Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

NEW CHAINS

I found my wrists and ankles chained outward to stakes in the forest ground when I awoke, twilight unfurling around me.

The events of the last few days roared back, dread punching me in the gut with such intensity I had to choke a cry down.

Dead. My family. Gone. Not a nightmare.

And Gia?

Against all instinct, I stilled my breathing, coaxing it into the rhythmic sound of someone asleep. I recognized the group from the cottage earlier bustling around, but I didn’t think anyone noticed I woke.

If Gia was still alive, I would find her. I would not lose her. Could not.

“I told you we should have just leveled her right away,” a male voice said, somewhat hushed, somewhat familiar. “Her magic might be dormant, and her memories gone, but she is still the Earth Daughter.”

A soft snort came from one of the younger females. “Me thinks someone es jest a wee bet embarrassed that he almost lost a testicle teh an untrained nineteen-year-old human,” she said, extending the word human as if to add insult to injury. Her accent was thick, sharp.

“You and I both know she is many things, but human, and untrained for that matter, are not any of them,” the male replied with more bite than before. That word again, human . I knew his voice now—it belonged to the man I fought in the woods.

“Ezren, Leiya, silence. Both of you,” a third voice said. “I was clear: no magic upon initial contact. The poor girl just had her family slaughtered by that maniac. She deserved us to come to her in peace and at least try the easy way.”

“So what now, then?” another voice asked.

“We will attempt the cleansing. Regardless if it is successful or not, it will be her decision whether to stay or go.”

I opened my eyes, panic at this ‘cleansing’ overriding my plan to eavesdrop. The male called Ezren turned to me first. There they were, emeralds on fire. Again, my mind went blank under his searing stare. It felt as if those eyes could burn me from the inside out. He blinked, pulling me back to the present moment and the state of my body. My hair was a matted tangle of mud, my body still slathered in filth. I turned my face away, heat rushing to my cheeks. “What did you do with Gia?” I demanded, refocusing on the important facts that I was kidnapped, in chains, and my best friend was nowhere to be seen.

“She is safe,” the older woman, Jana, replied. “No harm came to her—nor to any of the other humans in your village. We simply calmed her mind and told her to go home and back to bed.”

I weighed her words. She seemed genuine, but then again, she was also a kidnapper.

“Why have you taken me?” I rasped, panic bubbling as I pulled on the chains with little effort. I was well and truly trapped with these strangers. “What have I done to be your prisoner?”

“Terra, we are here to help you, truly. I swear on the lives of those I love. If you cooperate, we will unchain you and explain everything.”

I detected no deception, but these were the words of a captor. And I didn’t have many loved one’s lives to swear on anymore. “Who the hell are you people? And what is a cleansing?”

“You have some memories trapped in your mind that we need to free, and I can do that through the cleansing. It will make sense after. I promise,” the silver-haired woman replied.

I remembered an account of Lahar healers using hypnosis to help trauma survivors recall repressed events. Many cases did not end well, with more than one instance reported of the patient clawing their own eyes out.

Didn’t seem ideal.

“Afterwards, you will let me go?”

The leader exhaled. “If that is your wish.”

“Will it hurt?” My words were whispers that seemed to echo through the forest clearing.

I didn’t need to see Ezren’s searing stare to feel his eyes on me.

“Yes,” the leader Jana replied. “I will do my best to be gentle and to block your nerve endings from pain. But memory recovery and magic emancipation are no simple tasks, especially when the memories and magic have been buried for as long as yours have.”

Magic . Magic was a fantastical concept, a tool for conceptual metaphor in storytelling. It was also the creed by which some religious fanatics claimed to live. We had a group on the outskirts of Argention, necromancers, or Deathspitters we called them. From what I’d heard, they fed off small mushrooms that grew into late winter and made minds turn mad. No one took them seriously.

Maybe these were a different breed of religious enthusiasts. The cleansing sounded an awful lot like a cultish purification ceremony. Something to scare children. I pulled on my chains once more in a futile attempt to improve my position. “Please, just let me go,” I whispered, wincing at the pitiful sound of my words. “I am no one. I’ve done nothing.”

Jana exhaled. “Terra, only half of that statement is true. I cannot explain the rest unless you let me help you. Please, let me help you.” Her words floated over me, casting a warm stream of sunlight. I felt my resistance lighten as if a weight lifted from my chest, agreeableness its replacement. Agreeableness, along with the knowledge I wasn’t going anywhere before they finished performing whatever the cleansing was.

I pressed my eyelids together, defeated, a numbness sinking into my skin. Whatever it was couldn’t be worse than waking up and remembering the life leave my mother’s eyes.

I could live a hundred lifetimes and never forget that image.

“Just get it over with.”

They removed my chains, which, according to the older female, were silver and thus… magic dampeners. Whatever that meant. I considered attempting another run for it, but my body clung to the ground, leaden and heavy, sucked dry of any energy.

“Terra, we’ll have to hold you down with our own hands. I cannot use the chains, and I have no rope with me. Do you understand?” Jana asked.

I understood that I smelled like piss, blood, and dirt, and was about to have strangers’ hands all over me. Not the first time I’ve been violated this week. I remembered the blue-eyed man leering at my naked body. Doing something I could not comprehend, but knew was inappropriately intimate.

Some small, broken part of me hoped it would hurt.

That it would wipe away the stain of the past few days from my skin, my soul. That it would be more painful than the pain I’d just awoken to, if only to give me some small reprieve from the crushing loss settled on my chest, threatening to swallow me whole. I begged for a distraction.

“Fine.” Small tears escaped down my face, pooling in the creases of my mouth.

Two women, one young and one middle-aged, took each of my wrists, pinning them down with all their weight. Two men did the same with my ankles. Jana folded her legs on each side of my head, framing it, her knees light touches on my shoulders, a palm cupping my cheek.

“Your power, your magic, rests in here dear,” she said, placing the other hand on her own gut. “Right now, yours is hibernating, shall we say. Someone made it very comfortable there, like a bear in perpetual mid-winter. It will not want to come out and will certainly not want your mind to be cleansed. Though the pain will likely be in your head, most of your fight will come from there,” she said, gesturing to my torso. “Ezren will hold your abdomen down, is that alright?”

“If I said no, would you let me go?” I let out a humorless chuckle, knowing the answer before I spoke.

Jana sighed. “What I meant was, well I just meant, I could have one of the females switch positions with him, if it bothers you to have a male?—”

“Just please get it over with,” I whispered, my eyes still shut, tears creeping out of them. A pair of knees settle somewhere between my parted legs with what sounded like a pained breath. I hoped it was Ezren struggling to breathe due to a cracked rib of my doing. The thought made a ghost of a smile caress my mind.

Warm hands pressed on my lower belly, sending a new terrifying jolt through me. I blinked my eyes open again, and it took a moment for the welled-up moisture to clear. His flaming green stare loomed just a foot away from mine. He looked scared too, which, though strange, comforted me… as if I was not alone in my fear.

Jana began. She first rubbed my temples. After a minute of massaging, she pulled her hands out and away from my head, tenting her fingers like something still invisibly connected them to the temples they had touched. Then her energy became chaotic. One moment she swirled her fingers in the dirt beside me, another moment she chanted with her arms open. Another I felt her hands on my scalp. I almost laughed aloud at the insanity of it all, but the pain soon came.

When I was fourteen and fell off the thick curling branch of an ancient oak thirty feet above the ground, I thought I had known pain. I shattered nearly my entire ribcage. The healer was shocked I’d lived. I thought I knew pain when my brother Javis dropped a boulder on my hand, or when father didn’t come home for three days following a mining accident, or when I saw Mama’s body slump to the floor of our cottage.

But I had not known pain like this.

Pain that made my body turn white hot. No build-up, no crying, or whimpering, just searing hot pain that made my body want to contort, sweat, scream. It felt like she was taking a man’s dulled shaving razor and using it to scrape out every corner of my head. Every nerve ending I possessed mirrored the pain, culminating in my gut, as if to highlight how my mind was ultimately connected to it all.

I screamed and screamed until my voice went raw, my body thrashing against hands that kept me pinned to the dirt. If tears or prayers or pleas left me, I don’t remember them. Eventually, my whole body went limp, and darkness claimed me once more. I drifted away, praying I wouldn’t wake up this time.

I woke on a warm feathered cot with a pounding in my head. I squinted through my eyelids, light peeking through a small window to my left. I felt I’d dreamt a thousand dreams but could remember none.

Unease pressed itself upon my lungs as if I’d forgotten something important.

The memories followed.

Matron. Stranger. Mav. Running. Hiding. Mama. Gone.

I squeezed my eyes shut, water dripping from their corners. How many more sleeps would I have to endure, waking up to a world where my family no longer existed?

I lay there, sinking into an internal pit of darkness, content to do so indefinitely. But the urge to relieve myself eventually won. I pulled off the covers and found myself in a woman’s dressing gown, free of the dirt and grime that had previously decorated every inch of my flesh. My hand flew to my throat—the familiar feeling of a small pendant resting on my clavicle sent a wave of comfort through me. I touched my hair. It was clean, too—someone had made an effort to de-mangle it. Someone who bathed me… while I was unconscious.

I sat up too fast, dark spots peppering my gaze. I steadied myself on the bed frame and swung my feet to the ground. It felt good to be clean after what I’d been through. But even that pleasant thought sent a staggering ache through my body, for how could I afford even the smallest happiness when my family was dead?

I made use of a chamber pot positioned in the corner. Someone had left a tray on a small table next to the bed, a cup of water, and a large, buttered piece of bread. Though I had resolved never to eat again, my body betrayed my will. My mouth watered when I sank my teeth into it.

My caretakers had also been kind enough to leave me a change of clothes: simple trousers, boots, and a loose-fitting linen shirt. The small gesture was comforting, but another wave of grief washed over me when I realized it meant my father’s military wear was likely gone. What would I have left of him? Of my family?

I sat again on the bed, working up the courage to open the door, wondering what awaited me outside. Wondering whether or not Jana spoke true when she said all would be explained. So far, her promise to treat me well seemed kept.

I loosed a breath, padding over to the door. I peeked into the hall. Just Leiya sat there, cross-legged on a stool, sharpening her knife—surprisingly nimble for such a tall woman. She had cropped fire-red hair and a warm face peppered with freckles and faint smile lines. She possessed the same pointed ears I’d noticed on Ezren. She looked formidable, and I had the distinct impression she’d seen the days of battle.

“Finally, the princess hath awoken,” she said mockingly, without looking up from the blade. “Have a nice sleep, did ye?”

“How long was I out for?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Oh, only about three days,” she replied.

I shifted on my feet. “So, did you bathe me?” My eyes narrowed.

That made her look up, “Nay, Ezren ensisted he do et. He es the best wi’ hair, anyway.” My expression must have been a mix of intense terror and confusion, because Leiya burst out laughing. The terror faded from my face, but such horror remained that she said, “Oh come on now, jest a wee joke.” She rolled her eyes. “If yer done pissin yer pants over a wash, do ye thenk yer up fer a walk?”

Leiya led me out of what turned out to be a small inn with a few bedrooms and a cozy tavern on the first floor. Jana had let me rest in the homey dwelling to recover from the cleansing, but requested I be brought to her camp several miles away right after waking—or so Leiya said. The moment we stepped outside, it was like walking head-first into a stone wall. Instinct stopped me in my tracks. The wall that I had ‘run’ into was made of an overwhelming surge of light, sound, smells. I bounced back, nearly falling on my hind.

She caught me by the arm and said, “Slow down lass, yer senses are gonna have a right time catchen up. Ye walk steady now an’ breathe deep. Big enhale an’ exhale. That’s et. Take et slow an’ leave yer hand on me arm.”

The inn stood lonesome on a tree-lined coach path, and other than that, there was very little to help me identify our location. And even if more clues presented themselves, I’m sure I wouldn’t have seen them. I was too busy taking in a new spectrum of color—a field of light that shone more vibrant, more varied than I’d seen before. Sounds blended together like notes in a song, making them less discernible. Odors, putrid and delightfully fragrant, mixed together, making my nose wrinkle.

The tree to my left bowed, and nausea bubbled in my stomach. “Leiya, I’m hallucinating,” I choked out, my eyes darting around.

“Et’s called settlen,” Leiya explained. “Yer gonna feel right off for a few days, as es with any cleansen, but the settlen es quick enough. Ye got more magic than most, so et could take a bet longer. An’ I’ve heard ets a bet harder for Wetches than Fae. But settle ye will all the same.”

Magic . That word again. And Witches? Did I hear her right through her thick brogue? Her explanation made little sense to me, but my body was still too absorbed with grappling its staggering transformation for me to voice my confusion. I took enough away from her comments that I knew the sensory overload was not permanent.

“See ef ye can feel the life around us, the forest,” she probed. “Maybe et well help.”

Her words held no meaning, but a deeper voice urged me to listen. I slowed my breath, and gave myself over to my senses, my legs continuing to move where Leiya led me. And then there it was—a buzzing jolt that flowed through me.

“What do ye feel?” Leiya asked.

“I-I’m not sure how to describe it. It feels… like the fabric of life.”

I had always been in tune with the forest. My whole life it sang a song to me that I felt like lifeblood. But now, it was different. I knew, somehow, I could sing back. And it would listen. It would bend and obey. And it wouldn’t really be bending or obeying, because it was a part of me. The lungs don’t obey because the mind consciously commands it. They move with the body’s intention. And that’s how it felt. Like the heartbeat of the forest was my own.

It took us almost an hour to reach the camp, and the walk was tedious. I felt like I’d been put into someone else’s body, which made doing anything, even walking, foreign and clumsy.

Eventually, we came upon a large camp of tents with people buzzing about. It looked how I imagined a war camp would, but far less dire and without the stink of death in the air. Many sat outside their canvas shelters on beautiful woven rugs, drinking from shining goblets, smoking from long pipes, and playing cards. “Who are these people?” I muttered, the words forming under my breath.

Leiya must have heard me, for she eyed me and said, “Wetches like their fancies, eh? I remember me ferst time at a Wetch camp. Looked like a bunch a’ rich folks on holiday. Thought them Wetches were soft, needin’ all these comforts and such. But no, them Wetches are tough as any Fae warrior. They jest like to travel en style .”

“Witches,” I repeated, dazed. Maybe I really was going crazy.

“Now look,” she grabbed hold of my arm and stopping me in the middle of the camp. “Yer gonna be right confused when everythen es explained to ye. Ye won’t know what te believe and ye won’t know who te trust. But ye hear me when I speak the truth right now. We are the only ones who can help ye get what ye want. Trust that .”

I raised my gaze, staring up into Leiya’s hazel eyes, feeling a limpness in my own. “And what is it you think I want? My family is dead. I have nothing to want for.”

“Yes, yes ye do. Whether ye want et now, or later, ye want revenge. And ye won’t be able te think straight again until ye get et. And even then ets a coin toss. But ets yer best shot at moven on, and we’re yer best shot at getten et,” Leiya said.

The word revenge sounded dirty to my ears. But it stirred something inside me—something primal. The word burned in my chest where it had been cold and dark before.

It felt good to burn.