Chapter 106: Side Story: Wings Clipped for Love

The door of the house creaked the way it creaked every month.

Malya stepped out onto the threshold, adjusting the strap of her bag, and her mother’s voice followed her from inside before she had taken a single step.

"Off to see Damian again."

It wasn’t a question, but Malya answered anyway.

"Same as every month, yes. We meet in the same place, you know that perfectly well."

The old woman appeared in the doorway, one hand on the wood, the other clutching the shawl she wore over her shoulders.

She looked at the bag, then at the sword on her daughter’s belt, then at the horse tied to the fence.

"You should have gone with him."

"Mother..."

"No, listen to me. You should have gone to Evangel with him, you were this village’s future, not him. A genius the like of which comes along once in a thousand years, that’s what he used to say!"

Malya finished tightening her strap.

"And I’d have left you here on your own."

"I manage perfectly well on my own."

"But you know very well that without you I couldn’t~!"

Her mother let out a breath, and it was one she knew by heart, the one she gave every time her stubborn daughter wasn’t listening to her.

"Nonsense. Absolute nonsense."

Malya smiled and came back up the steps.

She took her mother’s face in both hands, leaned in, and kissed her on the forehead.

"I’ll be back the day after tomorrow."

She went down, untied the horse, and swung into the saddle.

Her mother stayed on the threshold watching her go, and Malya turned once at the end of the path to wave, the way she had every month for years.

~~

Night had long since fallen by the time she entered the forest.

The horse walked at a slow pace along the dirt track, and the torch didn’t light much.

It reached the base of the trunks on either side, a few paces of ground ahead, and nothing else. Beyond that the dark started all at once, complete, and it didn’t move.

Malya wasn’t worried about it. She knew this road, and she knew she’d be out of the forest before the middle of the night.

Then the sound passed above her.

Wingbeats. Sinister ones, like nothing she knew.

She raised the torch.

The light climbed a few metres, caught the low branches and stopped there. Above it there was nothing but a ceiling of black, motionless leaves.

She stayed like that for a moment, arm out, listening.

Nothing came back.

And it was in listening that she realised there was no sound at all anymore. Not an insect. Not a rustle. The silence was total, when it hadn’t been ten paces earlier.

The horse had stopped without her asking it to.

She felt the body beneath her go rigid, the muscles of its neck harden, and the animal took two steps sideways without going forward.

"Easy."

She laid a hand on its neck.

It was shaking.

A second set of wingbeats passed above the canopy. Then a third, further right, taking a different line.

"Easy, easy—"

Her own breathing had quickened without her noticing, short and high, and she was gripping the torch hard enough to hurt her wrist.

"HRRRIIIIIII—"

The horse screamed.

It reared at the same time, both front legs coming off the ground and rising high, so high that Malya went back with the motion.

She jumped rather than fell.

She landed on her feet, the torch still in her hand, and the flame flattened under the movement before straightening again.

She had no time to say a word.

The horse was already gone.

She heard it strike the ground in front of her, then off to the side, then the hoofbeats moved away between the trees and the sound faded.

The wingbeats followed.

Several of them, one after another, all in the same direction, and this time they dropped below the canopy.

"HRRRIIIIIIIII—"

The scream started again, further off in the forest.

It didn’t stop.

It went on, climbed, broke, started again, until it no longer sounded like a horse at all.

And underneath it there was something else. Something slower, wetter, with cracking in it at uneven intervals.

Malya ran toward it.

She drew as she ran, sword in her right hand, torch in her left, shoving branches aside with her forearm without slowing.

The sound got closer.

Then the torch lit up what was at the end of it.

The horse was lying on its side between two trees, and it was still alive.

Its legs were still moving, barely, in the empty air. Its belly was open along its whole length and three things were inside it, heads buried to the shoulder, working without looking up.

Malya stopped dead.

The smell arrived with the light, warm, and she took a step back without deciding to.

One of the creatures pulled its head out and turned it toward her.

It was black, its limbs too long, its joints bending the wrong way, and four wings folded down along its back.

It launched.

Malya struck before she even understood she was doing it, and her blade came up and opened it along its entire length. The halves dropped on either side of her and something black sprayed across her legs and smoked where it touched the ground.

She backed away further.

Her breathing had gone beyond her control. Her hand shook on the grip, and the shaking climbed all the way to her shoulder.

She raised the torch above her head.

Right. Nothing. Left. Nothing. Above, the branches, and behind the branches the dark.

But the wingbeats were everywhere.

Not above. Not in front. Everywhere, at different heights, on every side at once, and she couldn’t follow a single one long enough to tell where it was going.

The other two let go of the horse and straightened up.

Then the wind came through.

It crossed the clearing all at once, between the trunks, and the flame flattened, rose, flattened again.

And went out.

The dark came down over her completely.

"No—"

She dropped the torch and ran.

She ran without knowing where, straight ahead, arms up to shield her face, the sword still in her right hand. Branches whipped her cheeks and her shoulders and she didn’t stop.

Behind her, the horse made no sound at all anymore.

She looked for the moon.

She found it in pieces, between the leaves, gaps of pale grey that lit the ground just enough to make out the trunks before hitting them. She ran from gap to gap, correcting her line each time, without slowing.

Her breathing burned in her throat.

Then she hit something.

The impact lifted her off the ground and she rolled several lengths, shoulder first, then her back, before coming to a stop face down in the dead leaves.

She turned onto her back and brought the blade up in both hands above her.

The thing was already coming down.

It impaled itself with all its weight. Malya felt the guard drive into her chest with the impact, and the body stayed there, above her, its limbs closing on empty air on either side of her face.

She pushed with both arms and rolled it off her.

Then she got up and ran again.

~~

She came out of the forest at daybreak.

The ground dropped away in front of her and opened onto a field, and the light hit her full in the face the moment she stepped into it.

It was a field of flowers.

They stood thigh-high across the whole stretch of it, white and yellow, and the morning wind moved through them in waves that ran from one end to the other. The sun was rising behind the ridge and stretching out the shadows of the ruins standing at the centre, a few sections of wall and three stone pillars still upright.

They had first agreed to meet here when they were fifteen.

Malya crossed the field at a run.

She was soaked in sweat. Blood ran from her shoulder and her temple, it ran down her arm to her hand, and it fell onto the flowers she pushed aside as she went.

Behind her, the wingbeats came out of the forest.

"Damian?"

Her voice broke.

"Damian?"

She reached the ruins, went round the first pillar, then the second.

"DAMIAN?"

He was behind the third.

Sitting against the stone, in soldier’s uniform, legs stretched out in front of him.

His chest was bloodied from top to bottom, and the blood had dried on the cloth a long time ago.

His eyes were closed.

Malya stopped.

She let the sword fall into the flowers and she breathed out, once, very slowly, and the tears came at the same time without her making a single sound.

She came closer and lowered herself down beside him.

Then she lay against his side and rested her head on his shoulder, exactly the way she had a hundred times in this place.

She saw all of it again.

Her fifteenth year, the first time they had really kissed, here, in these flowers, and the silence that had followed because they were still young and shy.

Last month, when he had argued once more under this same pillar for her to join him in Evangel, telling her again that it wasn’t too late, and when she had answered that she couldn’t leave her mother.

When deep down she had wanted to.

Every month. Every time she had crossed that forest at night because she didn’t want to keep him waiting too long in the morning. Every time he had got there before her, sitting in exactly that spot, and raised a hand when he saw her coming through the flowers.

She closed her eyes and slid her hand up to his chest.

"Idiot..."

She held herself against him.

"I love you so much."

And as her last words were lost in the wind, the light of the sun came down over them, and the wingbeats with it.