Read Online The Harvest by Chuck Wendig - Free Book Online Page A

like a poppet on a string.
    And it flies right through a curtain of fire.
    The bat burns, and it dies.
    Enyastasia thinks this is very funny.
    Not ha-ha-out-loud funny. But quietly, internally hilarious.
    It lifts her spirits because, as a metaphor, it works. These bats are an emblem of the Heartlanders. They’re animals. Animals who don’t know how to remain content and cling to their cave spires like good little beasties. The Heartlanders are trying to escape the cavern. They want to fly. But when they do, they will be met with a shower of sparks and a rain of fire.
    They will be met by Enyastasia Ormond.
    Wind whips. The cataract of fire is moved by it, embers cast wide.
    A few bats flit free and escape, squeaking as they seek freedom.
    The girl grunts. Irrational rage rises inside her. But she stills herself and remembers that the bats are fundamentally stupid. Occasionally lucky, but always dumb. The bats will come back to their cave.
    And when they do, they will catch fire.
    Behind her, a voice.
    A girl like her. A year younger. She has a name, or had one. Bettina. Her face is a labyrinth of fresh scar tissue, healed but pink. The puffy ridges sporting delicate black lines cresting each tiny hill of skin. It’s a living mask. A reminder of what the girl has lost. A reminder of what the girl can never be again. And in this, she is no longer Bettina.
    She is only Harpy. One of many.
    “Dirae,” the Harpy says. “It’s time.”
    The cylindrical chamber wraps around one of the peaks of the mountain—this peak called Zebulon’s Finger for reasons Enyastasia does not know. (Nor, frankly, does she give even a single damn; history is of no interest or value to her. The future, on the other hand, is hers to own.)
    Two men sit in chairs the color and shape of blood orange halves. Red cushions, burnt umber exteriors.
    The one man is old, long, and livery. Flesh hanging off him like a rag tossed over the peg on a coatrack. He’s tall, thin, and knobby as a coatrack, too, and sitting there in the chair he looks kinked-up, given over to discomfort.
    The other man is younger. Not as young as she is, certainly—Enyastasia knows that ultimately she is just a girl, and he is no boy. But compared with the ancient spirit sitting across from him, Heron Yong looks fresh-faced and innocent. Naive, even. Mouth pressed to a flat line, hair bound in a small knot behind his head, above the base of his skull. He looks nervous.
    The old man speaks. His body appears ancient—shaking like a broom in the hands of a palsied maid—but his voice is strong as a horse’s hoof stomping dirt with its iron shoe. Deep, resolute, unwavering.
    “Enyastasia Ormond,” the old man says. “It seems that we have heaped a great deal of trust—or, rather, faith—upon your shoulders. Looking at you now I question if you have the frame to support this burden.”
    Fuck you, old man .
    She sniffs and forces a stiff smile. “As this burden is not a literal physical one, I don’t think my stature or frame hold a great deal of relevance, Master Architect.”
    Master Architect Berwin Luzerne makes a face like he just took a bite out of a rotten apple. A horse apple, maybe. He stands. She thinks he’ll walk the way he shakes, a doddering, juggling step. But his stride is fast and swift—equal more to his voice than to the shudder in his hands.
    One of those hands lashes out, grips her jaw tight. She can feel the pinch of his arthritic claw. Her teeth grind and pop.
    “Look at you,” he says. “Your grandfather would be disappointed in you. Such potential wasted. All that schooling. All that time spent grooming you for great things. And for what?” He runs a thumb over the scars she cut into her own cheek. “You’ve marked yourself like a savage.”
    “A savage girl to fight savage people.” She thinks but doesn’t say: And my grandfather was a pipe-addled half-wit. Smart in architecture and design. Dumb in everything else. That old wisp of a man,