A Deal in the Dark #3
Just as I was about to close my eyes to the pain, I glimpsed movement at the edge of the clearing to my right.
I forced my eyes to stay open and follow the movement, both Nella and I paralyzed on the ground in a heap.
A small figure was stalking closer to us around the edge of the clearing.
I could make out spindly legs and arms, as if the thing was fragile and bony.
I couldn’t make out its eyes or a mouth, but I could tell its head was turned toward us, watching.
The clothes it wore seemed thin as a sheet of paper and just as white, billowing in the wind still swirling around us.
Its makeshift clothing covered only the lower half of the thing’s bony body and stopped at its knees, every bone pronounced.
The creature seemed to have the same anatomy as a mortal human yet was far from human with its cries and thin purplish skin.
It had long, flowing jet-black hair that seemed at odds with the rest of the weathered body. The hair was almost beautiful and flowed over its chest, covering what could have been bare breasts.
I tried to pull Nella to her feet, but she seemed glued to the ground, limbs frozen and unwilling to move. So instead, I found some sliver of courage and grasped it for dear life.
“We mean no harm! Let us be, and we’ll let you be!” I cried out, praying it was human enough to understand me.
The thing stopped its pursuit and wailing and stared at me.
I realized with a lurch in my gut that it had no eyes, only indentations of sockets with thin skin clinging to its pointed bone structure.
Its mouth seemed to smile, but it was hard to tell, as it had no distinct lips, just an opening that peeled back to reveal spaced-out thin yellow teeth that I guessed had once been very sharp but had been ground to dull points over time.
And I assumed this thing had been around for a long time.
Nella stirred on the ground behind me as the creature’s stare-with-no-eyes seemed to shift a fraction from me to her. I bolstered the last remnants of my courage, intending to protect Nella with my last breath.
“Child, can you understand me?” the thing asked in a voice that was unearthly and somewhat feminine. Its eye sockets turned back up toward me, clearly intending the question for me.
I could hear the wailing behind the question, but it was faint and less painful, almost diminished as it mixed with the words I could distinguish.
Nella’s screams started up again, and I became desperate to make them stop. She must have heard only the wailing, no words, or else she would have been as shocked as I was that this thing spoke.
“Yes, I can! Please, just—stop. I’ll give you anything you ask to leave us be!”
“Naci!” Nella screamed, pleaded.
“Fuck, Nella, I’m trying. I don’t know what to do! You run if you get the chance, do you understand?”
“You are unique, my child,” the creature said, ignoring the panic between Nella and me. “A mortal that can understand me and not succumb to my wails without their brain bleeding and imploding. It is mere amusement that has kept my call from ruining the other.”
The other. I looked to my sister on the ground, my fear for her growing to a potent thing as I saw a trickle of blood stream from her ear between her fingers.
“Stop, please! If your amusement buys her life, then tell me what you wish, and I’ll do it,” I pleaded with everything I had.
It pondered my offer for a few wonderfully silent moments, giving Nella a reprieve.
“You could be useful, I suppose. I’ll give you a task, a unique one. A difficult one. If you succeed, I shall grant you your life and one question, and I shall answer as truly and honestly as is possible with my knowledge, which I admit is vast.”
Of course it hadn’t been enough to survive my father and Aemilia. Now I had to survive an ancient creature’s creepy—and most likely deadly—forest task.
“And if I don’t succeed?” I asked, fear and uncertainty interlacing with my thrashing heartbeat.
“If you fail? Well then, I will wail until the other’s head explodes and take you as my personal plaything. It’s not often that I can keep an intelligent being alive while speaking to it. This is a banshee’s gift and curse.”
Holy. Shit. The thing was, in fact, a banshee. I thought banshees were just warnings in nursery rhymes, stories to frighten children into staying away from fae lands.
I had no choice but to accept. This couldn’t be how either of us died. Not here, not now. Not right after we’d gotten our first taste of freedom that promised a better life.
Questions chased each other in my mind. It said only one, but there were two I needed the answers to. Two that were equally important to me and to us surviving. If it had such vast knowledge, I needed to ask both.
Two questions, two lifelines. Both answers could change everything for me. For us.
“Two questions, and I will agree.”
The banshee seemed to think, bringing its long, thin fingers to tangle in its hair. Its lips pulled back again in a sinister, lipless smile.
“You have a deal. Now, for your task.”