The men who’d come to her home, normal men, human men, who’d ended up burning it all down, taking the women and children to a fate worse than death. Walking dead-eyed with the others, a bundle of cloth heavy in her arms. She cradled it close to her chest and her eyes softened when she looked down upon it. Then they hardened as she stopped in her tracks and another woman bumped into her. She dug at the swaddling with her hands and exposed the babe fully to the cold air, hoping to rouse it, but it was already dead and cold. No, not “it.” He. I knew, rather than saw. He. Her son. Too innocent and fragile to endure the grueling conditions of this walk of captives. Too young to even have a chance at life the moment the village burned down.

She wailed and flung herself to the ground with the body of her child, pulling out her hair in grief. There was no charcoal to blacken her face, nor were there any knives to mar her skin so the world would know her pain, but she still had her hair.

It was a death ritual, to make yourself ugly or harm yourself because a loved one had passed on. It was meant to show how strongly one grieved for their dead loved one, slashing cheeks and nonlethal parts of one’s arms and body, smearing mud and thick red paint that took weeks to wash off.

It assured the dead they’d be mourned, and this young woman couldn’t even do that. Another man from the raiding village yanked her up and shoved her forward, tossing the small corpse of the baby behind. The woman cried out, and she was met with a slap in the face and forced to keep moving as her precious child dwindled farther and farther away.

I reached out and gripped the woman in the water. Because underneath her silvery appearance, burning white hair, and wraithlike eyes, her true face appeared—a young woman with pale skin and a small nose with a soft bridge, rich brown eyes, yellow hair that fell like feathers around her face. Her claws passed through me like wind through leaves as I took hold of her forearm and reentered the memory with her.

The men camped at the top of a cliff and harsh winds blew. The captive women and children huddled closely together to share their warmth despite the lack of adequate clothing and blankets. Every so often, a child would stir and cry before being shushed by its mother or someone would hide a cough knowing any sign of weakness could get them killed. The survivors all came together as one.