by J. Thorn
Rowan rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll find ’em, Thom.”
Chapter 24
“I must tell you something.”
“If you can’t pay your delinquent ale tab, don’t worry. I’m out of the inn building business.”
Thom smirked and kicked at the dying coals left by the previous night’s fire. The women slept as the sun threw the first light into the cloudy sky.
“It’s not about that. It’s about something in my past. Something I did.”
“Listen,” Rowan said. “What you do with your sheep out in the fields be no business of mine.”
“I wasn’t always a shepherd.”
Rowan cocked an eyebrow and leaned in toward Thom. The fire crackled and a gust of wind rekindled the flames. Rowan looked around the forest, listening to the branches groan.
“Go on.”
Thom pulled his cloak tighter, feeling oddly cold.
“It’s about my childhood. My years as a teen.”
“Droman Meadows was a small village with loose lips. We knew more about each other than we cared to admit.”
“No, you didn’t,” Thom said.
Rowan ran a finger along the edge of his broadsword, nodding at Thom.
“The border skirmishes. In the southern regions. You remember those?”
“Aye.”
“Do you remember how the king managed his soldiers?”
“C’mon, Thom. You either tell me or you don’t. Enough with the stalling and the questions.”
“I’ve killed men,” Thom said.
Rowan sighed and rubbed his beard.
“I’ve done it with the blade but I’ve also done it with…something else. Magic.”
Rowan chuckled and slapped his leg.
“You had me going for a second there, lad. Next you’ll be wanting Marik to mentor you in the dark arts.”
“I’m serious.” Thom’s eyes locked on Rowan’s. “And I think the energies belong to the Shadow.”
The wind roused the fire, turning it into fairy dust.
“I’ve seen the symbols my entire life. They’ve come and gone at random times and in my sleep. I don’t know for sure what they are or why I see them, but I do. There’s something about me, Rowan, something cursed and wicked. My birth parents, they probably knew it and abandoned me at the doorstep of the forest witches.”
“That’s not true, Thom. You don’t know—”
“I do,” Thom said. “Because I’m the only survivor from the orphanage, from the boys sent to fight the king’s war in the south. During one of the last sieges of the outpost, the symbols came and a voice spoke to me. It told me more about the powers than it ever had before. It said I had to survive, that ‘she’ needed me alive and this boy was a threat to her. She instructed me to kill him.”
“And you did?” Rowan asked.
“Yes. I gutted him like a wild animal.”
Rowan looked at his friend’s hands and then in his eyes.
“I’ve killed for her. For it. And I don’t even know what darkness lies in that power. I’ve tried hiding it, ignoring it. But every time I do, it awakens with a greater appetite and I fear what it will ask me to do next. My family—”
“Nothing will happen to the girls, Thom. I’d give my life for them. And for you.”
“I know, dear friend. I know. But this power, this energy, it brings a reckoning like nothing you’ve ever felt. It commands death and destruction through the intoxicating symbols and I fear I cannot repress them much longer. They feel like a long, dirty secret I can no longer hide. She’s coming for me, Rowan. The Shadow’s agent, the witch, the crone. Whatever one calls it, it is death by any name.”
“What happened when you returned? From the battle?”
“I was the only village boy from Droman Meadows to survive. The atrocity I committed, the murder. You’re the only one who knows it besides me.”
“Kira?” Rowan asked, keeping his voice low so as not to wake her.
“No. She would fear for herself and the girls, as she rightly should.”
“Aye. ‘Tis best not to worry her,” Rowan said.
“Make me a promise, my friend.”
Rowan shook his head and bit his bottom lip.
“You must take me before the symbols can corrupt us all. You must promise you will do so.”
“I promise, Thom.”
Thom extended his hand and Rowan shook it.
“Thank you. It’s good to know this simple shepherd can count on you.”
“Simple? ‘Tis nothing simple about the Shadow, my friend. Let’s have another bite of breakfast by the fire.”
Chapter 25
“Jasmine.”
Krea cupped her hands around her mouth, calling again. She and Sarra woke in the clearing after sunrise, wondering where they might find Jasmine. They waited for almost an hour, hoping she would find her way back. But she never returned.
Thick-leaved branches hung across their eyes and blocked passage. As Krea and Sarra pushed them aside, the dark forest opened before them like a tomb. The sky, barely visible through the thick canopy, appeared as featureless as milk. They imagined the air above the canopy to be warm and humid, carrying the scent of coming rain. Within the trees, it was cool, wet and still. Sarra noticed the ground became soggy over the last hour’s travel. They wandered into moist lowlands and lost their way again. The mosquitoes started biting, too. Red pinpricks covered their arms and legs, the bites swelling into itchy welts. As they struggled through the forest, calling out for Jasmine, the muddy soil sucked at their shoes like quicksand.
“It isn’t like Jasmine to run off without saying anything. Where could she have gone?” Krea asked.
Sarra shook her head. “You should have been watching her.”
They walked all morning. The sun hid behind the featureless sheet of white clouds covering the sky. Yesterday, the entire forest began to look the same to Sarra and she would have welcomed any change in scenery as a sign that perhaps they might finally break free of the woods. But now, having wandered into this mire, she would have done anything to get back to dry land.
“Maybe we should turn around,” Sarra said.
“No. We have to find Jasmine. We can’t just leave her alone in the forest.”
“We don’t even know she came this way. If we turn back now—”
“No.”
Sarra sighed and folded her arms, thinking it really didn’t matter which direction they walked.
Why argue? We’re lost. As far as we know, Jasmine could have wandered toward any point on the compass.
Sarra felt the prick of a needle on her arm. She slapped the bloated mosquito that landed on it, blood splattering her face and shirt. She felt sick, as if a more sinister insect ate a hole through her stomach.
Sarra led Krea forward, favoring a slight rise in the terrain. She reasoned higher ground gave them the best chance to escape the muck. But the ground undulated in all directions before disappearing into the overgrowth, never revealing a way out.
Krea lost her footing and stumbled into a young maple tree. As she caught herself on the thin trunk, viscous water spilled out of the leaves onto Krea. She cried out and slung the slime off of her face. Grime ran down her body, making her skin tingle. A swarm of mosquitoes ascended out of a bed of mud and wet leaves, becoming a mobile haze.
When Sarra tried to help her up, Krea pushed her backward into the mud.
“Don’t touch me,” Krea said. Her shoulders shook with soundless cries. “Why is this happening to us? I don’t want to die here.”
Sarra climbed off the ground, slinging mud from her arms. She approached slowly, extending a hand toward her younger sister. Krea smacked at Sarra’s hand, clutching the maple’s trunk. After a moment, her eyes softened and she accepted Sarra’s hand. The girls pushed on.
By late afternoon, the canopy broke enough to reveal a sky striated in whites and grays. The sun would set soon and Sarra’s skin prickled at the thought
of being trapped in this part of the forest after dark. The mosquitoes became more numerous and more aggressive, rising from the mud and flying out of the trees. Sarra’s entire body itched. Bloody streaks covered Krea’s arms where she scratched them raw.
With the ground so wet, Sarra thought a swamp had to be nearby. But she didn’t hear the calls of frogs. Like everything else in this forest, all was lifeless.
The sky turned to evening slate. The girls’ legs trembled like rubber, no longer able to withstand the effort to trudge through thick mud. The swampy smell grew thicker, as though grass and hay rotted in a bucket of water.
Krea alternated between fits of crying and moments where she talked to their mother and father as though their parents walked alongside them. Sarra tried to keep her grounded, tried to get her to focus on taking the next step. But Krea could not be consoled. She limped along without her twin sister.
Evening faded into night like a dying candle. Sarra called a halt to their aimless travel and this time Krea didn’t protest.
With each step Krea took, foul water carrying the scent of rot welled out of the soil with mud pulling at her shoes. Mosquitoes swarmed from all directions, coalescing into a stinging cloud.
“Put the shawl over your head,” Sarra said, as she pulled hers over her own head and arms. “And pull your skirts tight.”
Krea did as she was told, first pulling the bottoms of her skirts together and knotting them around her ankles. She draped the shawl over her face and arms. A few of the mosquitoes still bit, searching for exposed skin, but most of the insects buzzed away with disinterest.
The girls sat back-to-back against a maple, their rumps upon a mound of earth rising up along the base of the tree. Sarra felt dampness seeping through her skirts, chilling her.
Sarra sat in silence under the darkness of the shawl, wishing for sleep to take her. If she never woke again, that would be fine, too. She only wanted to be free of the mosquitoes and to be dry again.
For a long time, they sat with their backs to each other, leaning against the trunk. Sarra felt as close to Krea as she had in their childhood days. She didn’t think it was possible for her to sleep in such an uncomfortable position. But when death came calling with black robes and scythe, she would sleep comfortably.
Near midnight, Sarra’s eyes drooped and her head bobbed. She heard Krea’s steady breathing behind her, the sounds soothing her like a lullaby. Sleep took Sarra when she least expected it.
The mire melted away and Sarra was walking through a meadow of wildflowers and tall grasses behind her home in Droman Meadows. The sun felt warm on her face and the sky beamed with a sapphire hue only existing in artists’ paintings and the world of dreams. She didn’t see her family but she could sense their nearness inside. As the world of dreams pulled her deeper, she smiled for the first time since before the attack on Droman Meadows.
***
A lighter gray in the sea of black marked the position of the moon within the overcast sky. The mire fluctuated beneath indistinct shadows and a ground mist began to form, rising out of the lowlands like a phantom. A distant splash of water revealed the only sign of life for miles. Krea stirred, then slumped back against the tree.
As the hour descended into the pit of night, a deeper shadow drifted out of the flora. It moved across the land in silence, agitating puddles gurgling out of the mud like tiny lakes. A chill spread across the swamp, scattering the mosquitoes and causing Sarra to pull the shawl tight around her shoulders.
The shadow swept nearer. The air rippled like a smooth pond disturbed by a pebble.
***
Krea was dreaming of their flight from the dread wolves.
She saw the forest coming closer and wanted to warn her sisters to turn back. But her chest tightened and her mouth would not produce sounds. And then they landed inside the forest and she heard the hollow slam of a door behind her. As she turned, the meadow dissolved, revealing only trees for as far as she could see.
She shivered, alone in a clearing under a moonlit sky. A terrifying image of a house built of human bone stood before her. She screamed, thinking she saw Jasmine’s face on one of the skulls. She heard her lost sister’s whispered voice, like the sound of a vulture’s wings as it descended upon carrion.
“I miss you, Krea. Come to me and we can be together forever.”
She wanted to run but her feet would not move, as though the swamp pulled her legs down into the thickening mud. A sliver of light formed within the wall of bone. She screamed.
Krea’s eyes opened. She pulled the shawl off her head. Wisps of fog grew thick along the ground of the darkened mire, rising up and licking at her face. She froze, listening. She could not hear Sarra breathing.
She’s dead and now I really am alone.
Then the steady rhythm of her sister’s breathing came to her.
But she was not alone in the night. As she peered through the mists, the fog stirred and a shadow weaved its way through the trees.
Krea’s heart raced, imagining a giant python slithering out of the lowlands with jaws large enough to swallow her whole. She shook Sarra by the shoulders but her sister’s head lolled against the tree as though she died in her sleep. Yet Krea felt her sister’s warm breath on her neck.
“Sarra. Sarra. Wake up. Something is coming.”
Krea shook her again, thinking her sister would surely wake this time, but Sarra drifted deeper into slumber as though drugged by a wizard’s spell.
“Sarra.”
“She will not wake for you, child.”
Krea gasped. For a moment, she thought she saw the imagined python, a snake tongue flicking at the air and speaking with a human’s voice. She blinked and saw the silhouette of a giant. Hunkered over like an old woman, yet two or three heads taller than a dread wolf, the shadow twisted in the breeze and stirred the mists.
“Who are you?” Krea asked.
“I am a traveler of the forest. I help those who are lost to find their way.”
Krea shivered. She noticed the breeze seemed only to touch the woman’s cloak as though she carried the wind with her.
“Are you lost, my dear?”
Sarra mumbled under her breath and pulled her shawl down her arms as though something cold touched her.
Why won’t you wake, Sarra?
“You are lost, I fear. Too far from home, too far from your sister, Jasmine.”
Krea raised her head. “How do you know my sister’s name?”
The old woman straightened a little, growing out of the mists with her head lowered deep within the hood of her cloak. “She was lost in the woods as you are. But fortunately we found each other.”
“Where is Jasmine?”
“Sleeping peacefully. I can take you to her before the night is over, if you like.”
“Is she safe? We have been looking for her since yesterday. My sister, Sarra, and I—”
The cloak hid the woman’s eyes but Krea felt them looking upon her.
“Sarra? That is your sister’s name?”
The woman’s voice conjured images inside of Krea’s head, packs of rats fighting over a morsel of rotting garbage.
“Yes,” Krea said.
Why does the old woman need to know Sarra’s name?
Her skin felt too tight, stretching over her bones like clothing she outgrew.
“Sarra Meeks, sister of Jasmine Meeks,” the woman said. “Such a beautiful name for a beautiful young woman. Would you like your sister to awaken?”
The air turned as frigid as a pocket of January air. As Krea turned her head toward her sleeping sister, she did not want Sarra to wake up. Krea felt something change in Sarra, like milk spoiling in the sun.
“I must take her back to my home with me where she will be safe from the night. Like your twin sister, Jasmine.”
“Take her back to your home?”
“Fear not, little one. I will not leave you here to die in the swamps. I control everything here. The wind, the birds and even ti
me. I’m sure you have wondered why days and nights are different here, stretched.”
Krea thought of the confusion on the road and the oddness of the forest.
“Would you like to see your lost sister?”
Krea nodded, although she did not want to see Jasmine any more than she wanted Sarra to open her eyes.
“Of course you do. The hour grows late and we must go now. But first, would you be so kind as to tell me your name so I may know who I share company with on the journey home?”
Krea didn’t want the woman to know her name. An odd thought whispered to her from the back of her mind.
No vampire may enter your home unless you invite them inside.
Krea knew those things did not exist—vampires and ghosts. But before this week, she had thought dread wolves to be fables, too.
She looked at the woman’s cloak billowing in the windless night. She did believe in vampires and in things more horrible than any storybook monster. Her body trembled and her heart pounded like a frightened mouse. She felt frozen to the dead maple by fear, and maybe by something else too. Something gripping her with unseen hands.
Sarra moved, coming awake in the gray haze of the shielded moonlight. As Krea looked at Sarra, she thought of the dead rising out of their graves. She wanted to run but her legs wouldn’t move. Krea wondered if maybe the Shadow stood right in front of her, the cloak shielding the old woman. If Krea tried to flee, the black form would swoop down upon her.
“Your name, my dear? You will want to tell me your name before your sister wakes up.”
The woman’s shadow engulfed Krea, blacker than the overcast sky should have allowed a shadow to be. Krea shivered more from fear than the icy touch of the ethereal blackness. The woman’s head lowered to Krea, hidden within a hood as deep as a midnight sky. Krea saw her eyes shining like candles, penetrating the darkness and looking through Krea.
Krea’s mouth opened, a scream stuck at the back of her throat. She felt a presence beside her and as she turned her head, Sarra bent over her like a puppet on strings, eyes burning like the old woman’s.
