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The winds of winter had been strong that year, and although they leveled the snow in the night making it far easier to cross flat plains, they made it absolutely impossible to travel during their chilling rampages. With them, they carried ice so fine that were it to touch bare skin, it would surely leave a thousand little splinters stinging and burning on its surface.
The winters here were harsh, too harsh for armies to move through. Perhaps that was why the war had lasted as long as it had, going on seven years soon.
Nothing had disturbed the tranquility of the white plains and the snow swept in waves aside from the wind and a single pair of soft-soled boots. They were bound with animal sinew and made of two different types of leather - making the step quiet as a whisper.
The Ember Sword had been on the road for weeks.
He was a long way from the deserts of the South, where he had spent the past five years. No snow fell there, although the winds were just as cruel - instead of ice carrying with them bits of sand just as sharp.
He was no longer certain what had driven him to say yes and come here - into this frozen wasteland. Perhaps he had loved the solitude that came with it. Perhaps it was that he hated himself, instead.
This time there was a purpose. He had to reach a certain point, in the middle of the vast emptiness of an icy tundra, where the Frozen Sea met the cold desert wastelands. He would know this spot, as, long before he reached it the ground would sour. Long before he stepped foot onto it - his health would fail and his bones would ache as an old man’s. His bread would grow stale, and his sword would rust in its scabbard. He would know it by a single golden chain, forged into the side of a mountain and reaching far toward the shores.
The Ember Sword stopped to catch his breath, the air scratching at his throat and lungs as he inhaled. The snowdrift became deeper and harder to navigate.
There was so much that he would give for a hot meal. If he had a mortal soul, that would have been the first thing he would offer up as payment to the devils that listened in the howls of the winds. All for a mere bowl of soup to sate the hunger for warmth.
Soon, it would get dark. And although the nights were not truly nights here, there were still dangers that followed with the shadows of the moon’s creation. Although the snow shone so bright and skies remained so light, some things did not mind the absence of the dark, lurking between bushes and trees, slimming down to fit the shade cast by a blade of grass, and expanding out for one cast by a tree or mountain.
He knew that one such shadow had followed him for quite a while now.
Behind him, not even half a league away, a Bauk made strides toward his scent. Always at night, through leaps and bounds, he would gain ground but not quite enough to catch up to the Ember Sword.
However, he was sure to do so eventually.
And the man did not wish to meet the Bauk face to face.
It had been many days since he passed through the abandoned wreck of a caravan on the road. Most of it had been swept into the landscape by the piling snow. The dead of it were either buried by their survivors or carried off by animals into the woods. It must have been there since fall, and he guessed that a regimen of soldiers somewhere made off with its contents. But, in this wreck, unbeknownst to him had been a Bauk.
The creature slid through shadows and creases, it followed him along paths - jumping from one shade to another. It would catch up soon.
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Val could not take her eyes off the reflection in the water. The apple on the plate had covered some of it, but it did not matter. She tried her best to see closer, move it, anything, but the reflection only showed the back of the man, the glow of the fire framing him from the other side.
Her heart screamed at her, and hands shook, but her mind would not allow the possibility. She must have been mistaken in what she saw. She must have…
The man in the plate went to stand, and she jerked her hand in surprise, then went to grab it and pull it closer. But, her fingers slipped and the water went splashing off the sides, the apple bouncing off the hard surface of the table and plunging down onto the floorboards in the dark.
The plate slipped her grasp. And, as a gasp escaped her lips, it went tumbling down. First, its ridge hit the wooden seat of her chair. It bounced, but not far - and landed shattering into a thousand pieces on the floor in a single violent ring and many clinks of clay rolling away from Val.
“NO!” Val fell to the ground, unconsciously scooping up the broken pieces - their sharp edges cutting her fingers and her palms. In seconds, Ivan was there, pulling her up, sleep still on his face, but his reactions faster than waking had been.
“What are you doing!” It was not a question but a reprimand, the first she had heard from him.
He held her by the shoulders, scooting her away from the mess. Once out of range, he rushed to grab a broom and sweep the pieces of sharp clay together and away from her.
Val sank to the floor, watching him. As if a bad dream, she’d been handed something so precious just to have it torn away. Just like that, she was no longer sure what she had seen.
“Don’t touch me.” She said raspily. At that, Ivan’s head flew back, his eyes widening as he realized what he had done. “I do not need you to save me.”
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“Sirin!” The Witch stood on the porch, it had been early morning, and she was shouting into the trees where her words echoed and got lost. “Sirin!!”
She stood for a few minutes, her eyes darting back and forth looking for any signs of the movement.
“Sirin!” She tried again, but only the stillness of the woods answered her back.
Ivan stood just inside the threshold, watching her with the look of a beaten dog. He had not been the one to drop the plate, but the sheer anger he had felt from her when he pushed her aside to clean it up, it had startled him as much as if she had hit him instead.
Still, the whole thing had truly been a shame. He decided he would find a way to get her a new plate so she could perform her evils there. It would be a good plate; he would even pick out the design, and he was partial to foxes.
He did not understand her. They would sit and eat sometimes, and sometimes she would disappear, leaving him to dig up carrots in the garden. She would be cold, and then she would make these caring gestures - whether a mug of water at night or a freshly washed shirt.
When he finally gathered the courage to ask her, she seemed to respond warmly, and even a smile brushed her lips for a moment. It was a nice smile. It seemed uncomfortable but not forced. And then, she forgot all about it until the night before.
He shook his head. This was a strange creature, and perhaps he just did not understand the Nothing, but sometimes she seemed more human to him than not. Yet still, she kept him a prisoner here, warning him against trying to run and setting guard outside with all sorts of nasties he could hear rummaging under the cover of darkness.
The worst part was that she had been easy on the eyes. They had spent months together, and he could not help but think that were she a hunched, crusty old woman, perhaps he would have an easier time with the thought that she was his captor. But then again, perhaps not.
Of course, he still did not know why she kept him there. Seeing his expanding waistline and the constant adjustment of his belt after the cakes and rich butter at nearly every meal, he began to think that perhaps she was just getting him ready to eat, which he had also heard about when it came to the Deep Wood Hag.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
But, to turn down the delicacies and home-cooked meals, even if it was unclear which home it was that cooked them, seemed ridiculous to Ivan. He’d spent so long on the roads. So long had the harsh conditions of the outdoors broken down his body and mind.
He watched his fellow man die around him, from harm or plague - it did not matter anymore. The villages they came across starved. It was in the faces of the children and the elderly, worn and tired.
Since the war began, it was as if the earth had been covered in a fog of gray death - looming just above the heads of everyone unlucky enough to be in its way. Compared to the horrors outside the woods, this place had almost been a refuge. The winter never came here, and food was plenty. Clean water was in the well, and the only hurdle he was expected to overcome was carrying it up the hill.
He’d gladly done chores for the Witch; they were small compared to what he’d done for most of his life in his father’s orchards.
She also had this leather-bound book - writing in it, reading it, and sometimes Ivan could swear she’d been caressing it as a lover. He shuddered at the thought of what vileness was inside. She always kept her grimoire close, and he did not think it a wise idea to attempt a look at its contents. He already knew it was full of rituals and summons of dreadful things.
Of course, there was also the creature she called ‘Sirin’.
He knew that if her song flowed through the clearing, he would have to retreat into the house and shut the door tightly. The grotesque bird-thing was what meant to eat him when he stumbled into the Glade. She also lured him there - at the bidding of the Witch, he was sure.
But the bird creature was still interested in eating him, and he knew this. The Witch warned him never to be nearby when she came. Never speak or look at the bird creature, and never say its name or his own.
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“SIRIIIIIIIN!” She hollered, her voice cracking slightly.
“I am not deaf, but it seems you are set on changing that,” Sirin called from atop the roof.
She sat on the ridge, glancing curiously at Val, who had never called her like this before. Beneath her, the heavy wooden door closed, and someone retreated inside.
“Never mind that,” Val’s expression held urgency and sleeplessness. “What do you know of the plate?”
“I know much, what do you need to know of the plate?”
“It’s broken. It lies in a thousand pieces. I need to know what I had seen before it broke.” Desperate, Val beckoned for the bird-woman to come down on the porch, and when she did, Val pointed to the little pile of broken clay with white and blue paint peeking out among it.
“A candle in the woods…” Sighed Sirin. “It had survived hundreds of years and could not survive you.”
“What does it show you!” Val demanded.
“What you want to see,” Sirin answered point blankly.
“The past? The future? I mean, what does it show you?” Val insisted, getting frustrated. She had to know.
Sirin considered her carefully, cocking her head.
“It shows you what you want to see.” She repeated, slower now. “If you ask it for the past, it will show it. If you ask it for the present, it will show it. But, if you ask it for the future - it will only show you the trajectory of the world. It doesn’t always show the truth, sometimes it just reads your heart’s desire with that.”
“This isn’t something you cared to tell me??” Val threw up her hands. “I am sick of this vagueness, Sirin. Is what I saw real?”
“First,” Sirin’s face twisted in displeasure, “I was not there. Second, I am not your mother and it is not my duty to explain to you the things of which you should already know.”
“Please…” Val’s hands fell, the anger gone as if a flame had gone out inside her. “Sirin, I saw somethi–someone, and I have to know what it meant. I have to.”
“Ah.” The bird-woman shifted her weight around. “You saw someone you weren’t supposed to see, perhaps because they weren’t even supposed to be.”
“You aren’t funny.”
“You aren’t listening.” Sirin insisted. “No blessing without a curse, Nameless One. I do not know what you saw. The mirror only shows what you ask of it. If you wanted comfort, it showed you that which would comfort you. If you think the images play with your mind, leave it and toss that pile of garbage out.”
“So…” Val trailed off. “It could have been the past. I was thinking of the past.”
“If you think so.”
Val sank against the hut's wall, the uneven bark scraping across her back.
“I saw him, Sirin.” She said, her words only barely audible.
The bird-woman had to step closer, her awkward claws dragging across the ground.
“Whom?”
Val had never told Sirin such things. She did not know why she had been speaking of it now. All that she knew was that she hurt, the pain hurting her chest and swelling in her throat.
“The one whose smell you knew on me when I first came. The smell that now has gone completely away.”
“Hm.” Sirin cocked her head to the other side “I wouldn’t go as far as completely. And why is it that he was not supposed to be?”
“He’s dead.” the words burned her lungs, and she caught a sharp breath, feeling her chest heaving. Do not cry. “He has been dead for a long time. Yet, I cannot let him go. And it does not seem to matter how long I spend here.”
“A life for a life,” Sirin recited, “a new one, Nameless One, will replace a thread torn.”
“No,” Val said, “it is not so for us. It is not so for people.”
“Us. As if I do not understand what lives outside the woods.” Sirin huffed. “I’d hardly give you the liberty to group yourself into that term any longer.”
“I laid him in his final resting place.” It was as if Val didn’t hear her. “I smelled the perishing of his flesh. I did not leave until I was sure. I almost did not leave at all.”
“And, is this what you saw?” Sirin asked.
“No.”
“And what was it you wanted to see?”
Val felt the tears push past her resolve and the knot in her throat threw her voice as she spoke, quickly wiping at her eyes with her sleeves.
“I wanted to see him again…”
“So.” Sirin was unmoving, and if she had eyes, she would have been looking directly at Val. “Then it showed you what you wanted to see. And what you wanted to see was him again, not a memory of him.”
Val turned her head to the bird-woman, her eyes bloodshot where she rubbed them, but did not say anything.
“You are so thick, Nameless One.” Sirin sighed in frustration. “And I am going home.”
“Sirin,” Val’s voice was pathetically meek. “It’s Val.”
“Hm.” Sirin paused at this, but only momentarily. “You look like you would be a Val.”
And with that, she was gone.
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He found her slumped against the outer wall, eyes reddened and swollen. She turned away, hoping he did not see her face.
How badly she had wanted to make him leave. Go anywhere but here. Instead, he sat a foot away against the same wall. They sat in silence, neither looking at the other.
“I’m sorry about the plate.” He broke the silence.
“Nothing to be sorry about.” She muttered.
“It brought me great joy and peace.” He continued. “But it seems like it brought you pain, so if that was because of me, I am sorry but I am grateful.”
“No…” Gods, but how dense he could be at times. Val did not want to speak and did not want to reassure him of anything. She did not want to speak of his family. “It wasn’t that.”
Again, silence. Only the birds and insects interrupted the stillness in the air.
“Who was she?”
“What?”
“Who was the woman, the one you saw after me?” He was looking at her, but the look in his eyes had been that of a rabbit ready to bolt. Val blinked, only then remembering what he was talking about.
“My mother.” She said, “It was my mother.”
“Oh…” This had been an answer he did not expect, because his entire posture changed. “A mother…”
And in that moment, it was as if something clicked in Ivan’s head, because he smiled - a smile so simple and genuine that she thought he probably did not know he was doing it.
“A mother.” He repeated.
Hags certainly do not have those…
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