The Girl in the Ashes
Alusya dreamed of fire.
Even in sleep, years after that night, the smell of burning wood and flesh clung to her. Screams of neighbors. The sharp twang of bows. Her brother's hands on her shoulders, rough and shaking as he pushed her away.
"Run, Alusya. Don't look back."
But she had looked back. She always did. And she saw the moment the arrow tore through him. She remembered the way his body bent, the way his eyes stayed on her even as he fell. A prayer on his lips—not to the gods who had cursed their family, but to her. Live.
When she awoke in the witch's cave, the dream still clawed at her chest. The fire before her was gentler, just a small crackling hearth that smelled of herbs and broth. But her heart beat like a hunted animal.
The first thing she saw was stone walls draped with vines. Bundles of dried leaves and flowers hung from the ceiling like strange charms. Bowls carved from bone and stone sat neatly on a ledge. The air carried a bitter, sharp tang—medicine.
And then, the boy.
He sat nearby, not looking at her. Long black hair shadowed his face, though a faint white streak caught the firelight. He was threading meat onto a stick, movements slow, precise, almost ritual-like.
His presence was quiet, but heavy. As if he wasn't just sitting—he was rooted.
She had screamed then, and tried to flee. But her body betrayed her—weak, feverish, legs collapsing beneath her weight. He didn't move. He only looked at her with eyes too calm, too still, like a wolf waiting to see if she would bite or cower.
"If I wanted you dead," he had said softly, "you would already be."
It was not cruelty. It was fact.
And somehow, she had believed him.
Weeks passed.
Alusya's wounds healed under his hands—though he never touched her more than necessary. He boiled herbs, bound cuts, fed her broth, kept the fire burning. Always silent, always watchful. He was not gentle, but he was steady.
She watched him the way one watches a storm from behind a door—afraid to step closer, but unable to look away.
He moved with the strength of someone older, but his face was young—near her age. His body bore scars and strange marks she didn't understand. Sometimes his shadow seemed to stretch longer than it should, flickering like it had a will of its own. When he thought she slept, he whispered a name to the cave walls. Andalusia. His teacher, perhaps. Or… someone more.
Alusya never asked.
She had her own ghosts.
Her tribe had called her family cursed. She remembered her mother's face the day the verdict came—eyes hollow, resigned. Her father's silence, the way he held his children close even as the villagers dragged him away. The gods had marked them, they said. And the tribe could not keep tainted blood.
Alusya's family had been taken to the pyre. She had been spared only because her brother shoved her into the forest, into exile. His last act of love was to make her a fugitive.
She hated the gods. She hated the tribe. She hated herself for living.
But here, in this cave with a boy who was cursed in his own way, the hatred quieted.
One evening, as the mountain winds howled outside, she asked him:
"Why did you save me?"
He didn't look up from the herbs he was grinding. "Because I could."
"That's not an answer."
"Do you need one?"
She had scowled, turning away. But later that night, staring into the fire, she realized she didn't. Not really.
For the first time since her brother fell, she felt something other than emptiness.
Days turned into a rhythm.
They hunted together—well, he hunted, and she stumbled through the underbrush trying to keep quiet. He never mocked her clumsiness, only adjusted, guiding her with a glance or gesture. He showed her how to set snares, how to tell which berries would sicken and which would nourish.
At the stream, he taught her to watch the fish's shadows rather than their glimmering scales.
In the cave, he showed her the use of herbs—how willow bark soothed fever, how bitterleaf stopped bleeding.
He never smiled, not really. But there was a warmth in the way he shared knowledge, as if passing down something precious.
Alusya soaked it in, desperate not to be useless. She had lost everything—home, family, safety. If she lost purpose too, she feared she would vanish into the dark.
With him, she began to feel purpose again.
Sometimes, in the still hours before dawn, she caught him watching the mountains beyond the cave. His eyes held a weight that made her chest ache.
"Who was Andalusia?" she asked once, unable to keep the question down.
He was silent a long time. Then: "My teacher. My… family."
"And she's gone?"
"Yes."
There was no tremor in his voice, but she felt the sorrow beneath. Heavy, buried, but not gone.
She wanted to ask more. But the words died on her tongue. She knew what it was to lose family. She knew grief too raw to name.
So instead she said, "She must have been proud of you. You survived."
He didn't answer. But for the first time, his gaze softened, almost as if he saw her—not as a stranger, but as something closer.
Alusya thought often of her brother. Of how he would have wanted her to find someone to trust. Someone to lean on. She had never imagined it would be a cursed boy in a witch's cave. But perhaps fate had stranger designs.
She began to think of the cave as safe. Not because it was warm or full of food—it wasn't, not always—but because he was there.
The loneliness inside her, the emptiness left by fire and loss, began to shift. Not vanish. But shift.
One night, she dreamed again of fire.
But this time, when she turned back in the dream, it wasn't her brother falling to arrows.
It was the boy—Ahayue. Standing between her and the flames, his shadow stretching into something monstrous, something protective.
She woke with tears in her eyes, clutching the blanket he had placed over her.
For the first time, she whispered his name aloud.
"Ahayue."
The world beyond the cave still stirred. Wolves prowled. Tribes whispered. The gods who had cursed her blood and his had not finished their games. She felt it, deep in her bones.
But for now, in this narrow space carved of stone, two exiles shared firelight.
Two cursed souls, abandoned by the world, but not by each other.
And that, Alusya thought, was a beginning.