Chapter 7
I dream again of the first time Dae and I met, or maybe it’s called remembering.
I was nine, a little while after the reaping and the move. My parents and I had parked on a dead-end road at the end of a long country lane, ready to explore a new forest—not the one Dad usually came through, but a different one.
I jumped out of the car. Ahead lay a small pathway leading into the woods. Bluebells were in full bloom, specking the landscape with azure. Trees hung low, leaning in close to one another to whisper secrets and rumours. Moss carpeted the banks.
The smell of wet pine filled my senses as I walked toward the thin path and into the woods.
“Stay close, love,” Mum shouted, a high-pitched edge to her voice. Her hands were clasped together, her eyebrows pressed so tightly they morphed into one long, horizontal caterpillar across her forehead.
“She’s fine. The forest will answer to her.” Dad let out a deep sigh.
The tall oak trees shrouded me, and the whispering wind brushed against my arms as I wandered through the forest. A little brook tinkled in the distance, the sound almost entirely drowned out by my parents’ bickering. It had been incessant that day. Nonstop.
I kept walking until the forest deepened, the light growing dimmer. A bramble shook. My eyes darted to my parents—they still deep in discussion. It trembled again as I neared.
I went down on my hands and knees and crawled from the path into the thicket, wincing as the pines and sticks scraped against my legs and palms. I crawled and crawled until I came to a small clearing.
In the middle sat what could have been a boy, if not for the two small goat’s horns sprouting from his head. About my age, his grey eyes were upturned at the corners, and his cheeks were round and full of life. His black curly locks fell across his soft skin, and his full mouth smiled happily at me. We both beamed.
He did a backward roll and landed on his feet, earning a laugh from me. I stepped toward him. He stepped back. I kept walking, refusing to let him escape. I continued until his back pressed against a tree, and we stood very, very close, almost nose to nose, our breaths intermingling in the forest air.
“Elysia!”
My parents’ voices resonated through the forest. They’d finally noticed I was missing. Better be quick, I thought.
“Be my friend.” It was supposed to sound like a question. Instead, it came out more like a demand.
“Okay,” the boy replied, his voice reminiscent of the tinkling sounds of a small stream.
“Elly!” A frantic edge was creeping into their voices.
“What are you?” I asked, jumping to the punchline, not wanting to keep Mum worrying. The boy raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips.
“What do you mean?”
“Boys don’t have horns.”
“Says who?”
“Says…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t think of anyone who had actually told me boys didn’t have horns. “What’s your name?”
“Daesryn,” he replied.
A pause. “Well, don’t you want to know my name?”
Daesryn smiled cheekily and remained silent for another moment.
“Elysia,” my parents’ voices sounded again, closer now.
Daesryn wiggled his eyebrows, and I laughed.
“I already know your name.” Mischief laced his voice.
“Are you my guardian angel?” I asked.
“No, do you want me to be?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what a guardian angel is.”
“You just, I don’t know, stick around, I guess.”
“I could try to be one,” he offered weakly.
“Okay.”
“Okay… I will.”
“I should probably go.”
“Probably.”
“Well, bye then.” I turned to leave.
Dae grabbed my fingers and pulled me back toward him before trying to kiss me on the cheek. The suddenness made me jerk, and Dae ended up kissing me somewhere between my ear and hair. We both blushed, our eyes trailing to the grass. I quickly turned and ran toward the edge of the clearing. Without another glance, I got back on my hands and knees and crawled toward Mum’s voice.
I knew what it meant when you meet a little boy who’s not a little boy. I’d met an angel, and he was going to watch out for me.
And watch he did. For all the following years, I could feel him. Deep in my bones. Burrowed beneath my skin. Hiding in the forests. Lurking in the trees. Slinking through the shrubbery. Watching me. Grey eyes, pitch-black hair, and curved horns followed me wherever I went.
I tried looking for him, but it never worked. The next time I saw him was in the forests behind the school at thirteen. I’d just gotten into a fight and ran to the forest to cry, and Dae was there, leaning against a tree as though four years hadn’t passed.
He looked utterly relaxed, lounging against the tree as if nothing had changed, except for his eyes. They burned with cold, hard malice. His horns, once so playful, now seemed sharp and menacing, more devilish than angelic. But I pushed aside the unease, refusing to judge a book by its cover. Especially not after spending the better part of four years searching for him.
The trees creaked as squirrels, birds, and bugs neared Dae’s long, fluid, tapping fingers. Dressed in forest green and midnight black, Dae’s grey eyes had hardened, turning cold and ancient. On top of his head, behind his horns, sat a tiny gold band—a new adornment. His eyes tilted higher at the edges, and his cheeks were sharp enough to draw blood.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was some terrible mistake.
Dae sniffed, his large, hooked nose curving upward with the movement.
“Hi,” I said.
Silence hung heavy between us. I took a step towards Dae. He flinched, his eyes wide with a wariness that made my stomach clench. He backed away, a squirrel circling his feet as he retreated from the comforting shadow of the tree. My heart fluttered, beating a strange, uncomfortable tune in my chest.
His horns had grown an extra inch and were starting to curve slightly at the top. His fingers, once short and plump, were now slender and restless, adorned with woven bands of lavender and ivy.
“Would you like to come with me?” Dae asked, biting menace and gentle love mingling in his singsong tone.
“Yes,” I replied, the sound tearing its way out of my throat. I’d tried to hold the word in my mouth, but it was already gone, singing a pathetic song in his ears. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I know.” He started pacing toward me, and it was my turn to back up.
I flinched as he reached up, his fingers pushing a stray curl back into my loose bun. The curl bounced back. He pushed it in again, using his other hand to weave it in and keep it in place. It bounced back again. With quiet precision, Dae used two fingers to pull an equal strand from the other side of my hair out, then twirled and positioned it so it mirrored the original stray curl.
“I hate you, you know?” he said when he’d finished fussing with my hair.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went for, “Oh.” My feet shuffled beneath me.
“Maybe I will take you one day.” His voice was all jagged edges and ice shards. It all felt so wrong. I shivered, a new, foreign, eerie shiver that sent goosebumps erupting across my skin.
Dae’s face softened, and his eyes quickly lost their cold edge as he ran one long, lavender-adorned finger down my shivering arm.
“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” he whispered.
“I should get back. I’ll get in trouble with school if I don’t.”
“Wait.” Dae shuffled, scraping a hand through his hair. “Do you want to just stay a little while?”
My heart leaped, even though he’d told me he hated me. “I really can’t.”
“What about tomorrow? At night, the forest behind your house, by that big yew tree.”
I had no idea where the yew tree was, or what a yew tree even looked like, or how Dae even knew where I lived. Still, I said, “Yes.”
Once again, I wake up crying in my cold, empty, lonely cell.