Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
ESMERAY
Izara was transcendent. With her hands in the air, she twisted her wrists and swayed her hips. All the other young witches gathered around her laughed and danced with her in the town square, admiring the sunbeams of her new witch mark that spread across her collarbones.
As she danced, she sketched symbols in the air with her fingertips, making sparkles of magic swirl around the dancers like lightening bugs. The other women giggled and whooped in excitement at the beautiful display of her fully blossomed power.
A smile danced on my lips as I watched her, but I couldn’t help the wistful ache that pulsed in my chest. The festival was held in center square of the town, in the open cobbled portion surrounded by the few businesses that occupied the town—an inn and an apothecary among a small smattering of shops.
Tonight, the area was dotted with colorful lanterns strung between the thatched rooves.
The sounds of boisterous singing and the scents of crushed herbs from the charms some of the witches were selling filled the air.
The whole thing was light and life—a perfect fit for my sister’s sunny new witch mark.
In the distance, a wolf howled, its melody equal parts mournful and celebratory, and the eerie note pierced my heart. My chest warmed. Beneath my sternum my own witch mark started to pulse, and I rubbed at it absently.
Every full moon for years, something had called me to the forest, but I had resisted the pull.
The power that drew me to the trees lay dormant in my veins as I turned my attention towards my duties.
Izara had needed me, and that had been enough to dull the yearning for something wild. Something primal.
I began to push the call of my magic into the background as I always did, but as I watched my sister twirl around the bonfire in the center of the square, I hesitated.
There was no longer a reason to deny the desires of my magic.
My breath rushed from my lungs as if I had been punched in the stomach at the realization.
Even as I froze, my blood began to rush faster in my veins.
Since I was barely a woman, my entire purpose had been to care for Izara.
I was a mother, a teacher, a nurse, and a guard all at once.
My identity as a witch had been pushed to the background the moment our parents died, protecting us from the angry mob that drove us out of the city in fear of our power.
It had been mere months after I received my own witch mark.
I had brought us to this small town where we could use our magics freely, but I had never been free to indulge the wilder tendencies that came so readily with my own power.
I had pushed all that aside in favor of selling potions and keeping a tidy house to give Izara the best life I could.
There was no time for mad dashes through the wilds.
Until now.
Already, I turned away from the town square, but I hesitated, glancing back over my shoulder. Izara and her friends were still enjoying the revelries around the fire, and the sunburst on my sister’s collarbone pulsed with light—a promise of the goddess Solara’s protection. She would be safe.
Still, I lingered until the call of the wolf came again. It was louder now, as if the pack drew closer. A shudder slipped up my spine, laced with anticipation. I was really going to do this. Quickly, I slipped through an alley and out of the town square.
Everyone in the village had gathered for the festival, leaving the streets deserted as I padded across the packed dirt towards the shadows of the forest. Laughter and shouts chased me from the festivities in ephemeral echoes.
Their untethered joy told me that they all felt the magic of the full moon as much as I did.
But while it made some witches want to dance and laugh in the company of others, it had always made me want to bare my teeth and howl at the moon.
As if it had heard my thoughts, the wolf in the distance began its song again.
At the sound, I picked up my pace. My heart accelerated and my steps to match it as I ran through the streets, arms pumping and skirt fluttering behind me.
My chest warmed pleasantly as my witch mark glowed, finally flaring to life fully as I let loose.
It grew tingly and pleasantly hot in a way it hadn’t in the five years I had borne it.
I didn’t slow until I reached the line of the trees bordering the edge of the village, and even then it was only to dodge around the boughs and branches. Leaves brushed my face and curled around my calves as if they were reaching out to caress me—to welcome me.
Finally, the flickering lantern light of the village at my back was swallowed up in the quiet of the forest, and I stopped.
My own panting breaths filled my ears in the relative quiet, but I could tell the forest around me teamed with life.
Small rodents scurried through the underbrush and somewhere in the distance sounded the low hoot of an owl.
A sigh of contentment escaped my lips, and I found myself kicking off my shoes so my toes could dig into the detritus of the forest floor. The rich scent of earth and decaying matter that was the source of all life permeated the air, and I closed my eyes for a moment as I breathed it in deeply.
I expected the inexorable call of the forest to quiet now that I had given in to my instincts and run wild into the dangerous woods, but instead it only pulsed louder—a thunderous roar that I somehow heard without my ears. I knitted my brows together and opened my eyes.
In the dark space between the trees hung yellow eyes.
A sharp breath hissed in through my teeth, and a cold rush of adrenaline flooded through my body as I stared into them, frozen. The pupils—slitted like a cat’s—dilated, as if they could sense my reaction.
They were just like the eyes I had envisioned watching me from the trees this afternoon. Or perhaps I hadn’t imagined them at all.
The leaves around the clearing I stood in rustled as if with a faint breeze.
“What are you?” I asked, my voice surprisingly level. A distant part of my mind told me I shouldn’t stay to ask. It urged me to turn and run until I was back in the warm light of the village, far from this thing that was clearly never meant for human eyes.
That voice was drowned out by the primal thrumming of magic in my chest, which howled now like the wolf I had heard earlier.
“I am this forest.”
The voice that answered sounded like the braying of hounds and the chirping of birds; the whistling of wind and the quiet warmth of sunshine filtering through foliage. A shiver ran up my spine.
“I didn’t know forests could speak,” the snide words were out of my mouth before I could think better of them.
The eyes tilted, as if the owner cocked his head in thought—for it was definitely a him. That much I could tell.
“But you did. You heard my call, and you came,” the voice came again.
As he spoke, I willed myself to take a step back. To put some distance between myself and the monster that lurked before me. Instead, I found myself straining my eyes, craning my neck forward to try to make out the rest of his shadowed figure.
His words made me think back to my hectic flight into the woods, deeper than I normally dared venture, the primal magic in me boiling over in response to the howling of…
“Are you a wolf?”
“Yes. And no. I am everything that lives and grows within this forest.”
“And why did you call me?” I asked, thinking of the inexorable pull of the howling wolf—the inexplicable tug under my breastbone I had felt at its melancholy wildness.
Leaves rustled, and a low rumbling came from the shadows before me, but that was my only response. Then, the eyes slowly shrank back, as if the unknowable creature retreated.
“Wait,” I demanded, stepping forward and reaching out a hand. I did not know why I did it. Perhaps it was because that haunting call still echoed in my skull, awakening the aching yearning that lingered in my chest and made my witch mark flare to life.
The sound of rustling leaves stopped, as if the whole forest froze.
“Let me see you,” I demanded, voice firmer than I felt. I clenched my fists to dispel the shaking, although the sensation that made me tremble did not feel like fear. More like the aching excitement of a want almost fulfilled, satisfaction so close I could almost taste it.
The shadows shifted and grew as the eyes drew nearer, rising as the creature stood to his full height until I had to crane my neck up to meet them. I drew in a shuddering gasp as he stepped fully into the clearing and out of the cover of the trees.
Even as he stood in the middle of the clearing, he appeared one with the foliage around him. As he had said, he was the forest.
Though his top half was roughly shaped like that of a man, and a large, muscular one at that, his skin was dappled in a thousand shades of brown and green, like bark.
Starting at his hips, his legs were covered in the thick grayish fur of a wolf, ending in huge, clawed feet.
As my gaze trailed up his body, my attention caught briefly on a bushy tail switching behind him, until my eyes were drawn inexorably back to his face.
His features were vulpine, matching the golden, slitted eyes that still seemed to glow in the darkness.
But most striking of all were the antlers, part deer, part twisting branches that reached up, up, up to mix with the canopy above.
Vines and leaves dripped off them, hanging down to frame his angular face.
My stomach clenched and my mouth grew dry, but it was not fear I felt when I looked upon this creature.
Instead, it was the same shivery anticipation I felt in the moments before I had decided to leave the festival and dash into the woods.
It was as if I was about to reach out and grasp everything I had been yearning for, even though I hadn’t truly known what awaited me.
I held my breath as he opened his mouth to speak.
“I am Drakkan,” he said, his voice a low rumble I could feel reverberating through the space between us. “And I am the god of this forest.”