Chapter 3 Winter
Chapter three
Winter
The weeks that followed were dreamlike and curious in nature; Elana was not sleeping, or at least not very much, for she was drawn ever more strongly to the well.
Her sleeplessness and wandering at night continued, and she tied herself ever more tightly to the bed each night.
She must have been sleeping, at least a little, for each morning she woke in a heap in the middle of her bedroom, tugging the rope to the full extent of its length, her foot purple and numb with the tightness of her bounds.
Yuletide celebrations passed and her family rang in the new year, but Elana could not have recounted a list of gifts given and received or delicious meals eaten. She lived as within a fog; her sleepless brain could not retain anything but the most basic of information.
“You’re sick again,” Marcus accused one bright wintery morning.
Elana had dressed for the snow and was bringing in firewood for the stove as Marcus chopped it.
The day had taken on a surreal quality, the bright sun tessellating her distance vision and making the whole valley seem like it existed within a shining snowflake.
Elana was so tired that she stumbled through the snow, dropping wood and picking it back up.
Her skin buzzed with exhaustion, every sound echoing around inside her head like a stone falling in a well.
She couldn’t think about the well. She shook her head, trying to clear thoughts of it.
“You are too,” Marcus said, taking her head-shaking for a denial of her declining health. “Those dark circles are back under your eyes, and I hear you at night, thumping around in your room. I know you’re not sleeping.”
Elana’s gaze shot up at him, but she didn’t deny it. He obviously knew the truth.
“It’s been bad ever since the priestesses stopped guarding the well.”
Now that accusation hit a little too close to the nerve for Elana. Her palms grew slick with sweat, the inside of her mouth cottony. “What do you mean?” she slurred.
Marcus hefted the axe over his shoulder, eyeing his sister keenly. “Was the monster there, sister?”
Elana stared at her brother, still not understanding what he was accusing her of.
“It’s in you, now, isn’t it?” Marcus had come closer, even though Elana didn’t remember him moving. He pressed the cold steel of the head of the axe into the tender, exposed skin at her neck. “The shadow monster. It’s with you now.”
Elana swallowed, her throat bobbing against the axe. Was Marcus suggesting that the monster had possessed her? “I don’t know what you mean, brother.”
He pressed the axe more firmly against her throat. “It’s why you’re drawn to the well. The monster has overtaken you.”
Tears stung Elana’s eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d blinked. She felt like if she closed her eyes, here and now in the yard, she would tumble into a heap and sleep until she froze to death.
Maybe it would be better that way.
She reached up and batted at the handle of the axe, taking the pressure of the steel from her neck.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’ve never heard that the monster could take people over.
” She tried to laugh off his accusation, but the sound came out false and bright.
She dumped her armload of wood at Marcus’s feet, turning away to leave.
But Marcus was faster, and grabbed her wrist, whirling her around to face him.
“Our valley has been affected by the shadow monster for a century. I don’t know what your problem is, or why the well is such an obsession for you.
But if I find out the monster is back and you’re somehow helping it? Somehow housing it?”
His grip on her arm tightened. Elana felt the slight shift of her bones under his fingers.
She didn’t know what he meant—there were no records of the monster possessing people.
He was wrong, he was crazy. He was obsessed.
She thought of all the times he’d narrowed his eyes at her, the suspicion he’d had of her that had somehow now grown into whatever this accusation was.
“Marcus,” she said evenly, eyes meeting his steely gaze, “you’re hurting me. ”
“I would never forgive you,” he breathed. He shoved her arm back towards her and her feet staggered to catch her weight.
A smattering of giggles sounded across the yard as the twins skidded into view, coming to a crashing halt before their older siblings.
“What’s going on, Marcus?” asked Edward.
Michel chewed the skin around his thumb nail. “Why are you shoving Elana?”
Marcus looked from Michel to Elana, shooting her a final, dark look. Then he smiled at his little brother. “Elana and I were just playing. Come, boys, let me tell you about the waterfall I found last time we went to cut wood at the edge of the Somberweald.”
Elana rubbed at her wrist where Marcus had ground her bones in his grip.
The Somberweald. The last vestiges of shadow.
Whether the trees were simply too dense for the monster to have eaten all the shadows there, or the greenery simply too ever-changing, the woods were the last place wherein the grey fuzzy darkness of shadows still bloomed.
Elana thought of them now, now that she could summon the texture of a shadow in her mind, the precise quality of light, or lack thereof, that the monster drew around herself. Was that what the forest was like?
Marcus gestured the twins toward the wood pile, speaking grandly of a wide, calm waterfall pouring from the rock where the meadow met the woods, the boys following him, rapt at his tales of bravery in facing the shadowy woods.
Shortly, he went back to chopping, the woosh and thunk of the axe keeping synchronicity with Elana’s heart.
Each swing of the axe ratcheted Elana’s emotions higher and tighter until she was a string ready to snap.
Marcus could not be trusted.
She returned to the house without a word to her brother. She shed her outdoor clothes in a heap and sat at the loom, tugging the beater bar with heated passion, pounding the fabric into orderly submission.
She couldn’t decide if she was more angry that Marcus had accused her in the first place or that he was, in his own misguided way, somewhat correct.
Maybe the monster wasn’t inside her, and maybe she wasn’t possessed or aiding the monster somehow.
But her own obsession was taking over her once again.
And as she beat away at the fabric, probably weaving it too tightly to be useful, she realized she didn’t care.
She had no control over what she wanted, what she desired.
She wasn’t longing for the well on purpose.
She didn’t choose this life. She didn’t wake up one morning and decide that she wanted to befriend a shadow monster.
Was that what she had done? Had she befriended a shadow monster?
Elana’s lower lip found its way between her teeth.
Looking up to check there was nobody else near the loom, she swished her skirts to the side to examine the new shadow seeded at her feet.
The monster’s words came back to her, clear as the temple bells: Build me a home, and I’ll let you keep your new dark companion.
Fail to do so, and I know what my next meal will be.
They certainly weren’t friendly words. But something in Elana longed to rail against her brother’s accusation, wanted to be the person she wanted to be and to damn all the expectations upon her.
Maybe something in her did want to keep this new shadow sleeping at her feet.
So while her body was present at the loom, tossing her shuttle and beating weft against warp, her mind began to scheme a way in which she could meet the shadow monster’s demands.
She couldn’t very well construct a house. Besides lacking the necessary basic skills, that much wood missing from the family pile would cause a great suspicion.
But a well built tent would keep off the wind, and with a few precautions, the water as well. And it would certainly be warmer than sleeping in the wet bottom of the well.
When she went to market, she bartered cloth ends and salvages from vendors who had no use of them, and she gathered fallen sticks at the edges of the meadows where the trees began, and she spun bits of the ends of threads into longer pieces of string, and when she could not sleep at night she sewed together a patchwork fabric that was strange but beautiful in its makeshift nature.
She bartered child-minding services for beeswax and waterproofed the cloth, and it wasn’t long before she had the makings of a small tent.
More snow had fallen since her last visit to the well, and she could hardly carry the parts of the tent there in her arms. She was in the process of piling her supplies, including a bedroll, food, and water, on the twins’ old sled as the sun set, when Josephine stomped through the snow, calling Elana’s name.
“And where exactly are you going with that nasty pile of old cloth and branches?” Josie’s voice took on the cadence of an angry schoolmarm.
Elana wiped her arm across her sweaty brow. “Do you know what, Josie, I’m going to the well.”
Her sister gasped.
Before Josie could interrupt, Elana continued on.
“No, don’t give me any sass. I’m exhausted, and all my body wants is to be near the well.
The priestesses have stopped guarding it, so clearly they’ve deemed it safe.
I need to sleep. I’m going to set up this tent and camp there, and get a decent night’s sleep, so that I can feel like myself again. ”
Josie was momentarily speechless, but when she found her voice at last, what came out was not what Elana expected.
“I suppose if that’s what you have to do to feel okay again, I support you.
It’s certainly… unconventional, and I think you should be safe, but if you have a tent and warm gear, and if the priestesses are right and the shadow monster is gone, then so be it. ”