Eleven
T he grass grows taller than a man here, and exhaustion poisons my limbs as I stare at the rippling fortress of greenery. Who knows what hides within the grasslands of the Mitte Midagi, waiting for unsuspecting prey to wander until they’re lost?
My leg aches with such ferocity that I worry it’s a punishment for my sins.
His scattered bones were supposed to be left untouched, unfound, unwanted, but I disobeyed the gods.
I’ve found all but an arm and his head, and the pain in my thigh reminds me of his severed body.
The Stranger stitched my flesh closed with skill, but the misery of climbing down the Verdens Kant and then walking endlessly to the Mitte Midagi pulled the stitching raw and ugly.
The scar will be brutal, but I don’t complain.
His scars are worse, for he is in pieces.
I never open the chest unless it’s to add another piece of him, but this new exhaustion, this new wariness of The Stranger, has me unlocking the chains.
I lift the lid and stare uncomfortably at the severed limbs and torso that used to be my breathing husband.
I detest seeing him this way, but my warm fingers find his cold ones and lace together with their stiffness.
For a few seconds, I linger against his skin, ignoring the curse’s bite.
The last time I felt his hands, he made me his wife.
It’s been well over a cycle since our wedding, since I’ve seen his eyes or heard his voice.
I’m so close to the end of my quest, so close to finishing this journey, yet I feel so far from his love.
I am no longer the beauty he married. I’m too thin, too bruised, too scarred.
My hair is dull. My skin is cracked and dry.
My mind is spiraling. What if he returns and cannot love the broken girl I’ve become?
What if he never returns, and this madness was for nothing?
That’s my greatest fear, and it’s why my wariness of the Stranger has increased now that only two severed parts remain.
Ever since he claimed me on the Verdens Kant, I cannot ignore the realization that I pledged my faith to someone dark enough to claim he can return the dead.
No one can do that, not even the gods. There’s no afterlife, not after Hreinasta banished Death.
There’s this painful existence, and then nothing.
The Stranger is either lying, or he’s a darkness I should have no part in, and I cannot decipher which I fear more.
That his lies sent me to suffer these quests in the most treacherous parts of the realm for nothing, or that I willingly opened my soul to evil?
I always knew his promise was dangerous, but my desperation clung to hope.
I refuse to live in a world without Kaid.
I don’t want to survive for decades knowing our marriage lasted only a night.
I need The Stranger’s promise to ring true, but I dread what it means.
“You should go before you lose the light,” The Stranger says in my mind. “The grass is tall. It will blot out the sun, but you do not want to see nightfall in the Mitte Midagi.”
“I know.” I clutch his poisoned fingers harder until the pain of the black magic makes me forget the ache in my stitched thigh.
“Do not lose faith now, my child,” The Stranger says.
“I can’t remember his voice. Yours is the only one I hear.”
“Are you doubting? Have you lost hope that you’ll hear it again?”
I say nothing. What can I say? That I need Kaid, but I fear what the end of this journey means? I don’t know The Stranger. What price will he extract from me to perform the impossible?
“It pains me to see your despair,” he continues. “I thought you were different, Sellah. I hoped you would have faith when no one else would. I have not forsaken you.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You should be… but not of me.” His voice sounds so close that I can almost imagine him behind me. “I’ve grown fond of you, my child. You should fear your task at hand, but never me.”
I lock the chains around the trunk and peer at the towering grass.
“Everyone I’ve trusted betrayed me,” I say. “My parents. The priestesses. Hreinasta.”
“But not him. Not me.”
“When this is over, will you abandon me?”
“You are mine, child. I do not suffer what is mine.”
“I want to believe you.”
“So, believe.”
“It’s hard when you promise the impossible.”
“For others, yes, but not for you.” I sense a warm presence at my back as he speaks.
“You survived the Sivatag when its heat kills all others. You reclaimed Lovec’s temple when his faithful could not.
You climbed the Verdens Kant and returned when most die on those rocks.
You faced Udens and gained his favor. He is a brutal god who takes his vengeance in blood, yet he did not spill yours.
I don’t understand how you struggle to believe my promises when you yourself defy the odds, the gods, the darkness.
Now go before the sun falls from the sky,” he orders when I hesitate. “I won’t abandon you.”
He’s right. I should be dead one hundred times over, yet my broken body still fights. Perhaps it’s not The Stranger I should fear, but myself.
“Watch over me?” I step into the towering grass, its height making me dizzy.
“Always, my child.”
* * *
The grass is surprisingly sharp, the ground below me uncomfortably soft, and I can barely see more than a few paces ahead. The reeds are taller than me in some places and come to my breasts in others, but no matter where I walk, it’s too thick to see where I’m stepping.
The wind rustles the grass, forcing it to bend, and anxiety settles in my chest. Moving stalks are my only warning of the predators hunting this endless nothing, but if the wind doesn’t stop, I won’t see danger coming.
Even the smallest insect can be deadly, especially in the presence of black magic.
That’s why I’m here. I sensed the draw of his bones, the darkness thick about him, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel its effects.
How many poisonous creatures hunt these grasslands, fueled by this oppressive evil?
Something wet slides across my skin, and I yelp with an undignified squeak. I faced the evil that consumed Death’s abandoned temple. I fell from Verdens Kant and killed tigers bred from dark magic, yet the slimy trail left by a small hidden creature disturbs me the most.
“Are there predators here?” I ask The Stranger.
He doesn’t answer.
“Stranger?”
“Do you truly want to know?” His voice is a warning.
“Yes… no.” I fall silent, the sharp grass stinging my arms as I push through it. “Yes.”
“They say it has a taste for human flesh,” he answers.
“It’s grown impossibly large, its teeth able to rip apart skilled soldiers.
It’s said he started small and innocent, wandering among the grass and mud.
His home is a cave hidden in the nothingness, and while it never appears in the same place twice, he finds it each night.
Legend tells of a vast treasure lost inside his lair, but all who seek its entrance must first kill its inhabitant.
In the first age of men, warriors tested their skill against the Mitte Midagi, and the creature killed them in self-defense.
Their blood on his tongue changed him, though, transforming him into a monster.
He swelled to an unnatural size and craves human flesh. He may already have scented you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
“Would it have stopped you?”
“No.”
The Stranger huffs with self-righteous satisfaction.
“What is he?”
“A beast you don’t want to meet. Follow the call, my child. Find his bones before the creature finds you.”
“He’s in the cave, isn’t he?” I don’t have to ask. I know Valka hid him there, in the home of a monster to hide the magic.
“If that’s what you think.”
“It’s what I know. He’s always left in the darkness, always in pain and suffering.
” The ache in my thigh worsens with each step, souring my mood.
“I wonder if I constantly sense him because the gods abandoned me. In their anger, they wanted me to know they scattered him to the worst parts of the realm.”
“That’s not why, my child.”
I cock my head, wishing The Stranger was here so I could look at his dark visage and ignore the fact that my own feet have disappeared below the mud.
“You say the gods abandoned you, yet your face burns with Lovec’s mark.
You’re welcome to return to the Vesi, and you always hear the call of his bones.
You swore your marriage vows in the way Elskere did, and the wed gods blessed your union.
They accepted your faith, and despite Hreinasta’s claim on you, you no longer belong to her. You belong to him, even in death.”
When my bones are nothing but dust coating the earth, I’ll still want you.
“Elskere didn’t protect us,” I argue. “Our marriage lasted hours.”
“But they protected your bond. It has not broken. It’s why you always find him.”
When my bones are nothing but dust coating the earth, I’ll still want you.
I say his name silently, for it’ll never break. “I will find him.”
“And the wed gods will guide you.”
I open my mouth to respond when the reeds ahead shift, and I freeze. That was not the wind. That was something in the grass. Something large. Something fast, and it’s aimed at where I stand.