by Olivia Ash
During one of her secret nighttime trips to the city, Sophia had witnessed an older man, a sorcerer she could only assume, creating light out of thin air with his hands and putting it into the lamps inside the home. She wondered if affluent families kept sorcerers on staff, as a sign of power and prestige. Maybe even defense. She imagined a sorcerer would be a great soldier to have against an invasion or worse.
She rubbed at her chest, trying to ease the residual pain still clinging to her skin. Concern filled her, as she wondered if one of the city sorcerers had detected her wild magic during the last episode and tried to hunt her down from his fortified room in the castle. She had enough episodes in the past twelve years, that she was sure someone would’ve taken notice by now.
Standing on quivering legs, defiance and anger made her body shake. Her magic swirled deep in her palms, eager to be unleashed. The sorcerer could keep on hunting. He could try to find her, she dared him to. She was no meek damsel in distress. She was a warrior, and whoever tried to hurt her would find that out quickly enough when she slid her sword through his belly.
Another whimper from Haris had Sophia climbing out the window to soothe him. She patted his head and smoothed a hand over his green fur.
“I’m okay, my friend,” she said softly, not wanting to wake Grindel.
He nickered, letting her know his concern for her.
With too much energy and an eagerness to burn it off, Sophia climbed onto the roof of the cabin to watch the sun start its rise into the cobalt blue sky. In three hours, Grindel would wake and she would be expected to start her training for the day. It always started off with a brisk run through the woods. A part of her wondered if she should simply disappear. He taught her well, and even he wouldn’t be able to find her. Not with her abilities and skill.
She looked toward the horizon, dreaming of the castles and cities far away, where she could begin anew. There would be no more porridge making for a grumpy old man who didn’t appreciate anything she did. No more early morning sprints across the croaker infested bog, being careful only to step on boulders and not poison-spewing spotted heads. No more shooting arrows into a hanging straw man until her fingers bleed. And no more hiding away in an old, rundown cabin with no family or friends to speak of.
Well, except for her yakshi friend, who even now paced on the ground around the cabin waiting for her to come down and pet him again. He acted like he’d been the one who had been attacked.
The skin-crawling shriek of a shadow falcon as it hunted in the predawn drew Sophia’s attention. She watched it swoop down from the highest branch of an oak tree to snatch a nipper from the ground before it scurried into its burrow. The little rodent was too slow, and the falcon too hungry and quick to miss. It was the way of things in the woods. There was the hunter and the prey. Most times Sophia felt like the hunter, but on rare vulnerable occasions she felt like prey. Like now, whoever had cast that magic on her was most definitely trying to hunt her down. It made her wish even harder for a chance to leave Nighthelm and make a life for herself elsewhere.
She could change her name to Annabel and she’d be the orphaned daughter of a grizzled blacksmith and a comely, buxom barmaid. Maybe she even had a sibling, a brother, who had died fighting in the Great War of Six in the west. She’d find a village to settle into and apprentice at the smithy. Before long, she’d be making swords and arrow heads for the soldiers in the nearby castle, and she’d be teaching the young boys in the village how to wield them. Everyone would come to like and respect her. Her skills would become the talk of the village, and eventually, even the soldiers would come to her for combat training. Maybe she’d even be courted by a few of those soldiers and perhaps a young lord. They could all vie for her hand. She’d fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.
Sophia shook her head, throwing off the flight of fantasy. It would never happen. Only a fanciful story in her head. Yet again, she was trapped by her untamed magic. She couldn’t leave until she healed her broken soul. Strangers were in peril when near her. She was too unpredictable in her state. She could injure or kill innocents with her feral power. No matter how far away she traveled from Nighthelm, she was dangerous. It wasn’t the city that was the problem, it was her.
Despite being told constantly, she was starting to doubt that healing was actually what Headmistress Mittle wanted for her. The visit to the room under the castle had planted the lack of faith in Mittle in her mind. The woman had lied to her. That had been obvious. Even to Grindel. Sophia suspected it wasn’t the first lie either, nor would it be the last. And if she was lying to Sophia, then maybe Grindel was too. Weren’t they working together to ‘help’ her?
Resolute and determined to no longer be a pawn in someone else’s game, Sophia decided to defy Grindel and visit the oracles that night to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. That would be the only celebration she would get. She was a resident of Nighthelm, and it was the right of every citizen to kneel before the great trees and ask for their wisdom. If anyone could tell her what she needed to know about her future, it was them.
Grindel and Headmistress Mittle either didn’t want to heal her or didn’t know how. Her coin was on a little bit of both. Either way, the job was left in her hands. Sophia was more than ready to heal herself.
Chapter Ten
Sophia
After making sure Grindel was still in a deep sleep—considering the loud snoring coming from his room—Sophia jumped on Haris and then they sprinted through the forest to the wall. She crept through the tunnel under the stone and then into the city. Everyone was tucked into beds in their respective homes, so she didn’t have to worry about coming across anyone. She avoided the guards by sticking to the shadows. Despite their expert training at the academy, the guards weren’t schooled to deal with someone like Sophia, who could manipulate the darkness and completely camouflage herself in shadows. As far as she knew, there was no one out like her anywhere else in the world.
She snuck to the center of the city, and the oracles that waited there. Cautious of what happened last time when she visited the oracles, Sophia remembered to wear a pair of black leather gloves with a special rune etched on the inside to help suppress her out of control magic. They had been a sort of gift from Grindel last year. She chided herself for not wearing them before. She’d gone so long without an incident, she’d honestly forgotten all about them. Grindel had reminded her to wear them after her last incident in the woods.
After climbing over the fence, she weaved around the other tall trees and walked to the middle of the sacred circle, and she looked at each face etched into each tree trunk, hoping against hope that her plan didn’t backfire. Confident in her entitlement to do so, she kneeled in front of them. Regardless of rank or nobility, every eighteen-year-old in the kingdom had the right to do the same. But she knew if she was caught, she would be punished.
Clasping her hands together in her lap, she bowed her head so low it nearly touched the ground. “I’m not sure what to say here. No one’s really told me anything about the ceremony.” She sighed, half-doubting that they’d speak to her. If they didn’t, she didn’t know what she would do. She was tired of being nothing but a broken shell of a person in a world that didn’t want her. At least, she had to try. She wasn’t a quitter.
She lifted her head and looked at each tree. They were all ancient oaks, but they all appeared different, each face carved into the wood, distinctive. In an old book she found amongst Grindel’s library, she read that each oracle was representative of a great and powerful sorcerer who once lived thousands of years ago, and when they died, each sorcerer’s soul had been bound to a certain tree. Sophia wasn’t certain if the lore was true or not, and she had been afraid to ask Grindel, as then he’d know she’d been snooping through his things.
“I’m here to ask for your wisdom, great oracles. Now, more than ever, I need some guidance.”
She stared at each face, willing their eyes to open. They had to speak to her. Th
is was really her only chance to be whole again.
But am I worthy? Body tense, shoulders throbbing with nerves, her lungs barely filling with air, Sophia swallowed hard and tried her best to steady herself.
“Please,” she whispered, her heart aching, “please, speak to me. I don’t know what else to do.”
Slowly, the eyes of the oracle she had touched opened. Sophia’s heart swelled at the sight. Then, one by one, the other oracles looked at her, eyes glowing, their trunks humming with power.
She felt the energy vibrations skimming over her skin. The little hairs on her arms stood straight up in response. It was the moment before a lightning strike when everything was buzzing.
In shock, Sophia gaped at the trees, wondering how they had all awoken. Had she done something to them, just by being here in the garden? Had her magic affected them somehow? Broken them?
When she’d touched the one oracle the night before, had she left residual, harmful magic behind in its roots? Maybe that had infected the others. What if she was destroying them somehow?
It wasn’t right that they would all awake for someone like her. A nobody. A broken shell. She wasn’t important. She was just a common girl, with no noble birth, no royal blood. If it hadn’t been for Grindel, she’d be a beggar on the street fighting for her food… or worse, dead.
Instead of their leaves turning black with rot and falling, and their branches breaking apart like she feared, they spoke in unison, their deep ethereal voices vibrating over her.
Little bird of sky and stone,
Pleased we are you have finally spoken.
We give you now a single chance
To mend what has been broken.
Is not destroyed, but resides in another,
That which has been torn asunder.
To heal yourself, find the piece,
Will speak to you like thunder.
Before the next harvest moon,
Bring to us of which you’ve found.
Then a gift you will receive,
Fulfill your true purpose, you are bound.
Not slave, nor trained warrior be,
Your destiny to which you own.
Orphan girl, lost in the mountain,
Need to restore the throne.
With only that cryptic message, the oracles began to go back to sleep. As Sophia gaped, baffled into silence, their glowing eyes slowly began to shut.
When the last tree went completely still, Sophia flinched in surprise. For a moment, she didn’t move a muscle as she tried to process what had just happened, maybe she’d been hallucinating, she had been awake for twenty hours and hadn’t eaten anything. She considered asking more questions of the oracles, but she heard the running steps of the guards rushing toward her through the park. In another few seconds, she would be surrounded and would have to fight her way out. She really didn’t want to injure those guards just doing their jobs.
Although bewildered and wanting to stay to truly absorb the moment, she couldn’t let them capture her since she wasn’t supposed to exist. If they found out what she was, she would be put to death. No explanation. No trial. Just an execution.
Sophia jumped to her feet, ran across the park around the other trees, over the fence, then escaped into the shadows. By the time the guards entered the circle, it would be empty. She knew they would frantically search the surroundings, wondering who had woken the oracles but she was already long gone from the area.
Half way through the city, she stopped and pressed herself against the wall of some tavern to catch her breath and to sort out her thoughts. Everything swirled in her head. The oracles’ voices, their words. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She very nearly pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t in a dream or hallucinating.
For the first time in her life, she felt true renewed purpose. She could be healed. She could be more than a broken soul, more than an illegal creature and a threat to the world around her. She had a true mission—find the missing piece of her soul. The oracles said the piece was in another. Could it really be in another person? Was it in someone she already knew? That didn’t seem possible as she only knew two people. And she knew, for certain, her soul didn’t reside in either Grindel or Headmistress Mittle. That would’ve just been a cruel twist of fate.
She wasn’t sure what “Will speak to you like thunder” meant either. Maybe when she found the piece, it would tell her somehow. Speak to her? She wasn’t sure if they meant it in the literal sense. The prophecy was all so complicated, none of it really made sense, but at least it gave her a way forward, gave her some hope. She would figure it out no matter what she had to do.
The harvest moon was only two months away. It wasn’t much time. And what if she failed? Would that mean she would never be healed? That she would remain damaged and broken for the rest of her life? She wouldn’t let that happen. There was too much at stake.
And, to top it all off, the oracles only spoke to those who were truly unique in some way—the kings, the nobles, the brilliant minds that would change the world. She was none of these things. So why did all six trees talk to her when the current record achieved by the last king, Duncan Averell, was only three?
She needed to do some research on the oracles. She hoped Grindel had some books on them, if not, it would prove difficult, as she couldn’t just waltz into Nighthelm library in the middle of the day and ask for volumes on the history of the oracles. And she didn’t think Headmistress Mittle would allow her into the castle to use the extensive library there.
A creeping sensation filled her. Someone was watching her. In her periphery, a door swung shut. She didn’t catch a face, only a mere glimpse of a solid form. She didn’t even know if the form was male or female. Unnerved, she slipped back into the night. Haris waited for her just outside the wall. He would be worried that she’d been gone so long.
She would find him, head back to the cottage before Grindel woke, and come up with a plan. The oracles had given her a whole new reason to survive. And she wouldn’t let them down. She couldn’t. It seemed the entire fate of the Nighthelm rested on her shoulders.
Chapter Eleven
Sophia
The next evening, after a particularly grueling training day, Sophia sat on a rooftop deep in the city of Nighthelm, overlooking a beautiful garden that she’d never been in before. After a long day of sword swinging and running an obstacle course Grindel had set up in the field, she immediately jumped on Haris and came to the city, sneaking in as usual. Her body thrummed with energy. After what the oracles told her, she needed to be around others, even if they didn’t know she was there, watching.
Couples paraded along the winding paths through flower beds of windflowers, larkspur, and her favorite, black snapdragons, and around a large, white, stone fountain, water bubbling out of the mouth of a beautiful siren. She shook her head at that, knowing full well that sirens looked more like fish-lipped hags than lovely, full-breasted women. The people of Nighthelm had so much to learn.
Soldiers and their blushing damsels in big, puffy, frilly dresses that dragged on the ground mingled in the large garden, talking and flirting with one another. She almost gagged at the thought of wearing one of those getups. The corseted top alone would be maddening to wear. How could any girl even move, let alone run or jump or perform a round house back kick to an opponent? But she did envy their flirting. She wondered what it would be like to have some big soldier touch her gently with his rough hands or whisper sweet words into her ear. The thought sent a surprising ripple of pleasure down her body.
As she watched more of the mating rituals, Sophia was grateful that she had a week or so before she would be considered dangerous again. She could already feel her power returning with every flex of her hands, so she knew she wouldn’t be able to visit the city for much longer. She just hoped it was long enough to figure out the prophecy the oracles bestowed upon her.
She recounted it in her head:
Little bird of sky and stone,
Pleased we are, you have finally spoken.
We give you now a single chance
To mend what has been broken.
That part was obvious. They were giving her an opportunity to fix her magic, and heal her broken soul although she didn’t know why they called her a little bird of sky and stone. Sophia wondered if she should tell Grindel and the headmistress what the oracles had told her. Maybe they could help her figure it all out. But it would more likely be that she would be punished severely for seeking out the oracles.
Is not destroyed, but resides in another,
That which has been torn asunder.
To heal yourself, find the piece,
Will speak to you like thunder.
This part was harder to figure out. They were obviously talking about her soul being broken. And that the piece was somewhere out there. It had to mean it was in another person, as inanimate objects didn’t hold souls, and she didn’t think it would reside in some plant or animal running around in the forest. But how was she going to find the piece? It seemed like an impossible task, especially to someone who was isolated and was never around people.
A girl in the garden giggled annoyingly at something her chosen male companion said, and Sophia rolled her eyes, but it gave Sophia an idea. What better way to talk and touch those around her than by dressing and acting the part. The ritual she witnessed was a perfect cover. She would pretend to look for a husband. She would use the parties and mingling events the city hosted over the summer to search for the missing piece of her soul.
