SHIVERING IN DARKNESS, CHLOE'S EYES fluttered open. She realized she'd been stripped down to her bra and panties and was now laying upon a cot, exposed to the chill air. Her instincts sent a wave of panic through her brain. Where am I?

     As she struggled into a seated position, her muscles revolted in agony. The room temperature had made them as inflexible as a half-frozen piece of meat, and her flight of the previous night had drained them of all their energy. They caught me. Her throbbing brain reeled upon remembrance of the night before. The nausea caused from the exertion of her forbidden power had subsided, leaving her with a growing fear.

     Her eyes adjusted, and she could make out a window with bars. She got up, stumbled toward them, and put her slender hands against the frigid metal. A prison cell... the fate of a witch... She wanted to deny her sudden realization. I'm the witch! Even though Chloe had kept her power hidden her entire life, she'd never identified herself as being a sorceress. She wasn't even sure what being a witch entailed, except for the universal loathing the people of her town people professed for witches, and that this moral transgression required that the sinner be burned at the stake. In the distance, a soft blue light glowed upon the horizon. Only an hour or so, and it would be dawn. Walking back to her cot, she trod over a blanket that must have slid off her body during her troubled sleep. Prone on the cot, she pulled the rough, woolen cover all the way up to her eyes. Her teeth chattered as her thoughts drifted to Wayne. What would he think of her now? If only she hadn't interfered with the bottle, then she would've had a chance to see him again. No! If I hadn't used my power, Lillian would've gotten him.

     But the truth dawned upon her. Now Lillian would have her Wayne anyway. Chloe rued the fact that her foolishness had destroyed any possible chance of a life with him. One kiss. Would that have been enough for Lillian to finally seduce Wayne? His parents preferred Lillian's social standing. Everyone in town considered Lillian to be his perfect match even though Wayne had been Chloe's best friend since childhood. But it would've been more than one kiss. Sometimes when the couples went to the closet, they didn't come out for another ten minutes. She shuddered with revulsion at the thought of Lillian kissing him. Yes, it was worth it. Wayne was the only person who made life in this miserable town worthwhile—the only person who knew how to make her laugh.

     She lay in her cot ruminating until she fell back asleep. Her dream of running from a pack of wolves was brutally interrupted by the deafening clang of a steel door swinging open. The sun was beaming through the window and the room had grown comfortably warm. Chloe guessed that it was already midafternoon.

     "You've got a visitor," the deputy snarled. It was the same deputy she'd vomited on the night before. As he stepped aside, a balding man decked out in the priestly red robe of the New Faith, with its characteristic stiff black collar, marched into her cell. He had a silk sash draped around his neck, embroidered with flames and flying dragons. Her father.

     He had a dour look upon his face. Seeing Chloe huddled and embarrassed under the blanket, he turned angrily to the deputy.

     "Where's your decency? Bring her something to wear!"

     Chloe could see that the deputy had an urge to talk back, but he knew better than to contradict a man of the cloth.

     "Yes, Sky Father," he said while closing the priest in the cell.

     Chloe watched her father walk over to the window to stand silently, gazing into the distance.

     After a few minutes, she couldn't bear his silence any more. Does he want me to apologize? To repent? She felt embarrassed to have let him down.

     Chloe stammered, "Father, I sorry—"

     "I could've saved you from almost anything," he said shaking his head with sadness. "Anything, except this. Why did you do it?"

     "Love," Chloe answered.

     Her father scowled. "Your problem is that you have too much passion. Love will destroy you."

     His stern answer brought back a wave of anguish from her childhood where she yearned for love. Her father had been too absorbed with his priestly duties, and her stepmother was as cold and hard as a tombstone toward her. Chloe would gladly accept love's destruction in place of a life full of cold indifference.

     "I suppose she was happy to hear the news," Chloe responded.

     Chloe's answer visibly shocked her father. "Is that what you think of your stepmother?"

     "I'm not one of her children, and she has always hated me."

     "No," her father said, "She always feared this day would come. If she didn't want to be close to you, it was to avoid the pain. And of course, she was afraid for the rest of the family."

     "She knew?" Chloe asked stunned by the revelation, and its logical implication. "You knew about me?"

     "Once, when you were very little, you misbehaved so your stepmother put your favorite doll on top of a wardrobe as punishment. She walked past the door right when you exerted your mind to pull your doll down. She witnessed it floating across the room straight into your hands. In the remaining years, we never saw you use your power again. Immediately after the incident, you became violently ill and fell into a short coma. When you awoke, you seemed to remember nothing of your actions. We'd hoped you had lost your ability."

     I had the power when I was younger? This came as a surprise to Chloe since she couldn't remember the incident. Her first memory of the nascent power appeared with puberty.

     Her father continued, "If your stepmother hated you, she would've denounced you. We're all bound by the law. She told me that she would never denounce you, even though she feared for your stepsisters."

     Chloe felt a pang of guilt. In a way it would've been easier to learn that her stepmother was gloating about her demise. Now she had to re-evaluate her childhood and it made her feel strangely guilty to have exposed her family to so much danger."

     "Your trial is already over," her father announced, "And the Commission has sentenced you to the customary penalty."

     "I didn't even get to defend myself!"

     "No one trusts the testimony of a witch," her father said. "Too many people observed your ability. The testimony was overwhelmingly against you as there were too many witnesses. Even your closest friends had to admit what they'd seen."

     To spare themselves the rod. Would I have done the same? Did Wayne betray me? She had to push back her fear to ask.

     "Wayne, did he testify too?"

     "The sheriff's son? No, he will face a later disciplinary hearing for being at that illicit party. It may impact his standing as an assistant deputy."

     Even if he'd been there, he wouldn't have testified against me, Chloe reassured herself.

"Maybe there's another way out?" Chloe suggested. "I could be sent as an offering to the Cloud Lords during the next Ascension."

     "The council will never go for that. The old members regret the past, and they resent change. They need a scapegoat to soothe their inner rage. Anyone with your accursed abilities represents everything they hate about our new world, no matter how much they pretend to uphold it."

     "Do you still love me, Daddy?" Chloe asked.

     "I do not dare to," he whispered to himself, half choking in a way that made her realize, he was broken inside. Obviously, he loved her. Suddenly his predicament became clear to her. If he showed any desire to help a witch, even his own daughter, the community would turn against him. He would be made to watch them burn her on the stake, and if he cried, he would face destruction as well. As a preacher, he would be under extreme scrutiny to uphold the New Faith. But Chloe knew it wasn't self-preservation that kept him from coming to her defense. It was his stepmother and her two younger stepsisters. Their lives were just as much in jeopardy, and he didn't want o see them suffer the same fate.

     "You are too young to remember the war that followed the Rift. Our New Faith was the only way to make people accept the new natural order of things. I saw which way the winds were blowing. Converting meant salvation, not just for me, but for all of us. We would've been rounded up with the others who were fighting to keep the old ways and the Old Faith."

     Mention of the Old Faith made her remember the golden chain with her mother's crucifix and locket. She reflexively reached to her neck and found it missing. They must've confiscated it with the clothes. Her mother had died during childbirth, so only her father could've hidden it away in the basement. Why did he do that?

     "Do you still believe in the old religion?" she asked.

     "This world has been abandoned. The Cloud Lords rule us now and I follow their Dictates. The New Faith has brought order. It doesn't matter that most of the older generation only pretends to believe. The younger generation doesn't know any better and is much more malleable. With each succeeding generation, the New Faith will be accepted like any religion handed down from generation to generation."

     Chloe wanted to probe him further to find out about her mother and why he'd hidden her crucifix, but the sound of the key in the steel door interrupted the conversation. Her father regained his stern composure just as the deputy returned with some folded clothing. The deputy's suspicious look showed he was on the verge of accusing her father of sympathizing with a witch.

     Chloe's father held up four outstretched fingers—the sign of dragon flame—and made a slow motion across his chest as he said, "I now consign you to the pyre, witch."

     The deputy made a sardonic smile to show that he didn't believe the show, and then tossed Chloe the pile of clothing. "Here you go, witch! It ain't pretty, but you won't need anything fancy where you're going."

     Her father walked past the deputy to the door and shot back a look full of sadness. It felt so strange to feel this quiet admission of love now, at the last possible moment. She'd yearned for some proof of his love all these years and to see a fleeting glimpse pained her all the more.

     The constable followed her father, slamming the steel door shut. Once they'd gone, Chloe unfolded the clothing which turned out to be nothing more than an extremely simple dress and a pair of socks. The dress seemed to have been made from two worn out bed sheets sewn back to back. She slipped it up over her head, and it hung awkwardly from her shoulders. With her socks on, she sidled over to the barred window and looked out to the town square, which had once been a parking lot.

     There were very few cars that worked anymore, and those that did required the extremely precious fuel, which was apportioned only to the military. Technically, motorized vehicles were against the Cloud Lord's Dictates, but the governorship in which she lived also had to protect itself from the neighboring governorship which was under the control of the Night Flyers, another race of Cloud Lords who were universally reviled as demons by her fellow citizens. For whatever reason, the Cloud Lords turned a blind eye to the military's use of vehicles, perhaps because the Night Flyers were a common enemy. Some speculated that the military only got away with it because they drove without headlights, and the rare vehicles went unnoticed from above. In any case, such vehicles were seldom seen in town, and thus young children often ran up to gawk at them. It was an excellent recruiting tool.

     Across the square, she noticed a large pile of wood surrounding a tall iron post. Every so often, a child would appear from behind a building with either a log, an old board, or a branch in their hand and toss it onto the pile. Chloe understood that this pile of old wood was to be the fuel for her funeral pyre and her heart sank. This was just more evidence that there wouldn't be any reprieve. The children seemed obsessed with fire, and she wondered if it had always been this way. Certainly, since the Cloud Lords had arrived, everyone feared the wrath of their fiery breath.

     Behind the growing stack of wood for her funeral pyre, tents had been erected to collect the provisions for the next Ascension. The arrival of the coatl had signaled that her town was to send the balloons aloft with provisions and sacrifices. During an entire month, the surrounding farmers would deliver the provisions, whereas the sacrifices would only be chosen the night before launch. Ostensibly, it was an honor to be chosen, at least according to the New Faith. To be chosen was to receive the 'Call'. But Chloe knew that the selection was carried out the night before to prevent families from finding a way to spirit their children to freedom in the event that they were chosen. Those who were married were spared from the selection process, which was why so many girls chose to marry immediately after turning seventeen. Others who became pregnant out of wedlock were also spared, but only until they'd given birth. Afterward, the child was given up for adoption, and the mother who'd been found guilty of attempting to avoid selection, was put on a balloon anyway. This threat had significantly reduced teen pregnancy. Some who chose to flee were declared traitors and faced the same punishment as witches. Most years, the town square witnessed one or two burnings.

     However, the past two years had gone without any public burning, and Chloe wondered if the town wasn't actually relieved to have a witch to punish. In fact, her generation had grown resigned to the obligations of Ascension. Some teenagers, a year or two younger, even seemed to look at being chosen as an honor. If the New Faith had been created as a politically expedient means of convincing the young to accept their fate, the propaganda had been successful. It seemed that if you could get people to follow something long enough, they would start to believe in it. Thinking about the New Faith made her realize that they'd taken her heirloom, her mother's crucifix. That was her only attachment to the past, and without it she'd lost her foundation.

     Still exhausted, she crawled back onto the cot and pulled the blanket over her head. She was terrified of what tomorrow would bring, but her brain felt heavy—too tired and emotionally spent to even dream about escaping. When she closed her eyes, she fell asleep immediately.

~~~ PLEASE VOTE FOR THIS CHAPTER ~~~