Another rustle combed through the trees. Only Tor and Skeld acknowledged it. Tor turned towards the sound as Aria emerged, her eyes wide as she looked at the pool of blood staining the forest floor. She quickened to Tor’s side her big eyes imploring him to tell her what happened.
“I need you to take him to the east shores,” Tor said, putting his hands on either side of her shoulders and staring directly into her face.
Aria glanced at Skeld. “Is he going to end up like the others in the trees?”
“Not if you help him.”
Aria seemed to think for a moment. “What must I do?”
Skeld went to speak but only a breath came out. Tor held up a hand to him, his eyes boring into Aria’s. “Call the Ferryman.” He glanced at Skeld who looked both stricken and accepting at the same time. It was the only thing they could do to ensure that Skeld’s soul would remain intact. It was also the only way to ensure he would return. If he never left, he would be destined to spend the rest of his days in the trees of the haunted forest. Tor couldn’t imagine a worse fate.
“How do I call the Ferryman?”
Tor leaned closer to her and whispered the incantation that he learned as a boy on Avrigost in the Land of Kings. He released her once he recited the entire rancid thing and nodded to Skeld. “Be well my friend. I will see you again.”
Skeld nodded, moving to Aria and taking her hand. The motion seemed to cause a reaction in Aria that Tor hadn’t expected. “I can’t feel him either.” She frowned.
Tor gave her a withering look, as though he wanted to tell her why but he couldn’t quite explain it in time. Skeld needed to get to the shores as soon as possible, and Aria needed to take him there. Tor wordlessly took a coin out of his pocket and twirled it in the air, letting it meld and shift until to him it was smoke and to Skeld it was solid. Skeld took it in his hand, a last look of gratitude crossing his face as Aria pulled him through the bushes.
Tor sat beside Desaunius and rubbed her back. All he could think about was how Aria was caught between worlds. She wasn’t where the dead were, and she wasn’t where the living were. She was stuck in the in-between.
Aria tried not to think about the blood. She didn’t like it, the way it made the ground a deep shade of crimson. She walked alongside Skeld who floated, his bald head tilted to the sky, watching patterns of clouds blot out the stars. She never asked Tor to explain himself after she emerged from the volcano. She tried to understand her existence, but her mind was blank. She was nothing and then she was something, she blossomed like a crescendo. Certain things were still settling in her mind, the wheel-like movement of night and day, the villagers, the land. She absorbed knowledge from everything she encountered, and yet, she felt like she was on the outside looking in. She reached the main path with the shrubs along the walkways and Skeld stopped, looking longingly at the bonfire.
“Come, Tor says it’s important,” Aria urged, her perfect violet-colored eyes imploring. He looked at her and she understood. He lost everything in a moment. His rugged shoulders rose and fell once, and a tear slid down his cheek, in line with his big nose, and landed on his upper lip. She set her lips in a line but she couldn’t help him with his grieving.
Moments passed in silence as Skeld purveyed the land, seeming to memorize every last detail. He turned to Aria as he continued floating down the path towards the field with the flower shaped lake. When they reached the crest of the basin he glanced at her. “What do you know about Tor?”
Aria shrugged. She had been thinking of asking him the same thing. Tor was a mystery cloaked in armor and gifted with a keen sense of peculiarity. She couldn’t explain him. “I don’t know anything,” she said softly. She descended the hill, keeping in line with the uppermost part of the basin, as they crossed to the haunted forest. “I suppose he’s worried.”
“About the hunters?”
“Is that what you call them?”
“They are hunting him are they not?”
The corner of her lips quirked up as she ducked under the first branch in the forest. She went to reach for Skeld to tell him to avoid getting tangled in the branches but her hand moved through his and she pulled away, gasping as he shuddered.
“You are an unnatural thing,” Skeld exclaimed, but his tone was gentle, bewildered. Aria felt a pit in her stomach. She twisted her toe in the ground and twirled one a stand of long white hair in her fingers.
“Tor said I was a Flame. Do you know what that is?”
Skeld shook his head profusely. “No child, I’ve never heard of them. On Tempia we are peaceful, we tend our crops, we feed our children. We don’t look for trouble. You…you are trouble.”
Aria looked at the ground, littered with ferns and flowers the colors of the rainbow. “I didn’t mean…”
Skeld straightened himself out and pulled his tunic taut over his chest. “Nonsense, bring me to the shores, we will not speak.”
Aria ducked her head and continued walking, making sure Skeld didn’t scratch himself on a branch, and turn into the cotton-like puffs wrapping around the branches. Night grew deeper, the sky hidden under the canopy of shiny cotton ball trees. Aria avoided the cairn holding the other Flames, for all she knew Skeld would try to do something to them and she wasn’t prepared to have them marred. She felt responsible for them, even if they weren’t awake and she was.
Hours passed, and Aria smelled the salt from the ocean before she saw it. When they broke through the last of the withered and dying trees, her eyes moved to the horizon, a line of yellow, above it, the midnight green and below it, a silver black stretch of water as far as the eye could see. She looked nervously at Skeld.
“Are you ready for your journey?”
Skeld bowed his head solemnly and began humming a tune Aria didn’t recognize. His voice was deep, notes vibrating out of him in long successions, some of them sounding like growls. She held her hands out to the water and began whispering the incantation Tor told her. It was long, and the words didn’t make any sense to her. She spoke, letting the vibrations roll of her tongue. When she opened her eyes there was a boat in the distance. It was shallow, the ends rising out of the water merely a foot. From one end it looked long and skinny but as it neared the shores, Aria saw it was about as wide as her body if she were to lie down. At the helm was a figure masked by a massive ragged black cloak. She squinted as the boat pressed against the shore, a sizzling sound erupting from the land. Aria stood mesmerized, attempting to make out the Ferryman’s features. He seemed sad.
Skeld stepped forward, coming dangerously close to touching Aria. She stepped back involuntarily, and for a split second the Ferryman looked at her. The vastness of his hood hid his features from her, but it was like a knife dragging along her non-corporeal form, from her head, down her back and into her toes. The shock made her aura flare, violet white sparks igniting the night sky with artificial light. Skeld looked back at her, horror etched on his boxy face. He swiftly presented the coin, dropping it into an outstretched skeletal hand. The Ferryman didn’t remove his gaze from Aria as he closed his hand around the coin and Skeld stepped into the boat behind him.
Aria gulped, all the light draining out of her as the boat drifted away from the shores, disappearing in a swath of mist. She crumbled; knees and elbows hitting the soft grass as tears fell between the blades. A horn sounded and she perked up, dawn erupting from the horizon.
Tor was trying to repair the fields the third time they came. The sun blistered his skin while he worked, discreetly pressing dust into his palm and using magic to revitalize the quenny. The villagers were inconsolable, losing their food source. They dug tirelessly in the mud, many of them unable to leave the field because they couldn’t believe it could be there one day and gone the next.
Things like that never happened on Tempia.
Tor looked up, noticing their forms on the hill near the bonfire. In the light of day the three of them were silhouettes, dark scraggly marks against bright canvas of bluish green sky. T
or squeezed his fist and set his jaw. He stalked towards them stopping at the foot of the hill.
“No.”
“There will be war,” Darkesh said, a series of clicks piercing the breeze.
Tor wiped his hands on his breeches and crossed his arms. “My answer is the same.”
“And our price is death,” Darkesh exclaimed. In a swift move he jumped from the cliff and landed with a thud, creating a deep indent in the mud not three feet from where Tor stood. Darkesh’s eyes crackled with fiery red passion, as his nostrils blew brimstone towards Tor.
Tor glanced behind him at the vast expanse of the field. The villagers were huddled in a small group at the far end by the stark short trees. He turned to Darkesh. “You’ve already taken the lives of these people. There is nothing more.”
“War is a terrible thing. It will begin here, and spread Across the Stars like a poison, taking everything in existence.” Darkesh spoke with an even tone, looking past Tor at the people of Tempia with hunger in his eyes. Tor knew him well enough to know he would feast on their flesh if given the chance.
Tor tilted his chin up to the massive draconian body of Darkesh. “I’m that important?”
“You’re that defiant?”
“I’m curious. You think I care for every living thing Across the Stars?”
“Come with us to the Land of Kings and we will end this stupidity.”
Tor shook his head, taking a step towards the villagers. “I can’t—I won’t—be a part of this treachery.”
Darkesh blew fire out of his nostrils. A spark flew into the mud and ignited, flames lighting up the land. Tor stumbled backwards, knowing this was benign compared to what Darkesh could do when truly angered and filled with dust. He glanced at Darkesh’s red lightning eyes and saw the hint of disappointment in them. “You will regret this when you are the last one alive.” He didn’t wait for Tor to reply, only stamped out the fire with his huge scaly foot and climbed the mountain to join the others. Tor heard Cassareece’s repulsive laughter as they disappeared over the mound. He let out a sigh. He didn’t want war, he didn’t want the people of Tempia to die and he didn’t want to make Aria fight.
He turned back to the field remembering the dust pressed into his hand. He held it out over the land, trying to turn time and space on its backside to bring the quenny fruit back. He focused hard and soon, the land churned, green leaves housing the quenny appeared. He bent, it was one, and he was already swaying on his heels from the force it took to bring it back. There were hundreds of people on Tempia, how he would have the strength to bring back all the quenny before the war was beyond him. He fell on one knee as the villagers on the opposite end of the field approached him, their cheers igniting the air.
“You saved us,” one of them remarked as he inspected the fruit.
Tor groaned. “I saved only one of you.”
The villagers looked at each other, counting eleven in their small group there. “Who will receive this fruit?”
Tor sighed, taking the quenny in his hands and pressing on it until the life force was drained, and it turned a bluish color, rotten. The looks on their faces: greed, competition, corruption, was how it began on Avrigost. He couldn’t bear to see their innocence ripped from them, their good nature replaced with rabid ferocity. He wouldn’t watch them turn into savages because of him. He hung his head, a gasp moving through the small group. “None of you will have it, for I cannot bring back enough for all.” Tor stood, a deep grievance settling in his bones. He trudged through the muddy field, crossed the hill and followed the trail marked by shrubs to the bonfire. He fell on one of the logs and sat there for a long time, staring at the fire pit, unsure how the Flames could help him when the war came for him.
***
Chapter 3
Ria hated the long waits for Tor.
She sat on the stone bench in the cairn, pouring over the things he brought from the village to store there. The other Flames were laid out on a stone table, covered by a thick beige leather hide. Beside them was a lantern, which flickered with candlelight. Even during the day the cairn was quite dark. On the edge of the table was a stack of parchment papers, some of them looked like the birch trees they had been harvested from. Some of them had cracked edges and black score marks along the outer side. She ran her hand over them and let out a sigh, not knowing how much longer he would be. She took a deep breath, smelling the haunted forest around her, and hearing the pin pricks of moans through the trees. The dead were restless. All of them wanted to escape their nest-like prisons and go to the shores.
When Tor wasn’t around she’d spend the day walking the narrow and trampled paths, listening to the calls of the dead. Most of them wanted to find the shores, pay the Ferryman and visit the afterlife. Some of them had the will to live, as though if a reason came they would break free of the branches and stand on solid ground, the way she did. She turned her shimmering hands over and back again, tracing the patterns of thin amethyst veins spreading through her form. A deep ache formed in her bones, the need to do something other than wait caroming through her. She glanced around the cairn and spotted a heap of metal. Tor had called it armor when he’d last visited her. Crossing the cairn she looked over it, wanting desperately to be able to touch something, affect something on the physical level. She knelt, and tried to put her hand on the armor but her form went through it the way it did with everything else. She hung her head in frustration and glanced at the far wall. Tor had created a makeshift smithy and when he wasn’t writing notes and experimenting with the other Flames he was heating and cooling the armor, reshaping it. She didn’t know what he was trying to do with it, Tor never explained himself. He did things and she watched, often learning more from his actions than his words.
Standing, she moved to the table and ran her hands over the Flames. They lit up underneath the canvas and sang their notes before going dormant again. She narrowed her eyes and tried again, focusing more on the canvas than on the Flames. In a grand gesture it whipped off the table, knocking the lantern on the ground, snuffing out the candle. Aria let out a cry and jumped back, curious about her telekinetic abilities. She whipped around and glared at the armor. It floated seamlessly into the air and she thought about the fire, about melting it down. Tor wouldn’t be back for another few hours and she had all day to do nothing in the cairn. The least she could do was amuse herself by making pretty things. The breastplate entered the large stone fire pit and flames rose to engulf it. Aria kept her attention on crafting something truly original and beautiful. She stepped forward, and without a thought to the heat, stuck her hands into the fire pit, feeling a tingle move up her arms. She giggled as the melted metal slipped between the cracks in her fingers and she moved them like a harpist, defining small points, and shaping a simple band. For a few seconds she forgot that she could touch nothing in the physical world, and pulled her hands out of the fire, bidding the former armor to come with her.
It obeyed, and though lopsided and malformed, it was the beginnings of an elaborate crown. It had a simple headband and what looked like a feather shooting up from the front of it. Aria frowned, she wanted it to look like a flame, like a crown of fire. She lost her focus and it clattered to the floor like a dead thing. Aria’s shoulders slumped.
“You’re quite impressive little girl,” a voice said from the opening in the rock.
Aria jolted, startled and sent a spark along the walls, lighting up every nook, cranny and crack with violet colored energy. Her stomach dropped as an abominably tall woman with long straight whitish blonde hair stepped into the cairn. Aria could barely make out her clothes, but they were a darker blue color, the dress falling to her ankles and showing off her chest. She angled her chin to the air and Aria, without thinking, moved the canvas so it would cover the other Flames. She stepped back, unsure who the woman was or why she was there.
“You’re not Tor.”
The woman laughed; a loud and shrill sound that made Aria cringe. “No dear, I’m Cass
areece.” She cocked her head to the side, staring at the canvas. Her fingers went to touch the edge but Aria stepped forward.
“Tor didn’t tell me about you.”
Cassareece looked pained by the comment. “I can’t imagine why…he used to love me.”
Aria watched Cassareece with a careful eye, not wanting her to unveil the Flames and not wanting to reveal herself as an unnatural thing. What Skeld said melded into her form and made her fear herself on a level so deep she couldn’t fathom it. “Tor loves Desaunius.”
“The wretch.”
Aria had nothing to say. She looked at the ground and shuffled foot-to-foot. She had so many questions in her mind she didn’t know which one to pick. Why was the woman there? Who was she? Why wasn’t she afraid of the haunted forest like the villagers? While she was thinking Cassareece glided into the cairn and took a look at the smithy, setting a blaze off in the innards and lighting up the cairn. She picked up the crown Aria had made and inspected it. Aria watched frost cloud Cassareece’s hands as she cooled the metal, turning the feather into something solid. She placed it on the canvas on the table, on top of the other Flames and Aria found her tongue.
“How did you do that?”
Cassareece shot her a devilish smile. “I could do a lot more if Tor would only join us.”
“He—he doesn’t want that.”
Cassareece fixed her with a look and her blue eyes turned to lightning storms. Aria stepped back her own amethyst enflamed eyes surprised. “Do you have a name child? Tor didn’t tell me he had a child with the wretch.”
Aria felt faint. “I—I’m not his…or hers…” She felt an affinity towards Tor because he was her creator, but father, mother, these things were more foreign to her than the Lands Across the Stars. “Tor calls me Aria.”
Villains Page 4
