He hadn’t realized they had already reached the pond until he felt a hard shove before being submerged in it. He sputtered and coughed, but stood up and stared at her.
“You could have drowned me in a puddle a few hours ago, but you’re going to have to do better than that now…”
“Shut-up. You stink and I’m getting tired of smelling you,” Cherry said, joining him in the water and swiftly unbuckling the shoulder guards.
He didn’t say anything more, just let her strip him down and toss the clothes worth saving onto the bank. Reaching into her skirts, she extracted a bar of soap and grabbed his hand to make him hold it.
He looked at it, but didn’t move.
“It’s called soap. You’d know that if you bothered to use it.”
He rolled his eyes and started to lather himself, cringing at the very feminine scent of roses released into the air as he did.
She fiddled around in her skirts once more, extracting a razor.
“You don’t have to shave me too,” he mumbled, but she glared at him so he sighed and lifted his chin.
She was quick and it was a wonder she didn’t ‘accidentally’ cut him. She trimmed at his hair but stopped as she worked at the hair around his ears.
“Were your ears always a bit pointed at the top?” she asked.
His hands went to his ears, frowned as he felt the tiny points extruding where there hadn’t been any before. And it’s not the only change I’m noticing…
He shrugged and she continued, not saying another word on the matter.
“Make sure you wash your hair too. Twice. No, three times,” she added, folding up the razor and sticking it back in her skirt.
She turned to leave but he reached out and grabbed her wrist.
He wasn’t sure why he stopped her. He could see the pain flicker there and wished one of the choices he made involved not hurting her.
“Thanks…”
She shook her head and waded out. He stood there unmoving until she was out of sight before he proceeded to use up the whole bar of soap. Turned out he could wash his whole body eight times with it.
He hadn’t noticed, but she must have come back to put a fresh set of his clothes and a towel there too. He didn’t bother with the guards or the cloak, just carried them back on his rose-scented walk of shame.
It was quite the scene when he returned to where they had set camp. Dolly was curled up against Brute once more, Sunday poked at the fire, Cherry was rubbing the other woman’s back comfortingly. The woman was squeezing a stuffed bear, but he felt the constriction in his throat as she did.
They’re not your friends…
The hateful voice in his thoughts was not his own and he sneered at its unwelcome passage.
A better man might have come clean then, apologized and told them everything they needed to hear. A better man probably even needed to clear his conscience before he could sleep at night.
He avoided looking at any of them as he threw down his armload of armor and curled into his bedroll.
He went right to sleep.
“Hey! … Hey, mister!” The voice was distorted, but there was no mistaking it. It was Brat. He felt the clenching in his chest, the dread that this meeting was about to go horribly wrong.
All he could see was blue above him and when his vision tilted, he could see the kid grinning at him where they sat on the edge of a pond. Brat was sticking their hand in the rushing water of a creek.
He remembered this; Brat caught a frog. He had snatched the frog out of the kid’s hand and shoved a stick through it so they could roast and eat it.
“ Ah, come on, mister… I wanted to keep it…” Brat had said in the memory.
He was holding the still living frog now, looking at the stupid bulging eyes as it belched a ribbit at him.
‘I have a choice. Would I really do it all over again?’
He handed the frog back to Brat, watching those pale blue eyes light up as Brat grinned. When Brat smiled like that, he felt redeemed somehow.
“You’re not so bad after all, mister. What should we name him?”
Name him, name him, name him.
The words stabbed at his brain and the scene distorted.
Brat was writhing, impaled on a spit, reaching for him as they twitched in the throes of death.
Save me, save me, save me…
He didn’t scream as he sat up this time, but Cherry was mopping at his head with a concerned frown on his face.
“What do you care?” he mumbled.
He didn’t know he had said it out loud until he saw her face rumple with distaste.
“Good morning to you, too, asshole,” Cherry returned, a cheery sarcasm followed by a face full of sweat-dampened cloth.
He pulled it off, looking over to see the others sharing breakfast.
Cherry headed over to them to grab a bowl, returning with food for him. He took it, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“What does this make you, the asshole emissary?” he asked, sitting up to eat.
“Guess so. You’re not very popular these days.”
He nodded. It was true and he didn’t intend to do shit about it, so it didn’t come as a shock.
It was better that way. The sooner he took care of this, the sooner he could put it all behind him.
“Thought you would be the one to hate me the most,” he admitted in between bites.
Cherry’s gaze was thoughtful as she looked at him.
“I don’t hate you. Neither do they. We’re just… scared. And you’re an asshole,” she reminded him, in case he forgot.
“I guarantee she hates me,” he said, pointing at the newest among them. “I threatened to kill her kid.”
Cherry frowned. She opened her mouth to respond then thought of something else.
“What did you name her?” Cherry asked.
Name her, name her, name her…
He grabbed his head with one hand to still the throbbing in his head at the echo.
“I haven’t… Not yet. It doesn’t always happen right away,” he told her. Not ‘mother’ or anything so damning. It made his head ache trying to remember the long-forgotten name of his own.
Sunday got up and approached them, her eyes shifting away when she tried to meet his.
“We’re going to the call the beacon soon. Do you think you can be ready?” Sunday asked in the polite tone of a stranger.
It left a sulfuric taste in his mouth.
Fajja-fucker, I won’t speak for you anymore…
“Yeah… yeah, let’s do that…”
It had to be in Rathbern…
Once the swirling fog of the Realms in between had calmed, he once more felt the dread of the distance light’s destination. A bitter laugh escaped as his thoughts twisted towards fatalism once more.
If not on my own damn doorstep, then surely smack dab in the middle of the fucking Embassy.
A deserved turn of fate, if karma were a thing, but the idea of people getting what they deserve was little more than a fairy tale.
The days were colder in the north, but sweat beaded on his skin in abundance while sleep became scarce.
He had been content to lead from far ahead, letting the others bond as they would. He hardly expected them to dampen their own need for company just because he found comfort in isolation. They tolerated him with extreme prejudice. He’d gotten his way, but there was an edge of loneliness he hadn’t counted on. Even though he was gruff with Cherry when she bridged the gap, his words lost their bite. It came dangerously close to being banter.
The beacon wouldn’t hold in the days it would take them to get there, but they would call it again before they reached the populace. There was a drainage pond for rain water on the edge of his land (in that other life) if it was necessary.
In terms of scale, Rathbern was certainly bigger than anywhere else they had been. Rathbern was a province, after all, a series of cities with the southern edge bordering the Orendon Kingdom’s own vast claim. Th
e northern edge was only marked by the steep cut of the mountains there or it might have been ambitious enough to be its own empire. His parents’ land had been generous given its distance from the competitive land grabs of the nobles closer to Rathbern’s government seat. It certainly hadn’t stopped them from making the long trip to stick their noses in political circles. It definitely made it easier for them to be murdered.
It wasn’t like Cherry to breach the divide between good guys and bad guys to approach him as they traveled, but he saw the reason for her change of tact as she pointed towards an enormous basin fed by a thundering waterfall.
He tried to smile wryly as he remembered its name.
Maiden’s Tears. Although they could probably fill three of these before this thing is over.
Do you cry, fair maiden, to taste the salt?
To flood the world you find at fault?
Alas, what fool has made you cry…
“Alas, I fear that fool is I,” he murmured, aloud once more, making Cherry’s head tilt with confusion.
It was a poem someone had read to him in that other life. Maybe his mother, but it could just as easily have been a whore plying him with wine.
“Reina… that’s what I’ll call her,” he claimed, barely above a whisper.
Cherry looked back at the unnamed woman and back to him, somewhat shaken.
“Because she’s a Rain Maiden?” Cherry asked. “Something like that,” he intoned, brushing it off. Because that was his mother’s name…
Cherry looked at him doubtfully, her typical response to his non-answers, but the act of naming the woman alone seemed to light some spark of cheer in those guarded eyes. She was easy to read and namely because he watched her far more than he would ever admit.
There weren’t many places worth noting, at least in his eyes, but Maiden’s Tears was breathtaking in its natural majesty. It was yet another misnomer because it didn’t fall like a sad flow of tears. It was a Queen storming into the front of battle.
He had done what was ritual these days; he left them to set up camp some distance away while he approached the waterfall alone.
There was that spot where the rock ledges were slippery but traversable, disappearing just behind the curtain of water on the far side. He headed there first, stopping to kneel by the ledge there. He plunged his hand in the cold agitated foam, knowing what he was looking for the minute the familiar shape of it triggered his memory.
He pulled it out, a smooth flat rock, the name still scrawled in poorly etched letters.
“What did you find?” came Cherry’s voice, making him drop it back in with a graceless plunk that splashed into one eye.
He glared at her with the other while he wiped at the cold sting.
“You’ve really gotta quit sneaking up on me like that,” he grumbled, pushing himself back up onto his feet. “Don’t you ever get tired of wearing that fucking halo?”
Her eyes narrowed but she didn’t take the bait.
“Tempting, but no. You know this place… from another life, perhaps?” she prodded.
Again, the words—all of them—were dangerously close to rolling off of the tip of his tongue. He bit down on it, still feeling the rawness of the unhealed bite there. It only served to remind him of why he held them fast.
“You don’t have to live in fear of them,” Cherry said, choosing those words carefully. Sometimes he swore she was picking around inside his brain when she did that. Why did the word ‘them,’ so vague, sound so exacting, so tempting?
“What makes you think I’m afraid?” he snapped, but she took his hand.
No, he let her take it.
“You’re shaking.”
He pulled his hand away, looking back at the spot where the rock disappeared.
“The water’s cold.”
The memory is colder.
A long time ago, he thought all it took to live forever was a name on a stone.
Cherry started to reach towards the water and he grabbed her wrist to stop her. Her Maiden transformation sprung forth, so sudden that she seemed to have plunged under the surface of water, the gown ballooning out around them.
As her frigid skin burned against him, he countered it with his thrall. The battle of ice and fire caused the air to waver, the world around them distorting with the clash of wills.
“I will penetrate you somehow,” she threatened.
He smirked at her choice of words.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he joked, latching his lips over hers.
The battle had begun and their clothes lost the first fight. They tumbled in a chaos of steam and blizzard frost until the Maiden’s Tears dried up. An understatement, really, since the earth around them was razed and frozen alike; trails of carefree fucking that looked more like the aftermath of a teenage prank gone horribly wrong.
He held her against him as they caught their breath and looked at the small pool that remained, barely suitable to fill a bathtub.
“Don’t suppose there’s enough for a beacon now,” he asked, sinking his teeth into her ear.
“We might have gone too far,” she agreed, twisting her body towards where he had dropped the stone before.
He hadn’t been so caught up in the frenzy that he hadn’t destroyed it. It had been what she had fought him for, after all—the rest had been a welcome bonus.
“What did I win?” she asked, turning her eyes to his with a shrewd challenge dancing in them.
“Were you bartering then? We have a word for that sort of woman where I come from…”
Cherry punched him and pushed herself away, using her arms to cover her breasts as she stood. His rubber cloak survived but the guards were worse for the wear. She plucked his cloak from the heap and he watched her struggle with its weight. It did double as an apothecary and a bank…
She managed to not collapse, probably on sheer stubbornness alone, but her exit was not graceful as the length of it dragged on the ground behind her.
Not terribly fond of the idea of getting another black eye from Brute protecting Dolly’s virgin eyes, he grabbed one of the shoulder guards and cupped it against his male parts to head back for his dwindling supply of clothes.
For fuck’s sake, it wasn’t like they were hiding the obvious, but the Maidens were shooting the two of them those conspiratorial looks of ‘I know what you two did’ all evening. Save for Reina, who seemed content to pretend he wasn’t there at all.
Nothing had changed other than the fact that had destroyed a waterfall that was quite possibly as old as the Gods themselves. Maybe that was just the insufferable bastard in him again. It had certainly been the best sex he ever had, but as long as Fajja had him by the balls, no woman rivalled that thrall.
He pretty much fucked himself for that temptation, leaving the nearest place for locating the next Maiden down to his childhood home. Technically, it bordered other lands and the manor itself wouldn’t be in view from there. Still, home was a feeling and you could blindfold him and flay him and he’d still feel it in his bones.
Rathbern wasn’t a place abundant with water unless you counted the heated pipes of water melted from the snowcaps. It was a precious resource here and one the Triumvirate had been keen on reining in to manipulate the people. His parents had thought themselves clever there too, living so close to the mountains that they could manage their own water supply. Ah, but the Triumvirate were ‘family friends,’ were they not? Just a perk that comes with the territory.
Even as a child, he hadn’t been that naïve. He had broken a boy’s arm for having a toy that he wanted. Even with five of the same at home, that one had to be his…
The present called him back from his thoughts as Cherry offered him food once more. She didn’t sit with him this time, but she had already finished eating and mumbled something about going for a walk.
He had seen the invitation to breach the gap of silence between him and the Maidens in their eyes still and ignored it. He turned over but sleep was
still elusive.
“What does she see in him?” Dolly whispered when she thought he was asleep.
He tried not to smile as sleep finally did come.
The soft hand of a woman snaked over him, a groan summoned from the pleasure of that touch. Those fingers curled into the soft sparse matte of dark hair on his chest and yanked, a painful jolt that made him debate whether he dreamed or not.
The blue-grey haze he found when he opened his eyes told him nothing—not just whether he dreamt or woke, but also not whether he lived or died in this place. He rolled over and Cherry was there as naked as he was.
He started to speak but she laid a finger over his lips and shook her head, cradling her head on his chest. Her finger traced down his throat, making erratic paths on his chest.
No, not just erratic paths but words … letters…
He concentrated and felt them forming in his head. E E D H A S B E E N P L A N T E D…
The strange sensation of opening his eyes when he had sworn he was already awake had passed, his body clearly dressed and in the same position he had been in before he had nodded off by the fire.
The sweat clung to his brow, but he felt the absence of Cherry and her usual fussing over him.
Not that he didn’t deserve it. He had all but called her a whore. In his defense, he was lucky that even whores didn’t refuse him.
He didn’t think of her that way at all. Cherry was Cherry, not just another girl that tolerated him or the Rain Maiden he was bound to protect. Whatever she was, she didn’t blend in with the ones he forgot. He saw her face everywhere. It didn’t matter if she smiled or disapproved as long as it didn’t disappear.
They had reached the low wall of rock that roughly marked the border of his homeland. It had been built as a retaining wall if the draining waters had ever overflowed, but it had never been necessary. He only briefly wondered which pawn had earned the deeds once his parents had been removed.
He stood quietly by the retaining wall as the Maidens filed down the hill, surrounding the water. He could see their breath in the frosty air but they removed their shoes. The shiver that stole over him wasn’t from the cold but the eerie swiftness of their change into the goddesses of death.
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