14. Eva

As dusk saps the color from the land and turns every shadow into a lurking foe—or the Magus—I search the trees. The crow on a branch far above us seems to be mocking us. It stares down at me with beady black eyes and caws. I think it is waiting for us to ditch Patty's corpse so that it can feast.

We need a tree with branches low enough not only for Theo and me to secure ourselves for the night but also to hoist Patty's corpse, keeping all of us out of reach of dragons. However, my search proves fruitless. Each tree looms large, its lowest branch soaring higher than the tallest spire of the Magus's manor. I can"t help but wonder how the furies set up their trap earlier. They must be exceptionally agile.

Finally, when the world is entirely made of black and gray, with no stars even shining in the overcast sky, Theo says, "Let"s set up camp."

After we set up camp and eat with minimal conversation, we lie in silence. Close enough to touch, there is something between us. The dead body is on the other side of our low-burning campfire, but it may as well be lying between Theo and me. I want to be rid of it; he refuses. I hope the smell of burning wood is enough to mask the smell of rotting flesh from any dragons or monsters. At least it is enough to mask the smell from me.

The Magus swims before my vision when I close my eyes. He lays over me, his shoulders wrap around me, he warms my cold feet and colder soul—fantasies. I keep forgetting that the Magus is no good. He tricked me into marriage when I was meant to—when I still want to—marry Theo. He created me to own.

I dream of a handsome man—no, more a boy. A boy who smells of chemicals and tomatoes. He tastes of it when I lean my head against his shoulder. I've been in his arms a thousand times, and a thousand times my stomach flips when his flesh touches mine.

"Evaline," he says, "Oh, Evaline." A voice like wine. Intoxicating.

But his shoulders are too thin and now tears are spilling down my face. "You need to quit," I am pleading, "It isn't healthy."

He stiffens against me. "That's easy for you to say. Doctor," his voice is mocking me. It is dicing my heart like an overripe tomato. I hate tomatoes.

It could be so easy, if only. If only, if only…

Then we are in a room bright with windows and the handsome boy is a handsomer man. He smells all wrong, like summer, like autumn, like health. He is the Magus, and he is looking at me, and he is not smiling. I long to touch him.

I'm awakened from sleep by the snapping of twigs. I snap up, and blink into the darkness. The world is made of dark silhouettes. Theo snores softly nearby. The fire has burned down to orange embers. Beneath me, under the blue flowers, twigs, and leaves the ground is hard and cold. I lean back down and shut my eyes. It must have been my imagination. Maybe it was just the last crackle of the fire.

SNAP. SNAP. SNAP.

It wasn't my imagination. My first instinct is to scream, but I have at least enough sense to clamp down my mouth before a sound comes out.

The snapping twigs and footprints are coming closer from the other side of the fire pit. A huge black silhouette is moving closer, closer. Now I really want to scream.

For a moment, what must be its head tilts at a certain angle, and I can see the reflection in its eyes, silver disks floating in this darkness. The beast—the dragon, for it must be a dragon—is huge. Bigger than several horses combined, at least. I stay perfectly still. I can't fight a dragon. I can't outrun a dragon. Running would only call its attention to me. I can't do anything. My heart is trying to escape my chest.

There is a scraping, and a ripping, and a squelching. My stomach churns like rotten cream when the smell hits my nose a-new—it smells like sulfur, like Hell—the dragon tearing into Patty's rotten flesh.

Yes, I think, Yes, better her—better it—than us. I find myself smiling as I watch the dark figure rip and gobble, flashing white razor teeth intermittently in this dark world.

I glance at Theo, sleeping like a rock beside me, dead to the world. I almost want to settle back, relax back into sleep like him, but of course I can't. I want to witness it if the dragon comes for me next. I have a morbid fascination with looking my death in the shining, yellow teeth. But I somehow don't think it will kill me. We are friends, you and I, Mr. Dragon, I think. You are eating away at a big stinking problem of mine.

Everything seems to happen at once. A particularly loud crack of a bone snapping in the dragon's jaw, Blacky waking up, neighing, snorting, rearing, rolling his eyes until the whites can be seen in the dark, snapping his rope, racing away, Theo sitting up, yelling, scrambling for his sword, and the dragon placidly chewing on like a cow with cud.

My brain finally finishes processing what just happened, and I yell, "No!"

But it is too late. Theo is already stabbing at the dragon with his sword.

The noise the dragon makes is ear-splitting, and I remember in the stories that if you hear the scream of a dragon death will soon follow.

"Theo, no!" I scream again, "Magus, help!"

I'm sobbing, whimpering, "Magus, Magus, help, help," reaching for something, anything to throw at the dragon. Its wings are wide and flared, blocking what little light there was and turning the confusion of darkness into a nightmare. Theo is a decent swordsman, but he stands no hope against a dragon, a vicious creature that can see in the dark, a creature that has claws and teeth as long as his hand.

The movement of the battle in the darkness is impossible to follow, Theo dodging one way and another, the dragon rearing, lunging, snapping teeth audibly.

I finally manage to lob a cooking pot at the monster and Theo yelps, gasping with pain. For a frozen second, I think I hit him, but no, I'm sure the dull thump I heard was the pot hitting the dragon's broad side.

I'm useless, I'm useless. Useless, useless, useless. The Magus will never come help me again. He doesn't care. He doesn't want me. I'm nothing to him. I'm nothing.

But the dragon is retreating. Loudly snapping twigs and branches as it barrels back into the darkness from which it came. We are alive! We are alive, alive, alive!

Theo falls to his knees, gasping in pain. I'm useless, useless, useless.

I stumble in my haste to get to him. He is gasping, clutching his right arm with his left. It is dark, but I can still make out the anguish contorting his features.

"You're hurt, we need light."

"You yelled ‘Magus.'"

I scrape the flint against tinder, frantically, clumsily. I want to remain hidden in the darkness. An eternity later, I get a small flame burning. The glow casts the shadows on Theo's face upward, further twisting his expression. My eyes fall to his arm, I can't look him in the eyes.

"We need to clean and bandage your wound," I tell him, as I dig through our supplies.

"You yelled for him," he is saying, "You yelled for the Magus!" The accusation in his voice makes me nauseous. Or maybe that is just the lingering scent of the rotten corpse.

"Show me your arm," I whimper, as if I am the one in pain, as if I were the one scratched by a dragon.

As I examine his wound—a deep gash, wet, red, a suggestion of bone white—he hisses it again, biting it out between his pain, "You yelled for the Magus."

I don't hesitate to strip the male tunic from my chest and wrap it around his dribbling arm. The dirty white fabric blooms a dusky red. For a moment, I am transfixed, watching the color spread.

"The Magus," Theo is saying. "The Magus," he is spitting the word out like poison.

I dig through one of our packs, grateful that Blacky at least didn't run off with our stuff. Blacky... The inside of my nose stings the way it does when I am about to cry. Blacky is as good as dead. I shut my eyes and open them again.

I find what I am looking for and return to where Theo remains standing, unmoving, clutching his wound, clenching his jaw. I can feel his eyes on me. He says nothing when I gently pull his wounded arm towards me. He makes no sound when I pour alcohol over his wound, as it washes the red blood to a flickering milky pink. He doesn't even make a peep when I take my needle and thread and begin sewing, poking new holes through his flesh with my bone needle to pull his skin together. I work quickly, rhythmically, naturally. I relax into what I know I must do and feel cozy with the warmth of the fire on the bare skin of my back.

I wrap his arm back up in a clean bandage—one Patty didn't live long enough to use. "You're lucky, it's a clean wound, it didn't sever any tendon or muscle," I murmur. My voice sounds alien to my own ears. Suddenly, I remember I am not wearing a shirt.

"Who are you?" Theo's tone is not kind.

I meet his eyes and see my own confusion reflected on his face. Confusion and disgust.

"How did you know how to do that?" experimentally, he moves his arm, grimacing in pain but managing a fist, "Did the Magus teach you?"

I stare at my hands; they are painted stiff with dried blood. How did I do that? How did I, who can't sew to save a shirt, sew up a wound?

"Adrenaline," is the word that spills out of my mouth.

"What the fridge is adreanaline?" Theo is scowling at me, "Is that some form of magtech?"

"No, of course not," I say, not knowing who is spilling the words out of my mouth. I don't know how I know what adrenaline is. Is it something the Magus taught me about and I simply forgot ever learning it? Suddenly, I am aware of wetness pasting my breeches to the inside of my thighs. I am shirtless, and at some point, I pissed myself out of fear.

"You watched as a dragon ate my mother. You called for the Magus instead of trying to help me. I don't know you. I don't know if I ever really knew you. You aren"t who I thought you were. And I have given up everything for you."

I want to tell Theo he's wrong, that he does know me, that I'm his best friend, and I love him, and I would never do anything to hurt him, that I loved Patty too. I want to get mad at him for saying such awful things to me. I want to make excuses, I want him to be wrong, but—he is right.

"Have some jerky and some water," I say. "You lost a lot of blood."

As he eats and drinks, I go behind a tree to change my clothes. I smile to myself as I pull up the fresh breeches. Modesty is a joke. What does it matter what you are wearing when your world is falling apart at the seams?

Soon after we lie back down to sleep (there is nothing else we can do in this dark) Theo scoots closer to me. He wraps his good arm around me and pulls me closer to the heat of his body.

"Thanks for fixing my arm," he says.

I dream many dreams, but I don't remember any of them.

When I wake up, I sit up, and stare into the middle distance at nothing. I want to go back to sleep. I listen for the sounds of morning birds singing and hear nothing.

There is nothing for me in this world. Indifferent to my misery, the morning dawn's soft light makes everything beautiful, streaks rays of orange onto everything, makes everything shine. The flowers, the trees. Our burned-out campfire, my satchel, Theo's snoring, freckled face. His rust-colored hair is especially brilliant with streaks of shining orange. Then I see the flowers rust-colored, freckled from Theo's blood, Patty"s blood, and the dragon's blood.

Without a horse, we are as good as dead. All our money and supplies were on Blacky's back.

When I wake up a second time, it is because Theo is gently shaking my shoulder. "Wake up, Eva, we need to get going. Wake up."

"Go where?" I grumble, going to finger-comb my hair only to remember it has been cropped short. I can feel it sticking up. Patting it down hardly helps.

"Go find Blacky, go to Esseff, get out of here."

"Go yourself," I say. I'm grumpy. I'm sad. I'm hopeless. And I'm scared. I have no right to be anything but the sweetest sugar to Theo. I should be grateful he didn't leave without me while I was asleep after my behavior last night, after I let a dragon gobble up Patty's corpse with no remorse. After I called for the Magus's help instead of his. But here I am, grousing at him.

Kneeling in front of me, Theo takes my hand in his warm, rough one. He strokes my hand with his thick, freckled fingers. I want to pull away. I want to punch him in his handsome nose.

"I'm sorry for how I acted last night," Theo says, "I was out of line. I was just...Well, I mean, I guess it makes sense you would reflexively call for the Magus when you were scared. He was your guardian. You are more of a victim in this than I am. I don't have the right to be angry at you. I think I was taking it out on you because I was scared too. You fixed my arm, and I was nasty to you...and I knew preserving Mom's body was a lost cause."

I'm not entirely surprised by Theo's apology; he did hold me close when we were falling asleep last night. It just irritates me more. Because he should hold a grudge. He should be mad at me. He is making excuses for me that I can't even make for myself. He was right about me last night. My go-to man, the one I wanted when I was at my most frightened, was the Magus. And I didn't want him because he is one of the most powerful beings in existence. I didn't want him because he could easily defeat the dragon. I wasn't thinking clearly enough to care about those things last night. I simply wanted the Magus because I wanted him, the Magus, the man—maybe even the man named Genji. And he didn't come. A part of me has been hoping, believing that he has been lurking in the shadows nearby, waiting for me to get tired of this adventure and to rescue me the moment I say his name. But that didn't happen. He let me go, and he didn't chase me. He didn't love me. I'm just a number to him. Number thirteen.

I finger the ring that I've made sure to keep in my pocket, transferring it every time I change my breeches. I'm such a sick, twisted girl. If I open my eyes, I can see that a part of me was delighted that he married me—because that meant he wanted me. But he gave me up so easily. It would have been so easy for him to find me and bring me home.

And I hate the part of me that wanted to be married to him—my desire for him is what made me so distressed when he initially married me—not the fact he forced me into it, but the fact that I wanted it. The fact that I didn't really care what happened to Theo or Patty—the people who truly care about me, truly love me. My hunger for the approval of a monster has turned me into a monster. An unlovable monster.

Anger and sadness thrashes inside me like a snake spiked through with a nail. I finger the ring. I paint a smile on my face for Theo. He still loves me—doesn't he? I don't deserve it, but he does—doesn't he? Even if the ‘me' he loves is not the true ‘me' but some idealized, forgivable version, I still want and need his love.

I do still love Theo, to an extent, as a brother, as a friend, but last night something that has been cracking broke, and I don't know if it can be repaired. I need to repair it. I will repair it, I resolve. I will fall in love with him and forget that the Magus ever existed.

I am a doll with a painted-on smile, as Theo takes my wooden hand to lead me forward into the forest towards an empty future, when I realize the smile on his face is painted on as well.