by Ross Turner
“I’m sorry…” Jared started, but Kael cut him off.
“Vivian…” He interrupted. “What are you going to do?” He asked.
There was a heavy pause that hung for a moment, as realisation dawned in Kael’s eyes.
“But…You can’t…No!” He didn’t even give her chance to reply, following her trail of thought before she’d even had chance to reveal it.
“Now they’ve found me, they will follow me.” Vivian explained. She knew that wasn’t entirely the truth, but she was simplifying it for Jared, trying to reassure him. “So I will lead them away. I will lead them back to Featherstone Keep, and nobody can follow me.”
Even as Vivian spoke, knowing she had to go back to Featherstone Keep, she didn’t have a clue why. She only knew that it was her only remaining option. She had to get away from civilisation, and there was simply nowhere else to go. She couldn’t bear the thought of more innocent lives being lost.
Jared abruptly changed the subject then, suddenly switching topics.
“Did you summon the animals from the Redwoods?” He asked. “Did you ask them to fight for us?”
“Yes.” Vivian replied simply, though in her mind she finished her sentence with ‘I think, but I don’t know how.’
“How?” He asked then, as if he had read her thoughts, but Vivian’s expression told him not to dwell on such things.
“It doesn’t matter.” She told him. “All that matters is that your people are safe now.”
Jared nodded his head, knowing instinctively that she could say no more on the matter. Instead, he politely excused himself, apologising again for his outburst, and left Vivian in Kael’s company, saying that he would allow her time to prepare for her departure.
As she watched the farmstead owner fade away and disappear into the night, moving slowly towards the collection of cottages, she couldn’t help but sigh, wishing that their conversation had gone better. But there was nothing she could do about it now. The most important thing was to protect her people, and to remove this threat, once and for all.
She had much work to do.
Back at the cottage that had been allocated for Kael’s recovery, he and Vivian sat at the wooden kitchen table eating a thick stew that had been brought round to them by one of the farmstead’s kitchen staff. It was a concoction of vegetables and chewy chunks of meat, and though neither of them felt particularly hungry, they forced it down regardless, knowing they needed to eat.
The room was lighted by a single candle that stood on a tray, sat between them on the table, and the silence was an eerie one, for following all of the chaos so far that night, it seemed most unnatural.
“You know I’m coming with you.” Kael told Vivian then, seemingly from nowhere, shattering the silence with his statement.
“You can’t Kael…” Vivian started, but she hadn’t the heart to finish.
Her head told her the undoubted, logical truth: that even with all her power, what Vivian was planning would be dangerous, and if Kael came, he would surely die. Her heart however, telling an altogether different story, yearned for him to accompany her, and the mere thought of separating from him again ripped pain in Vivian’s chest unbearably.
Such a decision is always a difficult one to make, but indeed forms the very basis of who we are.
“Why?” He asked then, seeming to encompass all that she had just thought with that one simple word.
Vivian decided that he would accept nothing less than the truth, and neither should he have done.
“Because I can’t bear the thought of losing you.” She admitted honestly, opening up to the young man in a way she would never have expected.
“You won’t lose me.” He assured her, and though his words were of course meant to be genuine, he had no way of knowing that for sure.
“You can’t say that.” Vivian said, shaking her head.
“But…”
“BUT NOTHING!!” Vivian suddenly screamed, rising to her feet and knocking their empty bowls flying across the floor, clattering against the stone.
Tears streamed openly down her cheeks and her shoulders shook and shuddered from forcing back intermittent sobs.
“My mother and father are gone! Red’s gone! Clover’s gone! And now even Emerson’s gone! I hadn’t even known him a day!!” She cried, dropping her hands to the table to support her crumbling frame, her shaking legs failing her.
Kael rushed to Vivian’s side and she fell helplessly into his arms, choking and sobbing uncontrollably, her years of pain and anguish coming flooding out all in one terrible burst.
“I…I…I can’t…I…” Vivian attempted, but she was unable to speak, and Kael comforted her and held her close.
For some time they remained there until, finally, seeing she was exhausted, Kael carried the young Featherstone through from the kitchen and into the bedroom. Laying her down on the bed, her cries eventually having subsided, he ran his hand gently across her back, still shaking slightly.
“I can’t lose you…” Vivian whispered in the darkness, for now there was no candle to light the room.
“I can’t lose you either.” Kael replied. “That’s why I don’t want you to go alone.”
For that response Vivian had no reply.
So, instead, she rolled onto her back and lifted her hand to Kael face in the blackness, stroking his cheek tenderly as he sat on her bedside. They stayed there for a moment, not so much looking at each other, for neither of them could see. Instead, they simply savoured that moment in each other’s company, for those fleeting chances to be with the ones we love so dearly do not come around very often: certainly not often enough.
Kael leaned down to kiss her then, touching his lips to Vivian’s slowly and carefully, as if that was exactly where they belonged. He pursed his lips open against hers and slowly let them shut, as if they were designed to be together, and the feeling took Vivian’s breath away.
She reached up and ran her hands through Kael’s hair, pulling him close and not letting him go even once.
Before she knew it, Vivian had rolled him over her and they lay together on the bed, lips and fingers locked. She ripped Kael’s shirt up off over his head, running her hands over his chest and back as she did so, and in an instant he too pulled her clothes away, flinging them off in the darkness.
He held her tightly, kissed her passionately, his lips exploring her body, and Vivian tore the few clothes Kael had left from him, tossing them away, not caring where they went.
Vivian wrapped her legs around his and pulled him as close as she could manage, arching her back with the feeling, throbbing, kissing and biting his lips feverishly, frantic and longing.
The night passed by in a blur for Vivian and Kael, unaware of the passage of time during those eventful hours, their hearts raced and their breaths were short and sharp and loud. Bound tightly together, rolling over and over almost uncontrollably in the darkness, Vivian had never felt so loved.
She had never felt so alive.
When the dark hours of the early morning had finally passed, just as the sun crept over the horizon, illuminating the horror of the night before, Vivian breathed deeply the cold air, sharp as razors in her lungs. She looked up at the light blue sky, clear and empty with not a cloud to be seen.
Nothing was simple anymore. Nothing had been simple for a long time.
Life in the Redwoods with Clover and Red had been, but besides that, everything else seemed horribly complicated.
Last night was perhaps the only exception.
She had not slept at all, and the thing that stuck in her mind the most, even still, was her overwhelming desire for Kael, in every sense of the word. Her feelings for him were deeper than ever, and she had never known such a thing.
So powerful, it filled Vivian completely, almost to the point of bursting, or so it felt.
She adored him.
She loved him.
That much at least was clear at least.
“Hurry up you idiot.
” A voice sounded from round behind the cottage. Vivian’s breath caught in her throat and she ducked to the side, dipping out of sight just in time to see two men round the corner, moving quickly and crouching low, talking in hushed whispers.
“I’m coming Zander…” The second man whispered submissively, hurrying along.
“Well you’re taking too bloody long!” Zander, replied harshly. “All those animals that were here last night, we’re bound to have got some, and I don’t want them to go rotten just because you’re a useless moron!”
The second man, Astley, did not reply then, but instead just hurried along behind his openly abusive companion.
Vivian watched with cold, dead eyes as the two men, the two poachers, raced off across the battle field of the night before, and slipped away into the woodlands. She had followed them once before, but had never come across them again since then.
They had given her the slip many times before now, forcing her to leave them as unfinished business.
Their being here surely wasn’t by chance, and if they were here, it was undoubtedly their trap that had destroyed Kael’s leg.
With a heavy heart, set in the unbreakable stone that is cold-blooded revenge and murder, Vivian’s night of love was all but forgotten, as is all too often the way, replaced by a lust that was both insatiable and unprecedented.
She set off after the two men into the Redwoods, her path lighted by the early morning sun streaming down upon her, filtering its way through the canopy of branches and leaves above.
Her mind was made up; it had not been a difficult decision.
This time she would not be left empty handed, and her intentions were not innocent by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, they were quite the opposite.
Malicious would not have been a strong enough word to describe Vivian’s thoughts at that moment.
She simply hoped that no one crossed her path until her work was done, for she would surely not rest until there was fresh blood on her hands.
16
Though the sun sat brightly in the sky, it was still low, and the remaining cold of the night had not yet passed. There was a chill breeze that picked up and dropped periodically, whipping in and out of the trunks and branches and leaves, stirring them into a frenzy above Vivian’s head as she stalked her way through the trees.
Just as the leaves about her feet danced and skipped, their wet faces sparkling and shining red from the night’s heavy rainfall, Vivian’s emotions stirred too, lashing around inside her chest endlessly. Just as when she had killed the Grey, not to mention all the others that had fallen to her heavy hand and terrible wrath, Vivian’s desperate lust for vengeance, her ceaseless desire to kill, left her feeling empty and unfulfilled.
Kael had perhaps temporarily subdued that great chasm, during their blissful night together. But now that had seemingly all been forgotten, and Vivian’s focus had shifted entirely.
Her revenge was not entirely self-focused however, for it had of course been Kael that had suffered the bear trap. But nonetheless, this was not how Kael would have responded, and Vivian knew it.
This lust for murder was hers, and hers alone.
It was perhaps half an hour or so later, after having begun her deathly task amidst the vast woodlands, that Vivian became even vaguely aware of the Redwood’s whisperings all around her. Their voices were urgent and fleeting, with thousands of tones tumbling over one another to form one enormous voice.
Roused suddenly from her state of complete and utter isolation, Vivian realised that no matter how hard she tried to hide from everybody what was happening to her: these desires, whatever they meant, she would never be able to conceal them from the Redwoods, for the great forest was as much a part of her as her dreadful yearnings were.
So she continued nonetheless, knowing that now, regardless, it didn’t matter. The Redwoods knew her lust for suffering. She couldn’t take it back, and Vivian somehow knew that, amidst everything else, it had always been there, even before she had killed the Grey.
Why should she continue to hide from it?
She saw no reason, and pressed on purposefully, closing in on Astley and Zander with every unfaltering step.
‘Vivian…’ A thousand overlapping tones sounded in her mind like a warning bell then, their urgency clear.
“No!” Vivian exclaimed, lifting her hands to cover her ears, though of course that made no difference, for she knew she wasn’t hearing their words that way.
‘You can’t go on like this Vivian.’ The millennia old voices of the great Redwood Forest urged her. ‘This is not the path you should take. It is not in your nature. This will destroy you if you let it.’
Vivian slowed her racing pace then, dropping her arms back to hang limply by her sides, and sighed deeply.
‘You’re wrong.’ She suddenly replied then, casting her thoughts and her words out far and wide. ‘It may not be the right path for me to take, and it may well destroy me…’ She told them, her inner voice fierce. ‘But it is a part of me, and it will probably consume me until the end of my days.’
The emphasis she placed on that statement, even though she wasn’t speaking it, was clear as day, and for a moment the Redwoods remained silent.
‘Vivian…” The countless whispering voices started, but she cut them off.
‘ENOUGH!’ She barked silently. ‘What do you know!?’
Of course she knew she was in the wrong, but her mind was already made up on this matter, and all of the words in the world, all of the countless years of wisdom that the Redwoods had accumulated in their enormous lifetime, none of it would sway her.
‘It’s not just a part of my nature.’ She told them then, her thoughts dripping with malice, though it was directed inwardly for some reason, rather than at the Redwoods. ‘It is my nature.’
And with that final comment, stinging like razors in her heart, Vivian shut off her thoughts to the great voices all around her. It wasn’t even that she ignored them, she simply didn’t even acknowledge their existence, and so their words no longer bothered her, freeing her to continue her terrible hunt without distraction.
Astley and Zander, snapping at each other with frustration in their voices, had just finished checking one of their traps, having found it empty and vacant of a victim. With all the animals that had gathered at Vivian Featherstone’s call last night, they couldn’t believe their rotten luck.
“Astley you moron! Why did you put that trap so far off!?” Zander cursed at his partner.
“You told me to put it there!” Astley replied defensively, somehow always copping out, even when it wasn’t his fault. “Don’t blame me!”
The sound of a sharp smack echoed through the trees then as Zander struck his partner full on across his face. Without even a trace of guilt, the overpowering bully loomed over Astley as he cradled his throbbing cheek.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that!!” Zander hissed through gritted teeth, grabbing Astley roughly by the scruff of his clothes and dragging his face up until it was but an inch from his own. “You’re a moron! If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even be alive today! She would have caught you years ago!”
Of course by ‘she’ he meant Vivian. And again, of course, he was wrong. Astley was probably a better tracker than Zander would ever be. It was just, quite simply, that he wasn’t a tyrant, and so always ended up being the one catching the sharp end of Zander’s tongue, and fist too, it would seem.
A rustle amongst the bushes caught both their attentions then, and Zander dropped Astley back to the ground, drawing a small blade from beneath his loose shirt as he turned to investigate. He crept closer to the shrub that concealed Vivian, totally unaware of what lay behind, just out of sight and reach.
Astley clambered slowly and silently to his feet behind Zander, drawing a blade also from beneath his shirt, crouching low nervously.
“What the…” Zander began. But he never quite finished his sentence, as a dark silhouet
te lunged madly towards him.
Vivian darted from her concealment, wild rage in her eyes. Wielding a snapped off branch, she drove it forcefully into his shoulder. Zander yelled in pain and reeled backwards, but he was too slow.
She leapt onto him and dragged him down to the floor. Astley yelped with fright, turning on his heel and darted away between the trees, abandoning his sorry excuse for a companion.
Driving her heel down onto the makeshift stake she had crafted, Vivian forced several screams of agony from the evil poacher, and began to systematically pummel his face with her bare hands, not even bothering to reach for another crude weapon, she drove her fists down upon his unprotected head.
Zander jerked and jarred violently, desperately trying to struggle from Vivian’s grasp, though hard as he tried, he could not escape. Her will was simply too great. But then, all of a sudden, Vivian leapt to her feet once more, and disappeared again into the shadows, not making a sound, her rage focused and deliberate.
The wounded hunter turned prey gasped for breath for a moment, shocked both by the savagery and suddenness of the attack, but then indeed also by its quick and abrupt cease. He glanced around for a moment, searching anxiously for the assailant, but Vivian was nowhere to be seen. Then he looked for his partner, Astley, but he was nowhere to be found either.
Cursing foully, Zander clutched at the stake protruding from his shoulder, weeping blood painfully. She had driven it deep, and it would take some attention to remove. He left it be, knowing she was still here somewhere, and climbed to his feet, stumbling off between the trees, his vision blurry at best.
He wobbled left and right as he scrambled forwards, dizzied from the heavy blows he had taken. The ground spun and buckled beneath his feet, though of course that was only his dazed senses playing tricks on him, and he forced his way onward.
Vivian followed easily, stalking her prey calmly, keeping perfectly hidden in the shadows. Her movements were unseen and perfect, flitting through the trees without a sound. She had let him attempt escape for a very specific reason, knowing instinctively where he would flee too.