The cottage was much as I remembered it except now lit by dozens of candles and a few oil lamps. Something nagged at me until I realized all the flames were absolutely still, frozen in place just like the owl outside. I had the urge to try pouring water just to see what would happen.
Yazel still had that thin, mantis-like look, but the doddering quality was gone. She stood up straight, and her eyes gleamed green with intensity above her wrinkled cheeks. I’d seen that look before on the face of my heartbreakingly beautiful mother.
She gestured at a small table on which something round, about the size of a grapefruit, sat covered with a black cloth. The sight gave me chills. “What is that?” I asked, knowing exactly what it was. It brought back a rush of feelings without the memories that go with it.
“It’s a way to see into the future,” Yazel said. “It’s the eye of time and the lens of fate.” She withdrew the cloth, exposing a clear, crystal ball.
My mother had one of those. She would stare into it for hours while I sat, forgotten. “It’s a piece of polished rock.”
“To those without the gift, that’s true. But your mother was a Teller Witch, so that gift lies inside you, waiting.” How in Nelson’s crack do these witches always seem to know everything?
“I don’t use magic. I don’t know anything about it.” Now didn’t seem like the time or place to tell her I actually hate magic and find it the weapon of cowards.
She settled into the high-backed, overstuffed throne behind the table. “Sit, please.” It wasn’t a request.
I did in the stiff chair opposite her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and put her fingers lightly on the ball. Her face reflected upside-down in the clear stone.
“You must look,” she said. “You must see what awaits you.”
“I don’t use magic,” I repeated.
“But the prophecy says you will be the last of the Teller Witches and the last of the Reapers. You must embrace both sides of your nature to fulfill your destiny.”
“I don’t have time for embraces right now,” I said, and stood up. “And my destiny isn’t set in stone.”
She reached across and grabbed my wrist more powerfully than any human should have been able to. “You will look,” she said, and her voice carried more authority than Adonis, Eldrid, and even Ganesh. It must be a witch thing, I thought as a chill of fear ran north and south and my knees collapsed, plopping me back in the chair.
I peered into the crystal. My mother had often tried to teach me to see this way, and I had dim memories of the kind of innocent visions a child might conjure. But I never knew if they were real or just my imagination filling in the blanks.
But whatever I saw then, I saw nothing now. No glimpse of Amelia’s fate or Lurida Lumo’s or my own. Just the frozen candle flames outlining the distorted, inverted image of Yazel.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Try harder.”
“I don’t know how to try harder!” I spat back at her.
She grabbed a handful of my hair and shoved my face against the crystal. “Look! Look!”
I wrenched free, leaving a few long, red hairs between her fingers. “I am looking, you old crone! I don’t see anything! I never have, and I never will. I don’t care who my mother was!”
She stared up at me with that same distant look. “You must. Everything depends on it.”
Blah, blah, blah. Curses and eyes of newt and magic and why don’t you grab a sword and fight like a real warrior? “Yeah, well, right now, everything depends on me getting back to the village and warning them about Lurida Lumo.” I stood and turned to go. The fact that I didn’t bolt like a startled rabbit made me inordinately proud.
“Hear me, Red Reaper!” she boomed as I opened the door. “What waits for you tonight will not be what you see. What you don’t see is what you must watch for. What lies behind what you see is what will destroy all you hold dear!”
I didn’t look back. I did slam the door.
When I stepped outside, the owl nearly took my head off as it dove toward its prey. I yelped in surprise. Guess time was running again.
Well, at least someone in this realm thinks I’m the Red Reaper. Maybe it’s time I started acting like her. I pulled myself together and raced toward town. The path was now as clear as day.
I wondered how I would convince these people that I was telling the truth. After all, I was a psychotic, leg-breaking, half-Demon monster to them.
But as the lights of the village appeared ahead of me, something Yazel said struck me.
She didn’t say the unseen future events would destroy me, she said all you hold dear.
What did I hold dear then?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After the mad rush through the forest and the experience with Yazel, I was wrung out by the time I reached the village. I stopped at the well to catch my breath. I drew up the bucket for a drink, but it didn’t cool the burning that I thought was coming from my throat. The homes were all closed for the night, and smoke rose in billows from most of the chimneys. I heard laughing children, adults singing, and barking dogs. I’d never experienced a home like that; it was just what I saw in the distant human settlements when I looked down from the roof of my tower. I’d often imagined what it would be like to be part of a real family with a mother whose smile could light up a room and a father who taught me to ride a horse. In my imagined family, my father would drink beer and regale us all with his stories of heroism during the war while my mother shook her head at his exaggerations.
I shook myself to dislodge this fantasy. No families were like that, human or Reaper.
I got to Amelia’s door and paused before knocking. If they were arguing, I didn’t want to interrupt. I’d caused enough trouble, and here I was bringing more. But it was silent within and dark save for the flickering of the fireplace light. So I knocked.
Sela opened the door. For a moment, she was speechless. “Aella,” she gasped at last. I was about to blurt it all out when Heod appeared next to her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to speak to Amelia. And to you. I made a terrible mistake, and you have to let people know.”
“Amelia’s with you,” Heod said. “Isn’t she?”
My stomach fell. This was bad in a way that I’ve never, in all my screw ups, been close to matching. “Please don’t say that.”
“She said you were taking her to my sister’s in Mastill. You were supposed to meet her.”
I closed my eyes. While I made my beeline for the village, Amelia had no doubt used the pilgrim trail. I’d missed her completely. She was probably sitting at the cave, waiting. Unless, of course, she saw the blue light, thought it was me, and went down…
“Listen,” I said as calmly as I could, “I was wrong. The big spider wasn’t Lurida Lumo. It was just a coincidence. I mean, there are big spiders in the cave, but Lurida Lumo is something else entirely. Something much worse.”
Heod and Sela exchanged a look of horror. Heod said, “So Litwin was right.”
I looked at the ground. “Yes.”
“You swore he was wrong.”
“I thought he was. I really did.”
“You thought we were all so stupid we could be fooled for generations by a giant bug,” he seethed.
“No! I mean…not like that.”
He was getting wound up now. “And you let my daughter walk right into it?”
“You were the ones who sent her away!” I fired back, hating the whine in my own voice. “All I did was offer to help!”
“Yeah? This must be a definition of ‘help’ that I’ve never heard before!” His voice got louder with each word. He glared at me with both hatred, which I was used to, and betrayal, which I wasn’t. It hurt worse than the hatred.
“Heod,” Sela said calmly with just a hint of tremor in her voice, “this won’t help anyone. Go and alert Damato. Tell him what’s happened.”
“No, I’ll go see him,” I sai
d. I wanted a chance to explain to Damato in person. Or that’s what I told myself I wanted.
“We’ll both go,” Heod said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The center of the village was still empty as we crossed it. I followed Heod to a small hut behind the tavern. A lamp burned within, but when Heod knocked, there was no answer.
“Wake up!” Heod yelled. I winced; he would attract a lot more attention than I hoped. “Damato, wake up!”
I pushed the door, and it opened. “Damato?” I called, and when there was no answer, I stepped inside.
The place smelled like him. In spite of myself, I breathed a little deeper.
The hut was sparse and untidy, just like my tower room. A rack on the wall held a bow, a full quiver, a mace, and a shield; there was a space for a sword, but it was gone. The bed was unmade, and the table, where the lamp burned, still held dishes from dinner.
And that wasn’t all it held. Stretched across it was my leather training armor. I hadn’t seen it since I’d awoken in Amelia’s house. What was that doing here? Some weird souvenir?
I scowled. Then I saw the tools.
There were implements for working with metal as well as leather. One of the huge punctures where the spider’s fangs had gone through was already patched. I realized with a start that Damato wasn’t hoarding my armor, he was repairing it. And since it was far too small for him, it had to be done as a gesture, a gift, to me. Interesting.
A tiny locket on a thick chain lay beside the tools. I picked it up; it was battered with time and exposure, but not even that could hide the fact that it was solid gold. I opened it and gasped: inside were three long red hairs, tightly wound into a circlet. They must have been stuck to the clasps on the armor. Or tangled in his fingers from that kiss…
I closed it and put it down before Heod could see. I didn’t want to explain it because even I wasn’t sure what it meant. Well, that’s not true. I knew, all right. I just didn’t know how I should feel about it.
“He’s not here,” Heod fumed.
“No,” I said. “But he left in a hurry. He didn’t put out the lamp, and he only grabbed his sword.”
“Hmph,” Heod said. “There’s never a guardian around when you want one.”
I picked up my armor. One seam was still half-undone, but I could wrap a strap around it. I wanted to feel like myself again if I had to battle a god. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find Amelia.”
He grabbed my arms. I hadn’t expected it and almost struck back before I caught myself. But the look on his face stopped me: it was fear but not of me. It was fear for his daughter.
“Please,” he said sincerely. “Do find her.”
“I will,” I assured him. Or die trying.
We returned to Heod’s house, where I quickly changed out of the tattered dress and back into my armor. I was especially glad to get my boots back, and my feet gratefully slid into them, the calluses nestling into familiar creases and seams. Heod kept his back discreetly turned, and when Hatho tried to sneak a peek, he got a thump on the head instead.
“You look young, but you’re very old, aren’t you?” Sela asked me as she helped buckle the leather.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“You don’t have any children, do you?”
That was the last question I expected, so it took me a moment to answer, “No.”
“And, if what I’ve heard about how Reapers are conceived is right, you have no brothers or sisters.”
It was true. Except for the extremely rare Reaper twins, we were all only children. A human woman didn’t survive bearing a Demon’s bastard offspring twice. Or once, for that matter. Except for my mother, but that was different. “None that I know of.”
She spoke without looking at me. “When I had Amelia, I almost died. When she was chosen for Acheron, I can’t tell you how upset and angry I was. We didn’t just lose a daughter we loved, we lost any grandchildren she might have. We lost the person who would likely care for us in our old age. We lost…part of the future.”
I said nothing. What could I say? The quiver in her voice, which she tried to mask, tore at my heart.
“Then you brought her back. I knew it was wrong, I knew it would anger Lurida Lumo, but I let myself believe you were right, that we’d been deluding ourselves for generations about what Lurida Lumo really was. I mean, we are a simple people. Few of us can read, none of us are schooled, and we live by the seasons and the weather, not the markings of a calendar.”
She stopped what she was doing and turned away. I reached out for her and let my hand hover over her shoulder. I’d never felt less like a human than I did at that moment, struggling to decide if she’d see my gesture as comfort or an attack.
“And now, we’ve lost her again,” she continued. “The same pain twice. No mother should ever have to feel that, Aella. Never.” I couldn’t imagine my mother distraught over the loss of me; after all, she willingly gave me away. And somehow, all of those pent-up mother-daughter feelings rushed toward Sela.
I rested my hand on her, and after a moment, even though she still didn’t look at me, she put her hand atop mine. I felt something in my chest push on me, like it was about to explode. I wanted to tell her, to say something. I looked at her long, beautiful hair and kind, blue eyes filled to the brim, and suddenly, I knew. I knew what I needed to tell her.
Then I heard the mob.
“What is that?” Heod asked, but a glance outside told him. “Oh, hell,” he said. “You women wait here. I’ll go talk to them.”
I think every person in the village had gathered outside the little house. Torchlight flickered through the windows accompanied by muttering voices. They weren’t yelling curses at least.
“Do you have any weapons?” I asked Sela softly.
“I thought you had a sword.”
“I misplaced it.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have anything else. Amelia took our only sword.”
The mob was armed though. I heard the clattering of swords and farming implements. I knew a pitchfork could do just as much damage as a spear in the right situations.
I clenched my fists against the surge in my blood. It was a threat, and Reapers were conditioned, even bred, to meet a threat with force. My temper began to simmer. But I fought to control it because these people were right to be angry with me. I’d intruded on their lives with a superior arrogance, and they were perfectly entitled to be pissed off.
“This is about to get…interesting,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I don’t think I can just stand here and let them burn me at the stake or whatever you do to heretics here.”
“I don’t know either,” she said with a weak smile. “We never had one before.”
“You can run away,” little Horva said.
“No. Not this time.” I put my hand on the door then turned back to the family. “Please remember I said this: I’m very, very sorry for what I’ve done to your village and your daughter. I hope Amelia is safe. I hope I survive the next few minutes to try and help her. But whatever happens, I want you to know I am sorry.”
Sela hugged me the way I’d seen her hug Amelia. I was speechless, and the wrenching in my chest grew harder and tighter.
Then someone knocked on the door.
It wasn’t the kind of pounding I expected but a soft knock, the kind you make to alert someone so you won’t startle them. Then the door opened, and Heod entered. He closed the door behind him. He didn’t look scared or worried. He actually seemed rather pleased.
“Aella,” he began.
“Heod, please—” Sela started to say.
“No,” I said. “This is my place. Heod, I understand why everyone is angry, but please hear me. I won’t go down without a fight. I can’t; it’s not in my nature. So while you may kill me eventually, a lot of your friends will die tonight.”
He tried again. “Aella—”
“I don’t want to kill anyone, Heod!” I almost shouted.
“Come outside,” he said, and reached for my arm. He didn’t sound angry at all.
I let him pull me toward the door and out in front of the crowd. They indeed had torches and weapons, most of them tools, some of them old, rusted heirlooms. I couldn’t quite make out their faces, but they fell silent when I appeared.
Then Sixle stepped forward. I knew I was toasted bread. I assumed my favorite battle-ready stance and mentally prepared myself for the worst fight of my life. Don’t kill, only incapacitate, I reminded myself. I took a short breath.
He said, “We are with you, Reaper.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“We are prepared to battle Lurida Lumo. We no longer wish to fall under his sway. He has taken too many of us for too long.”
It took me a moment to absorb this. “Are you serious?”
“We are. You may think us simple and backward, and perhaps that is true. It has certainly been true in the past. But when you denied Lurida Lumo his sacrifice and none of the terrible punishments foretold in the prophecies appeared, we realized the truth. Whatever he is, he is no god, and we have failed our own children for generations.”
Yazel stepped forward. Her distant demeanor from earlier was gone, and she almost cackled with glee. “Once I got that idiot Litwin to shut up, the rest of them saw reason. If I’d known it was going to be so easy, I’d have done it years ago.”
“Now,” Sixle concluded, “it is time for vengeance.”
At this word, the crowd cheered and shook their weapons and torches.
I wondered what wizard had cursed me to move into this strange new world where everything was suddenly backward. “Ah…that’s great.”
More cheering. It sounded both wonderful and strange to my ears. A girl could learn to like that.
“You lead us,” one of the boys from earlier said. “We’ll follow you into hell.” People cheered at that too.
I’d been to hell or at least a place close enough and certainly filled with Demons. “No, wait, that’s not…I appreciate the offer, really. A war against a god is no place for humans. But I do need a sword. And a shield if anyone has one.”
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