Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 14

The morning passes in dawn’s freshest rain and relieved sighs as Armund wakes, fever broken, and completely lucid. The Fianna fussed around Armund over breakfast, clapping him gently on the shoulder and hugging him carefully. I asked him how he was feeling, to which he responded he felt much better. I didn’t dare break the seal on his wound dressings to check the state of it, the Merrow flower having been completely used up and none of us eager to wander back to a watery grave.

The final bits of our camp are being packed away into packs as I don my cloak. Aine is balancing with her hands out as she walks across a narrow log. Konan tosses small rocks at her feet, trying to get her to lose her balance. He shoots me a glare when he sees me watching.

I hide my smile by pretending to search for something on the ground. Konan isn’t fooling anyone. He’s not as scary as he seems if he has a gigantic soft spot shaped like a twelve-year-old girl.

“Alyx,” Armund greets with a shy smile. His color is much better, his slight tan returned to his skin. “I wanted to thank you. For everything.” His face turns serious, his warm eyes boring into mine.

I nod and fidget with my sleeve. “I—yeah, I’m just glad you’re better.” I give him a sheepish smile. “Are you feeling any pain?” I ask, more comfortable assessing than accepting gratitude.

He looks at his arm. “Not much. It mostly feels numb, maybe slightly tingly.” His dimple flashes when he says with a smile, “I’m glad you’re here. For more than just this.” he lifts his wrapped arm. “It was getting a bit stale around here. Haven’t had a change in company much in the past thirty years.”

“I’m sure.” He’s staring into my face too intently for my comfort. Part of me likes it and wants to keep talking to him because he’s so friendly and warm. Sweet. I wish I could reciprocate in kind, but I’m just so awkward and socially stunted, I don’t know how he does it. “Have you ever had others in your group?”

Immediately, I think of all the ways in which that is the wrong thing to ask. What if someone has died and I just brought it up?

He shakes his head, looking at the others as they gather with their packs slung. We move up behind them, filing out of our camp, starting our day’s journey. There has been some talk of where we head next. It sounds like we head west, towards the capitol. There have been murmurs of leaving the continent. I’m too new and my position too precarious to offer any input. I’ll go wherever they go.

“We’ve never had anyone else in the Fianna. We have some allies across the country, and in others, but none that have ever traveled with us. Diana was one,” Armund says.

I swallow hard.

His hand settles on my upper back, giving it a slight rub. “ I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

I blow it off. “It’s fine.” Even if it hurts, I don’t want people tiptoeing around my feelings.

He nods, pulling his hand back. “She was a great healer.” When I do nothing but nod, he goes on. “An even better person. She always gave Fionn a hard time, which he needs.” He nudges me with an elbow when I smile and nod. “See, you’ve already caught on and you’ve only been with us a couple of days. You’re going to fit in just fine.”

The comment makes me feel better. “How did you meet Diana? Was she… like you?” I ask.

“We met her about fifteen years ago, while we were traveling through Rheol. She was there, buying some herbs and whatever else she needed. She saw us and just knew. She had come from Danu, too.”

The statement baffles me. Never once did Diana seem as though she was anything but ordinary. She was a great healer, yes, but nothing she did was beyond human abilities. The first and only thing I ever saw of her that would have had me asking questions was her journal that Fionn and I found. “I don’t understand that. She didn’t… look like you. She looked human. Her ears were normal. She never wielded.”

“Well, she was different. She was one of the folk—what we call non-wielders. She didn’t have the ability to wield as we do, but she was from Danu. It’s very rare. But sometimes, children are born and they just… never change. They never develop the power. It’s the power that does it, changes us.” He blushes a bit and gestures to his ears, “The ears become pointed, and we can then hear better. We can see better. It… grows us. We grow tall, and strong. But for a few, it just never happens, and we don’t know why. She was one of those. She said she had worked with the healers of the Tira Slan ia. She never told us how she escaped Danu.”

His words wash over me. I never knew her at all. She had an entire existence that I never knew a thing about. It feels like betrayal, but I know it’s an unjustified feeling. How could she have told me? Did she know that I would eventually be able to wield? What are the odds that it was all coincidence that she settled in my village?

“Alyx! Walk with me,” Fionn calls from the front.

He’s observing the two of us from his place at the head, gold eyes flickering between us.

I move to take up the space directly behind Fionn. There is some time in which he says nothing. Part of me thinks he doesn’t trust me to befriend his friend, who is clearly the most trusting of the group.

We travel animal paths in the crowded undergrowth of the magnificent forest. She towers above our heads, a behemoth of sound and life, from the canopy, to ferns and berry bushes, to the insects crawling along the dirt. Birds call across miles of uninhabited wild, singing songs of birth, life, and death.

Occasionally, large drops of water pour down from leaves, creating waterfalls from the pooling rain.

Behind me, I hear Aine playing a game with Konan, her endless chatter and his occasional grunt. She describes some infinitesimal bit of the verdant forest and makes him guess what she’s seeing. It usually starts out with I see something greeeen.

Cold water slaps me in the face, jarring me from my listening. The branch Fionn had walked through, and did not bother holding for me, sent droplets spraying into my face and hands, rolling down my nose. The corner of his mouth turns upward in a sly glance back.

I go to kick his feet together as he takes a step, but he quickly dodges it, not even looking back. I grit my teeth as his chuckling whets my ire.

He clucks his tongue in consternation, teasingly shaking a finger. “Now now, you know better than that. You think you can trip me? I haven’t survived this long by allowing drowned rats to get the best of me.” He pointedly looks at my sodden appearance.

“And how long is that exactly?” I grit out.

“Longer than you, shorter than Elva.” He glances back at her, grinning fiendishly. He’s way too cheery this morning. “She’s ancient. Isn’t that right, Elva?”

“Ancient is a strong word. You’re but a babe, and it shows, Fionn.” Her tone is bored.

“I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who noticed his immaturity,” I concur, still glaring ahead at the back of his curly honey hair.

“Immature? Me? Because I let a branch hit you when you weren’t paying attention? Let this serve as your first lesson. If you want to survive you have to pay attention. Don’t get lost in your thoughts. Especially as I’m sure they're as droll and depressing as you. I could almost feel the angst rolling off you.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I ask angrily.

“How old are you? What is your favorite color? Could this be a more boring line of questioning?” He looks back at me. “Fine. I’m around seventy of your human years. I’ve been here in this lovely realm for nigh on thirty of them. I am considered young amongst Fae. Really, we all are. We were in training to be in the Fianna when we… left. Well, all of us except Elva, she just happened to be in the right place at the right time, right, Elva?” He grins at her, but there are shadows in his eyes.

I want to ask what he means. How did they leave? What happened to all of them?

Elva replies only with, “I would say that you were in the right place at the right time, Fionn.”

“Ah, but just think how lonely you would be without all of us in this beautiful realm with you.”

“Aine is alright, the rest of you I could do without.”

A girlish giggle comes from the far back.

“Maybe if she didn’t steal my snacks all the time I would agree,” Konan’s rough voice sounds.

“Hey!” Aine’s voice of twinkling bells is indignant. “It’s not my fault you leave them in such close reach. It’s almost like you want me to take them.”

Indeed, I doubt anyone could take anything from the hulking man without his knowing and allowing such a thing.

Another branch smacks me in the face and the shaking in my limbs is suddenly from more than the cold.

“You’re a slow learner, I see.”

I master my temper and gently hold the offending branch and pass it off to Elva, who is directly behind me.

“What are we doing here?” I ask instead of launching myself at Fionn like a wildcat. Like the ice in my bones begs for.

“What do you mean?” Fionn asks. His voice has an edge to it.

“I mean what are we doing here? What have you been doing all this time? Where are we headed from here?”

“What? You mean you don’t wander aimlessly for years at a time?” His stupid grin is back. He sighs at my unamused face. “You’re really no fun. Well, for a long time we were… searching, for anyone else who perhaps had wandered into this same realm. We found none but Diana after all these years. Though she would never tell us how or why she came here. Then, we were searching for a way out. A way back, or to somewhere else once we found the Fomorians had found their way here too. We only ever found one rift… One tear in the fabric of this realm that held…” Fionn falters, looking green. “Well, it was not a place that would have been better than here, even with the Fomorians. I don’t know who made it, or why it is there, but it is best that it be left alone.”

“Where?” I can’t help but ask.

What type of place could make this fearless warrior green with terror? Who could shake the unshakable? I’m not sure I want to find out.

I catch the branch he sends flinging back at me this time. Though, it still gets my cloak and face wet.

“Not far from here, actually. Don’t go wandering the mounds if you can help it.” He smirks at me. “And as for the rest of your question, we are going to first find you some supplies, while we train. There is a village due south of this forest, by the sea. We will try to snag some supplies up from a leech or two. Maybe some wealthy townspeople, they always have the best stuff, and guard it with the least ferocity. And in the meantime, we will keep looking for a way back. If we find one, it will be your choice whether to follow us or stay here.”

I wonder if I will ever have to make the choice. What kinds of horrors will I face between now and then? What else lurks in the mist and shadow of this realm that we excuse as folklore and delusion?

“Have you ever found any other… creatures here? Like the Merrow. Has anything else slipped through?” I think of the rumors of the raider groups that terrorize villages. What does the Pretty King know of this? Could the ruler of our country possibly know that the people in his employ are soul-sucking demons? How could he not know? And what does that make him ?

Elva responds, “There are all manner of things that slip through the cracks, girl. You can feel them though. Their otherness. Some wear the skin of familiar beings. Some do not, but when you learn to feel them… it cannot be ignored.”

Otherness.

“You made it sound like you saved the rest of them… Did you?”

A long stretch of silence. Even Aine discontinues her game with Konan in the tense silence.

“I was never Fianna. I was an emissary for my own people—a people much older and more advanced than the Danaans. We, who had traveled through realms for generations, had found a world much like our own—one of life and balance. One where the people were different, but similar. I was sent to establish relations with them—the fae. With the Queen of Danu herself. I was in the palace grounds while they celebrated their day of Aberth de Dana. A few young guards were stationed with me—the young Fianna legion who volunteered to stay behind for Queen Maica.” She gestures around.

“By the time we discovered what was going on, the Fomorians had overpowered everyone—the Queen herself. Even the healers of the Tira Slania, the most sacred and powerful beings of the Danaans. There was nowhere to go, we were surrounded, outnumbered, overpowered—so I walked through the worlds, as my people had before me and brought those that were with me at the time. My home world… was so far, and I would have needed someone else, one of my kin, to help get us all the way there. So I just walked to the closest world I could find, hoping we would find a way back to the rest of my people, an ocean away—to at least warn them what lurked across the sea. But as I stepped a foot on this ground it was like a blanket had fallen ov er my power, suffocating it. Power here is dampened.” She glances at Aine, who is hardly paying attention. “What you saw of Fionn in the square… those are a shadow of his abilities in another world. We think that’s why Aine hasn’t developed any wielding ability yet, despite the fact that she has two very powerful parents. It happens that Fae cannot wield, but not often. I cannot… I cannot walk as I once did. I cannot get back by making my own tears. So we are trapped, searching for rifts that already exist. Hopefully one that will take us to a realm where I can reach my full power once more.”

I hadn’t realized until this moment that I’d never seen Aine wield, but I do recall her mentioning it back at the bog.

I glance at the rest of the Fianna in the silence that follows. The anguish on their faces tells another story. One of loss—a greater loss than my own. I wonder if maybe Elva told this story because she is the only one able to force the words out.

I shouldn’t prod at open wounds, so I don’t ask any more questions.

Elva’s face says she is willing to give nothing more.

And so I keep placing one foot in front of the other.

Branches to the face seem to be the mildest form of training Fionn has planned. It starts with self-defense, reflex testing, and conditioning. No mention of wielding at all. I’m eager to learn to wield, to be more than helpless for once. Maybe then I’ll feel like I have my feet on solid ground.

Fionn made a point to slyly attack me as we walked—Konan too—but once I grew wise and quit allowing my guard to drop, he taught me basic escape techniques and evasive maneuvers. He runs over the soft spots on a person to strike—swiftly and brutally—to disarm and escape. When I had grumbled about this not being the kind of training I had agreed to, he spat back that it would, “be a waste of my time to train you to wield if you would only walk straight off a cliff or be detained as easily as an infant,” and proceeded to put me on my ass once more.

I have a feeling that even if he teaches me everything he knows, I won’t ever be able to take him on. Diana used to say I have the endurance of a mule. And she wasn’t wrong. I’ve always been naturally fit. Able to run faster and farther than Mariana when we were girls. Able to lift heavy bales of hay that even my dad sometimes struggled with. I just think I’ve always been highly motivated to get the hard part done and over with.

Even so, Fionn is quicker and stronger than any living being has a right to be—they all are. They slink around like the mountain cats of the Ghaels a merchant once told me about. The merchant was trying to sell a pelt to the poor, the great fool. He explained how they moved around unheard, unseen unless they wish to be. When I tried to knock Fionn down, it was like trying to topple a tree.

These people. They were bested by the Fomorians. A whole society of them, gone. Wiped out by a shipload of Crows. The sheer impossibility of things getting better, of ever getting rid of them, is enough to make me consider laying down on the forest floor and letting the moss grow over me.

We are to reach the town of Tristram tomorrow. I can feel the leagues traveled in every step of my foot. I can feel every time Fionn tripped me in my scraped knees and skinned palms.

I plop down beside Fionn as the sun falls, craving some hot tea and food. Specifically, the tea that Dealla keeps, rationing carefully to last between towns, and any scraps of meat they throw my way from the rabbits Armund and Deri hunted as we traveled today. Perhaps that’s what thirty years in the wilderness buys you—the ability to take down belts full of small game before noon. I beg with my eyes like a hound at a table but say nothing. I much prefer the type of hunger that I can easily ignore, letting the silence take me into a deep sleep to the sounds of my howling stomach and atrophying muscles. But with training and walking, my hunger is ravenous, the likes of which I haven’t felt in the most sleepless of nights.

“Don’t get too settled, I have more tasks for you.” Fionn’s grin is smug.

A sadist. I made a bargain with a damned sadist.

He grabs my hand and my skin prickles where he touches it. He lays it flat to the frigid ground, the moss soft under the pads of my fingers.

“I want you to tell me what you feel.” His gaze is piercing—my brain stops short.

It takes me a moment to realize he is referring to the ground under my hand as opposed to the feel of his callused hand on mine.

I focus on the place where my fingers met the moss.

“It feels… soft, cold.” I rub my fingers lightly over the tops of it. Like green fur.

“Deeper. Can you feel who it is? Become it. When you can accomplish this, I will give you some food. When you earn it.”

Traveling leagues and leagues only to be attacked by him intermittently does not “earn” me a bit of rabbit, apparently.

I look up at the others who watch me. “Come on Fionn. Let her have some dinner first,” Armund sighs, shaking his head at Fionn. The others nod their agreement, Dealla and Elva both verbally agreeing .

“No. She can do this. Hunger is good motivation,” Fionn states firmly, watching me with burning eyes. Konan agrees with a nod.

Armund presses his lips together, looking at me apologetically. Elva stalks off. Deri rubs Dealla’s back as she watches angrily.

I close my eyes. I want to learn. I want to get better and this is the closest thing to wielding as we have worked on all day. I make sure to keep some measure of awareness on him, not trusting him not to shove me into the fire to prove a point about my “awareness.” The move would be crueller than anything he has done before, but I can never be sure.

I try to do what he said, I swear I do. I think about thoughtlessness, simply existing to sprawl on the forest floor and be trodden on. Think about being soft and moist and drinking from the floor of the world. I feel its little fuzzy fingers beneath every nerve in my own fingertips. I repeat that to Fionn.

He shifts slightly. “More. Get closer.”

I scrunch up my face, closing my eyes and try harder.

Roasted rabbit and hot tea—stop.

I try to remove myself from my own consciousness, place myself within the tendrils that breathe life into the world.

It’s… so otherworldly, yet so intrinsically a part of everything around us.

“It… sparkles. It feels like tiny pricks of light. It… breathes, inhaling and exhaling. Growing and shrinking. It moves and feels, not like us but… I don’t know how to describe it.” I exhale, keeping my eyes shut, waiting to be scolded—told to dig deeper. My stomach is eating me alive and my fingers tremble where they touch the shaggy moss.

I smell the roasted meat and my eyes fling open. Fionn dangles a rabbit leg just under my nose.

I barely hold myself back from tearing it from his hands with my teeth. I pluck it quickly from his grasp, lest he decide to take it away again, and tear into it.

He chuckles, saying, “Very good, Alyx. We will continue to train this way as we travel tomorrow. Practice that other sense you have.”

A part of me appreciates the slight praise, glad to have done something right—glad to feel like I’ve made some modicum of progress at my one and only purpose. The other part of me wants to get back at him for treating me like a dog, wants to hate him for his methods.

We eat in silence for a long time, each of us weary and travel worn.

Aine comes to sit beside me and bumps my leg with hers, smiling shyly.

“Did you see the Merrow?” she whispers.

Beady black eyes stare back at me in my mind’s eye.

“I did.” I lick my fingers clean of rabbit grease, probably licking some dirt off with it.

“What was she like?” Aine’s eyes are wide, leaning slightly closer. Armund watches with interest across the fire.

I can see her mother debating whether or not to tell her daughter to stop being nosy in my peripheral vision.

“She was terrible. Utterly wretched, and you would do well to keep far, far away from her.”

Aine considers that for a moment before she says, “What do you think she does all day? All alone there.”

I stop my finger-licking to consider her question.

Eating unsuspecting humans, taming the fish and frogs, plotting revenge against those who have wronged her. She had claimed I smelled like them. Smelled like him. I have no clue what she was referring to. Madness probably .

“I think she spends a lot of time... biding her time. I think she lies in wait for something. She said I smelled like him. So maybe she wants vengeance against someone for something. But then again, maybe she just blows bubbles at the newts and dreams about her next meal.”

“What do you mean she said that you smell like him?” Armund asks, eyes wide.

“Did she tell you who?” Aine continues, ignoring him.

Nobody pretends to be doing anything but listening. Armund’s reaction suggests that she didn’t whisper anything to him.

“She said that… She said that I smelled of him. That she would torment me as she had been tormented. She called me a Soul-eater. A Kin-killer.” Soul-eater she had called me. Only one being had that power, that we know of. A Fomorian. For what if I am… like them somehow? I think of the moment in the square. The dead Crow and his silver essence and my sick urge to feel it. If I don’t know where my power came from how can I deny it?

Fionn reads the worry in my eyes.

“She could have just smelled them on you. From when they held you, dragged you through the square. From before… When they tried to—” A deep inhale. “Hurt you.” He finishes. He meets my eyes and holds them in his gilded thrall. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Fomorians seeking out other creatures to torment. To taste. Maybe she had a bad run-in with one of them.” He sounds almost soft. Trying to calm me. It’s a new look on him. It doesn’t fit in with the image of him I have created. The one he has created.

Yes. Yes, they had been all over me, could probably be scented all over my skin. The thought is as disturbing as it is relieving.

I nod in thanks, accepting the explanation as truth .

“Good thing we never have to go back,” Armund says, giving a reassuring smile. I’m sure he’s just as glad of it as I am.

“Do you miss anyone? From your village, I mean. Did you have friends?” Aine goes on, as if the topic of the Merrow is over. Boring. Apparently, my miserable life is more interesting to her.

Do you miss anyone?

Such a simple question brings such depth of agony.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

The feeling of something being missing from me, like a missing lung, has torn me apart for years. Made a ghost of living flesh.

I miss having someone try to take care of me, even though I fought it. I miss my one friend who had given a shit, that I had lost due to my own self-imposed exile. I miss having herbs in the garden and being able to light a fire in the hearth. I miss fruit pies and a mother who would go to the ends of the realm for me. I miss having someone to rely on. I miss having someone. Miss having anyone. There was no one.

“I didn’t have any friends. The only reason anyone would realize my absence is because we made such a scene in the square.” What could a child know of loss?

“I doubt that’s true. If I had a village, I would notice all of them. Everyone. I would notice you. Even if you didn’t talk to me,” she says, matter-of-fact. She seems to realize I’m being evasive and narrows her already slanted eyes. “You didn’t have any parents? Any family?”

“No.” My tone is hard, ending this topic of discussion. Nosy pre-teens .

Aine’s lower lip compresses a little in disappointment when she reads the solid iron in my eyes. She looks away.

I look up and see Deri, warning blaring in his narrowed eyes. Tread carefully around his precious daughter, it says.

Got it. Don’t be a cold, bitter bitch towards this soft-hearted girl.

What it must be like. To have a father who cares.

That small resentful voice, jealous of a twelve-year old—of a child who had lost everything before she ever even existed. I don’t need more proof that I don’t deserve to be her friend.

The crackling fire fills the night with pops and sizzles.

The silence of that extended hand lowering, withdrawing.

For some reason, I can’t take the disappointment wafting from her. Even if I don’t deserve to be her friend, she deserves kindness.

“Have you ever seen the sea?” I ask Aine.

She side-eyes me, still frowning, “Yes.”

“Tomorrow will be the first time for me. But I love the water… I love the creek that flows beside my house.” I flinch. Loved. I loved the creek. And that’s not my house anymore.

She nods, still not looking at me fully.

My next words are a whisper, just for her, though I’m certain the rest of them can hear as well. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.” I chip at the sharp edge of my middle fingernail. “Talking about my family hurts… I don’t like doing it. So if we could just talk about something else…”

I can’t look away as I wait—wait for her to dismiss me completely, as she should.

She looks over empathetically, before nodding emphatically. Such an endlessly forgiving heart kids have. I wonder when it goes. I wonder if I ever really had that.

“I’ll show you the tide-pools. They’re little pools in the boulders that dot the beaches, they have little creatures in them when the seas fall.” She moves onto the next topic without hesitation.