Free Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) by TJ Klune

head on a pike as warning for everyone else. Kill her , they’d said. Tear her to pieces.
    No one spoke in her defense. Not even her parents.
    Three days later, it was made known by a young man that the woman had been two months pregnant. They’d kept it hidden because they were terrified of what their parents would think. They were only eighteen years old, he’d said. They didn’t know what to do.
    Why didn’t you say anything? he was asked. Why did you let her be cast out?
    I am a coward , he mumbled.
    Why didn’t she say anything?
    He could only shake his head.
    They found her a week later. Or, rather, what was left of her.
    Cavalo knew that people were good, that these people were good. This town of Cottonwood. But he also knew the hearts and minds of men. He knew how they could be. His own heart and mind were just as dark.
    Cavalo watched the people of Cottonwood approach under a lightening sky the color of bruises. He didn’t see any weapons drawn. That didn’t mean that no one was carrying. He knew how quickly things could escalate. But he was encouraged. He didn’t know why. He didn’t care what happened to this boy. This Dead Rabbit. This psycho fucking bulldog. He didn’t care about his kind. Or if he did, it was with white-hot rage that threatened to boil over at any moment. There was nothing else there but that.
    Should have just killed him , Bad Dog said again, picking up on Cavalo’s thoughts, as Cavalo imagined he did.
    He didn’t reply to Bad Dog. Instead, he said to the girl, “Deke just doesn’t know when to shut up, does he?” His kept his voice light.
    Aubrey smiled. “You should know that by now,” she said quietly. She moved no closer.
    “Yeah,” Cavalo said. He should know better. About a lot of things.
    “Out of my way!” a voice rang out above the approaching crowd. “For God’s sake, people. Move your ever-loving asses !”
    People moved as they were told. Quickly. Parting, like an ocean from an old story.
    A large man barreled forward, larger than a man had any right to be. He kept growing, he was fond of telling people, and just decided never to stop. Hank Wells towered over everyone. He had to be approaching seven feet tall and was almost as wide as he was long. His voice seemed to come from deep within him, an approaching rumble that one first felt rather than heard. But then it came, and it was like a low roar. He was a giant, like those in the stories from Before. They still told those stories now, or at least some variation.
    In the After, some things did not change.
    So he was a huge man, a great man. Hair like burnt rust, the scalp starting to show through in a flash of white. A laugh like thunder. Arms covered in black tattoos, symbols that Cavalo had never seen before his first meeting with this man. Symbols that meant REDEMPTION and FAITH and RISE in languages that were no longer spoken in the world, found in the burnt pages of books that crumbled when touched by clumsy hands. Inside his left forearm was a quote, one of the few in English, grafted on in blocky letters: IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN.
    Who? Cavalo had asked.
    Ray Bradbury.
    Is he alive?
    No. He died. In Before.
    Why?
    Why these words?
    Yeah.
    They spoke to me.
    A huge man. A great man. A doctor. At least, the closest thing in Cottonwood to a doctor. It was a trade passed down from his father and his father before him, one of the few documented lineages that Cavalo knew of from people who had survived the End. It was a profession before; now it was a trade. People died when they were sick now. Many more than died Before. Machines that had been able to diagnose the simplest of things were nothing more than fairy tales. When found in the remains of hospitals, they were melted, burnt husks that no longer moved.
    People died now. Over the tiniest of things. Much of the knowledge had been lost. But Hank said they would get it back. He said it would take time, it would take a long, long time, but they would get