Faeborne

by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

  “And she did this to you, didn’t she?” Seren’s voice was thick with emotion. “The darkness I always sense within you. This is what causes your nightmares.”

  Brennon nodded. “It’s called faeduhn, the dark magic of the Morrigan, and it takes hold in one’s soul like a fungus, slowly spreading until that person no longer has control of his or her actions. With each violent, malevolent or dishonorable act this person commits, they grow closer and closer to giving in completely and turning Faeduihn. Every time I grow angry, or become lost in my nightmares, or commit an act of violence, I risk going past the point of no return. If that happens, I will no longer have a conscience or any morals to lead me down the right path. And I do not know what I might do to those around me if this happens.”

  Seren was horrified, but it all made perfect, terrible sense. Why Brenn always kept his distance from her and why he’d grown even more distant after they’d danced together in the barn. He was cursed with this faeduhn magic, and he feared he would harm her in some way. She had managed to chase away the darkness before, trim this encroaching fungus back, but she had never tried to go deeper, to eradicate it at its source. Now that she no longer feared keeping her secret from this man, she could do just that. Maybe, just maybe, she could even cure him. The very thought of such a thing thrilled her.

  “I am not afraid of your dark magic, Brenn. Not in this moment. It will not overtake you here.” She traced his dark brow with one finger. “Finish your tale, and then I will share my own. The one that ended the moment you brought me into your home.”

  Brenn nodded and took a breath.

  “One day, the Morrigan sent me out with her top advisors on a mission to overpower the mind of a chieftain. Normally, she never let me out of her sight, but she was occupied elsewhere with more pressing matters. Instead of overtaking the chieftain’s mind, however, I latched onto the minds of her generals, all three of them at the same time. I forced them to kill each other, and then, I fled. I thought I could run home, get my parents, sister and brother-in-law and flee to Erintara before the Morrigan caught wind of my escape. I would plead with the High Queen Danua for our protection. With all the other Tuatha De pledging their loyalty to the high queen, the Morrigan would be unable to act.

  “I figured I had a half a day’s head start on her, and I planned to push myself as hard as I could. I made it back home by dawn on the third day.”

  Brennon’s throat closed up as the memories of that day flooded his mind. He reached beyond the pain, forcing himself to finish, even though his voice broke more than a few times.

  “The house was untouched, but a great plume of smoke rose from somewhere behind it. Four bodies, burned beyond recognition, were piled upon the lawn. I did not have to examine them closely to know who they were. It was the bodies of my mother, father, sister and her husband. Several other lifeless forms were scattered about as well, all of them dressed in the black and red of the Morrigan’s army. I fell to my knees, but before I could even begin to process what had happened, a roaring sound filled my ears. I thought it was my grief taking hold, but I was wrong. Just beyond the standing stones beside the main road, I saw her, like a black cloud of death and horror, the goddess who had ruined my life and destroyed my family. I will always remember what she said to me:

  ‘Was it worth it, little Fae-child? Were their lives worth your selfishness? Because you didn’t like serving as one of my most useful tools, they had to die. So pathetic. You have no honor.’

  “I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t breathe. I just knelt there in the mud, blackened by the ashes nearby, and gasped for breath, the stench of burning flesh, freshly spilled blood and fear scorching the back of my throat and nose. I waited for her to do to me whatever it was she had done to my family. Death was so near, and I welcomed it, yearned for it. Instead, her violet eyes flashed red, and the cloud of black smoke lying at her feet rose like the wings of some great demon.

  ‘I cannot touch you, vermin’ she’d spat. ‘That wretched sister of yours placed a geis upon this land. In her last dying breath, she cast her glamour outward, making it so that I might never step beyond this stone barrier. But she was a fool. Geasa can always be broken, in time, and they do not come without a price. In making this place a fortress, she in turn imprisoned her son. The moment he steps beyond the guard stones, he will no longer be protected. And young boys, like young men, are so foolish. Their simple curiosity of the outside world always proves their downfall, just as it will prove to be his.’

  “I’d listened to her, not really hearing what she was saying until she mentioned my sister’s son. It was then that I remembered she’d just become pregnant before I was taken away. Somehow, I found my voice, demanding to know where he was.

  “She’d smiled in her cruel way and nodded toward the barn. ‘I may not be able to touch him,’ she told me, ‘but the geis does not apply to my soldiers.’

  “With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I threw myself back onto my feet and tore down the path toward the barn. I found three men in there, chasing after Rori the way hounds corner a fox. His nose and ears were bleeding and his eyes were closed, but tears streamed down his face. I had never met my nephew. He had been born and had grown into a young boy while I was away. But, he was the only family I had left. Without even thinking, I grabbed the first weapon I could find, a scythe hanging on the wall of the barn, and swung it at the men. A fiery rage took over me then, blinding me to the rest of the world, and I cut the men down with the ferocity the Morrigan had beaten into me. When it was over, I was drenched in blood and breathing like a bellows.”

  Brennon paused in his story, and Seren took advantage of the moment, letting it all sink in. His past was far more terrible than hers, and considering what he’d been through, it was a wonder he still had any kindness in him. He had proven it time and time again by the way he treated her and with the love he bestowed upon his nephew.

  Feeling the need to reassure him, Seren pressed her hand to his face and settled her ear over his heart, soothed by its strong, steady rhythm.

  “They had blinded him,” Brenn finally said, his tone taking on an entirely different level of regret. “They’d hit him on the head several times while tormenting him like an animal, and it damaged his eyes beyond repair. He has never regained it. I am almost glad he couldn’t see, though. Had he witnessed what I did to those men, I never would have earned his trust. It was hard enough, at first. He was only five years old, his entire family murdered before his very eyes. And then to have his sight ripped from him, with me there, fighting several demons of my own, a complete stranger to him.”

  Brenn pressed his lips to the top of Seren’s head as he pulled her farther up his body, a tremor shivering along his nerves from the contact of her skin. “He’d been in the barn, Seren. Watching through one of the knotholes,” he continued on, his voice so soft, she could barely hear it. “The last thing he ever saw was his family’s brutal murder.”

  Seren shifted, pulling away from Brenn and sitting partly upright so she might look down at him. Despite all the ugliness he had spoken of in the past several minutes, she couldn’t help but get lost in his unique beauty. He was so tall and strong and fierce, in his own way. He lived in a house with his nephew and worked the land, but he had the grace and strength of a warrior. His dark hair and ashen eyes never ceased to captivate her, and the light golden tone of his pale skin fascinated her. When she laid her arm against his, it reminded her of one of the small, hidden canyons back in her village, the walls composed of layers of clay and limestone. It dawned upon her, then, that she and Brennon were more like those layers of rock than she realized. They were so different, yet circumstances had pressed them together like the ribbons of color in that canyon, and now, they were one solid unit. If she were to return to one of those culverts and chisel out a piece of that banded rock, she would not be able to separate the clay from the limestone. Just as, no matter what happened from this point onward, she would not be able to s
eparate her soul from his. The thought both thrilled and terrified her.

  While she contemplated this new revelation, Brennon reached up a hand and ran his fingers through her hair. It fell in front of her shoulders, cascading down her torso like freshly turned soil.

  “Now, you know my entire story,” he said, still playing with her hair. “Three years have passed since that day, but it still haunts me. In my dreams, and during the waking hours. I try to hide my fear and anger from Rori, but sometimes I slip.”

  His voice was reserved, as if he still expected her to leap from their forest bed and bound away from him in her doe form, never to return. Yet, he was also oddly calm. A great burden had been lifted from his shoulders, one she now shared with him. The thought made her smile. She would be happy to help this man with whatever troubles came his way. She would be honored to be the one to ease his pain.

  Seren furrowed her brow, suddenly remembering something. “If the geis was put in place by your sister, then why must you reinforce it every year?”

  Brenn gave a small shrug. “We share the same blood, and blood reinforces the magic already in place. It is also important that Rori participate as well. I make an extra effort to visit each standing stone with him by my side, not to remind him of the awful day he lost his parents, but to remind him where the stones are and that he must never cross them.”

  Seren nodded and frowned. How terrible, for Rori, to live such a life.

  “Now,” Brenn said, gently pulling Seren back down beside him, “will you tell me your story?”

  Seren settled back down atop the spare cloak and braced herself up onto one elbow, mimicking Brenn. Absentmindedly, she traced the ridges of his abdominal muscles, smiling at the harsh intake of his breath. He was so different from the Fahndi men of her tribe. Broad instead of slim, fair skinned instead of copper-toned, thick muscle built from physical labor instead of the lean muscle that resulted from lengthy excursions into the forest.

  Seren huffed out a long breath, her fingers lingering over a set of crisscrossing scars on Brenn’s skin. “My story is not nearly as tragic as yours.”

  She had lowered her voice, afraid to admit that much. Brennon had just spilled his heart and soul to her, confiding something she was certain he’d told no other living creature. What was her experience growing up shunned by a bunch of bullies compared to the torment he had lived through?

  “I would still hear it,” he said.

  Seren lifted her eyes to Brenn’s grey ones. For a second, they were almost blue, and then their color began to shift, starting around the rim of the pupil and spread out to the edges of the iris. When they were that familiar smoky grey once again, she lowered her eyes and nodded.

  “You know I come from a Fahndi tribe living deep in the heart of the Weald,” she began, her voice a bit shaky. “You have known since we first met that I can transform into a deer. What you don’t know, or more likely, what you haven’t fully figured out yet, is I have the gift of healing.”

  Brenn let out what sounded like a long-held breath. “That explains much,” he murmured, running one hand through his hair. “The night I brought you home, after mistaking you for a regular deer, your glamour flared bright for a half second. I knew then there was something special about you, Seren of the Weald. I thought it might be a Fahndi thing, having volatile glamour.”

  Seren shook her head and held a hand up to his mouth. He kissed her fingertips, and she smiled. “No. It is a very rare gift among my kind. Something that would have put me in Cernunnos’ high favor, had I been born anybody else.”

  The smile on Brenn’s face faltered and Seren said, “Let me finish. Then, you might understand.”

  He sobered and once again gave her all of his attention.

  “I was born small,” Seren continued, “even for one of the Fahndi. From the very beginning, my other clan-mates rejected me. Part of it had to do with the fact my mother didn’t know who my father was,” Seren paused for a moment, her thoughts lingering on those particular memories.

  What they had said about her, those many weeks ago, it had been true. She hadn’t wanted to admit it because it hurt too much. But her mother had told her years before, when she was old enough to know such things.

  For some reason, she found herself retelling this part of the story out loud. “My mother had been away from the village looking for berries when a group of men found her. They left her alive and well enough to crawl back to the village. She had been tended to and the medicine women had made sure to bring her back to health, but from that point on she was set apart; tainted. And then, she discovered she was pregnant.”

  Seren cleared her throat, fighting the tremor in her voice. Brennon caressed her back with a gentle hand, almost humming a healing tune as he did so.

  “When I was five,” she continued weakly, “some of the boys pushed me down a steep incline. I fell into a patch of dead shrubs, and one of the sharp branches impaled me above my hip.”

  She reached down and rubbed at the scar, now nothing more than a faint line, closer to Brenn’s skin tone than her own.

  “It was fully healed three days later. The next year, one of the girls tried to take the basket of wild apples I had spent the afternoon picking from the top of a tree. When I resisted, she punched me in the eye. It turned black and swelled shut, but by the next day, the bruise had faded, and the swelling was gone.”

  Seren recounted many more tales, and Brenn listened patiently, his hand never ceasing its stroking of her back. She was grateful for his silence. After all, she was not telling him all of this to gain his pity, just as he had not sought hers with his story. She was telling him this so he would see her, every part of her. And so maybe, she could finally let go of those old heartaches for good.

  Eventually, she came to the part of her story where their paths had crossed.

  “A few days before you shot me in the woods,” she began, “I’d been relaxing in one of the meadows near my tribe’s village when several of my peers approached me. They often liked to tease me, poke fun at my parentage and turn my torment into some kind of a game. That day was not much different than the rest. Only, I was different somehow. Instead of shrinking meekly away from their abuse, I decided to stand up to them. I called one of the girls a name, and she slapped me, hard enough to cut my cheek.”

  She paused and turned her gaze away, her hand reaching up to trace the memory of the sting on her face. Brenn’s light touch brought her back, his fingers directing her chin toward him, so he might look her in the eye. She saw no judgment there, only compassion and understanding.

  Without Brenn having to ask, Seren continued. “I should have walked away then, but I didn’t. I did something very reckless instead. I was tired of their cruelty. I was tired of taking their insults and scorn when I had within me a power every single one of them would envy. In that moment, I decided I’d had enough. So I gathered some of my healing glamour and used it to erase the small wound in my cheek, right in front of them. I thought revealing my magic would impress them; show them I was not as worthless as they thought. By showing off my glamour, I thought I’d gain their respect.”

  Seren sucked in a deep breath. “I was wrong. As soon as the glow of my healing glamour faded, they were on top of me, kicking me and calling me all sorts of horrible names. Rozenn, the girl who’d slapped me, told them if they could get me to change, and then kill me in my animal form, they could claim they were out hunting and thought I was an ordinary deer.”

  Brenn tensed beside her, then slowly relaxed. He began stroking her hair and asked, “What happened then?”

  Seren gave a shrug. “I managed to get free and transform, then I ran as fast as I could, waiting for their arrows to pierce me. I ran for miles, never looking back.”

  She turned in his arms and looked up at him. Tears blurred her vision, but she did not fight them, and they never fell.

  “I don’t think I meant to run away, Brenn. I was just so frightened. And then, by the time I was
too exhausted to take another step, I was lost. I wandered that entire night and long into the next day. At some point, I think I came through a dolmarehn, the stone gateway hidden beneath the forest’s tangled plants. My mind wasn’t entirely clear, and that is the only explanation as to how I managed to travel half the length of Eile in the time I did.”

  She lifted a hand and placed it over his heart, her fingers warming against his skin. Brenn shivered, but she knew he wasn’t cold.

  “That is how you came to find me in Dorcha Forest.”

  Seren breathed in then exhaled with a great sigh.

  “I’m sorry, Seren,” Brenn whispered, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “You have suffered greatly.”

  She tilted her head so she could see his face. “Not nearly as much as you.”

  Brennon gave a dry laugh. “We each suffer what we will in our own way. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and some of us are able to take hardship better than others. Who is to say your suffering is less than mine simply because it is different? I think you have just as much right as I to fear the ghosts of your past.”

  Seren sat up farther so she was leaning over him, her hair pooling on his chest. The sun was cresting the horizon in the east, and the birds and small beasts of the wood were starting to complain about their presence. Seren ignored them.

  “Then, we are both damaged souls, you and I. But the darkness that haunts you, Brenn, it has given my spirit a reason to shine. Grandmother Peig told me, before she left, that I wanted to shine my light on all those around me, when there was really only one person who mattered. That person is you, Brennon Roarke, and I won’t ever tell you I don’t love you, because the exact opposite is the truth.”