Cartess drive them all.
-Genesifin
They began the trek conservatively, with Brenol hoping to stretch into greater distance and speed as they progressed. Colette was unaccustomed to traveling long distances, but the lunitata had been adamant about leaving her pony, not wishing to be the only party saddleback. The castle owned but two of the small beasts, and there was no way that grown men could mount the animals, whose frames were far smaller than the normal stock animals of Alatrice. So the trio eased into walking, and, despite the circumstances, Brenol and Darse strode alongside each other with a measure of contentedness; it had been so long since the old friends had been together. Colette, although occasionally glancing at the two men, appeared to not attend their conversation. She merely swept beside them in silence, rapt in thought and emotion. They allowed her her privacy as they returned to their long-held friendship.
“How’re things back on Alatrice?” Darse asked, looking from the road to Brenol.
Brenol shrugged. “Much the same. There have been rising conflicts on Trest, so even though Paraff is removed from it, the king is still tense. And making the whole kingdom feel it… The price of conscription passes raised this last orbit. It was nearly double the usual rate. I had to sell four chickens after all the harvest just to earn enough.” Brenol’s face screwed up in irritation, but then he met the older man’s gaze with glittering eyes. “Your door has never been so clean, though.”
Laugher spilled from Darse’s lips. “Yes, I hadn’t thought about that. It must feel good to have the town free of traitors.” He narrowed his eyes at the young man. “You probably drank all my coffee to celebrate the victory.”
Brenol mimed guilt. “I cannot confirm a thing.”
“Next you will tell me you sold my pallet.”
“No,” the man began. His mouth spread into a wide, handsome smile. “I did give my milkers to Mager, though.”
Darse gave an exaggerated groan. “Mager?” he asked incredulously. “Mager? The little thief? You gave your dairy cows to her?”
Brenol laughed heartily; he had expected as much from Darse. “She finally did admit to nipping from your stores.”
Darse raised an eyebrow. “Was this before or after you gave her more than she could ever earn in her lifetime?”
Brenol pinched his lips together to stifle his laughter. “Well, she’s going to look after your place. And ma.” His features clouded momentarily.
“Mager was always able to sniff out a good deal,” Darse huffed, but then he asked quietly, “How is your mother?” His eyes were both concerned and curious.
“Ever the same,” the man replied. “She…” Brenol thought back to their last encounter, how for a brief moment he had connected with her. But it had ended just as everything always ended with her: bitterly. “Ever the same,” he repeated blandly.
Darse, without slowing his easy gait, settled his firm hand on Brenol’s shoulder. The warm pressure was solid, good. It stirred a sorrow loose in Brenol while simultaneously settling his heart. Darse knew and understood. He had perceived the truth about his mother before Brenol ever had. The older man had always been like a father—yet somehow now also his peer—and his support seemed to make everything bearable, even the deepest, most untouchable wounds.
Brenol gave Darse a quick dip of the head, Darse recalled his hand, and the two continued on. Their relationship, if changed at all, had only matured in their orbits apart.
~
The journey to the lugazzi dragged on and on. By the fourth day, they were left trudging through mud and muck left from the previous evening’s showers. While none of them harbored joy at the terrain and weather, Colette in particular matched the dismal skies with her clouded mood and step. Her initial pleasure in seeing Brenol after so long seemed to Brenol as fleeting as a dream. She was completely lost in herself.
Brenol and Darse communicated with their eyes, but there was only so much that could be relayed in silence. The young man noted to himself that he must insist that Darse learn Arman’s aural code at the earliest opportunity.
As they rested that night, still a day’s journey from the border, Colette’s voice woke Brenol. “Bren? Are you asleep?”
He elbowed to a sit and stared at the woman. She had barely spoken since Sleockna, and he was loath to pass up the opportunity to hear her voice, no matter how exhausted he was.
“Are you okay?” he asked with concern. Her face was yellow in the light of the jumping flames, and her features were wracked with tension. Brenol glanced to Darse. The man did not stir.
Colette’s lips parted as if to speak but then shut again. Finally, she pointed. “Your hair is a mess.”
Brenol granted her a small smile and ran his fingers through the tangled crop. “My ma couldn’t understand why I grew it out. She all but snuck into my room at night to chop it off.”
“What happened with your mother?”
Brenol felt his stomach harden. While he did not want to talk about her, he was willing to do practically anything to feel connected to Colette again. He sighed. “When I left? Or in general?”
“Both.”
Brenol inhaled heavily and met her gaze. “She let me go.” He rubbed his tired features. “But as for the other? She’s… she’s not well.” Brenol shifted his feet closer to the fire and tugged the blankets around his shoulders. “I didn’t understand it for so long. And really, I still don’t entirely. She…she’s so nervous and jumpy. She doesn’t think the way that other people do.”
“What do you mean?”
“She says things that are all wrong. And does things all wrong too.” Brenol’s eyes narrowed in memory.
“What’s something she did?” Colette persisted.
“You really want to know?”
Colette gazed back solemnly.
Brenol sighed. The scene was burned into his mind as though branded there with a scarlet hot poker. “Well…you know how we eat differently on Alatrice? Abstaining from meat isn’t a mark of being civilized. Kings and queens eat meat. The educated, the poor. And really, the rich can afford it more often. So, on Alatrice, we eat all. But there are still taboos.”
“I see,” Colette replied cautiously.
“Well, when I was a boy, eight orbits old, a stray in the area had a litter of puppies. I knew we didn’t have enough food for ourselves, but when that pup’s ma left him behind after a few septspan, I wanted to keep him like I wanted to breathe. So I hid him out by Darse’s place and gave him any scraps I could come by.
“He grew and was the best pup in town. Black and white, with this patch of brown over his snout, so I called him Muzzie. I loved that dog. The other kids loved him too. Not a mean muscle on his furry frame. When school started up again, Muzz’d follow me and wait in the play yard just to follow me back to Darse’s. I had to tie him up there at night or else he’d follow me home, but he seemed to understand that I’d always come back.
“But one day he escaped. I know it wasn’t Darse, but someone must have untied Muzz. I woke up in the morning to find him snuggled in my pallet with me. I nearly threw up right there.” Brenol shook his head sadly. “Little boy of eight and I nearly heaved up my stomach in fear because I loved that dog so much.”
Colette listened, rapt.
“I was so scared. I knew she’d beat me ragged if she found I’d been keeping him. So I dressed and crept out of my room with him in my arms…” He paused and winced. “I… I don’t know if I should tell you. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to see her in any other way…”
She waited silently.
Finally, staring off into the darkness, he continued, his voice carrying unmistakable sadness. “She was awake. She took him out of my arms and drowned him in the washing tub. Right before my eyes. I begged her to stop, but she had this glassy look, like she wasn’t even there. She handed me his body and told me to skin him. Beat me when I didn’t listen. She beat me over and over, but I couldn’t do it. She finally did it herself and then roasted him and gorged herself sick on his flesh. I wept for days.”
“And she knew?” Colette asked in wonder.
“I told her, I screamed, I shook her. But she just has something missing inside her. You might think she is normal, but if you’re ever with her for long, you realize she isn’t. At least, that’s what I finally realized. I showed up at Darse’s lashed and choking on tears. It was then that he sat me down and explained about my ma.”
“What did he say?”
Brenol shrugged his shoulders. “At the time? Not much. He told me she wasn’t healthy inside, but it was the kind of sickness that didn’t really heal. Not that she’d let anyone come near her anyway. She barely let me touch her as I grew up. She just wasn’t…right inside.”
Brenol exhaled, and his eyes closed briefly as he shook his head. “But later…later, Darse told me more.”
“More?” Colette asked.
“More.” Again Brenol shook his head. “Darse often traveled to sell his crops. Locals were not always so eager to do business with him, so he’d pack up a wagon and travel to the nearest city… Well, he was out bartering at a town over and, to skip through a bunch of unnecessary details, a woman he spoke with mentioned Ma.”
“Yes?”
“She was surprised Darse knew Ma, and she told him that they’d grown up in the same village.” Brenol gazed up to the skies, not actually taking in the heavenly lights. “She said Ma had been strange and different as a child. She really wasn’t well in her mind even then. But a blight hit the crops pretty significantly one summer. And her parents, without a drale or mark to their names, offered her up for the king’s service. For girls, this means a life of sewing, cooking, or some other castle service. So she left. They taught her to be a seamstress, but when they realized that she was…different, I guess the local physicians began experimenting on her. To try to fix her mind… Anyway, it only exaggerated her condition.”
“I’m sorry,” Colette said quietly.
“Me too,” Brenol replied. He sighed, thankful she did not question him further about all that the doctors had done. Some things did not need to be repeated.
“And Muzzie…did you ever forgive her for that?” she asked.
“I think so. I hope so, at least. I finally realized that her sickness sent me to Darse in a way nothing else would’ve. So even though sometimes that memory still sends my stomach hopping, I try to remember how the whole thing gave me my relationship with Darse. And now Massada.”
Colette glanced over to the slumbering bundle. The man’s chest rose steadily, and his aging face lay serene and mild in repose. Without another word, the lunitata drew her own bedding up and curled her small frame into a huddled ball.
Between the dark night and all that he had revealed, Brenol felt a sudden intense weariness. “Anything else bothering you?” he asked softly.
She did not respond. She clamped her lips shut and feigned sleep.
Brenol sighed and lowered himself back down into his blankets.
~
Colette entered the lugazzi and paused, eyeing Brenol curiously. She, the nurest, had hardly blinked upon exiting Veronia, but the young man had stopped, stooped, and caressed the soil with a gentle hand, whispering both thanks and farewell. No answer came, but the clear eyes that rose and locked into hers revealed much; he did not expect one. She blushed and shied her face away.
Twilight swept the skies with a hungry haste, and Darse and Brenol scrambled to make camp so they could eat and rest their fatigued legs. Colette, not even pretending to busy herself, sat with expectant eyes, watching Brenol. He completed his tasks but sensed her gaze as an uneasy tickle upon his neck.
Brenol firmed his heart, recalling the fish-child he had shrouded in soil, and seated himself beside the princess. Her delicate lunitata glow was a faint golden amber, the only soft aspect of her hard face. The young man’s hand itched to grasp hers, to find some sense of the woman she had once been, but he knew the time was far from ripe. So he simply and plainly relayed the terrible facts of Jerem’s poison.
Darse listened silently, soon wishing he could erase Brenol’s words. The hatred Colette already harbored for the villain kindled under the fury of this new trespass. Every word seemed to sour her heart further. Brenol, even though he had seen the untamable fierceness in her, was shocked. She seemed more animal than human.
Colette began to pace and circle the campfire.
Is this her fate? To live only through her rage? Brenol wondered. His face betrayed nothing, but his heart trembled for the lunitata.
Darse gave Brenol a gentle prod. “What about the hos?”
“Yes, the hos…” After rolling the code through his mind for many matroles of travel, he almost did not know where to start. But simplicity seemed best at this point. “It’s an antidote.”
Colette halted with a gasp. Her trim figure leaned in, and her ravenous eyes scoured Brenol as if in pursuit of the hos’s location on his person.
Brenol held up a hand to implore patience. “There’s much more. The story on the hos is twofold—written in two hands. Plus, some of it I have pieced together from Deniel’s memories… Anyway, orbits ago, a man, Jerem, began working on a poison.”
“The fool who never relents,” muttered Darse.
Colette hugged her arms around her slender body. Her eyes were haunted and wide.
“He required a few rare supplies but was so immersed in trying to dissect the secret about the nuresti that he hired another to find them, concoct his creation, and test it. I can only imagine that Jerem had planned to kill this man from the beginning, for he knew too many of his secrets.”
Darse sat nearby, quietly attentive.
“So after the hireling made it, he tested the cocktail on a maralane child—”
“How?” Darse interrupted. Confusion and horror etched his somber face.
“I don’t know how the man stole her, but he did. She was very young, but smart enough to see beyond her own suffering. She wrote invisibly upon her hos, hoping the story would somehow find its way back to the maralane. She, Larest, was held in some tank in a house. The man poisoned her water daily to determine its results. She only briefly mentioned the intense pain.”
“Three save us,” Darse muttered.
Brenol quirked an eyebrow at Darse’s invocation—he wondered to what degree Darse had taken the gods of Massada as his own—but continued, “Larest could see that her end was coming. Her one hope was for the hos to tell her story so the maralane could prepare for whatever was going to happen. She knew very well that she would not be dumped back into Ziel even if she survived the poison…” Brenol lifted a hand to indicate time passing. “The hired man was later repaid for his efforts with a knife to his chest, and Jerem ran off with the cocktail. The hos then fell into Deniel’s hands.”
His audience gaped, riveted.
“Larest, then?” Colette whispered softly.
Brenol just bobbed his head in assent. The abrupt ending of the child’s enchanted lettering revealed the obvious.
“Deniel didn’t know immediately what it was about, and really, I don’t know if he ever did. But somehow, somewhere down the workings of fate, it returned to the waters, and maralane eyes saw it.”
“Why didn’t you give Veronia the antidote while we were there?” Colette interjected. “Or tell me what it was?”
Brenol’s chest hardened, awaiting the blow. “It isn’t that simple.”
She seemed to work for the patience to endure the rest of the tale. “Please go on, then.” Her eyes were cold and untamable.
He breathed and willed himself forward. “The other script is in a new hand, Preifest’s. They hadn’t found the hos ’til much later. Much later. The poison had already been dumped into Ziel and the maralane affected. I can only imagine the brutal suspicions they must have had toward the upper-world… At least finding the hos told them the truth.”
“When was the water poisoned?”
“Around the time Jerem went out to the island.”
“Why then?”
Brenol shook his head. “Can we ever understand his madness? Maybe he knew he’d never be able to leave the island unless he did it. Maybe he poisoned the waters before heading out to the island. But it seems to be around that time… Regardless, he was fixated on owning Massada. And he knew the maralane would never be idle if he succeeded.”
Darse shook his head, muttering. “He cared only for power. Plucked away those who had any, one by one.”
“Yes.” Brenol spoke softly, but the word’s import was hard and cold.
“Do you think he was trying to kill the land too?” Darse asked.
“I don’t. He wanted to be a nurest, not destroy his source of power. But in the end, does it matter?” Brenol replied. “He was trying to spread death. And he succeeded.”
Colette’s fists clenched tightly at her sides. Quiet as a breath, she whispered to herself, “I hate him.” Her face was ugly in its pinched loathing.
Brenol closed his eyes, but in his mind the picture still lingered.
Darse’s words tugged the young man back to the conversation. “And the hos—you said it now contains the antidote?”
The coppery head nodded. “Yes, or at least that is the word Preifest used. The maralane made it.”
“But you said the maralane are dying. Why don’t they use it for themselves?” Darse asked.
“Arman thinks the maralane began dying before the poison. And that maybe this just sped things along. But as for the antidote? I think it is more specifically for the terrisdans, not the maralane—Preifest’s writing suggests it would be harmful to them. I imagine land and creature do not work or heal in the same manner.”
“Wait. Preifest didn’t say anything when he gave it to you?” Darse’s worn features were incredulous. “The world depends upon this, and he sprinkles riddles in your food?”
“You know, I don’t think to a maralane this is a riddle. He assumed I would know.” Brenol’s brow furrowed in remembrance. “When I saw Preifest at our last meeting, he was changed—and not simply physically failing. He was genuinely grateful for the upper-world’s kindness during this…” Brenol’s lips jumped sideways in displeasure, “extinction. He must’ve seen this as a small way of giving back.”
“Why didn’t they give the antidote to us before if they knew so much?” Colette asked bitterly.
Brenol shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t find the hos ’til recently. Or maybe they didn’t know how badly hurt the terrisdans are. Maybe they can hardly cope with their own fate, and so the antidote has been a slow response.” In his mind, the grim words he refused to speak echoed: Or maybe they waited because of that ridiculous book.
“Can the poison affect us?” Darse asked.
“I can’t say, but I’d guess no—Massadans seem fine. Maralane and terrisdan alone were touched. If it affected us, we would have seen signs of it long ago. No, something protected us, or we were simply immune.”
“I suppose it’s all dispersed by now anyway,” Darse mused.
“And I would guess,” Brenol began, after seeing Darse open his mouth to follow the thought, “that the antidote will be harmless to us too. The maralane are anything but short-sighted.”
“Why not give it now, then?” Colette asked.
Brenol tightened his jaw but did not respond.
“What is it, Bren?” asked Darse. His golden eyes were filled with concern as he took in the tall frame sagging under the hos’s paltry weight.
The young man exhaled. “I don’t know how to give the antidote. Is there a serum within the hos? Do I crack it open like an egg? Divide what’s inside? Or is the antidote the object itself? And how would it be administered to the terrisdans? I don’t know. Preifest was clear about one thing in his writing though. His exact words were: Do not bring it to the water. It will only cause death. They must be too weak to withstand it… Preifest had told me he accepted his fate, but there must be something truly terrible that could happen if the hos goes into the lake. I can only follow his wishes.”
Comprehension and awe mingled in Darse’s gaze. “Preifest handed over the power to save us, but it’s powerful enough to destroy as well?”
Brenol’s words came out hollow and scratchy. “It would seem so.” He left me with more power than I care to hold…
Colette seemed not to have heard. “Veronia drank its death,” she whispered.
“What about the terrisdans that didn’t directly take in Ziel’s water?” Darse asked. “I imagine that the most damage has been done to those fed by the Pearia or surrounding Ziel, but what about Callup? Bergin? Granallat?”
Brenol grimaced. He did not want to utter his most feared conjecture: Are the lives of the terrisdans connected? If you take down one, will they all topple like a tower of blocks?
Darse rubbed his face wearily. “Bren?”
The young man closed his eyes and concentrated his strength. Remember that your gortei comes first… He opened his eyes and rolled his words out cautiously, “I don’t know if we can save every terrisdan.”
“Goodness. Does it ever end?” Colette spoke quietly to herself.
Never, Brenol thought in answer, yet in that moment of despair, Arman’s face appeared in a memory. He said we will do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. The young man clung to those words.
“So now?” Darse asked.
“Now. Well, now we go to Limbartina. Meet Arman. Get some additional answers. Talk to the maralane. Talk to the umbus.”
“Is there any hope?”
Brenol gave a careful nod. “We have the hos… So yes, I think so.” His fingers slid into his pocket and curled around the tiny figurine.
“What if there are no answers in Limbartina?” Colette asked, her wild eyes darting between them.
“We pray it doesn’t come to that,” Darse said.
Colette persisted. “But if it does?”
Brenol sighed quietly, almost imperceptibly, beneath the cover of his controlled and authoritative face. His sturdy voice rang out into the cool evening air. “Then we save what terrisdans we can.”
“And who decides?” Her voice was as cracked as an addict’s, strained and desperate. He could imagine the clawing greed she felt to save Veronia, even at the cost of the rest of the world.
Brenol leaned over to gaze steadily into her savage eyes. “Massada does.”
He placed a large hand upon her shoulder. His touch was warm and tender, but she shivered and shook out from underneath it; comfort was not what she wanted.
Colette frowned and stiffly turned away. A thought resounded in her mind: If I were in Veronia with the connection, I could make him give me the antidote.
She shuddered but at the same time felt the greed pulsing up and taking her.
You still could, her blood sang. You still could.
~
The dark skies curved over them, and stars glowed brilliantly, their tiny beams seemingly within grasp. The ruby fire crackled happily, and in the chill air the three huddled silently around the heat. Colette, not granting even a glance to her companions, stared through the flames until darkness fully settled, and finally wrapped herself tightly in her blankets and curled on her side like a scared child.
Brenol watched her with a frown.
Darse waited until he was sure Colette was asleep and then slowly motioned for Brenol to follow him into a thicket of trees to the west of their camp.
The young man stood, his hair bright before the firelight, and breathed a reluctant acceptance. His breath frosted the air before him, but his goose bumps were not entirely due to the penetrating freeze. He craned his neck back and peered up at the celestial lights.
He felt lost as to what to do about Colette. She was an enigma, and he could see as well as any that holding her hand would never heal the desolation within her. She needed someone to save her, and he felt he was very far from being that person.
Guide me now, Brenol pleaded to the heavens. If you were ever there. Guide me now.
His face was grim and taut as he padded softly from the fire. He approached Darse in the grove of trilant. The air was drenched with their honeycomb-pine scent. Tiny cones littered the forest floor and crunched softly beneath his heels. Brenol positioned his back to the deep woods, unwilling to allow the lunitata out of his sight. Her small form was but a rounded lump before the bright cherry flames.
“She cannot come,” Darse said. “Travel is slow enough, and her mind is as tangled as a brier.”
Brenol’s frown turned into a grimace. “She’ll not let us leave her. Nor should we.”
“I will escort her back.”
Brenol breathed out a wry laugh, soft as a whisper. “She’ll not have it, Darse. You know the iron will in that woman. I barely know her anymore, but I know that still remains.”
Darse sighed in resignation. “What then?”
Three help me, Brenol thought wryly, recalling Darse’s words of several hours earlier. He raised his eyes to meet Darse’s gaze—barely visible in the dark of the forest—and claimed the only choice they had. “You follow with Colette. I will push fast into the north and meet Arman. If we need each other, there are the aurenals.”
Darse considered the young man’s words. Yes, this was the best of their options. He was thankful not to have to shoulder a protesting woman across a terrisdan to bar her in her rooms, even if there seemed little purpose to her presence at the soladrome.
“You seem to have figured it all out,” Darse said finally, his face falling into a grim smile.
“I’ll let you know when that day comes,” Brenol replied with a soft exhale-laugh. He moved to turn but then stopped abruptly and faced Darse. He placed a sturdy hand upon the older man’s shoulder and locked green eyes with gold. “Darse, take care of her. She’s important. More than we could ever guess.”
“Wha—”
Brenol waved his hand to stop the query. “I don’t know.”
I don’t even know if I can trust the thoughts and memories in my own head, he thought. He glanced again to the stars and nodded, more to himself than to Darse. “But I’m leaving tonight.”
Darse’s eyes widened. “Tonight?” Massada weighs heavily upon him…
“Tonight,” Brenol replied firmly. His voice was a hushed rumble.
Another thought occurred to Darse. “Wait! I nearly forgot.” He fished through his pockets and extended an object to his companion. Brenol drew it close for inspection. It was a nut no larger than a peach stone, entirely smooth and a striking strawberry red hue—evident even in the heavy shadows.
“What is it?” Brenol scrutinized every side as if it housed a deep mystery.
Darse’s voice carried a puzzled tone. “Some nut from Caladia. Arista gave it to me to deliver to Arman. She tried to act like it didn’t matter at all, but the whole thing was heavily contrived. I think it must be important. So since you’ll see him first…” The sentence lingered in the air like a question.
“Of course, Darsey. I’ll bring it to him. Massada shall make a sealtor out of me yet.”
The logistics of traveling with Colette for the next few days spun through Darse’s mind. He exhaled slowly in thought, wondering how she would react to Brenol’s abrupt departure.
“And Colette?” Brenol voice held a hesitant desperation. “She is capable of anything, Darse. The nurest desire is a terrible thing.”
Darse turned firm. “I’ll guard her. She’s like a daughter. I’ll guard her with my life.”
Brenol nodded, as comforted as he could be. “See you soon, old man,” he whispered. He crept back to collect his gear, and in just a few moments, he swept from the campsite, agile and silent.
Darse watched him fold into the shadows. I almost don’t know him…but no, he’s Bren. Just kingly now.
~
Colette accepted Brenol’s parting with composure—just a brief flicker of fury mixed with disappointment washed her features when Darse revealed it. Then the young woman adeptly hooded her eyes and face with stoic emptiness. Darse’s insides stirred anxiously; he wished he had not witnessed the masking.
They walked north, taking the soft paths of the terrisdan that wound eventually to the mouth of the Pearia. Five days elapsed in their crossing of Garnoble, but the scenes were pleasant and the weather only slightly chilled. Darse brushed aside the lunitata’s cool demeanor and sought to speak amiably, if only to help ease her tired mind.
“It’s been over three orbits since I’ve seen you. I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit before this.”
She shrugged, but curiosity won. “Where have you been living? Wasn’t it Selenia?”
He said the word slowly, as if unsure of its taste. “Granoile.”
Her eyes jumped in surprise. “Granoile? Why did I think Selenia? My sealtor found you, anyway.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I don’t know much of Granoile.”
Darse chuckled. “Most do not. It’s the place of the frawnish.”
“Well, of course. But where do you live?”
Darse raised his eyebrows in a friendly motion.
“You live with them?” Her face opened in surprise. It was a welcome change from her usual scowl.
“As much as they let anyone. They’re a private people, but they’ve accepted me in their own way.” The corners of his lips curled up wryly in memory.
“I didn’t think they allowed anyone to even approach their towns.” She shuddered, thinking of talons and fangs. Massadan fables were rife with exaggerations of the mysterious fowl-folk of the east. Few had ever seen their kind, let alone lived among them.
“They’re fierce, certainly. But no harm to those who wish them well. I’ve taken up carpentry work and live in the frieze of town. Really, it’s a little hovel in the town center. Initially, I think they wanted to keep an eye on me to make sure I was behaving, but now it’s simply allowed for the convenience of my legs.”
They were not as kind in their choice of language, though, Darse recalled. “Cripple.” Yes, “cripple” had been their term.
“Why? Why’d you choose it?”
“Reminded me of home, in a way,” he smiled.
“I didn’t know you had frawnish in your world.”
“It was a joke, but I suppose only Bren would understand it.”
“I see,” she said coolly.
Darse face sagged. He opened his hands out to her in simple appeal. “I just like them. That’s all. They’re fascinating to me.”
His deflated sincerity disarmed her. He sounded like a child explaining his favorite flavor of frozen cream. She bowed her head, blushing at her behavior. Yet I don’t know how to stop. I just… I just… I’m so bound inside. I wish I could leave it all behind. And run. And not have this pounding drive for power inside me. And never think about Jerem or any of this again… Just be free.
Her eyes pooled with tears, but in a swift and determined rush, she bit down and refused to let them fall. Jerem will never get another tear from me. I hate him.
Darse turned his gaze ahead. He could not discern the meaning behind the queer expression upon Colette’s features, but what he did see caused his insides to knot.
And on they continued.
~
Jerem’s eyes pored over her, hungry and leering. His fingers pried at her clothes and ripped them as she sought escape. He held her tight, his hot breath searing her slender neck. She was suddenly standing, and she ran and ran, but he was ever on her heels. Her dark hair whipped in the wind, blinding her from the path ahead. She turned to see if he was still in pursuit, but when she looked forward again his arms had encircled her, somehow already there. The sickly perfume of soil and spice filled her nostrils as he lifted her up. He stamped upon the ground, and she could hear Veronia wailing beneath her. And not just Veronia, the people too.
All she wanted was to disappear. But how can you vanish from the world?
Colette woke in the cold dawn with her flesh damp and heart pulsing madly. Darse was already kindling a fire for breakfast but had the courtesy to avert his attention as she stole from the darkness of her dreams. She shuddered, both from the present cool and the crawling fingers she had felt upon her body just moments before. Her face was as white as bone.
I’ll never be free. Never.
His fingers, his eyes.
She gulped down breakfast without tasting it and walked numbly forward as they began the monotonous footfall of travel yet again. The glow of the lunitata was only a shimmer under her brooding eyes.
Her light is dimming, Darse realized with angst. She was alive, but far from living.
He scanned her face and was met with an aloof coldness. He sighed and continued walking, unsure how to reach her.
Three help me, he pleaded.