by Lucy Smoke
“You’re not thinking about the big picture, Nerys.”
“What’s the big picture?” Survival. That’s it for me. Food. A roof over our heads. Safety. Me not rotting in a dungeon for possessing a spirit guide and trying to escape the great King Matric’s law.
“You need to learn more about spirit guides. From what I’ve heard, Ragnarok has a large diversity and the oldest history in the area. Someone there probably knows something or they can at least point us in the right direction.”
I know he’s right. I’ve spent the last several months trying to get anything and everything I could on spirit guides. At first, to simply make the voice in my head go away and then as I got used to the inky man, to understand him. I don’t hate the inky man, but I don’t love him either. The inky man isn’t cruel or malicious. He’s brought me nightmares and headaches, but in other ways, he’s brought me peace. A new place with new people might bring answers.
And freedom. I roll my eyes. He’s getting cocky.
You didn’t bring me freedom, you are the reason I had to seek freedom.
You would have been content, otherwise? And he’s also feeling snarky today.
I might have been. I glance at Coen and he’s watching me again.
“What?”
“Nothing.” The side of Coen’s jaw clenches whenever he lies, the teeth crunching down as though biting into a particularly hard piece of bread.
“You talk to yourself,” a voice pipes in. Our heads turn and Titus peeks out from behind a bale of straw he’s currently using as his bed. It’s set directly across from us behind a sagging half wall that might have once been the door to a stall.
“I—what?”
“When you talk to your spirit guide, you sometimes talk to yourself,” he clarifies. “Well, not to yourself per se…” His clarification sinks into a pit of confusion and hardcore blushing as he glances to Coen and then back to me. “You’re talking to him—your spirit guide—but, well, you’re doing it out loud.” I raise my eyebrows at him as he comes to a stop and just huffs out a sigh.
“Oh.” What’s the big deal about that? I wonder. “Why didn’t you just say so? Why haven’t you ever said anything?” I ask Coen.
Once again, Titus is the one who answers. “Because you’re not speaking in any language I know.” I blink, confused. What does he mean?
Coen sighs and frowns my way. “I don’t like not being able to understand you.”
“What does it sound like?” Titus sits up and repeats a few words. He’s right, it doesn’t sound like English at all, but what disturbs me is that I can understand everything he says.
“I wonder what language that is,” I say aloud.
My native tongue, the inky man supplies.
Which is? I get no response.
“It sounds like Firetongue,” Titus offers.
Coen looks at Titus. “How would you know?”
“I read,” is all he says. No matter if he reads, King Matric wouldn’t have books like that in his city.
I note that neither he nor Holden have brought supplies with them, no bags or sacks like Coen and I. It’s a curious piece of information that I tuck away for later examination as I think about what he actually said. Firetongue is the language of fire breathers–Dragons, Phoenix, Fire Nymphs, Salamanders, Kitsune and the like. I wonder which one the inky man is.
“Ragnarok would be a good choice.” Holden leans over the side of his loft, dust and straw falling over our heads. “I have a friend who lives there.” Coen brushes away a few stray pieces of straw from the top of my head.
“You’ve been there?” I ask incredulously.
“My dad was a tradesman and I went when I was little.” I take notice of the “was” in reference to his father and I want to ask more, but I know that because of his reaction earlier, he wouldn’t appreciate it.
“We should go,” Coen restates. I groan, slumping back into the straw.
“Fine.” I give in. “We’ll go in the morning.”
⚜⚜⚜
My side is chilled. Not the brush against an Ice Phoenix which would leave me frozen and dead, but the kind of chilled that says my side used to be warm and has been missing warmth for quite some time. Before I open my eyes, I reach out, feeling for Coen’s big body. It’s gone.
“He’s out hunting,” a lyrical voice informs me. “With Titus.” I groan and roll over. The clothes on my body are still slightly damp, making the chill in my bones all the more prominent. After a few moments of contemplating going back to sleep, I decide to get up. I would sleep forever if I could.
“Do you think there’s a river in the area?” I pull a clump of my own matted hair away from my cheek and grimace at the dried out feel of it.
Holden shrugs and bends over a rounded bowl made of straw that he’s weaving together. The sides of the bowl stick out around the lip forming a brim of some sort and I realize that it’s a hat turned upside down and not a bowl.
“Well,” I announce. “I’m gonna go find one.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Holden says, flipping the hat over and perching it on his head. “Your boyfriend wouldn’t be too happy if he got back and found you gone.” He flicks the brim so that the fronts fall down over his eyes, hiding them.
“You probably wouldn’t do a whole lot if you were me. I’m still going.” I climb the ladder to his loft and I can feel him watching. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting my cloak,” I snap. “I want to let it dry in the sun while I bathe.”
“You’re bathing?”
“No, I’m just going to the river to drown myself–yes, I’m going to bathe.”
“Oh, well, in that case–” Holden hops up and moves to grab his cloak from one of the beams as well. “I’ll join you.”
With my cloak in hand and back on the ground, I raise an eyebrow. “If you think you’re going to bathe with me,” I say sweetly. “Then you might be more suicidal than I originally thought.”
Holden reaches the last few rungs of the rickety ladder and leaps the rest of the way down. “You think I’m suicidal?” His tone isn’t offended, or even amused, but merely curious.
“If you weren’t when you deserted Matric’s city then you are now. You are not watching me bathe.”
“Nope,” he agrees. “Just gonna let my clothes dry out as well.”
I frown at him. “You’ll keep your eyes to yourself?” I clarify.
He grins. “As long as you do the same.” My frown deepens, but he follows me out of the barn, anyway.
There isn’t a river, but I do find a small stream. The banks on either side are steep with bushes and shrubs hiding the secret water source from prying eyes, so close together that a long-legged person might be able to jump over if he took a running leap. I couldn’t have been luckier. Even though it’s small and narrow, it is a few feet deep, deep enough for myself.
I set my cloak out on a branch and hide behind it as I undress. True to his word, Holden doesn’t so much as glance in my direction as he sets his cloak out as well. My hood is frayed and smells like rain and mud. I lay that out as well before debating on how to get from my changing place to the stream without flashing him.
“No peeking,” I warn. Holden steps out from behind his cloak in all his gorgeous golden-skinned glory. I gasp and immediately shut my eyes, turning away. “What are you doing?!” My shriek scares a few birds from the nearby trees, causing several of them to flap around their branches and lift into the sky.
“Drying my clothes.” My face is warm, redness creeping up my neck. “I won’t peek if you won’t.” He’s teasing me, the no good, rotten, dirty, street urchin.
Too late, I think. I already caught a glimpse–too much of a glimpse, his tan skin and the shallow lines on each side of his abs. Not the detailed and defined lines that Coen has but still a rock solid outline. I swallow around the lump forming in my throat.
“I’ll just... uh.
.. be over there.” I gesture widely at the stream and practically leap across the ground while his back is turned to dive into the semi-cover of the water.
The liquid is soothing and the current is slow. I ignore Holden as I let my feet sink into the muddy bottom. Cupping the murky water in my palms, I splash it up and down my arms, rubbing it in to get rid of the worst of the mud and dirt caked on my skin. When I dunk my head back, wetting it and picking through the knots and tangles, it feels like heaven.
“Interesting marking you got there.” I jump and push down a scream, spinning until my full back is facing him, glaring at him over my shoulder.
“You’re not supposed to be looking!” I growl, my hands coming up to cover my breasts.
“You peeked.”
“I-I did not!” The blush is back with a vengeance
“It’s okay if you did, most can’t resist.” He slides one hand down his chest with a wide smile, and my traitorous eyes follow.
“Well, I most certainly resisted,” I deny, yanking my gaze back to his face before tilting my head back to the front. “I didn’t peek. Now, turn around!”
“I’m just curious about your mark.”
One arm stays centered across my breasts while the other instinctively reaches across my shoulder to touch the edge of the birthmark that stretches across my upper back.
“Was it a burn?” he asks.
Most people would assume that considering that the skin is darker. The shades of the skin tone are twisted looking, twining around each other and spreading out line vines crawling away from their source of life, a darker marking in the middle of my back. Though the surface of my skin is still smooth there, I know it’s a startling image. I drop the hand over my shoulder back to my breasts. “No, it’s a birthmark.”
“Do you know the legend about birthmarks?” I jump when his voice comes closer, right on the edge of the stream’s bank. He leans down, his breath touching the nape of my neck, blowing cool air against my hot skin.
“No.” I choke the word out.
“People say that where you were killed in your last life shows up as a birthmark on your new body.” His fingers trail the edges of the marking and I resist the urge to lean into the touch. Instead, I step forward, breaking the contact.
“I want to get out now,” I say.
“No one’s stopping you.”
“Okay, let me rephrase then. I’m getting out to dry off and if you aren’t several feet back with your back turned to me and your eyes averted, I’ll make sure you don’t have eyes anymore.”
His warm chuckle tickles down my spine, but I finally feel him move away. When I peek over my shoulder after giving him a few minutes to get into position, he’s gone and so are his clothes.
My pants and shirt are completely dry when I slip them back on, much warmer than before. The sun peeks out from behind the still hovering rain clouds as I begin folding my cloak over my arm. The snick of a gun being cocked freezes the blood in my veins.
“What ‘ave we got here boys?” A thin, raspy voice stops me. The barrel of the gun pushes against my spine and I curse myself for not being more aware. I finish folding my cloak and instead of placing it back over my arm, I set it down gently. “Looks like a pretty little doe has wandered too far from her herd. What’s say we have some fun with her, eh?”
“I’m rather more of a she-wolf than a doe.” A wave of anticipation flutters through me, but it’s not my own. The inky man is awake and eager.
Excited? I ask
Training, he responds. I already figured that the inky man must have been a warrior of some kind when he was alive. His thoughts, when they slip through, are exacting and precise. He points out weak points and always keeps me on alert. Before our symbiotic relationship began, I was normal, heartbreakingly average. With him, there are flickers of a fighting knowledge that wasn’t there before. Coen has certainly appreciated the competition since I started training with him.
“Little does don’t need to talk,” the voice at my back replies. “Now turn around there, let me and my boys see that pretty face o’ yours.”
I turn slowly until I faced with a potbellied older man. His face is round and his lips are chapped. The rough life he’s led is obvious from the scars on his hands and arms, to the deep set of his eyes in his puffy face. Those eyes are dead, empty of anything but lust and excitement as he looks down to my boots and travels back up over my calves and the way my feet are set shoulder width apart. He lingers on my covered breasts before he reaches my face. I lift a brow.
Glancing behind the older man, the whole group reminds me, each in their own way, of a pack of animals. Instead of an alpha wolf as the leader, the older man is an oinking boar with fat sides and short little chubby arms with sausage fingers that grip the revolver in this hand. I stare at the gun for a moment before looking back at them. Their clothes are ragged, their faces haggard. There’s no way they could be soldiers. If they have a gun, they must be from beyond Matric’s Kingdom. They must be desperate if they are on this side of the mountains.
The slightly taller boy behind him has a mop of spiky inky black hair and limbs so thin they make him gangly. Like a spider who has found his next meal, he smiles at me, revealing a toothless mouth. Well, almost toothless: a small yellowed tooth dangles behind, abandoned by its neighbors.
The last boy is just as fat as the older man, a piglet to the other man’s boar.
It’s impossible to tell which of the two behind the leader is older, but it’s clear that they are all related. The fat shorter boy, much like who I speculate is his father, puffs out his ruddy cheeks while the other thin boy allows his eyes to flick across me as his left eyelid twitches and he licks his lips.
“I’d ask if you like what you see, but I think I already know the answer,” I say flatly. The oinking boar grins and so do the two boys standing behind him.
“Why don’t you take off them clothes fer us and show us a good time, eh little doe?”
“Go slow,” the older man orders.
I grab the hem of my shirt as one might when pulling it up and over the head. Dragging the fabric up and over my head before dropping the shirt at my side, I tilt my head. I frown as I try to think of my next actions. Images flicker through my head as the inky man highlights certain body parts that would be weak against even my small fists.
“Now that thing.” The boar points to the strapped brassier around my chest with the barrel of his gun.
“You’re a real father of the year aren’t you?” I mock, reaching for the hooks that hold it together. He smiles at me.
“I’m a great father, ain’t I boys?” He laughs as the tall, spidery boy steps forward nodding his head up and down.
“The best da,” the piglet replies.
Spider and his brother take another step closer, eyes wide. Their father smiles real big, displaying a few blackened teeth. “Finish up, girl.”
I take a breath and let the brassier fall away, but I can’t stop my arms from coming up to cover my chest. I may be bold at times, but even I’m not completely comfortable being naked, especially in front of leering highwaymen. The man considers me before gesturing for me to step closer. The closer I get, the more fidgety his boys get. I can tell they want to rip into me, tear the rest of my clothes off and get to the good parts. I console myself with remembering the images that the inky man showed me. Nose. Groin. Stomach. I can hit those no problem. Even Coen has told me I’m pretty good for a girl. With the inky man in my head, maybe I’ll be better.
The old man sets his gun to the side, hefting up his pants to reach beneath his fat folds to undo them. When his fat fingers manage to get the top of his pants undone, I edge closer, until I can smell his rancid breath. I grab his hands and lean in, pretending interest.
“You want to go so fast?” I ask. I squeeze his wrists to hide my shaking and I realize I’ve let go of my chest and he’s staring. Heat rises under my skin, but I ignore it. Boobs are good. Boobs are a distraction.
> I take another deep breath and before he can answer me, I turn and shove my hips back at him, tugging forward at the same time with all my strength. And just like that, the boar goes tumbling over me, landing on his back in the grass, his gun flying several feet away. I take a second to blink down at him before I jump forward, slipping my dagger out of its sheath and holding it to one of the many rolls of skin lining his neck while keeping my eyes trained on the boys.
Don’t show fear, the inky man whispers. The piglet goes for the gun and I cluck my tongue at him, catching his attention as I press my blade harder against the old man’s neck. The man chokes and gurgles a bit in shock, his saliva collecting in the back of his throat as he struggles on his back. His struggles lessen when he realizes how hard it is for a man his size to get up and around a knife pressed to his throat.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I suggest to the kid with his hand poised over the gun. “He’ll be dead before you can point it at me.”
“You gon’ rob us?” Spider asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going to rob you. But, I am going to make you strip.”
“Huh?” the fat one asks. I press the blade further into the old man’s throat until his face is tomato red and a line of blood forms on the tip of the metal.
“Strip,” I order. I’ll throw their clothes into the river and then take off. I can’t imagine three men, two of them the size of giant pigs, chasing after me with their junk flagging in the wind.
The piglet glares at me, his fingers twitching.
“Do you want me to kill your dad?” I ask. I won’t, but they don’t know that.
The old man is panicking, waving his arms up and down, trying to keep his head as far back as possible to get away from the knife at his throat. Tears run over his ruddy cheeks and the stench of urine fills my nostrils. Really? I can’t keep my exasperation from showing as I glance down at him in disgust.
“I don’t really care if you kill ‘im,” he says.
I huff, looking back at him. “If that’s true, then why don’t you have that gun in your hand?” I taunt.
