.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

ARSONIST'S LULLABYE!

oooo. prologue

THE SUN HAD BARELY RISEN, AND THE GIRL'S HOME WAS BURNING. Flames danced across the thatched roofs of the cottages, caressing the woven straw with the gentle touch of a lover; painting the morning sky in shades of burnt orange and crimson.

It had been an accident, of course. It always was.

Her mother had warned her, had forbidden her from using her power. Those in the world blessed with a sin like the girl's were unnatural, her mother warned. An abomination.

The fire had started with her, borne of her quick temper; an inferno that had swallowed their small cottage whole. 

And now she clutched onto her brother for comfort, small faces pale, fresh tears leaving tracks in the ash that already stained their skin. The children huddled in the charred ruins of an old barn, hiding from the villagers that now wanted them dead.

"Cathain a fhillfidh ár Máthair?" her brother sniffled, bottom lip trembling. When will Mother return?

The girl did not reply. She knew the answer - how could she not? - but the words couldn't leave her mouth. Her whole body was frozen, seized by fear, grey eyes wide in lingering horror. Distractedly, she looked at her hands, unchanged in spite of what they had just done.

Her silence alarmed her brother, who began to cry in earnest.

As though awoken by his cries, the girl blinked before clamping a hand over his mouth. Silence had been their saviour so far, and to break it would condemn them both.

"Fan!" A rough voice called, making the children shrink further into their hiding-place. "Sílim gur chuala mé rud éigin thall ansin!" Wait! I think I heard something over there!

The girl's heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribcage, fear spreading its dark wings inside her chest - they were done for. 

There was silence for a second, as though the very world was holding its breath - before someone grabbed her from behind. 

She thrashed against the arms holding her, screaming until she thought her lungs would burst. Her fiery tresses had escaped their braid, hanging in a mess around her face, over her eyes. Her brother's sobs reached fever pitch from somewhere on her left, spurring the girl to struggle harder, desperate to reach him. 

Twisting around, she recognised her captor as Cillian, the man who owned the farm near her family's cottage. He was built like an oak tree, with a scrubby shock of red hair. His usual kindly smile was gone, however, the merry light in his eyes replaced by a new hardness. 

"Le do thoil, Cillian, is mise," she begged, trying to meet his eyes. Please, Cillian, it's me. 

Cillian's gaze fell on her for a second, a spark of recognition in his eyes. He loosened the grip in one of his arms, and for a moment hope, bright and brief, filled the girl's heart. 

The blow that came was sudden, lightning-fast and leaving her vision blackened around the edges. Her face was bleeding where the big man had cuffed her, but the pain was nothing compared to the stinging betrayal she felt. 

"Cillian," she sobbed, the word dragged from her chest. 

"Ciúin!" he spat, ordering her to be silent. 

There was no reasoning with these people, she realised, with their superstition and prejudice. In their lands, her kind were seen as evil creatures, haunting folk tales and songs; the monsters lurking in the darkened space under a child's bed.  

The children were half-carried, half-pulled out of the village's blackened remains, now too frightened to make a sound. As they left the stone cottages behind in favour of hedgerows and rolling fields, the girl realised where they were being taken. 

She began to writhe in Cillian's arms, more frantic now, possessed by fear. An image flashed through her mind - a table-like slab of rock, raised from the ground and adorned with dark spatters of blood. She had not been the first. 

To them, she was nothing more than a wild animal caught in a trap; a dangerous thing begging to be put down, and she would be treated as such. 

As they broke through a dark cluster of trees, they were met by the rest of the villagers, faces stained with ashes and hatred. The girl would not find any help here. 

"Cailleach." They hissed as she moved through their ranks, voices rising in a malevolent chorus. "Ollphéist. Deamhan." Witch. Monster. Demon. 

With silent deliberation, Cillian bound the girl's wrists together, the dirtied rope almost pulling her hands together in a mockery of prayer. He then pushed her to the stone slab, forcing her to climb atop it as tears streamed down her face. 

Her brother was crying again, screaming as though the sounds were being carved from his chest. 

Turning her head to find him, the girl instead saw Darragh, who had exchanged pleasantries with her mother on market days, now approaching her with a bloodstained dagger in one hand, blackened cauldron in the other. 

After all, the only part of a witch worth anything was her blood. 

The copse of hawthornes around them stood sentinel, bearing silent witness to the cruel justice about to be served. A harsh wind whipped their branches, singing in harmony with the children's cries. 

Silence swept over the clearing, the only sound was Darragh's heavy footfall approaching the stone table. The girl screwed her eyes shut, sending silent prayers to the Saints; pleading for it to be quick, that her brother would be left alone once her sins were finally atoned for. 

"Filleadh ar an dorchadas, cailleach," Darragh spat, and the girl didn't have to look to know he had raised the dagger. 

Return to the darkness, witch. The last words she would ever hear, full of seething hate, fueled by cruelty and fear. Still, at least she would die with the wind on her face, drying her tears and filling her lungs with their final breath. She waited for the final flare of pain, for the cold flash of the dagger.  

But instead, the screaming started. 

The girl's eyes flew open, struggling to comprehend the scene before her. The clearing was in complete chaos, villagers running in all directions, faces frozen in masks of horror- and Darragh...

She bit back a scream, bile rising in the back of her throat.

Darragh's body hung suspended from one of the hawthornes, impaled on a black bough; an insect pinned to a board. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, jewel-bright droplets vibrant against his already-greying skin, blue eyes wide and unseeing. 

The girl tore her eyes away, instead fixing her gaze on her brother. It seemed as though he was rooted to the grass, hands falling to his sides as the winds finally died down. His eyes met her own, pupils huge with fear. 

"Ba thimpiste é," he whispered, unable to look away from the dead man's still form. "Bhí sé ag dul a ghortú duit-" It was an accident, he was going to hurt you-

The remaining few who had not fled stared at the boy, beginning to back away through the trees. How had they been so foolish? One witch, they had expected, but they had not bargained for a second. 

As the last of them disappeared behind the hawthornes' dark limbs, the boy scrabbled in the bracken for the dagger, taking it to saw through his sister's bonds. As soon as the frayed rope had fallen to the dirt, the boy took his sister's arm, intending to lead her far away from the grisly scene. 

However, the girl wrenched out of his grasp, shaking her head. "Ní féidir linn imeacht gan ár máthair," she said, mouth set in a hard line. We can't leave without our mother. 

Not wasting any time, the two crept back towards the village, nerves completely frayed, jumping at the slightest movement, the smallest sound. It didn't take long to reach the charred remains of their home, a twisted wound upon the land. The chimney still remained, as did the hearth, and there, blanketed in a soft covering of ash, was their mother. 

She had been asleep when the fire had started, and now her bones lay, almost peacefully, with one arm tucked under her head, stripped bare by the flames her daughter had been unable to control. 

The girl had sinned, and now she was to pay penance. Ignoring the disgusted whimper of her brother, she took the blackened bones of her mother's hand, breaking both the index and middle fingers off with a hollow snap. She closed her fingers over them, holding the pieces tightly as the children stole one final glance at their mother's remains, before they were running again.

They needed to get far away from the village, far away from the Wandering Isle itself, not stopping until they reached somewhere they would be safe to grieve. 

As they sprinted past the outskirts of the village, the girl became aware of the bones still clutched in one hand, to serve as a permanent reminder of what she had done. Of what she was. 

The children fled across the fields; away from all they'd ever known, their future stretching unwritten before them. She was alone in the world now. They both were. And so they ran, with the gorse on the hillside still burning, the wind howling its lonely lament. 

◇

THE COPPER COIN GLINTED IN THE LATE-AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT, burnished and bright against the faded silken tablecloth. It lay amongst a number of small wooden cups, which had been strewn haphazardly in frustration only mere moments before. The Suli campsite was peacefully still, the only noises were the birdsong and the boy's frustrated grumblings. 

The boy groaned, slumped face-down, the various objects scattered around his head like a halo. "It's impossible," he mumbled. 

His mother looked over from her place by the fire, her gaze softening at the sight of him. "What's impossible, my love?" 

"This," he said desperately, lifting his head and gesturing morosely at the mess before him. "My magic tricks, Mama...they don't work! The coin keeps slipping off the table!" 

"Ah, moje srce," she hummed, getting to her feet. "There is a knack to it, but you'll get it eventually! Here-" in one swift movement, she had set the cups in a neat line, before gently placing the boy's small hands on them. 

Slowly, she guided his hands, sliding the coin between the cups. 

"It's not about following the coin with your eyes, no, you need to follow it with this-" she lifted one delicate hand, placing it over the boy's heart. "You need to feel where the coin is... like it's an extension of yourself. Do you understand, my love?" 

"I... I think so?" He looked up at her, dark brows furrowing. "Let me try it again," 

Tongue clamped between his teeth, the boy took the coin in his hand, the metal cool against his skin. Closing his eyes, he rolled it over and over in his palm, feeling every groove and dent, feeling the famlilar shape of the Ravkan eagle on one side. He placed it under one of the cups, beginning to slide them back and forth, quicker and quicker until they became a blur of honeyed pine beneath his fingertips. 

Whenever he began to feel the coin slip out of his grasp, he simply pictured those familiar grooves in the metal, and it remained concealed. Satisfied, he slowed his hands until the cups were completely still against the maroon velvet. 

Hardly able to conceal his grin, the boy turned to his mother, trying to use his best 'entertainer' voice. "Now madam, which cup holds the coin?"

"Hmm," she tapped her chin with one finger, feigning indecision. "Is it... the middle one?"

Already knowing the answer, the boy wordlessly lifted the cup to reveal nothing. 

"I knew you could do it, my love!" His mother planted a kiss on the top of his head, running a hand through his mop of black curls. 

He looked up at her then, and in that moment, nothing in the world could have compared to her smile. Years later when he turned the memory over in his mind, worn and faded as a stone smoothed by the waters of time, he would cling to the echo of his mother's smile. Even when his world had grown bleak and hopeless, and he could no longer remember her laugh, or her smell, or even her face, he would think of that smile. It was his lifeline; the one small comfort on the nights when the memories he had tried so hard to run from finally caught up with him - when the nightmares became far too vivid to ignore. 

But then, he was only a boy, and the evils in the world were merely shadows lurking in the corner of his room; able to be banished with nothing more than a soft beam of light. 

"Mama," he asked then, face alight with excitement. "Can I stay and continue with my trick while you collect the water for supper?" Then, adding hastily, "I won't stray from the wagon, promise!" 

"Well..." she hummed, expression softening at the sight of his hopeful brown eyes. "Alright. But stay right here, yes? I'll be back soon - your Papa should be too." 

Planting one final kiss on his forehead, she took the battered copper kettle in one hand and set off to follow the trail that led to the river. 

The Suli camp was quiet, save for the chatter of the wrens in the trees, their sweet song filling the tranquil space. A pleasant breeze wound itself between the caravans, the balmy air still carrying the feel of summer, despite the season having ended three weeks before. The boy sighed contentedly, a wide grin dawning on his face. In that moment, life seemed perfectly blissful. 

He began to move the cups as his mother had showed him, utterly captivated by this newfound skill, his hands moving faster and faster once more. He laughed then, a sudden outburst of joy that sounded far too loud in the still air. 

The birds had stopped singing, he realised, stomach sinking like a stone in deep waters; sick with an unease he couldn't quite place. The camp sounded eerie now, feelings of peace replaced by isolation as the boy shivered, desperately wishing that his mother had stayed. 

A twig snapped behind him, and the boy began to panic, whirling around but seeing no one. "Mama? Papa?" he called, hating how his voice trembled. 

It was only then that he spotted the figure lurking behind his family's caravan, a heavy cloth sack in one hand. The boy opened his mouth to scream and the man lunged, roughly grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and stuffing him inside the sack. 

Twisting around wildly, the boy took a deep breath to scream and recoiled at the sickly sweet scent that clung to the cloth, vision already going black around the edges. His thrashing subsided to a weak squirming before he went completely still.

A few hours later, the boy would wake to the sounds of the ocean and the rough talk of sailors in a foreign tongue, stuffed belowdecks in the hold of a ship. He would cry, a child's weeping gasps as the others in the cell looked on sadly, bound hands unable to console him. 

He wept for his mother and his father, innocent with no understanding of where he was being taken to. Of what they would make him do there.

The boy's cries lasted well through the night and into the rosy dawn of morning, before coming to a halt when he simply had no more tears to give. The ship would soon dock, and he would be thrown into his new life in a city of vice. Unbeknownst to him, it would either be his undoing, or his transformation. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE!
this chapter has been in the works for some time, and i'm proud to say it's finally here!! i hope it serves as a good insight into fianna and dhananjay's backstories, and that you enjoyed reading! <3
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(also this chapter is dedicated to Jackieshalom; thank you so much for listening to my ideas and helping me pick one, ily!!)