The Will and the Wilds

by Holmberg, Charlie N.

  I know how pathetic I am, yet I can’t seem to heal myself. I place one handkerchief in the laundry and take a second to wipe my eyes, which are growing sore from the constant application of linen. My dear, kind father does not ask after my troubles or try to make them right. He merely remains silent, feeds me when I forget to eat, and places a kiss on my head when I sit on the rug before the unlit hearth, where Maekallus had once lain beside me.

  It takes another day for me to realize the gobler’s mark has vanished from my arm. Whether it was nullified by my entrance into the monster realm or vanquished by the power of the narval horn, I’ll never know.

  I sleep a sleep without nightmares. Without dreams at all. I am still broken and sore in the morning, but I force myself from my bed and put a broom in my hand, determined to reclaim the life he so selflessly returned to me. Whenever I pass the east-facing windows, I look out into the wildwood, wishing and hoping, but the stone tells me he is not here. The bracelet remains fastened around my right wrist. I haven’t the heart to move it.

  I tend my garden, pulling weeds without a thought in my head, trying to will the sweet summer air to mend me. I make dinner and burn myself on the pot, then guide my father through the steps of finishing the meal.

  All this time, the stone hangs from my wrist, not cool, not hot. But after we’ve eaten, when Papa is setting up a game of fell the king, the stone turns cold, chilled as snowfall in an instant. My broken heart leaps, and I clasp the charm tightly against my palm.

  But it is not a narval it warns me of. It warns me of many things, many mystings. The first name it whispers is orjan.

  It is with utter despondency that I realize Maekallus was right. That it wasn’t safe to use the stone near Scroud. That he is intimately familiar with it. That the moment I unleashed its power in his presence, I confirmed what the first, dead gobler had known.

  The stone is here. And now the great mysting lord has come to reclaim it.

  “Papa.”

  My voice is hoarse, though I’ve barely spoken the last two days. I rush from the house, leaving the front door open. The sun is half-set, casting everything in shadow. “Papa,” I say, a little louder. I run around to the cellar and call down into its darkness. “Papa!”

  “Enna?” he calls back.

  “Papa, mystings. In the wildwood. They’re coming this way. We need to leave.”

  “Mystings?” he repeats, and his face appears at the bottom of the ladder, a basket half-filled with mushrooms in one hand and a lantern in the other.

  “Please, Papa. Scroud is coming.”

  There’s a glint in his eye, and not just from the lantern. A moment of recognition, and then it’s gone.

  He sets down the basket and climbs up with the lantern. “I should have kept a horse.”

  Regrets do us no good. I grab his arm and pull him into the house, grateful he’s hale again. I grab a sack and load it with whatever food I can find. The Will Stone brushes my arm and stings. I hiss, but refuse to take it off. Instead I wrap a cloth around it, tucking the ends beneath the bracelet.

  I fear I’ll need it.

  “How many?” My father takes his sword off the mantel.

  “Too many.” I’ll hurt myself if I grasp the stone now and attempt to count. Never has it been so cold, so acidic to the touch. They’d felt so close. Closer than the portal ring. Had a scout discovered my home without my knowledge? Had another mysting seen me, or Maekallus, the night I freed him?

  Thoughts of Maekallus stab through me, making the broken horn in my breast ache anew. I throw the sack over my shoulder as Papa buckles his scabbard to his belt. He’s donned a cloak as well.

  He pauses and studies me. “Elefie, where are we going?”

  The backs of my eyes burn. I rush to him and take his hand. “Away, Anchal.” I call my father by his first name, as my mother would have. There’s no time for corrections. “Away.” But though I’m eager to flee, I can’t just abandon Fendell to its fate. The townspeople will think I’m crazy when I ring the warning bell, especially midday. But the wise ones will heed me.

  “But the baby—”

  “She’s here,” I assure him. “Come.”

  I take his hand in mine and bolt out the front door, flying down the dirt path into Fendell. It seems forever away, and yet I reach it quickly. Odd looks assault me as I push through the crowd to the bell tower looming above the well. I have to stand on the well’s lip to reach the rope. It’s heavy, but Papa grabs the length just above my hands and pulls it down.

  The bell’s toll is emphatic and reverberates through my body like a living thing. My ears rattle with the sound, but I pull again, and then a third time. Townsfolk are gathering around; I see the apothecary and Tennith’s mother among them.

  “Prepare to fight or flee,” I say, ears ringing. “An army of mystings is coming.”

  Several stare at me, fear slipping into their countenances. One man actually laughs.

  I don’t have time to convince him.

  Taking my father’s hand again, but before I can pull him through the crowd, I hear my name over the murmuring of the others. “Enna Rydar!”

  I whirl back, panicked, only to spot an unfamiliar face among the townspeople. He is tall, with a strange beard and—

  Gods above, I know that face. He is one of the scholars from the library. Jerred, wasn’t it? I drew the vuldor for him.

  The horn piercing my middle throbs as memories threaten to sink me into the earth.

  Jerred runs up to me. He is elated, his eyes wide, his mouth smiling. “I’ve finally found you! You said a day’s ride, but I didn’t know what direction! My search led me—”

  “Run,” I interrupt. There is no time. “If you want to live, run.”

  I turn my back on the scholar, on opportunity, a second time and hurry my father out of town, ignoring the questions and jeers that fall upon me from the locals. I answer only, “There is no time!” We head west, parallel to Fendell and away from the wildwood. We do not cover even an eighth of a mile before the shrill giggle of a grinler raises the small hairs on my neck.

  My father stops and turns back, drawing his heavy blade.

  “Papa, please,” I beg, but his clear eyes narrow at the great forest behind us.

  They emerge in broken lines—grinlers, orjans, goblers, freblon. Another serpentine slyser like the one who appeared from the summoning circle in Maekallus’s glade. Even two dark-haired narvals march among them, and the sight of their menacing horns and switch-like tails hits me like a blacksmith’s hammer. They look nothing like him, yet they are so similar. The woman is taller than the man, her hair brushing the ground, her chest exposed.

  They leak from the wildwood like mortal corruption, and I wish our realm would devour them faster and turn them into sludge. A strange part of me feels betrayed by the wildwood, that it would let so many of our enemies trespass. Yet I’ve always known what the wildwood was. I’ve always been told to beware it, even when its sun warmed my skin and its land fed my belly.

  I hear a scream in the distance, followed by shouts. Some in Fendell have seen the monsters pour from the forest. The small army, at least seventy-five mystings, does not move toward the town, however. They march toward me and my father, and at their head is a tall orjan wearing a gold-plated sash, from which hangs what I assume to be large teeth. Scroud.

  He is far more menacing in the sunlight. His black eyes hold eternal depths. His tusked scowl, a thousand promises of suffering.

  My father crouches, his sword ready. I grab his elbow. “Stop.”

  “We will die valiantly, Shenard,” he whispers. I don’t recognize the name and can only guess it belongs to an old fellow in arms.

  The army passes my home. In the distance I see a smattering of men armed with knives and pitchforks on the road from Fendell, but they hesitate. They are outnumbered. Never have we seen so many of these creatures at once.

  A chorus of grinler giggling fouls the air as the setting sun turns the sk
y red, filling me with memories of the Deep. I pull the rag from my wrist. I feel Scroud’s gaze like a poisoned arrow in my cheek.

  I grab the stone, gasping as chilly agony shoots up my arm and into my shoulder, instantly immobilizing the joints. It webs across my back, tightening the muscles and twisting bone.

  In response, somehow, the conical horn in my breast warms, driving back the worst of the pain. Still, my teeth chatter and my palm burns. I clench my jaw until my head aches.

  “Stop.”

  Scroud hesitates. The narvals slow, and most of the others do the same. A few grinlers continue forward, shoving each other and making that horrendous screeching, laughing sound. Scroud growls loud enough for the sound to carry the distance between us. He takes one labored step forward, then another. He bellows at me, and I cannot tell if it’s in my tongue or his, for the words are too low and harsh. They are nails in my ears, hammering down into my brain.

  I squeeze the stone harder. The broken horn heats to a feverish temperature.

  “Stop.”

  My entire body tingles with the power of the Will Stone. It’s as if I’ve shot an invisible wall out from myself and the army has collided with it. The soldiers freeze and look about in either anger or confusion.

  My body is shaking, as though the Will Stone draws its energy from my own soul. Beside me, Papa says, “Enna?”

  I don’t answer him. I don’t dare break my concentration.

  The goblers inch forward.

  “STOP!” I bellow, and my voice echoes against the wildwood. The mystings hit my wall again. The horn burns so hot I fear my body will crumble to ash around it. The Will Stone is so cold in my fist I can feel it searing a hole through my flesh. I meet Scroud’s dark gaze head-on.

  “Go. Go!” I scream. “You will not come back here! You are banished! You will not come back here!”

  The wall pushes at them. I can’t feel my legs. The simple act of standing is excruciating.

  The army doesn’t move. Scroud balks at me, but he does not look away. I can feel the intensity of his will. Of his desire, his hatred, and I am its focal point.

  My father gasps with what I can only assume is clarity. Recognition. And I believe Scroud recognizes him as well.

  “Leave!” I stagger. My father grabs my arm, the one not paralyzed by the stone, and holds me upright. I lean into him, pushing what strength I have into the stone. My breast is on fire, driving back the ice in my shoulders and gut. “Return whence you came. Leave this realm and never come back. Leave. Leave. LEAVE! ”

  A bolt of the bitterest winter spikes through me, filling every crevice of my body. I gasp and collapse into my father’s strength.

  He drops me to my knees. The cold has abated, but I tremble with the memory of it. The fire has left, too, but my body tenses as if run through by a sword. I lift my eyes to the wildwood just in time to see the flicking tails of the two narvals as they vanish into the trees.

  They’re gone, all of them, as if they never were. Folk from the town begin filling in the almost battleground, lowering their weapons, exclaiming and whispering all at once. They look back at me, their eyes astonished or bewildered. I am grounded enough to recognize Tennith among them, dressed in soiled farming clothes, a scythe in hand. His dark eyes meet mine. He is confused, yet his brows draw together as though he is angry. As though I’ve removed some sort of mask and he doesn’t like what’s underneath.

  Trembling, I manage to stand and take a step forward. “T-Tennith—”

  His father, behind him, sets a heavy hand on his shoulder. Tennith allows himself to be pulled away, his expression never lifting.

  I was clearly the target of the mystings’ attack. I rang the warning bell. My voice shouted mad commands at them. Mad commands they heeded. I have given the townspeople good reason to reject me. I know instinctually that they will no longer buy our mushrooms or sell to us. They will close off their conversations when we venture near. Were I to knock on Tennith’s door again, it would not open to me.

  Something sharp bites my right fist. I wince as I open stiff fingers. I can barely see for the tears in my eyes.

  The Will Stone, the dark gem my father risked his life to secure for me, rests in a dozen pieces against my palm.

  CHAPTER 31

  Two Months Later

  The town of Crake is a modest one. I had thought Fendell small, but Crake is half its size, barely large enough to be called a town. We have a wisewoman, a biweekly farmers’ market, and little else. One must travel to Caisgard for supplies that cannot easily be homemade.

  It was Jerred, the scholar, who helped us find the place. He was the only person who would speak to me after Scroud’s army vanished. It was he who bartered for our supplies, he who found the abandoned blacksmith’s cottage half a mile from the tiny town. It is a small home with three rooms, nestled against a bend in the wildwood, about seventeen miles south of the home my father had built with his own two hands. The house meant for his sweetheart, before the mystings killed her. The house that now stands as a great tombstone for the three loved ones buried on its grounds. A painful loss, but the time had come to leave the dead behind.

  Jerred has left us to rebuild our lives, with a promise to return. He saw me turn away the mysting army with his own eyes. His interest will not be deterred. And were I of a more sound mind, I would be thrilled at the prospect of studying with an accomplished scholar. But for now, I must focus on securing this new life, and repairing the damaged pieces of myself.

  There is a comfort to this new home, this new patch of forest, and I’m grateful for the endless list of tasks that need completing to make the cottage a suitable place to live. I’ve cleaned cobwebs and spiderwebs, hammered new boards into the floor, filled holes in the roof with mortar while Papa hammered shingles. I’ve even cleared a plot at the back of the house, facing the wildwood, and placed my delicate transplants in its soil. Tusk nettle, lavender, rabbit’s ear, aster leaf, tapis root, and oon berry. It will take time before they grow hearty enough to harvest, but I can wait. I’ve gotten rather good at it—it’s what I’ve done all these weeks since the mystings vanished into the wildwood.

  Time is the best healer, my grandmother used to say, but it is a cruel master that takes pleasure in my torment and withholds its salve. The pieces of my heart are as shattered as the Will Stone, and they are so heavy that when I cannot occupy my mind with a distracting enough task, I can barely breathe for their weight. I cannot forget, for the horn lives inside me, keeping my soul where no other can take it. But if I cannot forget, then I cannot heal, and thus I find myself trapped in an endless loop of sorrow and self-pity.

  My mother never cried, or so I’ve heard. I always thought myself like her, but my time without my soul made me weak, and the tears come easily now, especially at night when I am alone to dwell in my regrets. It worried my father, at first. Now I think he’s made his peace with it, though I have not.

  After a wearying day of helping Papa dig out the cellar to make space for mushroom shelves, I collapse onto my bed, dusted with filth. Yes, time is cruel. I weep just as much as I did the morning I found Maekallus gone and my soul restored to me. The pin through my breast no longer pains me. On occasion it warms, as if speaking to me the same way the Will Stone once did, but it cools down just as quickly, leaving me unable to interpret. The foolish part of me searches for him in those moments of warmth, imagining that he’s calling to me, but he is never there.

  Maekallus holds very still until the pesky dragonfly hovers a little closer. Then he flicks his tail, slicing through the insect’s long body with its sharp point.

  He gives the halved insect a cursory glance before ducking his long horn under an oak branch and continuing on his way, hoofing softly through the edge of the wildwood. He’s spent way too much time here. At first, he told himself he was fleeing the unrest in the Deep. Scroud had lost another battle—this one before it had even begun—and his remaining followers had abandoned him for good, hating him
for their banishment from the mortal realm. While Maekallus is glad to see his former tormentor so diminished, he doesn’t want to partake in the ensuing anarchy. So he returns to the wildwood, following memorized paths.

  But when Maekallus finds her house empty, he searches farther, sneaking through the streets and taverns with his invisibility up, listening and watching. It takes a week to find her, though she has yet to see him. He wonders if she even can—the Will Stone no longer hangs from her wrist.

  The things he could have done with the thing . . . To think he’d given it back to her. Twice.

  That was a different Maekallus. One he remembers but doesn’t understand. He recalls loving the mortal woman, enough that he’d do anything for her, but he can’t . . . comprehend it now. Yet he finds himself pulled to this place, as though she made a binding spell all her own. Perhaps she is a witch. This new spell tugs at him in the same spot the first one had.

  He hates it. Yet the memories eat at him. Enna is different than Narah, the brothel woman. Enna had been a part of him once. She made him mortal, for a moment.

  He hasn’t eaten a soul since expelling hers. He wonders if doing so would bring the emotions associated with his memories pouring back. Does he want to feel that way again? Those feelings had come with a heft of miserable emotions. He also knows that Enna would hate him if he consumed another mortal’s soul just to remember the connection they once shared. That makes him hesitate.

  And he hates it.

  CHAPTER 32

  One Month Later

  The trees in the wildwood whisper of autumn. Some seem to crave it, their leaves already tipped yellow and orange. I hate the cold, but the beginning of autumn is my favorite time of year. The ancient trees are brilliant in their symphony of color. A person can walk among them and feel as if they’ve walked into the sunset itself. Ash trees will soon wear crowns of gold, and maples will burst into tangible flame. Then the leaves will drop, and for days it will be like a rainbow of snowfall, and it will be beautiful. It’s no wonder my mother could not resist crossing through the wildwood the day the grinlers found her. I was born at the peak of the leaves’ vibrancy.