Chapter 37

Thirty-Seven

FINN

That the dream didn’t end meant something, though the memory shifted ahead to me standing in a familiar clover field, surrounded by moonlight and trees stretching up into the sky. Lena’s favorite grazing spot. Yet there was no sign of her.

Maybe I’d arrived before her?

I sat down beside a tree, exhausted from the trek, and thought to wait for a time. A nuzzle of something to my cheek woke me before I realized I’d fallen asleep, and I opened my eyes expecting Lena, but finding her new fawn. The baby barely had his legs, stumbling about in that ungainly way of the newborns. Mother had hoped he and I would bond, but he was far too little to understand me as Lena could.

“Where’s your mama,” I asked the baby, petting his brow and ears, while I scanned the area. He snuffled me again. “Yes, you’re hungry, I know. Let’s find your mama.”

With the sun rising, sky colored far overhead in a wash of pinks and oranges, I searched for any sign of Lena. The forest sat in strange stillness. The absence of birds at first light made me wonder if a bear or some large predator had wandered into our area.

I paused to listen, straining to hear any movement as I clutched the fawn close to me. Beyond his snuffles, the silence stretched. Where was Lena?

“Let’s head home, little one. My mama will know how to find yours,” I told him. He trailed along as I headed toward home, wary, and quiet as possible. A sense of doom grew in my gut with each step. The forest was never this quiet.

We approached the furthest perimeter, and I noticed the chimes cut from the trees. In the wind, their sound a gentle and soothing tinkle, but a lot of movement in the forest would stir them up as a warning. I bent to retrieve the first fallen strands. The woven vines used to hang the dried bones, pine cones, hallowed bark, and varied light rocks, had been cut. None of the deer were tall enough to reach them, and the smaller inhabitants of the trees, while occasionally stealing a piece of wood or small stone for a nest, usually left them alone.

I gazed along the tree line searching for the rest of the markers, and finding them all gone from the trees. Why?

The local townsfolk rarely hunted this deep. Mother said it was part legend of my sire’s madness, and part the sensation of the woods. But this forest thrived with energy and life, sometimes to our frustration, as we’d plant a small garden, and the heart of the woods would send every woodland creature to eat it all. Usually, the mood of the forest was playful, but now I suspected the doom came from deep within the roots of the ground. The thrumming in my chest intensified with each step home.

I grabbed up the fawn, and wrapped him up in a blanket to tie around my chest, then ran. The closer I got, the more my mind screamed, while a lock remained on my jaw, keeping me silent. The forest covered any sound of my tracks, or I’d grown deaf in those few seconds of fear, as I moved like a ghost, appearing at the edge of our tiny cabin to an array of heavily armed men.

The men from the market.

I hesitated behind a tree, searching for any sign of mother. She could have made it back before me as I’d visited my father. But why were these men here?

They hauled things out of our cabin in satchels. Why were they taking our stuff? I approached with growing rage, our entire life of working to live in harmony with the forest and survive being stripped from our home. How dare they?

The fawn made a small noise, and I realized I was growling, but couldn’t stop. My heart hammered in my chest; darkness wriggled at the edge of my vision. I unwrapped the baby and let it down, giving it a small push away from the chaos I could feel rising inside me. The baby didn’t move, but I stalked toward the men, my hands clenched and long tendril claws dripping blood as they erupted from my fingertips. The bright beauty of my other form feeling an overwhelming sense of dread that cast a shadow over my light.

One of the men turned, his gaze flipping past me and then drawn back, eyes going wide. It was then I saw the carcass of Lena, cut wide and being carved open by another man on the opposite side of the house. My heart flipped over with rage and grief.

“Witchborn!” The first man shouted. The other looked up, but it didn’t matter. I flew toward them, heart in my throat and bloodlust driving my rage. The first two died in a spray of blood. Others flooded out of the cabin, swords and arrows raised.

They all died.

The moment passed from one heartbeat to the next, and I stood among a wash of pink and red chunks of meat. Vile bits of the dead men washing me in their tainted blood. I gazed at Lena and then the open door to the cabin.

Changing from beast to man again took a few seconds of concentration. Tears ran down my face as I approached the open door. The inside of the cabin small. It had only been mama and me. I felt like the baby in the wagon again, fearing my apa’s madness, as I stepped inside our home. The destruction barely registering my notice as all I could see was mama stretched out on the bed, unmoving.

I silently willed her to get up, breathe, smile and welcome me home, but her gaze cast open and blank at the ceiling. My heart pulsed in my ears, deafening me to everything as I stood over her logging a list of the things they’d done to her, from her nude body covered in blotches of blood and burns, to the discoloration around her throat.

Monsters. I tugged the blanket up over her, left the cabin, and carried Lena’s remains inside, then closed the door to keep them safe from the elements as I stalked through the woods, searching for any other sign of life. I passed the fawn, tiny little thing still on shaky legs, and cursed the humans for the plague they were.

The trees withered with each step, land shriveling beneath my feet.

I ran into another group of armed men coming from the north. Had they somehow followed me? The group froze upon seeing me.

“Why’s the boy covered in blood?” One asked.

“He’s the babe of that witch,” another said.

“She was a goddess,” I said, rage rising again at their disrespect.

One of them threw a pouch at my feet, the tea bag supplies I’d given to the woman in the market. “Like this isn’t witchcraft? The boy is witchborn, best to rid him of this blight before it infects us all.” He raised his sword, but that’s all I saw. From one moment to the next, again I stood in their shredded remains rage over the bag of tea soaking up blood at my feet.

I took to the sky, a transition as easy as breathing as long as it was fueled by rage and pain. The flight to the village, folks moving about for their day startled by the drip of blood as I hovered over them. It was only the beginning as I dove at the first armed man I saw and didn’t stop until the entire town blazed behind me, covered in blood and gore.

The trip to apa’s took most of the day, but my heart was too heavy to go home and give mother and Lena a proper burial yet. Turning them back to the soil would take a few days of work and the forest crumbled in waves, like my rage was killing the land. I couldn’t swallow it down. Between grief and rage, I found every waking moment a drowning wave of emotions.

The shadows around the cave had seeped away, and trees lay in ruined piles, uprooted and lifeless. Had the soldiers been here too? The basket of supplies still on the table, second jar of preserves unopened. No movement from the cave.

Had he hidden away while those monsters killed mother? I stalked forward, never having entered the cave before, but held out a hand to create a light as I stepped into the dark expecting glowing eyes and a snarl to meet me.

A few dozen steps inside lay a man. At first I thought he was one of the armed men, but without blood or a sign of a struggle, he was unmoving, broad back to me. I approached and knelt beside him, no sign of life as his heart had stopped. His long hair covered his face, matted and unkempt, and when I brushed it away, I found my apa, the rare glimpse of his human self before he’d leave the cave and find himself lost in the shadows.

The dark twitching blight had vanished. I rolled him over and searched for signs of a fight. Finding him unmarred, as if he’d finally succumbed to the curse. The cave around me glittered with a thousand trinkets my mother and I had gifted him over the years. Proof he hadn’t always been lost to his beast.

I rose to my feet and exited the cave, every part of me screaming, inside and out, while I swallowed the sound, fearing that I’d draw humans to us. But as I dropped to my knees and finally sank to the ground, wrapped around my knees and sobbing, I cursed the forest for not protecting mama, apa, or even Lena. Rage spawned something inside that latched on, and began to grow.