Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword by Anna Kendall Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anna Kendall
continue to see that he could ‘live and eat like any other beast’ without setting him the task of bringing a marker to me – a task for which he seemed very ill suited? Dissatisfied with what he had told me, and insufficiently moved by pity for his helplessness, I was more determined than ever to shed him. Now. Tonight.
There was no moon, but the stars shone brightly: the Weeping Woman, the Cat, the Wagon Wheel, the Southern Star. Leo, exhausted by the day’s hurried pace, slept deeply. His concave chest rose and fell; a soft whistlingnoise came from his thin nose above the mangled lips. Hunter, too, slept, curled up tightly as a coil of rope. But I knew that the second I stepped on a twig, or perhaps even rose, the dog would wake. So I left the only way I could. I jabbed my small shaving knife into my thigh, willed my passage, and crossed over.
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt choking my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—
And then I stood in the Country of the Dead. The landscape seemed exactly like the one I had left, except for the light fog, and even that seemed to diminish as I moved towards the road – or where it would be if this place had any roads. My plan was to walk for several hours across country. If Leo woke, he would not know in which direction I had gone in either landscape, even if he could steel himself enough to cross over after me. And by the time I returned to the land of the living, I would be too far away for Hunter to sniff me out.
As soon as I emerged from the woods onto a broad field, I came across the Dead. Widely scattered in ones and twos, they sat in the places where they had died. They gazed at nothing, their faces tranquil and calm. None of them were old women, who were usually the only ones I could rouse, and anyway they would not be able to tell me anything I wished to know. I trudged on.
The Country of the Dead is perpetually silent. Ordinarily I don’t mind it; ordinarily I don’t even think about it. But now the quiet felt leaden, as oppressive as the low grey sky and the dim, even light. I began to hum, and then to sing, and the words were the troubling ones of Leo’s song:
Never, never will I cease
To follow where you go,
And ever, ever will I be
The hound upon your doe.
Well, I had shaken my hounds – both of them – and in another week I would be with Maggie. I would hold her in my arms, feel her fair curls against my cheek, endure the deserved tongue-whipping she would give me for abandoning her – probably many tongue-whippings – and then we would make our life together with our son. Maggie, who had always loved me better than I deserved and—
Something flickered at the edge of my vision.
I stopped and peered through the pale fog. An object appeared on the ground in the middle distance, disappeared, appeared again. A small object, no larger than a pie. My heart began a low, hard thumping in my chest.
Should I cross back over? But I might not have walked far enough to be beyond Hunter’s ability to find me.
Cautiously I approached the object. Again it flickered out of existence. When I reached the place it had been, there was nothing there.
But there had been. Here, where nothing ever appeared except—
‘ Waaaaahhhhh! ’
My heart nearly jumped from my body as the thing reappeared, and this time there was no doubt what it was. A child, red-faced and screaming. Its blue eyes glared at me, the smell of its full diaper hit my nostrils, its indignant yells pierced my ears, and then it was gone again. And I understood.
This was an infant hisaf , unable as yet to control its coming and goings across the barrier of the grave. When I had been such a babe, such crossings had probablyhappened mostly in my dreams. Back then hisafs had not been able to cross over bodily. There must have been times when my infant self lay asleep, restless and feverish from some childish illness, pain in my head or belly or throat. That’s
There was no moon, but the stars shone brightly: the Weeping Woman, the Cat, the Wagon Wheel, the Southern Star. Leo, exhausted by the day’s hurried pace, slept deeply. His concave chest rose and fell; a soft whistlingnoise came from his thin nose above the mangled lips. Hunter, too, slept, curled up tightly as a coil of rope. But I knew that the second I stepped on a twig, or perhaps even rose, the dog would wake. So I left the only way I could. I jabbed my small shaving knife into my thigh, willed my passage, and crossed over.
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt choking my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—
And then I stood in the Country of the Dead. The landscape seemed exactly like the one I had left, except for the light fog, and even that seemed to diminish as I moved towards the road – or where it would be if this place had any roads. My plan was to walk for several hours across country. If Leo woke, he would not know in which direction I had gone in either landscape, even if he could steel himself enough to cross over after me. And by the time I returned to the land of the living, I would be too far away for Hunter to sniff me out.
As soon as I emerged from the woods onto a broad field, I came across the Dead. Widely scattered in ones and twos, they sat in the places where they had died. They gazed at nothing, their faces tranquil and calm. None of them were old women, who were usually the only ones I could rouse, and anyway they would not be able to tell me anything I wished to know. I trudged on.
The Country of the Dead is perpetually silent. Ordinarily I don’t mind it; ordinarily I don’t even think about it. But now the quiet felt leaden, as oppressive as the low grey sky and the dim, even light. I began to hum, and then to sing, and the words were the troubling ones of Leo’s song:
Never, never will I cease
To follow where you go,
And ever, ever will I be
The hound upon your doe.
Well, I had shaken my hounds – both of them – and in another week I would be with Maggie. I would hold her in my arms, feel her fair curls against my cheek, endure the deserved tongue-whipping she would give me for abandoning her – probably many tongue-whippings – and then we would make our life together with our son. Maggie, who had always loved me better than I deserved and—
Something flickered at the edge of my vision.
I stopped and peered through the pale fog. An object appeared on the ground in the middle distance, disappeared, appeared again. A small object, no larger than a pie. My heart began a low, hard thumping in my chest.
Should I cross back over? But I might not have walked far enough to be beyond Hunter’s ability to find me.
Cautiously I approached the object. Again it flickered out of existence. When I reached the place it had been, there was nothing there.
But there had been. Here, where nothing ever appeared except—
‘ Waaaaahhhhh! ’
My heart nearly jumped from my body as the thing reappeared, and this time there was no doubt what it was. A child, red-faced and screaming. Its blue eyes glared at me, the smell of its full diaper hit my nostrils, its indignant yells pierced my ears, and then it was gone again. And I understood.
This was an infant hisaf , unable as yet to control its coming and goings across the barrier of the grave. When I had been such a babe, such crossings had probablyhappened mostly in my dreams. Back then hisafs had not been able to cross over bodily. There must have been times when my infant self lay asleep, restless and feverish from some childish illness, pain in my head or belly or throat. That’s