Jake was surprised to see it so alone, but upon closer inspection, he noticed the guards’ demeanor wasn’t as lax as he supposed, each watching warily in pairs around the perimeter. They carried swords and bore the marks of Outriders. He had never seen so many gathered in one place. They each seemed both alert and bone tired. A few boys and men from the village lingered nearby, but they kept their distance, standing beyond the ring of guards. Members of the town council were gathered in a heated discussion, apparently displeased with the creature’s presence in the town and undecided on what they should do. The guards look equally discontent with the creature. The youngest among them, who had a thin wisp of a beard and only looked to be a year or so older than Jake, was arguing with the most grizzled of the guards as they approached.
“I’m not doing it. I’m not going any closer than I have to,” the younger man said.
“You’re going to do it, and that’s that.” The grizzled man shoved a plate towards the younger man, who accepted it reluctantly.
“I don’t know why we have to make a show of it. We should put the thing down before true night falls. Before its friends come for it.” The guard took notice of Jake and Kenton and nodded their way. “You boys, you here to have a look at the demon? Want to get up close?” he asked.
Kenton looked as though he’d just been promised a king’s daughter. “Sure,” he said before Jake could convince him otherwise. With a glance towards the older man, the younger guard held out the plate.
“Go and dump this through the bars.”
The plate held the bones of a half-eaten pheasant, nothing more than would be tossed to a half-starved dog.
Kenton took it without hesitation, but the older man put a hand over his wrist.
“You got any knives on you?”
“Course I do,” Kenton said.
“You’ll want to leave them here lest you find yourself stabbed in the neck.”
“Really?” Kenton asked.
The older man nodded grimly. “Already seen it twice. The thing could make you kill your own mother if you aren’t mindful. Like a damned adder playing dead. It’s just waiting for its moment to strike. And it doesn’t need to do so by its own hand.”
The man looked serious, the sort of man Jake figured wouldn’t scare in the face of an adarak.
Kenton dropped his knife from his belt, still grinning. Then he nodded for Jake to do the same. “You’re coming with me.”
“I am?”
“Yes. Make sure I don’t go crazy.”
“You’re already crazy,” Jake muttered, but he put his own knife next to Kenton’s reluctantly before following him towards the ring of torches. The guards eyed them, and Jake noticed that the men who had been arguing paused long enough to watch.
“What in the shadows of Everdark are you getting us into?” he asked as they passed inside the circle of torches.
Kenton just smiled. “Live a little, alright? This won’t be the first time you get close to one of these fuckers.”
They moved towards the cage and Jake began to see the creature properly. Right away, he could tell there was something chillingly human about it. It was twisted into a ball, arms covering its head and feet pulled in close to its body. Rather than fearsome, though, it appeared small, like a boy not yet fully grown, unhealthy and thin, gaunt and near-death. Its clothes, if they could be called clothes, looked ragged, more like loose hangings of the forest draped haphazardly across its body. The skin that was showing was covered in bright red markings that looked like burns. The creature looked limp, as though it was dead already.
Kenton slowed as they approached, eyeing the creature warily. He caught Jake’s eye, and for the first time, looked somewhat frightened. Jake kept his attention on the creature, wondering if he would know before it struck. Would it take over his mind? Or would he find himself suddenly with his hands wrapped around Kenton’s neck?
Before he could answer these questions, they were before the bars of the cage. Now he could see the creature even better. It was alive. He heard its low, ragged, sucking breaths, and saw the sheen of sickly sweat covering its sallow skin. Silver-white hair fell about its head, which was hidden beneath its twisted arms. Its ear was as long as a hunting knife and stuck from beneath the cover of its hair. It twitched as they approached, like a dog’s ear, listening on a hunt. A fresh wave of chills crossed Jake’s skin.
Carefully, Kenton turned the plate and quickly dumped the bones into the cage, and then withdrew as fast as he could.
“Here you go, fucker.”
The plate caught the bar and clanged quietly.
From beneath its arm, Jake saw a single eye open, staring back at him. It was overlarge and gleamed golden bright, and in that moment, he had a thought that wasn’t his own.
Help me. Vesta. Help me. Please. The light. . . it burns.
Jake stepped back, a flush of fear coursing through his body. The thought was so foreign, so unnatural and unwanted, that he almost shouted. Kenton looked at him, surprised by his sudden movement.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake said.
He moved away from the cage, never taking his eye from the creature. Kenton started to make a joke, but upon seeing Jake’s face, followed.
“What was that?” he asked.
Jake just shook his head, then said. “You didn’t hear it?”
Kenton grew serious but then smiled, as though Jake was playing some kind of joke. “Don’t mess with me,” he said, still smiling.
“I’m not,” Jake replied, retreating further, past the ring of torches to the guards. “I heard its voice inside my head. Like it was thinking for me.”
“What did it say?”
“Something about the light. It wanted help.”
The grizzled guardsman overheard this and shook his head. “Only help will come when we put the thing out of its misery. Now go on, boys, no sense lingering here to watch it suffer.”
Jake and Kenton headed back to the festival. But while Kenton seemed more excited than ever to join up with Skelm, Jake had made up his mind in full. He was going to promise Peony the next day that he wouldn’t go. He would swear it on her and her good name. And after that, he was going to ask her father for a courtship. There was no way and no how that he would ever go wandering off into the Northwoods. Every illusion of boyhood fantasy had been doused with his single glimpse of the creature’s eye and the thought that had invaded his mind. He hoped in the morning the creature was gone, and he hoped he’d never hear of sprites again. But somehow, he knew this wasn’t the last of it. Trouble was going to come from bringing that demon to town, and someone was going to be hurt by the end of this.
After seeing the sprite, they returned to the festival, and eventually, with enough persistence, Kenton slowly roused Jake from his dark thoughts. They rejoined their friends, who were drinking and laughing, telling stories and passing news. The group listened with bated breath to Jake’s account of the sprite. They laughed doubly hard at Kenton’s version, and even more so at his story from the bridge. The festival rose to a ruckus and Jake eventually loosened up, the night devolving with each passing mug of beer. Men added wood to the bonfires and rolled more kegs from the town hall. The blazes burned and the beer flowed like water. Incomprehensible songs rose and fell like the wind until voices swelled and drowned out the music. And all the while, the Bright Moon rose slowly over the horizon.
As it did, Jake’s fear of the sprite subsided, but his resolve to Peony grew firmer than ever. His mind kept wandering back to her and the flowers he’d laid aside. He’d left them behind some barrels on the western side of the square, where they wouldn’t be seen or trampled or pissed on. He sipped his beer and wondered what else he could add to them to please her. After seeing the sprite, he wasn’t so sure about wandering in the woods at night looking for moon lilies. Even in the woods by his farm, which were familiar as the back of his own hand, it seemed a foolish game. But then again, it wasn’t like a sprite would wander into th
e realm, and Kenton’s mocking was driving reason from his mind. By his fourth cup of beer, he decided he’d still go looking, and by his fifth, he was properly warm and ready.
After one more beer and listening to Kenton recount the story of him peering under the bridge for a third and far more exaggerated time, he decided it was time to slip away without a word. There was no way his friends would let him leave before the village burned down, so he waited for the opportune time. It came as the Jeffry twins dragged Kenton into a heated argument over who was the prettiest girl in town.
“Don’t ask him, he’s reliably unreliable,” Kenton said without even looking towards Jake. “He’ll answer Peony until the moons fall out of the sky.”
The Jeffry twins seemed to accept this at face value, and Jake used it as his cue to take his leave. Pretending to shuffle off for another beer, he slipped towards the western side of the square.
Kenton was right, of course, because as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t even close. Lisa Derens could dance. And Jaimee Finkton was pretty as a pixie. But Peony had to be the prettiest girl in all of Astenith. Her hair reminded him of the Princess Elianna, and her skin was like moonlight pooled on the forest floor. He realized, with his pitiful attempts to put it into words, that he was buzzed on more than just the memory of the night. He was well on his way to drunk, which meant it was all the better to leave before things spun away from him.
Jake tipped the last of his beer in the dirt and retrieved the beginnings of his bouquet on his way to the edge of town. He arranged the flowers in a tight bundle, hoping that their time behind the barrels hadn’t caused them to suffer too much. It was too dark to really tell, so he did his best to keep them ordered and held steady. He hoped Peony would like them.
He walked, and wondered as he did if he could make her a ballad to go along with the flowers.
“Peony, sweet peony. . .” he started, head in a cloud. “I’ll brave the dark, to earn love’s hand, Moon lilies from the night, for my love’s. . . hand.” He fell silent, his rhyme having gone horribly awry. How difficult could it be to rhyme with hand? Panned. Canned. Sand. . .
“Nope,” he decided aloud to himself. “Flowers will do.”
He had no choice now but to find her moon lilies. Determined, he set off into the night.
It was a thirty-minute walk from the village square to his farmhouse, one that he made every day and night on the way to and from Mr. Cooper’s shop. A few minutes to the edge of town. A little over a mile to the lane at the edge of the woods, and then another half a mile from there. He could run the distance in half that time, but at night, the road was too rutted to risk twisting his ankle.
Soon, the voices of the festival faded into the night and he had only the moon above to keep him company.
Moons, he realized, noticing the Dark Moon following sullenly after the Bright Moon. He could practically hear his mother’s voice.
“Ill-fate for those caught alone beneath the Dark Moon.”
He snorted. By her own reasoning—which was contradictory in nature as was so often the case—the Bright Moon would also watch after him.
“Which is it tonight, mother?” he muttered to himself.
The fading shouts from the festival were all he got in answer. In truth, he didn’t hold with either. It wasn’t as though he liked walking alone at night, but he did so often, especially in the winter months when the sun set early. Those nights, though long, sometimes seemed bright as day, with moon and starlight pooling on the snow. Tonight, however, wasn’t quite so bright, but it wasn’t pitch-black either. None of his mother’s superstitions were going to cost him. The Bright Moon, Blood Moon, and Dark Moon held light, but no power. The stars neither. He was in Astenith, inside the border of the realm. He would be fine. And even if he wandered into the woods in search of flowers, it wasn’t like he was wandering into the North Woods. These weren’t the same woods where Skelm had found the sprite.
Goosebumps prickled across Jake’s skin at the thought of the creature. For a moment, he saw the golden-bright eye and felt the tingle of intrusive thought in his mind. He shivered, then shook the feeling away, reminding himself that until this week, talk of sprites would have earned a laugh and more of the ribbing he’d already suffered for the troll. Those demons might be out near Annordale, but they weren’t any trouble for him here in Stillwater.
That being said, it didn’t take long for the same wariness from before to rise in his throat. Though the beer did wonders for his courage and the festival was still going full bore, the road seemed unusually quiet, and the village houses along the lane unusually dark. Black windows stared at him as he walked. Shadows hid from the rising moons, and the wind moved like a whisper through the grasses. In each dark yard or beneath the blackened porches, he could imagine one of the pale creatures hiding in the dark. He looked for golden eyes and twitching ears, and hurried along, knowing he was being foolish.
He left the village heading towards the moons, which were both full and in the east, rising above the hills as they chased the stars from the skies. Their shared light turned the fields a ghostly pale and the orchards to an unnatural sprawl of perfect dark. He tried not to look down the lines of trees, fearing he might see some dark silhouette dart through the moonlight. Beneath his feet, the cobbles turned to gravel, and the gravel turned to dirt. Then the dirt led him step-by-quiet-step a mile and a quarter to the edge of the hills where the forests sprang up. Moonlight bathed the treetops, but beneath the forest’s eaves, the shadows gathered, black and still.
By now his buzz was fading. The road split in two, with the main road continuing eastward toward Hornblower and Rhune some fifteen miles distant. That way disappeared into the trees as though it was swallowed whole by a wall of darkness. His own path, meanwhile, turned aside by way of a small lane. The lane headed northward along the edge of the woods towards a still-hidden row of farms at the foot of the hills. He couldn’t see them yet, but he thought he smelled woodsmoke in the air.
As he walked the lane, he kept watch on the woods, the pitch-black shadows accompaning him along his way. Sweat condensed between his palm and the flower stems. He rearranged them, hoping not to crush any of the petals, unsure why he was so frightened.
He had grown up playing in these woods, hunting with his father and building forts with Tom Garren and his little sister, Astrid. But the open forest and sun-dappled meadows of the day seemed like a whole different world at the moment. Black shadows and pockets of deeper darkness were all he could see as he continued to walk along the lane.
Within a quarter-mile, he saw the reassuring lights of the Garren’s farm, and a few minutes after that he came around a bend and saw the Hallfield’s house. In the distance, he could just see the lights of his own farmhouse. A lamp burned on the porch. His mother had either left it out, or she was still up, waiting for him.
He slowed and eyed the woods. They looked no less menacing than they had where the road split, and while Kenton’s prodding and Peony’s wishes had firmed up his will in the village, it wasn’t a comforting thought to step off the road. For a time, he just listened. Crickets buzzed their summer song and the wind stirred the leaves. He heard an owl, and then some far away snorting that sounded like the Garren’s horses out in the pasture. The air smelled of oak and dried grass and summer pine. It seemed like a perfectly normal night.
He looked around him. Moonlight beamed down now, and the Bright Moon had moved ahead of the Dark Moon in the heavens. Just around him, he could actually still see if he tried, and beyond that, there were layers to the darkness. The woods would not blind him.
For a moment, he lingered, and then almost turned back for home. He would have, except for the memory of Peony’s laughter and her eyes as she had requested something marvelous. He looked back at the Bright Moon, hoping it would keep him safe.
"Never a worry on a full bright night. . ." Jake muttered to himself, stepping off the road. "The things we do for love. . ."
He kne
w a meadow lay beyond the first layer of woods, and if he was lucky, he might find both elvish bellflowers and moon lilies there. As soon as he entered the forest, he paused, and his eyes slowly adjusted.
He walked easily, stomping over fallen limbs and through low bushes that were hardly any hindrance. The ground crunched underfoot, and though it was dark, the moons yielded enough light to know his way. After a time, he stopped and looked back towards the lane. The meadow seemed a bit farther than he remembered, but he could still see the lights of the farmhouses here and there between the trees. Once again he hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, he kept going and was soon glad for it. He came to the grove of aspens and the meadow beyond.
Moonlight lay thick upon the grasses before him and he stopped and grinned.
“Hello, my beauties,” he said excitedly.
He had remembered rightly; the field was full of moon lilies. Each flower was spread wide beneath the moonlight, black faces upturned like velvet lily pads on a midnight pond. They seemed to preen themselves to the Bright Moon’s light. He stepped closer and squatted down to have a better look. Even in the dark, he could see the shadowed speckling that would be blood red in the daylight. A dozen lay just at the meadow’s edge, drinking greedily from the moons, and another dozen were scattered about the middle of the field.
Jake grinned, knowing that he could gather more than he could carry. He stepped forward and picked one flower and then another, and then another, making his way along the edge of the woods and adding to his bouquet. He laughed to himself as he did, imagining Peony’s face when she saw the flowers.
He had an armful now, and he decided it was time he turned back for the farmhouse. Glad to be through with it, he stepped back into the shadows of the trees.
Twelve Ways to Die in Galadore, Volume I Page 3
