I suspected the pyre who all the fuss was over might attack, so I stepped in front of him, begging my legs to move swiftly. I was close enough that I felt my back against his body, and I reached behind me and held his wrist in an attempt to communicate the need to remain calm.

<<I will go. But the child>>, he intended. <<I cannot leave without him. And I cannot leave without helping you>>.

Take him, take him. Only leave us now. I wanted him to go, but I hoped I could keep him close, all at once. I wanted his help and I wanted nothing to do with him. It was a strange feeling. Sometimes strange feelings are all that are allowed to us.

Episode 37: A Pyre Shows A Young Woman How

It always perturbed me, the use of wooden stakes over metal blades. For the best way to injure a being is always to use the very thing of which that being is made. Humans are made of clumps of earth and metal, and so we drive steel swords through one another. An occasional bullet as well is made of metal. Dirt, we are. And what is dirt besides dead things? Rotting things? Leaves and waste and corpses all compiled and composted until they can be made useful again?

Pyres, however, are made of life. Of light. They are made of things that grow, not that out of which things are grown. And so it is sensible that they would be more easily wounded by a natural thing. A plaything for human children: wooden sticks.

I turned my attention to the travesty at hand. To Vincent, who gurgled as Hallen shoved the stake in further to my beloved pyre’s chest. To Rosemary, who would have screamed if she could have, and how she wrapped strong fingers around Hallen Tower’s head and threatened to twist it right off his meaty shoulders.

I had no power to stop this. Nor did Sam, who was as always, comprehensively useless. I was too slow to intervene. Too slow to compute what would happen to Rosemary if she took the life of this Braun and what was already happening to Vincent.

But the pyre whose name I did not know…he stepped in. With great agility, he took Rosemary’s hands from the head of the wicked Braun. He replaced her grip with his own, hoisting Hallen by his coat front and, with a bit of effort, hurling him across the way, well past the garden and far enough that he would not stand and return so quickly.

The pyre sank to his knees at Vincent’s side. But Rosemary was already overcome, her palms squeezing her own cheeks as she paced small circles beside darling Vincent.

Vincent’s blood, a deep dark red and nearly black, pooled and bubbled past the wooden stake in his heart.

What could I do? What could be done?