Solstice: A Short Story

by Wendeberg, A.

  A cawing makes her eyes fly open. She looks up. A mistake. With the sky so far away, she feels as though she’s falling already.

  She grips the pole tighter, wanting nothing more than to cry out for her mother. Why is the world such a scary place? Why is everything so loud? The moon so bright? Can she even be sure it is the moon and not the sun?

  She inhales a calming breath and sends her gaze across the roof. Its edge is close by. There’s an iron monster — maws gaping in a perpetual scream. She might be able to catch it. If only she dare let go of the post and slide down a bit farther…

  One try, she tells herself and opens her fists.

  Wind hits her face, then her arms catch the ugly metal structure. Her ribcage screams in pain, but she’s caught it. She’s caught it.

  She gazes down and almost loses her grip. Below her yawns an abyss. Black and endless.

  She sucks in air. Maybe courage comes like that — with a deep breath and a rumble of the heart.

  But she doesn’t know where to go next. There’s nothing else to hold on to. She looks around frantically as she feels her fingers weaken. Her arms tremble, her shoulders, her whole body.

  A clicking of talons on the roof. She looks up and spots a black bird with a blood-red beak walking up to her. Is it possible for birds to grin? It has no teeth as far as she can see, but the corners of its beak are curled upward, the beady black eyes twinkle. It hops onto her hands, croaks a sharp call, and drives its beak into a wrist.

  She slaps at the bird with one hand. Another peck, a bead of blood, and she slips. For a short moment, all is quiet. Then, wind howls in her ears, pushes between her bare legs, into her armpits, her nostrils. Her feet touch a slippery surface, her buttocks graze it, she tries to turn around, grappling to find a handhold but all is a blur. The surface — could it be another roof? — begins to tilt, slowing her descent, until she’s in thin air once more. A heartbeat later, water engulfs her, the icy cold emptying her chest in a bubbly scream.

  She almost regrets not having fallen onto sharp rocks, for now she’ll die slowly. Water fills her mouth, her airways. She’s gagging and kicking, unable to cry out, for her lungs are already empty. As her head breaks the surface for a brief moment she hears a sharp ‘Caw!’

  The noise is enough to make her reach toward it, stretch out, kick again and again, until her hand finds something slippery, but solid. She pulls herself up on it, gasping and sputtering until all liquid has exited her airways, and finds the bird not far from her, marching along what appears like the rim of a large bowl. She looks around. This is what she’s plunged into: a bowl more than twice the size of her cell. Why would men build a bowl that size and fill it with water? Who would be big enough to ever drink from it? Horrified, she pushes the thought away.

  The bird taps its beak against the rim, tock tock, then points it down an alley. Hurry up, the bird seems to say.

  And so she does. She pulls herself out of the water, and sets off at a run. It doesn’t take long for her legs to burn like fire. The longest distance she’s ever walked in her life is the thirteen paces from one wall to the other. If the guards find her, it will be impossible for her to outrun them.

  The scent of rain clings to her skin and hair. If she had the time to notice, the sweetness, the utter freshness of it, would make her weep. She’s believed that water inherently smells and tastes of corroded tin jug.

  She comes to a halt, her sides aching, chest barely able to pull in enough air. A large silver disc throws its light upon her. White pinpricks scatter across the black, as though someone has spilled milk. Milk, like Mother has given her. One of her fondest memories.

  It must be night, then. The moon is sometimes a sickle and sometimes a disc. That much, she remembers from her mother’s tales. When the sky is clear and not covered by what Mother called “clouds,” one can even see the stars. And that is what she’s seeing now. Night is when man sleeps. The few that are awake will have limited eyesight, for the moon doesn’t provide enough light for them. To her, though, it is brighter than her cell. Almost blinding in its intensity.

  Behind her, she hears the sounds of metal clanking against metal. But her feet won’t move. Her mind cannot grasp the immensity of what surrounds her — the grit digging into her bare feet, the scents of fire and urine, the moonlight reflecting off wet stones, the height of buildings, and how sound bounces off them. The world pushes down on her, assaulting her senses. The vast space above her might collapse onto her any moment now, mightn’t it?

  The sound of a key scraping into a keyhole, followed by a click, and a door opening, finally makes her leap. Shouts echo through the alleyway.

  She runs. Past stone houses and water wells, over cobblestones polished by time.

  In the shadows of a doorway, she slithers to a halt. She recalls her mother talking about men riding horses to be fast. Horses live in stables, and stables have large wooden gates. Horses eat hay which supposedly looks a bit like straw, only with much smaller seed-things on its tops. And that’s what was littering the street in front of the tall wooden gates she ran past only a moment ago.

  She traces back a few steps, lifts a bar, and peeks through a crack in the wood. Enormous creatures on four legs blink gentle brown eyes at her. Hoping these are indeed horses, she squeezes through the gap, not daring to open the doors wide, lest someone discover her. Her feet step forward while her mind stutters one warning after another.

  She approaches, tentatively reaches out and touches soft noses. One of them pushes warm breath across her cheeks, and she asks, softly, whether he (or she?) might want to come with her.

  The animal doesn’t understand her words, but it likes the scents of the girl and her soft hands. Sensing her urgency, it kneels for her, allowing her to climb onto its back. She wriggles, trying to entice it to run, and the horse feels a tingling in its legs and decides that a meadow, somewhere far away from here, is a much better place to be right now. It takes a timid jump forward, and glances back at its passenger.

  She clamps her legs tight around the horse’s belly, her hands entwined in its mane, and the creature prances to the large doors, nudges them open with its broad head, and bolts toward freedom. The manure stuck to its hooves flies off in wide arcs.

  Daughter hides her face in the horse’s thick mane so as not to see the enormity of space, whizzing past. She wishes she could plug her ears, for the knocking of hooves on cobblestone, and the song of the wind are too much to take. But what’s lying behind is far more terrifying.

  With a few whispered words, she begs the horse to run faster, and it seems to understand. They fly over the street and out through the castle gates, their hinges long untended, iron wings corroded by time and battle.

  They dart into the forest. Twigs seem eager to brush her off the horse’s back, to hold her near the castle, to be found, to be dragged back to the dungeons.

  A knot forms in her throat as she thinks of Mother’s cold body. She feels herself tiring and beginning to slide off the horse’s back, and the animal feels it, too. It adjusts its pace a little, and bumps her back up to where she’s more comfortable. She flings her arms around its neck, and utters a choked, ‘Thank you.’

  Forcing images from her mind, those of papery-thin, scarred skin, of frail arms and grey lips, of that cruel, cruel tug that separated body from spirit, she tries to focus on the present.

  She is free, but she cannot rejoice. She felt freer at her mother’s side. The horse’s warm mane takes in her tears, her gulps and sobs.

  Death’s belly brushes the forest floor. The heavy scent of wild boar makes his mouth water. Paws extend talons, gripping the soil; his muscles tense, ready to propel him forward.

  A noise reaches him. His ears swivel toward it. A rhythmic thrumming. A horse, quickly approaching. The pig notices it too, and escapes with a grunt. He hears the huffs of horse and rider. The wind carries stinks of manure and rain, of dungeons and man. His hackles rise.

  He readies himself, assessin
g their path, and soon he spots the horse plummeting toward him. The small figure hunching low over the horse’s back is barely visible.

  He trots toward them, lightly, as though to greet the two. Time slows. Hooves touch the forest floor, sink into the soft soil, and kick it up. The breath of the horse exits flared nostrils. The whites of its eyes glimmer in the dark. The rider’s bare heels dig into the horse’s sides, toes and soles black with dirt. Bony knees trembling.

  He lunges, his left front paw extends to swipe the rider off the horse, but something unsettles him. He’s unsure if it might be the way the wind lifts her hair, how it appears to be wrapped around a lover’s wrist, gently tugging and releasing a moment later. He’s unsure why this hooks into the centre of his chest, into the organ that’s solely there to pump blood through his body.

  The horse is about to get away. The wind ruffles his whiskers.

  He stretches his long body and his talons make contact with his prey, breaking soft skin. The horse screams and the rider falls, her long hair catching the moonlight.

  A low thud. A sigh, that of exhaling one last breath before losing consciousness.

  His silver pelt ripples as he pounces on his prey. Her lids flutter. Her eyes open. They have the colour of beech leaves in spring. She blinks, orienting herself. Not a child anymore, but not quite a woman, either. He feels the heaving of her small ribcage under his paw.

  Somewhere in the depth of his mind, where the long-forgotten lingers, covered by dust and time and memories of war, of violence and death, there deep in that forlorn abyss, something begins to stir. He blinks it away.

  There’s a shy flutter of fingertips against his cheek, and his thoughts are back to where they should be: on killing. He folds back his ears and hisses, readying himself for his prey’s piercing shrieks. But the gentle touch doesn’t break, the screams don’t come. Startled, he licks his nose, and leans his massive weight on her ribcage. He feels the tittering of her heart against his paw, the urgency of her lungs as he slowly limits her intake of air. He watches the frantic struggle grow weaker. Her face reddens, her lips pale, and life begins to drain from her.

  She punches his nose in a last effort. It surprises him. Her pupils are wide, swallowing the spring green. Her small hands try to wrap around his throat, but he’s too massive. Her fingers barely reach through his thick fur. He shows her his teeth in a snarl, feels the hand loosen as her lips send a gentle flutter of fog out into the night. Her limbs slacken and the fresh green of birch leaves disappears behind her lids.

  He lowers his head and closes his jaw around the delicate throat. Incisors pierce the tender skin, and sweetness spreads on his tongue. The aroma is so unexpected, so overwhelmingly delicious that he can’t help but sink his teeth in father before he slackens his grip and runs his rough tongue over the punctures he’s made.

  His eyes graze her collarbone. As delicate as a sparrow’s. Blood pools where her neck meets her shoulder, and loses itself in the bed of dead leaves she lies upon.

  As he stares down at his prey, he notices that her hair is the colour of the morning sun. There’s a glow to it he’s never seen.

  Confused, he turns to look at the night sky. Stars. A moon. The sun couldn’t have dropped down without him noticing it.

  He turns back to her and blinks again, as though to wipe away the unexplainable. The clicking of blood as it hits the ground makes him lower his head once more. He licks the wound he’s inflicted. Her heart still beats a tentative rhythm, her lungs stutter a staccato.

  He sniffs at her lips, and a forgotten past expands in his chest, weighing him down. A peculiar feeling of familiarity makes his cold soul ache, and he wishes he could remember his name. The name his mother gave him.

  But his mind does not provide an answer.

  He lifts his paw off her ribcage. The lust to rip a throat has vanished. The grime and blood covering her are unsettling him now.

  Wishing to turn back time, he sends his coarse tongue across her skin. Her sweet scents wrap around him. An unexpected memory flattens his ears against his skull — that of himself walking on two legs. He shivers.

  Impossible!

  He shakes his head and wonders how much time has passed. How long has it been since he’s seen one of her kind? Five-hundred winters? A thousand?

  He never counted.

  It did not matter.

  He can’t imagine why she’s been left behind, but the fact makes him angry and sad. And so he begins to wash her. First, her feet. They taste of salt and dirt and blood. He cleans the abrasions. Her toes, and the spaces in between. Her ankles and up her calfs, her knees. He reaches her thighs, cleans her in gentle swipes and feels her shudder beneath him. Up along her stomach, her budding breasts. Her skin pebbles where his tongue touches it. Gently, he turns her over and finds a line of sun-coloured down covering her spine. He licks the short, soft fur until it’s silky, and remembers a folk tale. Or is it a prophecy?

  On Summer Solstice the only Shield left in time emerges from the depths of Earth. The only Blade left in time finds her. Together they bring back the Sytha, unite all Shields and Blades, and rise against the enemy; drive man back whence they came.

  He lifts his head and regards her. If only he could wipe away the confusing emotions, the unbidden images. There’s this overwhelming familiarity he cannot place. Has he seen her before? No, it’s not possible. He is Death. And yet.

  And yet.

  He lowers his mouth to her chest and dips his tongue against her breastbone. He washes her for the pure joy of it, and because he wishes he could somehow make the cuts and abrasions, the bite wound, heal faster. He wishes she might grow a pelt as thick as his, and, perhaps one day, hunt with him. And be invincible. He finds himself wishing, just a little, that she might sleep until sunrise, that she might rest against him, as his body warms hers. And, when she finally opens her eyes, that she might not be terrified of him.

  But he is Death. Everyone fears him.

  He feels a sudden weakness sneaking in that would make him forget who and what he is, and leave him vulnerable for a day and a night. He shouldn’t have let the horse and the girl distract him.

  He needs to find his hideaway.

  How could he forget this, for even a heartbeat?

  His legs are trembling already. He digs his talons into the soil. Locks his joints in an attempt to stay upright, he looks up at the moon. The approaching morning pales the sky. He hisses at the threatening sun, but it’s of no use. Solstice begins.

  She’ll kill me, he thinks as his legs give. His head comes to a rest on warm, sweet skin, and consciousness slips from his mind.

  She wakes to pain and a weight stealing her breath. She jerks with surprise and shock that she’s alive. Not even dying. She gazes down her body and finds a man curled up, half atop of her, half lying next to her. His eyes are shut, moonbeam hair spread over her stomach.

  His breath tickles her skin. He’s not dead. Neither does he seem to be injured. Why wasn’t he attacked by the beast? Did he save her from it? But where are his weapons and why is he sleeping? Perhaps, he was hit on the head?

  Carefully, she inches away from him. The movement makes her sharply aware of the injury at her neck, her cracked ribs, the cuts on her back, knees, and hands.

  But none of these matter. She sees the sky brighten. She feels the leaves under her buttocks, the moss under her palms. She smells the scents of earth, rain, and pine sap. Everything, oh everything, is magical, even the scents of the man. She shuts her eyes and sucks in the world, the magic, all life. When she opens them, she wonders briefly where the beast has gone, and of what kind it might be. Mother never drew anything like it. She’s learned about trees, grass, birds, pigs, and buffalo, among many others. But nothing like the beast.

  She gazes at the man, wondering if she should stand guard by his side, given the possibility that he might have saved her life.

  But all men are cruel. She knows that much. She decides to leave him to his own fate. />
  But it’s too late.

  His lids twitch. His eyes snap open. A liquid gold.

  His muscles flex. He feels the aching emptiness of his stomach as his gaze falls onto the girl before him. He licks his lips, doesn’t notice the lack of whiskers and fur, doesn’t remember that he washed her skin and cleaned her wounds only moments ago, or the sweet scent of her, the soft flutter of her fingertips against his face. He can’t remember who and what he is, or how he got there.

  His clouded mind bows to his instincts. He leaps, his body feeling oddly inappropriate for such a movement, but not inappropriate enough to make him hesitate. He grabs her throat and her hair, revels in the frantic knocking of her heart, her struggle for air, and how she claws and kicks at his chest. His mouth fills with saliva at the prospect of fresh meat. With a snarl, he lowers his teeth to her neck, to the soft spot where life taps wildly beneath her skin.

  But then he freezes.

  There’s a bite wound that looks suspiciously like his doing. A rivulet of her blood is curling from her neck toward his…hand? Why does he have the hands of a man? Even…the body of a man! Not quite, but repulsive enough. He shakes his head, trying to wake from the nightmare.

  As her blood touches his furless skin, fire spreads through his body, scorching his bones. The urge to protect, to lash out and kill whatever threatens her overwhelms him. He howls with fury. His skin pulls tight. Fur begins to grow and ripple. His strange man-hands thicken, fingers shorten. Black claws extend, grazing her throat.

  He lets go of her abruptly, stares at distorted limbs that grow more familiar with each hectic tha-thump of his heart.

  A flicker of bluish light is reflected in the girl’s irises. He flinches as ice touches his spine. A voice, far-away and yet, deep beneath his skin, whispers, It is time to remember, son. And a flood of ancient memories hits him, brings him to his knees: his true form, and the day he chose his warrior animal. The arrival of man in his world, the war, the butchering of his family, of countless other families, and finally, the flight of the Sytha. His refusal to go with them had had nothing to do with heroism. Legends, fairytales. Her scent in his nostrils. The soft down trailing along her spine.