“I had three older brothers. I can manage,” she said defensively, misunderstanding the source of his disbelief. He didn’t think her incapable. There was a word there that stopped him from protesting.
“Had…” he repeated, cutting to the chase.
She sniffed with a regretful twitch of her mouth and he knew she hadn’t meant to elaborate. Still, she met his eyes and decided something else.
“They died during a conflict in Kylrith a few years ago,” she explained simply, suddenly concentrating hard on the act of lathering the beard on his face.
That had been more than a few years in his time. He saw the furrow in her brow, the remnants of pain she was trying to school out of her face. There was more to it, but it wasn’t his business.
She forced his jaw up and he let out a short laugh.
“Don’t move or I’ll cut you,” she warned and he remained quiet, not sure if she meant intentionally or not, but erring on the side of caution.
She worked quickly and he felt an odd sense of comfort in the quick scrape of the blade, the splashes of water and the way she narrowed her eyes and bit her lip in concentration. Again, that sense of familiarity returned, even if he couldn’t recall the last time he ever trusted someone with a razor to his throat.
When Cherry finished, she sheared away at the hair too, cropping it much closer and much better than his usual hackjob. She brushed away at the hair and ran her hand over his skin in inspection, her fingers lingering for a minute on the scar there. His head tingled in the fluttering euphoria of nostalgia at the intimacy.
“You’re better looking than I thought,” she murmured absently.
Realizing how familiar she was being with him, she pulled away her hand as if from a fire. To hide her embarrassment, she shoved the towel against his face. He laughed, caught off-guard by her.
“Still pretty hideous,” he amended, but he peered over the towel to see her shaking her head.
“The scar is pretty gnarly, but you have a nice face,” she said, seriously.
“So I’m not exactly ugly, but now I’m nice?”
“No, you’re definitely an asshole, but you’re not entirely unfortunate,” she added with a dull finality.
It confounded him that this woman could be so much like the kid. All except for the femininity, but puberty often handled even the stubbornest androgyny. He might have wondered what trick of magic might take someone back in time but make them older, but the kid had a little mole above their right eyebrow, paler blue eyes than Cherry’s even.
He realized he had been staring at her when she cleared her throat. She was clasping the dagger in front of her, another question in those eyes.
“Ah, I know this is weird, but… would you draw the dagger for me?” Cherry asked holding it out to him again.
He wasn’t sure what the angle was here, but knew it was the other piece to her half-truth. It would glow like a normal flame, not blue like one who could use it. When he drew it and it glowed like fire, he shrugged and resheathed it, handing it back.
Her eyes danced with an eagerness even as the rest of her face attempted to mask it.
“I knew it! I knew you’d be the one to help me!” she said with an odd reverence. “I… I know it sounds crazy, but I had a dream. The Rain God came, said we were in danger, but there would be a man who could call the Flame and stop it from happening!”
“It was orange fire and if you’re a Rain— “
She clamped her hand over his mouth, but he peeled it away to continue with careful amendment.
“If you’re one of them, you know better than anyone that there is no Rain God. Hasn’t been for thousands of years. The dagger is supposed to glow blue…”
She nodded, but had more to add.
“It doesn’t glow for everyone, only those chosen for different purposes. The orange fire is the fire of guardians… As for the dream…”
He stood, handing her the towel and shaking his head.
“Huh-uh. No way. Whatever you think, I’m not some hero. I don’t work for free,” he told her.
“I can pay you,” Cherry said stopping him when he tried to walk around her, throwing him for a loop once more. “Please, I… I thought I would have to handle this on my own. I don’t even know who the others are and we are meant to blend in, to stay unnoticed. I have a way I can find them, but it leaves me vulnerable.”
She was worse than he was when it came to explaining, but he couldn’t blame her for being cautious. She lived and worked in the poorest part of the city and the way she drew eyes, it was a wonder the city hadn’t swallowed her whole. He had been an ass himself by forcing his mouth on her.
“Clearly, they have a way of finding you too,” he pointed out. That part was as much a mystery in the future as it was now. There was no pain in his head from lost knowledge, so it wasn’t something he had ever known. Sometimes his scrambled brain had its perks.
Cherry nodded miserably, but hope rose into her eyes again. She bounced on her heels in the urgency of her plea.
“Name your price,” she pressed again and those eyes wore him down. He sighed with aggravation and surrender, cursing the eyes of children and women, shooting back a curt nod.
“We can discuss that later. How about we start with a room on the house?” he proposed, his stomach growling additional demands. “And a meal.”
Cherry’s shoulders slumped in resignation but she nodded and tilted her head towards the tavern.
“Fair enough. Most of the patrons here are drunk enough that they’ll eat anything resembling food, but we have a couple of choices that aren’t completely unfortunate,” she said, turning only to make sure he followed.
This was usually when he would start running in the opposite direction. She seemed to suspect it, withholding things from him as well. He didn’t do long-term plans. Rescuing a bunch of Rain Maidens from a power-hungry king qualified as a longterm plan, so he wracked his brain trying to decide why this was any different.
Cherry was forbidden fruit, cringe-worthy pun aside. She was too pretty, too vulnerable, and he felt as if he might taint her simply by being too near. She kept looking behind her as if she knew he balked at this arrangement, those anxious eyes begging him not to change his mind.
He seemed to stall at the doorframe and she pouted, reaching back to take his wrist and pull him over the threshold. She pressed at his back as she led him to the bar counter, rounding the counter after he sat. She wiped her hands on a towel before writing a ticket and handing it back to the cook.
She leaned onto the counter and propped herself on her elbows, an action that pressed her breasts into better view. Far more seductive an action due to how unintentional it was.
“Suppose you tell me how the Rain God brought you to me,” she said, her voice alluringly husky as she tried to keep her voice low. It wasn’t one of those ridiculous whispers though…
It wasn’t a story he could tell easily. There was little of his life he remembered with any coherence and he didn’t dare tell her he came from a possible future where she and the Rain Maidens had died, that he had kidnapped some irritating kid for no reason he understood. Like the kid, she might try to seem tough, but he had seen the shift in her demeanor when her ‘Rain God’ announced some mysterious guardian had come. How much he could tell now felt thick on his tongue.
He wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t dead for a third time and this was some strange afterlife. It felt real enough, but there was a Rain Maiden with fiery hair that suspended reality.
It made him grow somber again, but she didn’t seem to pay any mind as she filled the silence after her unanswered question with reluctant small talk.
“I usually only let women terrorize me this much after I’ve bedded them,” he interrupted. This usually shut a woman down fairly quick, but he didn’t like how chummy she was getting.
“Consider it part of your pay then,” she added with an eye roll.
“I could discount for additional servi
ces rendered,” he added with a wriggle of his eyebrows.
“Wow, charming… How do you stay single?” she retorted, dripping with sarcasm.
“Just lucky, I guess,” he said sitting up. “How about some useful information? Like why finding your friends leaves you too vulnerable.”
Cherry’s eyes shifted with obvious anxiety, hoping no one caught wind of that. She leaned over the counter and he openly admired her breasts this time.
“Later, okay?” she warned.
“Your room or mine?” he flirted relentlessly.
“There’s a bathhouse a few blocks from here…” she began and his jovial mood vanished again.
“Yeah, I know the one…” he said.
“I have to work until nightfall, but I can meet you there,” Cherry explained, reaching into her apron.
Cherry reached forward and tucked something against his forearm.
“Don’t lose it. I’ll need it back later,” Cherry said, before tending to other patrons and ignoring him the rest of the time.
He looked down and frowned. It was the wooden ‘key’ that Brat had been admiring in another time.
She had forgotten about giving him a room, but then nothing had really been decided yet either. Not that he could rest right then anyway. He wasn’t quite ready to believe that this was truly the past and he had enough of surprises.
His feet took him first to where Brat had lived. Brat wouldn’t be alive, assuming this was the past. He knew it was stupid to keep insisting it wasn’t. He hadn’t been in Orendon 12 years ago, but everything in his gut indicated that’s exactly where he was now.
“Looking for something, boy?” came the shaky voice of a suspicious old woman.
He was anything but a ‘boy’ to anyone aside from some old crone. He hadn’t seen her in the shadows there, but she stepped out now, probably wondering why he stood there staring at her uninteresting old building.
“No, thanks… Just… thought I was forgetting something important,” was all he said before wandering off again.
The cellar…
It seemed odd that he would want to go back there. There wouldn’t be any trace of Brat there, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it might have been. Once again, there was an odd pull guiding his footsteps.
He always questioned what guided him, truth be told. Just like there was often a good reason for the compulsion, it could often be bad. One such compulsion had pulled him right into the middle of a thieves’ den. Turned out it wasn’t somewhere he had to be, but somewhere he had been to retrieve an item for a client. Also, one of the last places on earth he should’ve returned to. He had gotten out, but the smith had needed to patch him up again.
There was no padlock on the cellar door.
He lifted the door away and headed down slowly, letting his eyes adjust with the bright sunlight at his back. He felt the sharp tip of a blade at his throat, forcing a sudden gasp.
“The hell are you?” the voice demanded.
His eyes snapped towards the familiar sound. It was clearer, younger, than the one he remembered but there was no mistaking it.
“Brat’s mom?” he murmured, seeing that honest reaction once again causing offense.
“I ain’t nobody’s mom!” she protested. He felt the tip of the blade dig enough to release a trickle of his blood.
She could be—she was in her late teens, wearing the sort of ambiguous clothes Brat might favor even though her breasts didn’t make her androgynous.
So Brat wasn’t born yet.
“I was thinking out loud. Didn’t mean to trespass, just got the wrong cellar,” he said.
The girl took a few steps back but kept the blade pointed at him. He backed away himself, heading back up.
There was no point asking questions. The only ones he had were concerning a future that hadn’t happened yet.
He had found his way to the bathhouse and tried the lock with the key, but was greeted by a room full of screaming naked women throwing soap at him. He laughed and made his way up a nearby building to watch Orendon from the rooftops.
There wasn’t much room in his life for contemplation. It was necessary to clear your head, which was something his brain did plenty on its own. Nevertheless, he had ended up going somewhere in his head because he hadn’t snapped out of it until he realized it was dark.
The sound of a frustrated kick and a heavy sigh from below followed shortly after.
He leaned over, peering down at her with a mischievous smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“People are trying to sleep around here,” he called down.
Cherry’s head snapped up and she folded her arms, unamused. He leapt over the side and slid down the ladder. Tossing her the key, she caught it effortlessly and unlocked the bathhouse door, disappearing inside.
He took his time going in there. She was dragging her hand over the nearly still surface of the water from where she crouched. There was a steady drip from the faucet that echoed loudly in the mostly empty room. His mind superimposed an image of what it looked like the first time he had come.
“Can a place hide from someone until it wants to be seen?” he asked her, not sure why he said it out loud.
He wasn’t sure she heard him as she didn’t break from rippling the water.
“There are places that exist only to protect people,” she murmured. She slipped her shoes off and pulled up her skirts only enough to dip her legs in, an odd blue light washing over her as a gradual shift made her look like one of the Goddesses he had seen in death.
She reached her hand out to him and he caught himself wandering over, crouching along the other edge. His own hand reached out and stopped in hesitation before reaching out for the surface.
He removed his own boots, hiked up his pants and stuck his legs in the water. He couldn’t hide his disappointment that it felt exactly like water always felt.
Regardless, he sighed anyway, the cool water relieving the heat and discomfort of broken blisters.
Cherry slid into the water, the silk of her dress billowing behind her but it did not soak the material. His throat went dry at the memory again.
“What about death? Is it outside of time?” he asked. Was she there then? Does she remember when Brat killed me?
“I don’t know… there is a piece of the Maidens there, but as long as we live, we have no memory of death, only the place outside the Gates,” she told him, those cerulean eyes of her making it impossible for him to look away.
She was beautiful, yes, but she was terrifying. You could dress it up anyway you like but the Maidens were Reapers.
He tensed for a moment as she reached for him, but she had grabbed his feet and ran her hands over them. He watched in awe as the dried blood and pus ran clear, the blisters vanishing under her small hands.
He remembered what he had asked her before.
“Why are you vulnerable when you are looking for the others?” he asked now and saw a tear escape those glistening pools of her eyes.
“I must go between worlds. I am blind here when I am in the Gate Realm,” she whispered, releasing his feet, but standing there watching him.
“You can see me,” he said, doubting what she told him.
“You are in between worlds. You died twice,” she explained.
“You know that much, but you don’t remember me,” he pressed once more.
The cold fingers of terror washed over him as her face became severe.
“The God of Flame overstepped his boundaries, tried to claim you on our turf. We were warned. I never said I didn’t know who you are, but if you met me in death, I would not recognize you. We are in three places always—here, at the Gates, and in death and one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. I can shift my awareness between the Realm of Men and the Gate Realm, but I never shift beyond. I am afraid I couldn’t or wouldn’t come back,” she said, before the horror passed and she was the ethereal beauty again.
Like Sirens, the creatures in stories
that lured men to their deaths…
“You were warned?” he asked and she stepped closer, stopping just between his knees.
“It is simply known. Magic is gone, the Gods are scattered, the messages are unclear,” she told him, reaching up to trace his jaw.
Great, so absolutely nothing helpful there. The sky is blue, the grass is green, kittens and scars are adorable.
Her fingers were icy, those rosy lips tinged purple now.
“You say magic is gone. What are you then?” he asked.
“Magic is gone from the Realms of Men. What exists here is an anomaly, endemic of the problem in the Realm of Gods,” she explained, her eyes making his own feel heavy as he struggled to watch her.
Yeah, he knew all about the ‘Realm of Gods’ all right… To mortals those glimpses came in dreams or, in his case, nightmares. The Gods moved freely there while you could compare what the humans saw to touring a closet in a whorehouse.
“I’m just a man,” he mumbled, his speech slurred with the incredible urge to sleep.
“Just a man…” she repeated, her voice distant now.
He felt the arctic press of her lips on his own, screaming into her mouth as she pulled him underneath the water.
He opened his eyes in a panic, hyperventilating as he sat up. He was dry, in a soft clean bed, the aching light of early morning pouring in through the billowing sheer curtains of the open window.
He stood shakily, still not sure of where he was as he stumbled over to close the window. He touched the dresser below it, the wall, struggling to ground himself to where he was. Moments ago, he had been drowning in the frosty kiss of a dangerous woman.
Feeling something in the pocket of his pants, the only thing he still wore. Reaching in, he pulled out the wooden bathhouse key. He passed his thumb over the smooth surface, a pang of pain at the memory of Brat’s insistence that it was carved.
The faint sound of the door clicking open made him turn as he winced at the pain of broken memories. It was Cherry, carrying a tray of food, holding it out before setting it on the edge of the bed.
She walked over to him, frowning with concern as she reached up and pressed a hand to his head.
“Are you unwell?” she asked, her voice human now.
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