The Moon and Stars Follow Their Courses
The moon searched for her missing son, her lantern light reflecting off the snow-tucked fields and curving earthwork ahead, knapped limestone set into its top like teeth in a jawbone. The trail was a soot streak across the silver land. Se’Tsiv wore her cloak wrapped almost double around her shoulders and woven mats of tough water grass on her feet, keeping out the damp and worst of the cold.
The cloak had started as a blanket–a gift from her father to her mother–rich blue cloth and embroidered with abalone beads from the edge of the world. After one of the goats chewed it up, Se’Tsiv’s mother cut it down and re-stitched it into a cloak. The last few beads hung around Se’Tsiv’s shoulders. They shimmered like the moon’s tears as she wept for her son, lost since before the age of man.
Bronze Heads had built an earthwork wall to protect themselves from the forest spirits. The alarm house stood at the head of the path. As Se’Tsiv approached, a Bronze Head came outside to gather sticks of firewood.
Se’Tsiv’s grandparents sometimes told her how terrible the Bronze Heads had been when they’d first come, bodies hard and shiny like wasps. Father-killers and brother-killers, with no women of their own, led by the thunder-cry and black shield-cloud of their god, Tsiv. But now, only the guards at the garrison gate ever wore their bronze helmets.
Actually, no. Se’Tsiv remembered the time all the soldiers had dressed in full armor when some trembling old man visited from Kabt. They stomped around outside the garrison, all yelling with one voice. Then the prefect had thrown apples and nuts to the crowd.
The guard gathering firewood noticed Se’Tsiv in the corner of his eye and turned. “Who’s that?”
Se’Tsiv chewed her bottom lip. Then she lifted her head higher and kept walking. Her breath fluttered behind her like a white pennant.
“Pines?” The watchman grinned. “I can smell you on the wind, my precious.”
“No. I’m Se’Tsiv, daughter of Beau’ca,” she answered in his language.
Another watchman appeared in the entrance of the alarm house. He had a leather-wrapped cudgel in his hand. He said, “I know you, Servant-of-Tsiv. Go home. It’s vile for one with a name like yours to creep around here at night.”
He thought she wanted to lie with them, like Sweet-as-Pines sometimes did. That annoyed Se’Tsiv, and it felt good to snap back, “Well, I’m going to find the witch and have her change my name.”
The kindling dropped to the snow. “In seven hells, you are. Think that’s funny? I’ll beat your–” He made a grab for her, but Be’Tsiv danced sideways. The watchmen chased her across the field, but their heavy boots slowed them down. Se’Tsiv bounded up the earthwork ridge, the ball of her foot landing sparrow-light between the sharp stones. “No joke. I’m changing my name.” The mocking words felt delicious in her mouth. “Then I’ll creep around wherever I like.” A hurled piece of kindling glanced off her shoulder. She laughed and slid down the other side of the embankment and ran for the forest.
The watchmen shouted curses at her. But the forest spirits were volatile. They couldn’t be bribed with gifts of fruit or flesh like the gods of Kabt, and the Bronze Heads never entered their home.
Se.Tsiv’s mother was born in autumn, while the Antlered King hunted the great bear, its fiery blood dripping down the sky. The lovers reached toward one another, never to touch. Their chains shone like silver. Her father washed away the blood, named her Beautiful-Like-Mica, and so she was set on her course, with flecks of gold glittering in her brown eyes.
Her looks even drew the Bronze Head priest out of his holy thoughts. His name was Beloved-by-Tsiv, and followed his course as wielder of the sacrificial knife, reader of steaming entrails and crimson smears. He was bound to his god by chains as strong as those that kept the lovers forever apart, but the girl had the hard beauty of the mountain. Her mouth was a clean fissure he ached to trace with his fingertip.
He was bound to Tsiv and could never marry. Still, when he visited, he tried to make the hut feel something like a real home. He brought treasures from Kabt–earrings and the blanket for Beau’ca, painted bowls for her parents, and when the baby came, a name: Servant-of-Tsiv.
Maybe he wanted to soften his guilt for ignoring his duties and wallowing in the bed of a goat-herder’s daughter. Maybe it was to protect the child from his jealous god. Se’Tsiv didn’t know. Her father had returned to Kabt long ago for some reason or another; nobody really understood why Bronze Heads came or went.
The stars followed their courses night after season after year, watching Se’Tsiv grow. She carried supper to her grandfather in the lower fields and plodded beside her mother carrying loads of wool to the garrison. The village men never helped them. Beau’ca had chosen a Bronze Head over them, and now, they relished seeing her bent low under her burdens. But Beau’ca’s beauty just grew even harder and sharper, into a flinty pride. She only let herself look tired inside the house. And only when they were squeezed together under the blue blanket did Se’Tsiv ever hear her mother murmur the name of her lover from the edge of the world.
The ice storm had risen up from nowhere, killing the fields. There wouldn’t be enough fodder to get all their goats through winter, so the herders slaughtered their oldest and sickest, getting what meat they could before the animals wasted away. Se’Tsiv worked with her grandfather. Blood blackened her hands and dripped to her elbows and melted the snow wherever it splashed. The whole village smelled like blood and salt when someone called, “There she is! Over there.”
A knot of people came down the path, leading the Bronze Head priest who’d replaced her father. Or maybe the one who replaced that one. Either way, he was a gawping, turtle-like man bundled in furs and thick wool leggings. The jeweled knife that made him priest hung from his belt.
As the crowd approached, Se’Tsiv’s grandfather took her arm and pulled her behind him. “What’s this?” he barked.
The priest ignored him, looking to Se’Tsiv. He asked her, “You’re Servant-of-Tsiv?”
Se’Tsiv managed a nod, and so she was set on her course.
The ice storm had grown from Tsiv’s anger. A dove’s entrails told the priest to go into the village and find the one bound to the great fire-spear hurler and conduct her to the god’s house. Once the roads opened after the spring thaw, the priest would take Se’Tsiv to Kabt to serve in Tsiv’s temple.
When she heard, Se’Tsiv’s mother squeezed her tight, spit on the ground, and said she was too young. There was no point, though. She’d stolen the love of one sworn to a god. A theft like that must be repaid. By the next morning, she started talking about getting Se’Tsiv sturdy leather boots for her journey. Se’Tsiv’s grandfather went to the garrison and traded the meat of the slaughtered goats for metal coins, a whole clacking string of them, that Se’Tsiv could take to Kabt.
Se’Tsiv made her own visit to the garrison a few days later. The Bronze Heads were so far from home. The young ones carried spears the same size as the veterans did, but in a crowd, their eyes flitted from face to face, helplessly searching for their mother or sister. Father-killers, brothers-killers, howling and terrible, but a gentle smile toppled them.
A Bronze Head with a forehead full of pimples told Se’Tsiv about the thousand wives of Tsiv. They lived in a long windowless building on the grounds of the great temple in the heart of Kabt. They prepared ritual meals for Tsiv and prayed to him on behalf of the Emperor, the army, and the devout who gave generously to the temple.
Se’Tsiv paid for his tale with a quick kiss and an easy laugh. As soon as she slipped away from the young Bronze Head, she started brooding. She didn’t want to be locked away in the house of a black-cloud lord. She didn’t care if Kabt’s armies won their battles or if the god dribbled blessings on some soft-handed wine seller she’d never met. She was Servant-of-Tsiv, though, and this was her course.
A witch could give her a new name, though. By picking a new name, Se’Tsiv could choose her own course.
>
That night, Se’Tsiv laid down with a rock under her back so she’d stay awake. After everybody else fell asleep, she got up, took the string of coins from their hiding place under the mattress, and slipped out.
The witch lived high on the side of the mountain. People were afraid of her, but those haunted by foul dreams or poisoned by fairy arrows went to her anyway. Se’Tsiv had never seen her herself, but Constance had gone for help when her brother was born and nothing could stop their mother’s bleeding. She’d told Se’Tsiv the witch’s hut lay east of the lower fields, to just keep following the stream up the mountain.
The trees closed in, so only pale shavings of moonlight came through. The deep winter forest lay silent. No birds sang, no insects thrummed. There were only Se’Tsiv’s steps crunching through the snow and the occasional pik of ice cracking.
The Bronze Heads would be furious that she’d cheated their lord. But the whole clattering, bellowing mass of them wasn’t much more terrifying than the two watchmen had been. She’d have to stay out of sight for awhile, and by summer they’d be worried about something else.
While her mind wandered, Se’Tsiv got turned around somehow. Finding her way back to the creek, something started following her. It kept its distance, but constantly sniffled and muttered to itself. Se’Tsiv didn’t know what would happen if she had to backtrack again and cross paths with it.
Then she entered a shallow bowl of sandy earth protected by a curving cliff face. A hut stood below the cupped hand of stone. The muttering thing didn’t follow Se’Tsiv into the clearing. That as much as anything assured her this was the witch’s home.
The hut was the old, round kind with the pointed thatch roof like a wool cap tugged down over its ears. Se’Tsiv decided not to wake the witch. She sat with her back against one of the pines to wait for dawn. Pulling her cloak around her, she let her eyes close for just a minute. When she opened them again, she lay on her side, the cloak draped over her head. Sunlight seeped through the blue fabric. She heard birdsong, and realized it was morning.
A sharp kick made Se’Tsiv yelp and scramble up, jerking the cloak off her head, certain the muttering thing had come back.
It was just a woman, sharp-faced and worn down to bones. “Shouldn’t sleep in the snow,” she said. “You won’t wake up.”
“I know,” Se’Tsiv snapped, embarrassed. She was shivering and her teeth chattered together, but she forced out the words. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
The woman snorted. She wore rotting layers of pleated grass, and her skin was black with soot and dirt. “How much would that matter to the crows who gobbled your eyes, hmm?” Before Se’Tsiv could answer, the woman gave her a bowl of steaming broth.
The bowl felt wonderfully warm in Se’Tsiv’s hands. The woman walked away, calling, “No, not dead. Not yours.”
Two crows watched Se’Tsiv from the hut’s eave. They squawked, and the witch shook her head. “No, not dead, not yours yet. Go on.”
The crows flapped up into the air, looking for breakfast elsewhere.
A long spear of ice ran down the center of the cliff face, a frozen waterfall stabbing at the stony creek bed. The woman smashed it with a rock, gathering the ice chunks onto a long scoop of bark. She was missing her right hand, balancing the bark between her shoulder and stump.
Finishing the vegetable broth, Se’Tsiv wiped her mouth and said, “So... You’re the witch?”
“Uh-huh.”
Her arm holding ice sagged, thin muscles quivering under the weight. Se’Tsiv took the bark from her, and the witch motioned toward her hut. “Now, what do you want? A love charm for some special boy, eh?”
Se’Tsiv rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t come all the way out here for that. An old Bronze Head at the garrison sells love charms, three for a sheep shank.”
They ducked through the doorway into the dank-smelling house. “Well, what then? Drop the ice in the pot there.” She pointed to an iron pot hanging over the fire on three legs.
“I want a new name.”
The witch didn’t look at Se’Tsiv. She squatted down to grind barley. “Not stuff to be playing with, girl,” she finally answered. “Go on home.”
“I’m not playing. My name is Servant-of-Tsiv.” And Se’Tsiv told the witch about her father the holy slaughterer, the grey god who claimed her, and the women locked away at his temple at the edge of the world. “I won’t bleat and beg some god to help somebody’s uncle’s gout. What do I care if they have the gout? Look. I can pay.”
She untied the string of coins from around her waist. The witch barely glanced at them. “I don’t want your little pretties.”
“They’re not jewelry. They’re money. Each one has the emperor's face on it, see? That shows they’re good anywhere in the empire.”
“They’re just pretties to me, girl.”
Se’Tsiv groaned. “Fine. What about my cloak, then? It’s way warmer than pleated grass. Stronger too.”
“It stinks of Bronze Heads.”
“It does not!”
The woman said nothing. A sparrow dropped onto the swept earth just outside the doorway, trilling its song. The witch nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard. Just past Robin’s Hill.” She tossed a few barley grains to the bird.
“So, what do you want then?” Se’Tsiv asked.
“I don’t know. What new name do you want me to give you?”
“Starling-Bright,” Se’Tsiv said, loving how the name danced on the tip of her tongue. She’d thought of it last night, waiting for her mother and grandparents to fall asleep.
The witch chuckled. “I’ve heard in Kabt, they keep pretty birds in cages. You might change your name and still follow the course set down for you.”
“Then not that then. Something else, I don’t know. But something that opens the world up to me instead of locks me away.”
The witch went on grinding the barley. “What’s my name, girl?”
“Uh... I’m not... I don’t know.” People didn’t toss a witch’s name around easily. Se’Tsiv had never heard her called anything but ‘the witch,’ and that was in whispers.
“We’ll make a bargain. If you can guess my name, I’ll give you a new one.”
“How many chances do I get?”
“As many as you want.”
“Really? And if I get it, you’ll really give me a new name?”
“Of course.”
“Um... Magic-Knower?”
“No.”
“Knows-the-Language-of-Birds?”
“No.”
“Friend-to-Birds”
“No. And while you’re thinking, go collect some more firewood. The pile is down to twigs.”
“Lives-In-The-Forest?”
“No.”
“Lives-With-The-Birds?”
“No.”
“Thin-Like-A-Bird?”
“You’re focused on birds, aren’t you?”
They sat by the fire, eating barley cakes. “This isn’t a fair game,” Se’Tsiv groaned. “You’re supposed to give me a clue to think out, not just make me guess anything.”
“For a girl who wants to change her course, you’re very sharp on how things should be.”
Se’Tsiv didn’t answer. Instead, she guessed, “Pretty-Green-Eyes? Watchful-in-the-Dark? Pretty-Green-Eyes-Watchful-in-the-Dark?”
The witch grew tired of saying ‘no’ again and again. She sat weaving water grass, holding the pleats still with her foot, while Se’Tsiv’s guesses bounced off her silence like raindrops off a boulder.
“Nimble-Fingered?”
“One-Handed?”
The witch scowled at her. “Who would name their child that?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t been any of the other names I’ve guessed.”
“Well, let’s get some sleep. Perhaps your mind will be clearer in the morning.” The witch’s bed was a pile of grass with some worn furs on top. Stretching out beside the old woman, Se’Tsiv wound herself
tight inside her cloak, trying to ignore the bugs skritch-skritch-ing inside the straw.
The moon searched for her son another night, and another and another. Se’Tsiv guessed more and more names, never getting even a flutter of recognition in the witch’s eyes. Sometimes birds came to share news of what they’d seen in the fields and village, but it was only things birds were interested in. Se’Tsiv wanted to know if her family knew where she’d gone. Were they angry? Were the Bronze Heads looking for her? But the birds chattered about the food in the garrison’s garbage pit.
The vegetable broth grew thinner each day. Still, the witch woke Se’Tsiv up every morning offering her a bowl. Finally, Se’Tsiv shook her head. “It’s not broth anymore. Just water,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“It has the taste of the mountain. It’ll make you strong like the mountain while you work.”
Se’Tsiv drank it, the warmth chasing the stiffness from her bones. Then, hunger still clawing at her stomach, she went into the forest to earn her keep. She gathered firewood and dug acorns out of the frozen leaf litter, the branches above tittering with ice. At sundown they had small cakes of barley and acorn meal. They even ate the burnt-black edges, but the cakes never filled their stomachs totally.
Se’Tsiv stopped guessing every name that popped into her mind. The witch’s name couldn’t be anything, obviously. It would be true, describing her course through the world. If Se’Tsiv watched closely enough, her name would reveal itself in something she said or did.
Except the witch hardly did anything. She wove grass mats or just sat in the embers of the fire, staring into its red-on-red glow and singing songs for the forest spirits.
She kept time slapping her hand against hard-packed earth, singing about how powerful and beautiful the spirits were, telling them how hungry she was, how cold. After days and days, one finally answered her. It came rooting into the clearing wearing the fur and yellow tusks of a boar. Se’Tsiv cried out a warning when she saw it, and stupidly, her first thought was to get the goats inside. But the witch grabbed a flint blade and stepped through the hut’s low doorway, still singing. Toddling toward her, the boar laid down at her feet.
“Come hold its scruff,” she said.
Se’Tisv crept closer, fighting hard to swallow. Brave-Killer had cornered a boar while hunting two summers ago. It had turned, slashed his inner thigh, and Se’Tsiv had seen him when they buried him. She could have slid her fist in the hole the beast’s tusk had ripped open.
The witch cuffed Se’Tsiv with her stump. “Quick. You’re being ungracious. He won’t hurt you.”
Se’Tsiv knelt down and grasped the bristly fur at the nape of the boar’s neck. It didn’t resist. The witch continued singing soft praise as she opened the veins in its neck. The boar thrashed once, raising a sharp squeal that echoed off the cliff face. Then accepted its death, quieting down, breaths growing shallow as its blood pumped onto the ground. The witch caught some in her cupped palm and slurped it. Dripping off her chin, it was the first time Se’Tsiv saw her smile, and that made her laugh. She realized the tangy smell was making her mouth water.
It was the best meat Se’Tsiv had ever tasted. They snatched sizzling pieces straight out of the fire, gorging until they felt sick. Still, there was plenty left. They dug a hole in the floor of the hut and buried the rest of the carcass packed with snow.
“How long until it spoils?” Se’Tsiv asked.
“Few days.”
“If you salted it, you could have meat all winter.”
The witch shook her head. “Don’t have any salt.”
“They have salt at the garrison. Barrels of it. Change my name, and I’ll bring you as much–”
“The forest spirits provide what I need, girl.”
They feasted for three days. When the meat soured, they drank soup from the boar’s bones for three more days. Then they went back to barley cakes. Se’Tsiv grew used to constant hunger again, a little stone in her stomach that made everything–talking, laughing, going to relieve herself–a chore.
The witch sang night and day, but the spirits had never felt hunger themselves. No others ever came to help.
The storm rose up from a pale blue midday sky, catching Se’Tsiv in the forest. Cold-stinging drops slithered down the neck of her cloak as she hurried to the hut.
The storm screamed for hours. She and the witch were eating their barley cakes when the wind flung a sparrow through the low doorway. It hit the ground, fluttered drunkenly up to one of the cross-posts, screeching down at them.
“He says it’s Tsiv,” the witch translated. “Says he’s angry at you. He’s looking for you.”
The god beat his spear against his massive cloud-shield, three sharp booms that shook the forest and made Se’Tsiv’s bones rattle. She looked up at the witch.
“Don’t worry. Bronze Head gods can’t come into the forest.”
So they sat–Se’Tsiv, the witch, and the lost sparrow–while the storm god hurled down ice and slashed out with his fire javelins. The sky was so dark, Se’Tsiv couldn’t tell when evening fell, but they had just laid down when an ice-bowed branch broke and smashed through the roof of the hut. Wind scattered the embers, and they had to rush around stomping them out before something caught fire. As they did, the witch just laughed. “Hoo-hoo, you’ve made him mad, haven’t you?”
With the fire out and the wind blowing through the hole in the roof, the hut grew cold. As they laid back down to sleep, Se’Tsiv said, “Here, take my cloak.”
The witch snorted at her. “In trade for changing your name?”
“No. Just take it.”
“Keep it. A little fresh air never hurt me.”
In the morning light, Se’Tsiv examined the hole. One of the joists had cracked clean through. “I could use a pine branch for awhile, maybe,” she said, knowing soft pine wood wouldn’t last long. Somebody would have to chop down an oak and cut a new joist from is heartwood, but the witch didn’t even own an ax.
The witch pointed to a spot on the edge of the clearing. “Go and dig under the snow there.”
“How come?”
“You’ll find what you need. Go dig.”
Se’Tsiv went, feet breaking through the freshly frozen crust of snow with each step. The spot was a slight rise in the ground. Se’Tsiv dug, first with her hands, then with a stick, first through snow, then tall dead grass. Another hut had collapse long ago, the roof joists splayed out like leaf veins. Curious, Se’Tsiv dug a few paces further away, uncovering a fence of woven branches moldering under the weeds.
She strained and grunted and heaved up one of the heartwood joists, strong and free of rot after years on the ground. Dragging it into the witch’s hut, she said, “There was a village here?”
“Yes.” The witch had unlashed the broken joist and helped Se’Tsiv fit the new one into its notch on the center pole. It was longer than the others, sticking out past the wall some, but it held sturdy.
“What... What happened to... the people?” Se’Tsiv panted.
“They left for the fields around the garrison, the big village there. Go cut some thatch. You’ve already dallied enough.”
Se’Tsiv followed the stream down to where water grass rippled waist-high along the banks. She cut it in bunches with the witch’s flint knife. Soon both Se’Tsiv’s hands bled, but she kept working and kept thinking about the collapsed hut.
The cold copper coin of a sun sank down into the trees. Se’Tsiv trudged back under the mound of grass.
In the hut, the witch smeared ointment across Se’Tsiv’s cuts, massaging it into her palms. Se’Tsiv stared up at the new roof joist. “The fields are better for farming and goats then here, right? That’s why they moved the village. But it’s also open on all sides and would have been too dangerous living there before the Bronze Heads build the garrison, right?”
The witch nodded. “We were safe as long as we kept the mountain at our back. It guarded us, held us safe lik
e a mother. Then the Bronze Heads built the garrison, built the road. They brought salt and pretty things to trade.”
“And everybody left you here alone?”
“I lived with my mother for a long time. She taught me magic and the names of the forest things.”
“But why don’t you move to the village now?”
“You think I want to be surrounded by bleating goats all the time? My birds give me as much company as I want. Now, it’s time for sleep.”
They laid down, Se’Tsiv wrapped in her cloak, the witch shivering beside her. Se’Tsiv’s body was exhausted, but her mind kept worrying at the abandoned village, a puppy biting its mother’s teat.
“What was it like when the Bronze Heads came?”
The witch groaned. “I hadn’t been born yet. Go to sleep.”
“You’re younger than my grandparents, then. When were you born?”
“The year after the Bronze Heads arrived. Go to sleep, or I’ll turn you into a cricket.”
Se’Tsiv sat up. “But I know your name. It’s Hates-Tsiv. That’s why you can’t live by the garrison with everybody else. Why you won’t even wrap up in my cloak.”
The witch lay still. Still facing the wall, she said, “When the Bronze Heads came into the village, one killed my mother’s husband right were you sit. He raped my mother beside his body.”
“Your father was a Bronze Head too?”
The witch chuckled. “Hardly some rich priest with pretty gifts. Just a soldier with blood still boiling from battle and a knife at her throat. I don’t know why she didn’t dash my brains the hour I was born. Instead, she raised me to carry her hatred after the rest of the village curled up with the killers of their people, even after she died herself.”
Sitting up, she looked Se’Tsiv in the eye. “So tell me, Servant-of-Tsiv, now that you’ve eaten my food and slept in my hut. My course lay in the opposite direction as your own. Is it any better?”
Se’Tsiv tried to speak. She could only shake her head.
“So what name would you chose for yourself if I took yours away? What name would promise you a better course than the one you’re on now?”
“I...” Se’Tsiv looked down and shook her head again, but was too proud to admit there wasn’t one.
She didn’t have to. Ha’Tsiv squeezed her arm with a twig-thin hand. “The stars and moon follow their courses through the sky, and we’re no better. Tomorrow, go back to the village. When the melts come, go to Kabt. It’s the road you were meant to follow.”
Ha’Tsiv lay back down, hugging herself to keep warm. “Tomorrow after you finish the roof, of course.”
The next morning, Se’Tsiv got up quietly and started tying the grass into sheaves. She’d never thatched a roof before, but she’d seen her grandfather do it, and it seemed pretty easy. Layering the bundles across the hole, Se’Tsiv watched the witch.
Ha’Tsiv sat in the embers, curled over like a dry leaf. She chewed a bone from the boar just to have something in her mouth, trying to trick her empty stomach. She couldn’t survive many more winters like this. Hates-Tsiv’s name only meant she’d die alone out here, surrounded by her birds and the old, mostly-forgotten spirits.
Had being Beautiful-like-Mica made Se’Tsiv’s mother’s life any better? And just because he was Beloved-by-Tsiv, hadn’t her father still ached for a human touch? Working on the roof, Se’Tsiv bit her lip and forced back tears of frustration. No name would make her any less of a servant than she already was–everyone was a servant to something.
When she finished, the witch gave her a larger-than-usual barley cake. “Eat before you go. You only have about an hour of sunlight left.”
Taking the cake from her, still warm from the fire, Se’Tsiv said, “I’ll go after you take my name from me.”
Ha’Tsiv shook her head. “Child, I thought you understood. We all have our courses to follow. Any name, any course–”
“Then take my name, but don’t give me any other.”
The witch jerked. It was the first time Se’Tsiv had seen her surprised. “You don’t know what you’re asking. If you didn’t have a name–”
“I won’t have a course laid out for me either.”
“but you won’t belong anywhere. Not in your family’s house, not in Kabt, nowhere. The gods and spirits won’t know you. You’ll blow around the world like dust.”
Se’Tsiv set her jaw, letting stubbornness stand for confidence. “We had a bargain. Will you honor it?”
“Not like this, no.” Ha’Tsiv set her jaw too.
“Then I’ll go back to the garrison and tell the Bronze Heads your name, Hates-Tsiv. I’ll tell them how you cast curses and sickness against them. And they’ll listen because I’m the servant of their stupid god.”
“I shared my food with you, my fire,” the witch hissed.
Se’Tsiv glared at her. She refused to reveal any guilt or give up what little leverage she had. “We had a bargain. Will you honor it?”
Ha’Tsiv finally nodded. “I will. It’d be kinder to cut your throat, but I will.”
She used the same knife she’d killed the boar with. Se’Tsiv bit down on her scream as it sliced deep into the soft skin at the crook of her arm. Pressing her lips to the wound, Ha’Tsiv sucked the blood and spit it onto the floor. The earth wouldn’t absorb it like it should have. The blood drops danced and spit like lard in a hot pan.
The inside of Se’Tsiv’s skull grew hairy and wiggling like a caterpillar. She thought to herself, Servant-of-Tsiv.
The witch spit out another mouthful of blood.
Servant-of... something... somebody...
Moths of light fluttered around her vision. The witch hacked, coughing up a red mist.
Se... Se... It had been there just a moment ago, but now the girl could feel the emptiness, a weight she’d grown used to suddenly lifted. “It’s done, isn’t it?”
Ha’Tsiv rubbed salve into the cut, then pressed a wadded ball of spider silk to it. “It’s done,” she said. “Now go.”
She stood up on wobbly legs, and looked at the witch. “I wouldn’t have told. Not really.”
“Go. Please.” The witch was afraid of her now.
The girl ducked through the low doorway. Taking a handful of snow, she washed the blood off her arm, pulled her cloak around her, and looked around. The village lay west, so she would go east. It was as good a direction to go as any.
Before leaving the witch’s clearing, the girl broke a piece of ice out of the stream and put it in her mouth. It melted on her tongue, and she drank the strength of the mountain.
Here’s a taste of Kristopher Reisz's Unleashed, available now.
Quiet Haunts and Other Stories Page 4