Faeborne: A Novel of the Otherworld

by Johnson, Jenna Elizabeth

  Brenn wasn’t given much more time to contemplate it further because Rori came bursting around the corner, half out of breath. Several small jars and paper envelopes threatened to spill from his arms.

  “I couldn’t see–” he began to say, before stopping himself short.

  The boy lowered his head and shuffled forward, forgetting what he had been about to say.

  Brennon frowned. Of course he couldn’t see, but sometimes even Rori forgot that fact. His nephew’s blindness was not just tragic, but a constant reminder of what his own cowardice and weakness had brought upon his family. Three years ago, Brenn had returned to Ardun to find his parents, sister and her husband dead and his nephew not long for this world. For almost a week, Rori had hidden in the barn with the dogs and horses, terrified and sightless, not knowing if those who had murdered his parents and grandparents would return to finish him off. The boy did not speak for a month after the event, and Brennon was too heartbroken to demand answers from him.

  Squeezing his eyes shut against the haunting memories, Brenn stood up and strode toward his nephew, meeting the boy halfway.

  “It’s alright, Rori,” he said quietly. “I can find what I need from what you’ve brought.”

  Brennon took the ointments and herbs from Rori’s thin arms and piled them onto a table he had dragged closer to the cot. He chose two envelopes and one jar, folding and twisting them open and taking small amounts of dried herbs from each. The medicine ended up in a clay bowl.

  “I’ll also need some of the tallow from the pantry,” Brennon said, without looking up.

  Rori darted off once more, his hands placed carefully in front of him. He returned shortly with another container. This one he knew by shape, so it didn’t take nearly as long for him to find.

  “What are you doing with all those?” he asked, as he found a stool with his fingers, pulling it closer to the table.

  Rori might not be able to see the world surrounding him any longer, but he was still a curious boy and did his best to imagine what the sounds and sensations looked like.

  “I’m making a paste of healing herbs for the wound. I’ll mix in a little ointment, too.”

  Rori folded his arms on the edge of the table and rested his chin on top of them. He tried hard to listen to his uncle’s every move. There were so many sounds in the room: the whisper of the fire, the quick, shuddering breath of one of the hounds chasing a rabbit in his dreams, the clacking of the stone mortar and pestle as Brennon prepared the medicine.

  More than ever before, Rori wished he could see again. He wanted to know what the young woman looked like. Did she resemble his mother? Was her hair the dark, earthy brown of Ardun’s fields before planting and was her face covered in freckles? A bud of sadness bloomed beside Rori’s heart, so he gave up on trying to picture the stranger. The only women he’d known before losing his sight were his mother and grandmother, and thinking about them dampened his spirits.

  “Could you return everything to where you found it, please?” Brennon asked.

  Sighing, Rori obeyed his uncle and gathered up all the jars and envelopes. By the time he made it back to the great room, Brenn had once again moved away from the table. He could tell because the fire was brighter; there was no one standing there to block it. Somehow, Rori knew exactly where to find him. Reaching out a hand to trace along the wall, the boy stepped forward until he came to the place where the young woman lay sleeping. Rori’s outstretched hand located the back of a chair, then made its way down Brenn’s arm until his fingers tightened around his uncle’s thumb.

  “Will she be all right?” he asked softly, somewhat afraid of the answer.

  Brennon took in a deep breath before answering, “I hope so.”

  The chair he sat in creaked as he leaned back into it. “You can go to bed, Rori. I’m going to stay with her a bit longer, just in case she awakens.”

  Rori stuck out his bottom lip and headed toward the wide, over-stuffed chair near the fireplace. “Then I’m staying down here, too,” he insisted, as he curled up like one of the hounds.

  “Suit yourself,” Brenn murmured quietly.

  Rori nodded, then yawned as his eyes drooped with sleep, his already darkened vision growing even more so. He couldn’t be certain, but Rori had a sneaking suspicion his uncle would spend more of the night watching the girl than sleeping.

  Chapter Three

  Outcast

  Seren was floating in a warm emerald pool in the center of the Weald, her dark hair fanning around her like the delicate fins of a shadow fish. She felt weightless, carefree and relaxed, all of her worries and troubles sinking to the bottom of the pond to leave her in peace. She could have been the only person in the entire world, and she smiled at the thought. The sudden muffled laughter and cheerful shouts of her peers reminded her, however, that she wasn’t alone. With a sigh, she cracked open one eye to watch them. Scattered throughout the secluded glen were several people close to her own age. Her Fahndi tribe mates. Languid and blithe, they soaked in the warmth of the summer day like the broad leaves of the beech trees far above. Those she had heard shouting were just arriving, shoving at one another in their eagerness to reach the wide pond which had become a favorite gathering place once daily chores and lessons were through.

  Seren felt herself go still, more so than she already was, drifting along the surface of the water. Soon, they would notice her, and her few moments of peace would be over. They would call her names and tease her for her lack of magic. Seren grinned at that last thought. No, perhaps they wouldn’t make fun of her for that reason any longer because she had finally managed to Change. The memory of it both thrilled and terrified her, for she had been the last one of them all to transform, even though she wasn’t the youngest.

  At just over twenty years of age, her people had wondered if she had been somehow denied the unique magic of her kind. But last week, while she was out collecting berries, she had done it. She had compelled her glamour to flow through her veins and reform her, flesh and bone. It had felt so strange, like a thousand invisible threads pulling at her joints and muscles all at once. And when it was over, she stood on four spindly legs. Her eyes could see farther, her hearing had grown sharper. Smoke from the campfires back in the village had tickled her nose, and an overwhelming desire to run through the forest had nearly taken hold of her senses. Instead, she turned and bounded back to the village, her new legs giving her speed.

  Every Fahndi child was honored in a celebration when they first Changed, but not Seren. She had only been eyed by her tribe mates with indifference. Their judgmental expressions said as much to her: So, the odd one has finally Changed. Nothing worth celebrating. Besides, she is no longer a child and only children are given a party. Seren had thought maybe, if she could only Change, they would finally come to accept her. She had been terribly wrong. But her mother had been so proud, and that, above everything else, had brought her joy.

  Before she could get too lost in her reminiscence, the afternoon’s serenity shattered as someone’s crude laughter carried through the secluded cove. Seren jerked in the water, losing her buoyancy for a moment. Realizing her small window of tranquility had been slammed shut, she directed her feet to the pond’s bottom and stood, eyeing the new arrival with trepidation. Rozenn, the bane of her existence. Considered the most beautiful of her tribe, Rozenn was the perfect example of what a female Fahndi should look like. High, delicate cheekbones gave her an air of superiority, and skin a wonderful shade of burnished copper never failed to draw the attention of the young men in their village. Seren did not envy Rozenn. Her mother had taught her that such emotions were a profound waste of energy. But she did hate the girl, if only for the simple reason she had never once been kind to her. As if hearing her thoughts, Rozenn turned her changeable green eyes onto Seren, standing there waist-deep in the water.

  “Oh, the half-breed is here,” she sneered, crossing her arms and looking down her nose. Not a difficult task considering she was standin
g atop one of the many moss-covered boulders crowding the glen. “Your father must be Faelorehn,” she continued. “If your awkwardness wasn’t enough, your horribly pale skin is just more proof your mother likes to sleep around. Honestly, I think it’s getting lighter. Do you spend the daylight hours cowering in a cave?”

  The others laughed at that, either adding their own words of agreement or shaking their heads in disgust. Earlier, they had been content to leave her alone. Rozenn, as usual, had to go and ruin it all. And all Seren could do was stand there, her mouth drawn tight, her cheeks flaming with color. Like the deer her kind could shift into, she was timid and quiet in the presence of her tribe mates, and this time was no different.

  Casting her eyes downward for a moment, Seren studied her hands and frowned. Her skin wasn’t that pale. It wasn’t as dark as everyone else’s, true, but then again, that wasn’t the only characteristic working against her. Unlike the others, her hair was also lighter, more like the color of tea left to steep too long compared to their glossy, raven-black. And her eyes were different, too. A honey-brown that stood out among all the shades of green, many of which were trained on her at that very moment.

  “That must be it!” someone else, Alpin, added. “No child of the Tribe of Cernunnos is a late-shifter!”

  “Or maybe it’s your mother’s tainted blood that has been passed on to you!” Nualan crowed. “Rumor has it your grandmother snuck off with a man from another tribe during one of the feast day celebrations. Some say she invited his friends along, too. Really, what self-respecting Fahndi woman would do such a thing?”

  He cast Rozenn a devilish look, his grin revealing perfect teeth. It was common knowledge Nualan hoped to make Rozenn his mate someday, and he did everything he could to garner her favor. Most of the time, that meant seeking out Seren and tormenting her.

  Rozenn only gave him a small smirk for his efforts. Then, she tossed her shimmery hair and sneered. “And they were the ones left behind during the hunt because of their incompetence. So, who knows what sorts of inferior beings make up your ancestry.”

  By that point, everyone was roaring with laughter, and Seren’s calm demeanor snapped. She never lost her temper; she was always too afraid. But this time, Rozenn had gone too far.

  “Shut your mouth, you bitter, spiteful harpy!”

  Silence permeated the meadow like some invisible, deadly disease. Seren, shocked at the anger that had spilled forth from her lips, gasped and quickly cupped her hands over her mouth. After a heartbeat or two, she lowered her hands and tried to apologize, though she didn’t really know why. Habit, she told herself. Since coming into this world, Seren had been awarded the place of weakest member of the tribe, and for years, she had simply accepted that fact. She was always the butt of all the jokes, the one to take blame for any unfortunate event, the child who got left out of every game. Seren had grown used to it over the years, but something had shifted. Perhaps her Fahndi magic finally waking up and forcing the Change upon her had also given her the courage to stand up for herself.

  Rozenn deserved the name Seren had spit out at her, because that’s exactly what she was. A cruel, selfish, manipulative harpy. Despite all that, however, Seren was ready with an apology. Before any words could leave her mouth, however, Rozenn climbed down from her rock, her long, toned legs a trademark of their race, and moved gracefully across the glade. Her arm lifted, and with the same poise she’d exhibited while making her short march, brought her hand fiercely and violently down across Seren’s face.

  Pain exploded in her cheek, and a bright-white light blinded her for a split second before her skin began to sting.

  “How dare you speak to me that way!” the other girl spat. “I am Cernunnos’s Favored, the most skilled at hunting, the most beautiful and the strongest of the young women of our tribe. I will not have some filthy half-breed, Fae-tainted, bastard call me names or tell me what to do! You obey me, not the other way around.”

  Although the silence continued to hang in the air, Seren could feel her fellow comrades moving in closer, their aggression slowly spiking. They were feeding off of Rozenn’s violence, using it to fuel their own, like damp rot that spread to the healthy wood surrounding it.

  Despite her fear, pain and lingering anger at her peers’ taunting, Seren knew Rozenn was right. She was the most beautiful, strongest and best hunter among them. Seren couldn’t even bring herself to eat meat, a characteristic usually only present among the strongest magic-wielders of her tribe. Yes, Rozenn was a force to be reckoned with. But despite her claims of prowess and superior good-looks, she was missing the one thing Cernunnos prized above all the others. He was the god of the Wild, a symbol of fertility, and although he appreciated beauty, strength and skill in the hunt, he especially appreciated the gift of healing, because it was so rare. In four hundred years, not a single Fahndi had been born with the ability to heal, except for Seren.

  Since she was a young girl, she had been able to fix many of the things the world had broken. The gift had developed in stages, slowly. First, she had started with plants. Seren’s tribe happened to live along the edge of one of the many meadows dotting the Weald, and several of the families kept small gardens just outside their dens. One day, Seren had woken before her mother, on the very brink of dawn, before the sun crested the earth, to find their tiny seedlings trampled. Seren knew, even at that young age, that someone in their tribe had sabotaged their garden on purpose. She had stepped out into the deep, loamy earth, her bare feet tingling with Eile’s magic, and knelt in the midst of the destruction. Hot tears of sorrow fell from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks. She had knelt in the soil, splaying her hands over the most damaged of the lot. Then, the pain and hurt in her heart stopped burning, and instead, spread throughout her body like warm sunshine piercing a bank of rainclouds. Her fingers began to glow a golden green, and the light swirled around the stems of the tiny plants, weaving the broken leaves and shoots back together.

  Gasping in surprise, Seren had stood up, trembling not from the cold of the early morning, but from the exhilaration and shock of what had just happened. When her fingers stopped tingling, she bent down and tried to repeat the action with another row of plants, this time reining in her fear. For once in her life, she felt a boldness welling up inside of her. No longer was she the smallest and the weakest of her tribe. No, in this she was strong. Not because she thought so, but because she felt it. Sweet pride, tinged with a bone-deep certainty, flowed free with this new and strange magic.

  This is my strength, that inner voice told her, this is what I’m good at.

  Seren remembered that day now as she stood in humiliation before her peers, her cheek smarting and her eyes filling with unshed tears. Something tickled her stinging face, and when she lifted a hand to touch the tender skin, her fingers came away red. Blood. Rozenn had hit her so hard, she’d left a gash. The silence surrounding them soon filled up with the soft voices of her fellow tribe mates like an ocean tide rolling in at twilight.

  “That’ll teach her,” someone murmured, viciously.

  “If she thought she was an outcast before,” another commented, “now she is even less than that.”

  A male voice, Braen, who had at least been kind to Seren until a few years ago when Rozenn used her influence on him, said, “She won’t be coming back from that insult.”

  Instead of crying and running for the warm love of her mother, instead of curling in upon herself and turning her eyes downward in submission, instead of coming back with another retort, which, incidentally, she didn’t have, Seren did something else entirely. Something she had promised her mother, and herself, she’d never do in front of those who wished her ill.

  As Rozenn stood resolute, her arms crossed over her chest, her face a mask of beautiful hatred, Seren lifted her arm in silence and called upon her healing magic. She had practiced every chance she got since discovering her gift that day, and she had become very good at wielding it. She had kept it hidden from others, her m
other not trusting her own people. Daniela had been certain they would find a way to use it against her child, to exploit her and make her situation worse. If Seren had been anybody else’s daughter, things would have been different, her mother had said. But Seren was so tired of hiding her gift, so sick of mutely accepting her place as the punching bag for her peers. And above everything else, she was tired of being afraid.

  Rozenn’s dark jade eyes widened as a pale golden glow illuminated Seren’s fingertips. She twirled her hand a little, making the brilliance swirl like disturbed mist. When she thought she had gathered enough, Seren brushed at the cut on her cheek, feeling the skin knit carefully together. Not even a thin red line marking the place of the injury remained when she dropped her hand back to her side.

  With great resolve and a determination that seemed to grow whenever she used her gift, she met Rozenn’s eyes with her own.

  Sharp anger and horror flashed in the other Fahndi woman’s gaze, but before she could fully enjoy the retaliation she had meted out against her enemy, a pain beyond reckoning ripped Seren from what had only been a memory. She gasped as a burning agony rolled through her shoulder, a harsh scream abrading her throat as it tore its way free from her lungs. Her eyes flashed open, and she caught a fleeting glance of a bright fire burning on the edge of a large, cavernous space, and the blurry face of a stranger with intense grey eyes gazing worriedly down at her. Before she could discover if what she was seeing was real or just another illusion, Seren fell back into the dark pit she’d been floating in.

  For several moments, or perhaps several hours, Seren couldn’t tell for sure, she drifted in that empty space. Eventually, the dark void was filled with more memories, all of them reminding her of the torment she’d endured growing up.

  One scene showed Seren a time she had cried into her mother’s lap, too ashamed to face the bullies on her own.