Winter’s Light

by M. J. Hearle

  Sam shook his head slightly, regarding her with deepening concern. ‘Blake died on the mountain, Winter.’

  It was like Jasmine all over again. Why wouldn’t anyone believe her?

  ‘I know what happened, Sam,’ Winter responded, her voice raw with emotion. ‘I was there. But somehow he survived. Not here, but in the Dead Lands.’

  ‘The Dead Lands?’ Sam frowned at her, but at least that maddening look of pity had left his eyes.

  ‘I think so.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know for sure. It was over so quickly. He’s being held prisoner by something. Some awful creature in a red robe.’

  That seemed to get Sam’s attention. ‘A red robe? You’re sure of this?’

  Winter nodded enthusiastically, encouraged by his reaction. ‘Yes, do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever heard of this happening before? Someone being reincarnated? Surviving death.’

  Sam hesitated before answering. ‘No. I haven’t. It’s impossible.’

  Winter felt the hope that had swelled within her start to sink, but then she noticed something strange about Sam’s oddly blank expression. He was lying to her.

  ‘Sam —’

  ‘I’m sorry, Winter. Dead’s dead. Not even a Demori can come back to life.’

  ‘But how do you explain what I saw?’ she asked, studying him closely. He shifted uncomfortably beneath her stare.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘So you don’t know for sure? If I’m right, if Blake’s alive. Will you help me?’ There it was, a simple desperate plea.

  Sam swallowed drily, turned and opened her bedroom window. ‘If I can. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

  He picked up the duffle bag and threw it out of the window. She heard it land softly on the grass at the foot of the tall tree outside her bedroom. Winter stared at him, waiting for him to say something else. Something that would scour this feeling of uncertainty she now had. This new sense that her hope was a fool’s hope.

  ‘I’ll see you at six-thirty. Just before sunset,’ Sam said, ignoring the disappointment in her eyes. For a moment, Winter didn’t know what he was talking about and then she remembered Benedict.

  ‘Don’t be late,’ he continued, and she had the impression he was almost eager to be out in the dark. ‘You should be safe during the day as long as you stay in the house. Try not to go anywhere alone.’ Stepping out onto the window ledge he looked back at her, a half-smile playing on his lips.

  ‘Crazy night, huh?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Winter couldn’t muster a smile. With one furtive glance Sam had managed to compromise the trust she’d awarded him.

  He seemed to sense this, his expression conflicted as he turned and leapt agilely onto the branch of the tree outside her bedroom. It sagged a little beneath his body weight but held firm. Winter watched him grip the branch and skilfully lower himself down. He hung suspended over the ground for a moment before dropping soundlessly onto the grass. In an instant he was up and scurrying into the shadows.

  Still upset by his reaction, Winter nevertheless felt a pang of concern as soon as Sam disappeared from view. Was he really going to spend all night alone in the dark? She wished they’d established some kind of signal Sam could use if Benedict showed up. Staring out of the window pensively, that secretive look in Sam’s eyes haunted her. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, he’d said, and she would make sure they did. She didn’t care if they were being hunted by a vengeance-crazed, soul-sucking monster. If Sam knew something about where Blake was, she would poke and prod him until he gave up his secrets.

  Winter closed the window and sat down on her bed. Picking up the journal and notebook Sam had given her, all her concerns and anxiety fell away. These were Blake’s words, his story. Reading them wouldn’t be the same as holding him in her arms, but it might make the vast distance between them seem smaller somehow. She opened the leather-bound journal and fanned slowly through the yellow pages, her fingers tracing Blake’s neat, flowing script. Though the words didn’t make sense, it made her happy to imagine Blake sitting at his desk writing them.

  Reverently she placed the journal next to the lodestone on her bedside table, touching the leather binding one last time, then lay back with Sam’s notebook. His handwriting seemed much coarser than Blake’s perfect calligraphy, but she could read it with little trouble.

  The first entry was dated August thirteenth, less than a month before Blake came to Hagan’s Bluff. She felt a cold shiver creep down the back of her neck as her eyes scanned the opening sentence.

  Claudette escaped tonight.

  Blake’s Diary, August 13th

  Claudette escaped tonight.

  It was close to midnight when I heard the cats begin to scream and I knew something was wrong. The storm had been so loud that I almost missed their cries, obscured as they were by the howling winds and deafening thunderclaps. Fearing the worst I quickly made my way through the dark house, guided by the bursts of purple and blue lightning from outside. The power had been off for nearly an hour. Coming up the stairs to the second floor, I saw the bodies. Dozens of them scattered in the hallway. She’d fed before escaping.

  Horrified, I entered her room and saw the empty holding circle. There was a pool of brownish water on the ground, smearing the chalk I’d used to trace the circle. It must have been how she escaped, though even now I’m mystified as to how she came across the water. Tomorrow, when the sun’s high and she’s sleeping, I’ll examine her room. It’s imperative that I solve this mystery.

  While the method of her escape eluded me, there was no doubt in my mind as to where she’d gone. The perfume of the Dead Lands still hung heavily in the air. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed her – I Travelled, praying that it wasn’t too late. That I’d find her in the dark skies over the city before she made a Shadow Door.

  Soaring just above the clouds, I was aware of the narcotic effect of the air as I drew it into my lungs. Almost instantly my fears vanished and the panicked thoughts racing through my head were soothed by a deep calm. I welcomed the sensation, rather than fight it. Confronting Claudette would be easier with a clear mind. However, I made a conscious effort not to look down at Krypthia, into the light wells. The moments it would cost if I succumbed, if only temporarily, to the light’s call, could mean the difference between intercepting Claudette or missing her.

  I’d all but given up hope when I saw her ahead, white robes billowing about her like the wings of some monstrous bird. She was in the process of creating a Shadow Door and through the thin grey veil separating the Dead Lands from the Earthly Realm I saw a house with a child’s red tricycle standing in the front yard.

  Even the narcotic-laced air couldn’t stop the flash of horror I experienced upon recognising that house.

  It was Ellen’s.

  I’d dropped her home there two nights earlier after finding her waiting on my doorstep with her charity documents, the silly pretence she used to visit me. The tricycle belonged to her brother Eric. He’d been riding around on it as I’d parked to let her out. Seeing the Shadow Door open, and realising Claudette’s dreadful purpose, I willed myself to fly faster.

  Just before she passed through the Shadow Door, I collided violently with her mid-air, sending us both tumbling down towards Krypthia. Claudette quickly gathered herself, rebounding from the shock of my unexpected attack, and started lashing out at me in fury, hooking her hands into claws, tearing at my face and chest.

  Tangled together in the air, we fought for what seemed like hours, our battle taking us down into the low clouds drifting above the city. She tried to disorientate me in the churning mists, but I was determined not to let her go and held firm. Eventually she tired, and in that split second when she weakened I created a Shadow Door back to the house on Iris Street, back to her room. Dragging her screaming through the portal, I threw her down on the floor, bracing myself for a renewed battle.

  Instead, Claudette fell to her knees and let loose a howl of suc
h brutal torment I almost went to her, almost took her in my arms. For a moment she was my sister again, and her misery wrenched at my heart. Only for a moment though, and then she glared at me balefully from beneath the grey tangles of her hair, and I saw murder in her eyes. I was her prison warden. Nothing more. An obstacle to be overcome. Or destroyed.

  Quickly I retraced the part of the holding circle that had been washed clean by the water, and sealed it with the words Val Muren had taught me. She watched me complete the process from the far edge of the circle, a chilling smile on her face, as if she knew something I didn’t. Even when I left the room, her smile remained with me, an uneasy companion in the dark.

  The storm had eased to a light drizzle as I collected the bodies of fallen cats and carried them to the backyard. I buried them with as much reverence as I could muster in my exhausted state while a conclave of cats watched on. They didn’t blame me for what happened, however that didn’t alleviate the guilt I felt, shovelling the wet soil down onto their cousins’ wasted forms. Smoothing down the earth over the graves I was gripped by an awful sense of premonition.

  Ellen, the girl I’d met at the grocery store who asked so many questions. Ellen, who somehow found out where I lived. Ellen, who just wanted to be my friend. To know me. Staring at the grave I thought of her. Claudette must have observed the girl’s first visit to the house, watching her through the boards I’d nailed up over the windows. Or perhaps she simply heard her voice as she spoke to me on the doorstep. In any case, I now know Ellen has been chosen.

  It’s my fault. I should never have ventured into town, there are other ways to obtain supplies, groceries. It was foolish of me. If it had been anyone else standing behind the register then perhaps I would have passed through the grocery aisles unnoticed. Ellen noticed me. She saw me as the others did and followed me here.

  Am I to live as a hermit, cut off from society for fear of bringing swift death down upon those I come in contact with? Perhaps I should disfigure myself horribly? Then those poor souls who find me so fascinating will no longer see the illusion of beauty. They’ll see the monster. The monster who greets me in every mirror’s reflection.

  The sun has nearly raised itself up fully from the shadows of the world and soon it will be safe for me to rest. Tomorrow I will begin the preparations for the move. We’ve lingered in this town long enough. Already I feel the hot breath of the Bane on the back of my neck, but this isn’t why we must go. That knowing smile of Claudette’s haunts me even now as I sit here writing. The longer we stay here the chances of my premonition coming to pass grow stronger. I won’t let another die. I mustn’t.

  The Black Mirror

  The room smelt of death.

  A thick, cloying odour, which reminded Lamara of meat left in the sun too long. As she drew closer to her mother’s bed, the smell became stronger. The smoke from the hearth fire could not cover it. Three months was all it had taken for the illness to progress this far. Enoch, the village healer, had told Lamara her mother would not survive another three. Looking down at her mother’s wasted form, the grey patches on her cheeks, the thin, colourless lips, Lamara believed him.

  The gods had abandoned them.

  She had made the necessary sacrifices, fasted, spent hours in silent prayer, yet they did not answer. They would not answer. Outside she could hear Teodore’s hammer as he worked with the other acolytes, forcing the stones into place. Her mother hadn’t awoken in two days and she didn’t think the sound of hammering would succeed where her prayers had failed. The work needed to be done. They were so close to finishing.

  Lamara’s pulse quickened as she saw her mother stir, moaning softly. Perhaps the noise had roused her after all? One trembling hand crept blindly from beneath the covers, reaching for Lamara’s. She took it in both of hers, shocked at the cold touch of her mother’s skin. It was stifling in the small room, but clearly not warm enough. She needed more wood for the fire.

  ‘Mother?’ Lamara asked, staring anxiously down.

  ‘Dau-daughter?’ Her eyelids slowly raised, the pupils taking a moment to adjust to the flickering firelight. Though the sun had yet to disappear behind the mountains, Lamara had covered the windows to block out the icy gusts, which roared down from the snow-capped peak above.

  Seeing her mother shivering, Lamara said, ‘I’ll fetch you another fur.’ She began to pull away, but her mother’s grip was surprisingly strong.

  ‘The gods . . . have spoken to me,’ she rasped in between painful breaths.

  Astonished, Lamara found herself momentarily at a loss for words. Eventually, she stammered, ‘What did they say?’

  Her mother’s eyes clouded and she began to drift away, the effort to speak too much. To her shame, a brief impulse to shake her mother awake gripped Lamara. She calmed herself. They could speak of the vision when she next awoke. If she awoke.

  Lamara went to brush back a lock of black hair from her mother’s feverish forehead, and was startled when her eyes snapped open.

  ‘Moth—?’

  ‘They told me . . . what you plan on doing,’ she hissed.

  Lamara frowned, disturbed by the look of accusation in her mother’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t —’

  ‘Promise me you’ll stop this madness.’

  ‘Mother, it is just the sickness —’

  ‘Foolish girl!’ She struggled to sit up, her voice rising. ‘I hear the hammers outside! I know —’ The words were stolen by a violent coughing fit. Lamara quickly took one of the strips of cloth by the side of the bed and held it to her mother’s mouth, easing her gently down. When the fit passed there was blood on the cloth.

  Her eyes slowly shut again, and her voice became weak. Whatever fire had briefly entered her body now sputtered out. ‘Promise me, daughter,’ she whispered fiercely. As it struggled to escape her constricted throat, her breath sounded eerily like the mountain wind whistling through the nooks and cracks of the hut. ‘Promise me you will not go.’

  A knock at the door offered Lamara a chance to escape.

  ‘There is someone outside,’ she said by way of an excuse to leave. Before she could close the bedroom door, her mother whispered again, ‘Promise me, Lamara.’

  She hesitated in the doorway. A part of her sensed this might be the last time she spoke to her mother. ‘I’ll return soon.’ Later, she would think back on these words and question whether or not she knew she was lying when she spoke them.

  Teodore was waiting for her outside the hut, his clothes and beard covered in a thick layer of white rock dust. He looked like he’d just wandered in through the snow. Towering over Lamara, he remained humble in her presence, unable to meet her gaze. She knew it had less to do with her standing and more to do with whatever secret emotions he harboured behind those kind, grey eyes.

  ‘What is it, Teodore?’

  Teodore cleared his throat, his gaze darting to her, then away again. ‘It is finished, Farseer.’

  Lamara’s eyes widened slightly, but this was the only outer evidence that his words had affected her. As the youngest farseer in the village’s history she had learnt early to affect a commanding presence even though she still felt every bit the insecure seventeen-year-old.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Teodore nodded, eager to please her. ‘It is to your design. As we finished carving the final rune it began to give off a strange heat. The men are afraid.’

  Lamara’s mouth had gone dry. So soon. She had seen the progress they were making but thought there were still days worth of work ahead. Her mind reeled with the enormity of the task she was about to undertake.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said, quickly returning inside to grab her wolfskin and taking the time to compose herself. It would not do to let the others glimpse her conflicted emotions – the excitement and the fear. She passed by the bedroom on her way back to Teodore, and considered briefly entering. Of going to her mother and embracing her.

  Lamara convinced herself that it would b
e best not to disturb her again – she needed her rest – but a deeper truth insisted something else. She did not want to meet that accusing gaze again. Promise me you will not go!

  Stepping out of the hut, the cold wind stung Lamara’s face. She drew the wolfskin tightly around her and followed Teodore down the winding path. Their home lay on the slope of the mountain, positioned back from a flat piece of rocky earth that jutted out over the valley. Just over the lip of the shelf, rows upon rows of treetops poked up at the crimson sky like arrowheads. In the distance the sun glared malevolently over the craggy peaks of the mountain range, like an eye filled with blood.

  Her gaze was still fixed on the red sun – a bad omen if ever she read one – when she finally saw the results of Teodore’s labour. Lamara’s breath caught in her throat. The portal was precisely as she remembered it, so much so that she had to blink several times before her mind was convinced it was real, and not the stuff of dreams. Twelve feet high, Teodore had constructed the two concentric granite rings precisely as she’d drawn them in the clay. The runes chiselled into the rings were the same as the ones she held in her mind, the same ones that had haunted her dreams since that day when the farseer had disappeared. The central black disc was now in position. It had taken the acolytes many months to source this last piece, and more than once Lamara found herself cursing the men who had destroyed the original portal, fearing that she might never gather the materials necessary to re-create it. But no, here it was, standing against the darkening sky just as it had before.

  Teodore’s three apprentices – Dermid, Gula and Rais – stood a good distance back, regarding the portal fearfully. They had not yet passed the necessary rituals to become acolytes, and if the tentativeness written across their features now was any clue, she doubted they ever would. Some men were not meant to witness miracles.

  ‘Does it please you, Farseer?’ Teodore said, watching her nervously from beneath his thick, stone-dusted eyebrows.