✶
The wagon had been a stroke of genius.
It wasn’t much faster than walking, of course, but after days of trekking through northwestern Ingola, Etienne was more than willing to rest his blistered feet. He let them swing from the back of the wagon and leaned back on his hands to enjoy the relative peace.
It was a warm, sunny spring day alive with the scents of tilled earth and blooming things. Birds called in the distance, and the low thrum of insects made for a lazy accompaniment to their slow progress. The land around them was still often populated by farmland, though the gentle plains of midwestern Ingola were gradually becoming rolling hills the closer they got to the Brig’ian Mountains.
For the first time in days, Etienne felt as though he could relax. Alphonse was tucked behind him in the wagon, not eating through their funds in the capital or wandering off in the woods. He could breathe easy and satisfy his curiosity for the lands away from central Ingola, where he had spent his entire life.
Here in the northern part of the country, they had even started to see small ruins. This area had been a part of Rhosan in ages past, a fact proclaimed in cairns, crumbled temples, and the wary looks on the faces of natives. They were just passing a simple cairn, constructed of rough stone blocks dusted in moss. It had likely stood as long as the road had been here, a marker for travelers between the nations for centuries.
Excitement brightening his face, Etienne turned to tell Alphonse about the cairn when he started in horror. She was sitting against one side of the carriage, curled between the sacks of flour their driver was hauling from his mill. One arm was raised to eye level so that she could watch a thick drop of crimson travel slowly past her wrist.
“Alphonse!” Etienne scrambled haphazardly to her, reaching out to take her wrist in his hand. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and began to mop up the blood. It was clear on further inspection that she had torn open the pad of her thumb.
“What d—” Etienne was interrupted by the miller calling out roughly from in front of them.
“Don’t move ‘round s’much. Bothers the oxen.”
Etienne crouched beside Alphonse and studied her hand. Thankfully, he didn’t think the honest old man had seen her. “What did you do to yourself?” he asked, worry contorting his features. “Why didn’t you heal it?”
It was difficult not to get frustrated with Alphonse. Every day was like this, constantly being on edge for the next strange impulse the creature would have, and yet, even as the feeling appeared in his chest, guilt smote Etienne for having it. She was going through this because of him. The least he could do was be patient with these strange symptoms.
“Do you remember it?” he asked, more gently this time.
❀
“I wanted to see the blood,” she murmured, trying to pry her hand back from him, tongue darting out to lick her lips in anticipation. Etienne’s meddling was distracting her from fighting the sickness’s demands.
Just a taste.
It crooned. It sounded so reasonable.
Alphonse winced, pushing back, and the voice growled but grew dimmer.
She took her injured thumb in her free hand and covered it. Green light radiated out from her healing touch, and the slice was mended. “I’m sorry, Etienne.” She mumbled, having recognized the irritation and alarm in his face. She knew being near her now was… Tedious. “I’m sorry.”
Etienne let her go, leaning back with a sigh. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. We’re both still learning about this. What does it feel like?” he asked, though a little timidly.
Astoundingly, Alphonse managed to smile at Etienne. Even at a time like this, he could still be curious, inquisitive. She bumped her elbow against his side, teasingly. “You aren’t supposed to ask a lady those sorts of questions,” she murmured, humor making her wan face glow from the inside.
She looked beyond, at the fields of wheat and barley they were passing. How they swayed in the spring breeze, green and bright, not yet the customary golden-brown of summer and harvest.
New.
What did it feel like? It was difficult to put into words. It was difficult to know. Half the time, she didn’t feel anything at all…
“Well,” she tried for an answer, placing her recently healed hand above her heart. “I feel it here mostly. My heart beats faster, or slower… and it’s heavy. Or there is intense pressure, and I think it’s going to stop altogether.” She swallowed. That was mostly when the sickness fought her tooth and nail to get out.
“Other times, it’s here…” Alphonse tapped the center of her forehead, the faint tattoo marked there. “I’ll hear a voice, and it’s not my own. It’s… it’s hard and strong and defiant and brave and… cruel.” That voice frightened her more than her heart-stopping.
“But mostly, I just have an instinct, and I want to follow it. It’s not until after the fact that I realize… I realize it wasn’t my instinct.”
And then there were the times when she felt nothing, thought nothing, and just… left her own body. She’d wake up somewhere new, or doing something she’d never done before… Other times she wasn’t gone, not totally. But it felt dizzy and blurry and much like a dream.
“I’m changing. Every day I feel it.” Her voice sounded distant to her own ears because she knew that there was nothing she could do. Even if they healed her of this sickness, forever Alphonse would be irrevocably altered.
Her eyes shot to Etienne’s face.
“Are you jealous?”
✶
Etienne opened his mouth to answer with a resounding no and then stopped. Hesitated.
Was he jealous?
He had listened to Alphonse’s descriptions of what the entity felt like with rapt attention, cataloging them against his own observations of her changing behavior. He wanted to understand the shadow that had infested his best friend. He wanted to understand what it was she was going through.
Did that mean he wanted to experience it himself? Etienne rubbed the hand-shaped scar on his chest.
He considered for a moment what it must be like: the confusion of waking up in strange places, in acting in ways that he would not normally, in struggling with the impulses of his own mind. Etienne shuddered. Who would he be if he could not trust his mind?
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not jealous. I just want to understand.”
He turned back to the view outside, his consciousness warring inside him. There was a small voice somewhere deep in his thoughts that wondered if somehow Alphonse might learn more than he could because of the shadow in her mind. It wondered that, if he had been the one chosen, he might have been able to use the entity rather than being controlled by it.
Mentally he shook himself. It was that same pride that had set them on this path. He had made the mistake, had let himself become so convinced of his own abilities that he would put his dearest friend in harm’s way for the sake of accolades and an apprenticeship.
Etienne turned back to Alphonse. “Do you think it would help to talk to me about the impulses? Then you could know if they were yours before you acted on them.”
Her cheeks turned a ruddy pink color. “I could try…” she finally muttered, not sounding all that convincing. She was silent for a long moment.
“Have I… have I done anything—ah—untoward to you, Etienne?”
Etienne cocked his head slightly to the side, bewildered by Alphonse’s sudden embarrassment. Was she genuinely self-conscious about the impulses of another creature? They could not be her fault. Besides, he had known her since they were both eleven, awkward and pubescent. What could she possibly have problems sharing with him?
He was almost hurt by her hesitancy. He knew it was his fault, but still, he was just trying to help. Etienne blinked at her for a few seconds, struggling to understand. Anything untoward? Oh.
Oh.
Briefly, an image of Alphonse standing in front of his bed in the light of the setting moon flashed in his min
d, her hands traveling almost sensually down her own body.
He reddened, just as embarrassed by the question as she had been.
“No,” he told her, his voice cracking. “You haven’t made any, uh, advances.” Etienne swallowed, but he didn’t look away. “I wouldn’t accept them if you—if you had.”
Wait, that hadn’t sounded right. He didn’t mean to insinuate that she wasn’t very—very nice.
“What I mean is, well… It would be wrong. Because it wouldn’t be you, so you couldn’t have a say. And well, Alphonse, not to say you aren’t quite, um, nice, but you are rather like a sister to me, so…” Etienne trailed off hopelessly, pink to the tips of his ears.
Alphonse’s face was beet-red. She held up her hand, which was trembling with horror. “Just. Stop. Etienne.” She looked as if she might faint with the pain of enduring this interaction.
He swallowed. He had just made it more awkward.
“I need a nap,” Alphonse said, turning away from him and resting her veiled head against a sack of flour.
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
The next two days of travel were surprisingly more comfortable than the first had been. For whatever reason, Alphonse seemed better able to control the impulses of the creature residing within her. Etienne wished he understood why, if only to make this journey as easy as possible on Alphonse.
There was of course, always the option of trying a spell to bind or control her. He had brought with him enough supplies to cast any number of such spells, and there would be places to buy more along the way.
Still, the idea left a sour taste in Etienne’s mouth.
This was Alphonse. His oldest friend. He didn’t want to cast layers of thick magic around her, like a wild animal that needed caging.
Thankfully, these last few days had been so calm that he hadn’t needed to think much about what it would be like to ensorcell his best friend. They had made good time, and already they were entering one of the few towns on the border of Ingola and the Wildlands. It was much like the other towns they had been through, nothing more than a few buildings surrounded by farmland: a general store, a tavern, a tailor, a butcher…
Of course, the first place Alphonse went to was the butcher.
She stood in the window, staring up at the raw meat on display there like some starving animal. Was this the creature again? Etienne looked uneasily between Alphonse and the pork loin hanging from the storefront and put a hand on her arm to gently pull her away. “That’s not your impulse, I promise.”
It must have been a slow afternoon for the butcher because he walked out at the sight of them in his doorway, wiping bloody hands on his apron. “Is there anythin’ I can get for ya?”
Etienne tore his eyes away from Alphonse uneasily. “Uh, yes. We need a few weeks’ worth of dried meat…” He glanced at the loin. “Pork, if you have it.” Perhaps that would sate the shadow.
“Alright,” the man said cheerfully enough, though he was unlikely to make as much off travel rations as the fresh meat hanging on display. “Come right on in, and I’ll get that wrapped for you.”
Etienne followed him with another nervous glance back at Alphonse. Surely she would be alright for a moment or two.
When Etienne exited the butchery to find Alphonse in roughly the same place that he had left her, he was so relieved he smiled. Maybe their easy days were going to last a little longer.
With a lighter step, the mage wandered from shop to shop, buying simple bran and dried fruit to round out their provisions, a couple of small tents and furs for the colder mountain weather, and two packs to hold it in. Each time he turned around, Alphonse was nearby, gazing at the town around them.
It wasn’t until he sat down to add the maps, clothes, and herbs they had brought with them that he realized how long it’d been since he last checked on Alphonse. Etienne looked up, expecting her to be just over his shoulder or looking into the next shop down the way.
Only, she wasn’t there.
He stood abruptly, nearly turning over the supplies he had so carefully packed. “Alphonse?” he called, then again louder. A few of the townspeople near him stopped and turned to stare, but Etienne didn’t care.
He had to find her.
❀
The sun was bearing down on her, warming her skin; the breeze was flirting with her veil and hair; and Alphonse realized, or maybe it wasn’t her, but the shadow, the sickness, that it was spring.
And that knowledge thrilled her. Absolutely consumed her. Destroyed her. She had to be in spring right now —this very instant.
Turning on her heel, she simply walked out of the village. No one stopped her, no one said a single thing. Perhaps they didn’t even notice Alphonse walking in an almost dazed state down the road, towards the small forested area to the west of the main path.
Winding her way through the trees, young trees, she could tell from how the light filtered through their leaves, how they sang when the wind chased through their limbs. This was a young forest, naive and tamed. Groomed almost.
She hated it.
She loved it.
Alphonse walked until she found a small meadow, a clearing from the trees. It was filled with wildflowers, dancing and swooping and bobbing in delight that she had arrived. A little brook chuckled through the center of the clearing, winding left and right, teasing her.
Alphonse wanted to dunk her feet in that brook, to marvel in its crystal waters. She looked down to take off her sturdy leather boots, only to realize that they were already gone. When had that happened?
She didn’t care.
Drunkenly she wove among the petals, dancing and skipping and spinning as she raced towards the brook. It glittered in joy to see her, splashing in a carefree way. Teasing her. Alphonse knelt before the waters and caught a ripple of her reflection.
And frowned.
How heinous she looked. Her high necked gown hiding all that the universe had given her. The veil covering her hair, not letting the glorious wind tickle its fingers through it. How awful. How wrong. How sinful.
Hastily Alphonse straightened up, yanking the veil from her hair, wincing in pain as the pins caught her locks.
With that disposed of, she cast it to the ground and quickly pulled the laces of her bodice loose, hauling it off her shoulders and freeing her ribcage.
How much easier it was to breathe now. To take in the scents of the flowers and the sun and the moon and the earth beneath her bare toes. She wriggled those toes, burying them in the sandy dirt of the shore. What a fantastic sensation! How had she not done this before?
It wasn’t enough. All of her needed to feel it. To be connected with nature.
For too long, she had lived in darkness. In whispers. In shadows.
Now she had this body, a strong, healthy body.
Discarding her skirts by unbuttoning the back and stepping out of them, Alphonse was annoyed to find more layers. So many layers.
An underdress and then a shift. And then a breast band and a loincloth and—
“Ugh!” She tossed the last piece of wretched clothing aside and stood, face tilted up to the perfect sun. A friend. A lover at times.
Her rays frolicked over her skin, across her breasts and navel and between her thighs. Everywhere it touched, she felt her body come alive.
For the first time in three hundred years, she was alive. Awake.
Whole.
A triumphant cry left her lips, and she lifted her hands, fisted, to the sky.
Enyo was free.
✶
Etienne sprinted back through the village in the direction they had come, both packs bouncing against his back. She wasn’t in any of the shops. She wasn’t between or behind them or gazing, slack-jawed at some cut of meat.
She was entirely gone.
Near the village gate, a couple of sweat-stained men stood smoking, a moment of calm after what looked to have been a difficult day. Etienne didn’t so much as call out a greeting, instead skiddin
g to a halt before them like a madman.
“My sister,” he panted, gripping a fistful of hair. “Have you seen her? A girl this high, wearing a veil?”
One of them clapped him on the shoulder roughly. “Not to worry, friend, she’s probably found herself some working man for a tumble!” He guffawed at his own poor joke, spraying the air before himself with spittle.
The other man just shook his head. “Give ‘em a break, Colin. You can’t say that about a man’s sister. Besides, we saw a girl like that headin’ out the village but half a sun length ago.”
That was enough for Etienne. He was off again, tearing out of the village after her. He was so focused on getting to her as fast as possible that he almost missed the boot lying forlornly to the west side of the road. Beyond it, there was a copse of trees, a beacon in the otherwise cleared countryside.
Etienne scooped up the boot and headed towards it, stopping only to collect its mate a little farther along. He found the first stocking a few hundred yards into the wood, stuffing it quickly into the boot. He wasn’t anywhere near as rigid as Alphonse when it came to propriety, but it still felt a bit indecent to hold onto them any longer than necessary.
The next stocking lay on the edge of a meadow.
It would have been idyllic under other circumstances, but as it was, Etienne paid little attention to the wildflowers. “Alphonse?” His voice was laced with panic. “Are you there?”
When he saw her, he froze.
She was entirely naked, her skin bare from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, and it shocked him so much that for a moment, Etienne didn’t react.
Then, he dropped the boots and slapped his hand over his eyes. “Alphonse, please put your things back on.”
❂
A foreign voice floated back on the gay winds, and Enyo turned to see who had come. Who would join her in the meadow of flowers and sunlight and breezes? Of spring.
A male. The male. The one who had released her.
She smiled broadly, showing all of her teeth, and stalked closer to him, holding one delicate hand out towards him, gesturing for him to approach. He needn’t be afraid, needn’t hide his gaze in deference.
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