by Jason Malone
I did not know it at the time, but that young lady would change my life.
Harold gave me a wave to indicate I could sit back down. Gunn introduced me before I could, and Harold seemed intrigued when he heard I was a Godspeaker. He asked why I was there, in the middle of nowhere during one of the harshest periods of the year.
I told him I had a job a few days to the north — some villagers were having problems with a ghost — and I was heading back home through the hidden paths in the woods to avoid paying the tolls along the main roads. Godspeakers were once believed to be above all other men, but now those of us remaining either sell our gift to whoever pays or become outlaws.
Harold offered to let me stay for as long as the snowstorm persisted. He had a couple of spare bedrooms, he said, and plenty of food stockpiled to last us the whole season if need be. I thanked him for his hospitality, and he and Gunn left me alone to finish the cold stew and stale bread his daughter had brought me. It was not the best meal I had ever eaten, but it sufficed.
Once I had finished, I sat cross-legged in front of the fire and meditated, emptying my mind and detaching myself from the dark and bitter night. Harold’s dog — a big, slobbery bloodhound — came to join me after a while, curling up by the fire with its head resting on my leg.
I closed my eyes and thought of home. I hated travelling during winter. This season was a time to remain indoors, after the harvest had been brought in and the weakest animals slaughtered for meat. It is a time to celebrate the closing of the year and take shelter from the darkness and the cold as the god Alcyn rides through the land with his host of souls. Winter, and Winterlow, is the time to remember the dead and honour our ancestors who reside with the Lord of the Otherworld. I preferred to be under my own roof in my own home — the home my master had passed on to me.
But instead I was here, out in the wilderness under a stranger’s roof, trapped in a snowstorm. Because of that blizzard, I would never spend Winterlow in my old master’s hall again. That Gods-damned blizzard both ruined and made my life, you will see, which was why I began my tale with it despite what the storytellers say.
If it were not for that snowstorm, I think I would never have met the Immortal King from the legends — or perhaps I would have, because Fate always gets her way.
I do not remember for how long I was meditating, but sometime after my hosts left me alone, a servant came and showed me to my room. The hall was two storeys high, surprising for a village this deep in the woods, and my room was upstairs. I immediately sank into the soft bed and feather pillows, wrapped in thick furs, and only then did I realise how tired I was.
I entered a dreamless sleep and awoke the next morning to the wind screaming outside my window. I stared up at the rafters and sighed. I knew I would not be going home that day.
I spent about a week in that house, so I took the time to get to know the family hosting me. Harold had a wife called Eloise, and they had three children: Gunn, their eldest and only son; Matilda, whom I had met on my first night; and Alia, Harold’s eldest daughter.
Alia was the friendliest, and she greeted me cheerfully my first morning in Henton, but Gunn was also enthusiastic to entertain a guest. Eloise was somewhat timid, and her youngest daughter even more so. Harold was polite and welcoming, but it seemed like his hosting was more out of duty than pleasure.
Still, I grew to like the whole family. They were certainly good hosts and made every effort to make my stay as pleasant as possible, all things considered. Harold and Eloise served a hearty breakfast each morning and a modest supper to finish the day. Harold also opened a barrel of his finest wine, which we enjoyed in the evenings as we sat near the big fire in the main hall, trying to keep warm.
At night I told them stories of my past journeys, which I admit grew more embellished with each cup of wine, but the family did not seem to notice. They enjoyed hearing tales of ghosts, elves, and other Otherworldly beings. Harold also talked about his time during the Usurper’s War, during which he fought for King Edwin and earned a damaged arm for his troubles. Despite fighting on the losing side, Harold gained his pardon by swearing loyalty to Lord Wim after the war, like most other nobles in the land.
As the nights grew late, Harold and Eloise would retire to bed, but Alia, Gunn, and I would stay up by the fire in the main hall, drinking and playing draughts or dice games. Matilda did not join in but would sit with us and watch. She would grin whenever I won a game, though, and would sometimes tease her sister when she lost. The two of them looked so alike, but they were of very different character.
On the second night and all the nights following, once everyone had gone to bed, Alia would visit my room, and we would enjoy each other before falling asleep in each other’s arms. Alia would wake up before the rest of her family and sneak back to her room to avoid her parents suspecting her nightly rendezvous.
Matilda was shy, but of the whole family it was she who seemed most interested in the tales I told. Her siblings preferred tales of action and struggle, but Matilda preferred the ones that meant the most to me — those of the Otherworld.
Her favourite story was of the time my old master took me to meet the Lord of the Forest and two unusual young lovers at an Otherworldly wedding. I was eight winters old at the time, afraid of the world I had been suddenly thrown into, but it was an encounter that filled me with hope.
Those tales laid the foundations for the bond that formed between us. She told me the occasional monk or merchant would come through bringing news, but most of what she knew of the outside world came from books. “I very rarely get to hear stories from a real traveller,” she said on one of the occasions we were alone together. “Especially not from someone as different as you.”
I took that as a compliment. I had been called far worse than different in my lifetime, and besides, Matilda was a little different herself. Even in those first few days I already felt we could understand each other. She sometimes bumped into the hall’s columns and doorframes, or into furniture, because she would walk around with her eyes on the pages of a book. There were also a few moments when I caught her on her hands and knees or jumping in an attempt to capture some kind of insect and put it in a jar. She would blush when she noticed me watching, mumble an apology, and hurry off to another part of the hall.
Her odd behaviour made me curious, and so I decided to ask her about it. I knocked on her bedroom door one day, hoping that if I talked to her there, she would not be able to escape should she become embarrassed.
“Come in,” she said after I tapped the door. I pushed it open to find a small but homey bedroom. A bed was pushed up against the wall away from the window, with fur covers and a feather pillow; three bookshelves stood against another wall stocked with a wide array of tomes.
Beside the bookshelves was a desk littered with more books, various jars and trays containing insects both dead and alive, and several half-melted candles. Above that, more shelves were nailed to the wall, holding even more jars. A worn rug lay in the centre of the room — an attempt to bring warmth to the hard wooden floor, I assumed.
Beside the open window was an armchair, and sitting in that chair, with her face buried in a book, was Matilda. “Good afternoon, My Lady,” I said.
Matilda looked up from her book, wide-eyed, and threw it onto her bed. Her black hair fell loose on her shoulders, and she was wearing a white blouse underneath a dark purple dress. Matilda stood, brushed off her dress, and then curtsied a little. “Sorry. A lady does not read,” she said. She blushed.
“You must not have met many ladies,” I said. “All proper and respectable noblewomen are very well educated. I once met an earl who needed his wife to read him his letters!” Matilda smiled at that. “May I sit?” She nodded, so I took a seat on the bed and picked up her book. “Comparing Moths with the Human Soul,” I said, reading the spine. I looked up at Matilda.
“I like insects,” she said.
“I can see that. So, are there any similarities between th
e soul and the moth?”
She nodded and sat back down. “Yes. The caterpillar is like our mortal lives,” she explained. “It crawls around, never straying far from its plant, and seeks only to eat. It eats and eats until it is big, and then it goes into a cocoon, from which emerges the moth. To us, the cocoon is our grave, and when the moth emerges, that is our soul breaking free of its mortal bonds.” Matilda blushed and looked down at the floor.
I smiled. “A theologian who likes insects. You sure are full of surprises.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
I frowned but ignored the apology. Why was she sorry? “Well, I came to ask you why you keep chasing insects, but looking at your room, I can see why.”
Matilda opened her mouth to speak, but she was interrupted by a loud wail, followed by the shutters rattling and then bursting open. Snow poured in through the now open window, and the room was filled with the sound of howling winds.
Matilda jumped from her chair to push the shutters closed again, and I went over to help her, holding them shut while she bolted them in place. She was panting, her hair now a wild mess. She looked around the room. The floor was littered with patches of snow and hail, and she scratched her head. I looked down at the base of her desk, where a jar had been shattered.
“That’s no coincidence,” I said. A large moth stood amongst the broken pieces of glass and began to beat its wings, shaking off flakes of snow before taking flight and doing circles around a candle. Matilda saw the moth too and looked back to me for an explanation. I shrugged. “Or maybe it is.”
Matilda caught the moth in her hands, spun around, and then went over to her shelf to put it inside an empty jar. “I need your help,” she said, her back to me. She shuffled her feet.
“Oh?”
“For my whole life, I have read about the world. I have learned of amazing places and different insects and interesting people, but I barely get to see any of it. I want to see the world. You are a traveller, and you have told me your tales. You can take me with you,” she said.
“I think you have the wrong idea,” I said. “I’m not a hermit. I do have a home, and I have only seen a fraction of the world.”
“Of course. But even a fraction of the world is enough for me. If I do not leave here, I am destined to be shut away in this boring hall for a few more winters before being married to some boring lord who will only lock me away in his boring house for the rest of my life. You are my only chance of getting away from here.”
I frowned. “The world is dangerous, Matilda. They do not talk about the frequent decapitations, dismemberments, diseases, and curses in those stories you read. And besides, what about your collection?”
Matilda looked desperate. “I can get a new collection. Please, Edward. I can clean your house and cook for you. I can wash your linens and clothes and sharpen your sword and scrub your mail. I can warm your bed, I am a vir—”
I stopped her there. She was beginning to make me uncomfortable. I could not just take this girl away from her family, let alone take her with me when I wandered. I walked the wilds, and the wilds are no place for a woman.
“That will not be necessary,” I said. “I already have servants who are paid to do those things.”
“I can do it for free.”
I looked down at Matilda for a long moment. My Gift is a powerful one. I can see things that most people cannot see: elves, dwarves, ghosts, Thorns, and sometimes even gods. I can sense when the restless dead are near. I can understand the conversations between birds. But the most useful of all these things is my ability to see a person’s soul. And as I looked into Matilda’s deep blue eyes, I saw a soul crippled by loneliness and longing. It was like staring into a mirror. How could I say no to her?
“In my line of work, you learn to trust your gut,” I told Matilda. “And my gut is telling me it would be unwise to leave you here, but I do not think your father will be pleased to see you go.”
Matilda smiled, and it seemed as though she was about to leap for joy, but she maintained her composure. “Yes, well, you will talk to him, will you not? He only really cares about Alia anyway,” she said. I nodded, and she smiled even wider.
“I will try. I must go for now, but I promise I shall do what I can to get you away from here. I expect I will see you at supper?” I asked.
“Yes, yes. Thank you, Edward,” said Matilda.
And so I left Matilda to her books and her bugs, wondering if I had made the right choice to promise. Where had that come from? How long had she been waiting to say that? Could I really just take her away with me and give her the adventure she wanted?
I do not know why, but something inside me told me I could not ignore her request. Something prevented me from saying no. Perhaps I only said that to escape her room and keep her happy for the moment, or perhaps in that moment I genuinely wanted to help her.
I spent the rest of the day meditating in my room, but I could not focus. My mind was constantly harassed by the thought of what to do next. Should I keep my word and help Matilda, or should I find some way to let her down gently? Her father gave me his hospitality, and it would be an incredible insult to take his daughter from him after that, for I would be breaking the sacred bond between guest and host.
Nevertheless, my intuition was telling me to take her. Get her away from here, it told me. She has a far greater purpose outside of Henton.
And so she did.
I did not talk to Matilda’s father about taking her away. I thought about it. I ran through different reasons and excuses in my head, but none of them were enough to justify Harold sending his daughter away with a man she was not to marry, let alone with a Godspeaker. I thought about lying and saying that I could make her my apprentice, but she showed little signs of having the Gift, and besides, Godspeakers have always been men. It would not be believable.
I could have offered to take her hand in marriage but soon tossed that idea aside. I was not a lord, but I owned land, and being a Godspeaker does carry a certain level of prestige among the nobility, so it would not have been an unreasonable match.
However, I was not ready for that kind of commitment. In those days, I imagined I would remain unmarried, like my master, and pass my possessions on to an apprentice. I was not going to marry a girl just to free her from her boring woodland village.
No, I needed to take her away in secret. Her family would only be able to know after she had left. What I was planning would be seen as little more than a kidnapping, the only difference being that my victim was willing. Gods help me, but I made a promise, and honour demanded I keep it.
The blizzard began to let up on the seventh day, and the following morning the skies were clear once more and the air was almost still. It seemed as though there had been no storm at all.
“You may stay for another night, if you wish,” Harold told me that morning. “It will be difficult to travel today, with all the snow on the ground.”
“I’ll accept that offer,” I said. I felt a pang of guilt, for Harold was offering me more hospitality than he needed to, and I was planning on betraying him.
“Good. We will have a little farewell feast in the main hall tonight, for we have truly enjoyed having you. Wanderers as interesting as yourself do not usually come this way,” he said. I smiled, and he went off to do his tasks for the day. He was overseeing the repairs being made around the village, but he declined my offer of help.
I decided instead to explore Henton a little, now that I could go outside and see it. Unsurprisingly, there was not much to see. The village consisted of several dozen homes, with a little marketplace in the centre. Henton’s well was dug in the middle of that marketplace, where some people had erected stalls and were busy selling wares they had crafted while locked up during the storm.
At the southern end of the marketplace was a tavern, already lively with laughter and song, while at the northern end was a small temple. I headed to the north to visit Henton’s priest.
“Edwar
d Godspeaker,” he said as I entered. I shut the temple’s door behind me, leaving the sounds of the marketplace outside.
“How did you know?” I asked, looking around the room. It was dark, the only light coming from a brazier that sat in the temple’s centre, and by the wall opposite the door was an idol dedicated to Hefenstea, the goddess of vengeance, omens, dreams, and the stars. The priest knelt before it.
“I cannot remember the last time someone who wasn’t Lady Matilda came to my temple. When I heard Oldford’s famous Godspeaker was in Henton, I knew I would have a visitor soon enough,” he said.
“No one cares for Hefenstea anymore?”
The priest shook his head. “Not in Henton, although the young lady is quite fond of her. Why have you come?” He turned to face me and slowly climbed to his feet. He was old, and in the brazier’s light I could now see he was also blind.
“Someone still has to honour the Gods,” I said.
The priest grunted. “I know why you have come, but you do not. Hefenstea has brought you here.”
“The goddess?”
“Who do you think conjured that blizzard?”
I did not reply. I washed my hands in the icy water that filled the basin by the door before splashing some on my face. I approached the idol and knelt before it, pressed my hands together, and bowed. Behind me, I heard the priest filling a horn with wine, which he blessed, then handed to me. I said some prayers to the goddess, poured the contents of the horn into the large bowl at Hefenstea’s feet, then bowed again.
“Hefenstea has sent you here to help her exact vengeance against Vylan, the fallen god who defiled her. Do you know the myth?” the priest said.
“I know the myth,” I said. I watched as the wine slowly drained through the small hole in the bottom of the bowl.
“Good. Hefenstea has revealed to me in a dream that a Godspeaker would come alone but would not leave alone, and this shall be the first step in Hefenstea’s revenge.”
I looked up at the wooden idol. Hefenstea was a fearsome goddess. She was once the fairest of all the Gods, and during a great betrayal she was raped by the fallen god Vylan. Hefenstea swore that she would avenge herself and slay Vylan and would not return to the Heavens until she had fulfilled her vow.
