5. Kiaran
Kiaran
T he girl living in my house was strange.
I knew mortals spent their time telling tales of the Forest. The fear that wafted from the girl when she showed up was proof of that. They had ideas of this Forest being evil. However, it was anything but.
If I were being honest, the most evil thing in this Forest was most likely me. There were certainly dangerous animals and creatures in the Forest but being as old as the Earth, they weren’t interested in hunting mortals anymore.
It’d been five nights since I picked up the scent of the sapphire eyed girl sprinting through the thick Forest. She smelled delicious.
Vanilla, strawberries, and an overwhelming sense of fear.
I waited until she was slowing down to give her a second wind by chasing her with my shadows.
I cast them out to take the shape of wolves, then they were to chase and bring her straight to me but those traitorous black wisps wrapped themselves around her shoulders, giving her a false sense of security.
She stole the berries from my bushes, even though I’d never been able to cross the clearing to get to them. Then welcomed herself in when the cottage opened right up for her .
The second the frizzy haired girl got close enough to the cottage, though, Fern bound me and my magic to the fucking attic.
Clearly trying to take away the pleasure of scaring the girl off.
The sentience in the cottage has been here as long as me, I think we’re bound together by a centuries old curse.
I assumed that she drew from my magic, bringing the cottage to life.
Which made it so much more annoying that she used it against me.
I decided only two years into my sentence that the house was a woman. I liked to call her Fernweh, Fern for short, because I would have loved to be anywhere else. Home preferably.
When Fern released me the following morning, I made myself invisible to her.
I planned on scaring her ten ways out of hell but after I finally caught a good glimpse of her, there was no way I could do that.
It would be foolish to waste such a pretty little sacrifice.
As long as she had celestial blood, she was the closest thing I’d ever have to getting home.
Though, if she did have celestial blood, she sure didn’t use it.
Fern had laid the girl to rest in my bed, with my sleepy time tea, then this fucking house put a beautiful, handcrafted chest and desk in my room and filled it with books, journal paper, a bunch of new clothes, and a few pairs of boots.
I’ve been stuck in this unfortunately enchanting Forest for two centuries and all Fern has ever given me was a headache. To make matters worse, my perfectly dusted prison was spotless when I awoke, my couch was gone, and the appeal of the cottage became utterly charming.
Seriously, a half-moat with glowing lights and what smelled like thousands of flowers? Fern was pulling out all of her most impressive moves for our guest.
Last night, I got the chance to take the girl in completely.
While she sat and ate like a barbarian at the table, I positioned myself across from her, entirely invisible but so consumed by every part of her.
The yellow hue of the candlelight showed me fresh, blue bruises covering her beautiful face.
One under each eye, another with the imprint of knuckles on her temple that would’ve been fatal if it had been a mere centimeter down, and many more faded ones on her cheeks that made her skin mimic someone about to hurl.
She’d pressed a light touch to her right eye and shuddered. My blood heated at the sight of her in pain at the hands of someone else. I wanted to know who the fuck hurt her. She didn’t seem dangerous, so nothing would be a good enough reason to batter her stunning face.
I didn’t know what she’d been through to get to me. All I knew was that she was here, and that was a beacon of hope toward my eventual return to my home in Avonya.
After dishonoring my Coven and failing the orders the High Priestess placed on me, my Coven sentenced me to spend eternity here.
The High Priestess wrote my fate in the stars.
I could earn my freedom by performing a sacrifice that would mirror the pain I caused nearly two hundred years ago.
When the girl arrived, I swore it was my sacrifice being given to me on a silver platter.
But it became obvious very quickly that the pretty girl living in my house bore no celestial blood.
So, Winter Solstice would come and go, as it has two hundred times in a row.
I observed my surroundings here for a long time.
Having been tethered to this fucking cottage for the better part of my entire life had given me the perfect opportunity to see it for how the mortals do.
This Forest was said to be a purgatory for Lost Souls, and it was, but not in the sinister way the girl’s kind thought.
The Lost Souls walked among each other here, sharing stories and tales of times long forgotten by the living.
Each night, they gathered around a campfire a good ways from the cottage and sang songs of times the living forgot.
If they were enemies when they were alive, you wouldn’t know it now. If I didn’t know any better, they saw each gathering as a meeting of old friends.
I felt like an unwanted guest in their camaraderie and it bothered me for a long time that I never had a friend. Having spent so much of my early life not having any, I was jealous of the souls who laughed together, sharing the peace that didn’t come until the afterlife.
While my cohorts in school were learning the fundamentals of our magic, like making a mess disappear or healing cuts and bruises; I was busy teaching myself how to summon portals to throw my sister through when she was getting on my nerves.
She came back every time, so it obviously needed more work.
After one hundred years of wreaking havoc on my realm, I made a seriously grave mistake.
Watching this stunning woman cozy up my dilapidated cottage for the last few days had been the most entertainment I had since being here, but it was starting to piss me off a little.
She spilled tea on the floor and ate food like a starved wolf.
The rugs were taking the brunt of her mess, but Fern took care of it immediately every time.
Truth be told, the ugly rugs that donned the rickety floors of the cottage weren’t being ruined by the tea, but was she born in a fucking stable?
Who the fuck traipses in here looking like a complete and utter mess, then dines and sleeps in a home that was occupied?
I suppose she really didn’t know it was occupied, since I hadn’t exactly introduced myself yet.
Humans were different from what I remembered.
This one, in particular, was much more striking than the ones that looked like the gremlins who lived down the trail.
Behind the gnarly bruising to her face that had now turned to a faded green, she had a little button nose, full pouty lips, and her cheekbones, now that the swelling was gone, defined her face in sharp lines that the women back home would kill for.
She had long, dark hair, always falling haphazardly out of her messy braid.
Her eyes were beacons. A sapphire blue that hypnotized me every time I stared too long.
She was frail. I don’t want to think of the cold shoulder Fern would’ve given me if I scared her off before she put some meat on her bones.
Sadness reeked from her. Her entrancing eyes held little life when she first arrived, but they brightened a little more each day as she got more comfortable.
I was never good at comforting people, or so my mother would say, so all I could do was absorb the pain that was emanating from her.
This evening, while the girl took her walk to talk to the frogs, Fern added a library onto the back of the cottage and filled it to the brim with books. I asked her for two hundred years to conjure up a book. Guess how many she’s given me.f
From floor to ceiling, bookshelves lined the walls, and a ladder hinged on a track to roll around the perimeter of the room.
It had a nook in the windowsill with more pillows than anyone should ever have.
There was a large desk, even more exquisite than the one that she put in my old room.
The raw edges of the oak were on display as a focal point, and Fern had already stocked it with books for her to start with.
“Orla!” The girl’s voice called through the house as she shut the door.
“I brought you flowers, I’m sure you can see that already, somehow.
By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how do you do that?
Are you a ghost? I feel like I’m going crazy.
” She giggled to herself and it sent a tingle up my arms. Probably because I haven’t heard laughter in two hundred years.
She was, clearly. Because who the fuck was Orla? She’d been saying the name for a few days but she was all by herself in here. Well, not entirely, but she didn’t know that. And my name wasn’t Orla.
“Anyways, is there a vase in here somewhere? Don’t magician one in. These are for you, for everything.” She scurried around the room like a mouse looking for crumbs. “Ah ha, found one. Okay, close your eyes.” The shutters in the window closed on cue.
Was she talking to Fern?
She set the vase down on the table. Flowers in every color spilled over the edges.
Fern had done a real number on renovating our home.
It was lively and filled with decor that I had no inclination she had the ability to do.
I couldn’t lie, I was a little offended that she didn’t think I was worth doing all this sprucing up for.
It looked truly magical in our home now, but with the girl’s addition of flowers, life was not just existing here. It was breathing. As if the girl had given the structure a soul. One deeper than Fern.