by Aleo, Cyndy
Whatever material is binding her wrists rubs uncomfortably against her admittedly hipster watch that they let her keep for some reason, and she flinches. How much time is left? Will she see him one last time or will they slaughter Jakub and Grace the moment they step into the forest?
Zuzanna hadn't bothered blindfolding her on the way in. She said there was no point; all the humans would know where they lived if they thought about it. The area of the forest barred to public access, preserved for the Żubr, makes the ideal spot. All the women are watching the various ways in from the publicly accessible areas, so Donovan watches them, hoping to spot Jakub before they do, to be able to shout a warning if they move first.
She’s still looking when she feels swift fingers on the bindings at her wrists.
“Don't move a muscle.”
Her eyes close involuntarily. It’s Jakub, and he’s somehow come up behind her. The women are still looking for him to be coming from another direction. His voice is barely a whisper, but her adrenaline is running so high it sounds almost like he's shouting at her.
“I’m untying you, Dee, but I don't want you to move yet. The second I move, though, I want you to roll to your side and crawl. Stay as low as you can and try to get into one of their homes. If you have any clue which is which, go for Bożena's, or maybe Agnieszka’s."
She wants so badly to answer him, to thank him, to say everything she hasn't said before now, but all that comes out is a pathetic whimper. His fingers brush the bare skin of her back where it's exposed at her waist.
“I know,” he says. “I promise you; I'll find you. Remember? I said I could find you the same as I could find this place, and I did. Be ready.”
Before she knows it, he's gone, and she tries to hold herself in exactly the same position she was in before he untied her. It's so much harder when she knows she's free and her body is screaming for her to stretch her tired and cramping muscles. Her eyes dart everywhere as she tries to keep track of where his signal will come from.
When it happens, it's sudden and there's no mistaking it. One minute, she's trying to find him in the trees, and the next, there’s blood all over her and the vines that had bound her. She flings them away and rolls to her right side, away from the direction the blood came from and the chaos that’s ensued. She crawls on arms and legs she can barely feel after being tied up for so long and braves one look back to see what he's done:
Zuzanna is pinned to the tree, her hands grasping at her neck while her feet kick at the air below. Blood flows from her mouth and meets the current running from the wound in her neck where Jakub has taken one of her own spears and impaled her through her jugular to the tree.
Donovan throws herself into the first doorway she can find. She hopes she chose correctly, but she can't remember which doorways she might have seen anyone using. Using her sleeve, she scrubs at Zuzanna's blood on her cheek. Nothing else is more important than getting off all that blood until she feels the hand close over her mouth.
33: Loss
Why, of all the huts Donovan could have chosen, did she have to pick this one? Grażyna wonders if the girl is fated to get them all killed or just herself. She knows Jakub had sent the girl here and told her to hide, but in this clump of five hill-huts, only one holds danger: this one, where she has been waiting for Edyta. The sisters expected them to approach from the public paths, but Jakub somehow senses where to find things.
She doesn't have the time or the space in her head to think about it. She saw him kill Zuzanna; she felt the loss to the tribe in her own soul as if she had never left. But the others will have felt it as well, and their only hope now is to eliminate at least Edyta as well before they are found. Without the two of them, the rest of the sisters might listen to reason.
Surely, they have to see that taking a human, torturing her, and leaving her bleeding in the woods for the animals is not what they have been taught and brings great risk to the tribe. Even in their killings of the males, they have done their best to be kind and merciful. Binding a girl and slashing her so the scent of her blood will draw carnivores to eat her alive is anything but.
Donovan is struggling in her arms, and she shushes her, first by identifying herself, then singing the kolęda Jakub sang to her before they came on this fool's errand. As the girl relaxes, she wishes once more they were back in the house in the woods, with Jakub being Vance, not Jakub, and the possibility of death something that hovers over your head instead of staring you in the face.
“What are you doing here?” the girl whispers.
Grażyna knows she means in this hut not in the forest. At least, she hopes the girl has that much sense.
“I’m waiting for Edyta. She'll return, because she has something here Bożena doesn't know she has: a bayonet she kept from a soldier she bedded and slaughtered even before I'd left.”
“Isn't that —?”
“Against the laws?”
Grażyna spins; the answering question came from behind her, in heavily accented English. She pushes the girl so that she’s behind her, so she can protect her, best she can.
Edyta has not come alone. Helena, Beata, and Adela are with her. She cannot fight four of her sisters, and she hopes Jakub realizes more were siding with Edyta and changes his course, or he'll soon be alone in the forest with the sisters.
“Many things are against the laws, aren't they, Grażyna? But we find we make our own decisions to do what we feel is right. You made yours, and I have made mine.”
“They are not right,” Grażyna says. “You have seen him. He is not the demon of legend. He is kind and caring and has learned all our ways.”
“What I see, sister,” Edyta says, “is Zuzanna dead on a tree. That is kind? Caring?”
“You left the girl in the woods for the animals!”
“She should not be here. She should not be with us. Humans should never know about us, and in that, you have broken the second law. But above that, she loves that thing you call son. If she were to breed with it and create more, we cannot imagine the consequences.”
“He is not what we were told he would be.”
“We cannot afford to believe you.”
Grażyna watches Edyta's arm rise and tries to guess her first target. Jakub — Jakub will be here soon. She need only buy Donovan more time. Even seconds will help. A full minute or two will be ideal. Grażyna pushes Donovan behind her again; the girl will not stay where she is put. She has been moving to Grace's side to better focus on the others and is probably watching for Jakub to save them. Or more likely, to try to save them herself and cause more havoc.
Time slows inexorably as Grażyna watches Edyta's movement: first her arm's rise, then the blade's descent. She can see Edyta has cared for her weapon all these years she has kept it hidden. The handle is clean, the blade sharpened. She can read the inscription carved into the side of the blade; the swirling cursive will fill with her blood in no time, she is sure.
Edyta has long known how to kill and do it quickly; she has often been the one to dispatch the human males after bedding. Grażyna feels the searing burn of the blade where it enters just on the inside her collarbone. With a duller stake, the death takes longer. Sometimes it has taken the men full minutes to die, begging for their matky. With Edyta's sharp blade, Grace has only seconds.
She thinks of herself as Grace now, not as Grażyna. Odd that as connected as she has felt to this forest upon her return, she is now the woman she was out in the world.
She is Vance's mother. Jakub's mother. Donovan's mother. But she has survived all these years for one thing, one purpose.
Her knees buckle and she falls. Her head hits Donovan as the girl tries to catch her, and she begs her, “Do not lose him to hate. Promise me.”
She hears no response. Please, Matka, hear my plea. Let the girl help him. Let him not lose himself. Edyta yanks the blade free, and Grace sees it slice the side of the girl's face on Edyta’s upswing even as she feels her life pouring from her, in both the blo
od flowing from the wound and her spirit leaving the body.
She focuses her eyes on the door, hoping for one last glimpse —
Ah, there he is, and he is magnificent. She has prepared him for this moment his whole life. Her eyes remain open, fixed on him, her son, knowing this is worth having saved him.
They are open, and watching him, until she sees nothing at all.
~
Even as she runs, Bożena already knows she’s too late.
The feeling of Zuzanna’s death is palpable, like someone has cut off one of her arms, if she had so many more than two. She’s already in flight when she feels that which is Zuzanna vanish from her mind, when the trees scream and the earth moans and she knows without a doubt that it will not end with Zuzanna.
She will lose more of her sisters today, and there is nothing she can do to keep it from happening.
There is a burn just under her skin that she feels and she knows it is Grażyna, that she is with Edyta, that things will not end well. She can feel Edyta’s anger, her hate, her furor over the loss of Zuzanna.
It should not take so long to get to them, and yet Bożena feels like she is running through mud, her legs and arms heavier than they should be, slowing her down.
She can’t see them, but she knows the moment Edyta wounds Grażyna, the moment her long-lost sister is injured, that the wound is fatal.
She stumbles, knowing the exact second her sister falls, and she keens as she falls to her knees.
She has been denied. Her best friend, her closest confidant.
She did not even get the blink of an eye’s time to see her alive again.
Was it worth all this, Grażyna? she thinks.
Bożena picks herself up and continues toward them. She already knows how this will end, that she will not beat him there.
And she finds that she doesn’t even care.
34: Return
Jakub takes in the scene in seconds. Four Dziwozony. His mother, already gone. Too late for him to save. And Donovan — he can't even look — Donovan under his mother, a pool of blood under her head.
He faces his mother's “sisters,” but no longer thinks of them as such. They are enemy. They have killed her. For all he knows, Donovan is dead as well, but he would surely feel that if it were true. The connection between them is still there, still pulsing, so she must somehow be alive.
“Man's weapons?” he jeers. “So much for the humans being inferior. Or have you saved that all this time just for my benefit?”
Edyta turns, obviously shocked. She has not heard his approach, nor him entering the hut. And yet he makes no move to attack. She appears confused.
“I always knew you would return and do this. I have known for centuries that one would betray us. I needed to be prepared,” she says.
“Or maybe you simply hoped one would,” he says. “My mother was more Dziwozona living among humans for 200 years in hiding after breaking the First Law than you have ever been.
“You don't believe in sisters or equality or justice or even in doing what's right. You want to lead, and you feel you could change this from a peaceful tribe to a dictatorship, if only the others were out of your way. What better way to get the sisters to follow you than to show that not only was Grażyna wrong, but so are the other, peaceable sisters, like Bożena, and Agnieszka?
“Create chaos. Break the laws to make it look like you’re solving problems instead of creating them. It might have been a good plan, Edyta, but for one thing.”
“What's that?” she asks. “Tell me what you think you know, and then we will kill you and end this entire monstrosity that Grażyna brought upon us.”
“Stop.”
Yet another voice joins in. Jakub moves from his spot, where he’s been blocking the door, and Edyta sees the rest of the tribe behind him. Bożena at the front. Tears run down her cheeks.
“My own sisters. All these years I have trusted you and this is what you brought into our midst? Human weapons? Torture? Judgment without trial before the whole tribe?”
“It is forbidden to let male issue live,” Edyta says.
“As it is forbidden to kill your sister.” Bożena turns to the sisters behind her.
“I propose we rid the tribe of those who would introduce this evil to our midst,” she says, addressing only those who have followed her, not those already in the hut.
Shouts of assent meet her proposal, and she doesn’t hesitate when she turns to Jakub.
“You can finish this, yes?”
Jakub nods, his muscles aching to get to Donovan, to check on her. But he can’t move right now without the tribe's agreement.
“Then finish it,” Bożena says with authority. It’s not quite an order, but he feels it’s best to behave as if it is.
It takes nothing now, he knows. It’s no more than a release: all the anger for his mother's death and her two centuries of hiding him, all to end like this. All his fear for Donovan, pale and bleeding on the dirt floor, terrorized by the Dziwozony, left for dead in the woods.
It bursts from him in a torrent, but his focus is so clear that not a hair moves on Donovan's head. The four who wanted him dead, however, are nothing but a few swirling flakes of ash.
And then he’s on his knees, keening sobs breaking free. There’s no point in holding his mother; her stare has been fixed and empty since he came into the room. Gently, he pulls her lifeless body off Donovan's and leaves her to the care of her sisters, who’ve begun entering the hut. Some are crying over his mother's body as they do whatever it is they’ll do before they’ll take her, but others seem to be waiting for his permission.
For what? he wonders.
With his hand under the back of her head, he lifts Donovan like a rag doll. The blood has already begun to congeal. It sticks to his hands like glue as he tries to move her hair out of the way to feel for a pulse. Her head turns when he slides his fingers along her neck to feel a thready beat, and the wide split down the side of her face is exposed. Bone shows through at her cheek.
“Pan Jakub.” He thinks it's Janina who speaks. “Please let us help her. There is so much blood, and we need to close the wound.”
It’s then that he loses it.
“Please no. Don't leave me like this, Dee. It can't end like this.” His embarrassing sobs continue, and he rocks Donovan in his arms. Too afraid to let Dziwozony — any Dziwozony — take her from him again, her blood drips onto his arm in thick beads.
His pride brought them here. They should have stayed in hiding. He could have continued to be Vance, and his mother would be alive and selling her herbs to the local stores, and Donovan would be alternately falling in love with him and growing to hate him, depending on what state his memory was in that day.
They could have kept moving, maybe forever. Now, his mother is dead and Donovan may be soon, all because he felt it was necessary to claim his birthright. To stop running and finally face everything his mother had run from. Power enough to obliterate four women into almost nothingness, yet he couldn’t save his mother, nor can he heal the woman he loves.
The sisters knew the whole time what he was. He’s nothing but evil. And his mother should have destroyed him at birth. The laws were right all along.
The fight leaves him, and the sisters lift Donovan as if she’s no more than a feather, cooing over her wounds and discussing what they should do in a rapid stream of Polish he doesn't even try to follow. He slumps over, his cheek in her blood, and closes his eyes. Maybe now that the internal threat is gone, they can eliminate the external one. He’ll wait here, in the combined blood of those he loved, but not enough to save, and wait for death.
35: Awakening
Donovan wakes screaming. The entire side of her face is on fire, and no one seems willing to help her. She hears women chattering all around her, but none of their chatter is English, and none of the voices familiar. Trying to assess what else might be wrong other than her face, she flexes her fingers, only to find them sticky.
&
nbsp; Grace.
Grace and the bayonet and all the blood.
She wants Jakub.
She wants Vance.
She wants to wake from this never-ending nightmare to find she's home and Vance has forgotten her again, and that's all that frustrates her.
Did they kill him, too? Are they torturing her now?
She screams again, but can form no words; it's all incoherent sobbing. There's a hand on her arm and soft babbling in her ear, but none of it makes sense, and the burning intensifies when she tries to turn her head to see who is speaking to her.
They hold her down.
They’re setting her on fire; she's sure of it.
Every cell in her fights them. The need is there to get up, to run, to find Jakub, to get out of the forest and get home. Until finally, a hand on her arm feels familiar and she stops struggling.
“Please, Dee, it's me. You need to stop moving so they can see how badly you're hurt. Please let them look at you. Please. I don't know how to help you.”
It's his voice, but she can't open her eyes to look at him. If she opens her mouth even a little, she's in agony as the fire burns up her neck and into her hair. There's no way to speak to him or let him know she can hear him if she can't open her eyes and can't speak.
Desperate, she tries for a low hum.
“Let go of her arm,” he says.
No sooner is her arm free than she feels his hand wrap around hers. Donovan realizes how cold she is, and the shivers overtake her until her teeth are trying to chatter. She isn't sure which is worse: the burning when her jaw knocks her teeth against each other, or when she tries to clench to keep from moving.
“Can you understand me?” he asks.
She gives his hand a squeeze.
“We're going to move you out of here. There's a hut they use for healing; it's the closest thing they have to a hospital and we have to stop this bleeding, okay?”