Stormfolk

by Alex Turner

—We enter on the cusp of something new, said the beast. We enter on the precipice of a new memory, a new feeling, a new start. The breath that I remove from the air and place into my lungs feels fresh. My ties have been broken; I am released into the space around me, no longer tethered by the reality of what once was. Just for a moment, I am free. I can go anywhere and I will still be free. Try to stop me, the beast thought. It will be too late when you realize that you cannot—

Calton took a deep breath, his lungs filling with the cool, sweet air. The puffy clouds dotted the sky above him. They seemed so close that he could touch them. And maybe he could, but as he commanded his body to rise from the soil of the earth, he found that it wouldn’t obey. He was stuck, staring at the open expanse above him, wondering. 

The sun burns down on Calton’s skin. Its rays dance around him, warming the cold breeze that brushes up against his cheek like a familiar cat—unexpected and soft. Finally, he feels his bearings return to him, his muscles calling to his brain as if awakened in a restless slumber. Calton pushes against the ground, feeling patches of melting snow under his fingers. He is caked in a mixture of dirt and ice, the sun blending the matter into his skin and clothing.

Calton takes a step, his shoe crunching into the soft snow. In places, a foot of snow still disguises the green grass below with a sparkling white. 

The snow remembers more than one would think. It retains the memories of footprints of happy children who play, and remembers the couple that laid on their backs and made imprints on its soft, white, icy surface. While many might think the snow is without thought, it comes from the heavens. It's sent from angels and knows more about the universe than anyone ever will. It is torn apart, melted, sucked into and through the air. It experiences its own changing in real time. It is pieced together, high enough to have the proximity to God himself.

Calton has always valued the snow. He treasures it as if it is his kin. He knows that the snow remembers, and if he were to ask, it would remind him of what happened. Squinting hard, Calton sharpens his vision towards the pathway in front of him. He shakes off the lingering pains in his arms and head and follows the distinct guide, turning his ears towards the ground, waiting expectantly for a response. 

He listens to the wind as it dances around the trees, obstructed by the tall stone and brick walls placed by man’s harsh hand. The air plays too roughly, dying leaves falling off the tree’s many fingertips. The tree extends through time, outlasting any and all living things around him. He grows taller even when he’s dead and he is larger by the time he has the chance to be reborn. Why must we question the wise’s nobility? His wisdom? His embodiment? His essence?

And then Calton remembers. 

The snow tells him the story that is sent by the trees. 

Calton listens to the story. The trees and the snow remember a time when they lived freely. A time before men built an empire around his home, around his legs. For years, they expanded, mimicking the behavior of the nature around them. Castles turned to cities turned to wide expanses of land, claimed by those who stole it. But viruses—the ones humans hold, the ones they embody—weren’t meant to spread. The balance was bound to find itself again.

Calton was born in the village. Inside a small shack on the outside of the palace walls. And he had a sister, Breveline. 

Just as the snow finishes its retelling, it all comes rushing back. Calton remembers the bright light, the sound like the cracking of a whip, and the strong gust of force that knocked him off of his feet and into the snow. 

Calton breaks out into a run, sprinting along the dirt path in the direction of his home. He needs to make it back to her. He needs to know that she is okay. 

Determination kept him going. He needed to make it over this hill and into the valley. That’s where his sister would be. 

The snow starts to level out as he reaches the top of the hill. After he makes it past the treeline, breaking through the thick brush of the forest, the sun envelops him in all of its glory. 

—To be unrecognized, to be forgotten, to be unloved by those who pray for it the most. Perplexity is not the right emotion, thinks the beast. Indignation is closer. I watch and I wait for the sun, my father, to carry me back home to the heavens. I have been sent down, not by my own accord. Yet, I have been cast away like one might throw away an old toy, a friend. Taking something for granted must come with a price, it proclaims. For the day has come when I won’t be rescued by my father. I will let the sorrows of the people pile up above their heads and let it rest its gleeful chin amid the clouds. There I will get revenge, suffocating all that was once known to be true. For to be cast aside is no forgivable feat. I chose how and when to stop accepting defeat. I have been trapped inside, struggling through every new breath. I called out to my mother. But she was not there. For neither am I, placed into the universe, awakened suddenly—

Calton could see it now, the village. Or what once was. Words didn’t greet him. The snow and wind didn’t offer their explanations for what he was seeing, for what was displayed in front of him. 

There was fire, a neverending burning flame, roaring high above the clouds and into the bright daylight. It festered, rooting its home in the middle of the city, behind the palace gates. 

Gone.

That was the only word to describe it. Every wall, every home, every shard that provided a sense of life in the surrounding space was eliminated. Torn. Decimated into oblivion as if it had never even existed at all. 

The castle had crumbled, taking with it every person of power that stayed cooped within its walls. It laid in a heap on the ground, broken and mangled. The walls of the city were shattered into dust, swept away by the breeze that held no care for the destruction below. 

Calton took a few more steps until it came into full view. He stood at the center of what he once called home. The village was ravaged. It was a shock to see some of the walls still standing. Many of the bricks had been torn straight out of their structure. The materials in the roofs had ripped apart and turned to dust. Clothes were scattered across the roads along with stray kitchen utensils and broken furniture. 

The door to Calton and Breveline’s home was gone. He stepped through the entrance, his foot creaking above the worn wooden panels. He feared what he may find inside rather than falling straight through the unreliable floor. His fingers brushed against the couch that now lay upside down in the kitchen, and the broken framework of the fireplace that rested in pieces in the bathroom. 

The clock that once hung above the burning fire had rolled across the house and under the dining table. Calton lifted it out with both hands, watching with grief as the second hand still spun around its axis. 

Calton called out for his mom. Among all of the belongings throughout the village, he hadn’t found a single body. They must have had some sort of warning. 

Guilt flooded his veins. He had felt it happen, as if someone had drawn the power to scream straight from his lungs. Calton should have known that this day would come. He had never regretted fleeing to the countryside more. He did so on most days when the overwhelming fear of life itself wrapped its hands around his throat. He had told his mother that he just wanted to escape; it was one of the last things he said to her. Maybe if he had been able to just keep it together, he would've been there to help her.

There had been a moment of silence as Calton felt the energy leave him. Similar to the release Earth gets as dusk says its goodbyes and dawn makes its entrance. Calton only worried for a moment, for it wasn’t long until an eruption pierced through the silence of the village and flattened him onto his back. He wondered how long he must have laid there in the patches of grass and mud. How long he had left them out to dry. 

The guilt was overwhelming. The simple thought of remembering what had caused the blight made Calton’s stomach turn. He set the clock down on a barren chunk of wall and fled the carcass of his home, stumbling back through the doorframe and out into the open. He took a deep breath, collecting the strength, the courage, the gust, and he screamed his sister’s name into the thinning air. 

The scream echoed off the few structures that still remained, fading out into oblivion towards the palace. Tears started to form in his eyes. He was all alone.

Calton slumped to the ground as his will to keep going leaked out of his veins. He didn’t know what to do. Not only without his mother, but without his sister too? His bewilderment was washed out by his guilt, then replaced by overwhelming sadness. He wanted to disappear. To evaporate into the wind, never to be seen again. Maybe that’s where his mother had gone. Maybe he could meet her there. 

Then a piercing cry rippled through the sky. From this distance, Calton couldn’t distinguish the words, but he could tell which direction they came from. 

A hitch rose in Calton’s throat as he propelled himself to his feet once more. He broke out into a run, bolting through the village, dodging stray mattresses and scattered bricks. He was surprised by how fast his feet took him as he barreled through the lives of everyone he used to know. Here and there, he recognized something that belonged to his friend, or a distant relative that he only saw every so often. 

It wasn’t until he reached the edge of the village that he began to slow. He stood on the singular dirt road that led towards what once was the gateway into the palace walls. He had only visited once before, when he was young. He had accompanied his mother on her journey into the city to retrieve goods for her sewing shop. She had run out of needles and needed a couple of different kinds of thread. It had taken her weeks to save up enough coin to buy all of it from them. Calton remembered how she cursed them for their scams and their pompous living style. Now it was all gone, wiped away. In a way, justice had been delivered. It just hadn’t discriminated against its victims. Pieces of the past lay everywhere—a representation of unmeasurable power.

Another piercing cry rang out across the street. This time Calton recognized his name laced with the semblance of a hard sob. He squinted against the sun, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand. He saw a figure way out near the rubble of the palace walls. And he ran. Faster than he ever had before. 

New tears started to pool in his eyes as the wind blew across his face. 

She was alive! His sister! She had survived!

“Stop!” Breveline said, her hands held out. “Don’t get any closer!”

Calton was too focused on the center of her face. He saw her. She was real. But as if held back through some sort of instinct, he stopped a few feet in front of her. He studied the rest of her. Her hair, the way it fell past her shoulders in a matted tangle. And her skin. A mix of shock and fear and worry filled Calton’s gut. 

“You’re glowing!” he said, more of a statement than a question. 

Tears fell like rivers down her face, carving streaks into the dirt on her cheeks. Calton took a tentative step towards her. She was fragile. She was broken and defeated. As he gazed at her sooted face, he realized what had happened. Her realities had been torn away from her, and Calton knew that feeling. It had happened to him once before. The beast that lived in his gut had spoken for the first time many years ago, and he remembered how jarring it felt to just exist. Every second had pulled along next to him, like a heavy wagon or sack. 

For him, it had been different. His power hadn’t come with the destruction he could bring, but what he could take away. Calton had made the sun disappear. It had plunged the village into a darkness that lasted a whole week. Years had gone by since his incident, and the fear of someone discovering who burnt out the sun has never left him. He reckoned they would burn him at the stake, slaughter him where he stood. Calton’s mother had been pregnant with Breveline at the time. But she took care of him. Protected him until they were sure that things would be okay. But how would Breveline come back from this? What would happen when surrounding kingdoms discovered what happened to this one? Calton could only imagine what they would do to her, and it made his blood lead out of his face. When the beast finally let go, the sun had returned, and the beast’s anger inside of Calton had eased to a quieter tune. And once again, their life was being taken from them. 

Breveline was sobbing and shaking. Calton reached out his hands, surveying her glowing skin. He felt the power brewing within her, the beast that was begging to be released. Calton intertwined his fingers with his sister’s, and he watched as the radiance of her skin transferred between them, leveling out to a more bearable state, and illuminating his exposed skin in return. He pulled his sister into a hug, wrapping his large arms around her back and head. She cried into his sleeve, her breath hitching high in her throat. 

“I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry,” she said between wavering breaths. 

Calton tucked her face into his chest, hiding her from her own destruction. He rested his chin on her hair, sweeping his eyes back and forth over the palace’s ruins. They would have to start again. He had done it before, with his mother and the missing sun. He could do it again. As long as he had her, they would be okay. They could fix this. 

“It’s not your fault,” Calton said gently. 

Deep down he knew that whatever brewed beneath their skin had no mercy. And if someone was out to get them, they would need something incredibly powerful. But for now, he thought, they can’t kill us. Then, he lifted his chin from the top of his sister’s head and kissed her forehead lightly.