by Liam Reese
“If I have to kill her,” said Queen Irae, “I will. I can’t let her go — she’ll go straight home and tell everyone what we’re planning. They’ll catch us, and hung us for treason, all of us. Karyl. Graic. Lully.” Her voice broke. “Treason against a traitor,” she said.
“He is not a traitor,” said Lisca from the ground. Her voice was raw with tears as well, and her eyes were still closed tightly against the world.
Irae looked up at Thorn with a helpless expression. “Do you see?” she said. “She will defend him to the death. But she doesn’t have to.”
Thorn swallowed. He knew what she asked of him; and that there was nothing else to be done. They could not let Lisca go, and they could not let her stay with them as their prisoner, not when she was a noblewoman, known everywhere, and her presence would lead to very awkward questions. No. No, the only thing to do was exactly what Irae asked.
He still didn’t want to do it.
The reluctance to do anything, the reluctance to speak, to touch her, to breathe, was so strong that he had to struggle against it. This must be what it felt like to be cursed, your mind tells you clearly what you must do, and your body fights it every step of the way.
He took a step towards them, and another. “It could go wrong,” he said.
“It could go right,” said Irae.
“I’ve killed creatures by accident. I could end up killing her too.”
“Yes.”
“Her blood would be on my head.”
“I will take it,” said Irae quietly. “If she dies, it will be my fault.”
Thorn licked his dry lips and rubbed his fingertips together. He was at her side now, and he crouched down, then knelt. Lisca opened her eyes at last and looked up at him. They were the same clear blue that he remembered from that other Lisca, when he was a child, so long ago. They had looked at him just like this, less than seven years ago.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Lisca’s mouth moved, but her voice was so quiet that only Thorn could hear her say, “Please.”
He put his hand on her belly, just at the bottom of the rib cage, and let it hover there for a moment. He could change his mind. He could take his hand away, make it into a fist, refuse to let his Forged ability change the life of this young, innocent woman; who was only guilty of disagreeing with the rebel queen.
He hesitated.
Irae dropped to her knees beside him and put her forehead on his shoulder. She was crying quietly. Suddenly she was Jelen again, impulsive, strong-headed, strong-willed, quite often wrong about everything, but Jelen, who had pulled him forth from his hut in the woods and given him humanity.
“Please be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t hurt her.”
He spread his fingers, fingertips flat and gentle, closed his eyes and concentrated. He could feel something surge and curl within him, the power awakening, drawing out of a long silent slumber. It skirled around his insides and laced through his fingers, and he knew without looking that light came from him now, a light with a quality that had never been seen before by anyone there. Something different and new.
He thought, Live. Breathe. Grow. Change.
The feeling pushed through him, through his fingertips and downward. He could feel the Forge begin to happen. The body that is became the body that was, and what there was now was entirely unique.
It did not hurt her. He could feel what she felt, a golden and warm sensation rising up back through his fingertips and racing straight to his heart to warm it. She felt the life, and she was afraid, but it did not hurt.
Then all he could feel was someone clutching him with icy fingers like claws, digging into his skin.
He opened his eyes.
Irae still had her head on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed tightly, her face stained with tear tracks. Around them, the group stood in silence and awe, so profound that Thorn wasn’t entirely sure that they would ever move or speak again.
Beneath his hand, already wriggling free, was a fox.
She stopped once she had made it free from his grasp and stood still on all four legs to look at him. She was a very pretty fox, with vibrant orangey-red fur with snowy-white tips and chest blaze, neat black socks and wise eyes that knew a little too much for a fox alone to know. She watched him for a moment, and he watched her, and at last he sighed.
The princess opened her eyes and gave a soft gasp. “Oh!”
The fox whirled away, and was gone into the underbrush, leaving them behind.
In the predawn light, Irae came to him.
He sat by the ashes of the fire. He had not slept — not attempted to sleep. His mind was live, though his body felt as though it could sleep for a thousand years. He had forgotten that Forging tired him out so.
“I dreamed about her,” she said.
He did not ask who.
“In my dream, she sat by a river,” the queen went on, as though he had politely requested that she do so. “There was a boat not far out. It was coming to get her, so she could cross. She didn’t want to swim, I suppose. I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to swim, either.” She stopped for a moment and tapped at her knee. “Now that I think of it,” she said, “she may have been me. I don’t know. It seemed as though it was her, but the more I think of it, the more I suspect that it was me all along.”
Thorn stirred, but only slightly. “Dreams are like that, sometimes,” he said, “you never quite know who you’re dreaming about, or why.”
“Yes,” said Irae, “that is very true.”
She picked up a stick and stirred the remains of the fire with it, thoughtfully.
“What do you think it means?” she said eventually.
“What do I think it means?”
“The dream. I’d be interested to know. What do you think it means, that I dreamed about the river and the boat and myself?”
Thorn thought about this. “I think it means,” he said, “that you were very tired, and in desperate need of sleep.”
“Even the bit about the boat?” said Irae, sharply.
“The bit about the boat,” said Thorn, “means that you don’t want to drown.”
She threw the stick into the bushes. “Thank you,” she said. “Not for the dream interpretation. For — for what you did.”
Thorn said nothing.
“It worked,” she went on. “It worked. Like I said it would, if you would just try.” She didn’t know any such thing for certain, there was no way to, but Thorn did not point that out. “We can do this,” she said. She was trying to convince herself and doing a bad job of it. It was hard to convince anyone of anything, this early in the morning. The rest of their companions still slept, ranged around them, pointed in all different directions like a compass rose. If they were going to do this, Thorn thought, they would have to pull together.
“What did you dream about?” she asked.
Thorn rubbed at his eyes with his fingertips. His warm, still-tingling fingertips. Would he ever get past that feeling, the strange burst of euphoria, panic, and dread, all tangled up together in his guts and winding him like fishing line?
“I dreamed about traveling,” he said.
It was a lie, because of course he did not dream at all. But it was easier to lie about dreaming than it was to tell Irae that he had lain awake all through the night, eyes wide, still tingling, still fighting to control his breath; lain awake with that feeling of euphoria, of having done what he intended to do, of having controlled his ability to Forge. He’d lain awake in the dark, letting the fire die at his feet, and looked up at the face of the rock to see a little fox staring back down at him, staring in silence, for what seemed like forever.
He caught his breath at the very thought of it.
“Traveling,” said Irae. “And what do you think that means?”
Thorn smiled at her. “I think,” he said honestly, “it means we have a long way to go.”
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Forged
(Thorned: Book 1)
Liam Reese
© 2018
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.