…yes. I do.
Do you know what I wish? She laughed even as he answered the thought. This was going to take a bit of getting used to, but she liked it.
There was no further need of words. She took Kanati by the hand and led him to the river. When they had drunk their fill, and as the moons rose in full and somber witness, they took the path to the Witching Well one last time.
* * *
It was a beautiful night, still and fragrant, and the skies were so clear she could see every star in Illindra’s Web. The ground at her feet, the stars in the sky, and the moons at her back all seemed to know of her purpose. Know, and approve. Awitsu could feel the Witching Well at the end of her path, and Kanati at her side, and for the first time since her mother died she did not feel alone or even afraid.
The stone houses of the village drew back from them, mournful and afraid, but did not seek to deny them passage. Nothing would, she thought.
Nothing could, agreed Kanati.
We are daeborn, they thought together. And it was good.
The Well sang to them in her sweet low voice, the song of the crone, of vengeance.
Vengeance, best served hot, Awitsu thought with a smile.
Vengeance, best served cold. He squeezed her hand, and let it go so that she could fetch the blood penny from her pocket.
“Serve it up with meat and wine,” they sang aloud, and then Kanati held a finger to her lips, and his eyes burned with a cold blue fire.
“Ten years old.” He cupped her hand in both of his; they held the blood penny together. It was smeared with her blood, and now with his as he drew his palm across it. They had beaten him, too, she realized. Beaten them both and left them for dead. “Ten years since she died, and you have been alone ever since.”
Dead, crooned the Well,
Dead
Left her for dead.
“He put her in the water and left her for dead,” she cried. “And I could not save her. I was just a little girl.”
“I remember.” Kanati put his arms about her and held her tight. “I remember. Make your wish, Awitsu, it is your right. The darkest wish of your heart.”
She pulled back from him, and held the blood penny high. Bathed in moonslight it glittered, it sparked, and then burst into light like blood made fire. The Witching Well burst into song, a fell song, a dirge, a canticle of bone and ash.
Vengeance is mine, she insisted.
Mine, cried the Well,
Mine.
Vengeance is yours, Kanati sang in her head, as I am yours.
And then he smiled at her, a smile as bitter and sweet and full of promise as the night, as bright as the stars that lit it. Bitter as Blood of the Child, sweet as innocence found after all else has been lost.
You see me, she thought, stunned. You see me.
Silly girl, he replied, I have always seen you.
You are beautiful.
You are beloved.
You are my Awitsu.
The starlight, the moonslight shimmered across the blood penny.
Come back to us, they called her. Come back.
Come to me, cried the Well. Vengeance is ours. Come, come to me. Bring to me the blood penny, sing to me the darkest whispers of your heart, make a wish. Make a wish. Awitsu is beloved of nobody.
Awitsu closed her eyes and let her face be bathed in light.
I am beautiful, she thought.
I am beloved.
I am his Awitsu.
“Heart of Illindra,” she whispered. “Soul of Eth. I choose life over death.” She curled her fingers over the blood penny.
It burned.
The Well screamed, a horrible sound full of blood and wrath and old bones, and then it fell silent.
Awitsu opened her eyes, and smiled, and handed the blood penny to Kanati. “I do not want this any more,” she told him. “You can have it.”
“Are you sure?”
Beautiful. Beloved. “Yes. I am sure. I have...changed my mind about making the wish.”
He took the blood penny, dead as it ever had been, and slipped it into his pocket. “What do you want to do, then? Where do you want to go? We can hardly return to the village.”
“I do not want to go back. I want to go to Atualon.”
“Atualon?” He laughed.
“Yes,” she told him. A slow smile spread across her face, warm and strange and wonderful. “I want to go to Atualon, and find the sleeping dragon.”
And they did.
But that is a moon-tale for another time.
Better than Breath
- Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne -
Brian Staveley
The small barn stinks, partly because Aron spilled manure all over the floor a few days ago—he’s too young, really, to use the wheelbarrow; his little hands barely fit around the handles—and partly because the sick son of a bitch I’ve got hanging from the rafters has shit himself several times.
Outside it’s a pleasant evening. There’s a salt breeze blowing in off the sea. The sun’s painting the clouds a resplendent red. The kids are playing up on the hill beneath the old oak, some game that has Caldi laughing so hard she sounds like she’s crying while Aron keeps tooting on a stick he says is a horn, rallying the other three to do battle against some invisible foe. I’d rather be up at the house sitting on the wide front porch that my grandfather built. I’d rather be watching the children and the sunset, sipping a glass of wine, basking in what has to be one of the last warm days before winter.
And instead, I’m in here, in a barn that reeks of manure and piss and human shit.
It’s not that I don’t care to clean it up, or that I’m squeamish. I’m a mother. I have four kids. I’ve scrubbed enough soiled pants and dirty butts. Normally, I wouldn’t bat an eye at one more steaming pile.
This is different, though. The man roped to the rafters must weigh half again as much as I do, and he’s strong—wide shoulders, big hands. He didn’t go down right away, even after I smashed him over the back of the head. It makes me tremble all over imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t been in the root cellar when he snuck into the house, if he’d seen me before I saw him, if he hadn’t been distracted by the children.
What if he’d come in the night, after I was asleep, when I couldn’t defend myself? What if he’d come when I couldn’t defend my children? My breakfast rises at the thought of it.
I need to be careful, even now, even with him tied up. I need to be more careful than I’ve ever been in my life, which is saying something. I can’t get close to him. He could still lash out with his leg, maybe knock me unconscious. I could clean up his shit the other way, my secret way, but then he’d see it, and he’d know what I am.
I haven’t decided what to do with him yet; maybe there’s a way to leave him alive. Even after what he tried to do, after the way he almost destroyed my family, I don’t want to kill him. I’ve never killed a person in my life, and I don’t want to start now. I didn’t even want to hurt him. All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is to be left alone, for my family to be left alone.
The man groans. A moment later, a trickle of blood runs down the side of his leg, sluicing through the grime. Earlier, after I had knocked him unconscious, I stripped off his clothes. I couldn’t take the chance that he had a knife hidden on him somewhere, but it was more than that. He’d come into my home, into my home, made me feel naked and vulnerable. I wanted him to feel some of that vulnerability. I wanted him to know what it’s like to be naked and powerless. I’m not proud of the impulse—I wish I were stronger—but here we are.
He doesn’t look like a criminal. He might even be handsome, if he weren’t filthy and bruised. Broad shoulders, calloused hands, weather-beaten skin—probably a fisherman from one of the little villages down at the coast. The fact that he came all the way up here, all the way into the foothills, chills my soul. If he could make the trip, others could, too. They would, if they knew what I was
. There would be no way to stop them. And if they took me, if they killed me, how would I protect the kids?
I realize, now that I’m thinking of the kids again, that I can’t hear them playing. The laughter from up on the hill has gone silent. A sliver of ice slides along my spine. I check the gag on my prisoner once more, getting just close enough in the dim light to see that it’s still in place, then I turn to the door of the barn.
I lift the latch, fingers trembling, open the door. Even the washed-out light of the sunset is enough to make me squint.
“Aron!” I shout. “Caldi! Juni!”
I can’t see them. All is quiet up on the hill. There are no children on the porch. None under the tree. Panic closes its fist around my heart.
“Aron!” I scream again.
His voice, when he replies, is right at my knee. “I’m here!”
I look down to find him beaming up at me, small face glowing with delight. “Got you!” he announces.
Relief washes over me, so hot it hurts. I drop to my knees, wrap his spindly four-year-old body in my arms, and press his face into my own. He smells a little like a puppy, a little like a little boy—hair wet from splashing around in the creek, dirt caked on the back of his neck. He smells like my son.
I pull away, kiss him, but then another fear takes me, this one a rusty, gnawing dread—the barn door isn’t quite shut, and a dozen paces behind me the intruder is hanging naked from the rafters, bleeding onto the dirt floor.
“Mama!” says Caldi, clambering out from behind the water barrel. She is beaming. “Mama!”
She toddles toward the open door while I grope behind myself, trying to drag it shut with one hand while holding off the two children with the other.
“No!”
The word is half a scream as it tumbles out of my mouth. I seize Aron by the arm, more roughly than I mean to. His forehead crinkles, then his mouth falls open in a sob.
I never grab him like this. I never yell at him. I don’t yell at any of them. Of all the places in the world, this old house on the ridge is supposed to be safe. I am supposed to make it safe. I shouldn’t be twisting his wrist and shouting, but I can’t let him get past me.
Finally, I fumble the door shut.
Aron is sobbing. Caldi’s mouth is wrenched into a baffled pout. I might be imagining it, but I think I can hear the man hanging from the rafters thrashing, tearing the ligaments in his shoulders as he tries to rip himself free.
“I’m sorry, Aron,” I say, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry. You startled me.”
He stops crying halfway to the house. By the time we reach the porch, he’s grinning like normal, like my son, asking me what we’re going to have for dinner.
“The other kids went back down to the brook to try to catch a trout,” he proclaims. “Can we have spices on it? The good spices?”
“Of course we can,” I say, kneeling once more to wrap him in my arms. Caldi comes up beside us and nuzzles her way into the hug.
“Fam-i-lee,” she says, pronouncing each one of the syllables.
I feel their love blossom like sunlight inside my chest. In that moment, I’m not afraid at all. The intruder doesn’t matter. I feel invincible, like I can do anything.
* * *
I wait until well after midnight, then check on the children. Aron is sprawled half off his cot, mouth agape, snoring quietly. Caldi is curled in one corner of her crib, Juni in the other. Even Willim, who is almost six, sleeps like a baby, his blanket clutched tight in his hands. I watch them for a while, partly to be sure they’re asleep, partly because there’s nothing more beautiful than a sleeping child.
On the other hand, I feel vulnerable when they sleep, powerless without their little eyes on me. I feel lost. It’s in the middle of the night that I’m most aware it could all be taken away, that this family I’ve built could be shattered like a dropped crock.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I murmur as I swing the door shut behind me. “Mama will always keep you safe.”
The night is cold as I step out onto the porch. The stars are sharp. A shiver slices through me, flaying me to the bone. I glance down at the knife in my hand. It’s not a weapon. Why would I own a weapon? My mind is my weapon; my children my strength. The knife is just a normal knife, the same one I use to clean the chickens every fall. It seems like a ludicrous thing to use to kill a man, but flesh is flesh. I keep the knife keen. The prisoner’s skin will open beneath the steel.
I’ve decided to kill him, I realize. There’s no other way.
He’s awake. I can see his glassy eyes as I light the lamp hanging from the rusted nail just inside the barn door. A part of me has to admire his strength. Two days hanging from the ropes, two days without food or water while I’ve been trying to decide what to do with him, and his eyes—a blue so pale they’re almost gray—still manage to focus, first on the light of the lantern, then on my own gaze.
“Aron,” he manages. The gag has come untied. No, he has chewed through it. His voice is a hideous, wasted thing, raw with lack of water, barely more than a whisper—but the name is a knife in my side all the same.
“Don’t talk about my son,” I snarl. I’ve crossed half the distance to him before I realize it. I stop myself, then take two deliberate steps back. I have to be careful while the children are asleep. I’m not as strong as I would be during the day.
The prisoner twists against the ropes. “...hurt him...” he groans.
“You will never hurt him,” I say. My breath feels like briars in my lungs. The night, which seemed so cold as I walked between the house and the barn, is suddenly hot as a midsummer day. I’m sweating—my brow, my palms. My legs feel weak, as though yesterday or the day before I’d run all the way up and down Burnt Mountain.
“You will never hurt any of them,” I say, more quietly this time.
I’m weaker at night, when the minds of my little ones are all tangled up in their dreams. I can’t light him ablaze with a glance, or shatter his skull with a thought, but most people live their whole lives without that kind of power. Most people come out of the womb normal, untwisted. This fisherman, for instance—all his twenty-five or thirty years he’s had to make do with the strength of his hands, the quickness of his wits, whatever stubbornness he’s got. No secret well of power for him, no leaching strength from a child’s love.
I study him, dangling from his bound wrists like a slaughtered pig. I’ve grown so used to my power that I rely on it, but that’s foolish, dangerous. There are other ways. I set the knife aside, and then, almost without looking, I reach up to where a long-handled shovel hangs from a peg just inside the door.
The fisherman tracks me with his eyes, then starts to thrash all over again, weakly now. I shake my head. The shovel—a shovel I’ve used a thousand times—feels heavy as lead in my hands, almost too heavy to lift.
“I don’t want to do it this way,” I say, stepping closer to him, but not too close. “I wanted to do it fast, painless, like slaughtering a hog.” I bite my lip. “But it’s too risky. You’re too dangerous.”
His eyes bulge. “I’m too dangerous?”
“You tracked me here, to my home...”
He bares his bloody teeth. “You’re a leach. An abomination...”
I hit him with the shovel then. The motion feels wrong, awkward, as though the tool itself resists being used to this end. The blow lands flat against his hip, and he hacks out a groan.
“All I wanted was to be left alone.” My voice sounds like pleading in my ears. I’m beating a man to death with a shovel, but I want him to see, to understand. “I don’t bother anyone,” I continue. “I don’t hurt anyone.”
Absurd to say, watching him writhing there in front of me, but I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to spend the last days of autumn baking pies for the children, watching from the front porch while they played in the leaves. I wanted to spend the chilly evenings by the fire reading to them, the old, wo
nderful tales about the taming of the Kettral or Yureen Fan’s voyage across the roof of the world. I wanted to fall asleep knowing they were safe in their room down the hall, dreaming their beautiful dreams.
And then he came.
I stare him in the face, hefting the shovel for another blow as he forms words with his cracked, bleeding lips.
“You stole my son.”
I shake my head. My whole body shakes. It feels as though he has reached in and wrapped a hand around my shuddering heart.
“No,” I whisper.
“Aron,” he groans. “My boy. You came into my house and you stole him.”
Icy waves of nausea wash over me. My legs falter like a newborn calf’s. I can feel Aron in my arms, feel the memory of it, his tiny body warm beneath my cloak, tucked against my chest as I flee into the night. Years ago now. Years ago, but not forgotten.
“I love him.” I don’t realize for a moment that the words are mine. “I love them all.”
“You stole them all. And now we’re coming to get them back.”
My head rings like a gong. We? He’s alone. He’s been here for days. There was no one else with him.
He reads my terror and smiles.
“That’s right. I told the others I was coming here, the other parents. I didn’t think it was you—I’ve been looking for so long, in so many places. I didn’t think it was you, didn’t think I’d find him, but I told the others... If I wasn’t back by the full moon...something happened.”
I glance out window. The moon glares, full and unflinching.
My prisoner spits onto the floor again and smiles. “They’re coming.”
My heart is a wild thing inside my chest, trapped, panicked. I can’t breathe. Then, when I drag in a huge breath, I can’t find a way to exhale. My body is a skin stretched to breaking.
I drop the shovel. There’s no time to kill the man now, and no point. They’re coming. I need to get the children, get them out and away. I have no idea where we’ll go. There’s no time for ideas. We just need to be gone.
I’m halfway up the hill to the house, stumbling through the rough stubble of the field, when I see the lanterns, hear the voices. I can’t make out the numbers, even in the full moonlight, but there must be a dozen. More than a dozen.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 39