by Sandra Waugh
That was two days past, from what I’d learned. I straightened. “Has no one opened the door?” I asked. “Has no one looked? Where was the creature wounded?”
They shook their heads at my questions, and I shook my head back at them, upset. “You cannot leave the Troth like this.”
“We thought it would die—”
“Except it hasn’t!” someone broke in. “And what if it’s mended—”
“ ’Twill burst through the door and kill us all!”
“ ’Twill have its revenge!”
Their words scrambled over one another in fearful spurts. Six adults—four men, two women—and the little boy asleep in the market square. Seven left. A sad straggle of survivors. The Troth keened, rattling the shed, and panic shivered through those standing, fevered their stares.
“You could cast a spell to keep it inside, to keep the door bolted hard, couldn’t you?” the youngest man there begged.
“She’s a Healer, fool!” A second man knocked his shoulder angrily.
“A Healer, nonetheless! They weave spells!”
“A Healer is no wizard!” I exclaimed.
“But she has knowledge of herb,” Brown-beard announced to a chorus of gasps. He turned to me, echoing my own warning with jittery enthusiasm: “You carry things that poison, no? That thing must be parched or starving. If we mashed your herbs, smeared it on some meat—”
A woman shrieked, “Meat! When we starve?”
“There are dead things all around us,” Brown-beard hissed back. “Take your pick.”
The angry man would have none of it. “Too easy after what they’ve done! As painful a death as we can make for that thing!” He turned. “You, Mistress Healer, have you something in your bag for that?”
Someone giggled wildly in agreement, saying “If poison contorts even a little, we can pull the tools from the shed and finish it!”
“Finish slowly!”
“Our revenge…”
It. Thing. The opportunity to pay back suffering with suffering. “The herbs are not for that,” I bit out over the ugly chatter. “You cannot ask me to take a life.” Defense, yes, but not cruelty.
“It’s a beast,” one woman muttered.
“No more than any of us,” I muttered back, repulsed. I’d had enough of violence. I pushed past the closest man by the door and grabbed the latch. “I will finish this my way.”
No one stopped me this time; instead, they ran back a distance and fell into a huddle. They cried to me, a mix of fearful voices: “Do not let it out!” “ ’Twill kill us!” “Tear you in pieces!” “You’ll be raven pickings!”
“I do not fear any Troth,” I called back. I opened the door and shut it hard behind me with grim relief. Better to face a wild brutality than a reasoned one.
—
The interior was dusk-dark. The windows were patches of gray from the smoke. A tumble of rakes, hoes, and shovels clotted the planked floor like jackstraws; wheelbarrows and carts were tossed upside down—the Troth had crashed into everything in a fury of pain. I could smell the leaked blood, hear his sharp panting, but I could not see him.
I kept my hand on the latch and whispered to test: “Where do you hide?”
A low growl emitted from the back shadows. Then nothing. I waited, learning by that eerie silence what I needed to know—’twas a warning only; the Troth could not attack. I let go of breath and latch, began climbing over the mess with as little noise as possible. Halfway, the stench of blood and beast stopped me cold. I swallowed, hitched a little to the left, and peered into the dimness, watching shadow resolve into form.
“There you are,” I murmured.
The Troth was horribly wounded, his left arm half ripped from the shoulder, the blood smearing him more black than red. Two days he’d lasted like that, an impressive feat. But it left him more dangerous—he’d die soon enough, but not before becoming even more ferocious in a final gasp of agony. The Troth would explode out of the garden shed just as the villagers feared and take them down. And he would take them down. Even one-armed, the Troth could take us all.
I studied him, wondering how a physique no greater in size could hold more strength than any human. The goblin-hunched frame; the mottled, spongy skin; the strings of hair and dagger teeth; the slits for a nose. And those eyes—they were meant for the dark. They caught the gray light in sudden gleams and flashes. It made me vulnerable that the Troth could see better and kill with a single blow. But I held my ground, held my gaze, wanting to see this foreign creature up close and wanting to know—as if somehow in the dim light and mess of blood I might recognize this Troth as the one who killed the young man I loved. And if I might recognize, then…
The end of the story I did not tell Brown-beard: that the Riders had saved Merith from the worst. Almost.
It was not two months since I saw the Troths leaping from Dark Wood, through the gardens and growing fields, through barn and cottage, thudding over the pretty paths that led straight to our village square. But then the Riders stormed in and…
And compared to Bern we’d been spared.
There was one slaughter, though, that stood out as breathtakingly cruel. A young man lay with his chest ripped open in the middle of Merith’s market square. Raif—my Raif. A Troth had slain my love, whole claw.
Perhaps this Troth.
We eyed each other. The Troth was cornered; I was exposed. An unfavorable standoff, truly. For him.
In that moment, in that space of wonder and possibility, I was invincible—a strength not from knowledge of cures or fearlessness, but from rage. I had a culprit to take it out on, finally, a way to release the screams I never screamed. My blood was heating, surging through veins, flushing cheeks, quickening heart—expanding until I dominated the shed and could crush this puny creature without a flicker of movement, and in silence.
The Troth sensed it. He remained wary; those luminous disks fixed on me. I returned his stare with arrows of ice-cold fury and a fierce smile.
“I would leave you like this,” I hissed. A minute ago I’d shunned such viciousness in the frightened villagers beyond the door. Now I wished and whispered a similar curse—a glorious, livid, and far too brief curse: “I want you to suffer. I want you to hurt.”
His gaze stayed fixed. The Troth didn’t understand me…or maybe he did. For though I might pretend I’d entered the shed with dark intent and hurl hate-filled words, Healers could not act out of malice. I could not harm, nor prolong agony. I could not even leave this creature to those villagers outside.
I could not avenge Raif’s death.
Still, rage illuminated, awed me, even—pure and fleeting like a shooting star. And then it was done. Smile gone, I settled to the task of ending his suffering quickly. My eyes roamed the room for something to use. There—a scythe. Sickle-shaped, with a sharp tip, honed blade, and sturdy wood handle. It hung on the back wall. Behind the Troth.
Healer’s task…I eased forward; the Troth shifted. I stepped over a rake, and he growled—a little game of dare, with me unafraid and he so very wary—ever closer until we were face to face, my cloak almost brushing his feet. I wondered that he neither attacked nor ran—wondered if he was truly too exhausted from pain and loss of blood. But the Troth stayed hunkered against the wall, snorts of breath flexing those ugly little slits, leaving me to stretch over him for the tool. The rank breath and the stench of his grisly wound mixed in overwhelming foulness. I swallowed against it, then slowly reached my hand above his string-haired scalp. Those orbs slid up, tracked my move—
“Mistress Healer!” Cries came pounding through the shed, shocking both of us. “Mistress Healer! What happens?”
With a hideous shriek, the Troth sprang and I lunged for the scythe. Then his claws were gripping my throat and it was I who was pinned to the wall, dangling, my fingers scrabbling for the sickle blade. And still the villagers shouted for me, their terror whipping frenzy. “Hush!” I tried to yell. There was barely a voice, barely air.
He used the wounded arm, yet the Troth kept rigid hold, his snarl curling a lipless mouth over those dagger teeth. I gasped and choked and strained for the scythe, stunned at how quick it could all be over. How easy. And then I stopped struggling, remembering that moment two months back when a Troth sprang for me as I kneeled by Raif’s lifeless body.
My useless wish now was the same as then: Kill me. Kill me.
But this Troth waited. Maybe he fed on fear and was surprised that I held none. Maybe he smelled the Healer, the herbs, and wondered what I could offer to cure. Or did he feel the same hate I did, and enjoyed that for me the pain of living was far worse than a quick death? Speculations only. The Troth was a wild thing, a killer, and I was prey. Eye to limpid eye, we stared, judged.
And there it was: the recognition that I should be killed. The creature’s grip tightened; I felt the claws digging in, forcing me sideways. The back of my neck grated against the planking. My fingertips touched the scythe. Now. Do it now. I was begging for him to win. His good arm went up to slash—
Instinct swept in. I ripped the scythe from the hook and had it to his throat before he could finish me. The tip of the blade pierced the small, soft fold in his neck, the point where blood would flow out fastest and without sting.
How quick it could all be over. How easy. How unfair. The orbs stared at me—no shock, just an easing of torment…and, finally, release. Then the luminous glow faded and the claws unclenched. The Troth thumped to the floor in a hiss of dark blood, and my feet touched down.
There was a moment of pure silence—even the villagers had stopped. Slowly, I wiped the scythe on my cloak and hung it back on the wall. I pressed my fingers against the splinters of wood where my nails had scraped and I exhaled…but not with relief. Healer nature always prevailed. No malice. No harm. Not even to myself.
The shouting began again.
Well, perhaps a tiny spark of malice: I clambered back over the wreckage, flung open the door, catching the villagers by surprise. They started and stumbled back, cringing with shrieks of terror, and I let them, before shouting over all of it, “It is done.”
Slowly they righted themselves, releasing fear in gasps, then choking with helpless laughter.
“You killed it!” The angry man wheezed. I nodded and brushed some cobwebs from my cloak, smearing all the Troth blood, which I’d yet to wipe from my fingers. One of the women turned to retch.
But the other woman wiped her eyes and looked at me in wonder. “How? How did you manage? You waded through our destruction, you helped, you killed…but your pretty face is so brave and still. You have no tears? No tears for sadness, or worry, or fear, or relief?”
No. I had no tears. Another thing: Healers did not cry.
“I did what you asked,” I told them instead. “I’ll leave you now.” I moved away from the garden shed. West, I remembered, and turned in that direction, then looked back at them all. “You will not forget the boy back in the square,” I said to the man named Rafinn. “You will not forget to make a broth, to feed him.” He nodded. They all did.
I would not be sorry to leave this village, that name. Each of them grinning now like fools over the death of one Troth. A tiny, ugly victory in a sea of despair, those grins highlighting bleak stares. Maybe mine was as bleak. I suppressed a shudder, said as fairly as I could, “Farewell, then. Good luck to you.”
Charred grass, charred village. Not sorry to leave this place—
But they did not like to lose me so quickly. They trailed me a little ways, chattering: “Won’t you stay?” “Where do you go?”
No, I will not stay. I go to my end.
“Wait, please, Mistress Healer!”
That was Rafinn. I stiffened, then turned.
“Your name,” he said, eager and nervous. “At least give us that. We must thank you by name.”
“Eve,” I told him after a moment. It was not my full name, or my nickname. But it made me sound older, more like the aged Healer he’d expected.
“Then thank you, Mistress Eve.” The remaining villagers murmured the same in turn, “Thank you, Mistress Eve.”
I nodded to each, then walked on alone.
“Mistress Eve,” I heard Rafinn say admiringly to the others. “The one who is unafraid of death.”
No. No tears, no fear of death. Grimacing as I left them in the distance.
Then, a little farther on, I smiled. Fear of death? Nay. I would be glad of it.
I WOULD BE glad of it.
That ran as a little song. Kept me company all the way to the mossy edge of a drought-diminished river. I stopped there to wash away the filth of the past days, shedding my clothes piece by piece—cloak and frock and undershift and sandals. I scoured the blood and ash from each using river stones in slow, methodic circles. Scoured myself with the stones until I, like the cloth, was scrubbed clean, and my hair was silver-blond again.
I left everything to dry on the bank and plunged into the river, diving straight to the bottom. Swimming was my favorite idyll, once—the clear water, the sun-sparkled droplets on skin, the peace—it was my shedding of a day, my healing. But now the quiet of it made my ears ring with memory: the clash of sword, the shriek of beast, and the roar of fire in Merith’s square. Things I could not shed or heal.
I would be glad of it. I sang it underwater, watching the bubbles rise and pop, like splatters of blood beneath the red sunset.
Later, I spread myself out to dry like my clothes and waited for the light to die. And even later I gathered watercress and fennel and a wild carrot for a meal, adding in a bit of dried meat that one village had spared me as thanks. Methodical and neat and emotionless. I scraped some oil from a berrit leaf onto a stick and lit it as a candle.
Functions of survival that I no longer had use for yet performed without thought.
A bitter truth: I might chant that I would be glad for death, but to offer myself to it was a near-impossible effort—even in the grip of a Troth. I was no good at it, at this decision to be done; I could not let go.
’Twas weakness, not cowardice. Call it duty, or the fault of my gift. Healers knew too much. An affinity with the workings of Nature: we could spot the greens and herbs to eat or mend with. We could find water easily, light a fire, fashion a storm-proof shelter, gauge direction….Our hands bestowed calming energy to others or sped the healing process. We protected ourselves instinctively, with little effort. The effort was in trying to take life prematurely.
Next to my little salad I placed two of the vials of herbs from my satchel and stared at them as I ate. Only two vials. The minion was too precious to misuse; I left that in the bag. But the heliotrope and yew were lovely poisons. I took them out often, unstoppered them to smell the dark-deep earthiness of one and the cherry scent of the other. I imagined fading into sleep.
Fade away: ’twas what I planned, why I left Merith, why I’d abandoned Grandmama and Lark one early dawn without goodbyes and walked away from my life. I could not stay, mend into some half existence. ’Twas like finishing a tapestry with the color missing, and I could not bear to weave such a dulled, lonely picture. I wanted Raif. I wanted not to have let him die.
My hand reached for the yew, disembodied. I touched a fingertip to the smooth glass, rolling the vial a little to watch the dark bits tumble inside. Some plants’ poisons fade when cut and dried. Never yew. Chew thoroughly, expect gastric distress, death comes quickly…I’d done this so many times: stared at or smelled the vials, recounting the effects, intending to stuff their contents in my mouth. Each time I was sure I could confound my instincts, I only found myself packing up and traveling on in a daze. Another meal, another night, another devastated village.
My fingers found the stopper. I squeezed it between my thumb and forefinger. This time, Evie. If this time you could just…
The fennel went bitter. I spit it out, wiped my mouth, and was stuffing the vials back in the satchel before I even realized.
But then I caught my breath. It w
as too forceful, that shove. My fingertips brushed things I’d tucked under the satchel’s bottom seam. Mementos of home I’d taken with me, things to keep close yet out of reach, things far more potent, more painful than any poison.
A lark feather and a braided leather ring.
The feather was for Lark. I picked it from the garden path not long after she’d gone for the Riders. It was no sign, but lark feathers were rare, so an auspicious find nonetheless. And the ring? The ring had been worn by Raif’s grandfather, the tailor who was mutilated by the Troths. During the attack on Merith, Raif grabbed back the ring the Troths had kept as a prize. And I, in turn, took it from Raif’s lifeless hand.
Hand to hand to hand—a circle of leather, a circle of victory and of death. My own hand was cold, frozen by that accidental touch. Memories were building now like rain clouds: first a sprinkle, then a shower. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to force them back, but they were bursting over me, as fresh as yesterday’s happening, brutally sweet and heart-scraping. Raif—my loyal comrade in Merith, my partner in all the exploits I could not share with my shy cousin. Every field and garden, every tree had been explored and picked and climbed together. He was the best part of my every day.
A downpour of memories now, drenching, drowning. So I gave in, hugged my knees close to my chest, and braced.
—
“Look up, Evie! Look where I am!” Raif calling from somewhere in the canopy of Jarett Doun’s apple trees. Six years old and so proud of his squirrel-like agility. “Hold out your apron!” Fruit raining down before I had a chance to lift the hem of my blue apron….
“ ’Tis Evie, you dolts!” Raif at ten years, snorting with laughter at our group game of blind man, when I’d put on little Wilby’s eyeglasses as a disguise. We were too familiar with one another to ever win at it; Raif was pulling off his blindfold with one hand and tugging my long braid with the other. “You cannot hide from me…!”
One hand usually pulling my braid, the other shoving his own shock of black hair from his brow. At twelve years we goaded one another—happy, carefree, busy bodies, just longer-limbed and wild-spirited. Raif constantly pointing over my head so I’d turn, and then stealing my hair ribbon to wave in victory. I’d leap for it; he’d feign surrender to my strength. We’d scuffle for the prize….