Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 13

Light dances behind my eyelids, singing the song of crackles and pops, whispering in my dreams that were memories. Shards of desperation, webbed fingers, and black eyes; they blend and fade in my mind’s eye. They become so abhorrent that my eyes jerk open.

The others are sitting around the fire, the rest of the world gone dark. Dealla and Aine whisper affectionately to one another, warmth on their faces. Deri watches, his entire world in the air between their breaths. Fionn is hovering between Armund and me. Armund is unconscious, his skin clammy and gray.

“Finally.” The voice is like smoke itself. The voice of the shadow, who sits across the flame. Elva stares intently at me as the firelight reflects off her dark skin, absorbing none of it, making it glow with a radiance.

I sit up, my every movement stiff, limbs heavy. The others have gone quiet at my awakening.

“You’ve been out for hours,” Fionn says tightly, searching my face. Gone is the contempt that used to live in his eyes when he looked at me, replaced with distrustful curiosity. “We need to get started with Armund, he’s… not doing well.” He looks to be torn on whether to satiate his curiosity or heal his friend right this moment.

Memories float back. I can’t make sense of them anymore than I can the morning I awoke to Crows turned to shattered stone. One thing is clear, however—it’s me. I did those things. Somehow, I rendered those Crows into nothing more than chunks of flesh. I turned the water to blades of ice and wielded them against the Merrow. I would have no doubt about it if not for the fact that humans do not have these fae-like powers. And I am undoubtedly human.

My parents could have somehow hidden their own, similar powers from me. But why? And why wouldn’t they have used them to save us from poverty and themselves from death? None of it connects.

My hands look ordinary—dirty and rough, with nails bitten down to their quicks. Many ordinary hands like mine kill, but very few in such a terrifying way. Shouldn’t there be some tell? Shouldn’t you be able to see the difference in the hands of a killer?

I have no answers, and nowhere to search for them. Anyone who would know anything about my past is gone.

My dwelling upon this is useless. Fruitless. The only thing to be done is to move forward, even if I have to do it blind.

Fionn has the Merrow flower neatly bunched in front of him, the roots I had so foolishly risked my life for, lost in the skirmish.

The others sit around the fire, keeping to themselves, continuing their nighttime routines.

Methodically, I separate the roots from the plant, the leaves from the stem, the petals and head of the flower from the stem. I take Fionn’s waterskin from beside him and begin boiling water in the small traveling pot he had set out by the plant.

“Care to comment on what happened back there?” Fionn whispers, hands clasped tightly before him.

I don’t look at him. I clean the roots from dirt and bog water.

“You. You fought that Merrow. You froze the bog. You… wielded.”

I have nothing to offer. It makes as little sense to me as to him.

The water boils. I remove it from the heat and place all of the components into the pot, steeping them.

“Have you ever done such things before?” he pesters.

Only the sounds of fire crackling fill the air. I watch the wisps of color effuse from the bright red petals, tinting the water pink in the firelight. It looks like blood.

“I think so…” I finally reply, unsure of where to start or what to say.

“What did you do before?” Fionn asks.

“I think I killed the Crows. The ones that showed up looking for me.”

“What happened to them?” Elva cuts in.

Her words conjure roaming hands, unwanted. Flesh, broken like shards of ice, blend in with the pink tea in front of me.

“They were trying to hurt me.”

Silence.

“More than kill me… They wanted to hurt me. Make it drawn out, painful. Take everything they could get before they ended it. I didn’t know… I still don’t know what happened—with any of it. What I did. I just woke up and they were in pieces. All over the garden. ”

A muscle in Fionn’s jaw flickers. His eyes harden.

I can feel myself retreating in my mind. Seeing everything in front of me from a far-off distance, like watching through a window. I pick at the jagged edge of my thumbnail.

I sniff at the weak tea. It smells sour. “I don’t suppose anyone has any peppermint or honey?”

Nothing but stony eyes reply.

“This is going to taste gross.” I shrug.

Poor Armund.

“And that was the first time anything like that has happened?” Fionn asks.

I think of the burn scar on the floor of my house. The one that always catches my eye in the morning.

“Yeah,” I say.

I move over to Armund, my whole body one gigantic ache. I pat his cheek gently.

He looks so like that child lying in bed, taken by a fever only days ago. Part of me is glad I didn’t have to see that end. Chestnut curls stuck to foreheads in sweat.

I urge Armund to sit up slightly. Fionn comes over to his other side, helping. I decant the cooling tea gently into his mouth. He does not seem to see me, or to understand what is going on past the instinct to drink.

“Do you know how this could possibly be?” Fionn questions again.

I scoff, still feeding Armund the acidic tea. “No. My parents are human. I am human. I grew up here. I was born here. I don’t know how I possibly could be able to do these things. I am the least special human to ever exist.” My head is shaking by the time I’m finished, taking the pot, now drained, from Armund’s mouth.

“Some of those things cannot possibly be true,” Elva says gently. “We have roamed these lands for near on thirty years. Not once has a human ever shown to be anything but powerless. Frail. Helpless against the Fomorians. You… may not be.”

Thirty years. They have been here longer than I’ve been alive. They look to be in their mid-twenties, early thirties at the latest. Could they have been wandering as babes?

Fionn sees me running numbers in my head and explains, “We don’t exactly age the way you do. We are… older than we look.” The corner of his mouth edges up.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

I hold my hand out for Fionn’s favorite knife. He’s running it along his hand again. His jaw clenches but he hands the hilt to me.

I remove the petals and the leaves from the pot, now drained of liquid, reserving them. I begin grinding what little we have of the softened roots into paste with the blunt hilt of Fionn’s knife.

“What did it feel like? When you used your power?” he pries more.

What does it feel like? It feels like there are two monsters coiled around one another inside me. One that wants to be left to die in some deep dark hole, hissing and spitting at anyone who comes close. And one that roars and fights with everything against the very thought of all of it ending, clawing at any chance at more. And when I wield, if that is what I did, the latter monster triumphs.

“It felt like… like not me. It felt like something just took over. Like I was going to die, and the… power didn’t want me to. And I feel terrible when I wake up. Like I’ve been thrown from a horse into a rock. I am so tired.” Yawning at the reminder but satisfied with the consistency of my paste, I unwrap Armund’s arm .

His wound looks horrid, the flesh melting off in great green and yellow sheets. The necrosis has spread. I use the knife to scrape the dead flesh from the top of the wound, searching for fresh skin under the rot. He groans but is too weak to pull his arm from my grasp. I wish I had some more milk of the poppy to give him for the pain, but that resource is scarce. The poppies are only farmed in Farus and are tightly controlled by the Crown and traded in Rheol, the river city.

Fionn watches my debriding of the wound with a grimace.

“Regardless of where you got it from or what is the truth, you need to learn how to wield it,” Fionn says, seeming to need to focus on anything but the scraping of Armund’s wound. “This actually makes my life much easier. Now maybe you can actually be useful to the Fianna.” He stands, shaking his arms out when he sees me dig-in a little harder on a stubborn bit of dead skin. “We don’t often need a healer. But this wound, could not be healed by our power alone. In Danu it would have been taken to one of the high healers. Thankfully, Diana has… had a similar skill-set.”

The change in tense slices through me. But I smother the feeling, shove it down with the rest. It will be in good company there, another wound to add to my collection of them that never quite seem to heal.

I apply a thin layer of paste along the wound, wishing I had held onto the rest of the roots. If for no other reason than to have something to show for my idiocy. Maybe then someone could say it was bravery.

I cannot think of the future. I cannot even force myself to be happy that this will make fitting in easier and solidify my position amongst them.

“Did you really name the Fianna after yourself?” I scrunch my own nose in distaste.

Konan barks a laugh from his place on the other side of Armund.

Fionn shoots him a deadly look before turning to me and snatching his knife back. “More like I was named after it. My mother was a bit… preoccupied by her duty. She led the Fianna back in Danu. It is what we called our legions. We are all that is left of it now.” His jaw clenches.

I nod in response, gently laying the leaves over the paste, letting them stick to the wound in a rudimentary dressing. Part of me would have found it amusing to have the confirmation that Fionn is self-absorbed enough to name the group after himself. The other part of me is relieved that he didn’t. I’m not sure I could have ever taken him seriously again if he had.

“Thank you,” Fionn says, watching me ensure the wrap on Armund’s arm is tight, yet loose enough.

Armund is still out of it, not having stirred much during my ministrations.

“He’s kind,” I say by way of explanation.

Fionn suddenly stands and grabs his bedroll, unrolling it in sure movements.

I stay fidgeting with Armund, fussing a little, making sure he’s comfortable and drying his forehead with my cloak.

I wonder when I’ll get a bedroll, how many nights I’ll spend on the ground before we go to the next town. The cold seeps so far into my bones in the night I’m surprised I even woke up this morning. At least my bed in my house had walls surrounding it and the floor made of level planks of wood.

Fionn gives me a feral grin that sets me on edge as he comes to stand over me. “You will begin training with me tomorrow. And I promise to only make it...” He tosses his head back and forth, considering. “… extremely difficult. And given your sunny, hopeful disposition I bet you will be an extremely teachable pupil. But I suppose I owe it to the goddess who brought you here, to try and train you.” He squats down, pushing into my space. “I cannot wait.” He is so close his breath curls against my cheeks, and I fight not to back away from his imposing presence, remembering the heat and roughness of his palms on mine.

He runs so hot and cold. I never know if he hates me or simply enjoys making me feel bad.

Before either one of us can look away he leans in and hefts me into the air, tossing me over his shoulder. For a moment I think it’s starting, this torturous training he speaks of. But he only moves over a couple of steps, and unceremoniously lays me down on his bedroll. My head spins but he has already started walking away.

“Sleep here, I’ll take first watch.” He leaps with feline grace, in only a few bounds, up into the high branches of a great alder tree, settling in a thick branch.

The others flicker their eyes between us, obviously trying not to be too conspicuous about it. Aine is already passed out, drooling on her mom’s lap.

My pride might ordinarily cause me to move out of his bedroll. Tell him to shove this gesture up his ass. Just because I now may be able to wield, that means I’m worthy. That means he’ll finally treat me better than the dirt on his shoe. Now I’m worth seeing.

I’ve never worn righteous anger well. Never been able to keep it on for long enough to make a difference. And so I allow the exhaustion that lingers in my bones, muscles, and marrow to pull me down. I roll my face into the slight cushion—it smells like pine trees and snow-capped mountains—and my leaden eyes shut without a fight.