Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael Read Free Page B

with an annoyed look from his mother, “I do not want to be hated.  I want to be like you and Father.  I cough sometimes.  Maybe I am sick.  I have heard that Garod’s priests can heal the sick.  Maybe they can heal me.”
    Neria hears the longing in his voice, and the sadness and desire to be normal almost breaks her heart.  She drops the stoneware plate into a bucket and turns to embrace her son.  He starts to cry softly, and she wraps her arms around him tighter.  After a moment she releases him to wipe away his tears with the skirt of her dress.
    “I no longer put stock in Garod or His priests,” she says.  “There is nothing wrong with you.  You are my son, and I love you just the way you are.  The day you were born, your flesh was as pink as any babe’s.  It changed to as it is now three days later, and you began to cough terribly.  I was told that you would not survive your first winter, but here you are in front of me, young and strong. 
    “Are you normal?  I do not know what normal is anymore, but I will tell you one thing.  No one normal ever did anything extraordinary.  You are extraordinary, because you are my son.”

2.
     
     
    Rael awakens coughing, which is not strange as it has happened many times in his twelve years of life.  But this time is different.  He is not coughing because his lungs have betrayed him in one of their fits, but instead because the air has a thick, acrid taste.  Every breath in is a challenge, and he tastes smoke on his tongue as the air passes through his mouth.  It is like the smoke of cooking fires, but far denser.  Rael tries to breathe through his nose, but finds the passages closed.  He continues to cough with every breath, but now it’s not just for the smoke.
    It hurts when he opens his eyes, like something burns them, and he shuts them tightly as they began to tear.  The pain subsides a moment, and he opens them again to look up at the ceiling of his bedroom.  Normally he cannot see the ceiling for it is lost in darkness, but tonight it looks as if the ceiling moves.  Before he has to shut his eyes again, the movement takes shape into a thousand bats, some hanging upside down while others move about.  Or perhaps his ceiling is covered with rats, but doesn’t make sense because rats should be on the floor, not the ceiling.  Rael suddenly feels sick with motion as the realization sets in that he is suspended by some unknown means on the ceiling of his room, and an army of rats mills about below, just waiting to eat him when he falls.
    Rael bolts upright, covering his mouth with his hand, and when he coughs, he feels a hot, wet spray into his palm.  Looking up, he sees that the motion that he thought to be bats, or rats, is actually a thick, billowing sheet of gray smoke.  He looks to the doorway that leads into the family room, and it outlines flickering orange light.  The house is on fire!
    “Mother!” he tries to call out, but his throat will not pass the sounds.  He continues to hack into his hand.
    Rael rolls off the side of his bed and thuds heavily to the floor.  It jars his shoulder, and he bangs one knee on the oak planks.  He pays it little mind, though, for he finds that the air is cooler and easier to breathe.  He wants to move out of his room, but his aching chest forces him to lay there for a moment, clearing his lungs of the smoke.  Once the hacking begins to subside, he crawls on his hands and knees toward the doorway.  A commotion sounds from the next room, just barely audible over a growing roar that he had not noticed before.
    A vision straight out of a nightmare greets Rael as he passes through the doorway leading from his room.  He almost has to squint with the brightness, even though it’s well into the night, and the room should be dark.  Orange flames lick their way up the walls all around, burning into the ceiling, and thick black smoke chokes out the cooler air as the home burns.  Four crumpled forms lay