Wander West, in Shadow

Elyse strolled through the murky swamp of her home, eyes bright, swinging her legs deftly on the loam that led a safe path through the brackish waters that surrounded her, the buzz of insects a constant hum in the background, Cecil calmly padding along at her side.

She was young, her body just having begun to show its curves - Cecil, despite being over a year old was not full-grown yet either, apparently aging slower than a housecat would. Besides her grin, she wore only the mud caked on her skin, the twigs and leaves knotted in her hair, and a thin belt of woven grass around her hips that she had decorated with animal bones. It was summer, after all, and it became nearly unbearably humid in the swamp during the summer - and she was warm even in the winter, her hot blood rarely succumbing to the chill. Her mother didn't care if she went about naked - except for the occasional visitor, their swamp contained only them.

Mother was back at the hut, brewing something - nothing to do with the Art, just something for supper. She had just waved, barely paying attention, when her daughter told her she was going to wander the swamp. Elyse was wandering more often of late, spending less time with her mother. They had...grown more distant, recently. Before she had met Cecil, she had always wished for a friend. But with him, now, a new longing within her had grown. A longing to wander, to see the world, even - though she would never tell her mother this - even beyond their swamp. Her mother still taught her of the Art, of course, and she loved it, but...the urge to explore it on her own, and the world about her, drove her away even from her mother's lessons. Though it was not only that. She loved her mother, but...it had taken her years to realize this, never experiencing anything else...she had come to understand that her mother could be cruel. Very cruel. She loved her still, but her mother's displeasure was something that made her tremble with fear.

And besides, with her explorations, she had already wandered a bit beyond the swamp, and discovered secrets - including one that she would never dare tell her mother about.

She reached the edge of the swamp, where the muddy waters, loam, and blackened, rotting trees interspersed with branching willows gave way to a more solid solid floor of hard dirt and forest of oak and evergreen pine. She cocked her head for a moment - she thought she had heard an odd chattering sound coming from somewhere in the swamp. Elyse looked around curiously, but saw nothing but the black waters and rotted trees of her home. She shrugged, and leapt nimbly into this new forest, hiding in the shadows of the trees, whispering to Cecil to follow her. Cautiously, she crept forward, confident feet finding a path between the gnarled roots of the trees, moving quiet as a mouse. After a while, she was rewarded with the sound of axes striking wood and voices shouting in deep timbre. Her favorite secret. The logger's camp, and the men who worked there.

The loggers had been here on and off for a while now, actually. She had first spotted them when she was much younger - when it was not really a camp at all, just a handful of men loading up carts with fallen trees. Then, she had not even known what she was seeing - well, she knew she was seeing men, but had no idea what a man was. She had thought them just a funny-looking kind of woman. And then they hadn't returned for some time, leaving just a clearing full of stumps that quickly grew over with moss.

But these past two years, the loggers had returned - and what's more, expanded. The logger's camp now held dozens of men, a well-trod dirt path where their carts loaded with fallen trees were pulled back to some unknown destination by oxen, and even a few log-stacked buildings - though she did not know what the use of some of them were, she could see in at least one of them that more men stripped fallen trees of their branches and bark before loading them into the carts. The clearing in which they worked was ever-expanding, a field of stumps and well-trod dirt, though they steered clear well of her swamp.

Elyse had been watching them for over a year with fascination. She did not think her mother knew of them - while she wandered the swamp to the very edge, her mother always stayed deep within, rarely venturing very far from their hut unless she had to gather ingredients - and even then, most of the time she merely asked Elyse to go. And the camp was far enough from the edge of the swamp that no sign of the men could be seen from it - though Elyse worried that if they got much closer that this might change.

She had seen men before - seen them slain, watched from a distance as her mother stalked poor souls that entered their swamp and held them beneath the water, drowning them. Either that, or her mother would have her familiar, a large constrictor snake named Serrah - prounounced in sibilant tones - crush them to death after she put them into an enchanted sleep. The one thing she made very clear to Elyse was that men were very, very dangerous - and though she would not explain how, that Elyse was dangerous to them.

Elyse didn't know about the second point, but she thought the first was probably a little true. She had, after all, read storybooks - her favorite a collection of stories about Rance, the Lion-Hearted Knight, and his adventures - and they were full of dangerous men. Murderous bandits, cruel Kings and armies of bloodthirsty soldiers, pirates, fell wizards...but then again, Rance himself was a man, and he was...well, surely he was dangerous, he was a legend with his sword! But also clever and tricky, and kind to those who did fairly by him. Not dangerous in the way her mother described men - almost as rabid beasts not even to be approached.

But it was certainly true men were dangerous to a degree. First of all, they were huge - the loggers were so much larger than she was, she thought even the least of them probably could have lifted three of her onto just one shoulder. And they ate, what seemed to her, a mind-boggling amount of food to keep up that strength. She thought maybe they were dangerous in the way that any large, ravenous beast might be dangerous - even if it didn't want to hurt you, it might do so just by accident if you got between it and its food. Though, she was slowly becoming aware that there was very much a part of her that enjoyed just looking at their broad shoulders and well-muscled chests, large as they might be.

In the past few months, though, something curious had happened. Women had appeared in the logger's camp. There was a part of her that knew that men and women must interact at some point. Women, after all, came to visit her mother in conceiving children, and she knew that required a man. And she even had some vague idea of what exactly that involved - in the stories, Rance always had women swooning over him, including some passages that went into a bit more detail that had Elyse blushing. But these women walked among the men without the slightest bit of fear, even though they were so much larger and what was more, wielding sharp axes. She wasn't quite sure what the women were there for - but she watched from the shadows with fascination as sometimes, they'd lead this men or that into a quiet spot in the forest to kiss. She had heard of kissing, of course - Rance was always getting kisses - but she had never seen it before, and it was stunning to see women put their lips to these dangerous, deadly creatures.

She had, once, seen a man strike a woman in the camp. When other men came running at the sound of her cries, Elyse had watched with horrified fascination - this was it, surely, she had thought. The fool woman had tangled with rough beasts like they might be her friend, but now they had turned on her and they were going to fall upon her with their axes. But instead, the other loggers had shouted at the man who had struck her, and eventually beat him with their axe handles. That was interesting in itself, too - she thought anyone who had received such a beating as he must certainly have died, but bloody and bruised as he ended up, he was still able to walk - and even be back at work within a few days.

But it was not just for the curiousity of men and their broad shoulders and their kisses that this camp held such fascination for her. They sang songs as they worked, in time with their axe strikes, they laughed and bellowed at each other, and the road out of their camp led to the wider world - an entire world outside of her little slice of the swamp! That road called to her, called her to places where her curiousity burned - what was the world like, out there, where men and women gathered in such large groups, what were their songs about, what were their lives like?

She found herself making up stories in her head about each of the men she saw, from what she could glimpse of them. That redheaded one, with the scar across his nose - he had gotten that scar fighting bandits, until his valor had won him the bandit-king's respect, and the woman he now snuck off with and kissed was his prize. That bald one, with the shifty-looking eyes - he was a spy for a rival merchant, and was planning to sabotage the camp from within! Or that one, the one with gray hair that nevertheless was so large and muscled he seemed nearly like a mountain to Elyse - he was a half-giant, and all this work, why it was practically as easy as sleep to him.

But she had a favorite - and she even knew his name, having heard it called by the other men. Bertrand. He was an older man, with very broad, hairy arms, and a thick, bristly black mustache that extended down to a beard on his chin, somewhat stout. He wore a tiny folded cap with a feather stuck in it, and giant boots that Elyse thought she could probably fit both her legs in if she tried. Bertrand had a funny habit. While the other men ate, he'd sneak off into the same spot in the forest every time to eat all on his own, in the shadows of the trees untouched as of yet by the logging. He'd smoke a pipe, and stare off sadly into the distance. And sometimes he'd cry, quietly, wiping tears from twinkling dark eyes. Elyse had a story for him, too. In Elyse's head, Bertrand had had a wife and daughter once. But the wife had run away from him, taking his daughter with her. And he'd go and cry in the forest because he missed his daughter very, very much. She often found herself weeping without quite knowing why as she spied on Bertrand.

And yesterday....yesterday, she had been brave enough to do what she had never done before. She had showed herself to Bertrand as he sat, smoking, in the forest. From a distance, she had popped out from behind a tree quickly, waved at him, and then dove back into the shadows. She had watched, giggling, as he blinked slowly, then leapt to his feet, calling out for her - asking if she was alright, if something had happened to her, that there was a camp nearby that they could get her some clothes and food and treat any injuries she had, that she'd be safe there. She had fled, her heart racing, as he trundled deeper into the forest, still shouting for her, watching, hidden, until he had scratched his head, giving up and heading back to the camp.

Today, she was going to be a little braver. Today, she was going to throw pinecones at him.

She plucked up fallen pinecones from the needle-strewn floor of the forest as she made her way to the spot Bertrand normally appeared at, gathering them in her arms. She crept closer than she had ever dared before, shushing Cecil as he mewed nervously. But as she spotted Bertrand's normal resting place, she noticed something odd. He wasn't there yet - though that wasn't strange, it would be a bit yet before he showed up - but...there was a small basket lying where normally sat, woven from thin strips of shaven bark, lying in the shadow of the pine tree where he normally sat.

Elyse frowned at this. She dumped her stockpile of pinecones behind a tree and crouched there, waiting.

Time passed, and Bertrand still didn't show. She squinted up at the sun in the sky above her - it was well past the time that he would normally appear. And curiousity was getting the best of her. She bit her lip, and then popped out from behind the tree, advancing cautiously towards the basket. She trembled - she had never been this close to the camp before. There were men she had a clear line of sight to through a thin layer of trees - if they were not so concentrated on their work they'd be able to see her if they glanced this way. Finally, she reached the basket, poking at it curiously before picking it up.

"'Allo!"

Elyse glanced up, eyes wide with shock, at the sound of the voice. It was Bertrand - closer to her than any man had ever been, perhaps thirty feet away, peeking out from behind a thick-trunked pine tree. How had a man so huge managed to hide from her?! He waved at her, smiling. "A little something from me and the other men in the camp," he called to her.

Elyse yelped and sprinted away, her heart pounding, legs flashing in the shadows, half-mad with fear and half-mad with exhiliration. She did not stop until she reached her swamp, diving in to hide behind the thick trunk of a willow, slumping down against the bark, panting, blood pounding in her ears. Then she smiled, laughing from the sheer excitement.

When she had calmed down a bit, she knelt on the ground, basket in front of her. Cautiously, she opened it. Within it were a few items - red wine in a loosely-corked green bottle, a crown woven from white lillies, a small pile of cookies wrapped in a cloth, a fox's skull, and a belt made of brown leather - with a sheathe containing a fine dagger looped round it. And a note. Unfolding it, she read - A peace offering to the Witch of Rue Ouest, from the men of Pinemoss. We promise not to enter your swamp.

She pondered this. Of course, the men must have heard legend of the witch. Did they think that she was her mother...? Or did they know she had a daughter - oh well, it didn't matter. Bertrand had given her a present! Laughing delightedly, she placed the crown of lillies in her hair. She uncorked the wine, sniffed it, and took a sip, shivering as the warmth sank into her blood. She nibbled at the cookies - eyes widening, they were sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. And finally she strapped the belt around her hips, patting her new dagger with satisfaction. Holding the basket beneath her arm, she strolled through the swamp, unsheathing the dagger as she walked, waving it through the air, pretending she was Rance fighting bandits, rescuing maidens who swooned over her, pretending that Cecil was her captured prize. Her heart beat with happiness at the gifts. Surely some men were dangerous, but some - some were kind. When she was Witch of the Swamp, she'd let men in to see her. Maybe one of them would even bring her a proper sword. Maybe -

"Where did you get that, girl?"

Elyse was startled out of her reverie by the sudden voice of her mother. With a jump, she realized it had gotten dark without her even noticing - dusk was settling in. And she had not noticed how closely she had strolled back towards her mother's hut - a tiny little thatched yurt on a small grass-covered surrounded by brackish water with the skeletal corpses of dead trees rising from it, a stump and a campfire the only other decorations. Her home was visible through a copse of willow trees - her mother must have come looking for her and found her here. "Nowhere," Elyse said, quickly sheathing her dagger, turning to face her mother.

Her mother looked much like Elyse herself did - though much taller than she would ever be. Pale, slim, with long dark hair. But age and a constant dark expression had given her face deep lines and harsh angles that the shadows sank into, and dark bags beneath her eyes - though her eyes were a light gray, as opposed to Elyse's dark blue. Her hands - those were what frightened Elyse the most, whenever her mother was angry. Her thin fingers had a tendency to go hooked, talon-like. And unlike Elyse, she did not go about naked - she wore a wide-brimmed, black, pointed witch's hat, crooked and drooping, and robes of tattered black rags. Elyse rather liked the hat and those robes, but her mother said she'd get a hat and robe of her own when she earned them - until then, she was to wear animal skins, if she chose to wear anything at all.

She stood only ten feet from Elyse now - her mother had the ability to be almost undetectable when she wanted, appearing from shadows where Elyse had sworn nothing was there - her eyes hidden in the shadows of her hat, her mouth a thin, grim line. "Nowhere," she snapped. "Really." She looked down, where Cecil was prowling around her feet, and nudged him away with a foot clad in a sharp back boot. She held out one long, pale arm. "Give me the basket, Elyse."

Elyse dared not disobey - she walked forward on unsteady legs and immediately gave over the basket to her mother. Only too late did she remember the note within it. Dread began to fill her as her mother began rooting through the basket. She snorted at the wine and the cookies - and then picked up the note. Elyse desperately wanted to run, run as fast as she could, but she knew there was no running from her mother. There was an awful, deadly silence as her mother unfolded the note and read it. "Men," she said, her voice still, deadly still. "You got this from men."

"Mother-"

In a flash, the basket had been thrown into the water, and her mother struck her across the face so hard that it left Elyse gasping for breath. Clawed hands hooked through her hair, tearing out the crown of lillies and great clumps of her hair at the same time, shredding it to pieces. "Stupid, ungrateful girl," her mother snarled, "I ask one thing of you, just one, and you cannot do even that? I feed you, shelter you, teach you of the Art - all I ask is that you stay away from the danger of men, AND YOU CANNOT DO EVEN THAT?" By the end of the outburst, her mother was howling, and Elyse could have sworn the shadows grew darker in her wrath.

"Please," Elyse gasped, but her mother struck her again, and again, until stars swam before her eyes and she fell silent, no longer even attempting to talk. Her mother's iron grip seized her painfully by the arm and she began dragging Elyse back towards the hut, kicking at Cecil, who was hissing and spitting by her feet, clawing at her robes. "I try," her mother growled, as she yanked Elyse along, nearly causing her to stumble, "I try not to be cruel. I do not strike you unless you truly need to be taught a lesson. Well, perhaps I have been too kind with you. Perhaps you only understand cruelty. I tell you these things for a reason, Elyse. To protect you from your father, and-"

"I want to see him," Elyse said quietly.

Her mother froze in her tracks, not looking back at her, and Elyse felt her heart leap into her throat. She almost could not believe what she had just said herself. Even more than men, the subject of her father was sure to provoke her mother's rage.

"What did you say?" asked her mother, her voice a whisper, her words like a blade poised above Elyse's head.

But something in Elyse had snapped. With great effort, she wrenched her hand free from her mother's grasp. "I said I want to see my father!" she cried. "You tell me nothing of him - only that he is evil and dangerous - I want to judge for myself!" She rubbed her wrist - her mother's grip had left an angry red welt on her arm.

Slowly, very slowly, her mother turned around, eyes gleaming in the shadows of her hat. And suddenly, Elyse found she was frozen where she stood. She could still breathe, but she could not move a muscle. Cecil yowled and hissed at her mother's skirts, but another look and he was frozen in place as well.

Her mother walked towards her, calmly, then leaned in until her mouth was next to Elyse's ear. "When you were born," she whispered, "I thought about killing you. It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Saved everyone a lot of trouble, most likely. I still could, you know. Oh, so easily. A word is all it would take."

Elyse felt her heart tearing in two. Despite it all, despite all the cruelty, she still loved her mother - and thought that her mother had loved her in return. Her mother, no matter how enraged she might have become before, had never told her this. It shattered her. And even as the words twisted in her heart, she felt fear fill her.

Her mother was not lying - there had been a time when a wizard, with a large, red pointed hat, long, dirty, travel-stained but still bright orange robes, a long black beard and a shaggy wolfhound his familiar, had entered their swamp. Her mother had kept Elyse by her side, silently tracking the wizard as he moved through their swamp, watching him hidden from behind willow and beneath wet leaves, not daring to approach him as she might a normal man. She had watched the wizard with fascination as he stood by a large pool of deep, dark water - and then with a few whispered words, stepped onto it and walked as if it was solid ground, his wolfhound trotting happily beside him. Her mother had waited for the wizard to reach land, and then grimly told Elyse to cover her ears. And then she had said a word so ugly and wicked that even Elyse, with her ears covered, had felt them burn. And the wizard had stopped mid-stride and crumpled to the ground. His wolfhound had continued trotting on for a while, then circled back when he noticed his master was no longer with him, sniffing and pawing at the corpse before finally sitting down and letting out a long, mournful howl. Her mother had coughed up great gouts of blood for a week after that, but Elyse had never forgotten her power.

Her mother examined the tears flowing down Elyse's cheeks coldly, expression unchanging at first. But then she softened. "Oh, my darling daughter," she murmured, wiping away the tears with her thumb, "forgive me. I did not mean that. I just worry for you, my sweet Elyse. It is not your fault; curiousity is natural. But you must listen to me, stupid girl."

With uncanny strength, her mother easily dragged her frozen body back the rest of the way to their yurt. As she threw open the door, the smell of spices filled Elyse's nose. The interior of the yurt was large, larger than it had any right to be, actually, and from the thatched roof dangled log clusters of dried fruits, cloves, and dried swampvines. Dozens of black candles lit the interior, which was furnished with finely carved wooden tables and plush armchairs covered in the rich, thick fur of animals that Elyse had never come to recognize, filled with down. Thick, exotic rugs woven in complicated geometrical patterns covered the stone floor, quieting her mother's footsteps as she dragged Elyse to her room.

There were doors in the yurt, as well - though again, from the outside it looked large enough only to support one room - three, in the main interior, in fact. The one on the left was Elyse's room, the other two she had never been able to open - only her mother had the key, and never let Elyse into them. She had watched her mother go into these rooms before, though - and noted that whenever her mother opened those doors, it looked as if entirely different rooms lay behind them from the last time she had seen them. Through the middle door, she had once glimpsed a room whose walls seemed lined with wooden, stringed instruments - fiddles, and many others Elyse did not recognize. And yet another time, through that same middle door, she had watched her mother walk into a room that seemed almost a cave - a floor of sand and rough stone walls, with a pool of water glimmering by torchlght within. She had always wondered just how many rooms her mother's yurt actually contained.

Elyse's room itself was small - containing just enough room for a bed, though it was a comfortable enough one, a small bookshelf which held her stories - though even now it was only half-full, Elyse had rare opportunity to obtain books - a rough wooden desk at which she studied the Art, and a dresser which contained shelves meant for clothes but which Elyse mostly filled with interesting rocks and animal bones she had found in the swamp. Her mother dragged her here now, placing her upon the bed, and left, returning moments later with Cecil, which she gingerly tucked into Elyse's still-frozen arms. She sat at the edge of the bed, stroking Elyse's hair tenderly, but her words did not reflect the loving strokes. "Foolish girl, to go so near to men," she said. "Foolish, and ungrateful. Do not worry, Elyse. I love you still, though you are such an awful daughter to me. I will fix it."

And then she left the room, closing the door behind her. Moments later, Elyse heard it lock, followed by the door to the yurt opening and slamming shut as well.

It was nearly an hour before she found that slowly, her body was able to move again. As soon as she could, she leapt to her feet on unsteady, numb legs and ran to the window to look outside. Nothing, she could see nothing - darkness had fallen, and there was no sign of her mother. For a moment she thought she could see gleaming yellow eyes staring at her from the darkness, but when she squinted there was nothing there.

Sighing, she sat down on her bed next to Cecil, who had recovered enough to begin irritably licking at one of his front paws, though she thought he sitll could not move his back. Elyse's only consolation was that in her rage, her mother had left her with the belt and dagger. She laid down, wrapping her arms around him, weeping into his fine striped fur, before drifting off to a foggy sleep.

Her mother did not return the next day, either. Luckily, Elyse had been used to being locked in her room for long periods of time by now; she kept stale bread stashed in her desk to eat when she got hungry. Her mother, she thought, was probably going to try to scare off the loggers. She was worried that she might try to hurt some of them - but none of them had violated her rules and entered her swamp. And besides, her mother might kill men alone and lost in the swamp, but there were dozens of loggers there, all with axes. Her mother might drown men, or put them to sleep, or even kill with a word - but she did not think she'd be so stupid to try to do that to a small army of them. Still, a dull knot of dread settled into her stomach.

She tried pounding on her door, but she knew from experience that was already no use - she knew it was thick wooden boards nailed together that she had no hope of breaking down. The window too, she knew, was too small to crawl through, though it opened outward. Large enough, thankfully though, to throw her waste-bucket out of when she had to urinate. She spent the day playing with Cecil, and trying to get lost in one of her storybooks. When night fell again, she actually became worried - both for her mother, and for herself. Her mother had always been crafty and cautious, but what if one of those men had put an axe through her skull? And she - she was getting very thirsty. She had no water in her room.

It was dawn the next day that her mother returned.

Elyse awoke to the sound of her mother humming a haunting, lilting tune, from somewhere outside. Rubbing her eyes, and licking dried lips, Elyse groaned as she got to her feet - thirst was making her feel cramped and sore - and stumbled to the window, to peer out.

Her mother was there, in the dim light of early dawn, the sun still hidden in the sky by pale gray clouds. She was-dancing, it seemed, almost, swaying her hips back and forth, black tattered robes brushing against the ground as she twirled, long dark hair swinging with the motion, humming all the while. She cradled something in her arms, but Elyse could not see what it was. She watched closely as, eventually, her mother ceased dancing, and gingerly placed the object on the blackened, gnarled stump in front of the yurt. Elyse squinted to see what it was as her mother moved to the side.

It was Bertrand's bloody head.

Elyse did not realize she was screaming for a moment, as she stumbled back from the window, bumping painfully into her desk. Her mother's mocking laughter floated to her through the window. Howls of horror quickly turned to outrage - she ran to her door and hammered at it, rattling it in its frame, screaming, as her mother laughed and laughed.

Elyse stepped back from the doorway, trembling. Her blood felt like it was on fire; she was nearly blind with rage. Something dark within her was whispering, faint but undeniable. With more strength than she knew she had, she herself against the door, ramming it with her shoulder. Pain lanced down her arm, but she felt the frame that held her door crack. She threw herself at it again, and again, turning her shoulder raw and bloody from contact with the rough wood, leaving a wet bloodstain against the door, but finally the frame splintered around the lock and she was able to wrench it open with the cracking squeal of tortured wood.

She tore throught the main room of the yurt, heading straight for the exit outside as Cecil bounded after her. She did not look at her mother as she flung the door open - did not dare - instead running straight past her, into the swamp, her mother's wicked cackle haunting her.

She ran faster and harder than she ever had, legs flashing, heart pounding in her chest, breath ragged and painful in her throat, so fast that even Cecil disappeared behind her. She bounded through the familiar path towards the loggers camp, her feet bleeding from cuts on sharp rocks that she was normally cautious enough to avoid. And when she saw black smoke rising into the sky in the distance, she ran even harder.

She leapt when she reached the edge of the swamp, dashing into the forest, no longer cautious, no longer trying to hide, not caring about the branches that scratched at her skin as she barreled through them, heading straight to the logger's camp. As she approached, the crackle of flames grew louder, and the smell of smoke grew thick - the could see the dance of large yellow flames peeking through the trees before her. Finally, she reached the edge of the clearing the loggers had been working on, where the trees ended and the stumps began. And she collapsed to her knees and choked out a sob.

The camp was a nightmare. Venomous swamp-snakes slithered everywhere, black scales contrasting with pale white mouths as they hissed. Unnaturally large hornets swamed in the air, fat and heavy, hundreds of them, creating a constant low drone that could be heard even over the crackle of flame. Axes lay scattered everywhere, abandoned as the men had fled. All the buildings were on fire, already far enough along that their roofs had collapsed, large flames leaping dozens of feet into the air, black smoke dancing in the wind.

She counted at least six corpses that she could see. One had all his limbs twisted in the wrong direction, his back bent at an odd angle, an awful rictus grin spread across his face. Two others had those strange, fat hornets swarming all over them, nearly covering them entirely. Another two had no sign of death that she could see from here - snake bites, most likely, as vipers and swampsnakes crawled all over them. And one man, lying facedown in the dirt, had every visible inch of skin covered in open, weeping sores. When she looked into the infernos that had been the camp's buildings, she thought she could see bodies burning in there, as well.

There might be even more that she could not see from here, but she dared not get any closer. She had no idea what her mother had done, and those snakes and hornets might prey upon her as well. She struggled to her feet, head spinning, feeling sick. She walked away in an unsteady fog. She knew where her feet were bringing her. She didn't want to go, but felt powerless to stop. Step by step, feet crunching in the dried pine needles on the forest floor, she approached it.

Bertrand's favorite spot.

And there he was, slumped against a tree, broad arms folded on his rounded belly, looking for all the world as if he was merely napping. Except, of course, he had no head, and blood drenched the top of the green linen shirt he wore. Elyse collapsed beside him, reaching out with a trembling hand to touch one of his arms; it was cold. She wanted him to be alive. She didn't think she had ever wanted anything more in her life. "Please," she sobbed, not knowing who she was talking to.

In response, a low, dusky laugh came from behind her.

She leapt to her feet, spinning around. There, in the shadow cast by a pine, was her mother, almost just a silhouette in the darkness, her face hidden except for the gleam of her eyes.

Rage came back to Elyse then. Trembling, she stepped towards her mother, pointing an accusatory finger at her. "You - you killed them," she spat.

"Me, child?" Her mother spread her arms wide in a mock show of innocence. "No, no - I cared not for these men, as long as they stayed away from my swamp. You killed them, Elyse. Because you could not stay away. They would still be alive if you had left well enough alone. These men are dead because of you."

Elyse froze in her advance as guilt roiled through her. That was...that was right, wasn't it. If only she had stayed away, the men would still be alive. Bertrand would still be alive. He might still see his daughter someday...she shook her head, trying to clear it. No. That was...just a story she had made up. But her head was in a fog, it felt difficult to tell what was real and what wasn't. "I-I never drew close, I always simply looked," she stammered. "And they...they were not dangerous, they had-women here, with them, I saw-"

Her mother snorted. "Whores. Do you think these men were kind? What do you think they would have done to you had they caught you, naked and alone as you are? Do you think what little of the Art you know could have stopped them from having their way with you?" She paused, then gave a nasty chuckle. "Or perhaps, you little slattern, that is what you wanted?"

With an outraged shriek, Elyse drew her dagger and launched herself at her mother.

But her dagger struck only air - one moment, her mother's shadow was there, and the next it wasn't. She heard mocking laughter from behind her, and then a sharp kick to her leg sent her sprawling. She recovered, scrambling backwards, seeing her mother standing behind her, carefully breaking off a thin, supple branch from a pine tree, snapping off stray twigs from it as she advanced. "Striking out at your mother - you have much to learn of the Art before you can handle the likes of me," her mother laughed wickedly. She gave the branch in her hands a practice swing - it cut through the air with a hiss. "I could boil your skin with a touch, and you'd deserve it - but a switching is enough, I think, for an ungrateful chit like you!"

Elyse leapt forward with her dagger again, but her mother danced among the shadows, lashing out at her with the branch, raising painful, bleeding welts in her skin. No matter how quickly Elyse struck, it was as if her mother was half-shadow herself, flickering all around her in the darkness, raining blow after blow down upon her. Soon enough, it felt as if every inch of her skin was on fire, covered in bloody bruises, and she dropped the dagger, curling into a ball on the forest floor and begging for it to stop as her mother struck her again and again.

Finally, mercifully, the blows paused. Elyse looked up, blinking blood from her eyes as she did so. Cecil had finally found her, after she had run so far ahead of him, and had put himself between her and her mother, growling and hissing, reaching out to her with claws bared, ears flat against his head. Her mother towered over her, a shadow against the light filtering through the pines, the switch in her hands dripping with Elyse's blood.

"Scratch at me, Cecil," her mother whispered, "And I'll feed you to Serrah."

Elyse gave a wordless yell, and reached out with one bloody arm to draw Cecil close to her, her blood tinging his fur. "No," she whispered, with what strength she had to speak. "Please." She closed her eyes again.

And the next thing she knew, her mother was kneeling next to her, whispering soothing words to her, stroking her hair with one hand. The other hand ran over her body, healing her wounds with the Art, slowly mending her torn and bruised flesh. "Shhh, my darling," her mother murmured. "I know it hurts. A painful lesson, yes, but all important lessons are. I love you, my beautiful daughter, my sweet, wild Elyse. I only want to teach you to know the dangers of the world."

And Elyse, weak, trembling, and exhausted, wrapped her arms around her mother and cried into her dress.

Soon enough, the pain had faded away - soon enough, all that remained of her injuries were a few welts and scratches here and there. "This man...the one whose head I took," her mother asked quietly. "You liked him?"

"Yes," Elyse said softly, her face still buried in the darkness of her mother's dress. "He...seemed kindly. Sad."

Her mother sighed, still stroking her hair. "You will meet men who seem kindly, in your life," she murmured. "And perhaps, one in a thousand truly are kind. But remember what I told you, Elyse. It is not merely that men are dangerous - though they are. You are dangerous to them as well." She paused for a moment. "Look at him, child."

Elyse tensed, gripping her mother's dress. "No...please. I don't want to."

But her mother forced her to look. "Remember, Elyse," she hissed, as she forced Elyse's head to turn to Bertrand's corpse, holding her eyes open. "Remember that this is the fate of any man you care for. Only death awaits them."

Elyse stared dully at the corpse, slumped against the tree, his blood staining the bark.

And beside the corpse stood a tall shadow, dressed in black leathers, long black cloak dragging along the ground, cattle-skull helm chattering, the yellow eyes in its sockets gleaming, black streamers flying from its curved horns, and as she watched it raised a cruel, curved sword, dripping with blood, and stepped forward, and the chatter of its teeth filled her ears-

Elyse's eyes snapped open.

She looked around her. She was still in the bathtub in her room in the inn, the water having grown lukewarm by now. Cecil slept peacefully on the bed, tail flicking and ears twitching as he dreamed. She could still hear the dim sound of conversation from the inn's common room, though it seemed to have grown quieter now. The light from the window told her that the sun had begun to go down, the shadows in her room lengthening.

She frowned, rubbing her head. She had been lost in memory, painful memory...but the rider had never been there in her memory. At least, she thought it had not been? She was certain she had never seen it, or anything like it, before journeying with Martimeos. Had she fallen asleep, and combined dream and memory...? She didn't think she had slept.

She tried to bring up the memory again, painful as it was. But no matter how much she thought of it - the rider was there, as her mother forced her to look at Bertrand's corpse, clear as day. She could remember it in incredible detail, the chatter of teeth, the way the black ribbons tied to its horns had snaked through the air as it moved.

She frowned, stepping out of the tub. The horror of the journey into Twin Lamps must have addled her brains. Perhaps, after some sleep, she would feel better.