by Jasmine Walt
This is not the fight we need to wage.
We need to get out of here and come up with a plan. A plan we build without the man we cannot trust. Without Adrian.
“We need to get out here,” I yell to William.
As I start to run, Adrian blocks my path. Tess turns to him, sword in hand, anger burning in her eyes. But she doesn’t do anything.
I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t be able to kill him, either. Just like I hadn’t been able to kill my father. Because I’d loved him once, and love can be a crippling thing.
But not anymore.
If I ever get back to where I came, I will do whatever it takes to save Anna.
The tip of Tess’ blade falls to the ground, and her dress slips from her shoulder. Her eyes are shooting daggers at Adrian as she grabs the sleeve of her dress and yanks it back up to cover her skin.
All I can do is stand there, unsure what either of them will do next, all the while trying to find my path away from here and a way to bring Tess and William with me.
But Tess only has eyes for Adrian, tears swelling on her lower eyelids. Her hand is shaking, gripping the hilt of the sword so tightly that her knuckles lose her skin’s golden glow. Adrian stares at her regretfully, and his hands fall to his sides.
This is my chance. I dart past him, successfully this time, and William grabs Tess by her wrist. But before he can pull her from the fray, another Cruor rushes from the shadows in a blur and grabs her around the neck. With Tess against his chest and another Cruor standing behind him, there’s no clear angle to stake him from.
Adrian finally moves from his spot. Gone is his calm and restraint. He hurdles across the field, a deep, animalistic war-cry wrenching from his mouth, and he tackles the Cruor.
“Not Tess!” he growls.
Apparently he was fine with leading William and I to our capture, but not if it meant Tess would go down with us.
William grabs her hand, and we run as fast as we can until we are gone, traveling into the black where they can’t get us.
We tumble out from space into a sparse forest of dark tree trunks, clumps of bushes, and tall shadowed pines that stretch up like arrows into the sky. My mind struggles to process what transpired, but my desire to stay alive won’t let my thoughts linger. I can only think of escape.
I have no real sense of which direction we came from or which direction we are running in now, but it is still night, evidenced by the moonlight cascading through the lattice of branches overhead and the odd night-vision glow of the world around me. Darkness and shadows stretch around us, as though the night wishes to consume us.
Wind slips through the trees, stinging my face with cold, and I’ve never been more aware that I am running than I am right now. Every breath is shouting in my ears. A fox yips in the distance. Fallen branches crack beneath my feet. Tree trunks creak, weeds slide against my legs, and thorns catch my clothing, ripping fabric and flesh alike.
We’re in and out of the black. Traveling and not. Our skip through locations should serve to lose the Maltorim from our trail.
When finally we stop running, Tess and William vomit into bushes, and my own stomach churns. For a moment, I think it will pass, but soon I am getting sick in the underbrush as well.
Once I’m recovered, I turn to them. “Are you guys okay?”
Tess is still hunched over, grasping her stomach, and William is resting with his hands on his knees. He straightens slowly.
“Too much traveling,” he says, eyes on the ground as he wipes the blood residue from his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Our bodies can only handle so much at a time, and we’ve pushed it this month. Much more, and we might not make it.”
Then it’s true. We really can’t run forever.
Over the metallic scent of their blood, an earthy fungus aroma carries on the wind. The air is a bit moister than I remember.
Tess sucks in a huge gulp of air, catches her breath, and stands upright. William spins slowly, then nods for us to follow him. We creep around the underbrush, animal eyes glowing from their depths, and duck beneath the cobwebs until we reach a path lined with flower blooms that are shut tight against the darkness.
At the end of the path, there is life. A small town spattered with cabins.
William leads us a few houses down and quietly raps on the door, looking in every direction as he awaits a response.
A squat woman with clear skin and large, kind blue eyes open the door. “Come in, come in!”
William shuffles Tess and me inside.
The woman rubs her hands over her apron, then swings her arms out. “My son! You’ve come! You’ve brought company!”
Son?
She hugs us as though she’s known us for ages, saving the biggest, tightest hug for William. He stares into the distance somewhere behind her. I want to make sense of everything that just happened, but I still don’t know what’s happening right now. Maybe William feels the same. Maybe that’s why he seems to avoid looking at anybody.
Pa’s words flash through my mind, back from when his sentiments were useful instead of hurtful: Don’t worry about the past when you’re running through the present.
And yet, a fragment is trying to force its way through. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing it away, and when the dizziness subsides from my effort, I open them again.
“You all right, dear?” the woman asks. She’s released William from her embrace.
“Not really,” I say, but one look at Tess tells me I’m not the one anyone should be worried about right now. “Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Cordovae. And I take it you’re William’s mother?”
“Heaven’s no!” she says. “I’m too young to be a mother!”
The woman is at least fifty, but I force a smile. Young at heart, where it matters.
“Madelina,” William says, “I don’t mean to be rude, but we need a place to stay and a little time to settle down.”
“Of course,” she says. She turns from him, facing me again. She smiles brightly as she bustles past. “I’ll prepare the guest room immediately.”
“Madelina.” When William says her name this time, his voice conveys the impending doom more befitting our situation. “We need something a little more...out of the way.”
Her hands bunch in front of her, and she turns back to us, frowning. “I see.”
“If you can’t, please say so. I would hate—”
“Nonsense. You’ll stay here.”
“You understand what that may mean for you?” William’s chest heaves with a deep breath.
An older man hobbles into the room. “What have we here?”
“Some friends stopped by for a visit, John,” Madelina says. “Now be nice...”
“Who, me? I’m always nice!” He pokes his cane at William. His hair is impossibly white. “I know you. Imagine you didn’t stop by for tea and biscuits, then?”
“No, sir,” William says, staring down at his feet. “But we will be out of here as soon as we can, if it’s all right we stay.”
Madelina solemnly takes the man’s wrinkled hand, and he presses his lips together, nodding.
“They’ll have to get through us first,” the man says. His large eyes grow wider, and I can’t help but notice how exaggerated everything is about this man—from his large protruding ears and bulbous nose to the knotted cane he pokes around with. “Go on, Madelina. Show them to their quarters. I’ll stay here in case any more unexpected company shows up.”
Through this all, Tess is silent. Her eyes glaze over, her face a stony, unreadable mask, and yet I can read what story her expression tells all too well. I grasp her hand, and even though she doesn’t grasp back, I don’t let go.
Madelina leads us through the dining room, where flour dusts the table and meat lies half-chopped on a wooden block. Pots and pans scatter beside each other, and wooden chairs adorn the wooden table. A vase of dried flowers and a pot of herbs rest next to the sack of flour.
The kitchen, attache
d to the dining room, is not much bigger than a closet with a stove and some cabinets. Steam whistles from the kettle, and the laughter of children echoes from upstairs. So much for her being too young to be a mother, I suppose.
The aroma of potatoes, onions, carrots, savory meat, and fresh bread waft from the small room. This place feels like home—or like how I imagine a home should feel. I can hardly remember anymore.
I want to trust them. To believe they won’t lure us to our demise, the way Adrian had. Can we trust anyone?
In the corner of the dining room, Madelina shoves some pans out of a small, doorless pantry, then moves aside.
“Through there,” she says, pointing to a space below the shelf.
William crouches inside the pantry and shuffles on his hands and knees, beneath the lowest shelf. He’s nearly too tall. His back lifts the wooden slat. But he drops to his belly and wiggles the rest of the way through the small opening. I let Tess go ahead of me, whisper my thanks to Madelina, and follow them through.
Once on the other side, I pull a thin piece of twine to shut the small door closed behind us. The clank of pots being thrown back into the closet echoes through the thin wood that blocks the entrance to the small room we’ve just entered.
The room is wide enough for us to all lie down and tall enough for us to sit up comfortably, perhaps even tall enough for Tess or me to stand. The main area has been swept clean, but along the edges are feces of small animals—rats?—and spider webs in the dusty corners. From somewhere in the walls, something scratches its claws against the wood.
I stare at my hands. My fists and arms are bruised. I’ve always bruised easily. My father would laugh and tell anyone who asked, ‘Kids, huh? They’re always bumping into things.’
I swallow hard. Not today. I won’t remember that man today.
Now that I’m Ankou, my body heals much faster, and already my bruises are turning a greenish-yellow. I take some nightshade from a pouch at my hip and chew it quickly, wanting the evidence of everything that just occurred and the reminder of everything in the past to disappear as quickly as possible.
When finally I can handle the silence of the room no longer, I gaze over at William. “What...happened?”
His own wounds have healed easily from his second nature alone.
“We were set up,” he says plainly. He still won’t even look at me.
“He betrayed us,” Tess spits. “Betrayed me.”
I frown. “Tess—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose the one person you should be able to trust.”
Ouch.
I most certainly do, but now isn’t the time for opening up with her. She’s dealing with her own fresh emotional wounds.
“What about the girl the Maltorim captured?” I ask instead. “Are we going to get her? Did we risk all that for nothing?”
“At this point, we don’t know that there was any girl,” William says. “So, yes, we risked all that for nothing. We couldn’t go back there now anyway. For now, we’ll stay here. It’s the only place I know we can hide. They’ll be looking for us now. This sets back everything. It’s the exact opposite of what we needed.”
“So what are we doing to do?”
“Focus on where to go next. We must move soon.” Finally his pained expression reaches me, but only for a moment before he winces and looks to the small passage behind me that leads back into the kitchen. “If they find us, it can’t be here. Madelina and John are good people. We can’t bring them into this.”
I bite my lip, shifting my weight on the gritty floor. “Haven’t we already?”
26
March 1692
The wind batters the roof overhead, and the noise keeps me on edge. The Maltorim will come barreling in at any moment. My body aches from the tension. No one is talking. No one will even look at one another.
I poke at the vegetables in the stew Madelina has slid into our small room. The soggy vegetables and undercooked potatoes have gone cold, and anxiety fills the void that was once my appetite, but I force down the stew and nibble on the bowl of fresh berries because there’s nothing else to do.
Tess had said my Ferrum nature might be able to help us, if I can learn to control it. So I practice on the stew. I press my teeth to a chunk of meat. Nothing happens. I envision my teeth turning to sharp points. Still nothing. I try to feel something in my core. I remember the time William stood behind me, his hand on my stomach, telling me I would know. That things would just happen. The memory stirs so many emotions in me, and for a moment my teeth tingle, but the sensation fizzles out, and instead I find myself staring at William.
He must sense it, because his gaze shifts up, and I quickly look up at the ceiling and sort of trail my attention around as though I was just checking out the room. Things are so weird between us now.
I don’t think I can handle staying here much longer. It’s too much like being in jail all over again. I can hardly breathe in here. The mold and mildew and rot of damp wood is overpowering. I carefully lift a drop cloth from the floor that is cluttering our space. I fold it carefully, trying to keep from kicking up the dust, but the stale air still catches in my lungs, and I cough.
I watch William as he presses another bite of bread into his mouth, followed by a chunk of raw meat, and I’m reminded that he is allergic to the very herbs that sustain my life.
I wonder if God exists—if he is part of the Universe, or separate. If the Universe created Him or He created it.
Maybe William has these answers.
“Do you ever pray?” I ask.
Tess must know I was speaking to William, because she doesn’t even look up. She just keeps twisting the small pieces of hair that stick out at the bottom of her long, dark braid.
William pauses, dropping a bite of food away from his mouth. “In my own way, I guess.”
“To whom do you pray? If the Universe has created us, doesn’t that make all known religions inherently wrong?”
He shrugs. “Or it makes them all right. I suppose it depends how you look at it.”
I frown and slump lower against the wall.
“I’m not sure how to look at it,” I mumble.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he says. “Religion divides people, when otherwise they are unified. It didn’t always, but there it is. People take sides when it doesn’t really matter what anyone believes. We all believe we exist, and we all believe the world once wasn’t and now is. That something made it be so.”
“You all say ‘the Universe’. That the Universe is the creator. What does that say about God?”
William chews a piece of meat and swallows before speaking again. “There’s a saying. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
How fitting. I suppose it’s true. I am me, whether called Rose or Abigail or Cordovae.
William nudges my foot with his own, and when I look up, he grins. “Just because we have another name for something, does not mean by another name it does not exist. No one is ever wrong for their beliefs. Faith, hope, trust—these are the good things in our world. Why question it?”
I shrug one shoulder. How can I not question it? After everything that has happened to me in my life before and my life now, how can I not want to know the truth?
Tess clears her throat, and when we look up, she says, “Will you two be ready to leave in a few hours?”
“Maybe we should go now,” I say quietly.
William lifts his eyes, his glaring annoyance at my suggestion drenching his expression. “It’s daylight, Cord.”
“How are we supposed to make any ground at night with Cruor after us?”
“We need to leave at night,” William presses, “so should we encounter the Cruor we will at least have the strength to fight. That is all we can do. That is all anyone can ever do.”
Except that’s not entirely true. Nothing is ever entirely true.
“I know that. But daylight won�
��t kill us. You could drink some of Tess or I’s blood, right? Then you would be fine for a few hours. It would give us a head start on the Cruor.”
“Brilliant idea,” Tess says, as though it’s the least brilliant idea she’s ever heard. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”
“I just thought—”
“Who cares if the daylight can reduce us to the size of insects?” Tess is nearly maniacal now, smiling and angry at the same time, a crazy look in her eyes. “At least it’ll give us a head start in escaping the inevitable.”
I scowl. “I don’t hear any better ideas from either of you.”
William closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know you mean well, Cord, but please, now is not the time. We will leave at nightfall to speak with the Oracle. She will know what to do.”
I hope he’s right. And I hope we make it that far, because I have a bad feeling about all of this.
I’m falling in and out of dreams about a woman I’ve never met. Who is the Oracle? What can she tell us? William spoke of her like some omnipotent being, but even he said she’s not the Universe—just the woman who carries its secrets...the oldest living fire elemental, the first Chibold ever to walk this earth. Will she be mischievous or serious? Kind or cold?
A knock at the entrance to the small opening of our hidden room rattles me from sleep. It’s dark. Cracks in the exposed wooden beams let through only the smallest slivers of moonlight, but they are equally as powerful as daylight to me now that I am Ankou. The shadows, however, still remain the one true darkness.
Across from me, William jostles Tess from her sleep. “It’s time.”
I hear the crinkle of her dress against the dirty floor as she shifts around.
A loud crash shakes the house, and I brace myself against the wall. “What was that?”
Before Tess or William can answer, screams shatter from the other room.
“Where are they?” booms a deep voice.
My heart leaps to my throat, and my lungs contract. Lord help us, no matter where we go, they will find us. I hold my breath and stare at the small passageway door back to the kitchen, then back to my companions.