Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

2 Myths and Legends

"The Fathers had sworn the daylight to silence, and she kept secrets in her dangling fingers. Brunië waited for the sun to set, then for the moon to wane, and there in shadow he found him.

"Be careful," Brunië heard.

"Dear sir," he said, "I am not afraid of the darkness or his mystery."

"And what of the frost, the icy wrangler, the curse of dawn?"

"What then, does the frost live?' Brunië whispered.

"Oh yes, oh yes," breathed the darkness, "she lives in the marked one."

~ Secrets of the Night by Skryse Nuuks (Written in Ashttïg Ewïg's Time, The Season of the Lords)

Avétk strode through the freezing wind, his determination unwavering. He did not mind the frost clinging to his hair or the cold creeping up his wet legs. Durek had always said, 'Discomfort is a pathway to freedom.' A good principle to guide a man like him, so acquainted with the sordid, responsible for it in ways none else could be.

The child had shown little resistance and now hung slumped over his shoulder. She weighed little more than the wind, and her bones jabbed at his skin—nothing compared with the pain he'd felt when the curse took him as a boy. The memories were sharp, but he did not feel anything. No terror, no fear, no hate or love. He was a heartless man. He had injured the woman who kept the child—a little blow to the jaw—she'd wake in an hour or so and tend to her wounds, but he had scared off her horses, put flame to their stables just in case the woman had planned to follow.

Sometimes watching things burn revived a hint of some long-dead remorse, something other than apathy, something he longed for however terrible that might be. Feeling something was better than feeling nothing—it meant he was alive and not just stumbling slowly to death.

As if in response to his thoughts, he stumbled over a rock he had not cared to look for. Not that looking would have made a difference. The Dreur Wood kept true to its name and wrapped them in darkness so thick he could not see his own hands. He paused and closed his eyes. The curse had its uses, and in his mind he sensed where the trees were, where roots bulged from the ground, where to plant his feet. It was more an instinct than an image, but he followed it out of habit even though he knew Durek would disapprove.

'The curse,' Durek always said, 'must be starved out.' Which meant using it to navigate a dark forest was out of the question.

Avétk's fist clenched, he grit his teeth. Durek was a man wise and deep as a well, but he did not understand. The curse was in him, part of his blood. When he closed his eyes, he smelled the Kleinelk and knew there were three huddled behind the trees fifteen steps away. He couldn't switch that on or off; it came and went without consulting him. How could he starve it if he could not even control its fluctuations?

For hours they traversed the Dreur Wood in a wordless silence filled with forest noises that echoed a dark night filled with pain, fear, loss. Memories more alive than he felt. When the snowstorm broke it was near dawn and the trees had thinned. The wind had whined and whistled through every twig and hollow, and snow had fallen through every gap it found in the Dreur Wood's canopy, but now he could see glimpses of a starry sky. Soon he left the last gnarled tree behind and with great relief gazed up at a myriad of stars, like powder flung in the air.

The girl did not twitch and struggle anymore, but his shoulder ached. She might've been a slight little girl, but any weight carried too long became as heavy as a boulder. This he'd learned from Durek too, holding a cup of tea for five hours.