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“You should have seen it!”
It was the kind of voice one only heard at the crack of midnight, a whispering hiss that crept around the corners and shivered across the wooden table, finding its way into the cracks. A small audience of children jumped in their skin, terrified yet delighted, unable to look away. Goblins had this voice, they were sure of it, for they had been listening for quite some time. Crones and hags and the sort of things that peeled themselves from the shadows, twisting into the darkest of dreams.
This particular night was full of shadows. The moon had risen pale and huge outside the window, a perfect circle in a sea of darkness, alone in an otherwise empty sky. There were other voices outside, people calling out to one another, the ceaseless creak of wagon wheels. The village had been wrought with noise since early that morning; even now, the attentive quiet that held the room was contained only within its walls. But that was of little concern. It was the story, or nothing.
The voice made it worse. And so much better at the same time.
“And what happened?” one of the little girls asked.
By now, they had all heard the story. If they had actively tried, there could have been no avoiding it. Not only was the tale being shouted in streets, ringing up the dusky alleyways, and echoing between neighbors, it had come on the wings of a tragedy.
There had been a great fire in the center of town. The largest blaze within memory. It had taken almost the entire morning to subdue it, the afternoon to sort through the wreckage. People had come from the hillsides, from the harbor. Men and women hauling buckets and screaming instructions. The horses had been set to pasture, and the children stashed in the granary. A thick blanket of smoke still lingered above the tree line. The village well had been pulled dry.
Yes, they had all heard the story. But they couldn’t help asking for it again.
The two things had become intrinsically linked: the harrowing inferno, and the hellish woman who had summoned it. Even now, they could imagine her perfectly; throwing back her head with a cackle of evil laughter, outlined against the burnt oranges and violent reds in the sky.
“You wish to know what happened?”
The old woman who’d been charged with watching them leaned forward with a toothy smile. She had been a laundress, back in the day. But that was nearly a generation before, and she was bent and broken from the work. Already one of the most aged people in the village, this gave her a rather frightful appearance, which at first she had loathed, but now, she rather enjoyed.
The voice had been carefully cultivated. It was fine enough for a stage.
“You need only look out the window, to see what happened. You need only to breathe in that pestilent stench, as evidence of her wicked plan. A witch, the people called her. One of those dread sisters who thinks to outwit the gods. But to liken her to a witch, is to compare an eagle with a frog. This was no ordinary witch. Such a creature has never been seen, not in my lifetime.”
The children leaned forward breathlessly, as the hearth-fire crackled behind them. It was small, considering their delicate location, yet its flickering shadows climbed fingers up the walls.
“Over seven feet tall, with blood-red eyes, bones like twisting branches, and piercing talons where there should have been hands. Her voice was a thing of nightmares, and those unfortunate souls who caught her gaze...? Some people say, they were never heard from again.”
It was a bold claim, yet the children believed it without question. How could they not, when the air still smelled of smoke? All their lives, they had been warned of the dangers of witches; this one seemed to have been drawn straight from the void in the center of their dreams.
Hadn’t they felt a chill when they’d stood beneath the tower? The blacksmith’s son had sworn to the gods he’d seen her chanting at the window, wisps of flames leaking from the claws.
“When the good king returned and passed his judgement, she flew into a shrieking rage. A hundred men were sent to subdue her, but she ripped past them like wind through a tattered sail.”
Again, this was uncontested. Though the numbers struggled to stand up. The children had seen the bodies of several soldiers, dragged backwards by the arms from the empty tower where she had escaped. They were drowsing, but not dead. The local candle-maker had been among them.
Surely one so feeble as him had not escaped the dread witch’s wrath?
“And where is she now?” another child whispered, leaning instinctively into the crowd to avoid being singled out from the rest. It seemed madness to speak of such things, even behind the relative safety of the familiar walls. The tower had been familiar too. Along with the brothel. Yet each of these had broken beneath the witch’s screams, like stalks of wheat to the farmer’s scythe.
Where is she now?
The woman leaned back on her heels, thoroughly enjoying herself. The light of the fledgling fire deepened the grooves on her face, and made her look all the more frightening. Her eyes, a pretty green in her youth, had bulged and tinged with yellow, leaping amusedly from face to little face.
“Only the gods could tell you,” she rasped, pleased when they leapt in their skin, “the gods or whatever twisting devils the creature serves. The forest might be filled with the king’s men, the hillsides scorched to dirt, but mark my words, for all those roving eyes, they will not find her.”
There was a single boy who felt brave enough to contest it. Even then, his slender arms were trembling. “My father said...” he faltered, and began again, “my father said she’s nothing more than a scared girl. I saw her once, I think. Her eyes were not red, her hands looked the same as mine. She lived here,” he added, glancing at his fellows for support, “in one of the dwellings beyond the wall.”
A shiver went through the crowd, undoing any uncertainty he might have cast. The wall had been another failing of trust, a familiar landmark sworn to defend, then breached upon a whim. It had shaken them nearly as much as the fire. The power of their mighty fortress, those impenetrable gates in which the strength of a thousand men had poured, vaulted like a children’s game.
He felt the change himself, clenching his fingers into fists.
“He said they will find her,” he insisted. “And burn her, just as before.”
A whisper ran throughout the children, emboldening some, while making the others flash darting glances over their shoulder, or even up towards the ceiling, as if the gods themselves might be listening. The walls of the granary creaked and groaned as a fierce wind beat upon them. Clouds were rolling in from the harbor, having forgotten it was summer. It would soon begin to rain.
The woman nodded slowly, fixing her gaze upon his pale face.
“And that is how these things happen,” she answered softly, drawing the little ones closer as they strained their ears. “With a poorly-spoken word, the bitterness of a look. Your father claims they will be successful, because that is what he wishes to believe. But this is not some scared little girl, scrambling without hope through the forest. This is not a little girl at all, but a creature the likes of which the world has never seen. She is talons and smoke. She is ash and wind. With the fires of hell gathered around her, she will return in a shrieking vengeance to finish what she has started.”
She paused for breath, as lightning flashed above.
“Only then, we will see her again...”
* * *
I’m never making it out of these woods alive.
A crack of lightning split the sky, and I startled in spite of myself—lifting my eyes to the heavens, as they defied the well-established rules of summertime and opened into rain. Not just a shower, as might have been expected, but a drenching torrent. The kind that seeped through your clothes, then your skin, working its way to the bones. Considering everything that had already happened, it was hard not to take it personally, hard not to think it was intentional, the vengeance of some distant god. Considering everything that had already happened, it was hard not to merely surrender; give in to any of a number of things working against me, and lower my head in defeat.
But I couldn’t do that. Because the second I stopped running, the people running after me would catch up. And I would finally discover how much the realm truly hated a witch.
You wouldn’t taste that punishment alone. It would fall on you both.
I cast a quick look ahead of me, to the young man staggering through the trees.
Like a pair of frightened dogs, Erik and I had scrambled through the forest, our skin and hair catching on branches, flinging ourselves down ravines, only to heave back up the other side. It had been easier, in the beginning. When the sun was still shining, before all the rain. At least then, we could see the ground in front of us, and it felt like there was a chance—perhaps not a good chance, but a chance nonetheless—that we might achieve the impossible and manage to escape.
It was the secret thing we’d told ourselves, in moments when our strength was failing and we couldn’t imagine trudging up the next hill. We’d chanted it like a mantra, clung to it with the tips of our nails, offered it as a silent prayer to the gods. For a while, it had seemed to be working.
And now this.
“Are you all right?”
I startled in surprise, my eyes flashing once more to Erik. He stood a few paces ahead and above me, his legs angled slightly against the slope.
We hadn’t spoken much since fording the great river and leaving the settlement behind. It might have been a mere precaution; there were soldiers in the woods behind us, listening ears and ready hounds. It might have been something a bit darker. I didn’t know why he’d spoken now.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said quickly, lowering my eyes to the ground.
I didn’t know when I’d become so shy with him. Sometime after the river, before the rain? It might have simply been that things had been allowed time to settle. It was easy to get swept away, in the adrenaline of the moment. Easy to make plans, and promises, to envision the possibilities.
Things looked very different, on the other side of the wall.
Are YOU all right?
He certainly didn’t look it.
The handsome bannermen was soaked and shivering. The blood that had dried in the daylight hours was dripping through his hair, and a nasty bruise had begun to spread across his forehead—courtesy of being head-butted by a giant in a perilous tavern brawl.
For the better part of the day, I’d been watching him lift a hand distractedly to the back of his head. From the slight sway in his balance, he was most assuredly concussed.
“What about you?” I asked softly.
He blinked in confusion, like he’d already forgotten, before shrugging it off with the same casual disregard that was drilled into every Viking boy past the age of five.
“I’m fine—”
“You were struck,” I interjected, climbing a few steps to join him. The rain streamed around us, as I lifted a worried hand to the side of his head. “It may not have—”
He flinched from my fingers, just the slightest motion, but his eyes gave it away. A flush spread across his cheeks, as my hand dropped quickly to my side—hovering uncertainly, like it wasn’t sure exactly what it was doing there. A few seconds passed, neither of us knew what to say.
He’s afraid of me.
I’d known it from the beginning, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Yet I could never have predicted the sheer force of it. The way it needled into me, carving its way inside. Of course he was afraid. I was a witch, he’d been raised on their stories. In the last few days, he’d amassed several new stories of his own. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d seen me kill a man just a few hours before, slashing right through him in a burst of rage and power. Now I reached for him with the same hand.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, unsure what else to say.
He stared back at me, looking as lost as I was, strands of ivory hair plastered to the side of his face. A moment passed, and he shook his head curtly, like it was long forgotten.
We continued up the hill.
Time passed at a crawl, or perhaps it was racing. It was difficult to tell past the canopy, and easier to focus only on the placement of my next step. The last of the sun’s warmth had vanished long before the storm, and the world had pitched into inky darkness. I kept time with my breathing, with my shivering. Anything to ground me in the moment, keep me from drifting too far ahead.
It wasn’t until we’d another league or so had passed, that I dared to speak again.
“Should we...” I trailed off, nervous to have broken the silence. He turned and waited, staring back at me in the rain. “Should we stop? Just for the night, I mean. We’ll have to eventually.”
It was the cloying truth that neither of us had dared to mention. I felt almost guilty saying it now. With the hounds of the king nipping at our heels, the only instinct in the world was to run, fast and far, run and keep running. The instinct remained, but the day had technically started sometime the night before, and no matter how great our determination, there was only so much the body could withstand. Already, we had pushed ourselves too far and long. The body kept the score.
He paused in surprise, or perhaps, he was merely considering. A flicker of emotion creased a line between his eyes. They lifted to mine, already apologetic, and I knew what he would say.
“We should go a bit further,” he replied, casting a habitual look over my shoulder. Not half a league could pass without him glancing back the way we’d come. At first, I’d thought it was a simple precaution. Perhaps I was wrong. “The woods are no doubt already teeming with soldiers trained in precisely this kind of tracking. They will not stop at nightfall; we must press on the same.”
I nodded mutely, fingers crunching around the cloak draped around my shoulders. Erik had insisted that I take it, though it had been made for him. At first, it had made things more difficult, though I appreciated the warmth, catching on every snag and bramble in the forest. Now, it was the only thing keeping me from curling into a fetal position and letting myself wash away in the rain.
“Will you take back your cloak?” I asked in spite of it, fumbling awkwardly with the clasp. It was finer than anything I’d worn myself, a silver lion stamped with his crest. “It shouldn’t just—”
“Keep it,” he said shortly, turning back around. “You need it more than me.”
I froze where I stood, staring at the back of his head. It hadn’t been unkind, quite the opposite, but for whatever reason, my eyes swelled with sudden tears and there was a great thickening in my throat. I tried to swallow, bowing my head against the rain. A voice, which had been growing steadily more insistent as the day dragged on, whispered again in my ear.
I should have just let them kill me.
The forest would do it anyway, it would just be slower about it. But now, instead of claiming a single life, the wilds of the northern realm would have two.
“Come on,” he called from ahead, “let’s pick up the pace.”
The storm continued to worsen as we pressed deeper into the forest, seeking refuge beneath the thick branches of the canopy, only to have a shrieking wind tear into us from the other side. The ground had become slick, and then thick; already, mud had risen to our ankles. I felt it dragging at each step, sucking me back down to the earth. Twice, we had to stop and extract ourselves from the pull of it. There was a howl in the distance and our eyes met. Was it a wolf, or a hound?
At this point, I wasn’t sure which was worse.
A pale moon had risen high above the clouds, alone without the scattered light of stars. It was scarcely bright enough to see, but we toiled further, winding through the dense underbrush without any sense of direction, seeking only distance between ourselves and the flaming mess we’d left behind. By now, I caught myself throwing glances over my shoulder as well.
What have we done?
It came to me slowly, breaking off in little pieces. All those troubling memories I’d tried to leave behind me the moment we jumped over the fence. The bodies of the guards we’d left piled in the tower; the ancient beams of the brothel, falling one by one. The moment in the stables—
I stopped myself there, and would go no further. There might come a day when I was able to think of such things, perhaps even speak of them without losing my breath. But that time was far ahead of us. At the rate things were going, it was unlikely I’d live long enough to see it come to pass.
Don’t think about that now. Just put one foot in front of another. Carefully—
There was a sudden pull around my ankle, a tug like someone had grabbed it. By the time I registered the pressure, my foot had already twisted and lodged itself deep within a crag in the rocks.
I let out a silent gasp, scrambling to find balance, but my momentum carried me forward, toppling me like a flailing sapling, and I went crashing straight down. My arms flew up in front of me, scraping roughly on the boulders, but it was no use. I landed flat on my face in the mud.
Crack.
A jolt of pain shot up my leg, so sudden and sharp that for a moment, I was unable to move for the shock of it. My vision went white, and my mouth was gaping and silent. It was broken, surely. Or severed completely. By the time I lifted my head, Erik was already kneeling by my side.
“I thought we were done swimming,” he said quietly, lifting me from the sludge. It took a second for me to realize he was joking. Another second to understand this probably implied my foot was still connected after all. The second after that, I felt it and let out a pitiful wail.
I should have been quiet, of course. Despite the howl of the storm, these were imperial soldiers and one could never be too careful. But that kind of sense had left me, and he seemed to have expected as much—gathering me closer and muffling the sound in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, over and over. “I’m sorry.”
I lingered there I don’t know how long, nothing but sobs and ragged breathing. He reached down with a single hand, extracting me from the rocks with as much delicacy as possible, while his other kept its place on my back, rocking and rubbing and soothing those apologies away.
After a while, it was silent. Yet still, my tears continued to fall.
It was too much. The accusation, the imprisonment. The days I’d spent locked away in that tower, counting the hours until my death. It was too much, and I had nothing left to face it. I had been scraped bare, unable to withstand a hurt foot, or the temper of a summer storm.
“Just go,” I whispered, closing my eyes as the rain pounded against my back. My face was still pressed against his tunic, but I know he heard me. I felt his muscles tense. “Just go back, say I bewitched you—that you broke free. They will believe it, Erik. You must at least try.”
His arm tightened ever so slightly, but his voice remained calm. “They will not believe it. And I’m not leaving you out here alone.”
You’ll die.
That’s what he didn’t say, but there wasn’t a need. We were both thinking it. Since leaping from the top of the settlement fence, we’d been unable to think about anything else.
I pulled back, just enough to see his face. “It needn’t be the both of us,” I stammered, unable to catch my breath. Tears continued streaming down my cheeks, mixing unnoticed with the rain. “And the gods have apparently decided your life has greater value than mine. Go, and be done with it. You have nothing here to prove.”
He ignored this with the same unshakable calm, reaching for my leg. “Let me see your ankle—”
But I tore away from him, wild and despairing.
“Just go!” I cried, biting fiercely at my lip. “Is it not enough I’m destined to die somewhere in these woods? Why must you insist upon the same? You probably think I enchanted you—admit it! The dread witch, cursed from birth. Gods-cursed. Without anyone...without anyone to...”
My breath choked into sobs, as the grief overwhelmed me once and for all. There was no longer any fighting it, I didn’t even try. I simply curled my knees to my chest, and buried my face inside them, wracked and shaking, my slender arms wrapped tightly around my legs.
It was quiet for a moment, then he shifted closer.
His hand caught lightly onto mine.
“Are we not just people?” he asked quietly. “Born under the same stars?” My eyes fluttered open, staring at our enjoined fingers, as he lifted my hand and placed it against his own cheek. “Is this some blasphemy against your gods? They are my gods as well.”
The storm blew wild around us, but his eyes were steady on mine.
“The rest is what we make of it, nothing more. We are writing the story now.”
