Enmity nocked an arrow, pulling her left arm back tightly until she could smell the handmade soap. It clung to the cracked skin on her fingertips and the old prin feathers she had collected and carefully washed. Most people thought they were useless after getting dirty but she knew that with patience most things could regain at least some of their original value. Her hands were stiff and chaffed from a mixture of chores, but the stinging pain in her fingers was nothing compared to the deep blistering feeling festering in her chest. The need to cough grew and grew, but she forced it down. Years of practice had taught her that she could hold it for a little while if she really needed to, and at that moment she really needed to.
Winter was almost upon them and she hadn’t been able to stock up enough food yet. Her jaw twitched at the somewhat false thought. In reality she had, but one of the butcher’s disgusting sons had found one of her bigger winter stashes and stolen all of her preserves. The wild boar she was sighting was the only animal she had seen in the last two hours and the sun was about to set. She knew she wouldn’t have another chance to get away from her chores anytime soon and she needed the meat.
The arrow scraped at her cold-sensitive cheek as she waited with ragged breaths. All Enmity could think about was forcing down the urge to cough. If she couldn’t, it would all have been for nothing. Silent white puffs of breath stained the still air as she waited for the boar to angle himself toward her. She needed a definitive kill shot. Ff she missed now, she wouldn’t have time to wait for another chance. The sun would be setting soon, and the air was already getting chillier. Her threadbare clothes were no match for the weather.
Her thoughts wandered toward her mental checklist of all the things she needed to do before winter set in. Getting a new pair of clothes was one of them. She was very small for her nine years of age, the withering disease made sure of that. But even then her clothes were getting too small for her. The hem of her skirts was closer to her knees than her ankles. If it weren’t for the old socks she had salvaged from one of the baron’s kitchen maids last week, she wouldn’t have dared the chill of the woods that day.
She was still thinking and grouping all of the necessary tasks ahead of her when the boar moved exactly as she had wanted him to. Enmity let the arrow fly without even thinking about it, immediately slamming her thoughts back into the moment. The time it took for the soundless arrow to fly from where she was hiding out to the boar about one hundred feet in front of her took half an age. She couldn’t cough, not at this last moment, if she coughed now she would scare the boar and it would all have been for nothing.
The second before the arrow slammed home, she choked on a cough she was trying to keep at bay. Her eyes teared from the effort and the boar moved, straining his ears towards her. He had sensed her presence and immediately began to run away. Enmity stood up, her position had been revealed, she needed to run after the boar. She allowed herself cough once before quickly nocking another arrow and shooting it at the already retreating boar.
The first arrow had ended up hitting him in the lower stomach, towards his intestines. From experience Enmity knew he would die in a couple of hours but she didn’t have time to track him down and wait for his death. As she quietly slinked after the rampaging boar and his bloodied tracks, she could only hope the second arrow had hit home. The arrow had hit him from the side, so she suspected both of his lungs had been punctured, but she couldn’t be sure until she was up close.
Ten minutes later the tracks were becoming harder to see. The sun was already past the tree line, casting too many shadows in her path. Her wracking cough wasn’t getting any better, always worsening in the humid cold. Tears were almost continuously running down her red-cold cheeks and she could barely breathe. She knew she needed to get to warmth soon. At times like these, she couldn’t help hating the withering sickness with a vehemence. It was the reason for most of her problems; the reason people avoided her. Everyone knew it wasn’t contagious, and yet she was shunned and cast aside.
She began seeing black spots in her vision not long after as she stumbled in the boar’s direction. Her sight failed her and she relied on instinct to guide her. Through the cold brittle paths of the forest, she could almost feel the warmth the boar had left in his wake. Drawing strength from that path she succumbed completely to her senses. As she let reason and thoughts escape through the back door, she knew she had pushed too far once again. It was never intentional, but time and time again she found herself at Death’s door. Knocking and hoping no one would answer.
It wasn’t just a girl’s fanciful imagination. This time she had pushed too far. With her body’s condition she should have known better but fear and hunger had forced her hand. She knew them well and winter brought out the worst in them. She clung to the remnants of fall before it succumbed to winter. While her feet still carried her toward the boar, she felt her mind flickering in and out of consciousness. It was as if her mind was going in and out of her body, one moment she could feel her limbs, the next they would be as numb as lead.
Death was upon her but it didn’t scare her anymore. Five years ago, the night her parents had died, it did. Back then she hadn’t ever been close to death. Now she knew better. She knew Death didn’t want her yet. Even now, with her body almost giving out on her, she could feel she would survive. She always did. Even when she thought it was all over, her body would pull life force from some hidden place and let her push through another moment of life. Slowly, her body responded in the exact way she predicted.
Instead of the usual spurt of energy from within though, she felt the energy trickling in from her surroundings. Fighting her consciousness, she remain focused on the mysterious energy source. It was as if the boar’s warmth was keeping her alive. In her mind that didn’t make sense, she hadn’t found him yet. His path lay before her and as she strained to open her eyes, she could suddenly see.
That didn’t make sense of course, her vision had already blacked out a while ago and she didn’t even have her eyes open anymore. And yet, it was like she could see a dispersing swirl of colors forming a path in ahead of her. Focusing on the swirling lines of color, she felt her body pulling them towards her. At first it seemed wrong and unnatural. She had to strain against the currents of light and pull the colors toward her. It was incredibly hard, and more often than not she didn’t manage to grab ahold of the lines before they dispersed into indistinguishable spots of nothingness. Her body learned though and she was slowly able to pull a few toward her.
The second she did, she felt a small surge of warmth stab her in the chest. It was slightly uncomfortable, but it was warm and so she kept on pulling. Forgetting everything else, she followed the colors, holding onto them like a lifeline. With every step, she could noticeably feel herself getting stronger, and every line she didn’t manage to hold onto felt like a heavy loss.
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As she felt her limbs strengthen, she could feel her body waking up again. She hadn’t even noticed when it shut down its non-vital parts. Suddenly she began to feel the cold again and a violent shiver racked through her body uncontrollably. She tried to ignore it, warming herself with the ever brightening colors. By now Enmity knew she would probably be able to see again if she opened her eyes. In fact, she was feeling better than she had in months. The burden on her chest had lessened and the constant pain in her limbs had lightened. It felt like bliss and she didn’t want to risk the chance of losing this new miraculous ability.
Death didn’t seem so welcoming anymore, it didn’t seem like a comfortable alternative to the daily hell she went through. Following the brightening color trail, she realized she wanted to live! The colors were growing so vivid, it almost hurt to look at them. And finally, it did.
She had reached the end of the path, she could tell. The colors were swirling like a massive vortex around her, caressing and taunting her skin. She wanted to devour them immediately, pull them toward her and wrap herself in their warmth. But then she was afraid of the consequences. Enmity didn’t want to lose the colors; she had just found them. Even if she had finally reached death, or if this was just a great dream, she wanted to enjoy it a little longer. She stood there, basking on the strength the lights gave her. The decision could be put off for later, she could extend the moment just a little longer... but then she noticed how they dimmed.
She choked in agony. It couldn’t be time for them to leave yet! She had just found them! As she watched for a while longer, she noticed they were growing dimmer and dimmer by the second. It hurt her to do it, they seemed too beautiful to extinguish, but she knew that if she didn’t take them herself, they would just disappear. Enmity drew the lights to her as quickly as she could. She wasn’t able to get as many as she wanted to and almost half of them got away. It was a painful to watch them floating into oblivion, but there was nothing to be done, not anymore.
Enmity fell to her knees. Her body was back to responding normally. She felt the cold rocks of the forest floor digging into her knees and shins with severe reality. She didn’t care. Compared to the loss she had just felt, this pain was nothing. Compared to the relief she had felt, this was nothing. She didn’t know how long she sat there in silence with her eyes closed, wishing with all her being for the colors to come back, but they never did.
Eventually it dawned on her that she couldn’t sit on the cold forest floor forever. Even with the newfound bundle of strength, she wouldn’t be able to survive the night out in the cold. As much as she skirted death, she didn’t actively welcome or look for it. In the end she was still human and beyond all things, she wanted to survive.
She opened her eyes and started getting on her feet before she immediately succumbed to a coughing fit. They happened every now and then, that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was how long she had gone without the urge to cough. It was a constant companion she barely noticed anymore. Sighing in remorse, she took in her surroundings as her vision cleared. It was already quite dark. The sun had already sunk past the horizon, but its rays were still streaking the sky. Enmity knew however, that most of the light was coming from the almost full moon. While she couldn’t see everything clearly, a large oak tree with a fallen branch gave her position away.
She was further into the woods than she thought possible. From here, it would be nearly an hour’s trek back to town. How she had made it this far she wasn’t sure. Straightening her back, she looked around with the assessing habit of survival. Comforted by the fact that she was completely alone, she checked her hidden satchel to make sure her life’s savings were still there. They were. Her bow was draped across her shoulder, her arrows in her quiver and her several knives hidden in all the appropriate locations. She sighed in relief. Losing any of her belongings would have been a tragedy. When you lived on the edge, you couldn’t take anything for granted, not even a dull discarded knife you had sharpened to a sliver over the years.
Standing up, she almost tripped over a mass before her. She didn’t remember there being a bolder there, she bent down to examine the bulky form. It was the boar. With two of her arrows still sticking out of it’s body, it was dead. Enmity almost felt relief, but there was a niggling feeling of uncertainty as she moved her hand to remove her arrows.
She wasn’t worried about the darkness, the real monsters prefered the light of day. Shewould be able to make it back with help of the moonlight. She also wasn’t worried about freezing to death immediately. She actually felt warmer than she had that morning when she leaned against the outside wall of the baker’s ovens. It was a warmth that radiated from inside and reverberated through all the nooks and crannies of her body. The warmth of the lights. Still thinking about the penetrating feeling that she could already feel dissipating from her body, she froze.
Something wasn’t right. Her hands were still touching the bristly fur of the dead animal. She was thinking about all the preparation she still had to do when she realized how cold it was. That wasn’t normal. Even if the animal had died over two hours ago, which she knew it hadn’t, it shouldn’t have been this cold, not this fast and not in this weather. As it stood, it was almost colder than the air around her.
Enmity’s hand flinched away when she took a closer look at the carcass and noticed the dead animal’s eyes. It’s eyeballs were completely molten into a black gory mess that had leaked down it’s face. Now that she noticed it, she also realized that the air had a dark putrid smell. She almost choked, but forced her stomach to remain still. Food was too precious a commodity to waste on something so fanciful as disgust.
She immediately stood up and evaluated her surroundings again, letting her hands drift to her hidden blades. Something wasn’t right about the whole situation and she still hadn’t figured out what had happened. She had killed a couple boars in her short life, and none of them had ever had this happen to them.
Still trying to pry into the silent darkness, she stiffened as a thought came to her. She had killed the boar. Not only killed it though, she had followed it through the woods, she had sensed its warmth… and she had... Her eyes jerked back to the animal in question. While looking at those charred eyes, she knew it was true, even if she didn’t want it to be. This time she couldn’t hold it in. She fell to her knees and emptied the entire contents of her stomach onto the cold forest floor.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand, she brought her other to the corpse. Anguish quickly built up along with her overflowing tears. She wanted to give it it’s life back, she wanted to give it all that she had taken back. Logically, she knew that she was going to kill the animal anyway, but in her heart she knew that this type of death was different. This type of death was final. She had become a murderer.
Enmity wanted to atone for her sins and mourn for the animal, but a part of her knew it wasn’t possible to undo what had been done. She would have to live with it. She wanted to walk away from the beast. She wanted to forget what had happened. She didn’t want to confront her deed, but she forced herself to bring out her butchering and skinning knives. It was her fault. She had done it and she was damn well not going to let her crime go to waste.
Over the next two hours, Enmity cried, butchered and carried her hunt under the watchful eyes of the rising moon. Enmity tried focusing her thoughts on the tasks she was carrying out, but try as she might, she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering. She had taken a life. She felt better than she had in months. She felt worse than she had in months. Her limbs were already weakening again, there was no running from the withering sickness, not for long. Not without stealing the life force of others. For a short time it had given her strength she didn’t even know her body was capable of. And in the depths of her mind, a place that she didn’t even let herself be consciously aware of, she knew she wanted more.