Chapter 4 Spring
Chapter four
Spring
The tail end of winter faded into the warmth of full spring, and the lush green of the meadow began to pop with specks of color as the earliest of the wildflowers came back to life.
Each morning after visiting the well, when Elana swooped her skirts aside, the little shadow that was seeded at the base of her legs had grown incrementally larger.
It was becoming harder and harder to hide the fact that Elana, once shadowless, now found herself being followed by a dark companion.
Maybe it could have simply been caused by the sun returning to the valley with the return of warm late spring, but somehow Elana knew it was because of the time she was spending with Nessa.
As the warmth of the days grew, so did the evenings get later and later, and Elana spent minutes upon minutes wringing her hands, waiting longer and longer for her family to fall asleep at night as the fading light insisted on taking longer and longer to die.
But her nights. Oh, the glorious secret of her nights, sharp as a freshly honed blade and sweet as maple sugar floss on a hungry tongue.
Nessa’s tent became more and more home-like with each visit as Elana secreted things for her from her mother’s storage cupboards.
An old pillow no one was using. A ragged blanket that hadn’t been loved since the twins were young.
An overturned wooden bucket Elana found behind the barn, half rotted, to serve as a table.
A deck of cards missing several that still managed to serve for playing chase the queen.
During one such game, Nessa snorted frustration at losing to Elana yet again. She threw her cards on the bucket and stood. “Elana. Take me to town.”
“Nessa, it doesn’t matter how badly I might want to take you there, I simply cannot.” The fight was already growing stale, the women having talked around and around it in exhausted circles.
“I swear to the darkness I will eat your shadow,” growled Nessa. She shoved Elana playfully backward onto the bedroll and followed, plopping herself on top of Elana’s belly.
The weight of her was glorious, pressing Elana down into the earth. She could die here happily, between Nessa’s thighs, held to the ground by the weight of a darkness she’d run from her whole life.
For a moment, Nessa looked shocked with her own audacity, but then she gathered Elana’s hands between her own.
“Please, Elana. I was trapped in a well for a century, with nothing to think on but rage and hatred. You have no idea how dark and lonely it was down there. And only because I was different. Only because I longed for something nobody else understood.”
“But you changed the entire history of our people with your appetite,” argued Elana.
Nessa sniffed. “It’s not like they were a very nice people, at least not to me.”
“You murdered a dozen citizens.”
“I’ve changed.” Nessa’s voice was petulant.
“You literally just threatened to eat my shadow.”
Nessa threw her arms up. “Would that be the worst thing in the world? You’ve been without one your whole life until now.”
“I’m rather fond of it now,” said Elana, joining Nessa in petulance.
Nessa captured Elana’s hands again and pressed them into her chest. “A hundred years, Elana. A hundred. I want to know things. The whole world. I want to see things! I long, I desire, I want!”
Now that was something Elana could understand. She knew what it was to be driven mad with desire and longing. She sat up, throwing Nessa to the ground. Nessa squeaked her displeasure.
“Come on,” Elana said. “I won’t take you to town, but I think I know a place we can go.” She offered a hand to Nessa, and Nessa reached back, a cautious optimism blooming over her face.
Elana had never explored the valley further than the well. After all, the woods were terrifying, and the well had consumed her every waking and sleeping thought, and all the places between wake and sleep also, for so long that she didn’t know what it was to want anything else.
But her lack of desire to explore didn’t mean that she didn’t listen to other people who did so, and Marcus had told her of the waterfall in the woods just past the well.
She pulled Nessa out of the tent and into the starlight, where her shadows somehow blended with the night without disappearing. Their fingers intertwined, Elana tugged her toward the edge of the Somberweald.
Nessa looked over her shoulder toward town with a longing gaze. Elana tried not to be hurt, squeezing Nessa’s fingers to bring her attention to the edge of the woods.
“My brother told me about a waterfall,” she said, scanning the trees as she remembered the day Marcus had threatened her with his axe.
She swallowed down the fear that memory brought bubbling sourly to the surface, and tried to remember what he had said about where the water was.
They ducked beneath the shadows of the Somberweald, and the world grew quiet and close around them, shadowy darkness enveloping everything.
A new kind of fear bloomed in her chest. People didn’t come here, yet here was Elana, boldly trekking deeper into the Somberweald than she’d have ever dreamed of daring.
“You talk about your family a lot.” Nessa was following faithfully now, cheeks shining darkly with excitement as they picked their way over fallen logs and tramped on spongey moss.
Elana cringed. “I love them,” she began slowly, “and they love me, too. I am not well loved elsewhere.”
“Why ever not?” asked Nessa, genuinely shocked. “You are very lovable.”
Heat rose to Elana’s cheeks. “I—thank you? I just… I’m different. I suppose. I don’t want what other women my age want.” Elana brushed aside a hanging vine and pressed onward.
“And what is that?”
Elana looked out the side of her eye at Nessa. Their feet carried them silently over the moss and ferns. Elana stayed quiet, thinking maybe she could avoid the topic.
But Nessa was not to be deterred. “What is it that women your age want?”
Elana sighed. She hated that she had to be the person to tell Nessa this. “Women my age want to be married and have children.”
Nessa looked coolly at her. “And you don’t want that?”
“I’m not—I don’t know.” This was an easier answer than trying to delve into the truth.
For a long while the two walked in silence, splitting the forest and weaving their way through the trees.
Elana heard it before she saw it; a whispering rush that became a roar the closer they walked.
The woods opened into a clearing, and up against the rock, the wide white foaming spray of a waterfall poured from the foot of the mountain.
Nessa shook her fingers free from Elana’s grip and dashed forward, as close to the water as she could be without stepping directly under the falls.
Elana lingered back, watching Nessa’s delight as she reached her shadowy fingers into the water.
“I know this place. How did your brother know this place?”
“He comes to cut wood in the Somberweald sometimes. I’d no idea he’d ventured so far inside.
” It hurt, to think of her brother as someone brave and bold, to think of him in admiration since he clearly didn’t reciprocate those feelings.
If anything, he despised her for her weakness.
Was suspicious of her. Elana tried to focus on the beauty of the waterfall, on the newness of this thing she’d never seen, instead of allowing herself to wallow in self-pity because of Marcus.
The spray caught Nessa’s hand and bounced onto her face and hair. Nessa laughed with delight, squinting into the foam. When she turned back, Elana’s breath caught in her chest.
Nessa’s face was spattered with a thin blanket of water that shone like stars against her dark skin. Droplets hung in her hair like jewels, catching the moonlight and reflecting it back.
No man could ever look so beautiful, bedecked by stars in the moonlight.
Elana couldn’t begin to imagine ever finding a dark stranger at festival as enchanting as she found Nessa.
She could never be obsessed with the close-shorn hairstyle of a man after having Nessa’s silky locks slip through her fingers.
The monster at the bottom of the well had ruined Elana thoroughly, and she found she couldn’t even be upset.
She joined Nessa beside the water, reaching her hands into the falling spray.
It was a shock of ice, as though it descended directly from the snow-capped mountains above. It probably did exactly that.
Nessa shot a devious look at Elana before cupping a handful of water and splashing it onto Elana’s gown. The cold sent a spear of ice through her chest, shutting down all thought. Elana gasped and huffed, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.
It was lucky that the end of spring was warm, because once Elana regained her senses she plunged both hands into the water and splashed it back at Nessa. Shrieking and laughing, they splashed in the water until they were drenched and gasping.
At last, breathless, they sank onto the mossy bank, shivering, side by side. Elana was aware only of the place their hips touched, how warm it was compared to the rest of her body. The skin there seemed to steam with contact.
“Thank you,” said Nessa. She sounded content. “This is something I haven’t seen in a century.”
“What is?” asked Elana. “Water that wasn’t in the bottom of the well? Trees and moss? A soft bank to sit upon?”
“All of it,” said Nessa, waving an arm. “The world, people. You.” She sighed prettily, and began deftly braiding the dark shadows of her hair into damp plaits.
Elana was mesmerized by the fluid motion of her fingers and the long dark strands as she wordlessly watched.
As a weaver, she was accustomed to the feel of different fibers against her skin, but nothing she’d ever touched had been as smooth as Nessa’s shadows.
She longed to thread her fingers through them, to spin them at a wheel, to understand their substance, their draw.