The Will and the Wilds

by Holmberg, Charlie N.

  His expression perks.

  “Does my trust surprise you? We’re bound in this, Maekallus.”

  He doesn’t answer, only steps out of the circle and walks to the edge of the glade, looking out into the forest. I wait for him to . . . I don’t know. Do or say anything, but he doesn’t. I lick my lips and try, “Are you hungry?”

  He turns enough to eye the lamb. It’s such a human gesture, made more so by his human expression. My mind wanders to the growing page on narvals in my book.

  “Maekallus.”

  His gaze meets mine.

  “Did you ever consider that, maybe, you are the bastard?”

  He turns toward me and folds his arms. “I’ve been called many things.”

  “No, I mean . . . your birth. Your creation. The lore is that narvals form from the blood of bastards. But what if your origins were human? What if . . .”—I hardly dare to say it—“you were once human?”

  He almost doesn’t react. Almost. His body remains motionless, arms folded, brow lax. But I see it in his eyes: a spark, a loathing, a hope. Somehow, all at once. He looks away, back to the forest, for a long moment before he says, “Do humans suffer boredom?”

  The question takes me aback. “Pardon?”

  He drops his arms, but forms a fist with one hand—one bloodied hand—and hits the trunk of a tree with it. “This realm is driving me half mad. I’d almost rather it consume me.”

  I laugh.

  I don’t know why. It isn’t funny. It’s rather pathetic, really. But I laugh, because our demises shine on the horizon, and Maekallus complains that the situation is too dull.

  I suppose it would be, trapped in the same spot of forest for days on end.

  But I laugh anyway. It feels so strange, so foreign, so good, and I realize I can’t remember the last time I laughed.

  Maekallus growls.

  “I’m sorry.” I hold myself, placing my hand over my ribs. “I’m sorry. It just . . . I . . .” I don’t have an explanation. Despite the laughter, I’m saddened by the realization that I’ve gone so long without it.

  I can tell by the scrunched look on the narval’s face that he doesn’t understand me. It’s no use explaining.

  I cross toward him, purposefully scuffing the descent circle as I go—I don’t want any unfortunate hunter or lost child to drop into the monster realm, should they wander this way. I unwrap my hand as I do so, tearing free a length of bandage that is still clean. I didn’t think to bring extra bandages with me today. I won’t make that mistake again.

  I reach him and move his bloody fist from the tree. Coax his fingers open—are they warmer?—and examine the cut that mirrors mine. No mystic corruption yet, only a bit of debris at the heel. I brush it off and bandage the wound.

  “Does yours not bleed?” he asks, low and petulant.

  “I have more of this at home.” I tie a small knot at the back of his hand. Look up at him. I didn’t realize how close I’d gotten. Close enough to kiss.

  But the blackness has only begun to spot him, and I wish to keep as much of my soul with me as I can. I turn away. Glimpse the descent circle.

  “Maekallus,” I say, quieter, “you say you can’t descend, but could we coax the gobler to ascend? He was in this very glade. Is there some sort of . . . trace, we could use? Mystical . . . residue?”

  Maekallus snorts at my lack of knowledge, but he studies the circle as well. “I don’t . . . perhaps. I don’t know the methods of goblers. But he will return, or his like will.” He shifts his gaze to me. “As for bait . . . reckon they want whatever it is you’re hiding.”

  His words shoot through me like lightning. I step back from the trees, away from his aura.

  He looks me up and down, as though searching for my secret. “But where will you get the blood to summon him, Enna? What human would you dare to torture?”

  “Not human,” I whisper. I clear my throat. “Not human. But I can find a young boar or a hare in the wildwood. Perhaps one will trespass here, and you can collect the blood in that canteen.”

  He smiles—a wicked grin that at once reminds me of what he is. “Oh, Enna. The animals here have learned not to pass by. Or haven’t you heard the silence?”

  I stiffen, hold my breath. Listen. I never noticed it before, the lack of birdsong, the absence of buzzing and chirping of myriad insects. When did the creatures of my realm abandon this place?

  The silence is a reprimand. He is a mysting. A mysting, Enna.

  As though I need the reminder.

  Grabbing my basket with my uninjured hand, I turn it away, concealing the Telling Stone. “I’ll find something. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Truly?” A smirk, not one of humor, tugs on his mouth, showing a pronounced canine. It isn’t so much animalistic as it is roguish. I chide myself for staring. “Even in the dead of night?”

  I hold his gaze. “That depends. Are you frightful enough to scare away the demons who linger in this wood, or only the birds and the flies?”

  He raises an eyebrow, and I feel as though he’s almost congratulating me. I leave, taking my basket with me. Back to the house. Slow, so as not to tire. As for blood, I will set snares, but they can take days to catch prey, and I dare not wait days. My soul aches at the thought of it. I wish not to waste money in the market for something I can hunt myself, but I’m poor with a bow and arrow, and if I ask my father to help me, he’ll wonder where the meat has gone. In the end, I’d rather be penniless and alive than dead and soulless.

  As I step over a brook and navigate an unseen path becoming increasingly familiar to me, I ponder on the exchange with Maekallus. What if he was human once, Grandmother? I think, wishing she were here to answer my questions. He’s of human make, isn’t he?

  The thoughts turn on me. And what does it matter? What would I think of him if he was human?

  My chest hurts. From the walk. I slow my pace even more and clutch the Telling Stone.

  When I arrive at my home too soon, I realize I missed a piece of my journey—my mind blanked again. Yet one thought burns strong.

  I must find that gobler.

  CHAPTER 14

  The only thing that can break the binding spell made by a vuldor-tusk knife is the knife itself, the death of its wielder, or the blood of a mystium.

  There is a hierarchy of animals in the wildwood. Insects and crawling things are at the bottom, followed by mice and birds. Then there are larger animals, like harts, and more vicious ones, such as boars. Wildcats and wolves dominate unclaimed land, but more often than not forfeit it to humans, who ultimately surrender to mystings.

  I do not understand the magic that loops my world and the monster realm together, and every question I have seems to beget ten more. I will not use human blood to awaken the summoning circle, even at the peril of my own life, but do the unseen mystics prefer fowl over fawn, or hart over hare? Will the circle heed my desire to find a specific mysting, or will it merely let out whatever is closest, as it seems to have done with Maekallus? Something even more dangerous . . .

  I do my best given the circumstances. In the evening, when the sun begins to paint the sky, I trek again through the wildwood with my basket in hand. I have to stop once to rest, for the unplucked pheasant I carry with me is heavy, and I am weary. I stop on a hunting trail carved with the intent to avoid mystings and listen to the distant whispers of the stone. When I arrive at the glade, Maekallus is waiting for me—I see him standing between the trees at the very end of his leash, his yellow eyes brighter than the rest of the forest, his arms folded across his bare chest. I pretend not to see the black spot growing like a bruise on the side of his jaw, or the one that darkens his ear, or the dozen others that were not there this morning. His magnificent horn is pure, as is his right hand. I know the latter, for when I arrive, he reaches for my basket and takes the load from my arms, silently leading the way back into the glade. I pause for a moment, surprised. A simple action, yes, but Maekallus has never done anything to aid
me. I wonder if he’s grown so desperate that even kindness is beginning to eat away at him.

  He’s already drawn the summoning circle. The circle I drew earlier has been stamped out, and the new one etches the northernmost part of the clearing. Maekallus sets my basket down several strides away from it and picks up the pheasant by its neck. He examines it, then glances to me.

  “What? We can always try again with a larger animal.”

  He smirks and lifts his tail to slice open the fowl, only to notice—remember?—that it’s lost its sharp edge. His frown confirms my own observation. I lift my silver dagger from the basket and offer it to him, hilt first. He takes it and beheads the pheasant.

  I accept the bloodied knife back. “Do you think it will work?”

  “No.” At least he’s honest. “But I hope it does.”

  I cock my head slightly to the left. His words pull on me. Maybe because they don’t feel like the words of a mysting. “Do you hope often?”

  The question causes him to hesitate in the grisly work of painting the summoning circle with the pheasant’s lifeblood. He looks at me like I’ve said something profound, and it’s a gaze that makes my skin ripple with gooseflesh, though the summer evening is warm.

  He straightens, the point of his horn slicing through a low-hanging leaf on a nearby oak. “I don’t . . . think I have.”

  And it strikes me suddenly, like a snowstorm in the late spring, and I don’t know why I didn’t consider it before.

  What happens to a mysting if he receives a soul?

  Maekallus has only a partial soul. My soul. I can feel it inside him as though I’m peering into a faded mirror, where I can only make out shapes and nothing more substantial. But it lives inside him. He hasn’t eaten it. He did promise, though it remains to be seen whether I can trust his word. Could it be the fragments of my soul that cause him to hope?

  Our eyes are locked for too long. He turns away first, focusing on the task at hand. I hug myself and soothe the chill bumps beneath my long sleeves. Turning to my basket, I retrieve my notes, open to a fresh page, and write, The Question of Souls, across the top of it. I needn’t worry about Maekallus looking over my shoulder, since he has already confessed his inability to read mortal script.

  I write, What does one call a mysting with a soul? Do they exist?

  What would one call a human with only part of a soul? And how large is each portion? How many times can my own soul be divided before there is nothing left?

  Oddly, the old saying of my grandmother’s springs to mind. I’m not sure how pertinent it is, so I write it in small letters in the bottom corner of the page. What is a soul if not an extension of the heart?

  My heart beats inside me still. Granted, Grandmother more than likely meant it metaphorically.

  I don’t dwell on the philosophy of it long, for soon the summoning circle is soaked crimson. I close my book. The moment Maekallus completes the eight-pointed star, the circle flashes pale blue.

  “I don’t suppose you brought a weapon for me?” he asks.

  I eye the dagger beside me. I hadn’t considered it. I offer the silver weapon to him, but he shakes his head and points to the wood behind me as he backs away from the circle. “Best to hide.”

  I hesitate, eyeing the edge of the glade. Snatching my basket, I rise and dart behind an old pine, clutching the dagger in my hand. My mind itches to experience whatever it is that’s about to happen. To document it. To know it. Maekallus grips the base of his horn and pulls on it for some reason. He tries twice more, pulling harder each time, until frustration paints his face red—or perhaps that’s the light of the setting sun. He backs away, out of my line of sight.

  I crouch behind the tree, peering around its rough bark just enough to watch the circle.

  For a long moment, nothing happens. Without woodland creatures to occupy this space, it is utterly silent. My gooseflesh returns. My Telling Stone turns bitterly cold beneath my fingers, and it speaks of so many mystings I can’t decipher a single one.

  The circle glows again, and I cringe as a grinler emerges—the very kind of mysting that slaughtered my mother, uncaring for the life inside her belly. It’s a foul creature with a round, furry body and pointed tusks jutting from the bottom half of its jaw. The teeth in between are sharp as sickles, as are its long claws.

  Grinlers travel in packs, but this one comes alone. It’s only in the glade a second before the circle flashes again and a mysting I’ve never beheld pushes through—a long, serpentine being. Several holes line either side of its head—ears?—and I hold my breath in macabre fascination, fearing it will hear me.

  The grinler grunts, and the serpent rasps something foreign in response. Terror overpowers captivation as my imagination fills in their words. Who made this circle? Where are they? Are you hungry? I smell mortal flesh.

  And then my eyes dart to the binding spell, the red bit of light that points directly to where Maekallus is hiding. I’ve grown so used to the ethereal magic I’d forgotten it was there. Surely these creatures can see it.

  A chill consumes my body. My hand is glass around the Telling Stone. I feel my mind starting to blank, and I dig my nails into the pine tree to keep from slipping under. The cut on my hand warms as new blood seeps from it.

  Another mysting ascends, then another. The fourth is a freblon, a humanoid mysting only hip high, just taller than the grinler. Its face is mutated and ugly, half man and half bovine. Its human arms end in bearlike hands. It’s naked, though thick fur curls about its thighs and genitalia.

  As one, the mystings notice the beam—only the width of a hair, but to me it looks like a beacon—and turn toward Maekallus’s hiding spot.

  I can’t hold my breath anymore. I try to let it seep out slowly, but my lungs are desperate for air. The serpent’s head snaps toward me.

  Then I hear a sickening crunch, followed by a wet moan.

  I force my shivering body to move so I can look out again. Maekallus jerks a sharpened stick from the body of the freblon. The grinler snarls and leaps. One of the creatures, the third to emerge, runs off into the forest, swift as a swallow. Maekallus grabs the hair at the back of the grinler’s head as the smaller mysting sinks its nasty teeth into his arm. My right hand stings with the sensation.

  The serpent moves to strike—gods, anyone, help him!—and misses. Maekallus throws the grinler hard into a trunk, then stabs the serpent in the back of its head with his makeshift spear. Its tail touches the summoning circle. Its death, or perhaps Maekallus, activates the thing, and in a flash of blue, the serpent is gone.

  Maekallus’s hoof slices through the spell, and the circle becomes dull, nothing more than a broken, bloody drawing on the ground.

  Blood runs down his arm as he stalks to the grinler. He watches it for several long seconds before turning away. I know it’s dead. Not only because of Maekallus, but because the icy pain in my hand is receding, enough so that I can force my fingers open and let the stone drop from my palm. For now, the stone whispers only of the runaway mysting, who continues to distance itself from the glade, and Maekallus.

  I’m shaking. I try to calm myself, but I cannot. I rub warmth back into my left hand, though it hurts my right to do so.

  “Enna. There are no more.”

  I keep massaging my fingers. Mutter a verse for protection against the supernatural.

  “Enna.”

  He’s standing at my tree. Reaches past my right hand—perhaps because of the newly bloodied bandage—and grabs my left. He pulls me to my feet with shocking strength, and releases me just as quickly.

  “You’re freezing. I’ve never felt a living thing so cold.”

  I pull my sleeve up over the bracelet. “I was . . . There were so many . . . I . . . You killed them. Thank you. But that one . . .”

  Maekallus snorted. “Beuhgers are cowards. She won’t be back.”

  Beuhger. So that was the word the Telling Stone murmured. I wonder what makes the mysting a she, but keep the quest
ion to myself. Maekallus studies the broken summoning circle, his red-tinted brows drawn, his tail writhing like a cat’s. A splotch of corruption blooms between his shoulder blades.

  “Those mystings were close,” he says, “very close, to come up so quickly. The more that press against a portal, the harder it is to cross over.”

  The statement reminds me of something similar my father said once, when I asked him about the War That Almost Was. “It’s difficult for large numbers on either side to cross over at once, and neither side can keep an occupying force. It’s what makes a war between realms so unfeasible.”

  Maekallus nods. “There was someone who didn’t think so once.”

  The words send new tremors across my shoulders. “Who?”

  But Maekallus doesn’t hear me, or chooses not to. He’s watching the circle. I touch my Telling Stone, but there’s no danger. The beuhger must have descended elsewhere.

  I eye the thin rivers of blood drying in the crook of his elbow. Coming to myself, I rush to the basket for the bandages I brought. I wet a cloth with water from a canteen and hurry to Maekallus’s side.

  He grabs my forearm before I can administer to him. Holds me tightly, pulls me close. For a moment I think he intends to kiss me again, to relieve the disease spotting him, but instead he says, “It’s like they wanted to come here.” His voice is low, his eyes searching. “The same place the gobler was. Why?”

  The Telling Stone dangles from my free hand. I hold very still, not wanting to draw attention to it. “I don’t know,” I whisper.

  Maekallus frowns and releases me. I hesitate. He says nothing, so I dab his arm with the cloth. He twitches.

  “Sorry.” The word is pathetic on my lips.

  “I’ve been attacked by grinlers before. It didn’t used to hurt. Not like this.”

  I lighten my touch near the wound itself. It’s mostly stopped bleeding, but a freckle of corruption burgeons between two of the teeth marks. Maekallus winces, as though he feels it. And maybe he does. “The . . . soul?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this.” He looks at the thread of the binding spell, the ever-unmoving leash stemming from the center of his chest. He wipes his hand over his face. “I’m going mad.”