The Bend of Magic - Chapter One

Edrea smelled the stink of rot permeating the air, an element of every new witch's moon. The familiar dread started at the pit of her stomach and ran up to grip her heart. The murmurings of a nosy town perked her ears as she walked, reminding her of the hum of a wasp nest. It was a funny thing—normally, no one paid her a bit of mind. But under a witch's moon, it seemed she was the topic of every conversation: the witch's daughter...a freak...her mother's creature. The worst of it was that every word of it was true.

The moon settled low in the sky as if weighed down by a great burden. Its glow, a rose hue, like wine diluted by water, meant death was coming. Someone would have to be sacrificed to the witch tonight and Edrea was the lucky soul who got to facilitate the ritual.

Ahead, the path opened into town square, where the courthouse and mayor's lodge sat like dignified manors to the humbler shacks of Peddler's Quarter. It was in Peddler's Quarter where she lived, in a bedroom behind the narthex of the church. The priest had made it a home for her and her father after magic had turned on him and Mother like a bad drug, as it's apt to do. "A sanctuary," the priest had called it, but Edrea suspected it wouldn't be enough to quell the hex of her condition.

The square was near empty at such a late hour--a handful of guards and a few tradesmen lingered. One such merchant, a stout man with so much of a beard she could scarcely see his face, dared approach. He looked upon her, eyes wide with childlike interest, and then withdrew his gaze as if afraid to cause her some great offense.

"Beg pardon, lass. It's just...I have never seen them this close before." When she didn't respond, he added, "...your silver eyes! They shine like the moon!" The blush on his face was evident and he added, "That is, the moon on other days than this."

"What you see in my eyes is simply the reflection of torchlight," Edrea lied, knowing full well that he knew otherwise, but detesting that they could still be seen even in the dimness. They were the mark of magic her mother had cast upon her as a girl. She was alive because of it, but some days that felt more like a curse than a gift. When nothing else was said, the merchant tucked his satchel under arm, bade her a pleasant evening and fled down the dirt path as quickly as his feet could carry him.

She felt for him—she felt for all of them. Their fear was justified, especially tonight, and her stomach knotted at this reflection. For a moment, she thought she might need to vomit, but that quickly passed and so she continued on to the east gate and then out into the forest.

Beyond the wall, the air seemed fresher, as if saturated by the bit of wetlands at on the far side of the river beyond a grove. She breathed in several yawns and felt a little better for it. The road was darker ahead, canopied by a family of evergreens as it rounded into a corner and out of sight. She touched the hilt of her dagger sheathed in her belt—a mindless practice whenever she entered the woods, as if her subconscious wanted surety that it was still there—and continued with a quickened pace.

Ten minutes later, she reached a clearing to find that the animal trap she had left shrouded in foliage had been sprung but was empty.

"Skunk's piss," she cursed, and looked up at the rose moon that seemed to her a great eye, watching and waiting. She still had time--Mother wouldn't summon her until long after the haunts rose from their swampy graves, and so she continued on, making her way into a darker depth of forest.

In his lucid years, Father would have called this man's work, and yet here she was beyond the protection of the town's walls, claiming plunders of 'coon, hare and fox carcass, and then collecting berries, 'shrooms and ferns that held within its spores the basis for healing ointments—all enough to fetch a week's worth of coin at the morrow's market. She couldn't deny that her father's sentiment was shared by most of the townsfolk. This was a man's work--not so much the activity of it, but because of the dangers of the forest: a passage for those exiled from the northern cities, feeding grounds for beasts and haunts that skulked about the trees.

Edrea rounded the corner of the north-facing wall, following a path she knew would keep it in her sights. Those who had never left town only ever saw the spotless, gray stones, untouched by harsh winds. But out here, the barrier took on a different persona: aged, tired, defeated—coated almost entirely in moss on this north end and oppressed by climbing vines at the south. A dirt path from the northwest twisted past a final series of young evergreens, leading adventurers to a line of four torches, each affixed to its own rock pillar. The last of these torches produced a soft, pulsing glow upon the north gate. It was this she came upon now, following the light through the brambles, recalling the placement of the next of her traps—at the base of a grand fir, its snare propped by a jutting root.

Further along the road stood two guards holding station at the gate. One of the men wore no headgear, a modest pair of leather bracers and a dented breastplate—a true Valen if ever she saw one. His fellow guard stood nearer to it, a direct contradiction to his comrade, donning an iron cuirass that glimmered in the torchlight, and a helm decorated with a red tail plume. This man had much broader shoulders, and arms that may well have been what the sculptors of the north had had in mind when chiseling stone depictions of their warrior gods. Judging by the shine in his armor, this had been a man of the King once, trained but not tested, she guessed. She could not have wiped away her smirk were his sword pressed firmly to her throat, for if he was here in this place, in the very bowels of Thalim, it meant he had been shamed in some way. No soldier of the King would be here of his own volition—so why wear such a token of failure? Why lift his chin with such conceit? She considered that in the right setting that tail plume might inspire men, as if the adornment had been crafted from the mane of a great lion or the crest of a grand steed—but atop this man's head, she thought it looked like nothing more than the tail of an ass.

"Men," she said, "the lot of you are so much alike." Then a bit louder in a throaty dialect meant to imitate the seamen of Gruhl, "yeh figh' wit yeh'r sharp swords and t'ink wit yeh'r soft uns!" That there were no witnesses to her performance yielded her the courage to cap it off with a vulgar gesture: one hand clutching her crotch and the other fisted at her temple. She could think of more than a few crones at the convent who would have fainted at the sight. This thought stretched her smirk into a full smile, enough to where she had momentarily forgotten about the witch's moon hanging above. But then the twirl in her gut returned, reminding her all at once what was to come. She sighed away her prejudices as she spoke the closest thing to a prayer she could ever think to muster.

"Be at peace, soldier. It may well be you the witch chooses tonight." Her eyes fixed on the man with the tail plume helmet, but her words were for herself, for her guilt, and she turned her eyes back to the earthen floor, dimly lit by the furthest stretches of torchlight.

* * *

Not ten minutes later and several more traps collected, Edrea finally crossed the nimbus of light cast by the torches of the north gate. The air, crisp and still, numbed her face that peeked out from under her hood. The critters of the marsh had picked up their chatter, their calls ringing through the darkness in a chilling symphony that brought a sense of comfort to Edrea. Her pack hung over her shoulder with several disassembled traps and skins of small animals hanging loosely from its base. She passed nearest the guard with the more modest dress stood post. He regarded her with a glare of suspicion.

"What's your business out here, kulan?" he called to her.

She had grown accustomed to the nickname. It was savage tongue for untouched, or unclaimed by a man despite her age so ripe. While the word was no longer believed to carry the curse of its original tale, many were amazed that this kulan had not yet been dragged from her home, violated and killed. She had known women who had fallen to such fates. She supposed it helped to have an entire town afraid of her.

She fetched a wooden seal from her satchel: a flattened circular thing with smoothed edges, fitting neatly in her palm and etched in the middle the sigil of their town, a great serpent coiled around a tree. Not that she needed it; as soon as she was close enough for the guard to see the glistening of her silver eyes, his own broadened in alarm. His hand drew to the grip of his sword still sheathed, lingered there as if he expected her to attack, before dropping it back to his side.

He studied her eyes for the span of several breaths, and then fear crept into his.

"Is-is it me?" he said. "Does the witch choose me tonight?"

Edrea didn't know what to say. Her silence seemed to have a strong effect on him just the same, for he looked as though he might weep.

She drew in an impatient breath. "I wouldn't know."

"But how could you not? Aren't you her child? They say that you are! Doesn't the witch call you her escort? How couldn't you know? Tell me! I won't flee!" The man had a wild look about him as the torch flames danced a reflection in his eyes. She didn't know if he was angry or scared—she guessed both.

"I have no more to do with her choices than you," she said. It was the truth, though none save for the priest ever believed her. This man didn't seem to either, for he looked at her as though she had already condemned him.

"Go, then," he said finally, and then mumbled something about "the infernal fires" and "that demon mother of yours" and other things not meant for her ears. She didn't linger, nor did she turn back to see if he was watching. She was used to this sort of thing, this mixture of hate and judgment and fear.

Another ten minutes and the intermittent winking of those torchlights through gaps in the trees became nothing more than an afterthought. The darkness made the forest seem smaller and there were times when she couldn't discern if she had reached an open grove or was surrounded by dense thicket. Not even the periodic spills of the red moon's light through the hemlock branches were enough to show her way anymore, and so she slipped a torch out from her pack and lit it with flint.

Three traps remained before she could head back. She had half a mind to abandon them for the night and return tomorrow, but that would mean leaving them for scavengers. It was during this contemplation when movement caught her eye; she held still as stone, focusing her vision not on what lay directly ahead, but on what shifted in her peripheries, as Father had taught. A wind stirred the branches in a sustained hiss and then moaned along the stone of the town's protective walls.

Edrea slowed her breaths, calmed her heart, and listened.

An owl bade her welcome with a gleeful hoot—she caught its eyes by the moon's reflection. The chirrup of a bullfrog sang harmony to the wail of a weeping bird. She tried to hear past these sounds, to listen for shuffling feet in bushes, for the crunching of autumn leaves. But it wasn't a noise that would disrupt her calm—there at the edge of her vision came such a slight shift in the shadows that she almost dismissed it outright, and had she not been tuned in to the movement, she might not have understood what she saw.

Mother!

The dark figure loomed past the undergrowth, gliding more than walking, with arms outstretched as if to command the plants to pull in their branches to make a path. This movement produced what Mother had once called magic's song, a subtle ring, but shrill and so full of sorrow that Edrea often had to hold back tears when she heard it.

She knew this wasn't her mother, only her wraith, a cast of magic projecting a more nimble, healthier-looking version of her. Bodiless, but just as sinister. A mere shadow. Her mother was tucked away safely in her cottage somewhere in the deeper wood, protected by spell so that none could find the place by their own accord.

"Y-you're early, Mother," Edrea said.

Then came the familiar twinge in her gut and the return of nausea, that invasion of magic needling its way through her body like fingers finding their way into a glove.

"It's time, child." The witch's words were gravelly and distant.

Edrea's mind filled with excuses, though she spoke none of them aloud. It wasn't needed--her mother knew her thoughts, could hear them as her own. Edrea felt the magic crawl up to her neck as it begun to seep into her mind like a settling fog.

The witch offered a deep, throaty growl in place of comfort.

"Aye...Aye, Mother...," Edrea said. "I will...I will meet you by the shrine...just let me bring home my traps and--"

"It is time now, child!" the witch said with a beastly snarl.

There was a shift in the moon's light, its progress had been hastened, pulled across the sky by the witch's magic until it slowed to halt, positioned so that its light filled the clearing and Edrea could see her mother's wraith with more clarity. Its features were clearer, but not as crystal as they were filtered by a shadow. Edrea guessed she was staring at a younger-looking version of her mother, perhaps what she would have looked like had she not fallen to the debilitating grip of magic.

"It is time," Mother said again, adding the nickname kopi, to soften then tension—"kopi" being the old tongue for a generic young girl.

Not "daughter"—never "daughter."

Edrea lifted her hands and pressed her palms at her temples. The magic felt like an expanding bubble pushing out against the inside of her skull. She grunted, "Yes...Mother," and with a rush of wind and what sounded like a distant, otherworldly cry of pain, she felt the magic run through her and out her eyes. Her mother's wraith collapsed into itself, becoming a cloud of black smoke and finally dissipating into thin air. She collapsed to her knees, tasted the salt of tears as they streaked down to her lips, and allowed herself to weep and mourn the death that was to come.