Chapter Twenty

 

 

She approached the lakeshore, eyeing Rewel warily. The man standing beside him had given her a start, but after a moment she recognized him as an Other. One of the villagers who forgot to pass over when the event had happened, whatever it was that had entrapped them in the village. The Others were rarely solid in form, whereas this one was.

Danya did not know names to put to the Others. She had only ever interacted with the healer and the woman she called Mother. She knew better than to fool herself into thinking that the woman who had come to teach her all about history had been her actual mother, but it comforted her to have something normal.

Rewel spoke at the Others, the Others would even speak back to him, but just as when they spoke to Danya, they could not answer direct questions. It was as if the Others could see Rewel’s lips moving, but could not hear his words. When his lips stopped moving, the Others chose then to respond.

“She’s hiding something,” she heard the Other say as she approached the pair.

Rewel turned to her, knowing she was there even though she had made no sound. He always knew where she was, even when she was completely silent.

The man’s eyes narrowed, icy blue. Like his heart. Sometimes his eyes were grey, sometimes brown, but normally they were a shade of blue that seemed to reflect how Danya was thinking of him at that moment.

“The lines are swelling,” Rewel said to her.

It had taken years for Danya to get the full breadth of the village’s destruction from Rewel. She had pieced it together from snippets from both Rewel and the Others.

There were lines of magic across the village that they could all feel; all except Danya that was. On these lines, the others could travel. Anyone who went beyond the lines simply disappeared, though no one believed they had finally passed on. Within the lines life was one of restriction and few supplies.

When a queen was linked to the village, the lines might only bloom a little or they might spread a little farther. Without a queen, the lines began to fade, along with the Others. The land on the lines responded much the same. With a queen there might be a small surge of growth, or even an animal caught on the lines. Without one, the land seemed to simply give up trying to grow.

Danya could not feel the lines, but she was aware that they were not direct lines. The lines did not radiate outward from the village, but instead straggled this way and that, as if they were imperfections within a stone.

“Swelling is good,” Danya said.

“I saw green just outside of the road’s line,” Rewel hissed at her through gritted teeth.

Everything tended to be grey, brown, or black. A queen had to be linked to the village for upwards of two months before green would be seen at a distance.

“There are rabbits over there,” the Other motioned. “Digging a burrow.”

“What did you link to the village, Danya?” Rewel demanded. “You said she was not a danger to us.”

“I said she was not a danger to the village,” Danya said quietly, clasping her hands before her as she gathered her courage. There was no need to lie any longer, not with the deed already done. Danya relaxed her control slightly and felt relieved. It had been months since the last time she had felt comfortable enough to let her guard down. “In fact, I believe Aren can be quite good for the village—perfect even. But she is a damaged young woman, and without proper guidance she will flounder. If Aren falls, so will the village. She’s strength enough to drag us darker than we’ve ever been before.”

“Why would you link her to the village, then?”

“I did nothing of the sort!”

And that was the end of her courage, she was certain. Questioning Rewel was not easy. When the man became upset with her, he would simply vanish, disappear into the woods for days on end. Leaving Danya alone and afraid because she had dared to speak out.

Now that she had Aren, she needn’t be afraid of being alone any longer. As long as Aren was alive, Danya would have a companion, someone she could speak to without worrying about Aren running off or punishing her for speaking out of turn.

“You linked her to this village,” Danya said, advancing on Rewel. “You were the one who didn’t bide your time, too damned eager to link a queen’s magic to us once more. I warned you. I’m certain I told you that she wasn’t like the others, I told you she was strong, and I damned well told you I don’t want to do this anymore!”

“What did you link to my village, you bitch?” Rewel demanded, coming towards Danya, standing toe-to-toe with her. “I will destroy you, if you’ve brought ruin upon me!”

“If you destroy me, you will be by yourself,” Danya responded, aware that her voice shook even though she wanted to sound firm. “And once more, I must remind you, Rewel, that you are the only one capable of linking someone to the village. Not me, never me. I have no hand in them being forced to give their magic to you. I’m just the one you use, like you use them, like you use all women.”

“What are you going to do, cry?” Rewel snarled.

The tears were coming, Danya knew they were. Not because she wanted to cry, not because she thought Rewel was right, but because she had no other way to respond. She could control her tears no more than she could control the setting of the sun.

Danya swallowed, trying to swallow the tears at the same time. “You linked her to the village and, like it or not, she is here until she dies. You could kill her, but it will be spring before another comes through and do you think we can survive the winter without her magic?”

Rewel went a scarlet red colour. The man growled through his teeth at Danya, but she didn’t flinch because she didn’t believe he would lash out at her for being correct.

“You have to let me—” Danya paused and drew in a breath. She gathered the shattered remains of her courage back around herself. “You will let me go down and speak with her, you will not interfere. Aren is a troubled woman and if she must die here, then I will ensure that when she passes to the next world, she is settled and calmer of mind. If you don’t allow me to speak to her, I will kill her with my own hands.”

“You can’t—”

“Right to death,” Danya spat out, feeling a surge of anger at being told who she could and could not kill. She could kill anyone she pleased! “I will not suffer her to live in agony just because you were too stubborn to allow me to sit and speak with her for a few hours a day.”

How dare someone so small and pathetic tell her what she could do?

Danya gathered the anger around herself and wrapped her mind in it. Anger was brash and impulsive, but it could stand where courage had crumbled.

Rewel had given her commands most of her life, but he had never dared trespass on conflicting orders with Danya’s instincts. He had remained well within the rights, which he still believed in, in his own twisted way.

To tell a rank that they could not kill someone was tantamount to daring them to.

“Fine, you can have your precious friend.”

“And if you ever strike her again? I will kill myself, and then we’ll see just how long you last without a rank to bring them in.”

Danya turned on her heel and marched off, trying to look as if she were confident about her own threats. She made it into her home before the tears started. Locking the door, she sank down and cried silently until the tears would come no more.

Sometimes that was the only way to feel better, was to let the tears come, but that didn’t mean she would cry in front of Rewel, not if she could help it.

Alone in her home, Danya looked around and almost wept from loneliness.

There had been a time when she would enter her home and her mother would be there, just waiting for her. The woman would talk and talk for hours, would respond to her if she were crying. She would even pat the air around Danya, as if to comfort her.

But her mother was gone.

The Other Danya had called her mother, whose name she had never learned, had disappeared almost twenty years previous. One day during one of the more desperate times, when they had been without a queen almost a full year, she had simply vanished. Several Others had vanished with her, though the Others had been weaker from the start.

The village had been cursed shortly after Danya had been born, this had been the only life she had ever known.

Danya saw a flicker out the corner of her eye.

She turned and there stood the healer. He was there one moment, seemingly staring right at her, then gone the next.

He had been the man who had taught her about healing, who held the title but not the rank. He had always visited when Danya’s mother went away for a few hours though the man never spoke directly to Danya, or even in her direction. He would walk through the house, his old home, lecturing some unseen person on the ways a healer might use herb and skill to aid a body. He spoke of how magic could be used to heal a body, if one was a healer and had enough magic of their own, as well as an older kind of healing.

Sometimes those with their own magic simply need to be reminded that their body was not whole.

Which was not a fact that Danya had shared with Rewel. There was some trick to this reminder, she knew, though she wasn’t certain what exactly. She had been more than capable of mending several young women who had stumbled in bloodied or wounded, simply by taking their hand and reminding them silently that this was not how their body should feel.

Aren was another, though Danya had hardly had time to remind the body that it should function a different way before the queen began warming to the touch. Perhaps due to her strength, or her other oddities, or even because she was linked to the throne. Aren’s flesh reacted eagerly to the urging of magic, which made Danya wonder what Aren would be capable of were she to turn her magic onto her own flesh.

Suddenly, teleportation and flying didn’t seem so far-fetched, once Danya had time to think back. Once her mind was focused elsewhere but looking for a distraction.

The things that Aren might be capable of were only limited to what she thought she could do.

How far she could walk from the wall she was chained to was limited only by how far she thought she could go.

Danya wondered for what reasons the throne had sent Aren to the village. For rest? For time away? To solve the small problem of a village that was not working properly?

To teach her that she was limited only by her own self-doubt?