Darkling (17 page)

“What is it?” I ask, sitting down on the bed.

Tristan draws a breath, as if coming up for air after swimming.
“My last journal entry.”

I wait for him to continue but he doesn’t. He goes back to reading. A line has formed between his brows. His body is taut. I wonder what the words could say to give him such focus. After some time, he shakes his head.

“It’s the strangest thing… I can recall bits and pieces of my life, like the ones I’ve shown you. But I don’t remember this day at all.”

“Maybe it was unremarkable.”

Tristan meets my gaze for a moment before holding up his journal. His voice shifts to sound a little monotonous and I realize he is reading to me. “Victoria slept in this morning. While she wouldn’t notice my absence, I headed into the woods to procure herbs. I am hopeful this new remedy will be the one to cure her spells. Our supplies are running low. Improving her health enough to travel south is imperative if we are to remain here. Though I am hopeful that my new friend will be of some assistance. I stumbled upon him checking a snare this morning. His name is Lucian and he is a hunter by trade. He lives in the neighboring village.”

“
Morrot,” I say, interrupting. Lucian was Draven’s father, but Draven has never said anything to me about a house in the woods. Lucian must never have told him. I wave my hand. “Go on.”

Tristan watches me for a few more moments, as if making sure I’m all right,
then continues reading. “I spoke with him about trading medicine for supplies. The herbs I planted in Victoria’s rose garden have done remarkably well so I have a ready store of treatments for common ails. As proof, I brought Lucian back home with me and made sure his game bag was well-stocked with vials and poultices before he was on his merry way.

“He has a gruff manner and is very to the point, but I like him. I think he and I shall be friends before long. He has even agreed to teach me to hunt, provided his village elder approves of our bartering. These mountain folk are strangely quiet but hearty. They seem to have very little contact with the world outside of their valley. I would very much like to spend time among them. Learn their ways. Perhaps even open a –” Tristan pauses. “Victoria.” He closes the journal.

“What about her?”

“I scrawled her name. I must’ve stopped writing to see to her.”

I nod, everything he just read trickling through my mind. If Lucian was young when he met Tristan, then this meeting was decades ago. However, if he was older, then this happened before the darkness when I was young. The idea that Tristan and I could’ve met in some other time and place has me spinning.

Would we have spoken? Would he have paid me any notice? Would we have been as drawn to each other as we are now?

There would still be the issue of Victoria. By the sound of his journal entry, he was looking for an escape from her even back then. For a friend. Or at the very least, a means to help his wife become a genuine companion.

Tristan carefully sets the journal down on the desk. “I wonder why I didn’t write anymore after that day.”

I’m about to ask if he died shortly after, but then I realize that’s a silly question.

“I don’t even recall what Lucian looked like,” he says, his voice distant.

“He was tall,” I say, drawing his attention. “With dirty blonde hair. A brown beard. Blue eyes.”

“You know him?”

“Knew him.”

Tristan crosses over to me and sits on the bed. He slips his hand around my waist. “Who was he?”

I lean my head against his shoulder. “He was my friend’s father.” Thinking of Draven is making me feel stiff inside. “He died over a year ago. Right around the same time Scarlet –”

We shouldn’t be talking about her. It’ll only make me sad. And resting against Tristan with my hand on his hip is reminding me of Draven and the woods and Lady’s feather.

“Who is Scarlet?” he asks.

I feel a little sick and once again wonder if the pork was going bad. I wish it was that simple. I wish this anguish was something I could just gag and purge myself of.
Something that I could leave ugly and foul on the ground and walk away from. But before I know it, I am speaking. “She was my sister,” I whisper.

“Another
was
, not an
is
?”

I nod.

“A bigger was.”

That does it. My face is contorting even before I feel the first cinch in my bruised throat or the first moisture in my eyes. I let out a dry sob. I try to make myself stop but after having cried so recently, it’s as if the dam has already been broken. When I feel the heat of a tear gliding down my face I know that many more will follow.
So many.

“I thought she was enchanted. She could do anything.” Now my breath is hitching. “The best at dancing, singing, laughing. She made everyone laugh with her.
Like magic. Then he said she was magic. Dark magic.” My throat hurts so much now that I have to stop to take a shaky breath. His hands are on me, hugging me to him.

“Dark magic?” he asks. I feel his words in my hair, where his lips are.

I wipe at my cheek. “Elias, our village elder, taught her to read. She studied with him. He said he noticed a change in her. She read about sorcery in some of his books. She practiced witchcraft.”

“What sort of witchcraft?” His warm breath is on my scalp.

“I never saw any. We never even got the chance to say goodbye.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up one morning back when there was still some light in the sky. She was screaming. I ran and found her bound to a stake in the middle of the village. The hem of her dress was burning. She was burning. Draven held me back as she died. Elias said she was a witch, so he set her on fire.”

Tristan’s hands have gone still. He doesn’t speak. I pull away to look at him. He has a peculiar expression on his face before he shakes his head, and his voice sounds distant again. “Burnt her?”

I can’t stop the sob that bursts out. I can hardly talk around it. “I saw her die. And I couldn’t stop it. They thought… they thought…”

But I can’t speak anymore. Not coherently. I’m shaking and trying to breathe. I’m moving. It takes a moment to realize I’m lying down. Tristan is behind me, pulling my hair over my shoulder. I curl up and he rubs my bare arm.

It feels like tears and snot are leaking from everywhere. I can’t get Scarlet’s screams out of my head. The sight of her blackened, peeling feet. The stench of her burning hair. The sound of her laugh. The funny faces she’d make at me. The way we’d talk in exaggerated voices, imitating other villagers behind closed doors.

I cry so much that I have no memory of stopping.
Only of waking. Time has passed. I know this because the room is nearly dark. The fire has burnt down low. One of my arms is cold but the back of me is warm and there is a weight on my waist.

Though I have been sleeping, my weeping has left me tired inside. That tiredness gives way to comfort as I realize Tristan is sleeping behind me.
Usually I‘m the one protecting Jasper. I didn’t realize I was still bearing that weight until this moment. Until I felt someone else protecting me again like Scarlet did.

Twisting, I peer at him. Tristan’s sound asleep. I can’t make out much of his face in the dim light, but what I do is so endearing that I brush aside his hair and kiss his forehead. When I had set foot into the forest, headed for Sacrifice Rock, I never expected this. I never expected to find such belonging with a stranger.
Such warmth amidst the chill of death. Such strength in whispers.

I roll over all the way and feel his soft breath against my chest. I’m still tired but for now I’m happy to just gaze at him. To let my eyes adjust enough to drink in his features. Were he graced with such beauty but had a cruel heart, I would only see the way his lips sort of frown. Instead, I see the way they dimple at the corners, looking like a reposed trouble-maker. I can’t imagine that such a pleasant face, such a noble heart would find pleasure in me. A girl who once thought he was a creature.
A monster.

The angle of Tristan’s cheekbone is highlighted in silvery light. It suits him so well that it takes me a moment to recognize it.
Silver light. Moonlight. The moon. Propping myself up on one elbow, I try to peer out the window. A mist in the air is glowing. I gently tug Tristan’s arm off of my waist then tiptoe over to the sill.

I squeal at what I see.
The beautiful, crescent moon. Clouds are streaking past but it has been so long since I’ve seen its light that I laugh. Tristan stirs behind me. I smile over my shoulder. “Come see.” I hold out my hand.

He climbs out of bed and slips his fingers into mine. The moonlight hits his face in full and he grins.

“Oh, how glorious!” The mist churning in the forest below us appears enchanted. Like hoary dragon’s breath or baby stars. “The darkness must be lifting.”

I
am so excited that I can’t speak. I can only gawk like a fool and lean on the sill. Then I’m struck by a wild idea.

“Dance with me,” I say. “Dance with me in the moonlight.
Outside.”

Tristan squeezes my hand. “I’ll dance with you anywhere.”

I gather up the hem of my mother’s wedding dress and dart across the room. Tristan chuckles as he’s yanked behind me. I know Victoria is weak because I can’t even sense a spirit in this house other than Tristan’s. Still, I pause at the top of the stairs, remembering how she tripped Tristan even when she didn’t have a body.

The lamps downstairs burst to life. My heart races and I glance around. Where is she?

Then I spot Tristan’s smile. He lit the lamps. She’s not in control anymore. Tugging on my hand, he leads me down the stairs. We reach the front door and he tries the handle. It turns. I grin. I’m growing more and more certain that we’ve defeated her.

For the first time since I came to this place, I step outside. The air is moist and crisp, and the woods smell of damp mulch and smoke. I get
goosebumps the moment the cold hits me. The house had been no warmer than the woods when I first arrived, but no longer.

I follow Tristan’s gaze. He is standing on the stair below me while I’m on the top. At this height, our faces are level. The moon is a bright patch of cloud at the moment. But even the clouds are beautiful in its light. I am mesmerized by their swiftness.
Their evanescence. I am reminded of spirits.

We descend the handful of steps. I am still barefoot and it takes a while to adjust to the icy wet beneath my feet. For the first time in months, I can see the branches of the dormant trees, coated in
a sheen of moisture in the hoary light. The mist swirls slowly, clinging to the ground, surrounding us. Like we’re in a cloud.

How beautiful the greens of new leaves will be as the ash and birch, beech and maple wake up. The thought makes me grab onto Tristan’s arm, hugging it to my chest.

For some time we remain like that, side by side, watching the clouds glide over the moon. Then they thin and we glimpse the shadowed circle. I can see the freckles on its face. I count them. Then I am distracted by Tristan’s fingers on my cheek.

He brushes aside a curl. I look at him and pause. His face is whitewashed but illuminated, as if he is glowing softly. We’ve never seen each other lit from above. I worry that he’s taking in my gaunt cheeks.
My pale skin. So pale that I’m likely to burn at the first touch of the sun.

“Always winter,” he whispers. “At last it will be spring.”

I smile and my lips tremble. I’ll freeze if I don’t move soon. Letting go of his arm, I snatch up his right hand and twirl beneath it. “One, two, three.”

Tristan grins and catches me around the waist, falling into the box step again.
“One, two, three.”

Though my feet are numbing, my heart is light. We dance in a circle and the glittering mist parts around us. I twirl out away from Tristan, keeping one hand linked in his. He spins me back to him and I twist under his arm as the mist gyres. We move, making up the steps, falling into each other’s rhythm. Then I begin one of our traditional dances.

Tristan follows my lead as I rest my forearms on his shoulders. He does the same to mine. It’s a quick step. First in a circle one way, then back. Halfway back I peel away and pop my foot behind me. Tristan laughs then has to move quickly to catch up. We repeat the step, faster this time. Then I hold onto his waist and he holds onto mine. We turn in a circle one way then I twirl under his arm.