The Grim Wanderer by James Wolf

Macen stumbled as they crept through the black woods, pulling Elena and Edar into the chilling snow. The bite of its cold seared their numbed skin. Edar began to cry. Elena tried to hush her little brother. Taem gazed through the menacing trees, towards the glowing embers of their ravaged village.
    Taem forced them to wait. They cowered in the hollow on the edge of the wood, trembling with the icy night. Taem saw in his siblings’ eyes they did not understand why he was keeping them away from the warmth of the burning ruins, but he had to make sure the Krun were gone. So they waited out in the cold. Frozen and close to death. Just a few minutes more, just to make sure.
    The brothers and sister scrabbled over the pastures. They ran between hulking mounds of shadows lying still on the snowy ground. Taem touched one and felt the coarse wool, felt the freezing wetness seeping from its side. He hurried his siblings on into the village.
    Taem shielded his brothers’ eyes as he led them to old uncle Nunas’s tool shed, where they found blankets and some solace from the bitter night. Taem made Elena promise to stay there and look after the younger brothers, as he searched amongst the village, sobbing as he slunk through the shadows. He had not taken his siblings to their house – that was where he headed now, alone. Was there something following him, he wondered? He scrambled over a hedge, quaking with panic and dread. The sharp leaves raked his skin, but the cold of the snow numbed the pain as he dived for cover.
    It was nothing, he realised. His imagination. He rolled over… and came face to face with Lucile’s pretty features. Taem sprang back in shock. Horror convulsed in him as he saw why her eyes were so blank. He wanted to scream but clamped his hand over his mouth. Fresh tears streamed down his face. He leant over and kissed her forehead, saying goodbye for the last time, before he scurried off into the darkness.
    Taem tried to avoid the other lifeless bodies as he crept down the familiar street. He had already seen enough death for a whole lifetime this bleak night. The cold air whipped into his petrified skin. His heart leapt in fear as another blackened timber crashed down. Everything he had once thought safe and secure now lay around him in ruin. Their old cottage still smouldered as he crept into the garden, and… no! Taem gagged his bawling as he saw the despoiled corpses…
     
    Taem shot bolt upright, tears in his eyes. The campfire had dimmed to glowing embers, and it was still the darkness of the middle of the night.
    ‘You could not sleep?’ Hirandar was in the shadows on the other side of the campfire. ‘The nightmare again,’ Taem murmured, wiping his eyes. He hated for people to see him cry.
    ‘You must try and let the past go, Taem,’ Hirandar sat up in her blankets. ‘There is nothing you could’ve done.’
    ‘I know,’ Taem sniffed, ‘but the hurt is deep inside me, and I can never forget.’ His eyes glistened as the sadness seared into him.
    ‘A terrible trauma has happened in your life,’ Hirandar walked over to Taem, and swept her hand over his brow, ‘but you must move on. Some things come to pass without reason. No one deserves a bad thing to happen to them. You have to take the sunshine with the rain in all things, in all of life.’
    Taem felt his head tingle with a calming warmth.
    ‘Now sleep,’ Hirandar smiled, as her magic induced Taem into a peaceful rest.
     
    Two days later, Hirandar and Taem had climbed high into the mountains. Taem had noticed the plants had changed as they climbed, becoming more hardy and sparse. The air was fresher and colder, and filled the back of the throat with blasts of coolness. Taem thought the ragged landscape of rock and stone had become harsh and overwhelming, as they climbed higher above the world. But he saw there was also beauty in the vastness, in the emptiness. Today the sky was thick with heavy cloud, making the grey landscape more