1. A Dark Wood #3
I’d watched in awe, feeling no horror at the brutal execution.
Those scoundrels had coldly killed a defenseless man and his young son, who had been doing nothing more than tilling their field on the outskirts of the village.
I had welcomed the bandits’ end, applauding the warriors who possessed the power to mete out such justice.
The sight of those women inspired me. For the first time, I recognized I could be something other than the blacksmith’s daughter.
Something other than a wife to the man chosen for me.
Something other.
Vague and amorphous, yes, but I wanted that with a bone-deep certainty. To be something else than what I was here.
I laughed hoarsely into the lashing cold.
It shouldn’t be so impossible when I had a way out with Henrik and Meya.
If only Da would relent. If only he would give up on the idea of his daughter of good northern stock marrying a man of good northern stock and producing offspring of good northern stock.
I pushed on stubbornly, sinking into snowdrifts that reached my knees as though I could outrun my fate.
My future husband would likely be old enough to be my father, with a face carved from wind and cold and time.
Body bent and broken from hardship. Hands thick and gnarled as an old oak with roots buried deep into the ground.
I would have to submit to those hands, and I felt sick at the thought, bile rising in my throat.
I didn’t remember my mother—my mother with my father, together.
That, them, was not a page in the book of my memories.
They were not an example I could point to and think, There .
. . that is how a proper couple behaves.
But I knew. I knew that marriage didn’t have to be a prison.
It could be something good if I was given a choice in it. Henrik and Meya were proof of that.
They’d lived with us as husband and wife for over a year now, sleeping in the bedroom across from mine.
I’d watched them every day. The exchange of smiles and knowing glances.
The subtle, lingering touches. The way they would stop and embrace each other for no reason at all.
Or for a reason—the reason simply that they loved each other. They chose each other.
I would have no such choice.
My father would never turn to me and ask what I wanted, whom I wanted.
He would never take my preferences into account.
He’d never treated me like Henrik. I was the baby of the family, the youngest, the girl, the one who was supposed to stay, to help Da, to do as bade and never ask anything for myself.
Anger burned like brine in my chest.
I was angry and sad and broken.
Defeated.
I wiped at the frozen nub of my nose, trying to warm it and return it to life. Good northern stock or not, my teeth started clacking hard enough for my jaw to throb. My lungs ached from moving the cold in and out of my body. Even my ears, buffeted by the cold wind, hurt.
The thought of going back, returning to my house, only made me colder.
A dark and clinging loneliness awaited me. Meya and Henrik were leaving. Jens would soon follow. Then it would be just me and my father, the two of us sitting in the thick, suffocating silence like blocks of wordless stone.
I pressed on, tears clogging my throat as the need to put distance between myself and the house where my fate loomed swelled inside me like a rising miasma.
With the village far behind, I collapsed in the snow-swathed woods, sinking into a deep bank, the freezing wet soaking my gown, penetrating my flesh. For once, I felt the pain of this cold like needles on my skin, but I didn’t care.
I buried my face in my stinging hands with a soft moan, envisioning my future stretching out in front of me like beads on a thread, one after another, falling in a monotonous drop of days.
My mind raced, searching, reaching for a possibility, a tether, something to grasp, to cling to, a way to persuade Da to let me go.
I exhaled, my breath fogging in front of me.
Da wouldn’t change his mind, and it filled me with rage.
I lowered my hands from my face. A poison started to wind through me, the ugly sensation sweeping over me, through me, twisting inside me.
It was a horrible feeling—this thing too awful to name.
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t acknowledge it, even to myself.
I turned my face skyward, gazing up at the dense, low-hanging clouds floating rapidly over the evening.
Some days, most days, the clouds turned to fog, heavy and thick as potato soup, concealing the mountain range in the distance.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, I could see the dark outline of the Crags against the purpling night.
My tears turned to delicate trails of ice on my cheeks. “I wish I could just disappear.” I sniffed.
Then they would regret treating me this way. They’d be sorry. They would live with the remorse, the pain. They would hurt. Maybe not the same way I hurt right now, but close enough. Pain was pain, and I wanted to wound them as they wounded me.
With another sniff, I swiped at the cold tip of my nose. “You hear me!” I shouted out into the ether, addressing whom . . . I didn’t know. The world. My family. Myself. The unfairness of the life that trapped and held me captive.
No response was forthcoming, of course, but it felt good anyway.
I felt powerful venting my fury, even if directed to no one. “I wish I could just disappear!” My loud, cracking voice fell, withering into a small, hushed whisper as I repeated, “I just want to disappear.”
The wind went flat.
An abrupt stillness came over the air. A preternatural silence descended. Everything calmed: the watchful sky with its drifting clouds, the once howling wind, even the moon seemed to hold its breath as though it were a living thing, an unblinking eye in the sky.
All at once I was certain I was no longer alone.
The branches, creaking moments ago from the breeze and groaning from the weight of snow, grew quiet. Even the cold seemed to pause, releasing none of its usual fury.
I peered into the deepening woods around me, suddenly impenetrable, darker, pressing closer, something untold in its depths.
I gulped, feeling observed, the weight of another’s gaze upon me. The presence of something in the darkness pushed nearer, stretching toward me, reaching for me, settling into my bones and the marrow of me, plucking at the life that hummed and pulsed there with insistent fingers.
My village felt far away.
I lifted my gaze up, beyond the treetops, to the outline of the Crags in the distance.
The mountains were a jagged tear in the sky, as though the hand of a god had violently ripped open the canvas of sky to form the peaks, a violent barrier now a shade lighter than the darkening night.
Fog circled the summits, almost reaching to the moon.
As distant as the Crags loomed, home felt even more remote in the weighted stillness.
Home—my village with its people and cozy cottages and shops locked up tight for the night—now so out of reach. In this moment, Isstad might as well have been on the other side of those mountains, might as well be across the Dark Channel.
The tiny hairs on my nape tingled with the renewed sense that I was not alone. Another had joined me.
Another.
I felt its scrutiny moving over me thoroughly, palpably, missing nothing, seeing all of me.
I rotated as swiftly as I could in the snow. “Who’s there?” I demanded, wondering if Henrik or Meya had followed me. Da wouldn’t have bothered. My brother and his wife, however, would care enough to pursue me. Or it could be Jens up to his old pranks, ready to torment me.
“Is someone there? Henrik?”
Silence.
I tried again, a brittle edge to my voice. “Hello? Who is out there? Answer me!”
Nothing.
My ears strained, listening to the humming hush.
After a while, I shook my head, feeling silly.
Of course no one was there. I didn’t matter.
No one had followed me. “I might as well be invisible,” I muttered into the cold night, my skin tightening sharply, almost painfully as my words landed on the flat blade of air.
I gazed up at the sky, studded with a million stars, the moon a great orb of light fixed on me. “I wish I was. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I could just disappear.” Then I would be free.
Snap.
My gaze swung, sensing a presence.
I scanned the press of woods that had always been my comfort and solace despite all the rumors and cautions of the dark and dangerous things that hid within it.
“Is someone there?” My eyes ached, afraid to blink, straining as I searched the snow-dusted trees around me.
No answer, but the wind abruptly picked up, waking, stirring violently around me, a living, breathing thing that rustled the strands of dark hair framing my face with cold fingers and sent the branches shaking in protest.
I reached for my hood and pulled it low over my head to shield me from the battering wind that suddenly felt too aggressive—almost like it was attacking me deliberately. I braced myself against the force of it, against the powerful roar filling my ears. I hugged myself.
Then, it ended. As suddenly as it began, the gale stopped.
I was alone again.
Whatever had been there with me, watching, blowing its icy breath down my neck, touching me with the weight of an invisible hand and then erupting into a howl of fury . . . was gone. Spent. It had departed.
Once more, it was just me in the woods.
I was alone.
A relieved breath shuddered past my lips.
Turning, I headed for home.
The evening continued to descend around me, sliding into night. There was nothing soft about the air as it thickened and deepened into sticky and cloying darkness.