Chapter 25 Shade
Shade
Iwas getting better at traversing town unnoticed. My presence didn’t repel folk as strongly as it used to. Now, if I tried to blend in and go unseen, I was mostly successful.
I could even slip in and out of the pub without drawing my wife’s eye.
The crone was quicker to notice my presence than most.
She pretended like she didn’t see me, but when other folk cleared the area, she glared at me. Shooed me away.
I needed answers.
If anyone could tell me about the vast blankness in my head, surely an old, wise witch could.
But I wasn’t quite sure how to ask.
So, I followed her.
It felt nothing like following my goddess. She was a mystery to solve. The crone was simply a task on my agenda.
“Speak your mind, Dark One,” she called out when she approached her cottage with me on her trail.
I took a deep breath. The truth was bitter on my tongue when I said, “I need your help.”
“I thought I told you to leave,” she accused. “Instead, you went and got yourself declared as Mister Moonvale.”
“I did. That didn’t turn out how I hoped,” I admitted.
“Hmm.” She stared at me long enough that I began to feel uncomfortable, but I refused to fidget under her watchful, heavy gaze. My limbs obeyed my command and remained still.
I cleared my throat.
With a sigh, she opened the door and went inside, leaving the door open.
I stood on the porch. The scent of patchouli, lavender, and warm magic drifted out to meet me, but I could not take another step. It was like a heavy barrier held my feet in place.
She stopped, turned, and looked at me quizzically. “Are you coming?” she asked.
“I—I can’t,” I admitted.
She smiled a small, secret grin. “Right. Yes. Come on in,” she said.
As if it was never there in the first place, the pressure lifted.
I stepped inside.
The mug was hot between my hands, almost painful. Mint-scented steam drifted over my face as I watched the old witch.
She was perched across from me, her silver hair tied back in a loose braid, her own mug resting forgotten on the low table between us.
She stared at me intensely. It was like she could see to my very bones.
“How’s your tea?” she asked. She knew I hadn’t taken a sip yet, and I didn’t plan to.
I didn’t trust the crone.
“Fine, thank you,” I lied.
Her cheek twitched. “Not a fan of mint?”
“Mint is great.” I set the mug on the table next to hers. “But I came to speak. Not for tea.”
She flicked her hand out, gnarled fingers sprawled. “Speak then.”
“You are a witch, yes?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
She nodded once.
“And do you know what I am? Who I am?”
Her throat bobbed and she sat up a bit straighter. “Do you know yourself?”
I gritted my teeth. “Answer the question. Please.” An unfamiliar desperation seized my chest, forcing a politeness into my tone that was inherently unnatural.
“This goes both ways. I will answer your questions if you answer mine.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “No.”
“No?” she settled her chin onto her hand, curling into herself where she sat. “How interesting.”
I fought down a swell of violence. I didn’t want to kill the woman. I still needed her help.
A small, buried part of me didn’t wish to harm her, regardless.
“And you?” I asked.
“You are hard to pinpoint,” she mused. “There is a darkness about you. An unfathomable power. I have ideas.”
“Ideas?”
She nodded slowly. “But you are a mystery. There is something I cannot grasp.”
“But you told me to leave,” I insisted—almost begged. “Why?”
“I did. I have a feeling about you. An intuition, you could call it. And it is not a good one. You are dark. As dark as they come.”
I sighed through gritted teeth. “So, you do not know who I am, then.”
“Why is it you’re asking me?”
“There’s this—” I gestured absently with my hands, “—this blankness where my memories should be.”
She cocked her head. “Is that so?”
“My mind has been erased, scrambled, blotted out. I do not know. And this pain strikes me at the strangest times.”
She picked up my mug, shoving it into my hands before she picked up her own mug. Her eyes never left my face. “A pain in your mind?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“How peculiar.”
“Can you help me?” I asked. I felt vaguely nauseous, having to stoop to asking another for help. But I was desperate. “Help me remember? Help me figure out who I am?”
“Try your tea,” she insisted. “It’s delicious.” She took a long, deliberate sip from her own mug.
I grimaced. “Why? Will that convince you to help me?”
She smiled, tilting her head forward in encouragement. “It’s polite.”
I took a tentative sip. It was a bit over steeped, but not the worst tea I’d ever tasted.
She nodded once, the smile falling from her face.
“Will you help?” I asked again. If I had to ask aloud once more, I was sure my ego would crack.
“I am not sure I can. Your darkness is not good for this town, as I said before. Trouble will find you. I can feel it.”
The anger was slower to boil to the surface this time. “I will leave when I have my memories sorted out,” I lied. I would leave only if I could snatch my wife and bring her with me. Preferably willingly rather than kicking and screaming.
“Hmm. I am rather curious… Can I feel?”
“Feel what?”
She rose, discarding her tea again and holding her hands out expectantly.
I swallowed. My throat felt strangely tight.
I didn’t want to touch the strange witch. I didn’t wish to press my skin to any hands other than Ginger’s.
I didn’t know what this crone was capable of.
But I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Be smart, or I will bring about your death,” I threatened.
She grinned, stretching her cheeks into wrinkled swaths. “I could make the same promise.”
“Very well.”
I placed my palm into hers. Knobby-knuckled fingers clenched around mine.
And then my skull lit aflame.
I screamed, the agonized sound clawing free from my throat before my senses were snuffed out entirely.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of dirt—warm, earthy, and a bit sweet from decaying plant matter.
And then came the cold. It permeated my stolen clothes, soaked into my spine, stiffened the joints in my fingers.
A warm weight sat in the center of my chest, holding me pinned.
My eyes were leaden. It took a great effort to pry them open, but after long, painful seconds, I was able to glimpse my surroundings.
I was in the middle of the forest.
Alone.
Surrounded by nothing but ancient trees, insects, and dead leaves.
Weirdest of all, there was a cat curled up on top of me, resting peacefully.
My head ached as though pummeled by stones. The pain got worse when I attempted to dislodge the cat and rise, shoving the bile from my stomach. I curled to my side and vomited, the tea I’d swallowed making a swift and violent exit.
The cat on my chest vanished into the night, hardly making a sound.
The fucking tea.
My whereabouts returned in bits and pieces.
The tea. The crone. Her gnarled, magical hands.
The witch had tried to kill me.
She drugged me, knocked me unconscious, and then left me in the forest for dead. She surely expected the forest’s wandering beasts to finish me off.
Luckily, I wasn’t that fragile.
I was going to kill that evil woman. I was going to kill her and flee with my wife in tow.
When my stomach finally ceased its roiling, I pushed onto my feet. The forest swung wildly around me, and I braced myself against the trunk of a tree for long minutes before my surroundings solidified again. Cold air was a balm to my lungs, and I sucked it down greedily.
I could scarcely glimpse the sight of the twin moons between sparse, gnarled branches.
Something poked at the back of my mind. It stung like a bee, hot and insistent, pricking at my awareness.
A memory.
I fell to my knees as it overtook me.
“What are you doing, brother?” a light, melodic voice asked. It bubbled with mirth.
I drifted through the trees, carried on a breeze, lighter than air itself. My fingers drifted over scratchy tree trunks, crushed dried leaves, left them as dust in my wake. The shadows were my safety, my home, and in the shade of the tree trunks I stayed. It was a game to avoid the sunlight.
I always won this game.
I was on the other end of the forest in the blink of an eye. “Catch me, sister!” I shouted. I could hardly see the girl, so far away.
“That’s no fair!” she complained. “You’re cheating.”
“Using the tools the fates granted us is not cheating, sprout. It is simply being smart.”
“We are not to play around with the talents. You’re going to get in trouble.”
“If we do not play, we will not learn—and the mortals will suffer.”
My brain threatened to burst.
I fisted my hair with both hands, tugging at the roots to relieve the pressure.
All at once, the memory released me—I was back in the depths of Moonvale’s forest.
I exhaled all the air in my lungs, deflating entirely. I was empty. Exhausted.
But I had a memory. A real one, even if it was short. It actually made sense.
My memories were coming back.
Maybe the crone would get to live, after all.