It was…gold.
Milly’s hand flew to her mouth. The cane she was holding fell to the floor, splashing as it landed. Her expression was horrified. “Felton!”
The cry tore out of her as another burbled noise came from him, and my eyes went wide when she held the lantern closer to his face. His face where liquid gold had scored down his cheeks where I’d hit him, and wrapped around to his mouth. He was trying to cough as it drained down his throat, trying to get the viscid liquid away from his neck where it strangled and squeezed.
“What did you do?” Milly shouted at me, looking from me to him. “Look at what you did!”
He struggled for a moment longer, and then his kneeling form crashed to the floor with a splash.
Milly wailed.
She scrambled forward, but the slippery floor made her go crashing down. I lurched forward to catch her.
I shouldn’t have.
I shouldn’t have, because as soon as my hands caught her arms, the gold spread to her. Like a conscious, intentional thing, it moved and encased, staining her clothes, blotching her skin, pooling in her mouth.
She couldn’t even scrabble and fight like the man did. And I was in shock. Utter, horrifying shock, as I watched this terrifying gold so viciously attack the one person I loved.
I tried to pull it away. Tried to claw at it where it poured in her mouth and dripped down her neck, but that only made it worse. More gold rained from my palms, surrounding her in a hostile downpour, making me snatch my hands back. I stared at them, watching more and more stream down, and I couldn’t stop it.
What did you do?
Denial tried to beat through my chest, but as I knelt over her, saw her one wide, milky eye, saw the way the gold was squeezing her and her brother against the floor…
There was nothing but panic then.
I scrabbled up, slipping on the wet tile, and I ran. I screamed. For help, for someone to come, for anyone else in the village to fix her, for this to all be a nightmare, despite the hot sun peeking over the horizon.
But as I screamed, as I ran out of her house and into the yard, my gold came with me. It followed my feet, nipping at my heels like a feral dog.
The first person who ran out of their house at my cries took one look at me and stopped dead in his tracks. I stumbled at him, hands gripping his arms, begging him to help me as tears poured down my cheeks. Tears that were no longer clear but the same gold that wept from my hands.
I shouldn’t have touched him. Shouldn’t have grabbed him. Because the gold pounced on him too. He fell, just as they had. Landing at my feet with a violent, panicked pitch, dying right there in front of my wide eyes, all because of a touch.
Shouts rose up and down the village. More people came out. I was shivering, crying, screaming, and this curse just kept rolling out of me in waves, flooding from my feet, pouring from my hands, more and more and more.
“She’s cursed! She’s come to curse us!”
“We need to burn her!”
No no no no
I was already burning with this nonstop cascade, and Milly—
When a group of men came running at me with lit torches, I knew they were going to hurt me. I knew I deserved it. But I needed them to go see. Needed them to help Milly.
“Please, please.”
They ran at me, eyes lit with fire, flames reflecting off the gold that gathered around me. With a spike of my fear, I tried to turn and run away.
But my gold didn’t.
It streamed out of me, poured from Milly’s doorway, gushing down the street like a flash flood, swallowing up the village in its wake.
It didn’t even take long for the gold to inundate the cluster of houses. For it to stream into every doorway and window, and drop from the rooftops. For the screams to rend the air. And then choked gurgles and running feet to abruptly halt.
It should’ve taken longer to murder an entire village.
I was stuck in shock, bare knees on the molten road, eyes blinking around the destruction I’d wrought. There was just a puddle left at my feet, the entire village splotched and blotted and dripping.
The flame from the torches littered on the ground mocked me. The dawning sun shone in accusation.
What did you do?
The gold didn’t dry up until my tears did.
And by then, everyone was dead. Men, women, children.
Milly.
Not even poor old Sal was spared.
My palms were a mess of congealed, tacky gold I had to scrub off, and my feet were the same. I could feel the thickly dried tracks on my cheeks as I ran through the village. Splotches of gold were everywhere, smothered against faces, fisting around chests, staining doorways and window panes like splatters of blood.