Abbie Eaton

CHAPTER 1

They would kill me if they knew.

I understood how dangerous it was. Understood exactly how reckless it was to practice outside where anybody may happen to stumble across me and see how those smooth, grey pebbles turned into jagged rocks, or how the water leapt up out of the stream to meet the cracked skin of my fingertips. Yet the fear of being caught melted away as I sat against the frozen banks of earth, letting whatever it was inside me crawl to the surface to be let free into this world. Time didn’t exist when I had the chance to escape into the forest beyond the boundary of the village and just breathe. It didn’t matter that I’d failed to hit the bird with my arrows, or that lifting a blade whilst astride a black mare had proven too difficult for my weak arms to lift the steel from where it lay against my thigh. Nothing mattered when I could have just ten minutes to myself to let the thing inside me breathe––to let it dance across the water, or wrap itself around the trunks of too tall trees and kiss each pinecone as they dropped down to meet me on the ground.

My thoughts had wandered again. Thoughts of what would happen to me if I were caught, or if the thing decided to develop a mind of its own and take over me completely. Those thoughts dissolved the second I saw them.

A flash of silver from the corner of my eye, almost invisible against the crisp frost that had formed a shimmering coat over the thicket where the trees grew denser. Only a flash and yet I knew what they were. I’d seen them before, watching me here. Watching me release the thing inside me and never coming any closer. Silver eyes that had wanted to remain hidden but brought along a feeling that had instantly caused the hairs on my neck to stand alert, had instantly caused me to whirl to meet the gaze only days ago as if my body knew I was being watched. As if my body were drawn to those eyes.

That feeling had me rising from where I’d sat against the bank of earth and walking towards the spot where I’d seen the eyes for the second time. I had to know. Despite everything I’d been taught in this village, against even my own instinct, I had to get closer, had to see who or what had been spying on me. And why it hadn’t killed me.

The cold had bitten at my flesh as I’d sat slumped against the earth and made my legs stiff and uncooperative. Even still, I crossed the ground, angling my head if only to catch a glimpse of that silver.

#

The cold hit me first. Followed by the breath being ripped from my lungs and finally the sound, as the ice cracked beneath my feet and I plunged into the water below. Stupid. How careless had I been to walk straight over the river in a forest I had spent my life growing up in.

A fool’s mistake for allowing the need to see what lurked amongst those trees to distract me from the skills I had been taught to survive.

It was bitterly cold. A cold that crept into my bones and burned as it sucked the energy and air out of me, teasing me closer to the bottom.

Water so cold that even the river had frozen over.

Water so cold it had barely trickled through the path previously carved in this place. I couldn’t catch my breath quick enough as it pulled me in, my legs had forgotten how to work, and my arms would not respond to me. The burning numbness spread through my head, squeezing it tight as I became submerged in the water, finally gaining enough movement to attempt to claw my way out.

It was useless. I was a tangle of arms and legs, and my parents had never thought it important to teach me to swim as a child––a task I wished I had placed upon myself or asked one of the men in the village to teach me as I found myself sinking further and further into the murkiness of the water closer to the riverbed.

As my back finally reached sand, I thrashed my legs, losing the leather sandals I had strapped to my feet, desperate for some way back to the surface. Anything, any sort of movement to get my head out so I could breathe. I clawed for something, anything to pull myself up with as my lungs burnt and threatened to betray me as the oxygen slowly left them. There was nothing. Nothing but sand and plants that uprooted the second I tried to pull my weight against them. I reached for anything, for a rock, for a branch, anything. I reached for that thing inside me and found that it too, had deserted me and I was left alone under the ice about to die. About to die. I couldn’t. I couldn’t go like this. Not alone. Not for such a stupid mistake. But I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t swim, or scream, or kick my god damned legs in the right direction.

The world was becoming heavy, my lungs were burning, and I knew it would only be seconds before my mouth would betray me to instinct and let in that fateful gasp of icy blackness. My eyelids closed, tired of the stinging from sandy water that swept over my pupils, tired of the effort of holding themselves open. And as my eyes succumbed to the darkness, so did my head as I finally stopped kicking. As my lips parted and sealed my fate.

CHAPTER 2

I barely acknowledged that the water had found its way into my mouth. I barely acknowledged that it was making its way down my windpipe and into my lungs. But something did. Something knew that I was clinging faintly onto the last few seconds. Something latched on and pulled. It pulled my eyelids open; it pulled my lips shut, it pulled my legs underneath me and it began to push me to the surface. Warmth spread through my body where the icy water nipped at it, and that thing that I had been clawing for had raised its head to push me up through the ice and lay me sprawled atop the frozen riverbank. I was safe. That thing had saved me and––

The burning cold in my skull was replaced by a grip that threatened to rip the roots of my hair from their follicles. I’d know that grip anywhere, had been witness to it hundreds of times throughout my eighteen years in this world.

“You evil bitch.” My father’s voice forced a shudder to run through me as his grip on my hair twisted, the pain shooting violently through where my hair met my scalp. I’d been caught. And now I’d die.

“Please.” The word left my lips in a gasp, and I knew before I’d spoken it that it would fall on deaf ears. That I had become the very thing I had been taught to hunt and kill.

His spit landed on my forehead, leaving a slimy mark as it ran down my frozen face. I wouldn’t be able to fight this, not after fighting under the ice. Even the thing that had risen itself to save me had disappeared back to where it had come from. Not a trace of it ran recognisable through my blood as I was dragged across the frosted pine needles back towards the village I’d run from just to gain ten minutes on my own. The last ten minutes I would ever get.

#

The look in my mother’s eyes as my father dragged me over the threshold to our cottage held a pain that was quickly suffocated with disgust. She knew. Before my father had so much as muttered a word, she knew what I was––what I had become––and the resentment on her face confirmed to me that I had perhaps minutes left in this world.

The grip on my damp hair slackened as he threw me through the door to a back room. A room that had seen many atrocities performed, and a room I had grown to fear over the years. People died in here. No. Not people. Things. Things like me.

The door slammed shut and I was left alone, shivering from the cold that had seeped into my sodden clothes and crawled through to my bones. What would they do to me first? Would he use those arrows that I’d struggled to hit my own targets with? Or would it be a blade that I could hardly raise with my arm out in front of me? Or would it be slower? Would they resent me so much that they would drag out my death––drag it out so that I would beg them to kill me like the men in this village had done to so many before?

And whether they believed killing the Fae was right or not, there would never be anything right about how they killed them; long, brutal, bloody. And for what reason? Because they believed the Fae were dangerous, and bloodthirsty, and would slaughter us if we did not kill them first? I couldn’t even decide if that was what motivated the men anymore, or if they just enjoyed the killing. Enjoyed the feeling of power over a creature born deadlier than them.

The cold was beginning to strangle each kernel of energy within me, and I didn’t know if I shook from the temperature or from the fear that I was about to leave this world in such a brutal way. The wood-panelled walls laughed at me. Dark patches upon the wood called out, drawing death closer as each second on a faraway clock ticked by.

The air became harder to suck into my lungs, my hands shook where they tried to push me up from the floor, and just breathing became difficult. I had to get out. Had to get out. Had to get out.

CHAPTER 3

I had to get out. The walls had become suffocatingly close. And god I wished for the thing that had saved me in the river, the thing I knew was wrong, and dangerous, and would see me dead at the hands of those who had raised me. Because now… now I couldn’t breathe, and the walls were getting closer, and they would kill me, they would kill me, they would kill me.

Perhaps it was all a sick joke at the hand of the god; that I had become the thing I was supposed to destroy. The thing I was supposed to hunt. And that fear I had felt when the magic––because I knew that was what it was––had first presented itself to me at just fourteen in a heated fit of anger when I’d thrown the bowstring on the floor and watched it burst into flames. That fear had kept me safe and had kept a lid on the thing running in my blood. And now, curse the god, now I had been so recklessly stupid that I had not even checked I was alone before letting it spring free in the forest. And I would pay for my stupidity with my life.

I shouted my frustration into the ever-closing space around me. Only then did something answer. Something dangerous, and wild, and… angry.

Finally, as if mocking me for the way I had not been able to summon it, did that thing in my blood rise to meet the walls, tearing the breath from my lungs and sapping all the strength from my knees. I had to get out. The panels of wood that made up the walls pressed splinters into where my hands beat at them. Begging them to give, to snap and allow me to escape from whatever it was that the men would do to me in here. But my pounding became weaker, the wood seeming to become harder at each strike.

My hands, bloodied and screaming in protest stopped. Not able to bang any harder as the room dragged in ever closer, my mind giving up at last and letting the thing take control.

I felt my body move of its own accord then, saw my shaking fingers rest silently against the wood.

Whatever it was screamed.

The wall recoiled at the touch of my fingers, wooden planks snapping apart where my flesh had touched them and flying so far into the trees beyond that they disappeared. I watched as my hands pulled apart the sharp edges of the wall and my legs, thin and unsteady, clambered through the wreckage. Frost and pine needles burned the soles of my bare feet as my brain fought to keep up with what was happening to my body. I had seen my hands do that, felt whatever it was explode from inside me, yet I couldn’t think. My thoughts weren’t mine. My body was acting on its own, and I could do nothing but watch.

My veins began to bubble again as voices sounded through the pounding in my ears, closer. Getting closer. I would die for this, for what I had done and what I had become. These people were ruthless and whether they had been friend or family, I was now an enemy. Now I had that thing running through my blood.

Perhaps it was the sudden realisation of the danger I was in, or perhaps it was that my brain had finally caught up which snapped me back into my body and let my thoughts become my own again. I had control of my hands once more as the first head of red hair rounded the corner of the cottage, eyes scanning my body and assessing the damage I had done to the wall. My own eyes cast over the blade he wielded, the blade that was slowly advancing on me as more heads appeared from both the corner he had rounded and now from the hole I had blown in the corner of the cottage.

Run.

No sooner had the thought sounded in my head were my legs moving. I hadn’t asked them to and yet I was heading into the trees. Faster. I needed to move faster. The shouts that had erupted behind me kept at a constant volume, informing me that I wasn’t gaining any ground on them. They were keeping up. I didn’t dare allow myself to think of the weapons they carried and what they would do to me if they caught me––if I tripped on a twisted tree root or my legs simply refused to keep moving. Keep going. Faster.

The trees moved in a blur then. The tall trunks of pine trees made easy weaving, and the thick trunks of oaks blocked the view of those behind me. Faster.

I had never moved so fast, never kept up this kind of intense strain on my body whilst my eyes slowed everything down around me, as if I were moving quicker than the world could keep up with. But I was thirsty. My god, I was thirsty. How long could I keep up this pace? How far could I get without having to stop for water? Keep going. Faster.

#

The trees blurred so fast not even my eyes could make out what was coming up ahead, but my legs at least understood what was going on. Tree roots jutted out from every angle but the ground, frozen and solid, leapt up to meet the bare flesh of my feet, keeping them moving and straight. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, the slapping of my feet as they hit the pine needles below them and…. nothing else. No voices. No clank of metal blades and the god knows what else. I could risk a look back now. Now that the voices had gone.

Nothing. Only trees and vast forest behind me. I’d ceased to be hunted. I let my body relax, too aware of how hard I had pushed it and found the rough trunk of a pine tree to be a welcome retreat as I leant my weight against it.

Was this the price to be paid for harbouring magic within you? Would praying to the god even help? It surely didn’t for the Fae. They were hunted brutally by the villages; the Lords from the larger towns insisting they be wiped from our lands alongside all traces of magic.

So no, perhaps praying to the god would not help at all. Because if the Fae prayed to the same god that we did, he had not deemed them worthy of saving. I didn’t think he would save me either. And it wasn’t as though I could think straight enough to pray anyway because I’d never known thirst like this.

My throat burned, and the feeling in my veins that had disappeared as I had run through this forest had come back with a vengeance. It made me itch––made me want to tear off my skin. I’d felt this feeling before. When someone had hurt me, or I’d been upset, I had carved crescents into my palms where my nails bit––a distraction to prevent the thing growing inside me from leaping out into the world. But now my skin burned as if my blood had been poisoned and was spreading across every inch of my body. Silver scars on my hands would do nothing to ease this sort of pain. The scratchy, unrelenting urge to rip off my skin apart and––I couldn’t think. The thirst had become too much. If I could just find some water.