Chapter 2 Autumn
Chapter two
Autumn
Elana wandered to the well during the day, sometimes, to observe the patient priestesses, guarding the well during daylight hours. As far as she knew, they were uneventful. No tales of creatures emerging from the well were whispered through the markets.
If it was true that the monster was gone, the death of it had thankfully not returned the shadows.
Maybe they would never come back. Maybe this valley, this town, would be shadowless for eternity. The townsfolk cautiously rejoiced. It was a subtle, uncertain kind of joy, however, because nothing had changed.
And that was just Elana’s concern. Nothing had changed. Each night she still found herself waking, literally at the end of her rope, standing in the middle of her room, her foot throbbing against the grasp of the leather cuff on her ankle. Nothing had changed, and Elana still longed for the well.
She’d no appetite, for her stomach was full to the brim with her longing, and as weeks passed, Elana grew paler and thinner.
Her sleep was so thoroughly interrupted at night that dark circles ringed her eyes, only offset by how pale her skin had grown.
Her family watched her, worry etched in their faces, but what could they do?
They could not force Elana to eat, and they could not help her to sleep.
By day, she did not do her chores or watch the children any longer, and everyone else simply picked up her slack because they didn’t know what else to do.
Elana watched Josephine, who watched her back with tired, anxious eyes.
She saw what the new responsibilities were doing to her younger sister, but she couldn’t bring herself to do anything about it.
Daily she wandered close enough to the well to see the priestess there, each time with a shadowed person nearby, often seated on a blanket with a book or some stitching or whittling.
All in all this was probably the least offensive experiment to be thrust upon the shadowed ones.
No blood was drawn, and they were not subject to the jeering gazes of the festival crowds.
Only Elana watched.
Fall was upon the valley now, the final explosion of wildflowers sending a cacophony of color across the meadows in a last desperate bid to send their seeds out before the snow.
Elana sat on the porch, shivering despite the late afternoon heat.
Her chair pointed east, and she watched the wildflowers swaying in the breeze, wishing only that she could enjoy them.
That she could feel enjoyment at all. That she could feel anything besides the aching longing in her chest. She felt as still as a stone in a river, watching the world rush around her but unable to interact in any meaningful way, watching her family slide past in their rush through chores and meals, until bedtime, when she dutifully lashed herself down and continued to wait and waste away.
Only Marcus seemed to slow in the rush, seemed to stop and watch her on her chair.
Only Marcus narrowed his eyes at her, tilting his head in the way he did when he examined a problem like a broken wagon wheel or deciding where next to roam the chickens.
Something in his attention gnawed at Elana, almost like he suspected her of some criminal activity.
She didn’t have the energy to figure out what his problem was, though.
He already knew about her being drawn to the well.
He had always known. Why would it bother him now?
It didn’t matter enough for her to focus on it.
She understood with poignant clarity why others who were drawn to the well, the ones whose families turned them over to the temple, wasted away and died in their youth.
She understood why the priestesses only kept them for a few short months, years if they were lucky.
Denying herself her heart’s greatest longing was carving away the very flesh from her bones.
The sun set, throwing blue twilight, and then black, in through her window. She tossed in bed, the rope twining and tangling between her ankles. She was so tired. At last, she sat up in bed.
Desire burned beneath her breast with a violence she’d never known before.
Maybe enough was enough. She couldn’t keep living like this.
She’d been lying in bed for hours and knew not one moment of peace.
Knowing that her family was already deep in slumber, she threw the covers back and began frantically working her knots free.
Her fingernails were chewed to the quick, which made this slow going work.
But she was finished. She’d lived with some form of this desire, being drawn to the well, her whole life, and it was only getting worse and more impossible to ignore.
She had been told to stop it, to suppress it.
And she had tried! She had tried to be a good daughter, a good woman, and to do what was expected of her.
But now she was tired, shadows damn it all.
If walking to the well in the dark ended her, she welcomed the sweet release of death.
She slipped out of the house, silent on bare feet, not stopping to pull on a cloak or boots.
She was afraid the sounds would wake her family.
She worried her wild heart beating against her ribs was loud enough to wake them, never mind adding boots on the porch to the ruckus.
Her breath came in shallow, nervous sips.
She didn’t know what would be waiting for her at the well.
Her own reflection, severed from her and acting of its own free will? A monster?
Or perhaps worse, nothing at all. Perhaps all this desire was in her own mind and it meant nothing. Perhaps she’d lost her grip on reality and the desire was nothing more than a curiosity of her broken mind. She swallowed down a mad laugh, slapping her hand over her lips.
It didn’t matter. It had to stop. And she had tried denying herself for so long, she felt she had to try something different. She couldn’t keep doing the same things over and over and watching as nothing changed except for her own misery multiplying.
The grass was crisp with the barest hint of frost, and Elana cursed her lack of boots. But she wasn’t going to stop now. Gooseflesh dotted her skin and shivers wracked through her, but she had to know what was waiting for her at the well.
Overhead the moon was pale and brilliant, like Elana, but it was full and round and lovely where she was gaunt and empty.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the changes in herself each time she looked in the mirror; her cheekbones were sharp as blades, her clavicles standing out against her milk-pale skin.
There was warmth in her skin still, though, as her footsteps thawed the grasses and the hem of her nightgown grew damp and chilly against her ankles.
When Elana finally pressed her thin fingers into the cold stone of the well, the longing within her seemed to settle at last. She inhaled deeply, thinking she would smell the last of the wildflowers, but the scent that rose to greet her seemed to come from the well itself.
Though the well had been closed for a hundred years and was surely wet and dank and perhaps—who knew—filled with rotting things, the scent that came to Elana’s nose was not offensive.
It was a smell of earth and spice and petrichor, the kind of smell that enchanted the bookshop in town, paper and leather and all things comfortable and deep.
Elana inhaled it hungrily, and felt sated for the first time in months.
The darkness inside her had brought her to the well, but perhaps her unusual hunger wasn’t dangerous after all.
Elana did not feel frightened. She felt only a vague curiosity, weakly satisfied by the smells coming from the well.
Perhaps denying her desire all this time had been the incorrect course of action.
Her fingers slid on the dampness of the cool stone, and she found herself leaning over the edge of the well, inhaling deeply of the rich and curious scent.
Inside the well was blacker than any night Elana had ever known. The darkness was so deep, so complete, that it seemed to pull her inward, a sense of vertigo flooding sideways through her mind so strongly she had to hold on or risk falling.
The darkness came toward her. Or perhaps she was falling toward it?
Elana couldn’t tell. Tendrils of shadow snaked over the edge of the well, curling around and between her fingers, sending a frisson of delight over her palms. A wild urge to move, to dance, to clench all her muscles in response overwhelmed her body, and she gripped the edge of the well all the tighter, her fingernails bending on the stone and moss pressing back against the swirl of her fingerprints.
The shadows whirled and grew, winding up her arms, curling provocatively around her neck, making all the small loose hairs there stand at attention.
A vicious hiss took up wild resonance, and Elana didn’t know whether to clap her palms against her ears to fend it off, or to throw her arms wide and welcome it into her depths.
She knew what she was seeing. “I’ve no shadow for you to eat, Monster,” Elana mumbled, her lips nearly numb with something that felt not quite like fear.
The hiss responded, a many-voiced sound, echoing through the well and around the field of wildflowers. Their petals seemed almost to shrink in response, but Elana straightened her spine, bringing her fingertips to brush her tingling lips.
Slowly, the shadows deepened and darkened around her, whirling across her ankles, soothing the heat of the skin under the cuffs and winding through her toes as she spread them in the grass.
It was not fear that rose in Elana’s chest in response.
The longer she stood strong, the more corporeal the shadows became, more solid and real, until they gripped her wrist like a hand and pulled.