Twisted Fate

by D. N. Hoxa

  She only waved her hand for me to keep going. So, I did.

  We reached the house, and I stopped in front of it, not sure whether to be in awe of it or terrified. It was made of wood so dark it looked black, with a canopy of trees all around it, each large leaf reaching toward it. In the dark wood, there were skulls—animal and human skulls of all shapes and sizes. They looked melted into it, like the wood had poured over each bone. It was as beautiful as it was terrifying.

  My heart beat steady in my chest. I looked down at my shoulder, at Hiss, who’d raised his head to see, too.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  I never got the chance to answer before the door opened.

  And then, I couldn’t find the words to answer if I tried.

  She could have been an inch or two taller than me, but that was where our similarities ended. Her shoulders were narrow and on them hung a black fabric unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It looked leather, and sometimes plastic, and sometimes ice or a glass surface while she moved. Her eye took all of me in while mine were stuck to her face. The face that was almost completely covered by metal.

  The silver-colored metal was beautifully engraved and in all the right places where her right eye and brow and nose and lips should have been, leaving only her left eye and cheek visible to the rest of the world. The mask ended around her jawline, revealing a long, slender neck, the color of her skin whiter than mine. Her left brow was white, too, but her hair was as black as the fabric of the robe that hung loose around her. The same color as her eye.

  Air had trouble getting into my lungs, so much so that my magic was alarmed and was searching for damage to fix inside my body.

  Then, she spoke.

  “Have you come for release?”

  Her voice was a melody, dissolving in the air like it had traveled a great distance to reach my ears. Only the echo of it brought me her words.

  Involuntarily, I took a step back. I didn’t dare blink for fear she’d disappear because she didn’t look real at all. She looked perfectly made up.

  “Hello, Soul Splitter,” Julie said, her voice as dry as it had been before. “My name is Julie. This is Elo. We’ve come to talk to you about something urgent. And important.”

  She only looked at Julie once before her one eye focused on me, and then on Hiss. She didn’t look surprised or the least bit curious to see a snake with ten eyes.

  “I see through you,” she told me instead. “Come on in.”

  I expected her to start floating on air. Gravity just didn’t seem like a big enough force to hold her down, but I heard her steps loud and clear, even though I couldn’t see her feet from the robe that dragged on the floor behind her. Her house had seemed small from the outside. On the inside, it was everything but. A large hall with two corridors to its sides, with too many doorways to count was right off the main entrance.

  I looked at Julie for a moment, and in her eyes, I saw her fear. It mirrored mine, even though we were afraid for two different reasons.

  Hiss must have sensed my hesitation because he licked my neck, right below my ear, sending shivers down my spine. Taking in a deep breath, I followed the masked woman to the other side of the round hall and through a set of double doors that led us outside again.

  The back of her house was similar to the front. It was surrounded by trees on all sides, their tips turned inward, acting like a fence that separated this place from the rest of the world. Skulls of all kinds decorated every separate piece of land where she’d planted flowers and vegetables and berries, too. I saw the strawberries burning bright red among the green, and for a moment, I was back in Gaena, in Mace’s castle, enjoying the sound of his voice and his stories.

  But when she stepped in front of me, all thoughts of strawberries were forgotten. The way she looked at me said that she hadn’t made up her mind about me yet. I could see my reflection in the black of her eye. Her white skin was like porcelain—a stark contrast that only gave her appearance an even more intimidating feeling.

  Her hands were folded in front of her, her chin raised, and she was more still than the trees behind her. She was waiting for me to speak.

  “My name is Elo Heivar. Thank you for letting us in,” I finally said.

  “Welcome, Elo. I am Faceless,” she said. “How much longer until you tell me what you want from me?” She didn’t sound impatient, only curious.

  Chin up, Taran, my father would have said if he were here. I knew what I was doing this for. Appearances didn’t matter. What this woman looked like made no difference. It was her help I had come here to seek.

  “Not much,” I said, hoping to ease up the tension in the air for a bit. “I’m elf, as I’m sure you’ve already seen. I’ve come here, to Earth, to get away from my House, who left me to die at the hands of the fae. But recently, I’ve encountered something else, something very dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than fae?” she asked. It didn’t surprise me that she knew. It was no secret to the worlds that Gaena was in constant war.

  “Much more,” I said with a nod. “They are called sidhe, and they’re a kind of fae themselves. They were banished from Gaena a very long time ago, and now they’ve reunited to claim our world as theirs.”

  For a moment, Faceless was perfectly silent.

  “And why would you want to stop them?” The echo of her voice in my ears made me shiver once more.

  “Because Gaena is my home.” There was no stronger reason than that. “I have to stop them before they get through the Gateway in the New Orleans Shade. To do that, I need help.”

  When I said those words, they sounded ridiculous to me, too. How could I, a woman barely out of teen-hood, stop an army of deadly fae who could command light with their magic?

  “How would I be of help to you, I wonder,” she whispered, her eye moving to the grass beneath us for a moment, but the one engraved on the metal of her mask stayed with me, and it felt like it could see me just as well as her real eye.

  I risked a look at Julie, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from Faceless. Her lips were parted, and sweat lined her forehead.

  “I don’t know.” The words rang in my ears. Such a disappointment. Faceless didn’t react at all, so I continued, desperate to fill the void of silence between us. “All I know is that I was tasked with finding my soul before I could fight the sidhe, and my friend Hiss thinks that you are it.” I touched Hiss’s head over my shoulder.

  Her eye moved to him instantly, and for a moment, she analyzed him in detail. Hiss only kept licking the air with his tongue and let her watch him.

  “Do you know what I do for a living, Elo?” Faceless finally said.

  “No.”

  “Do you know why they call me Soul Splitter?”

  “I don’t.” But the name suggested it wasn’t anything good.

  I could have sworn she smiled, even though I couldn’t see her lips at all through her mask.

  “May I show you?” she whispered, but she didn’t wait for a reply. She walked to our left, to a patio right next to the tall trees that provided a perfect shade against the sun. There was a rectangular black box on a table, and it didn’t look anything out of the ordinary. Faceless opened it with such care, you’d think it was a living thing. What she pulled out of it wasn’t something I’d ever seen before.

  It was some sort of an instrument, closer to a violin than anything else, only it was different, too. The wood of it was as shiny and as black as the wood of the house at our back. There were only two thick strings on it, and the shape of it was a bit rounder and the handle narrow at the base before it expanded toward the tip.

  She put it over her left shoulder, her eye closed, and she brought a bow with hair seemingly made of metal to the strange violin. When her eye opened, it focused on me.

  Then, she moved the bow.

  The melody was very similar to her voice. It filled the air everywhere, and at the same time, it blew away with a nonexistent wind. It was a haunting sound, and the
strings wept every time Faceless touched them. It reached into my very core and squeezed hard until a sigh left my lips. Even my magic didn’t know what to do against it. It wasn’t an attack. It was just music.

  While I listened, I saw Julie fall to her knees through the corner of my eye. When I was able to look away from Faceless playing her violin, I was horrified all over again.

  Julie was on her knees, on the ground, her head lowered, chin pressed to her chest. Over her head, something shimmered. It was shapeless and it kept moving all around itself, but it never moved away from over Julie’s head.

  Julie didn’t move at all.

  I didn’t know what to make of it, partly because my mind insisted that what I was seeing wasn’t real. How could it be? Julie had been standing right there a second ago.

  But then the music stopped.

  “She will be okay,” Faceless said, her voice pulling me out of my trance. I fell to my knees, too, and Hiss slithered out of my jacket.

  “Julie?” I whispered, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Julie, wake up.” My hands shook. My whole body shook.

  “She can’t hear you for now, Elo,” Faceless said, and she was much closer to me now. “Her soul is free. Can’t you see it? Have you seen a more beautiful sight?” Her ghostly hand waved over Julie’s head, at the white shimmer floating in the air.

  “What are you doing to her? Stop it,” I warned. I didn’t care how much I needed her help. If she hurt Julie, I was going to hurt her. I could feel her heart beating. My magic was already inside her body. All her organs were alive. They were perfectly within reach of my magic. I could put her to sleep, even kill her, long before she could play a string in her violin.

  “I’m only giving her release,” Faceless whispered. She was on her knees, too, right next to me. Her hand wrapped around my shoulder. “She will be okay. Walk with me.” And she stood up.

  I couldn’t leave Julie’s side. I tried to raise her head so I could see her face, but her body was as stiff as a rock. I was afraid of hurting her by pushing too hard.

  “Come, Elo,” Hiss whispered and started to move toward the garden where Faceless was waiting for me.

  I closed my eyes and convinced myself that it was okay. I had no reason to doubt Faceless. Julie was going to be okay. She was still alive. Everything inside her was functioning as it should.

  Only her soul was no longer in her body.

  I had never been in stranger situation in my life, but I managed to get up, anyway.

  “You literally split souls from bodies,” I said, and I sounded bitter. Something about this whole thing didn’t sit well with me. I watched the shimmer over Julie once more, but to look at it too long made me dizzy.

  “I do,” Faceless said, and she said it proudly. “People come to me from all over the world.” She turned her head toward her garden. “Everyone needs a break from themselves every once in a while, and there is no more blissful state of being than that.” She waved her hand at Julie. “She is completely free.”

  But Julie didn’t look free. She looked like a statue.

  Convincing my legs to take me forward took effort. I was exhausted by the time I was next to Faceless again.

  “People ask for this?” How could someone want their soul out of their body?

  “Every day,” Faceless said. “It is both my gift and my curse, but it is beautiful.” We walked ahead, but I turned every few feet to see that Julie was exactly like I’d left her. “Now that you’ve seen, what do you think I can do for you?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have an idea. Killing Julie right now would be the easiest thing in the world to do.” She was perfectly motionless. A knife to her heart and she would be no more. “You can kill an entire army with only one soldier.”

  “I cannot separate the souls of an entire army, I assure you,” Faceless said. There was no amusement in her voice, though I could have sworn she was smiling again. “I can only do it with eight, maybe ten at a time.”

  I nodded. “That would be more than enough.”

  “Tell me your story, Elo. Your true story,” she whispered. “We can sit here, and you can tell me who you are.” She waved at the other side of trees. There was no patio there, but there were two old benches beside one another, with a faucet made of mud rising from the ground in between them. Clean water ran out of it and into the ground, creating a miniature river that flowed toward the batch of purple flowers at the end of her garden.

  “Will you tell me who you are, too?”

  “Perhaps—when the time is right.” She sat down gracefully on one of the benches, pulling her robe around her. I saw her feet, her skin as white as the rest of her, her toes barely covered by flat black shoes.

  I looked at Hiss, who was making himself comfortable wrapped up in a bundle on the other bench. He nodded his head slowly to me, as if to tell me that it was okay. That I could share every secret I had with this strange woman.

  That any of this made even a little bit of sense.

  I looked back at the beginning of the garden, where Julie still kneeled on the ground, her soul shimmering over her head. Finally, I sat down and told my story.

  Chapter 13

  Chapter

  * * *

  Faceless stared away at her garden, lost in thought. I watched the flowers, too. And the strawberries. The story I’d shared still tasted bitter in my mouth. What would I give to have even one of those strawberries to chase away all the reminders.

  Instead, I caressed Hiss’s scales while he lay next to me on the bench, his head resting on my thigh.

  I gave Faceless time to ponder over what I’d told her. I’d only left out the personal parts of my story so far because if I had any hope that she would be honest with me and decide to help me, the truth was the only thing that would lead me there. It wouldn’t always work, just like it hadn’t with Daredevil, but Faceless was different. She listened differently, too. She never interrupted or mocked me. She cared.

  Julie was still on her knees, her soul hovering over her head. I wondered how much longer she would be like that. I wanted to ask, but before I did, I sent my magic to Julie to search for any pain in her. There was none. She was in perfect health.

  “Those strawberries,” I heard myself say. “May I have one, please?”

  Faceless said nothing, only gave me a nod. It was enough. My mother always told me that even in the worst of times, one should always learn how to appreciate small things, small victories. Maybe this is what she meant because when I sat on the ground in front of the strawberries and picked the brightest one I could find, it felt like a victory to me. It was small, but its color said that it would be heaven on my tongue.

  It was. I closed my eyes and ran away from Faceless, from Earth, from the universe. I didn’t think for once—I only enjoyed the strawberry.

  “What you ask for is my life,” Faceless said from behind me. My eyes opened to find her standing over me, her eye focused on the strawberries. I stood up. “I don’t have one.”

  I looked down at her chest and felt her heart beating. “Yes, you do.” As long as she breathed, she lived.

  Once more, her left cheek became slightly rounder, giving me the impression that she was smiling underneath her mask.

  “What can you do for me, I wonder,” she whispered, raising her hand toward my face.

  I resisted the urge to move away. She only touched my hair with the tips of her fingers.

  “I can heal you,” I said. “It’s what I do.” Maybe there was no pain in her now, but there was a reason why she wore that mask. A burn, maybe? Anything her skin had suffered, I could mend.

  “I don’t need to be healed,” Faceless said. “I hate it when people assume I hide my face because I’m concerned with appearances.”

  “It wasn’t my attention to insult you. I am just offering you what I have.”

  “What you have right now doesn’t interest me,” she said bitterly.

  “What she will have, might,” Hiss spoke for the
first time. He was on the ground, bundled next to my feet, and all his eyes were focused on Faceless. “The trust she’s shown you doesn’t come easy. It doesn’t come from the untrustworthy.”

  I expected Faceless to be at least a little surprised to hear Hiss’s voice. She wasn’t.

  “The trust she’s shown me comes from desperation,” she said to Hiss. “And what did her trust do for her in the past? She lost everything because she trusted.”

  Her words weighed on my shoulders. “And I will gain it all back the same way. I trusted my brother because he is my blood. I trusted the Winter prince because he earned it. I trust you with the life of my friend because I am desperate. One way or the other, we all have our reasons to trust. If you’re going to hold that against me, I will take it as your answer.”

  “That is not my answer,” Faceless said without hesitation. “You are strong, Elo, but you are young. You want to save a world, but you have no idea how much saving a world costs. Do you?”

  “Whatever the cost, I’ll pay it.” Gaena was worth it. My people were worth it.

  “A favor, then,” Faceless said. “Not now, but in a year, a decade, a century. That is my price.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said in a breath. “If you tell me who you are. What are you?”

  “I used to be a witch, but I will tell you what you want to know before I collect. That is my word,” she said. “How will I be certain that you will pay my favor when I come for it? People change. Only when the change suits them, but they still change.”

  “In a year, or a decade, or a century, if I live, I will repay your favor with whatever you ask. That is my word. My soul is yours if I don’t.”

  Finally, Faceless looked surprised. Her black eye widened, and she even leaned away from me for a bit.

  “You have the courage of a fool, but your gift is invaluable. For it, I will fight beside you, here, on Earth. And if you die before this is over, your soul is mine all the same. That is my deal.”