Catherine - Present

  It’s been three days since we left Fornthveit’s ruinous black teeth behind. Now, it’s swallowed by the downpour. We hope to leave it that way, staying ahead of the spreading word that it has been destroyed.

  River-rot and dew war in my nostrils as we march along Thespa’s western riverways. The leather strap of my pack gnaws at my bone, a parasite of necessity for the long road. I shift the weight, but it slides back into the macerated groove of my skin. Wonderful.

  A day or so past the first trading post, a caravan took us in among their hard-ridden wagons. It is a band of merchants, five or so with means, and the rest, common peddlers. A loose association out of Westrock, if I had to guess. Highwaymen weren’t common on the western side of Fjolln river, but Svartn had been known to spill a coin or two. Rarely blood.

  They’re as cautious as they are superstitious, and so we travel with a dozen armed men skirting our sides. They watch us more than the trees. Not all, but enough. Just the kind of gaze that drags over you before flicking away as if innocent. As if unseen. I’m not sure if they distrust us, or if they’re starved for touch.

  They do not want mine. That ice mustn't be broken.

  They are rabble. Not true soldiers. Maybe some were, once, but their eyes have dulled with liquor and many seasons, their bellies turned soft. The one nearest me stumbles with the lingering touch of spirits, embarrassed, he offers me a tobacco-stained grin.

  I nod and look away. More for him than myself.

  Batar, the convoy's impromptu spokesman, seems reassured by the mercenaries, despite their indiscretions. After everything, I suppose I am too, now that I know Izzy can’t be trusted to do what needs doing. Not that they’d find comfort in my presence if they knew about Her. About Us. She has not drummed my marrow since the slaughter. Instead, I think things.

  Little things. How blood flows through the neck. Where the bones stretch the skin. The way breath sits in the chest. Things Izzy can’t know, so I don’t tell her.

  Batar seems a good enough man from what measure I can make. His smile is that of any merchant’s to be sure, but sometimes, I’ll catch the softness of a father behind it and I am loathe to admit it, but it soothes me. Perhaps I won’t flay it off.

  Father…

  Whatever peace I derive from strangers is muddied by Izzy. She dotes on me like a destitute suitor, her eyes strained with the unspoken, but she says nothing, choosing instead to swelter under her guilt. I know what she wants from me, but I cannot give it. She offers me a waterskin and I take a long gulp from it.

  And why should she not be taken with the weight of her actions?

  “Get enough, love?” Izzy asks. She reaches for the skin, but her crooked fingers don’t clasp around it tightly enough and it falls to the mud. She curses under her breath and picks up up.

  Ah, that’s why. I broke her.

  “Yes.” I say. “I got enough.”

  Luca is just as guilty, but he spends most days sitting beside Batar on the carriage bench, chattering. I think one part out of fascination with the world, another part out of ache in his feet. He hasn’t met my eyes once. I don’t need his blathering anyway, just the fix.

  When not burying his nose in books, he’s speaking with Batar about his homeland and learning about Thespa. Exile has not been kind to the boy, but it seems to have ignited a wild curiosity in him that I have not seen since I was a girl.

  When I was foolish enough to carry wonder in my pocket.

  “Does it always rain this much?” Luca’s voice lilts from the wagon ahead.

  Batar lets a raspy chuckle loose, puffing a ring of smoke from his pipe. “I take it your homeland did not teach you of the Great Rains of Thespa?”

  “My village…we do not concern ourselves with the workings of other lands.”

  Batar nodded knowingly and pulled the pipe from his lips. “Where are you from, master carver?”

  Luca twiddled a piece of wood, vaguely shaped like a doe. “Uh, it is called Kotalcuan. You would not know it.”

  “I know it now.” Batar smiles. “Now, let an old man pry. You speak as if home is far. What brings you out this way? Art?” He looks at the carving in Luca’s hands.

  “Yes.” Izzy answers for him. “Mesica. Culture. That sort of bullshit.”

  Luca nods.

  I glance over my shoulder and for a brief second I catch a glimmer of sadness in Luca’s eyes.

  “My village did not…appreciate my art.”

  Batar claps the young man on the back. “Appreciation is for those who ask for permission. Be a man who needs neither.”

  I roll my eyes at the bonding happening just ahead. Sure, well, I would have appreciated more warning when he carved a flawed sigil into my shoulder blade.

  The afternoon sun leeches sweat from my skin in slick sheets even through the overcast sky. My thighs burn with judgment, having atrophied in my hideaway, rubbed raw from the slow churn of miles. I shift my pack again, the damned thing having a vested interest in my suffering. The rain has soaked through everything, even the lining meant to keep the worst out. I smell like the grave, but so does everyone else.

  She thinks it suits us. I ignore Her.

  The men speak in low tones. To avoid the attention of anything foul, unable to see thing among them. This was the way of hardy, southern Thespans, and if nothing else, that’s what they were.

  A plump man in half plate whistles through missing teeth. “Crops rotted all the way through to the root, Maddoc, I’m tellin’ ya. Pa says he’s seen nothin’ like it.”

  “Your Pa is mad.” Another throws an apple core at him and the men laugh. For a moment.

  It’s always like this. Laughter first. Then the quiet settles. They speak of things they do not understand, but have heard on the road in whispers. I would not introduce them to the truth even if I could.

  I see one of the merchants high on the wagon rub a charm between his fingers at the mention of the rotting land.

  Don’t worry, gentlemen, you are protected by a grown man’s little wooden toy.

  Then, answering the merchant’s prayer, a little nightjar wobbles into view. I study the way it churrs and bounces from tufts of grass, devouring insects happily. Peace looks like this, I still remember, from another time, and the others enjoy its presence. Even the gruffest of them.

  It pauses, head tilted, throat puffed. I hear its lungs swell. And all I can think of is how it would feel to crush its windpipe. It flutters away from my predatory longing.

  The nightjar gone, the silence returns, deeper this time. Even the men fall quiet. As if they know what festers in my head. A wet wind stirs the grass like it’s searching for something. I pretend not to notice when the charm falls from the merchant’s fingers. I also pretend not to notice how another one of the hired stares—not at the charm, but at Izzy’s legs.

  He doesn’t want her touch, either.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The storm worsens by the hour. Lightning cracks its whip one time too many and Batar finally calls the halt with a sharp whistle and a raised palm.

  “Here,” he barks, gesturing toward a clearing near a wooded section of land off the road “Circle the wagons around. Pull in for cover.”

  The merchants and their families fan out. Horses are reined in and tied to sturdy trees. Batar’s youngest works on a tarp to give them some shelter. One of the younger merchants slips in the mud trying to unhitch his own tarp from his wagon bed. Another curses the storm, shaking out his drenched bedroll. Izzy immediately takes the chance to pitch our tent. Anything to repent. Her fingers fumble only once when the rope tangles, and I begrudgingly help her unwind it and stake the posts down.

  We speak nothing of it. Of anything. Her eyes catch mine, then drift elsewhere, not searching for what’s changed in me. I know she sees it. She’s the only one who could. Luca makes himself useful elsewhere, preparing a pot of rabbit stew with a crystal peddler from the north. He’s awful with knots anyway.

  Wagons form a half-moon fortress. Firewood is gathered from the treeline and stacked near the center, damp but nothing accelerant won’t solve. A few of the hired blades stalk the perimeter, more to avoid work than anything else, but some see the ghosts of unease in the shadows.

  Within an hour the place feels almost cozy as we all huddle in our tents. Some opting for the more comfortable confines of their covered wagons. Batar’s might as well be his home, it’s far nicer than what I had been living in at Fornthveit.

  I sit by the low fire long after the others bed down, picking at the over-salted stew the others made, trying to make myself hungry. The storm wanes from destructive to steady. Rain pecks against the taut leather of the tent and thunder rolls in the distance. I lean back and close my eyes.

  Anglen rises behind them.

  A village carved into the basin of the southern range, sunburnt and forgotten. Izzy and I followed rumors there—that’s all we ever followed. A hag, witch turned demonic thing, had taken up residence there, we’d heard. But people like to talk more than think, so we didn’t expect to find what we did.

  It wasn’t some conniving witch they feared. It was worshiped.

  Most hags, few there are, tend to use trickery and subterfuge to get what they want. This place? They had fed the thing on generations of sacrifice, willingly. Girls no older than ten, covered in ritualistic nonsense, painted like whores. The poor things.

  I remember the one child’s face, even now. Auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a little button nose. She didn’t even scream when they handed her over to the slimy fucking cow. She chose it. Saw it as a honor to her family.

  We stepped in, but, the townsfolk took us to arms. Izzy killed three, and I, two, before we fled the insanity. She didn’t even try to get out, I think she’d rather the people suffered that way. We never found the hag after that. Just a blood-soaked altar and a village full of empty eyes.

  I open mine again, off to my right Izzy turns in her sleep.

  The fire pops.

  A low growl sifts through the camp, then cuts short. I blink, straining against the dark beyond the fire’s edge. And then I see it, barely more than a shadow at first. A sheep-hound, white and gray mottled, limbs caked in mud.

  One step. Two. Backwards. Its head is still, facing forward even as its legs reverse. Drool dangles from its jaws like wet rope. It stumbles briefly over a tent peg, rights itself, and keeps moving backward, through the wagon ring.

  The few who are awake don’t seem to notice it.

  The animal stops near the edge of the trees. It turns then, not its body, only its head, like it’s being unscrewed. Its black eyes latch onto mine and something turns in my stomach.

  It takes one final step, forward now, and disappears between the trees. Part of me wants to follow it and tear it to pieces.

  Izzy stirs beside me in the tent. “Did you hear that?”

  “No,” I lie.

  ***

  Fjolln flows before me. Not a ripple mars the surface.

  And She is there.

  A woman stands at the river’s edge, facing the water.

  Her hair hangs in sodden curtains to her thighs, impossibly dark, like they are feeding on the darkened banks. Her gown clings to her, white, thin, soaked near transparent. I know it. The stitching at the collar, an escutcheon rose. It is one of the gowns we wore in Stoneheart.

  She doesn’t move.

  Thump, thump.

  You killed them all, Catherine.

  The wind doesn’t carry the words, the river does, like a letter written in the black ink of the water. My legs reject my will. I step forward.

  Each step is worse. The ground softens beneath my feet, swallowing my prints. I try to stop, but there is no ground anymore. Only Her.

  Don’t look. I scream it, inside my head, as if I can demand it of myself. Don’t look at her. Don’t look!

  But her head turns anyway, unscrewing itself just like that fucking dog. I slam my eyes closed to protect my soul. I feel her breath against my ear and she whispers.

  You need to finish it.

  I wake with a sharp gasp. My skin is soaked, the blanket tangled around my hips like I’m caught in a trap. The fire has burned low. And behind my sternum, She laughs. Or, maybe We do.

  I notice it then. Warmth is missing. I reach for it blindly, as I always did in the caves, and find her bedroll empty, cooling.

  Izzy is gone.

  I sit up, my body stiff. A known heat prickles along my skin. Hers.

  I stand. Too many scents. A long drag of them tells a story, a poor one. The kind passed around by husky, wanting voices. My ears fill with the deafening of night calls, slicking leaves, and the slinking of hungry souls. Gods, it’s fucking agony.

  I catch it anyway. Yes, we do. Can’t miss it.

  Izzy’s scent. Her heartbeat. Fear sours them both, a delicious change for someone else. Not Izzy, never Izzy. I exit the tent.

  I am the moonwalker. The moon gapes, silver and swollen, eager to witness its child return. We see everything now. Even the dark parts.

  We—no, I leave the camp toward the forest line.

  Thump, thump.

  My spine jerks with the beats, a sinew-shredding twitch.

  Ungh. I laugh. The muscle sews itself back together as my femur fractures. Ghhn-mmm. I squeeze the fragments together, regaining stability.

  I see them, split between the trees, surrounding what’s mine. Their breath is ragged, soaked with need. They fumble at straps. Hers. Theirs. The story plays out as it always has, but we have a new ending planned! A sick musk gathers about them.

  A gag cuts in her mouth. Oh? What’s this? One leaks already. Izzy’s dagger sunk to the hilt.

  Good girl.

  I laugh again, but they tug at her trousers, so it’s cut short.

  No. That ruins it.

  The patron moon blots out my footfalls as I tell it a new tale, crossing distance, silently, dark energy vibrating through my bones. I step into the open and wait for their hungry eyes.

  “Oi, this fuckin’ twat came to us!” Tobacco-teeth turns first, his mouth full of decay. The others follow, leering at my figure. So much for hardy, southern Thespan men.

  I tilt my head and smile coyly through the twitches in my face.

  “W-we are w-wounded.” The sound scrapes like metal against brick, rattling out. “You didn’t want me?”

  The first grin fades as I pluck his heart from his chest like charred meat off hot metal. My own heart surges with joy. Another man sends a warhammer crashing into my ribs. I feel them break but I am immovable. I crush his throat in my hand like a fibrous gizzard.

  So that’s what it feels like.

  Izzy is already piercing her thumbs through the fat one’s eyes, her face purple with effort.

  I cackle, giddy.

  The last runs. We love that. I follow him.

  When I return to Izzy I am painted to the elbows in my favorite color. I place his scalp like a crown on a nearby tree.

  Izzy’s back is to me, hunched over the gathered pouches of coin like a manic street urchin. Her hands tremble as she rifles through their things, no sense to the order, just gathering what she can. I step too close and she startles—whipping around, blade drawn, stance wide like I’m some cold revenant. She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are rimmed with red, face pale. For a moment I don’t move either.

  I don’t quite know what I am yet.

  The ground steams with blood. It soaks the fallen leaves, slicks the bark. My ribs grind when I breathe. The bodies lie scattered, not haphazard, but not natural either. I arranged them. I remember the start, the joy. The rest is blind pleasure.

  Gods, what’s happening to us. ME. Fucking ME.

  Then something breaks. My knees go first. I slump to the mud and reach for Izzy like a child, not the woman she knows, not whatever I’ve become, just the little girl inside who wants to go home. Who has only one home. Izzy.

  “I’m sorry,” I croak. It comes from under Her, weak and pathetic. “Izzy, I didn’t mean—are you—”

  The tears come fast, blurring everything. She hesitates, blade half-lowered, then steps forward and wraps herself around me. The same way she held me in the cavern. Lemongrass and sage. I bury myself in it. She strokes the back of my head, smearing the blood, then clears her throat.

  “Wait here,” she says, already pulling away. “Don’t move, Catherine.” And then she’s gone, off into the dark. I sit in my revelry and do as I’m told. Then, in that sticking, wet hell, I realize how new this is. She is changing. We are.

  Izzy returns minutes later with Luca in tow and my pack in her arms.

  Luca’s eyes widen and he cups his mouth. “What happ—

  “We can’t stay, not now, there’s no way to—fuck, Cat, clean yourself.” She wets a rag with her waterskin and tosses it my way.

  I scrub the blood away frantically but it stays with me.

  Luca runs his hands through his scruff. “What have we done?”

  “This time…well, Thespa is better off now.” Izzy says darkly, pulling me a change of clothes from her own bag.

  I change quickly and pull her dagger from the man’s throat, cleaning it.

  “We’re close to Ithek.” I say, sliding the blade into Izzy’s scabbard. “We need to move fast, put some distance between us and the caravan. Restock there. We can take the long road around the other side of Fjolln.”

  “They’ll just be waiting for us in Mesica!” Izzy throws her arms up. “Word of Fornthveit will spread, too. Our guiding fucking grace was swiftness, Cat—

  “I fucking know that.”

  “Isolde is right. We need to get to Stoneheart as soon as we can. I will not be responsible for more…of this.” Luca’s skin pales, his features sunken. “I must set this right.”

  “So, what now?” Izzy ignores him. “Lay low in Ithek? Go the long way around and skip Mesica altogether? Aren’t there mountain towns on the westernmost riverway?”

  “Let’s just get out of here. Can think on the way.” Izzy extends my sword out to me but I push it away. “Keep it.”

  My fingers grip the blood-drunk warhammer in the muck and lift it. The one that cracked my ribs.

  A man used two hands.

  I lift it with one.

  She is still with me. And I let her stay.

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