, and he’s been carefully living a life without magic. Without it, Marcia would have to be within miles of them before even sensing his presence.
The odds of it are incredibly low, but when Anna glances back out the window, the eucalyptus sway, silver green leaves rustling in warning.Run,they whisper.
Run.
Paranoid. She’s being paranoid. A bushfire gives her plenty to fear, but it isn’t an obstacle they can’t overcome. They’ll flee before it catches up to them. The old utility truck the previous owners left in the barn, the one Khiran drives into town with his bootlegged driver’s license, is a temperamental thing, but it should still make it.
Anna stares at the exposed skin of Khiran’s arms as he pulls on his boots. Skin that will burn if he’s caught in the flames.
Outside, one of the sheep gives a panicked bleat and Anna’s gut sinks. “I’m going to let the animals loose,” she says, breathless with urgency as she slips her feet into a pair of shoes. “Give them a fighting chance.”
Khiran’s jaw strains, the muscle jumping, but he nods. “Be quick—it moves faster than you think. I’ll grab our things and get the truck started.”
They don’t waste any time. While Khiran grabs the emergency bag from the top of the closet, Anna runs out the back door. The sheep are frantically pacing along the fence, screaming. Her handsfumble with the lock on the gate, the clip slipping between her fingers. When she finally gets it open, the herd runs out of the pen and into the yard. They hesitate on the driveway, their ears swiveling anxiously and their trembling bodies stiff. Instinct is telling them to run, but they don’t know where to runto.
Anna knows she doesn’t have time to help them. She goes to the chicken coop next, throwing open the door. They stare back at her with dark eyes from their roosts, but it’s three in the morning and the late hour holds them still—the burning light on the horizon isn’t enough to coax them into wakefulness. She leaves the door open and hopes for the best before running to the barn.
She can hear the old truck’s throaty hum, smell the gasoline puffing from the exhaust like a chain smoker. Her nose wrinkles at the smell as she opens the passenger door, and freezes.
The driver’s seat is empty.
Her heart crashes, knocking into her ribs with enough force to leave her momentarily breathless. In her hand, the metal handle bites into her palm as she frantically searches the barn. “Khiran?” His name trembles on her lips, a question she’s afraid to know the answer to. She can’t stop looking at the keys dangling from the ignition, from the emergency bag set on the cracked leather seat.
He was here. He was here, and he’d had everything they needed to flee.
Why wasn’t hehere?
“Khiran!?” Her voice breaks as she screams his name, her hand leaving the handle to run back into the yard, into the house. His name keeps falling from her lips like a prayer, a fragile, desperate hope made sharp with fear. He’s not in the yard. Not in the house. She can hear the fire now—hear the mighty cracks and pops of the eucalyptus as they burn and crash.
Anna stands on the front step, paralyzed as she watches the flames grow higher. Grow closer. Her ears strain for the sound of his voice in the chaos, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing—
Movement from the corner of her eye, a glimpse of a humanoid shape she shouldn’t have seen in a landscape of flames and shadows.The trees are thrashing now, the heat of the flames spiraling through the branches.
Run, the leaves hiss.
Run, the branches groan.
RUN, the trunks howl, wood splitting.
She bolts from the house, runs past the truck, and chases the shadow. She swears the trees are screaming at her as she weaves between their pale, peeling trunks. The flames haven’t touched this part of the bush, but it’s quickly creeping closer. Anna can feel the threat of it on her skin, hot enough to sting and coaxing sweat from her pores. Smoke surrounds her like a fog, thick and suffocating, but in it she can see the shadow of a silhouette.
It’s not Khiran.
The figure is too small. A child. Oh, god, it’s achild.
Anna rushes forward, a different kind of urgency flooding her. She reaches out; the smoke thinning enough to make out the curled figure of a little boy. His knees are folded up to his chest, his arms hugging his legs and his head bent.
The moment she touches him, his head jerks up—staring at her with large eyes that shine like amber in the firelight. There’s soot streaking his olive skin, ashes tangling in his dark hair, but there’s no fear in his expression. No red eyes or tear tracks. Only a calm surprise that sets her on edge. He can’t be older than four; he should be terrified. Smoke is curling in her lungs, making her throat itch and her chest ache. She coughs around a breath, still staring at the boy, and understands that somethingisn’t right.
“You’re not human,” she murmurs. He looks down at her hand, still gently cupping his shoulder, but shows no sign of understanding her.
She thinks of the story Khiran told her, of the boy turned god who was too dangerous to roam free. The one of fire and fury. The one no one could touch without being burned. A child, Khiran had called him. She had never stopped to question if that changed, if he grew the wayKhirangrew. She never realized that when he said child, he meant child then and a child forever.
This is the god they treat like a bomb waiting to go off.
This is the boy they fear.
In her chest, her heart splinters. How long has it been since someone touched him? Held him? How could they treat him as an adult when he was still imprisoned in the mind and body of a child?
