Chapter 33 #2
My mind was my own even though the mist remained thick.
My thoughts were still frenzied, but they no longer slipped from my grasp.
I drew breath, clasped the talisman between white-knuckled fingers, and pressed forth across the meadow.
Beyond the pond, the thrashing roots had left the brushwood in ruins.
Spindly twigs and cracked branches littered the mud-brown snow and slowed my step.
I climbed over them, numb to the pain of bruised knees and torn skin.
I was a wild thing in a wild place, where I belonged.
I paused for breath at the treeline. The ancient oak, the heart of the forest, rose like a mountain into the skies—with branches as wide as the earth, a crown as tall as the clouds, a moss-draped trunk like a tower.
I found Adrik amid its gnarled roots.
I screamed as I saw him, and as I reached him, I fell to my knees. His face was neither dead nor alive, but a horrid veined shade of grey and green. I brushed a finger over his cheek. It scraped my skin, coarse like bark.
“Adrik,” I whispered.
He did not answer. He could not. His mouth hung half-open in a silent scream, his beautiful features twisted into something grotesque; like the gnarled knot in the trunk of a tree, one that a wanderer might mistake from afar for a face.
“Adrik!”
I clutched his arm and shook him as I sobbed. Faintly, I remembered the birch twigs, and I let go of him just long enough to make a small circle around us. I tore the cloak into five long shreds and fastened them carelessly to the lower branches like ribbons.
The wind hissed in anger. You protect him. You protect the traitor.
“Please,” I sobbed. “He did not mean to—” I gasped for air. “I know what happened. I can fix it. Just let him go.”
Let me to him, screeched the wind. Let me take what is mine. Let me taste the vile poison of his blood.
I clutched Adrik’s bark-clad face. My tears seeped deep into the wood, darkening the bark. I scraped my palm over it—
I scraped it, and beneath the knotted scar writhed a vicious pain.
It stirred memories of rattling coughs, cabbage soup, the sting of a rusted knife.
The darkness within me stirred. From its depths crawled a memory.
And I remembered… I remembered not just the thick bandage around my hand as I held my dying mother.
No, I remembered there was one on her hand, too.
I watched, vision blurred with death, thoughts tangled with fever, as she wept.
As if looking through a misted glass, I remembered that there was another spirit.
That I had met it. That I bore its mark on my palm.
There was a spirit who adored barter. Who loved all things balanced.
Who delighted in the art of trading. My mother did not talk of that spirit often and when she did, it was in a whisper.
She never talked to it either or invited it into our home, save for one dark autumn night when my forehead burned with the blight-fever.
She’d been feeding me a bowl of cabbage soup, and I remembered not much of that night save this: the fire on my skin, the cold of death in my bones.
The door crashed open with a howl of wind and my mother’s eyes became dark as the moonless night.
She did not hesitate as she reached for the rusted knife but she screamed as she sank it into her palm.
I had not the strength to do much but draw a rattling breath as she did the same to me.
She licked my palm, trickled a drop of her blood into my mouth.
Then, she clasped my wound to hers, and we remained so until my forehead cooled.
I remembered rising from the stove bed, excited to tell her that, against all odds, I was feeling better. I found her faint with the blight-fever beside me.
She had not hesitated to die for me.
She was mad, my father reminded me later, when I told him of that night because the unspoken words were festering within me. Just a mad woman with mad visions and no one would be surprised if her daughter was as mad as her.
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
No, my mother had not hesitated that night. I did not hesitate either.
Once Adrik had healed the tree, the town would need me no longer. It would still need him. This world… This world needed his brightness.
I freed my knife from my belt and plunged the blade into my hand.
I barely felt it, numb with cold. I reached for Adrik’s hand, the one not yet covered in bark, and I drew the knife as gently over his skin as I could.
When I touched my lips to his palm, I sighed in bliss—he tasted of all the things I held dear.
I held my own hand over his mouth, dribbling a few drops of blood into his mouth.
Then, I settled beside him and drew the cloak over us, clutching his hand.
I unbridled the threads of my magic, allowed them to flow from me like a golden river to warm the soil beneath us—to keep us alive while the spirit of barter worked its magic. Exhaustion crept into my bones. I paid it no heed.
I needed to keep going. I needed to ensure we survived this cold long enough for Adrik to wake. For him to break the curse.
“Evana.”