Chapter 2
Two
In her village, order ruled above all else. Order was peace. Order was safety. Order was absolute.
Justice. Punishment. Law. These were the doctrines of her people.
Elowen knew better than to ask for softness, or to ever expect it.
She moved through the narrow stone streets like a slip of shadow, her body too thin for the coarse fabric that hung from her frame.
Her long dark hair, usually braided to keep it neat for the Council’s scrutiny, often escaped in loose strands that brushed her hollow cheeks.
Her blue eyes, striking even when lowered in obedience, noticed everything, even the things she was punished for seeing.
Her bones pressed gently against her skin—the sharp angles of collarbone, the pronounced curve of her ribcage, the thin wrists that looked as though the slightest pressure might snap them.
She, like so many in the village, bore the unmistakable signs of hunger: pallid skin stretched too tightly over delicate structure, faint tremors in her hands when she worked too long without rest, a weariness that lingered in the hollows beneath her eyes.
Her physical fragility did not dim her presence, it sharpened it, making her stand out like a single fragile flower growing through cracked, darkened stone of the houses that were filled with darker silence.
The cottages were lined up in narrow, uniform rows like teeth clenched in a jaw.
No one planted flowers in their windowsills.
No one hung paintings in their homes. No one loitered.
Laughter, if it even existed at all, was hushed behind thick curtains and quickly silenced.
Families kept to themselves and taught their children obedience before they even uttered their first word.
Expression was weakness in her village. Questioning the rules set in place by the Council was treason. And kindness? Kindness was foolish, dangerous, and forbidden.
Elowen had learned these things as a young girl, but she ached to be different.
She was always too quick to comfort. Too slow to judge. Too eager to shed a tear when a thief lost a hand or question why the poor and sick were given less food during the harsh winter months than the healthy, even though they were the ones that needed the nourishment the most.
Elowen knew that softness was equivalent to danger.
Like her father, she grew up to become a healer, though the townspeople trusted him more, for he was both a man and more experienced in the art. Her father was quiet, firm, and always obeyed the Council’s orders without question.
His touches were clinical, and his words were few.
Elowen, by contrast, was gentle. She hummed quietly to herself when she crushed herbs. She would let her cold palms linger on a child’s feverish brow for a bit longer than needed. Her heart ached when a woman would come in seeking a pain remedy for bruises shaped like her husband’s fist.
There was a part of everyone in the village that tolerated her for this, as it was human nature to seek comfort, but that was all they did: tolerate. They did not accept her, nor like her, nor trust her.
But she did not care. Or at least, she tried not to.
Elowen had but one freedom, and it was the forest.
Beyond the high iron gate of her town, past the guard’s torches and the stone walls, lay the beauty of nature.
This is where Elowen found peace and serenity in her rigid world.
Even the light seemed softer there, filtered through a thick canopy of trees that changed with the seasons into vibrant shades of yellow, orange and red before falling lifeless in the winter—only to turn green again.
She visited the forest often, under the excuse of gathering roots and other ingredients. The Council approved of her collecting, so long as she returned before dark and her satchel was inspected upon return.
Everything she brought back became the property of the town, and so however much she might have wanted to, Elowen was not allowed to have things. No one was.
Deep in the forest, far from the paths laid by men of the past, there was a lake.
It wasn’t large, but it was wild, natural, and real.
Cupped between moss-covered hills, surrounded by soft meadow grass and floral shrubs, the lake reflected the beauty of the sky every day and night in a way no mirror ever could.
Animals, too, found peace there. Deer would come for a refreshing drink while foxes played in the brush. A crane would show off its beautiful balance, while fish bobbed at the surface of the water, waiting for insects to land.
The lake was where Elowen was allowed to feel. She was allowed to unbraid her hair and decorate the locks with flower buds. She was allowed to draw shapes in the soil. She was allowed to sing, even if she didn’t know any songs.
Here, the world was gentle, and Elowen could be gentle with it.
Her village trusted the forest as much as they trusted her, and that was very little.
Long ago, in a time before anyone in her village was born, dragons once lived in the mountains and hunted in this forest. It is said that their blood soaked into the roots and deep into the stone.
Her village said the forest was cursed by their blood, but Elowen did not feel that way.
It felt like the only place in her world that wasn’t.
Still, she was careful. She never strayed too far from the lake, and certainly not any deeper into the forest. She was a healer, not a fighter, and Elowen did not want to put herself in danger, forced to defend herself while alone.
One day, while foraging near the lake for mushrooms, she saw something strange.
A trail of thick, dark, fresh blood in the grass.
Something within her stirred, and her healing nature overrode her caution, compelling her to follow.
The blood cut through the soft grass in uneven strokes, as if something was wounded and attempted to stagger to safety, only to collapse every few steps. Elowen crouched, her satchel thumping softly against her hip as she followed the trail.
It never occurred to her to turn back, so she continued forward, even though the sun was already dipping behind the trees and she knew she must return home before dark.
Her heart raced as she followed the blood trail. Something within her wanted to believe there was more to the woods than her small village knew—that magic still lingered there. That she wasn’t the only one who felt like the silence between the trees wasn’t as empty as it seemed.
Then, near a small clearing, she saw it: a corpse.
Not of a human or a dangerous beast. But of a goat.
A large one, well-fed and plump. Or at least, it was before its belly was torn open, leaving behind thick claw marks raked across its hind.
Flies had already begun to gather at the wounds.
Elowen exhaled softly, and knelt beside it.
She brushed a hand over the stiffened leg.
As she stroked the strawy hide of the goat, her fingers grazed over the brand burned into the rear near the tail.
She recognized the marking well. Livestock from her village, belonging to an old man with no family.
The council kept him well-paid in exchange for keeping them well-fed.
An even trade in their eyes, while half the town went to bed every night with the sharp ache of hunger in their bellies.
The goat must have escaped its pen and found a bloody fate here in the woods. Elowen eyed the claw marks again. Not from a wolf, as the marks were too wide. Not from a bear either, as they didn’t hunt in that part of the woods. The marks were also too deep to have been from a falcon or eagle.
Something else downed the poor animal. Something big.
Night began to fall, and Elowen needed to return home before she was punished for being out past curfew. Before something returned to finish off its meal.
Elowen stood. She didn’t hum or think, just hastily walked home with a stirring, unsettling feeling in her gut that she was no longer alone in the forest.
By the time she returned to the stone walls of her village, the guards had closed the heavy iron gate. But Elowen was used to slipping through the bars when the guards were lost in conversation amongst themselves.
Once back inside the walls, she could freely walk, no longer afraid of being caught out after dark, though curfew quickly approached. Elowen tightened her thin shawl around her shoulders and made her way to her father’s cottage.
It was small, like all the others. Even smaller, maybe, because the front entry functioned as a small store when the townspeople needed remedy for some wound or ailment.
She shared a single bedroom with her father, sleeping on the floor on a mattress she made herself out of worn-out clothes and feathers she’d collected over the years during her ventures into the forest.
When she finally pushed inside the weathered door to her home, her father sat at the small table near the fireplace, poking the glowing embers with an iron rod. He didn’t glance up when she entered, just let out a gruff sound of acknowledgement that she had returned.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“No, father,” she said.
He grunted. “Useless girl,” he muttered. Not with any cruelty, but with exhaustion. The Council always requested something new from her father. A new potion or salve or tea. They ran her father ragged with work sometimes, and it was Elowen’s job to make sure the ingredients stayed stocked.
Sometimes, though, like today, she’d return with nothing, and her father quietly feared it would be the day the Council ran out of patience with him.
Elowen didn’t flinch at her father’s words. She never did. She simply sat her empty satchel down on the floor near the door and moved to a small basin to wash her hands. The cold water ached in her bones and bit at her skin, so she joined her father at the fire to dry and warm them.
That night, they shared a dinner of stale bread and water-thinned gruel. Flavorless. Hard to swallow. But it was all they had, and both she and her father knew better than to complain.
Complaints about such things were forbidden.
After she washed the plate and bowl they shared for dinner in the same basin she washed her hands in, she crawled into her flat, uncomfortable mattress on the floor, and pulled her shawl tight around her to try and hold in the warmth.
She lay awake near the window, staring at the silver moon and stars from a world far beyond her own.
One day, she thought, she’d like to be closer to the stars.
Her mind began to drift back to the goat and the claw marks, thinking hard about what beast could have caused such an injury.
She remembered a weight in the air she’d never felt before, but quickly corrected herself. She was surely just imagining things.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had watched her there in the forest, and maybe even hunted her.
Elowen closed her eyes, forgot about the goat, and dreamed of wings bringing her high above the clouds to touch the stars.