Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 6

We walk in single file through the dense brush of the forest. Fionn leads the group, the crazed one directly behind him, keeping close to me. I am trapped between him and the patriarch of the family of three. His wife, presumably, and child trail behind him softly. The sick one takes up the rear of the pack with the shadow, who is utterly silent, floating over the ground, eyes fixed on my back. I have not summoned the courage to look back at her, but I can feel her eyes digging in between my shoulder blades.

As I walk, questions swirl in my mind. Where are we going? How long will they tolerate me with them? What are their plans for me? Are they a part of a larger group, perhaps one organizing against the Crown? Or could they be the Dragon King’s raiders, sent across the border to sabotage and unsettle? My position feels so precarious I’m too fearful to ask such questions.

We walk until the sun is directly above us, peeking through the leaves.

The group slows. I stumble, trying not to step on the heel of the crazed giant in front of me.

Looking up, I peer through the edge of the brush and directly into the southwestern edge of Comraich. My heart drops. I thought we had been moving away from the town, but we have just come at it from another angle.

Have they come back to turn me in? I would run, but I’m trapped between two people who won’t let me get far.

“What are we doing back here?” I try to keep my voice calm when I’m fighting the urge to run. The part of me that feels like a trapped animal is willing to take her chances.

Fionn’s voice comes from the front, “I just needed one last look at the scenery.”

He takes in my fearful state, seeming to enjoy my poorly concealed terror.

“I figured you would need some supplies to help my friend, Armund, here.” He jerks his head to the sickly one behind me.

“I don’t even know what is wrong with him,” I protest in a hushed voice.

Fionn rolls his eyes skyward and the black-eyed one grips my arm, pulling me forward to take his place behind Fionn.

Apparently, big pale man doesn’t like to be talked across.

My eyes are locked onto the gray stone buildings, waiting for Crows to descend, flood from between the buildings and kill us all. Even with my gaze drawn elsewhere I can feel the heat of Fionn’s hulking form as he steps further into my space and whispers in my ear.

“Here is what is going to happen. You and I are going to take a little jaunt through town into the apothecary to collect supplies needed to heal a wound from a bog creature.”

“Bog creature? From the Morrigana bog?” The bog lives northeast of Comraich, just beyond the boundaries of Wynedd. It’s desolate, nobody has reason to travel there, and it spells disaster for anyone bringing through wagons. My mind sifts through the wildlife found within the bogs. Nothing that is poisonous enough to kill with a touch alone resides there. I rip my eyes from the gray stone walls of my death and search Fionn’s face for answers instead. “Did he touch some animal?”

Fionn’s head bobs side-to-side, deciding what truths I deserve. “Of a sort.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t help me. What did he touch?” I sound like Diana scolding a shameful customer, trying to hide their shameful deeds. Specifically ones that their wives would take issue with, involving the whorehouse on the northwest corner of town. The thought makes a pang move through the newest hole in my heart.

His eyes hold mine and I find myself flustered. His intensity sends thoughts flying from my mind like birds scattering to the wind.

“A Merrow,” he states flatly.

I sigh and search the skies for patience, any excuse to break that gilded stare.

“Just tell me, or I am not going into that place to be molested and hung in the square.” Perhaps dear Armund had a run-in with some ivy on his favorite part. Perhaps they spin tales of a mythical creature to spare him from the embarrassment of having too much fun and contracting some venereal disease. All men are the same.

“I’m being honest. There is a Merrow living in the bog. We just happened upon it, and it roughed up Armund in a little… skirmish we had.” One hand grips his dagger in its hilt, and his other gestures agitatedly.

My silence must be deafening because he finally looks back at me .

“Right. And a troll lives under my footbridge. He gave me this dress. Do you think I am that naive? That I would believe a half-woman-half-fish creature did that to him?” My mind starts to be pulled to other impossible things: claws dragging across the back of my skull where none exist, bodies torn apart by ice and fury. “I would not even know how to heal such a wound.”

My mind stutters as I admit my uselessness. So foolish.

“Well you don’t, but maybe Diana did.”

“Maybe. But I doubt she believed in bog monsters either.”

“She and I have some shared past. I knew she would know how to heal such a wound.” He eyes me out of the corner of his gaze, assessing my reaction.

Maybe you don’t remember her and our ways, but I do.

Our ways. I never did know where she came from. No one ever spoke about it. It was as if she had just appeared from nowhere, no questions asked. Most people were just grateful to have a healer nearby.

Diana had always rambled on, bumbling about amongst dried herbs and glass vials, and I blocked it out far too often. I wonder how many things she revealed when I was too lost in my own self-obsessed pondering.

My index fingernail has a chipped spot; I scrape at it with my teeth. I should have asked her about her childhood, about where she learned to be a healer, where she grew up, and why she left. Should have asked her about her favorite book. Should have asked her about her family and if she missed anyone. I should have asked her anything. Everything.

Remembering my audience, I look back at the others. The manic one is staring at the sky in boredom, fingernails scratching at his arms. The married pair is watching wearily, the father shifting unhappily—his family is too close to the danger that stalks the streets of Comraich. The girl looks at me with owlish eyes—as she has been the whole time. Like she’s bursting with questions but has been told to keep quiet. The shadow stares dead-eyed at me, waiting. Fionn waits impatiently for a response. My eyes fall to Armund, the one wrapped in a cloak, the dark circles under his angular face giving him a corpse-like appearance.

“Is this true, Armund?” Something about him feels friendly, even in his weakened state.

Armund shuffles towards me, passing the others in line. He shoves up the sleeve of the cloak covering his arm.

The smell reaches me first. Rotting flesh is, unfortunately, a smell with which I am acquainted. My hand slams over my nose as I peer closer, wishing I had some peppermint oil to rub beneath my nose. The green and yellow ooze is seeping from five lateral slashes across his arm, one on the underside of his forearm, like something tried to grasp him but he slipped out between the claws. The flesh appears swollen twice its normal size and is mottled green, purple, and almost black in some parts. The mis-coloration trails all the way up his arm, disappearing into the cloak shoved up to his bicep.

Whatever did this had to be carrying some potent venom. His flesh has become necrotic.

“When did this happen?” I whisper, rotating the arm gently. I take off the rest of the cloak to see how far the trail of redness goes, hoping to see it stop below the shoulder.

“It’s only been two days,” says a rich feminine voice from behind him. The shadow. Her eyes are almost black, but somehow twinkling, like a night sky. “We rubbed the poultice that Diana gave us on it every few hours and kept it covered, but it only worsened.”

I nod slowly, knowing Diana gave them some of our in- house poultice, which usually does the trick for most dirty wounds.

“Just to be clear, you told her a Merrow did this?” I couldn’t recall anything like this in any texts she had me study.

“Yes,” Fionn answers.

“This… I do not know what she was planning on retrieving for you. I do not know of these wounds.” I look back up at Armund, not wanting to say where my train of thought is leading me.

If I can’t get the festering under control… the source of the wound must be removed.

It’s like he reads my thoughts, because his warm brown eyes widen, and his whole body starts to tremble.

His demeanor before was low, but now his lean form shakes as a bush in the wind, and he finally looks awake. He also looks… young. An adult he may be, but his eyes are that of a pup. He is as tall as the others, well above my head, with fair skin and chestnut brown curls. But he is slight of form, better suited to indoor work than to being a mason or farmer like these other oxen of men.

“I—I’m not a fighter.” His voice is deep, that of a man, but gentler. He continues, “The others, Fionn, told me to stay back but… I wanted to see something stuck in the silt of the bog. The Merrow just came at me. I didn’t see her coming. I tried to get out of the way, but she got me a little…” His voice trails off as my hand reaches out to cover his.

His hand burns with fever.

“Maybe Diana has something in one of her books,” I find myself saying, without thought of the consequences. I jerk my hand back from his, turning to Fionn, ignoring the others that had been watching on silently.

Fionn stares, hopelessness written on his face. He cares for this trembling boy whose fate I seemingly hold in my hands. It takes a second for him to realize I’m looking to him for a plan.

His head whips away from me, back towards the town.

“Okay, so we go to Diana’s. It would be more discreet if we went just the two of us. In and out.” His voice is firm, commanding.

I nod quietly, eyes locked on the gray wall of a building. My thoughts race, heart pounding.

I look again to Armund, and know what it is to not want to die—to beg for help and receive none. For that, I’ll go.

Fionn turns to address his companions.

“I want you all where you were before, formation around the circumference, patrolling your areas. If you notice anything suspicious or hear my signal, amplify it. We meet at the same spot. Any questions, Fianna?”

Silence for a beat.

I turn around to look at them.

Everyone but Fionn is gone. Whispers on the wind.

“Let’s go.”

I feel eyes on me everywhere. I’m being watched, studied, followed.

Paranoia whispers in my ear, running its fingers down my arms.

But if there was anything there, I would be dead already.

I pull the cloak Fionn had stolen from a cottage at the edge of town closer to my body, tugging the hood further down over my head. It is less conspicuous than my ruined cloak and dress from before—or it would be, if this was not one of the few sunny days we get in a year.

Most people are sunning themselves whenever possible. Sneaking out the back door of work. Hiding in their dying gardens, beside the blighted potato patches. Trying not to look too free, too content. Trying not to draw the eyes of a Crow in need of a meal.

As Fionn and I creep down the side streets of Comraich, ground crunching under boots, I try desperately to push down the fear. The grip on my throat is, this time, definitely all nerves.

Every instinct I have screams at me to get out. Screams at me to get far, far away from this place that begs for my death. But still I walk on, because it is either death at the hands of a Crow, or death at the hands of this evil I don’t really know. Could he be more cruel than them? What would he seek to take from me first?

So I walk along this fine line, death awaiting me on either side should a strong wind blow in either direction.

We have stayed clear of the square, giving it, and its reapers, a wide berth.

A familiar thatched roof appears at the end of the road, the front door torn from its hinges, windows shattered. A part of me is surprised to see it still standing.

Once, a family down the hill on this side of town was accused of harboring rebels in their cellars. Their daughter, Caras, would bring by Rhodri’s supply of wine casks and she would sing in the tavern whenever she came by. Even I would linger in the doorway when she would sing. The rowdiest of patrons would fall silent to listen as her voice gave the stale air life. The melody told stories of heroes slaying fire-breathing dragons, a king leading his people to freedom, and a love that was worth risking everything for.

Her family’s home was found burned to embers after the accusation, and there were no tales of love and heroism floating in the air of Rhodri’s tavern from that day on. The bodies of Caras, her parents, and her little brother were charred, nothing but blackened bones when people went to “investigate.” They were there to pillage the home, to pick over anything that was worth anything. Nobody was entirely sure who started the rumor. I had always suspected it was Aled, a regular of Rhodri’s tavern, who spread the rumor. He had been spurned by her when he drunkenly asked to wed her one night after her song. He glutted himself on booze and herb for weeks after their family burned. He was not a wealthy man before.

I suppose Diana’s apothecary was too central, too close to other people’s homes and businesses to risk a blaze like that. A blaze hot enough to char human bones and eat away at flesh might catch onto the inn that the Crows had occupied. A nest for a Murder.

As we dash under the doorway, the glass crunches under my feet, breaking the eerie silence.

A few vials of liquid remedy lie broken on the floor, the rest presumably stolen. Remnants of clean cloth are in the hearth, burned beyond use. Only a few corners stick out in the edges of the space. Dried herbs, once lovingly hung, are torn from their hanging string and stomped into the floorboards. Medical instruments are strewn across the floor or tables, bloodied. Perhaps they have a concept of irony, using her healing instruments to injure her own flesh. Any memorabilia from her many years of life are either shattered on the floor or desecrated in some way. This is the entryway that I left through but two evenings ago.

Left, after I had hissed hate at her.

I thought I was familiar with the concept that everything can fall to ash in seconds—that the words you say might be the last that person ever hears. But every time I think I have that reality living in my bones, the world shoves more of it down my throat .

Fionn’s eyes on my face. The weight of them. The weight of this scene, the weight of all of the things that are robbed from us for just existing—are heavy on my shoulders.

My eyes stick to one memory, laying amidst the piles of torn books on the floor.