Over a month had passed. Rosalea still had enough supplies to get by without going into town, and she had set herself a semi-permanent camp up as deep into the forest as she could physically make herself go. She found, over time, she was slowly able to expand her range of existence. She wasn’t sure if it was because of adjustments in the way she thought or if the spell was weakening in some way due to her stubbornness. It wore her out though, to fight with it so constantly.

So far, no one had come to see her, no one to check on her, or even to try to claim the red dress back. The people of Mire knew she had to be around somewhere, but seemed content that she was staying out of sight. That afternoon, however, it changed.

She faced a whole group of them. She noted some of them were openly carrying weapons. A man came to the front, crossing his arms and looking down at her. “Manage to find a secluded enough spot, yellow-eyes?”

Rosalea slowly stood, ignoring the insult. “May I help you?”

“You are a changer witch, right?”

Rosalea clenched her teeth, but slowly nodded.

“The mayor has sent for you then,” he said, reaching out to grab her.

Rosalea moved aside. “Why is that?” she tried to keep her tone level, though he was scaring her a bit.

He lunged forward and grabbed her roughly, even though she tried a second time to avoid him touching her. “You will know when you get there. It will not work out for you if you try to avoid the mayor’s bidding.”

Rosalea gulped, but she did not try to pull herself back. He was much larger than she was, and struggling would have done little good unless she resorted to magic, and she didn’t want to hurt him. Besides, I need to ultimately figure out how to get along with the people who live here. I should try to help and be friendly. She was stuck with them for better or worse until she died. It startled her to see that they went out of their way to catch her horse, and to lead Annie along with a makeshift halter toward town.

As Rosalea did not seem as intent as they had expected on not cooperating, or maybe was not reacting in a way that could be perceived as being dangerous, the man looked down at her and began to talk again. “Well, the beast people can heal, can’t they?”

Rosalea disliked the dirty name. “Uryans can heal,” she agreed.

The man sneered at her. “I don’t care what you yellow-eyed freaks call yourselves.”

Rosalea refrained from sighing or correcting him. “But, I cannot heal,” she said.

The man was dragging her along by her arm, and he shoved her forward roughly. “You just said you could.” She was pushed along through the town’s square to the largest house in a way that made it difficult for her to keep arguing with the man. When they arrived, he practically shoved her into a tall, heavyset man. She kept her feet, but when she looked up, she recognized the man to be the one that seemed to communicate with the dragon before everything had started. She was actually a little surprised that the dragon kept a mayor, but then maybe she should not be. After all, the town generally seemed to take care of itself.

The man pointed to a corral, where Rosalea saw possibly the prettiest stallion she had ever laid eyes on; he was almost as pretty as Annie with his rich blood-bay coloring, but obviously had a much stronger and muscular build that showed off his good breeding. She also knew instantly why she was here and why they wanted a healer. His eyes were really red, almost to the point of glowing instead of the natural brown they should have been. His coat was all covered in sweat to the point of a lather. He was dying of something typically nicknamed Madness disease. It started abruptly with the animal becoming more animated and violent, but then they stopped sleeping at night. Fairly quickly, the animal became more and more active and violent. The eyes turned red, the creatures often frothed at the mouth and exerted themselves to panting exhaustion, attacking anything that got too near them until they died. “That stallion brings a lot of gold to us every year,” the mayor told her as she saw all of this. “I command you to save it.”

“But I cannot!” Rosalea exclaimed. “Even if I was a healer, healers cannot reverse death. No one could reverse a disease like Madness at this stage!”

The man snapped his fingers. A man near Annie brought a knife to the mare’s throat. The horse instantly began rearing and kicking, and the knife slipped, making a nick on the horse’s neck. “Calm down!” Rosalea exclaimed instinctively. “They are going to hurt you worse if you do not calm down right now!”

The mare did as asked, though Rosalea was already having second guesses. Perhaps the best option was to take some scratches and wounds but to also get away… But where would we go? I am trapped here with these people. If we try to flee, I will just end up on the ground with my body unable to move. She turned back to the mayor, trying to plead her case. “I do not know how to heal.”

He glared at her. “You had better learn. Because if I lose my prize horse, you are going to lose yours. beast child.”

Rosalea could see there was no reasoning with him, and she felt her eyes burn. Maybe if she showed them she tried, they would relent and let Annie go. If they do not let go after I try, I guess I can… she didn’t want to think about attacking the town. As soon as she thought about it, she couldn’t help but think about the Uryans counter-attacking and killing those raiders. When she thought about all the blood on the ground as the Uryans hunted them down to defend themselves, she knew she didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it if she could help it at all.

She didn’t want to think about the damage she could and would have to do with her magic, and then she did not want to think about what they would do in the years after that. She still had to trade with them: eventually, she would have to find work with some of them so she could make a living.

Still, she had only seen healing done once. Taishan put his hands on the person, and I saw white magic flowing from him and… through? into? the injury. She tried to think of how she would describe the white magic knitting itself into the injury and sliding deep into the other person’s magic and disappearing. The liana had not even tried to teach it to her because it took so much skill and magic that they felt she should wait until she had her own liana.

So, could she possibly have any hope in learning it right now without any help? Healing only works if the illness or injury is not at a point that it would be lethal, and this… this has to be well past that point. Even if someone caught it in the beginning stages, I am not sure that this is curable. It was an always fatal disease which escalated rapidly. The stallion currently pacing around and lashing out irritably would soon be trying to break down the fence and trample anyone near it.

The disease is so rare… I do not even know how the animal caught it, or how any animal would. Since she was staring, and not moving, the mayor cleared his throat aggressively. She took a step toward the fence as Annie danced with anxiety. All right, so assuming I can teach myself to heal I need to go through the motions. If they see me do my best to cooperate, then that will be enough, I hope. She climbed the fence and got into the corral with the stallion; it immediately took notice of her and instantly charged her.

Terra magic to increase the pull down to the ground, she thought as she focused on her earth magic and imagined a sphere of intense gravity. The thing screamed and pitched and kicked as it fell down, but the last thing she wanted was to need a healer herself. Then she knelt by its head. You will rage until all your strength is spent. The poor creature was completely gaunt, soaked and lathered in sweat, and shivering. His breath wheezed over her knees as he struggled to get enough air. He was close to dying already. She placed her hands on him and tried to think of what to do.

The magic has to flow into him, around him. I have to be able to reach healing magic… But… nothing. She tried just pouring magic over him, and the only result was that her caelus magic formed a thicker coat of air over his body. She tried to layer each of her magics over him, but the plant-vitae did not want to go. It slid off his body and into the ground, and it caused little sprouts of hayseed trying to push their way up into the light in response to her magic. Her imber magic, likewise, would only help with gathering up some of the heat and sweat from the horse and dissipate it, offering faint soothing sensations and little more.

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She reached for her changer magic. She knew it had to be something with that. But she had never really used it beyond seeing animals and speaking to them. When she tried to layer it or make it do anything resembling cooperating. She looked down at the horse again. With this magic active, since she could not control more than one at a time, she could see the stallion’s life force magic. She could see the pure light of it near the stallion’s heart, but over the rest she could see an angry red color slowly eating its way through the horse’s body toward its heart. She knew that once that light was gone, the stallion would probably be dead.

So, she worked and experimented, and she desperately tried to find a way to stop the red from progressing.

She did not know how much time had passed, but she was feeling fuzzy from burning through her magic and trying to focus through her growing panic to try and help the horse. Each time the violent thrashing of the horse almost got him back on his feet or each time he nearly bit her, her stress grew. As his whimpers, screams, and panting breaths got more wheezy and dragged and shallow, she suffered with him. He was dying, and she was making him fight her while she tried to draw it out.

Nothing she did would stop the progression of the red, and the light inside the horse was almost gone. “I am sorry,” she said shakily. “There is not anything else that I can do,” she said. She looked around, the group around them had dwindled, but the mayor was still there. Annie was still there, though the man had put his blade away. She looked to the mayor, “Please, I have tried everything I can think of.”

The stallion chose that moment to get up, rearing onto his back legs to strike at her with his front feet. She pushed him back with an essa barrier, and he lost his balance, flopping on the ground, blood trickling out of his nose as he thrashed to get up again. Rosalea had, for a moment, been too focused on not getting hurt herself, that she didn’t immediately comprehend that the mayor had just said, “Well, then I shall keep my end of the deal.”

When she did, panic surged through her as she spun back to do something to help Annie, but the man had already taken his hunting knife and quite casually, with experience it seemed, stabbed it between the tender area of the horse’s shoulder blade and ribs, ripping through lungs and piercing the mare’s heart. Her horse screamed, and she screamed something like it.

“No!” She made a sweeping motion with her hand and sent the man near her horse flying back so violently with caelus magic that he smashed through another corral fence and scattered the goats in the pen nearby. She vaulted the fence and caught the mare by her face as she fell down, dragging them both down. “Annie!”

“I think that… this is it.”

“Annie!”

The horse heaved and thrashed. “Watch…”

That was the last thing the horse said. Rosalea felt coldness sweep over her. And a great deal of rage. She was aware of the sky above them darkening and turned and looked at the mayor, who was backing up nervously. “How could you?! What have I ever done to you?!” she advanced a step toward him. She remembered he called her beast girl. I should have fought back right away. Her cold pain dissolved into icy rage. Wind howled through the thatched houses, lifting away chunks of roofs on buildings nearby. The sky darkened and there was an intense thickness in the humid valley air.

“Archers!” he cried.

Rosalea turned to see four or five men raise bows on her. She felt so much rage that she could hardly think. They were attacking her, and they had just hurt her so much. They released their arrows, and she held up her hand. An essa magic barrier materialized and the arrows struck into it, floating in the air. They brought me here against my will, she thought. And they killed… She wanted to scream at them, but it only came out as a strangled noise as she turned the arrows in the air and flung them back at them. She heard a few more bow strings snap and saw that there were archers behind her. She held up her other hand as she felt an arrow whiz by her head. Something shoved her really hard in the shoulder, and she staggered a little before she flung those arrows back also.

They are going to kill me if I do not do something to them. She reached out to the clouds gathering overhead, and the wind, and summoned a lightning bolt. She had played with sparks experimentally before, and she remembered those were fairly jumpy and liked to conduct themselves toward the ground through whatever they could jump to.

It still didn’t prepare her for the lightning striking the spot where she stood. She was angling to get it to go to ground in the middle of the square, but she had no such luck, it arced that way, and then forked back and struck her.

It was only by virtue of being full of caelus magic in order to call it that she was not hurt. The deafening noise and bright light scattered everyone near her. She was not seeing well herself, and not feeling at all well, but she knew she had to get out of there. She broke into a run for the nearby swamp. She was weak, tired, her mind was scattered, and now she felt weird all through from being electrocuted… it was so hard to focus.

She found a particularly thick set of cattails, and using a bit of plant magic and weather to make it dry and a better hiding spot, she slipped in. Her shoulder was throbbing as she laid down, and her eyes were burning and she was struggling not to sob. Her skin felt tingly and numb, and she felt dizzy. What was I thinking going straight from sparks to lightning? She felt vaguely like the world was spinning and she couldn’t seem to stop it, and closing her eyes made it worse. But she knew what she was thinking; she wanted to hurt them like they had hurt her somehow.

“We have to find that monster! She destroyed the paddock! She attacked us!”

“Don’t you think that it is better to just leave her where she is and ignore her?”

“She is dangerous after all.”

“Cowards… that is why we formed a party. She cannot possibly take all of us on.”

“Think the mayor can actually make the dragon take her away?”

Rosalea held her breath. That seemed to be four different voices. How big of a search party was looking for her? How could she possibly elude that? And the dragon?

“Blood! Over here on these swamp weeds!” Rosalea held her breath, hoping that they were not the weeds that she was in. However, she knew they had to be, as a moment later she could hear the men crashing around and pulling her plant magic woven plants apart. I have to make it not worth their effort, she thought. She stood up and reached her imber magic, which made her want to throw up after the lightning bolt, and threw her arms down. Mud splattered everywhere and a wave of water came up which she shoved at the men, knocking most of them down. She then dropped the temperature drastically, partially freezing all the ground around her, and ran.

Blood? I am bleeding? And she finally touched her throbbing shoulder. In the back of it, she finally felt the shaft of an arrow.

The realization she had been shot just about made her faint. She stubbornly pushed the feeling down, I have to get the arrow out. I will never get away from them if I leave a faint blood trail everywhere that I am going. She reached behind her and gripped it, but it was at a bad angle. All right, caelus magic it is, she visualized a hand of it behind her, wrapped around the arrow, and she made a wrenching motion with her hand and ripped it out.

The shriek of unadulterated pain that left her lips sent several birds into flight and echoed around the swamp a bit. She was on her knees, vision full of gray and black sparks and she felt sure she was going to faint. You have to stay focused. You have to get away from these men, or they are going to kill you!

Where are you going to go? Another part of her taunted. You cannot leave the parameters of the spell. You cannot really EVER escape these people…

Rosalea pushed that sort of thinking far down into herself. It wouldn’t help. She might as well give up if she felt that way. She ripped the bottom of her shirt off and wrapped her shoulder crudely. Then she got back up on her feet and slowly made her way deeper into the marsh, feeling sick and hurt all over.

She soon found a spot much deeper in the marsh than she expected she could get with the spell binding her to the town. It had a fallen log and some more thick cattails. Once again, she encouraged the cattails to grow thicker and broader, and after checking for residents in the log, crawled inside the hollow in the middle and curled up. She gathered all her magic to her, realizing that some of the men of the town were bound to be mages, and if she had any loose in the environment, they would be able to eventually find her with it.

Minutes passed and she heard no sign of anyone. She took it to mean they were having trouble finding this spot or she had sufficiently scared them into not looking for her or rallying a larger party. In the quiet, her emotions settled from adrenaline and fear to emptiness and pain.

She didn’t even try to stop the world from blurring as her eyes filled with tears. She held the sounds in as best as she could, but she sobbed breathlessly as her mind forced her to grapple with the direction that reality had taken. Annie was dead. Rhainnon was gone. Both things might be her fault. Annie was definitely her fault. I should have just fought them. There was never hope I was going to get along with them if they are like this.

She spent so much time trying to not be her heritage. The images of the dead slavers never left her, and even though she knew why they had to die, she knew that day, after she had accidentally put the man’s sword through his boot and pinned several of them down to be later killed while helpless — she didn’t want to fight anyone again. The logic didn’t change how her heart felt about the deaths.

She also spent so much time trying to prove that she wasn’t an Ieshan. She wasn’t a beast child or a monster that could steal your soul. She had kept her head down, had been quiet, and had hoped that if she was patient and good, that they would see the real her. But there was apparently only one Rhainnon in this world, and she was gone now.

Ulric pounded all that battle strategy and leadership into me, and I did not listen. I just pretended that I could take the gentle road, and then ignorant people would know better. I should have stood my ground, I could have saved Annie if I had just fought them to start with. They had no intention of seeing me as anything other than what they think I am. She clenched her fists, took a deep breath in, but it did not slow her sobbing misery.

Annie, you were such a pain. You were so difficult about everything we did, but… Now she could only think of how the horse had really stuck with her, and even for all of her whining had been a good companion. Too bad Annie hadn’t thought to fear the real predators in their world. Rage surged through her as she thought about them demanding her to do something she could not do, and then punishing her for it. No, not punishing her. Annie is dead for my mistakes.

She longed to be anywhere but here. She longed to be back with the Ieshans. Then Annie would still be alive, even if uncomfortable, with the Uryans. She tried to avoid what she knew in her head she needed to realize.

But then, slowly, the thought came that she did not want to think. I will never make that mistake again.

She repeated the thought again and again to herself until she finally fell asleep.