19. Fiella
Idreamt of magical mailboxes, fingers stained with ink, and kind, mysterious strangers.
After waking later than I normally would, I bundled up and headed to the shop. I noticed that the air somehow felt even colder than it had yesterday. We were supposed to be headed toward the mild season, not back to the freeze season. Ugh!
If the mild season didn’t hit soon, Moonvale would miss the wave of tourists, and that would be disastrous for us all.
The wind was so frigid it was painful on my face, and the air felt like shards of glass as I breathed it into my nose. I had to blink rapidly so my eyeballs wouldn’t frost over.
I made it to shop as fast as my legs would carry me without actually breaking into a run. It wasn’t snowing, but the air certainly smelled like ice and darkness.
Redd was already waiting by the front door when I arrived, bouncing on his toes and holding himself stiffly.
“Gods, Fiella! Took you long enough, it’s freezing!” he snapped at me through chattering teeth. I tried to ignore how nice my name sounded in his mouth, even with the chattering. His lips were blue, and he had his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Someone needed to get this man a warmer cloak.
“Don’t worry honey, Fiella’s here to save the day,” I grumbled back as I tried to still my shaking fingers long enough to fit the key into the lock.
I tucked my satchel in closer to my side. I didn’t mention the fact that I had stopped at the bakery for pastries on my way. I figured that the news wouldn’t go over well under the current circumstances. Even this shocking cold wasn’t enough to disrupt my morning ritual.
Redd crowded so close behind me that I could feel his breath on the side of my face. Impatient vampire. I caught a hint of his mint and sandalwood scent and had to stop myself from inhaling more noticeably.
We both rushed inside as soon as the door was opened, slamming it shut behind us to keep the devilishly cold air out.
As we stood there, blowing hot breath onto our fingers and trying to regain blood flow in our extremities, I caught the sight of a snowflake lazily drifting to the ground from the corner of my eye. Weird–it didn’t snow often in Moonvale, and never this late into the season.
Whatever, I was sure it would pass. It was probably only a few wayward flakes.
Sookie trotted over and rubbed her head against my ankles, meowing loudly. She even briefly rubbed up against Redd. Traitor. She was never affectionate to others like she was to me, it was our own sacred bond.
She had been in a strange mood ever since the beetle incident. I guess I couldn’t blame her.
“Well, let’s defrost a little and then get to work. If we finish repairing the loft today, we might be able to finally get started on those new shelves,” I mentioned hopefully. Redd had convinced me to lay wood over my previously stone floors, and that had slowed our repair progress. As had the stone reinforcements on all four walls.
This was taking much longer than I had expected, but I wasn’t necessarily upset about it. I subtly glanced at Redd.
He grumbled an agreement, eventually removing his cloak with reluctance. He was clearly not built for the cold. “You should get one of those enchanted fireplaces in here. It’s fucking cold.”
“Do I look like I’m made of silvers? Those things are expensive,” I muttered back. “Toughen up. It’s not that cold.”
“Says the local. You forget I’m not from here. I’ve never been this cold in my life.”
I held my arms out sarcastically. “Awww, you poor thing. Need me to warm you up?”
He shot me a glare. “No. I’ll live.”
I let my arms fall back to my sides with a snort. “I sure hope so. It would be so embarrassing to have to tell everyone such a strong and fearsome vampire dropped dead from a little chill.”
“Oh great, she’s got jokes,” he grumbled.
“Get to work, frosty. We’ve got lots to accomplish today.”
His exasperated sigh was extremely satisfying.
Redd and I lost ourselves in our newfound routine, not noticing the hours as they passed. I didn’t want to open the door to take the garbage outside, so we made a pile by the door to deal with later.
I was growing to appreciate the grumpy vampire’s company more and more, as much as I had tried to avoid it. He would be leaving eventually, he made it clear that he wasn’t here to stay, and it would be a waste of time to grow attached.
He was just taking a break from Sunhaven, before he either went back or moved on to somewhere new.
I couldn’t figure him out. He spoke fondly of his home, but he didn’t seem to want to go back any time soon. He didn’t sound passionate about traveling, either, like my Ma and Pa were. He just reluctantly accepted the fact that he was moving from place to place.
It was strange.
“You don’t talk about your home much, aren’t you from Sunhaven? I travel there often; you guys have some lovely shops. Do you miss it?” I asked while scooping up a pile of dust. The dust was never ending. I needed to invest in an anti-dust crystal for the shop, whenever the silvers were flowing again.
He took a moment to think before answering, his hands busy sorting a pile of wooden boards.
“I do miss it sometimes. There’s not much to tell, though. Nobody wanted me around there anymore. It was for the best that I left.” I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded a little too nonchalant. Like he was forcing it.
I scoffed. “I’m sure that’s not true. I bet there are tons of people missing you right now. What about your family? Or your friends? Or any lady friends?” That last part slipped out before I could hold it back. Whoops.
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, a frown pulling at his mouth.
“Trust me, they’re happy that I’m not around to screw things up for them anymore.” He turned his back on me, moving over to begin hammering down the new loft stairs.
I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t deny having lady friends back home. I’ll have to pry more information out of him about that later.
I stepped into his eyeline and tapped him on the arm, forcing him to look at me.
“No way. Please explain. It’s not like you’re a creepy murderer or anything, you’re just a little bit of an asshole. No offense. There’s no way they were happy to see you go,” I insisted. The thought of Redd having nobody missing him back home made my heart ache in a strange way.
Everyone deserved to have people who cared about them enough to miss them fiercely.
He took a deep breath, hesitated for just a moment, and then he began to speak.
I removed my hand from his arm and stepped back, and my hand felt cold. I shivered as a chill traveled up my arm and down my spine.
“It’s hard to explain,” he started. “First it was the small things. Minor shop mishaps. Tools going missing. Things of that nature.”
“Sure, that sounds pretty normal,” I responded, confused.
He shook his head, frustrated. “It didn’t stay that way. Things got worse.”
“How so?”
“Things just started to get bad. Really bad. Everywhere I went. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, I became this… this bad luck charm.”
“Bad luck charm,” I stated. “I don’t understand.”
He gritted his teeth and ran his hand through his hair, mussing the strands. “I don’t understand it either, Fiella, but I know what I saw. The town was falling apart because of me. My friends were getting sick. My family’s business was suffering. Everyone was suffering. So I left. I fled. I was hoping that if I left, then my family and my friends would be spared from whatever curse was following me.”
I took another step back, feeling slightly woozy. “Okay…”
“That’s how I ended up here. I crossed the Barren Lands because I was sure that the bad luck wouldn’t be able to follow me. But somehow, some way, it did.” His cheeks reddened, and I could hear his heart thumping from across the room. He stared at me anxiously.
I leaned forward, my hands on my knees. My vision began to darken at the edges, panic trying to claw under my skin.
He had somehow become the harbinger of bad luck, setting off an unfortunate chain of events wherever he went. He fled Sunhaven to spare his family and neighbors from further tragedy. He traveled to Moonvale to try to escape the misfortune.
He brought the bad luck here with him.
He believed he was the cause of my shop travesty. My massive financial loss. The destruction of my livelihood.
He believed it was all, somehow, his fault.
For probably the first time in my life, I was speechless.
“Oh…kay.” I let out a massive breath, my cheeks puffing out.
“Okay. Okay. Hey, it could just be a huge coincidence,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I believed that myself. I forced myself to straighten up and breathe.
One incident, or two, or three, could be explained as a coincidence. What he was describing sounded like much more than that.
He did arrive in town right before everything started happening…
I had crossed paths with him right before…
I tried to hold back the wave of anger and resentment that threatened to wash over me. I tried to stop the claws of panic from piercing their way into my mind, my chest. If what Redd was describing was true, then maybe the worst incident of my life really was his fault.
I didn’t want to blame him, but I couldn’t stop my thoughts from spiraling. I didn’t know what to think.
He stared at me for a long time, a crease between his brows and his hands folded together in front of him. “You know what, maybe I’ll just go. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll wrap this up here,” he eventually murmured.
“That’s probably for the best,” I choked out. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, Fiella. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” His voice quaked slightly.
I didn’t respond, my eyes glued to the floor. When he turned to face the door, he froze in place, gaping at the window.
While we had been absorbed in conversation, we hadn’t noticed the shop slowly getting darker. Had night fallen already?
No, that wasn’t night. What we saw out the window was absolutely nothing. Blackness.
“Well, fuck,” Redd proclaimed.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
“Looks like we’re snowed in.”