I scrabbled up, slipping on the wet tile, and I ran. I screamed. For help, for someone to come, for anyone else in the village to fix her, for this to all be a nightmare, despite the hot sun peeking over the horizon.
But as I screamed, as I ran out of her house and into the yard, my gold came with me. It followed my feet, nipping at my heels like a feral dog.
The first person who ran out of their house at my cries took one look at me and stopped dead in his tracks. I stumbled at him, hands gripping his arms, begging him to help me as tears poured down my cheeks. Tears that were no longer clear but the same gold that wept from my hands.
I shouldn’t have touched him. Shouldn’t have grabbed him. Because the gold pounced on him too. He fell, just as they had. Landing at my feet with a violent, panicked pitch, dying right there in front of my wide eyes, all because of a touch.
Shouts rose up and down the village. More people came out. I was shivering, crying, screaming, and this curse just kept rolling out of me in waves, flooding from my feet, pouring from my hands, more and more and more.
“She’s cursed! She’s come to curse us!”
“We need to burn her!”
No no no no
I was already burning with this nonstop cascade, and Milly—
When a group of men came running at me with lit torches, I knew they were going to hurt me. I knew I deserved it. But I needed them to go see. Needed them to help Milly.
“Please, please.”
They ran at me, eyes lit with fire, flames reflecting off the gold that gathered around me. With a spike of my fear, I tried to turn and run away.
But my gold didn’t.
It streamed out of me, poured from Milly’s doorway, gushing down the street like a flash flood, swallowing up the village in its wake.
It didn’t even take long for the gold to inundate the cluster of houses. For it to stream into every doorway and window, and drop from the rooftops. For the screams to rend the air. And then choked gurgles and running feet to abruptly halt.
It should’ve taken longer to murder an entire village.
I was stuck in shock, bare knees on the molten road, eyes blinking around the destruction I’d wrought. There was just a puddle left at my feet, the entire village splotched and blotted anddripping.
The flame from the torches littered on the ground mocked me. The dawning sun shone in accusation.
What did you do?
The gold didn’t dry up until my tears did.
And by then, everyone was dead. Men, women, children.
Milly.
Not even poor old Sal was spared.
My palms were a mess of congealed, tacky gold I had to scrub off, and my feet were the same. I could feel the thickly dried tracks on my cheeks as I ran through the village. Splotches of gold were everywhere, smothered against faces, fisting around chests, staining doorways and window panes like splatters of blood.
I killedeveryonein Carnith.
I’m not sure when I collapsed, but when I woke up, night had come. The shadows of the gilded dead surrounded me. Houses far too quiet, not a single fireplace lit. I ran back into Milly’s house, sobbing, exhausted, walking over the streaks of gold on the floor that felt as sticky as the honey Milly harvested.
I knew I couldn’t stay. Knew I had to get away. So I stripped off my syrupy clothes and washed up, dressing in a clean shirt and pants, along with my cloak. I found Milly’s knapsack and filled it with as much food and water as I could carry, and then I fled.
I couldn’t bear to stay in that house. In that village. So I ran to the next one over. That was as far as my exhausted feet could carry me. Stayed in a hidden alleyway, unable to sleep, because all I saw was that splash of gold glinting across Milly’s mouth and cheek and good eye, the milky one untouched, staring ahead, unseeing in a completely different way.
The next night, that village was raided. With men who brought torches and threats. I thought they’d found Carnith and they’d known what I’d done. I thought they’d tracked me down to kill me, that they were going to punish this village for unwittingly harboring a cursed girl.
Of course, I didn’t know then that it washim. Didn’t know that he’d followed me across the ocean on a hunch and that he’d found Carnith, where his master plan morphed. He didn’t need the clout or wealth from being Derfort Harbor’s east-end crime boss. Not anymore. So he shed the false name and had his men burn Carnith to the ground and bury the gold, hiding the evidence entirely.
