Stain

by A. G. Howard

  She made her way forward, pressing through the thorns that ripped her gown and bandages until the cloth hung in shreds. Fresh blood slicked her feet and skin. She winced instead of whimpered, and plunged through to find herself face-to-face with the Pegasus, a few steps from the swampy pit. His hot breath overpowered the bog’s stench with a fusion of musk, charred grass, and sweet clover.

  An indignant nicker greeted her and again she heard the voice, gruff and masculine: Danger. Kill. Fly. But it wasn’t aloud. It was inside her head. She could hear his thoughts . . . as he could hear hers.

  His wings labored with loud thuds—a futile attempt to escape the monstrous bracken clutching his neck—and sent gusts of wind across her scalp. She rubbed her nape with a bandaged hand. The baldness felt peculiar and out of place. She didn’t have time to consider why because the Pegasus’s efforts to escape had sucked him deeper.

  Stop moving. It’s pulling you under. Holding out five bloody fingertips, she tried to calm him. Do you have a name?

  He snorted, curls of sooty smoke rising from his nostrils. I require no name. I am destruction. I am flame. Step back.

  I only wish to help you. She exhaled a shaky breath.

  I need no help. I will save myself. Step back or I will scorch you to scars.

  His wild beauty fascinated her, and his arrogant pride made her forget the blood dribbling from her fingertips, the agonized throb of her flesh. Then I have nothing to fear, for I am already one big scar. She suddenly remembered how to smile. I will call you Scorch. And once I rescue you, you’ll belong to me. The possibility gave her hope, to have a companion she could ride upon—to fly above all this desolation. To leave the confusion behind.

  His head reared up, flinging goopy sludge across her face. I belong to no one but the sky.

  The goop leaked into her mouth and she spat out the taste of rot and dying things. She braved grasping a thorny vine in her hand. Unsung wails clumped in her barren throat as she wound the length around her waist to form an anchor line.

  Scorch grew still once more, watching her. Witless mite. You’re much too small to rescue anyone.

  Ignoring his disparagements, she huffed. Well, your beastly brawn seems to be more a detriment than a help. Small could be the advantage here. Why are you in this mess to begin with? She wasn’t trying to distract him as much as herself as she slipped into the cold, slimy liquid and the spikes at her waist punctured her flesh like angry talons. The anchor allowed movement without being sucked under, holding her secure as bones floated around her within the luminescent sludge. She shivered.

  This place is called the moon-bog. When the Pegasus answered this time, there was something gentler about his inner voice, as if he sensed her pain and terror. It’s said to be a window to the night realm. I wished to look for myself. I live for adventure.

  Well, you might very well die for it today. The girl managed the retort even as the thorns gouged deeper into her waist. Strangely, no tears would come despite how her eyes stung. Grinding her teeth, she towed herself toward the Pegasus. Upon reaching him, she tugged on the leafy tangles at his neck with mangled hands.

  Scorch ground his front hooves deeper into the bank, but held his wings folded to heaving sides, waiting. She sensed his impatience in the twitches of muscle, his distrust in the huffs of hot breath. The heat radiating from his sweat-slathered coat and his immense size frightened her, but she didn’t shy away.

  At last, she broke the bracken’s hold. He flapped his great wings, accidentally pounding her head. She capsized and her body plunged beneath the surface.

  The Pegasus climbed free and the murk rose, buoying her to the surface. She choked for air. The thorns embedded deeper in her waist as something tugged on the vine, dragging her up.

  She clutched at her anchor, letting the barbs grip her palms for added leverage. Once she emerged, she slumped on the bank next to prancing hooves. She laid there panting on her belly, clammy clothes stuck to her weeping flesh, one side of her face buried in ash.

  You are fierce, tiny trifling thing. Scorch’s muzzle, bleeding from the briar vine he used to drag her out, nudged the odd necklace that draped the back of her neck. He snuffled upward to her head—gentle against her baldness. But I still belong only to the sky.

  Just as she rolled over to argue, he reared, his hooves missing her skull by inches. Instinctively, her arms flew up for protection. Her fingers lit to a golden glow, startling both herself and the horse. Flame leapt from his nose, burning the skin in the spaces between her bandages. The tang of roasted flesh and singed blood filled the air. She coughed a silent scream. A flash of crimson darted in her peripheral where a fox wove through the briars toward them, snarling. Scorch whinnied and crashed out of the thicket—tail held high and wings trailed by glittering cinders. He offered one last nicker in the distance, this one rife with fury and elation.

  The fox became an elegant man dressed in red fineries, though his ears remained furry and pointed. Upon seeing her state, his orange, bestial gaze narrowed. He dropped to his knees at her side, smelling of dog, feathers, and wind.

  She was too weak to struggle as he cut the binds at her waist with a knife, then scooped her up and stood. Her eyes fluttered closed, her blood draining away in rhythmic drips at his feet.

  “No. Look at me.” His voice wasn’t in her head. It was persuasive and silky—an irresistible command that echoed across the glowing moon-bog. She forced her heavy eyelids open, squinting at his unearthly perfection, at his sharp-edged teeth. “You will not die twice on my watch. I won’t have you costing me my wings again. Stay awake now, little Stain. The fates have grand plans for you.”

  Part II

  In Which the Forest

  Swallows the Rose

  9

  Walls of Honeysuckle and Misery

  Deep within the Ashen Ravine, in a clearing isolated from prying eyes, hidden inside a house without walls, the girl with no identity drifted in and out of consciousness. Time passed immeasurably. The gray, hazy light that filtered through the leafy canopy overhead never seemed to wane and fever racked her body with shivering shudders.

  At one point upon waking, she tried to peer out from heavy eyelids, but it was like looking through hedges of white thistledown. She realized the fringe grew from her own skin . . . that it was her lashes blinding her. Reaching up, she plucked several free. An excruciating pain reached all the way into the pit of her stomach, as if the hairs were rooted to the very core of her being and scored her insides on their way out. She dropped the long hairs and doubled over on her pallet in agony. On the blankets beside her, the discarded lashes became liquid, forming a pool of moonlight. Just as the gutting pain began to ease, a fresh crop of lashes sprang from her eyelids.

  She slapped a hand over her mouth. Not only did she not know where or who she was . . . she didn’t know what she was.

  Too exhausted and confused for an escape attempt, she trembled in silence as the witch with a mud-pie gaze opened the patchwork curtains around her pallet to tip her horned head inside. Stain—as Luce the beautiful sylph had dubbed her—choked on silent yelps when the witch plied a diluted minty soup of meadowsweet down her throat, put comfrey ointment on her skin, or wrapped bandages over her throbbing wounds. Stain kept waking again and again to find herself trapped in this unsettling reality that both consoled and mortified in the same breath.

  On some level, she considered that her warden, who introduced herself as Crony, must be trying to help, for why else would she feed and minister to her? Unless they needed her alive for some ill purpose. Or were those of magic-kind capable of kindness? Speaking of “kinds,” did Stain belong to this place, among these otherworldly creatures? Why couldn’t she remember?

  Unfortunately, it was just as impossible for her to ask these questions as it was to communicate pain and fear. Without working vocal cords, all of her bottled emotions compressed tight within . . . a swelling, hot pressure that threatened to explode.

  Until at last
, that’s precisely what it did.

  Stain awoke in semidarkness. Her wardens . . . or captors . . . spoke in hushed tones on the other side of the drapes that muted her surroundings.

  “The Pegasus has been sniffing about again.” The sylph man’s voice drizzled sweet like satiny honey despite the underlying acidity of the words. “There are char marks on the trunks surrounding the house.”

  “May-let we should let him see her.” Crony’s voice was the opposite of Luce’s, like bowed, barren branches scritchity-scratching together in the wind. “May-let he’d be the medicine she need.”

  “How’s that to work?”

  “A creature that breathes fire and outlived the extinction of its own be a worthy guardian, wouldn’t ye think?”

  “He almost killed her in the moon-bog. I saw him aim to strike her skull with my own eyes. He’s feral. Unpredictable. Extend the wards beyond the house’s frame. The trees that surround us . . . plant your nightmares there to keep him at bay.”

  Scorch was only warning me. Stain wanted to shout his defense. Her muscles tensed atop her thin, lumpy pallet at the mention of nightmare wards. She wasn’t sure what such things were, but they sounded horrific. She thought back on the moment the Pegasus’s hooves came down inches from her head. She’d sensed his unspoken message: that he owed her nothing, for he had saved her from the bog just as she had saved him. He was showing her he didn’t belong to her, that he wasn’t to be tamed.

  But she didn’t wish to tame him. She wished to be heard . . . to be understood. The Pegasus was the one beast that seemed to have that ability. That made him the only prospect of a friend in this place she couldn’t remember. She wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him.

  Stain forced out a screech that erupted as little more than a gusty breath—unheard by any ear. Clenching her useless throat, she noticed the strange necklace again . . . a pendant of braided hair at her collarbone. A witch’s trinket. That must be what was silencing her. They’d rendered her unable to speak to keep her helpless and at their mercy.

  A nicker shook the leaves in the distance, and she realized her silent screech had been heard after all. Luce cursed from the other side of the drapes. “Our house is but a tinderbox, woman. With only a sneeze he could set us to flame. Cast your spell!”

  Before Crony could respond, Stain mustered all her strength to rip off the necklace and tuck it under her pallet. She plunged out from her sanctuary. Her vision blurred with feverish sights. The house loomed like a skeleton, a dizzying disarray of boards, nails, and discarded, unwanted things.

  Gooseflesh prickled along her body—beneath a tunic two sizes too big that hung to her knees—as she teetered between chills and feverish flashes. She scrabbled over the stony floor through a layer of ash, pushing beyond the torment of torn flesh to thrust her torso over the threshold before Crony and Luce could catch up.

  Something jolted through her the moment she crossed and hit the powdery terrain outside. A startling hiss filled her ears, though it didn’t come from either of her captors. It was locked within her head. Her vision faded; her body curled to fetal position and spasmed as her entire being funneled down into a malevolent darkness that scraped her hollow with claws and teeth. She sensed rather than saw the ground soften and swallow her whole. Underneath, in a suffocating earthen tunnel, formless creatures reached for her . . . things made of bone and shade that craved human flesh. She raised her hands to protect herself. Her fingertips lit to a brilliant gold—a light that scalded her skin and eyes.

  “She’s locked in a nightmare.” Luce’s panicked remark carried across a great distance, through the soil and ash spanning between them. “What is happening with her fingers? They’re lit up like lanterns! Stop thrashing, Stain. You’ll only tear your skin more!”

  “Where be her talisman?” Crony asked, sounding as far away as Luce. “Find it while I bind her to reality.”

  Stain burrowed through the dirt, subterranean like a worm, to escape the creatures she sensed gaining on her from behind. If she didn’t dig her way out, it would be her death. The light radiating from her fingers illuminated dormant seedlings cradled in pockets of soil that screamed to be renewed. Instinctively, her fingers burned brighter, hotter, as if all the fever in her body gathered at their tips. The seeds sprouted in answer, roots spreading and blossoms blooming, pushing upward toward the surface. Stain grabbed on and held tight—a flower’s roots wrapped around each wrist—springing out from the dirt and choking for breath against a heavy cloud of smoke and heat. Her eyes refused to open.

  “Stay back, rabid donkey.” Luce’s harsh warning broke through in the same moment Stain felt a string drop into place around her neck.

  Her eyes opened then, and the nightmare faded away to a scene of fire and flowers in the witch’s front yard. Stain had never been underground. It had all been in her mind. Scorch whinnied, prancing through the small clearing, nibbling on petals and leaving sparks in his wake.

  “There now, wee one, ye be back with us.” Crony caressed her fuzzy head. “No more crossin’ the threshold without yer necklace, aye? That be yer protection again’ the wards.”

  “How did you do that?” Luce asked Stain, barely allowing the witch to finish her instructions. “How did you call up the flowers?”

  She had no answer. Only then did she notice her hands were embedded in the soil, and with each painful pulse of her fingertips, the ground lit up and other blossoms sprouted: reds, oranges, golds, and purples. A rainbow giving life to the ash alongside Scorch’s trail of embers.

  “Let’s get you back to bed,” Luce said. He helped Stain stand and led her aching body over the threshold. Crony was already inside the cadaverous framework, tidying the mess Stain had left in the wake of escape.

  Stain stalled at the door, wavering on weak legs, catching Scorch’s fiery gaze. You came to find me.

  His gruff voice tapped her thoughts: I came to torment the fox-man.

  She grinned. You will return. We need each other.

  What use is a pesky little child to a steed of wings and flame? He stood on a path close to the doorway—yet too far to touch or be touched.

  Luce snarled for the Pegasus to leave but Crony intervened. “Let the wee one see the sky . . . it be twilight’s blink.”

  They all looked up together where a small opening in the leaves showcased a glimpse of blue. For one enchanted instant, the sun’s blistering brightness dimmed. Stain was able to view the endless heavens without her eyes burning. She saw new colors—purple, blue, and red—and imagined flying with wings of her own. During that flash of darkness, she looked back at the Pegasus and saw her eyes reflected off the dark mirrors of his gaze, amber and glinting like coins.

  He shook the sparks in his mane. You are not of this place. Your lashes are slivers of the moon, and your eyes pierce the darkness with starlight. He turned and trotted into the thicketed surroundings without another word.

  Stain backed into the house and plopped onto her pallet. Emaciated and flawed as it was, Scorch had given her her first glimpse of self.

  Crony handed Stain a teacup while Luce grumbled something about the yard. He carried out a pitcher of water and doused the tiny fires burning her flowers. The care he took in saving each one impressed her, and she began to trust him, yet remained wary of the witch.

  Crony withdrew the bandage on Stain’s waist and some scabs ripped free, reopening wounds. Stain choked on a soundless cry, wriggling to escape.

  Crony gripped her shoulder. “No need to hold back, wee one. Start makin’ some noise. It’ll help ye feel better. Grunts and growls be just as fine as speakin’ to one such as me. So don’t be afeared to try.”

  It was obvious then that neither of her keepers realized how broken she was. She suspected they knew no more of her than she knew of herself. Had they stumbled upon her . . . found her somewhere half-dead?

  She touched her throat, her eyes stinging with that bewildering hot dryness that should’ve preceded tears.

/>   Crony’s swampy gaze narrowed. “Ye have no voice?” She reeled back, as though the thought almost knocked her over. She turned to Luce, who stepped across the threshold with a bouquet of flowers in hand. “She has no voice.”

  Luce’s features—so lovely amid all the ugliness—fell. He shook his head and turned away with a low growl.

  In spite of Crony’s attempt to comfort, Stain feared her for all the wrong reasons: her reptilian face, the gruffness of her mannerisms, the horns that caught the hazy daylight, accentuating sharp, curved tips. The witch seemed wounded when Stain pushed her away. But there were walls erected between them that Stain had no means to break down—no way to communicate or common ground to stand upon.

  Crony moved aside and allowed Luce to redress Stain’s wounds. He managed to be gentle until he tied off a bandage too tight around her knee. At last, Stain’s bottled-up frustration overflowed, and instinct overtook. Her arms lifted and her fingers moved in symbols and letters that both surprised and empowered her. She yelled at him with her hands.

  He jerked back, bewildered. “What is she doing?”

  Crony moved closer, her soupy eyes wide with wonder. “Speakin’. She be tellin’ ye that ye tied up her leg like a tourniquet. Loosen it.”

  Luce did as he was asked. Thrilled to be understood outside of her mind, Stain signed a thank-you to Crony. Then told her everything she could remember: the truth about the Pegasus, how she awoke without any recollection and was frightened by Crony’s slumbering form, how the strands of sunlight that peered through the leaves burned her skin.

  Crony responded patiently. The witch confirmed that they’d found Stain dying close to the entrance of the ravine, and that anything of her past was a mystery. But Stain pushed aside the loss she felt, for now she had made another connection. Her trust burgeoned like the flowers she could call with her fingertips. She realized Crony had a kind soul and wasn’t the monster she’d mistaken her to be.