Chapter 9 #4
“But I’m rambling. More to the point, it was natural for me to learn the constellations.
I enjoyed watching them move over Tyrnoraen as the seasons changed, although I suppose one can’t really call them seasons anymore.
Just gentle to harsh winter. I was stargazing when I saw Vraethik escape, and admittedly was deep in my cups, which I attribute to my terrible decision to chase after him on my own.
I suppose I thought I could catch him. That alerting the guards would only waste precious time.
Or maybe I’m lying to myself and hoped catching him would gain me the love and glory that had been beyond my reach my entire life.
” The prince took a deep breath. “The reasons don’t matter.
I gave chase and caught up to him. But it was too late: we were beyond the safe borders of Tyrnoraen, he’d summoned the lichboar and I couldn’t fight them both.
Why he took my hair and changed me into a bear rather than killing me, I don’t know. But you know the rest of the story.”
In the abrupt absence of the prince’s rich voice, the tent felt strangely empty.
Cerise’s mind whirled, mulling over the implications of his speech.
Would it truly work? Could removing the bones reverse the curse?
Yet the issue of storage remained, unless they found a way to completely destroy them.
“Did I put you to sleep?” the prince teased, though a tremor of insecurity rippled through the words.
“No,” Cerise said. “I’m just thinking. I never considered the possibility there could be a way to remove the corruption.”
Hope, fragile and fearful, flickered in her chest. She quickly squashed it.
Hope was a dangerous thing, leading to laziness and disappointment.
She recalled the scattered bone fragments from the eruption earlier, how it simply spread the curse.
Even if they moved the bones, they’d just be relocating the curse elsewhere.
With how the hex spread through the ground, the earth was likely too corrupted now to fix.
The curse would remain in the soil, the trees, the air.
No, the best they could do was stop Vraethik from making things worse.
A hazy, green light shone through the tent fabric, shifting in brightness as it passed them. Cerise shot into a sitting position, watching the strange glow move around the tent.
“What is that?” the prince whispered, leaning up as well.
Cerise shook her head, uncertain. It moved from her side of the tent, around to the prince’s, then faded as if getting farther away.
She hadn’t seen anything besides the pool beneath Azkanix’s bones glow like that before. But it couldn’t be the bones. They didn’t move.
Cerise picked up Beloved and slid toward the tent flaps, quietly untying the laces.
Peeling back the fabric, she poked her head out into the frigid night. Light snow fell, shimmering green with the nearby necrotic light.
In the distance, a doe and her fawn traipsed through the woods, hooves soundless as they stepped through the snow.
Because they didn’t have hooves.
They didn’t have bodies.
As their wispy, translucent green shapes moved, their forms seemed to condense and spread like contained smoke. Stuck in the shape of deer, but ethereal and gaseous.
“Are those…ghosts?” Oberon asked, pulling back the opposite tent flap and peering out.
Cerise watched the mother and child. They stalked through the cold night, completely unaffected by the chill.
Noses pressed to trees and snow, searching for food.
Her heart sank to her stomach, and for the first time in decades, the back of her eyes stung with tears.
These poor creatures. The end of their lives had likely been suffering, either starving or cursed.
Even in death, they couldn’t find peace, trapped in this nightmarish plane, ever searching for food.
Was this now the fate of all living creatures when they died?
“I think so. They must not know they’re dead.”
“You’ve never seen this before?”
“No, we don’t go outside at night. None must’ve been close enough to the cabin to shine through the windows.”
“Where do you suppose they are, during the day? Are they always there, wandering the world, just invisible to our eye?”
“I do not know,” Cerise whispered, imagining thousands of trapped human and animal spirits, endlessly wandering the earth.
With one last long look at the receding spirits, Cerise and the prince ducked back into the tent. The absorber sucked out the chill they’d let enter, and sensation returned to her nose and cheeks.
“Azkanix’s curse must capture their spirit, somehow. Keep them tied to the earth,” the prince murmured. “Do you suppose if we come across a ghost bear, it’d attack us? Or do you think they’re docile in death?”
“I do not know that, either. Let us hope it’s the latter.”
Heavy hearted, Cerise laid back. The prince must’ve felt the same, for he spoke no more. It seemed many hours passed before she fell asleep, knee crying with pain, mind turning over the prince’s words, the implications of the deer spirits, wondering how many ghosts wandered these cursed woods.
It wasn’t until the moment before slipping into unconsciousness that she realized she hadn’t placed Beloved between them.