My heart stopped. Ghan yanked on my collar, causing me to stumble forward.
"Wait… what? There are over a thousand people in this town! How- how many are…" I couldn't even say the word.
"Yaazal says well into the nine hundreds."
My heart still hadn't started back up. Nine hundred? How long had it taken them to find the bodies? How long was I out?
"How long ago was the town destroyed?" I asked, still being pulled along.
She glared at me out of the corner of her eye. "You should know," she spat, and walked faster.
"No! Please, I don't know!" She ignored me and walked even faster. How fast can this girl walk?
And then, just as my heart started to beat again, it stopped when a horrible thought struck me.
"Do you know who's dead? The names?"
"No." She didn't even look at me this time. "But we know for a fact that everyone within a three mile radius is dead." She took a breath. "Including children and infants."
I stopped walking, causing Ghan to stumble a little. She wheeled around, hand raised. I hardly felt it when she slapped me. My mind was whirling, calculating how far away from home I was.
I collapsed when I realized it was no more than a mile.
Ghan's hand lost its grip on my collar just as my knees hit the ground. My dress, already torn, ripped even more.
My parents… I took in a shuddering breath. The world spun around me, and black dots danced in my vision.
Mom? And Dad? They were gone?
No. They weren't. Ghan was lying. Or she miscalculated. That's what happened. I laughed, relief coursing through me, and looked up toward Ghan to tell her about her mistake.
But when I looked up at her, her face was twisted in fury. She was shaking and a vein in her neck was throbbing. I laughed harder, relief about her mistake hitting me full force. How stupid could I have been to believe that Mom and Dad were dead?
This time I really felt her slap.
"STOP IT!" she screamed, tears streaming down her twisted face. "STOP LAUGHING!" I doubled over, still on my knees, and looked at the ground. My face stung where she had hit me, but I was still happy. Mom and Dad were okay.
"But, Ghan, you-"
"Don't EVER use my name!" Another slap. "You think this is FUNNY?" Slap. "You think death is FUNNY?" I glanced around and saw a couple of people watching. Yazzal was running up.
"Wait! You made a mistake… not everyone could be dead!" That would be too much. Way too much death in too short of a period. It was not possible.
"MY FATHER!" Ghan screamed. "MY FATHER WAS HERE!" Another slap. I was sure my cheek was red. Ghan leaned in closer to my face. "And you!" she spat on me. "You caused this! You killed him!" Her arm was rasing again, but Yazzal caught it as it came down.
"Ghan! Ghan, honey, stop!" Ghan looked at him, anger and pain clearly showing on her face.
"But she killed him! SHE. KILLED. HIM!" She tried to rip her hand free of Yazzal's grasp, but he twisted her around so he was holding her in a hug. She collapsed into him, her face hidden in his chest, her own chest heaving with sobs. A man came over to me and stood me up, leading me away. Ghan's sobbing drew farther and farther away, and, eventually, it was just me and the man walking through the debris with the occasional workers.
"I-" But he slapped a hand over my mouth.
"I don't want to hear it." He snapped, and we walked in silence for about a mile. Then we came onto a carriage drawn by a horserat.
He shoved my inside, and I fell to the floor. He slammed the door shut, and I heard muffled murmuring. Then a slap on the side of the carriage, and the bump of the wheels going over the rocky street.
I tried to adjust myself so I was sitting up, but the carriage was rocking so much I couldn't. So I just lay there, my head bumping on the floor, as I was lead away from the home they say I destroyed.