Night Witch

Chapter 14

Karina gasped and stepped backwards, trying to ignore the emotions churning in her stomach. Nyx was Olga, with her proud stance and white shawl, and then he was Helga, with her blond braids swaying and a sadistic smirk splayed across her features. The figures changed quickly--Duras, Gertie, Rosin, her mother--until Karina felt her eyes sting with unshed tears. "Why are you doing this to me?"

Nyx shifted into a massive bird with beady black eyes and dull inky feathers. "You never know what hides in the night."

"What does that have to do with me?" she asked softly, her fingers curling into fists. Nyx morphed into Hans and her eyes flashed at the sight of her travelling companion. "Were you--are you--everyone I've ever known? Were eight years of pain just you?" She stumbled backwards into the hard wooden wall and leaned against it, trying to find something solid. Something real. "How do I know who to trust? What to trust?"

Nyx shifted into the bird again, which was oddly reminiscent of a giant crow. "That's the point," Nyx said, "you don't."

Hot tears ran down her cheeks but they seemed too normal to wipe away. Karina squeezed her eyes shut, but it was all just more blackness, more of Nyx's fingerprints over her world. "Was it you who enslaved me? Who was Olga? Who was Duras? Just other voices in people's heads? Other 'Night's?" She laughed, the sound as bitter as her early teenage years. "What even are you?"

"Olga and Duras were the people they showed to the world. The masks of themselves, nothing more." There was a pause. "And I'm not even human."

"Why would you be, you bastard!" She sighed, strangling the sob that was trapped halfway through her throat, and pressed herself against the wall even more. "You. What. Are. You."

"Nyx. Messenger of the night. Your best dream...your worst nightmare."

"My nightmares?" She sighed heavily, trying to erase the disturbing images from her head. "My nightmares are my best dreams."

"Not always." She opened her eyes to see a pale-skinned tall boy about her age standing above her. Nyx must have changed his form again. He offered her his hand, and she angrily shoved it away. "You haven't always been this sad. This angry. This lonely."

"I'm not lonely! I'm just--"

"Alone."

The word made her take pause. "Alone." It was a trembling truth, a shaking leaf that she couldn't seem to let go of. "Alone."

"Once upon a time, Karina Hedge wasn't alone. Once upon a time, Karina Hedge was happy."

She wrapped her arms around her torso. She felt like a hollow gourd. "That was a long time ago."

"Are you sure?" Nyx waved his arm, and suddenly there was light all around them. She blinked to adjust to the new setting. Dark, twisted trees, vines and thorns that scratched against her leather boots, the stench of rotting wood. And, in the distance, a flash of dirty auburn hair and a laugh that sounded like the the bells used when Moracians sang a safesong.

"Today you were happy."

"Was that happiness?" she asked, her chest tight. "Was it real?"

"As real as the mark on your face."

She bowed her head. "It's been so long since I've laughed like that." She smiled a small, sad smile. "I was happy."

"No need to sound so surprised." He waved his arm again and the scene faded into shadows. "When you were a child, you were happy all the time."

He waved his arm again and Karina was home.

It was a small, wooden house, with plants drying above the hearth's blazing flames. Scents of sage, lavender, and fresh chopped pine wood filled the air, all mixed with the smoky smell of veal. Karina tried to recommit everything to memory: the table in front of the hearth that they had eaten all their meals on, the soft wool blankets on the chairs that made their home in a corner during the summer months. The countertop behind the hearth where Vasilisa had made her cooking area and would chop up herbs and meat. The butter churner right beside the countertop where Vasilisa had taught her to churn butter, the way her mother's hands had fit over her own. Her father's bow and arrow in the corner that she had once pretended she could wield.