Chapter 3 HelpHeadache
The Draw Of The Dark
A long, long time ago…
Her feet were caked in dirt.
Every inch of her trembled.
She doubted that this humble little cottage was where she’d find him.
Whispers sounded from all around her, but they didn’t sting her the way the wind did through her chemise and the thin shawl she’d manage to grab before she’d started running.
While her eyes watered, she wasn’t necessarily crying. The tears had yet to fully come, but they would.
Her hands were red and swollen from the cold. Moving them hurt, but she needed to knock or at least open the worn wooden door to the cottage.
“Brother…” Her voice rasped as a warm tear escaped her eye. The trail of water down her cheek chilled instantly.
Using the side of her shaking hand, she pounded the door twice. The tremors grew more violent, making her hunch over. He probably wasn’t here. Some cottar’s wife would probably open the door and tell her to leave. She’d probably be called a horrible name or three.
The door grunted as it lifted and then opened with a whine.
“Aradia?”
Her eyes snapped up.
She should hate him.
She should shout and bring down every righteous bit of fury imaginable. He was the reason she was powerless and hurt.
Instead, seeing his familiar face staring down at her reduced her to sobs.
She crumpled into a crouch as she cried. Her fingers grabbed uselessly at the shawl around her as she wept. Strong hands grasped her upper arms, trying to help her stand, but her knees gave way.
“How long have you been outside?” she heard him ask softly.
His gentleness made her cry all the harder.
He scooped her into his arms and turned back to the warmth of the cottage. She was aware of the door closing against the blue evening, the smell of coming snow sharp in the air.
She felt herself set on a rough woven carpet before a hot hearth. A soft blanket was thrown over her shoulders. She heard the noises of a kettle being set over the fire.
“What happened?”
Aradia squeezed her eyes shut. Her fingers were throbbing in the warmth, but they still clumsily tried to tighten her hold on the shawl.
“What do… they call you in this life?” she managed through a tightened throat.
“Daniel.”
Aradia nodded and rocked back and forth on the carpet. Her emotions surged in the face of her safety.
“I’ll deal with the ones who did this.”
Aradia’s eyes snapped up to meet her brother’s dark ones. She saw his somber sincerity and his pain on her behalf.
“I can’t feel fear. Not since our battle… What is this… What is… this feeling?”
“Grief. Anger. Despair.”
Aradia felt the soft blanket slip from her shoulders as she stared at her brother vulnerably. “Why?”
“It’s normal to feel this way after something horrible happens. A lot of people go through it. I didn’t know you were nearby.” He slowly seated himself on the floor a short distance from her side.
Instead of explaining how she had come to find him, all she could manage was, “Why… would you do this to me?”
Her brother stilled.
A century ago, his face had been filled with ire and hatred. They had battled. They’d almost destroyed an entire continent doing so… Lobahl had once been a lush jungle. Now eighty percent was desert because of them.
“I wanted you to understand a fraction of what I was feeling. Do you know that in this village, two-thirds of the women have endured what I believe you just have? There are even men who have been hurt this way.”
The fact that her brother seemed to already know exactly what had happened to Aradia made her throat close to the point where breathing became a struggle.
“I feel your pain. I feel all of their pain. Aradia, the cruelty of these humans… It’s capable of destroying any good that could have been.
” He paused and visibly weighed his next words.
“There is good. I never said otherwise. But humans do not deserve this beautiful world our parents have made. Can’t you see that now?
Can’t you see how they will destroy everything? ”
“What about those who have been hurt? Don’t they deserve every scrap of goodness so that they can heal?” Aradia argued, but unlike in the past, this argument was desperate, and even to her own ears it sounded broken.
“Good might win out for a little, but the evil of them, Aradia…” Her brother shook his head, his grief palpable.
“Aradia, I’m scared for the good humans just as scared as I am for the ancient beasts.
The evil will spread more and more. It is beyond my ability to solve.
Our parents were wrong. No one can help the humans. ”
“There has to be a way to stop them. To stop the evil in humans from growing more powerful!”
It was her brother’s turn to grow misty-eyed.
“I’m not strong enough for it, Aradia. I can’t even…
I can’t even be raised in my child years without suffering.
How can I help people when they fear me because they fear their own darkness?
Rather than face it, they say I’m the root of evil.
When really, they’re too afraid to see that the root is in them.
I don’t even hate them for it. I hate them for looking for someone to blame.
For ignoring it. For embracing it because it is easier for them than to be humbled. ”
Aradia listened, her tears quietly falling.
Her brother’s words… She could tell that if she were capable of feeling fear, she would have felt it then. The sentiment rattled around in some vacant space where her heart used to be.
“Why couldn’t we try to fix it together?” she whispered. “Like Mother and Father told us to?”
Daniel stared at her, a tear of his own escaping.
“Because you don’t feel and see what I do.
Just like I will never know the strain of summoning a tidal wave or building a mountain the way you did.
Aradia… What you have been asking of me this entire time is the equivalent of a master looking at its beaten, starved dog and saying, Why can’t you go hunt for my family?
Why can’t you try?” He took a shaking breath, his gaze falling to the carpet as the fire used its shadows to cut the truth of his feelings into his face.
“I can’t do it anymore, Aradia. And it was cruel of our parents to expect me to. ”
Aradia stared at her brother.
There was nothing she could say. These were discussions they’d had before. But she had to silently confess to herself that in the past, she never could have imagined how wretched powerlessness could be. How soul-shattered she felt when she had been attacked earlier that very day.
Something hot and uncomfortable sparked in her chest as she looked at her brother. “If you know how horrible this kind of thing is… why did you wish an eternity of it for me? Why do I deserve to be tortured? I just wanted to help.”
Her brother’s agonized eyes found her own. “Because you were torturing me. And you were torturing the ancient beasts without knowing what you were doing.”
When Aradia spoke again, it came out choked. “I never wished harm on you.”
“I didn’t want you to be harmed, either, but it was the only way.”
Tears fell more quickly down Aradia’s cheeks. “If this, in your eyes, is the only way to help me understand, then you aren’t any better than them.”
Her brother flinched as if her words had hurt him, but his expression was accompanied by acceptance.
“I never said I was better than them. I know I’ll pay in the Grove of Sorrows.
But one day, Aradia, I think you might realize that sometimes there are no good choices.
You must simply make the decision you believe to be best for as many people as possible. ”
★ ★ ★
Tam woke with a start, sweat coating his brow, his stomach roiling.
He located the chamber pot under the bed and retched.
Shivering, he clambered out of bed to sit on the floor. The ship rocked more than it had during the day, and it was making Tam’s head spin.
Grabbing his discarded tunic from the floor beside the bed, he launched himself at the door of his and Eli’s cabin. Next, he pushed himself out into the corridor and proceeded blindly until his stiff legs clambered up the stairs.
The frigid sea air struck his face as soon as his head crested the main deck.
He welcomed it and gulped down a clear breath, which in turn made his vision whirl even more aggressively. His hand clasped the banister as his knees buckled.
“Lord Tam, are you alright?” A sailor’s voice called from somewhere on the main deck, but Tam couldn’t respond as he sprinted up the rest of the stairs, crossed the deck, dove for the railing, and heaved all over again.
“My apologies, Lord Tam! I will retrieve a coat for you!” The sailor’s footsteps scampering off sounded distantly behind him.
A dull throbbing entered Tam’s head as he raised an unsteady hand to his forehead. “What the hell was that dream?” He remained glued to the railing as the waning moon shone brightly overhead.
Eventually the sailor returned with a coat that Tam slipped on with a quiet mutter of thanks.
He didn’t want to return downstairs yet.
The longer he was above deck, the better his stomach felt.
Bit by bit, his head managed to clear. Though the haunting dream he’d had of the devil and first witch was still sharp in his mind’s eye.
The devil really did look like him.
Something soft brushed against Tam’s ankles, jolting him in surprise.
When he glanced down, however, he found the familiar shining green eyes of Kraken.
Stooping over, he swept up his father’s familiar into his arms. He could feel Kraken’s soothing purrs rumble beneath his fluff, and it calmed Tam’s erratic heartbeat.
“I had a bad dream,” Tam explained softly. “But it felt more than just a dream… And with everything going on, I suspect it has a lot more meaning and truth behind it.”
Kraken didn’t make a sound, merely flicked his head to the side to look out over the shadowed water before them.
Tam’s shoulders eased as the cause for his nightmare appeared in his mind in a sudden rush. “I think I… I did something.”
Kraken turned to peer up at him.
“You can’t tell anyone, Kraken. Promise?”
The fluffy familiar slowly blinked at Tam.
“I started telling people I was the devil. I even told it to the first witch.”
Kraken gave a chirp of alarm.
“I felt something in the air when I decided to start doing this. And I think… I think something is happening to me because of it.”
A low rumble sounded in Kraken’s belly.
Tam chuckled quietly. “Are you really growling at me?”
Kraken’s growl increased in volume.
“Yeah. I know. But I did it for Luca. He’s my son, and everyone kept targeting him. It wasn’t my best idea, but it seemed like the only way I could keep him safe.”
Kraken let out an exasperated huff.
“I’ll figure it out. I’m an Ashowan, right?” Weariness filled his body like an iron weight. “I’ve known for a long time that there is something off about me. As if darkness was always ready to eat me. Hunting me, even though it felt attached to me like my shadow.”
Kraken’s tail twitched.
Tam tilted his head, his thoughts drifting. “My da and sister always seem like they are in this other world. A world that’s warm and whole. A world filled with light, and hope, and… good. I’ve never felt like I could be in that world.”
With his breaths quickening, Kraken nuzzled Tam’s bicep.
“I used to think it was because I was scared of my magic. But I’m not scared of it anymore, and I still feel this way. It’s one of the reasons I’m so uncomfortable around the Troivackian king. He’s always been able to see it in me somehow.”
Kraken’s grumblings and twitches stilled as he listened.
Tam lifted his gaze to the stars. “Mum says that you only have to look up at the stars to see an example of infinite possibilities.” He cast a melancholy smile to the sky. “I wanted to believe that maybe one day I would live in the light, too.”
Tam lowered his face to Kraken. A sharp prickling started behind his eyes, but his smile remained fixed in place, though it was harder to hold. “I’m starting to think I was never meant to be in the light. I think there’s a chance that I was always supposed to become the devil.”
Kraken extended his right paw and gently brushed it against Tam’s chest in a clear attempt at comforting him.
Tam returned his attention to the stars. “I’m probably being dramatic after a bad dream. Don’t worry too much, Kraken… But if someday the darkness does get me? Please keep my family safe for me?”
Kraken pressed his head even more firmly against Tam’s arm This time, when Tam gazed into his soft face, he saw a tear gleaming on the feline’s long lashes. It made Tam feel even worse, but at least he was a little less alone for a moment.