Excerpt: Blood Dancers
She dances barefoot in a gentle fire, twirling in a tattered crimson dress. The flames flicker and they resemble her heartbeat. The heat gives her life, and if there are watchers, it flows through her and reaches them. A dance only danced for the sick and the intimate, else she’d weaken.
When she’s dancing, she becomes a stranger. Her parents, her brother, her friends, all think she’s someone cold and distant. But the fire frees her, protects her. Whether it melts her shell, or if the spirit of the fire takes her body over, she does not know, and she does not care.
But tonight, something is different, and it’s not the blood moon. In years past, dancing under the autumnal red moon would give her strength she had never known. And tonight, she feels weak, faint, her skin is as translucent as it has ever been.
Someone is watching.
She stops to catch her breath. A strange calmness takes over her. Anyone, man or woman, might be alarmed, even frightened, at the prospect that there's someone there with them in an abandoned church deep in the woods, miles from home.
I know you’re there, she says in a sing-songy voice.
Up here, says a strong, smooth voice, but clearly a woman. She is leaning against a pillar, with one leg dangling off the beam and the other outstretched. She’s a wearing a black canvas jacket and black denim pants. A hood covering her dark hair. But her bright blue eyes give her away. She says, you’re a blood dancer, are you not?
I am. The dancer says. How long have you been there?
Since you started the fire. I was told you’d be here.
By who?
The winds. She sees the look on the dancer’s face. I mean it, I don’t know why I was drawn here. I was…
Hiding. But from?
Hunters, wolves, I suppose. But I thought I’d be safe here.
You’re someone.
I am. My name is Awnie. And you are?
Sari Conrad.
just a brief excerpt from a story from characters tangential to For the Glory of the Wretched