Icewitch

By

Rebecca McFarland Kyle

Ashlan spurred his tired stag the last few measures toward the warlord Lyrell’s camp. Doing so was not a safe maneuver on ice slickened ground, but the dread that sent him homeward ahead of the hunting party bade him hasten. Was it his mother, Lyrell’s headwife, or one of his younger half-sibs whose heart called him so?

He prayed he was wrong with every step his beast made. Coming home virtually empty-handed during a near-famine would subject him to more of Lyrell’s lash—or worse, ostracision. 

Drumbeats on the frozen air, a broken-hearted death toll, slowed his pace only a little. ‘Attack,’ then ‘death,’ Ashlan read in the pattern, then nothing further.

Other hunters would follow to defend the now vulnerable camp, but most would remain afield hoping the whale, ice bear, or seal to feed the clan’s empty bellies.

The chill wind beat at his eyes, the only part of his seal brown face uncovered by furs and leather. His massive horned mount's hooves crunched as he moved implacably forward. Before them, their combined breaths fogged the air.

In the fullness of winter, darkness ruled even the day. A flickering blue spark of Ashlan's magic lit the path so his beast could see the ground before them. Endless night was not a fit time for anyone to venture forth alone, but the summer’s fishing had been lean and the camp's supplies were dwindling fast. The warriors already had begun to slaughter the slower riding beasts for food, which would leave them traveling afoot with narrower foraging. Should any of the other clans choose to attack, they’d be fighting afoot. Although attacks by competing warlords were infrequent in winter’s omnipresent darkness, war was not unheard of particularly when supplies were as scarce.

Ashlan paused at the rock wall where sentries were usually posted, awaiting a hail. When he heard nothing, he extinguished the flickering mage light that would target him like a campfire in the darkness and spurred his beast forward, his heart hammering with the hoofbeats on the flinty cold ground.

Lyrell cannily selected this site because it was protected by a ridge with small pocket-like caves protecting them from the Northerly winds. Ashlan’s mother, Alle, had gained status as the headwife when she used her gifts, freezing and shaping water, to create a wall of ice surrounding the ridge’s other three sides, spiky as a shark’s tooth and built up in a maze-like web. Ashlan was one of the few hunters privy to all means of entrance and that knowledge was only gained because he’d aided his mother using his small water-gifts to freeze the ice spikes she’d created into place.

If Lyrell could defend the area, they hoped to scavenge driftwood and whalebone enough to build permanent houses during the short summer months which gave them hours of daylight to work. Having a home base would make them more attractive to neighboring warlords with aims toward increasing their territory, but Lyrell trained many capable young men to defend their position. Their chief would soon celebrate his fortieth summer. He was aged for a warlord, ready to settle down and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Ashlan slowed his mount as he worked his way through his mother’s puzzle-like wall. He stepped through quartet of spikes resembling the teeth of a great beast, a ‘Fire wing dragon’ she’d called it only to him, then sidled past a crevasse designed to break the legs of unwary man and beasts. He did all of this by feel, remembering the rhythm of a children’s song his mother taught to aid with the task.

Once past the wall, Ashlan’s breathing calmed when he sighted the main firepit still lit. Though the encampment was still as death, he saw no signs of battle in the day-old snowfall.

Scarcely any of the camp's inhabitants turned when Ashlan rode in to the inner circle of the camp past the outer ring of hide tents of the single warriors and hunters tasked to guard the women. The clan was clustered around the central cook fires talking worriedly. Many wore mourning gray and ash-smudged faces from the firepit.

"What happened?" Ashlan called when he neared the gathered people beside the periphery of the fire. Fear, shock and grief was what he saw, though his clansmen spoke not a word. He could plainly read the pallid features of Lyrell’s clan. None but his mother could discern the blood rising in his own shadowy mien.

"The Icewitch has come!" One grizzled Grandmother, twisting her hands in consternation, shouted in a trembling voice. "She has taken Ayrn as her offering."

Ashlan’s blood heated with rage. Of all his half-siblings, he was closest to the golden haired blue-eyed Aryn, fleet as an ice-bear with their Mother’s lyrical voice and gift for shaping water.

Ashlan’s fists tightened on his reins, causing his horned mount to dance nervously. The old woman made a frightened noise, shifting the children away from them. His mount reared, trumpeting a brief protest. He quickly regained the beast’s head, settling him down before his sharp hooves injured an innocent. He forced himself to breathe, to swallow the knot of panic in his chest so he could speak calmly.

"Where did she go?" Ashlan demanded. His mind whirled with memories of childhood terrors by campfire light. As the only dark-skinned child living within the camp of moon pale people, he’d been threatened more than most with being given to the Icewitch if he misbehaved. The creature had many faces in his youthful nightmares. Each of those dreams ended with him awakening stifling screams. A youth of seventeen years, he'd long since abandoned such childish fears. True, young boys were periodically taken from their clan, but the occurrences were seldom compared to those frozen to death or savaged by an ice bear.

Desperate tears rolling down the milk-white faces of the women made him comprehend the Icewitch had indeed invaded their camp. But he would be cursed further than he was if he would allow the creature to take his youngest brother.

"Ashlan, where she goes, you cannot follow." Alle, his mother, strode forward, her thick covering of furs making the slender woman appear almost as wide as she was tall. Her piercing silver eyes, the only feature Ashlan inherited from the fair-haired woman, filled with crystalline tears. At her command, one of the older boys stepped forward to take the reins of Ashlan’s beast. Ashlan dismounted so he could speak to the tiny woman eye to eye.

"I will not permit her to take members of my family!" Rarely was Ashlan's voice raised It did not befit a shengi, a son of rape, to speak in more than whispers, but he was angry beyond caring.

"It is my fault, Ashlan," Alle protested, her musical voice rising with the strain. "I should have sent out the sacrifice myself. I had not thought she would venture forth in this weather."

"Sacrifice?" Ashlan narrowed the space between himself and his mother. The harsh land made them all callous, but the idea of willingly giving up younglings was beyond reckoning.

"Come with me." Alle ordered to the large central cavern Lyrell reserved for his family. "I suppose you are old enough to learn."

Alle quickly led him into the space she shared with Lyrell, a cuplike cave warmed with a ball of blue-white fire Ashlan conjured atop the high rocks. His new baby sister, Jemoia, blissfully slept cuddled with one of the bitch dogs who aided them in the hunt, wrapped in heavy furs and heedless of all the commotion around her.

“Every moon, the Icewitch took a young male from the clans,” his mother spoke softly. “I caught her coming to claim one of ours and I made an arrangement with her. I’d give her one of the boys from our campfire each winter if she would leave us alone.” She paused tiredly when she glanced toward his youngest sib, only a handful of moons old. “Jemoia’s birth was harder on me than I’d expected...I should have given the duty to another of the women...”

Ashlan’s fists clenched. He strode a pace away from the familiar domestic scene swallowing back horror at what his mother had done. Heat from the close quarters made him want to remove his fur coverings, but he knew if he did, he’d remain by that fire weeping like a woman.

“When I was late with my tithe, the Icewitch came to the camp as in days of old—-” His mother’s voice had the desolate crack of a frozen lake breaking beneath your feet.

"I am going to save him," Ashlan interrupted, silencing her with a slash of his arm.

She recoiled, tear bright eyes wide and for the first time, frightened.

"You must accept this. I can’t lose you.”

Ashlan shook off his mother’s tiny hands, grasping at his muscular forearm. Heartbroken sobs wracked her small form and awakened the baby girl, who wailed along with their mother.

"This is my brother! Your son.” Ashlan’s head shook in denial with every word. His mother placed her small body between the door and him, her lips firming.

"Your half-brother," she corrected. "I tried to keep her from choosing one of this family. I always took the children to that mad creature myself because doing so would give me the right as headwife to choose which boys were taken. I selected the lame, the frail, and halt who’d be claimed by this hard land before their manhood, anyway. But, when she came here, she chose of her own. I am just grateful it was never you."

Ashlan turned his back to hide the tears. Growing up with the taunts, Ashlan believed he was hardened to any abuse, but his mother’s love and favor still stabbed him in his heart. Why she loved him when he was forced upon her, he could never understand.

“I’m getting Aryn back.”

“My son, she has powers you cannot even comprehend.”

“I will either bring Aryn back or I will not return.” Ashlan laid one kiss upon her forehead in parting, then turned from her embrace. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped out into the main camp to reclaim his mount. He let the cold air harden himself to his mother’s sobs. They followed his steps like a ghost, blowing away in the cold arctic wind. 

He noted he was yet the only hunter to return.

“Which way did the Icewitch come from?” Ashlan asked of the young man, who pointed a shaking arm toward the ridge that Lyrell had so counted on protecting them.

Ashlan blinked, realizing a portion of the ice-maze next to the ridge was gone.

“Melted,” the youth’s voice was as high as a young girl’s. “Like she’d touched it with fire.”

Then the youth fled. When Ashlan heard the sound of Lyrell’s drummer announcing the warlord’s return, he quickly mounted his own beast and hastened away.

His mother’s words echoed in Ashlan's mind as he followed the trail the Icewitch left. How could they have sacrificed their children all these years? Were they not warriors? Were they such fearful babies they would waste their strength on conquering weaker warlord’s camps and bullying helpless villagers and refuse the challenge of a threat to the countryside such as the Icewitch?

Reproachful thoughts heated Ashlan's blood on the cold trail. And a strange trail it was indeed. He would have sworn the witch was a fool for taking a sled and team on paths his own beast could barely navigate. Surely the rails would freeze. Yet, his puny magic showed him clean two parallel lines over the worst of the terrain.

The trail was straight and clean and easy to follow like that of a poisonous snake or an ice bear. The kind of path only a fool would follow.

Abruptly, the lines drawn by the sled rails disappeared. The tracks of the team still indicated that they were pulling a burden. Somehow, she'd managed to levitate the sled while her beasts lumbered along giving it forward motion and direction. Such a feat was an accomplishment compared to Ashlan's own magic. So far, only he and his mother had any gifts among the people of this land. His mother, who was fair as any native and a rare beauty as well, was revered. Ashlan, with his night-dark skin and tangled black hair, was reviled despite the fact that he was the only person he’d ever met who could light a fire without a flint.

What other spells will I have to face?

Alle knew of magic and had some training, though she never would tell where she learned. When they were alone, she’d conjure creatures out of ice to amuse him. When Lyrell’s children were born, she shifted to making shadow animals with her hands against the tent walls like other mothers.

The trail ended at a high tower on a crooked finger shaped peninsula on a field of ice that could be a substantial lake when it warmed up. Smoke drifted from the top of the tower offering warmth and heat.

This is a useful steading, Ashlan realized. The tower would house at least one large family and their servants. The lake would provide water perhaps even fish. The crooked finger of land was an easily defensible area with three sides of the tower backed by water. And, the keep was undefended. Ashlan only saw one set of small tracks that led to the tower. Lyrell should have claimed this for his steading long ago.

A house of stone, Ashlan marveled. The tower rose to an amazing height. Scarcely, had he ever seen a large house of wood. The warlords were far too busy fighting amongst themselves to build any permanent dwellings. Cautiously, he touched the walls, running a curious gloved finger along the mortared veins. Chiding himself for wasting precious time, he continued forward, seeking the Witch who held his brother. Having no other clues about her location in the tower, he followed the warmth.

Ashlan cautiously entered the door, shielding himself with his magic and his sword against attack.

"Welcome, Dark One." Arctic winds blew down Ashlan’s spine at the sound of the voice. Momentarily, he considered turning and fleeing. Older and wiser men than he had not deigned to take the path he had chosen. Still, it was Ayrn she had.

"What do you wish from me?" The voice and the warmth led him to a circular room in the center of the tower near the top. The warmth was almost as uncomfortable as the cold outside. Dominated by a huge bed, curtained with scarlet velvet, and a roaring fireplace, the room obviously was meant for sleeping and other pleasures. Balls of bluish flame from the same flickering light as Ashlan’s own poor magic, suspended in midair, provided brighter illumination than candles.

Cautiously, Ashlan stepped across the threshold. Keeping his weapons within reach, he tried to match his posture to her own. She showed no defensiveness, but Ashlan suspected the witch did not need to.

"I came to retrieve my brother, Ayrn," Ashlan answered simply, coming to face the silvery wraithlike creature that stood before him. He marveled at the harsh planes of her chiseled form, which was beautiful as a spear of ice carved by a Northern wind. The normal round softness of a woman was not there. Even her nipples seemed as though they would be sharp and painful to touch. Her face was what fascinated him the most, though. Her wide nose and full lips were similar to his and her hair was twisted in locks like he wore in the summertime to keep himself cooler.

"How novel," a short, amused laugh parted the Icewitch's lips. "You would hardly qualify as a replacement. You have been with a woman."

How did she know that? Ashlan wondered. Unbidden the memory of his first woman returned to him. He'd not understood when his mother delivered him into the hands of the coarse woman who lived at the edge of the camp. Like many of the children, he'd snooped around the outside of her tent wondering at the animal grunts and laughter emitting from the men who visited there, including his Lyrell, his reluctant adoptive father.

Ashlan had been unprepared for the way the woman’s hands and mouth moved across his body, summoning feelings it would take years for him to recognize and understand. Ashamed, he'd hung his head afterwards as the woman regaled the whole camp with tales of his scarred, dark flesh from Lyrell’s early beatings. One by one, he outfought the jokers.

His mother's only explanations for her action was that she wished to protect him. Now, Ashlan understood she’d made him unfit for a sacrifice. It would have been far too easy for the camp to give up an oddling to the Icewitch. Indeed, according to his mother, it was their custom. Only his mother would’ve missed him if he was gone. That, he could not understand, since his dark face and foreign features had to be a daily reminder of the rapist who fathered him.

"You may have him back, if you wish." Elegant silvery fingers pointed towards a pile of covers in the corner furthest from the scarlet bed at the foot of a tapestry woven in rich yellows, greens, and reds depicting animals Ashlan believed were the true form of the ice creatures his Mother created to amuse him. He paused, startled to see a bear with what looked like a snake for a nose, a big cat with a long mane of twisted fur, and a winged beast above them.

Firewing Dragon? Ashlan now saw the true shape of the creature his Mother crudely drew.

Surprised at the ease of her acquiescence, Ashlan made his way to the side of the bed hesitantly pulling the covers aside.

Despite his warrior's training, Ashlan gasped at the sight of his brother. Ayrn's body, white and cold as snow, and hollow like a reed. He turned the youth over, but could find no cut though the child was as empty as the wind.

"No one has ever come for their sacrifices," the Icewitch continued, unperturbed by Ashlan's shock. "It would be convenient for someone to come in and clean up."

"Curse you!" Ashlan shouted. "You speak of my brother like refuse!"

Fury overriding his grief, Ashlan struck out at the woman with his sword. The screeching shattering sound that his blade made as it struck some invisible barrier between them blasted his ears. He tried again, forcing all of his strength into the blow. Sparks flew from the barrier, stinging his face and singeing the furs he wore. A roar deafened him and sent him sprawling to the ground holding his ears.

Ignoring the pain in his head, Ashlan rose to the challenge again. He lashed out at her with a bolt of his power. Impotently, his best effort sputtered against her shields like summer lightning.

"If you but knew how to use what you have, you could be like me," the Icewitch offered with a seductive smile. A wave in his brother’s direction and Aryn’s body blazed up like seasoned kindling, flaming the blue of a summer night.

Ashlan did not dignify her with a response. Instead, he threw himself toward her, grasping her slender throat between gloved hands. Gasping, he backed away leaving the palms of his gloves behind him. Idly, the Icewitch pulled the leather scraps from her body and let them fall to the floor.

“No wonder your mother loved your father so,” the creature marveled. “You came from such strength, such power. I wonder, were you one of the dragons, the lions.”

Love? Ashlan paused, staring at the woman. She’d just spoken in a tongue his mother had taught only him among her children. The rich musical sound with its rhythmic tongue clicks stayed his hand.

My father’s language. Despite himself, he stood entranced.

“You think your mother would have kept a child she didn’t want, particularly one forced upon her by a man she didn’t care for?” The Icewitch shook her head, ruefully. “You know the power she has with waters, the very humors of her own body. She could wash an unwanted seed from her womb with a thought.”

Despite himself, Ashlan nodded. Lyrell rutted like a beast and created more seed than his mother could bear and live. While she’d never spoken of it, he’d known she’d prevented herself from bearing many years.

“Alle had to let Lyrell believe she was a victim else he would not have had her as wife no matter how beautiful she was.”

Ashlan swallowed back a bitter taste. Of course, Lyrell would have sported with a woman who’d been with another, but he would not have claimed her as his unless she’d told him a convincing story. And, if he had not claimed her, Mother would have become one of the camp women.

“Don’t you tire of the snow-skinned people with their harsh tongues?”

Ashlan caught himself nodding before he realized and stopped forcing a frown to his lips.

"I could offer you something much more interesting," the Icewitch's voice was low and cajoling. "It has been long since I have taken a strong man to my bed. I give you my word, I would not harm you. Like you, I am alone here and from a far-off place.”

An overwhelming sense of heat struck Ashlan. Hands twitching, he contemplated removing the furs covering him. Already he was sweating. It was a dangerous situation. As soon as he went outside, his flesh would freeze.

"Perhaps my present form does not please you?" Before his eyes, soft flesh replaced the armored shell. Lustrous gold hair sprouted from her bald scalp. Her eyes were the deep blue of mountain lakes.

Stepping back, Ashlan shook his head, denying the temptation.

"Would a woman of your own breeding please you more?" As if it were sun kissed, her flesh changed to a woodsy brown. The curves of her body softened. Golden hair turned the rich brown color of fine wood. Dark eyes, expressive and deep, beckoned him. Her mouth grew full and ripe like summerfruit. His body replied in a manner his voice could not.

"You are so lonely," the Icewitch crooned in that secret language that spoke to his heart like no other. She gestured him to another bedchamber above the present one, even more fine than the first.

They sported many times. In between, the Icewitch told him stories of a place to the South. In this country, the mage-gifted shaped fire as his Mother did water. And, the mages ruled. They were revered almost as much as gods.

Later, as Ashlan rose from her bed, he could not say why he answered her seduction. Ultimately, he could not resist pretending that there was someone else like him even if it cost him his life. He still marveled that the Icewitch left him alive to tell the tale.

"Why?” he demanded when she stood beside him returned to her cold form.

"Have you ever eaten a large meal and still felt unsatisfied?" When Ashlan nodded, she continued softly. "You have given the first strength of your life-force to the other women you have lain with; thus, you would not nourish me."

“There was no child with the camp woman.”

“There did not have to be,” the Icewitch’s tone was amused. “You spent your first energies in her. That was enough.”

"Still, you left me alive," Ashlan protested.

"Here, you are one of a kind like I am," the Icewitch answered simply. "Once, I was like you, outcast from our people. It is a land kissed by sun and fire. My powers were unlike theirs, so they thought I was an oddling, cursed. The Master Sorcerer refused me acknowledgment as a mage or even the most basic instructions. Desperate for some way to control my powers, I discovered secrets my people would not have me know. I left the place where I was born and came here to this cold place where magic has all but died. I used my powers to gain eternity. I could teach you the use of your gifts. You could join me."

"No," Ashlan demurred. Already, several enemy warriors perished upon his blade, but they were taken in honest combat. He'd sooner die than take the blood of an innocent.

Ashlan dressed and strode back down the steps to the first chamber with the Icewitch trailing after him. He pulled a silken sheet from his lover’s bed and gathered as much of Aryn’s ashes in it as he could.

"Go in whatever peace this cold land will grant you," the Icewitch bade him. He left saying nothing further.

Grief and guilt rushed through Ashlan's mind as he mounted his stag and rode away. He paused beside the frozen lake where the Icewitch’s tower was. For a brief summer, flowers would bloom in a rainbow of colors and the waters would flow blue and clear as the sky. Aryn would like that.

“You would have been a great warrior.” Ashlan recalled his brother’s laughing face. Lately, he’d been showing a gift for the bow. Despite his small size, Ayrn already could hit the target with his arrows as well as many of the older warriors. Perhaps his targets now would be the summer stars.

Ashlan quickly brushed tears away from his eyes, swallowing his grief down with the knot of hurts he’d stored away since birth.

He could not return to Lyrell's camp. He detested what they had done to the children, but wasn't he as bad bedding with the Icewitch?

Ashlan pointed his stag in the opposite direction of his former home, Southward where the Icewitch claimed they both hailed. He could not remain with Lyrell’s people and this cold place.

Only a few measures away was a small village who owed their protection to Lyrell. Checking his saddlebags, he realized they still contained the few fish he’d gleaned from the hunt. Guilt stabbed him for not sharing even this small bounty with his clan, but the provisions would get him away.

Outside the village, he encountered a young boy swathed in bright red. Mindless of the numbing cold, he sat in a snow bank staring ahead.

"What are you doing here, boy?” Ashlan asked. The child did not answer.

When Ashlan brought his mage light close, the child’s pupils were already huge as though he’d stared into a fire. He didn’t react as much countrymen did to the strange fire. Neither did he protest when Ashlan picked him up and placed him on the front of his saddle. Believing the child was lost, Ashlan took him back to the village.

A woman clad in mourning gray with her face covered with ash met him at the village gate, forbidding him to enter.

“Why?” Ashlan demanded.

"He has a disease of the blood. There are knots beneath his skin. First, it took his strength, then his mind. Our healer died just weeks ago. We gave him the last of our summer poppy, then left him there because there was no one to speak the rites over him," the child's mother explained to Ashlan. Her face was bleak and colorless as the landscape.

Ashlan nodded. It was custom for the camp's healer to give a quick, honorable death to those who could not do so themselves. Nature would take the child perhaps more slowly, but the family would not have the death of an innocent unprepared for the next phase of his life on their heads.

"Would you take him where you found him?" the mother tearfully pleaded. Ashlan could see that none of the villagers had the fortitude to make the return trip. The beautiful child would lie in wait until the harsh land or his bad blood claimed him.

Wordlessly, Ashlan swept the child back upon his saddle. A threnody, bitter as the cold wind, followed him back to the place where the child had lain in wait for winter to claim him.

He wasn't sure where the idea came. He was less certain whether it would work, but somehow, he had to try. Averting his eyes from the snowbank where the villagers had wanted the child to die, Ashlan purposefully rode back to the Icewitch's tower.

He found a place near the wall sheltered by the worst of the winds. He lit only the smallest of mage-lights, just enough to warm his face and hands. But as the dark hours crept by, he feared the cold would claim him as well as the child before the Icewitch left her protected tower.

Finally, he caught a glimpse of twin mage fires. Soon after the Icewitch departed, riding upon her sled which did not touch the ground.

Ashlan’s bones creaked like an old man’s as he rose from his concealed position and stole back into the warm tower. His face and the exposed palms of his hands burned with the cold, but he knew he could not remain long.

Gently, he left the child upon her bed and stole away.

With the patience of a hunter, he lay in wait after she returned. He had no idea how long it’d taken the creature to drain his brother. He forced himself to remain outside wondering what happened. Clouds hovered ominously above him in the night sky, threatening snow. Neither stars nor moon shed their light upon him nor aided him in telling the time with their journeys across the dark sky.

For a while, he slept fitfully. Visions of Ayrn’s life came back to him. Lyrell’s joyous announcement that his favorite woman had borne him another son. The smell of his mother’s birth blood and the strong liquor from the men as Ashlan held his half-brother for the first time and drank a salute to his birth.

As he grew, Ashlan realized his younger brother was someone special. He stood helpless at the sight of two-year-old Ayrn standing in the path of stampeding riding stags. No beast’s hooves even came close to the blessed child’s body. It was then Ashlan declared himself his younger brother’s protector and set out to train him to become their clan’s next leader.

Ashlan had been the first to seat Ayrn on his own riding stag and show him the use of the reins. Ayrn beamed with pride as he rode unassisted for the first time. He was brave, strong and the best of any of Lyrell’s issue. 

Finally, when Ashlan could stand uncertainty no longer, he crept back into the Tower. Immediately, he noticed the place was not as warm as before. The Icewitch and her final offering lay sprawled side by side on the bed.

Her true form had not been much different from his own, or even the one she’d assumed to seduce him. Covering them both, Ashlan folded their hands and closed their eyes. Then, he cast his mage-fire to set the interior of the tower ablaze.

She had needed killing, Ashlan tried to assure himself as he rode away refusing to look back at the tower brightened by his fire. He could not permit her to continue living as she was.

Still, he would not forget the time he spent with her. It was not the bedding, although that was unlike any pleasure he had ever experienced. She had told him tales of his true homeland far to the South.

It never snowed; she had said. Not even for a short time. The sky was light for half the day. Brown fertile earth produced a variety of plants, not like the determined little snowflowers that fought their way through the cold, gray ground. Blackwood from that land was hard as his sword. Waters flowed providing transportation throughout the year. Like someone stores firewood to warm themselves on a cold night, Ashlan saved every word she'd said to him.

Possibly what she said was strictly fantasy, bedtime tales devised for her own amusement as much as his own. So much of what she said seemed too fantastic to be true. Worse, she could have been lying for her own entertainment. He still found that hard to believe. She'd told the truth when she said she would not kill him.

He had only two wishes, he wished he had asked her the name of the land where he came from.

Last, he wished she had given him her name.