The Will and the Wilds

by Holmberg, Charlie N.

  The gobler falls sideways. The horn gleams, burning off the blood, sending the stench of it across the glade. Maekallus wrinkles his nose. With a squeeze of his fingers, the horn vanishes from his hand and returns to his forehead.

  He winces and looks down at his palm, at the blood there. Not the gobler’s—his, oozing from the cut that had sealed his bargain with the mortal woman. He flexes and relaxes his fingers. The gobler is dead. Why does the mark linger?

  He senses a tug through the magic. The bargain pulls him toward his quarry. Still alive? Close, very close. Maekallus turns—

  —just as a knife sticks him in the heart.

  His breath whooshes out of him, and he keels forward as a gobler—a second gobler, the one the wound on his hand screams for him to defeat—wrenches his blade free and steps back, out of reach of Maekallus’s horn. A thin thread of red light travels in the blade’s wake. Maekallus sees it’s a vuldor tusk, not forged metal. Realizing what it means, his insides turn brittle as shed snake skin.

  “No!” he rasps, reaching forward, but that narrow light saps his strength. His elbow hits the ground. Still he reaches. Not that. Anything but—

  Too late. The gobler plunges the tusk knife into the soil of the earth, and Maekallus feels a crippling tug deep inside him.

  “Rot where you betrayed us,” the gobler says with heavy, scratchy words. He spits on Maekallus’s shoulder and flees deeper into the wildwood.

  The telling pulse in Maekallus’s hand vanishes with him.

  CHAPTER 5

  Rabbit’s ear, a thick variety of grass, will stave off infection caused by magicked creatures or bespelled items.

  I lay my blankets by the hearth after my father retires for the night. The fire burns bright, heating the house beyond what is comfortable. I do not open any windows. I do not sleep. I write in my book all the knowledge I gleaned from my meeting with Maekallus. Once that is done, I lie down, clutching the hilt of my mother’s silver dagger with my right hand, while my left squeezes the Telling Stone until the stone grows so cold I could not open my fingers if I wanted to.

  I don’t notice when the stone begins to warm, only that it has. Sometime in the early morning, when the sun shines at the horizon, I drop the stone and rub my knuckles, coaxing the muscles in my fingers to soften. Both threats are gone. Maekallus kept the bargain.

  I pick up my bedding and return it to my mattress, falling asleep instantly atop it. The sun is full and bright when I wake to my father’s footsteps retreating from my room. I imagine he’s checked on me several times. I rarely sleep in so late.

  After I dress and comb my hair, I feel the Telling Stone. Cool to the touch. I focus on it, closing my eyes as I do so. It’s Maekallus’s presence that keeps the stone from warming entirely. He is either a ways off or docile, if the stone’s reaction is so mild. Yet those yellow eyes could never be described as docile. I immediately assume the first reason.

  I returned all my borrowed things from my trek into the wildwood save my father’s remaining medallion—the rest of the mysting’s payment. With the gold in my pocket, I walk the perimeter of the house, searching the green spaces between old, tall trees. A fawn peeks out near me, and turns away just as quickly. The Telling Stone doesn’t change.

  Needing to busy myself to stave off uncertainty, I join my father in the cellar and tend the mushrooms. They grow with little fuss, but it benefits none of us if a poisonous breed gets into the mix, or if ripe mushrooms go unpicked and wrinkle on the log.

  I do not work for long before a sharp pain dances across my palm. I excuse myself back to the house to treat the cut on my hand. Peeling back the bandage, I frown at the mark. I do not know how mysting bargains work, but the cut has not healed in the slightest. At least there is no sign of infection. I wash it, apply a thick layer of salve—in which I include rabbit’s ear, in case the wound is magical—and bandage it anew. My father has not noticed the bandaging; if he does, I’ll tell him I scraped my palm on the nail that sticks out of the ladder to the cellar. The one I’ve known to avoid all my life, but Papa will accept the lie. Even so, I dislike spinning another tale to fool him.

  Days pass. I wait for the narval to collect his payment, but he doesn’t come. No mysting can stay in the mortal realm for longer than a few days, but my Telling Stone neither warms nor cools.

  My hand doesn’t heal.

  My father slips back into his easy routine, the stress of the first gobler incident forgotten, or at least buried. I try to make a new salve for my hand with lavender and tapis root. It staves off infection, but the cut doesn’t so much as crust. I finally show it to my father, for he knows the basics of battlefield wounds. I give him the story of the nail, seasoned with truth—I say I injured my hand days ago, yet it has not healed. His brow pulls taut as he stitches my hand after liberally applying expensive thorrow herb, the seeds of which had been purchased from the apothecary in town. Despite the numbing medicine, the stitches smart. I try to bear them gratefully.

  The fine thread holds the cut closed, but the wound does not heal. It grows more tender with each passing hour. Redder and darker. Two days later, with my father’s medallion weighing my pocket, I venture back into the wildwood to close the bargain for myself. I do not go far before I hear footsteps coming my way. My Telling Stone remains unchanged. Regardless, I breathe a sigh of relief when it’s another human who emerges between the trees.

  “Tennith,” I say, my start leaving me breathless. A thin beam of sunlight spills through the canopy and dances off his light hair. He’s wearing leathers instead of his usual plain clothes, and four rabbits hang over his shoulder, back feet bound by rope. “You startled me.”

  He smiles, reminding me again of how handsome he is. The leathers hug his person far better than his loose farming clothes, highlighting the broadness of his shoulders. I have to remind myself not to stare.

  “Enna, pleased to see you. What brings you into the wildwood?”

  “I’ve traps of my own.” I indicate the rabbits.

  “I never thought you for a hunter. But . . . of course, it makes sense.”

  I shrug, though my father is more than capable of sending an arrow into the heart of a boar or deer. That is, if he doesn’t first get lost. What we don’t get from traps set close to the wildwood edge, we purchase from the town.

  He eyes me a moment too long, but before I can think of something to fill the quiet space, he says, “If you’re ever in need, I can—”

  “Tennith, you’re kind.” And he is, and were my father and I in better repute, perhaps I would wear a comelier dress and try to catch his eye at fair time. I’ve dabbled with the fancy, but dreaming can hurt a heart, as Grandmother would always say. “I assure you we are well. There are only two of us to feed.”

  “Yes but . . . please remember the offer. Would you like escort?”

  “Thank you, but no. Only one left to check.”

  Though his eyes linger on my empty hands, he nods and moves toward the town. I watch him go until the thickness of trees hide any evidence of his presence. Squeezing the Telling Stone, I walk deeper into the forest, focusing on the cool presence of a narval.

  The stone doesn’t lead me to the place where I burned a summoning circle into the forest floor, but away from it, northward, where I had last sensed the goblers. I tread carefully, scanning the trees, especially where they grow thick and force me from a direct path. A cool prickle warns of a mysting miles off. It vanishes minutes later. I cross a hunting trail and avoid tall grass for fear of traps, step over a brook, and climb up a short, rocky incline. The Telling Stone’s temperature doesn’t falter, and I wonder at it. Is Maekallus moving away from me at the same pace I’m moving toward him? The stone has previously acted in this manner with rooters, which are docile. And Maekallus is no such thing.

  I reach an oval-shaped glade, where oak and aspen part. What I see instead makes me gasp. A grotesque creature is slumped near the center of the clearing, skin blackened and bubbling, though I
can still make out arms and legs . . . and a long, stony horn patched with charcoal.

  I press my hand against a trunk to keep myself upright. He smells of compost and something foul, something otherworldly. A thin tendril of light, like a glowing red spiderweb, leads from the black mass to the earth, disappearing amid grass and clover.

  My voice is a near whisper. “Maekallus?”

  The body shifts, head lifting to look at me. His face is patched with black, and a blackened bubble moves across his neck like boiling tar. His eyes are vivid and yellow, but one is heavy, the lid swollen. I see for the first time his cloak beside him, rent and smeared with black ooze.

  “You,” he says, the word heavy, venomous, and rasping. “You . . . are the bane of . . .”

  He doesn’t finish the sentence, for a wet cough erupts from his throat. He tries to stand, but his hooved foot slips in its own muck, and he falls to his knees.

  I take a step forward, staying well out of his reach. “What’s happened to you?”

  He glares at me. “Your cursed realm . . .”

  He doesn’t have to complete the sentence. I need only look at him to know my realm is eating him alive. My lips part in surprise. This is why the stone’s temperature has remained unchanged. Maekallus has been in the mortal realm this whole time.

  “I have your payment here!” I pull the medallion from my pocket. “Good graces, Maekallus! It’s not worth any coin to stay here!”

  Maekallus laughs—at least, I believe it’s a laugh. It’s a wet, cruel sound, sticky and terrible. “You think . . . I suffer for you?” Another laugh. “Stupid mortal. I’ve been bound here by your quarry. Two . . . I killed the wrong . . .” He takes a deep, wheezing breath. “Did you not know? . . . The bargain is not . . . complete.”

  I stare at him, then at my bandaged hand. Carefully, I pull back the wrapping to look at the stitched cut, wiping off drops of fresh blood seeping from my father’s handiwork. A dark ooze has begun to bleed through the bandage, not unlike what consumes Maekallus. I cringe and swallow, my stomach uneasy. “This? This is why it hasn’t healed?” Behind him, I notice blue ink in the wild grass and realize it’s gobler blood. Its body is nowhere to be seen.

  The mysting shifts to face me. “It will not heal . . . The deal is not done.” He pauses for a long moment, long enough that I think he won’t speak again, but he does. “You will suffer more slowly than I do, but you will suffer.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, cradling my sore hand to my chest. “And what did you mean about being bound here?”

  “Can’t . . . leave.” He gestures weakly to the thread of light, beholding it as a thief would his executioner. Holding my breath, I inch closer. Again staying out of his reach, I touch the light. My fingers pass right through it. I try to grab it, to break it, but it’s no more tangible than sunlight.

  “How do I break it?” I straighten, step back.

  He snorts, coughs. “Find the gobler . . . kill it. Soon. If I die . . .”

  He hacks, and black sludge hits the ground in front of him.

  I cringe. “If you die, what?” I clench my wounded hand. “What will happen to the deal? To me?”

  He hesitates. “You’ll die, too.”

  My blood runs cold, and I back away from the monster, pulse quickening. “You lie.”

  I think I see him smirk through the bubbling goop. “You might lose that hand first, but our fates are bound.”

  I pull my cut hand away as though I could shield it. “I-I made no such bargain.”

  “The magic . . . is no . . . respecter of . . . mortals.” He lifts his head as though it weighs as much as an anvil. “But . . . perhaps . . .”

  He wheezes.

  “Perhaps what?” I beg. My hand stings, and I unclench my fingers. Blood has worked its way under my nails, and tar stains the bandage.

  His bright eyes glimmer. “A kiss . . . may free me . . . and therefore . . . you.”

  “You are a liar.” I wrap the bandage around my hand too tightly, my movements shaky. “Narvals are soul eaters.”

  What is a soul if not an extension of the heart? Grandmother had once said to me. To lose one’s soul is to lose what makes one human. It’s no better than death.

  I spit on the ground and, in my head, curse my grandmother for not speaking of mysting bargains in her book. Curse myself for thinking I had a solution. Curse my father for venturing into their world, for if he had never stolen the Telling Stone, the goblers would not have come looking for it.

  I retreat into the forest until I find a sizable stick. Gritting my teeth against the pain in my hand, I hack through weeds until I’ve drawn a large circle on the forest floor, beside Maekallus. I get very close to him, but he does not lash out, only bubbles and moans and suffers. I carve the eight-pointed star across grass and clover.

  “Descend.” I bark the command at him. The circle won’t require sacrifice if he’s merely returning home. His blood and body are made of the monster realm.

  He laughs. “It will not . . . work.”

  “Try it, you putrid oaf!”

  He glares at me, but concedes. He topples over, straining to roll onto the circle. He lies on his back, staring up at the sky. He does not descend. The circle and its star remain dull, lifeless.

  Cursing again, I take my silver dagger and stab it into the earth where the gleaming thread disappears and dig, dig, dig. But the thread burrows deeper and deeper. I slash at it with the blade; the silver passes through harmlessly.

  “One kiss won’t . . . steal your soul.”

  I glare at Maekallus. A bubble travels under the flesh of his arm, darkening the skin in its wake. Pity stabs through my gut. This is no way for any creature, even a mysting, to die.

  He rolls, just enough to look at me. “A myth . . . Just one . . . will not steal . . . your soul.”

  My left hand grabs the cool Telling Stone. I wish it would warn me if the narval is lying, but it only whispers that he is here. That he is weak. “Then what is the point?”

  “Do not . . . ask me to . . . explain the magic . . . of our worlds.”

  I feel a pinch on my scalp, and only then do I realize I’ve grabbed my own hair, fistfuls of it. I feel light headed, and the smell—gods above, the smell. I can’t think straight. My heart pumps as though I’ve run the length of the wildwood. My legs feel like thick tree roots spiraling into the ground. My lungs are iron, and each breath struggles to fill them. The stinging cut on my hand bleeds and burns with the promise, You’re next.

  I struggle for words, for composure. “When.”

  Maekallus groans against his unseen torturer.

  “When!” I rip my hands free, taking a few strands with them. “When will it kill us?”

  “Don’t . . . know . . .”

  “A wild guess will do!”

  He stares at me even as his heavy eye finally swells shut, weeping black tears. “Perhaps . . . a day.”

  I look up at the sun, so cheery, so uncaring. Only a day . . . Thoughts push themselves against my eyes, but I can’t think all of them. I can barely breathe.

  I turn from the glade and run back through the wildwood, seeking escape until my legs can carry me no farther.

  CHAPTER 6

  Intelligent mystings may be willing to work for hire for mortals, and are bound to their promises by reciprocal laceration. Be wary of making such deals, for the price paid may amount to more than originally bargained for.

  I do not lose myself in the wildwood. I know it too well and have been taught too much caution for that.

  I collapse at the foot of an evergreen, dried needles like old bones poking through my skirt and into my knees. I inhale the hearty scent of pine for a long time, until the back of my hair burns from the touch of the sun and my wrists ache from holding myself up in this cradle made of forest. I lean against the evergreen’s trunk and force myself to my feet. Heat ignites in my right palm. I look at it only to discover I’ve bled through my bandages. In this, at least, I know
Maekallus was truthful—if he does not heal, neither will the cut on my hand.

  Is there any truth to the rest?

  I cradle my injured hand and stumble away from the tree, picking through foliage and undergrowth toward my home. My grandmother’s writings warn me away from narvals, as does my own common sense. Yet if Maekallus’s death equates my own, then what do I risk by giving him what he wants?

  Besides, although I have no heart for mystings, a sliver of me chafes that his cruel suffering is my fault. Had I not summoned him, had I not insisted on this bargain, he would not be . . . melting in the wildwood, bound to the mortal realm with, seemingly, no chance of escape.

  I touch my lips, my true inexperience pulsing at my fingertips. My mother married my father when she was but eighteen. I, at twenty, have never so much as kissed a man. To think that my first kiss could be with a mysting, let alone this mysting, tears apart my very soul . . . I shiver despite the warmth of summer.

  I clear the wildwood and see my home, ringed with oon berry, ahead. My father is outside, beating a rug, and spots me. He waves one arm. He may wonder where I’ve been, or think he’s merely mistaken the time. I can never be sure.

  Time. I have so very little. And what if Maekallus’s guess was generous? What if he—we—have less than a full turn of the sun?

  I wipe away a tear with the heel of my hand. I should not cry. My mother never wept, or so my relatives have told me. I’ve strived to be as strong as she was, yet another tear escapes, and another. I slow my pace so my father will not see, then slip around him and into the house.

  My hand aches. I clean the wound again—several stitches have popped free, revealing black corruption mingling with blood. I bite my tongue to keep from gagging and use the rest of the thorrow herb to numb the sting. I try not to imagine that black ooze consuming my arm, my chest, bubbling and popping and—