Curse and Whisper

by A J Gala

  “Doddie, is that the same place you prepare food?” She whipped her head in the direction of the body.

  Troll Daughter folded her arms before answering. She prepared food there sometimes… obviously not now.

  “You can’t just go dragging dead bodies in here!” Naia wailed. “You know better than that! Gods, what am I gonna do with all of you?”

  Tizzy piped up as Naia walked out with the tray. “I had no part in this!” She could hear Aleth and Troll Daughter laughing about something again, and she grumbled. “Why is it,” she started, approaching him, “that lately, every time I leave you alone, I find you halfway to blackout drunk?”

  He let her take the bottle. “No blackout here,” he smirked. “Nothing is strong enough to mess me up right now.”

  She wasn’t sure how many grains of salt she should take the comment with, as his track record for sniffing out things to get him “messed up” didn’t comfort her. She tried to forget that she knew the effect Lilu’s venom had on him.

  “You sure seem messed up to me.” She took a sip of what was in the bottle and winced. It was wine, or at least it had been originally, but it had been mixed with blood and other liquor. “Is everything you drink so vile?”

  He thought about it, kicking his feet. “Yeah, I guess most of it is.”

  Troll Daughter made a snarky comment about the man on her countertop, and Aleth’s laugh was more of a giggle.

  “Doddie, he’s dead, that’s gross! You can’t just drink blood from a dead person; it’s like—it’s like syrup!”

  She asked him, pausing for his giggles, if he knew that for a fact, or if it was just something that another bloodkin had filled his head with. Then she said she’d give him one gold coin if he did it.

  “What? Really? A whole gold coin?”

  “Aleth, no.” Tizzy threw her arms out. “Do not take that dare. You don’t need one gold coin!”

  Troll Daughter doubled her offer.

  “I think I should do it, Tizzy.”

  All she could do was shake her head. The two started back up with their inside jokes, and Tizzy tuned them out, taking a moment to examine the body. When she saw the bite marks on the body’s mangled neck, her jaw dropped.

  “Did you do that?”

  This time when she looked at him, Aleth was markedly uncomfortable and started to fidget. His good humor faded.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I just—” she was caught off guard by his defensiveness, “—I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Wasn’t expecting it from me? Because you don’t think I’d do things like that?”

  Troll Daughter sighed and told them to go outside with whatever nonsense was about to happen.

  “What?” Tizzy put her hands on her hips. “No nonsense is about to happen! I just asked a question!” She saw Aleth leave out the back door and sighed. “Oh gods. Aleth, where are you going?”

  She couldn’t believe she was following him out and participating in what was likely to be an alcohol-fueled tantrum. She didn’t have but a few seconds to prepare what she’d say as she came out into the clearing and shut the door. As soon as it closed behind her, he swept her off her feet and held her back against the cliffside.

  With flushed cheeks, she studied his face. “You’re not upset at all, are you?”

  He bit his lip through a grin. “No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She hated how vulnerable she felt when he gazed at her with such confidence. She hated that he knew it too—that he could see the evidence all over her face.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked her.

  “What did you do out there? What happened with that man on the counter?”

  He leaned in, and she could feel his breath on her skin. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you sure? I feel like I should. You’re acting unusual.”

  “How is drunk and aroused unusual for me?”

  “I see your point.”

  He laughed. “You can see it if you want.”

  She snorted, and he laughed harder, and she slipped in his grasp.

  “Way to ruin the mood! You can’t make jokes like that.” She took a minute to catch her breath. “Alright, put me down. I think you need to take a walk.”

  He let her boots touch the ground, then backed away and surveyed behind him. “A walk? I don’t know. Lately, whenever I go out here, something bad happens. Broken bones, whole arm almost ripped off by a wild boar—”

  “Good thing I’m here to protect you.” She grinned, and his wry smile told her that he didn’t feel safe at all.

  They set off anyway, walking through the Bogwood beneath a clear, starry sky. The air was thick with the scent of mud and dead leaves—the true scent of autumn. Tizzy’s heart was light as a feather.

  “I don’t feel like going back,” she said. “Naia’s nosy, and she’s such an over-sharer! About everyone! I know way too much about people I’ve never even met. And then there’s Yasuo. She’s told me all kinds of things about him that I never asked. It’s sure a lot harder to look him in the eye.”

  “Just him?”

  She looked up at him, a dash of sin in her eyes. “Believe me, she’s spilled plenty about your habits. Don’t worry though. I’m not judging.”

  “You’re judging.”

  She took his hand and led him through a winding path of bushes. “If I were, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Oh!” He bellowed. “My habits aren’t that bad!”

  “They’re pretty bad, but I get it. I get it.”

  “Please. You do not ‘get it.’ You and I are so different. You’ll never understand why I do the stupid things that I do.”

  She felt guilty for sobering him up. She squeezed his hand and kept leading him through the forest, through tall trees halfway through losing their leaves, until there was another clearing far away from the inquisitive friends at Sheerspine.

  “Of course I understand. Before you came back, I didn’t exactly handle myself all that well.”

  A full day of unobscured sunlight had dried up most of the mud. Up above, a waning sliver of moonlight hung.

  “Do tell about what a reckless drunk you were. I’m sure this will be riveting.” He planted himself on the ground while she started to wander.

  “I don’t mean like that,” she huffed. “But no one wanted to be around me. You could ask anyone. I’m sure you could even get sweet little Allanis to admit it if you really pestered her enough. I was just mean.” She dragged a few logs over to where he was sitting. “I didn’t even have a reason to be. I just was. All the time. To everyone. I don’t know, maybe it was just the headaches.”

  He watched her work one of the logs into kindling and tinder with her knife.

  “You never really were a people person,” he said. “And if I’m being honest, you’re still mean. But you seemed to like Gavin and Isa well enough.”

  She chuckled, scraping pieces of bark into a pile for the fire she wanted. “You saw how I was when Athen and I first met them. I know you were there. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I could just feel you out there with us. Watching.”

  He bit his knuckle. “I probably shouldn’t admit to how often I’ve done that.”

  “You’re such a creep.”

  He found a little stone in the dirt and threw it at her. “Apparently, that’s just your type. But I couldn’t have been the only one. Tizzy, tell me there were others.”

  She’d amassed a decent pile of kindling and tinder and decided the next step was digging out space for her fire. She spent a minute locating a nice, flat rock, then started the chore, scooping out cold dirt from the ground.

  “What do you mean?” She grunted.

  “Tizzy.” He groaned into his hands. “You’ve had interest in other people, right? You’ve stared at someone’s ass, you’ve flirted, you’ve—I don’t know—but you have, right?”

 
“No. I don’t like people. Having an interest in someone is the farthest thing from…” She cut off her words with a noise of thought. “Actually, you know what? Centa’s friend Phio is cute. But I don’t think much more of him than that.”

  For a split second, Aleth remembered his outing with Troll Daughter. He remembered Cato and carving a message into his arm.

  “So you got as far as calling someone cute?”

  “Then you happened. You walked in so tall, so angry, all wet from the rain—”

  He groaned again.

  “I guess everything changed after I finally fed. Without those headaches, I swear I’m a different person. I’m the way I was supposed to be. Shit, if I had felt like this before, maybe things would have worked out with that guy Allanis kept trying to hook me up with.”

  “Wait. What?”

  She knew that would get a response out of him. “Yeah.” She smiled. “Really nice guy. Really nice. Too nice. I couldn’t stand him, but now that I think back on it, he was a good-looking piece of—”

  “How good looking?”

  She pursed her lips together as she thought. “So good looking that I might be regretting my choices!”

  “Tizzy, if you’re just now regretting the things we’ve done, there’s a problem.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  He suddenly regretted saying it. He rubbed his knees and sighed. “A little part of me regrets it every time. I never should have let it happen; we never should have gone down this path. That night of the storm—” He trailed off and shook his head. “But I love you. That’s the part that wins this argument every time.”

  Once the firewood was arranged, she dug out the flint in her pocket. “There’s no part of me that regrets it. Just a part that feels guilty because I know I’m supposed to.”

  “Don’t feel guilty. I’ve always known you were a little fucked up, and I don’t hold it against you.”

  “Excuse me!” Her jaw dropped. “I am not!” Her shoulders bobbed with a little laugh as she got sparks to catch onto the kindling. Soon, a small flame came to life.

  “A bold-faced lie, sister.”

  It was her turn to throw a rock at him. He got up, grinning, and started dragging fallen boughs over to their spot. They sat together on top of the plush pine, watching the fire in front of them crackle amidst the darkness. She laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Thank you for everything,” she whispered. “I hated the way I was before. I didn’t know I could feel this way, and as crazy and awful of a world as we’re in now, I wouldn’t change any of it.”

  He put his arm around her. “I need to tell you something.”

  When she glanced up at him, he didn’t meet her eyes. “What is it?”

  “I sent a message to Allanis.”

  “What do you mean you sent a message to her?” She sat up straight. “When did you send it? Why? I’m confused.”

  “I had an opportunity today while I was out. A creative one, but it worked. I was thinking of you. You seemed really happy when you said you talked to her in your Ethereal form, so I thought I’d keep the dialogue going.”

  “What—how—”

  Normally he wouldn’t have been proud to be explaining the day’s earlier events to her, but something had changed. Perhaps it was the culmination of Maran’s words, of Tizzy’s own efforts to reassure him, of Troll Daughter’s outing, and of a damn good feeding… and perhaps it was something else. He finally stopped trying to figure it out and accepted his new outlook.

  “The body in the kitchen is a Hunter. Doddie and I found him. He was harassing some other man. So, I took care of it.” Remembering all of it made his blood rush. “Afterward, I realized the other man was going to be headed to House Hallenar, so I sent him with a message.”

  “Aleth, what does all that mean? You’re being vague. Why was he going to House Hallenar?”

  “He, um, was a raider. He’ll be looking for Adeska. He was convinced she’d be at House Hallenar still, so I gave him a message. On his arm. That I wrote with a knife.”

  “Oh my gods.”

  He laid down with his arms behind his head and a wide smile on his face. “Yeah.”

  “Wait, which raider was it?”

  “Cato.”

  She didn’t know what to make of the news and could only barely picture the man in question, but she didn’t feel good about it. When she looked over at Aleth, he was staring up at the stars, his conscience as clear as she’d ever seen it. Some part of her said she ought to be troubled by it, but she dismissed it and lay down with him.

  “It’s going to be cold out tonight,” she said.

  He knew it would be, but he couldn’t feel it. All he could feel was the Hunter’s blood buzzing in his veins. “What were you doing with one of Doddie’s books earlier?”

  “I was trying to learn about lilitu. I know we’re going to have to start thinking about going back to the Convent, and I got stuck thinking about everyone there.”

  “Louvita’s going to come after us if we don’t face her first. She’s not going to let go of you and Maran.” He found her hand and laced his fingers with hers, holding on tight. “But why were you so stuck on lilitu, specifically?”

  Tizzy shrugged. “I think I should make an effort to understand Lilu. She’s so different from us—the way she does things, the reasons she does things—and I thought if I could make sense of it, she might be less upset with me all the time. Or at least I could be better prepared for it.”

  Aleth sighed. “She’s different even by lilitu standards. She’s here in the first place because she doesn’t do things the way she was made to. Books aren’t going to help you very much.”

  “You sound like you know a lot about her.”

  “I’ve known her for a long time. We have history. Most of it is bad, but not all of it. She talks about a lot of things when she thinks I’m not listening.”

  “I’ve been told you used to spend a lot of time with her.”

  He chuckled. “You sound jealous.”

  “Just wondering what it all means.”

  He searched the stars for the ones he knew, for the constellations friends and acquaintances had shown him years ago. He could just barely remember lying in the grass with Tizzy and Rori as children, making up constellations of their own and imagining outlandish stories.

  “She was there for me, in her own way. Everyone is hard on her about what happened—when I went to her after what happened with Torah—but it’s not fair. She wouldn’t have known what she was doing was bad for me, and even if she did, she wouldn’t understand why she should have given a shit. She gave me a way to escape when I wasn’t ready to face everything. Tal and the others don’t get how much I needed that.

  “I don’t know if she was really doing it for me at all, but I try not to think that far into it. Her venom took me just far away enough. And when she thought I was too high to hear her, she would just go off about everything. One of Doddie’s books actually calls lilitu ‘Mother Daemons’ because they steal children.”

  “Has Lilu ever—”

  “I don’t think so. Not in the time I’ve known her, at least, but she’s hundreds of years old, so who knows? Daemons are made with human souls that don’t make it to Botathora, and lilitu are tasked with acquiring them. Sometimes they can steal a child away directly to the Hell Planes to become a daemon, but other lilitu are more inventive. They’ll spend more time on this Realm, impersonating a mother and convincing a child to kill for them. Those souls have a direct line straight down. The point is that Lilu isn’t doing any of that. She refused.

  “She’s never said why. A year ago, another lilitu came to the area. We think it was to talk to her, but Lilu went out and killed her before we could find out what was going on. But I think I understand. Lilitu are essentially servants. And Lilu will never spend her life in servitude, whether it’s for the good of her species or not.”

  Tizzy wondered if the daemon had truly been made in the image of
the others at all. How could she rebel against the very purpose she was created for? She let her thoughts get away from her and nestled in closer to Aleth, resting her head on his chest, listening for his heartbeat. She could barely hear it. Little by little, as they slipped farther from human and closer to nightwalker, their organs were losing their necessity.

  The topic of Lilu had cemented the sour note of the Convent. They had gotten away with running, but she knew just as well as he did that there would be repercussions.

  “Aleth, are we going to be okay?”

  “We can’t be okay forever, Tizzy.”

  “That’s one way to dodge a question.”

  He traced a hand down her back. “I wasn’t dodging. I’m just not sure if being okay is part of the picture anymore.”

  She breathed in and could feel the anxiety start to close in around her. “What do you mean? Why would you say something like that? Gods, I was relying on you for some positivity.”

  He felt the breath of her hmph on his chest and grinned. “Someone once told me to never lose sight of the big picture. And that is some of the dumbest shit anyone has ever said to me.” He continued to trace his hand along the curves of her body. “So, naturally, I came up with strategies to completely forget about the big picture.”

  In the blink of an eye, he had rolled her onto her back and pinned down her arm. She smirked, but the blush across her cheeks betrayed the confidence she tried to fake.

  “Is that why you drink so much?”

  “That’s not the only thing I do.”

  Her other arm was suddenly pinned too. She struggled just enough to test herself. Despite regular feeding sessions with Maran, her strength hadn’t grown to match his. He knelt down and brushed his lips over her cheek. She shied away.

  “What? You ignore my boundaries, you insist and insist even when I say no, but now that you finally have me where you’ve wanted me, you’re changing your mind?”

  She winced as his grip tightened. “I—I didn’t—what are you trying to say? None of it happened like that! I didn’t—I’m not—” she moaned when he kissed down her neck, “—I would never—”

  “You did.” His lips were still tugged into a smile. “It’s okay, I forgive you. But you should at least do me the favor of fessing up to it. None of this should have happened, but you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”