Chapter Text
The village by the old forest is one of superstitions.
Since the beginning, the people of Weald have blamed all their ills on the woods that rest sleepy and silent by the little village they reside in. It’s not uncommon for them to avert their eyes when walking too close. It’s not unusual to find crosses hanging in the trees on the edge of the forest. It’s not unexpected to hear mothers and fathers warning their young to avoid entering at all costs.
Veiled under a constant webbing of mist, the men who must hunt within the throng of trees are blessed and bestowed with well-wishes before every departure. Upon their return, the villagers toss their thanks to their God for having protected them and borne them safely home.
The people of Weald fear the unknown as if it were a monster with teeth and claws and a hunger for flesh all its own. Every night without fault, as twilight inches over the unmoving treetops, they close the gates and shutter the tormenting windows and lock the doors with wooden barricades.
They scurry down ladders into dreary cellars dug deep below ground and hide amidst the soil and the worms. They stay there until morning, like field mice squirreled deep in their den, with wool shoved in their ears so they can not hear the whisper of the trees, nor the crow of the night birds, nor any other haunting sound that might try to coax them out.
Weald is a village that prides itself on strictly following the Rules, capital R, and each and every one must be abided to the letter, lest they risk the ire of the spirits that live beyond their fences.
They bury the lamented dead far from their homes and lace their bodies with wormwood and arsenic to keep them from rising. They hang silver bells twisted with the bones of small animals from the street lamps to ward off mischief making demons who lurk in the ever-present shadows.
They do not dance and they do not laugh, for both are vulgar, salacious pastimes known to entice the truly dreadful. They teach their children to hate the stars and the moon and the flowers that only open their petals under the midnight sky. That is the hour of witches and fiends and creatures that long to steal away the souls of the good and the righteous.
They have lost more than their fair share to the trees. Men who’ve taken a wrong step and fallen only to snap their necks like twigs upon landing. Young women who’ve gone missing, the girls simply vanishing without a trace. Children wander away, enticed by a song only they can hear, most of them never to be seen again either.
Others speak of having seen large black hounds and wolves with jowls dripping with fanged fury. There are those who speak of feeling as if they’re being pursued by an invisible force that runs on four hooves. Ill tidings weep from the woods and any unlucky enough to be ensnared rarely come back
The stories are old, far older than something as ephemeral as mere memory. A promise of danger lurking beyond the pines, tales of ghouls of all kinds rooted in the very fabric of the tapestry that is Weald through the ages. There has never been, nor will there be, a time when they look upon the forest with anything but dread.
Lily Evans, resident of Weald since birth, has been raised to fear the forest. The bedtime fables of her youth were filled with warnings whispered to the light of a lone flickering candle. Gathered in her mother’s lap, fingers lacing through her hair, her parents would warn her. Listen to the elders. Obey the rules. Never go in. And above all, never go in alone .
That was before, Lily thinks, as she shoulders her bow and arrow, and steps beyond the copse of trees. Cool air greets her and Lily breathes deep. Much as she doesn’t want to be here, she has no choice — this is the only way to keep from starving. Stomach aching with hunger, she steels her nerves, continuing, one foot after the other.
You see, several years ago, poor Lily’s family was struck by madness.
It took her mother first, a strict and goodly woman with soft hands and sharp eyes the colour of the creek in spring. One night, just before the equinox, she began scratching at the walls, begging her husband and daughters to let her out, let her see, let her feel the moonlight on her bare skin and let the night air soothe the ache between her legs!
Terrifying them all, she began to moan and rutt and rub herself against whatever she could, her groans turning to shrieks, turning to a rattling silence that eventually ended in a painful and drawn-out death.
Her father followed not long after, his madness earned by the dissecting eyes that followed him like flies to a carcass wherever he went.
Despondent and bereft, he hung himself on the thickest branch of the gnarled, old oak tree near their residence. Lily found him there, cold and swinging and silent as her mother had been.
Truth be told, even before all that, the Evans family, or more particularly, the matriarch of the Evans family who perished so suddenly, made the people of Weald uneasy.
‘It’s the women from her line ,’ the villagers have been known to say. ‘ Something about them just doesn’t sit right. Not right at all.’
And then after her father’s demise, ‘ She ate her husband's soul like toffee and he withered and died without her. More to fool any man who falls in love with an Evans woman.’
Perhaps it’s the fact they have always been, by far, the most beautiful women to be born into Weald. Perhaps it’s because they only ever give birth to daughters (an odd and discourteous thing to do to a man in need of a male heir). Perhaps it’s simply due to the fact that they’re unusual in a place that doesn’t appreciate anything that might be construed as ‘out of the ordinary’.
It isn’t so much anything they’ve done. More of a feeling. A sense of… otherness, that has always made more than one of their neighbours mutter meanly, Witches.
Wild women who ensnare good men of good stock and good fortune and use their good seed to make more of their wild kind, spreading their mystical wickedness as far as they can.
Utter poppycock, in Lily’s opinion. If she had any magic she’d have made use of it a long time ago.
“We can not help you.” Doors slammed in her face when she asked for aid in bringing her father’s body down. “Your family is cursed. We can not risk it spreading.”
“This is all your fault,” her elder sister, Petunia, berated her. “If you hadn’t been born under the harvest moon none of this would’ve happened. Everyone knows it’s bad luck to be born then, but you just had to come early.”
Ah yes.
That .
Bothersome that. Made Lily Evans an outcast from her first breath.
Irritated at the time, Lily didn’t bother to tell her she had little choice in the hour of her birth. That, like in most instances when she’s tried to talk to her sister, would’ve been a waste of breath.
Petunia has a special skill for turning a blind eye when it suits her. She never asks where the rabbits or the foxes or the birds Lily brings home originate from. Perhaps she imagines they spring from the ground like wildflowers.
Lily never offers the truth lest the food turn to ash in her mouth. Disagreeable as Petunia might be, Lily has no desire to see her starve. They would’ve done so long ago (and perhaps that’s what the villagers wanted) if Lily hadn’t begun venturing into the wilds in order to put food on their table.
It’s not all that bad, Lily muses, as she glides her fingertips over the moss-covered tree trunks. Sighing, she inhales the earthy scent of desiccated leaves and dew swept soil. Birds chirp in the canopy and sunlight peels downwards in little bursts of warm amber amidst all the vibrant green.
Everything out here is so awake. So alive. So lushly decadent, every surface sprinkled with green and smoothed over with bursts of colourful wildflowers. It breathes. The swaying branches and the swishing leaves and the animals that scurry and the creek that gurgles. It’s like an orchestra, all the soft sounds of nature vying to be heard and melding into something riddled with honey and gold.
Mushrooms pepper an old log she nimbly steps over and twigs crack beneath her boots, moisture gathering in the heel of her sock where a hole has begun to form there. She’ll need a new pair soon, though who will sell them to her, she has no idea.
A snuffling sound makes her ears prick up and Lily lowers into a crouch, notching her bow and pulling the arrow taught against her cheek. Exhaling as her father taught her, she aims, eyes narrowing as she studies the forest — waiting.
It’s not long before a shape moves in the distance, too large to be one of the usual creatures she catches. Curious, Lily lowers her bow slightly, managing to snatch glimpses of brown hide as the beast approaches, branches pushing aside as it wanders into the open meadow.
Lily gasps, heart leaping up into her throat as her eyes fall on a deer, larger and more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen. It lifts its great antlers, head tilting in a noble sweep as it leans forward to drink from the glistening river that burbles and froths as water rolls over the rocks.
Entranced, she watches its tongue slip out of its mouth as it begins to lap from the stream. Worms wriggle over her boots and a lady beetle buzzes, landing on her hand. If she were to shoot now, she’d be able to strike right in the top of its head.
There’d be no pain.
A swift death and food for the entire winter. Petunia could sell the hide and antlers and use the money to buy new clothes and extra firewood so they could make use of the whole house, rather than the few rooms they sequester themselves in so they don’t freeze. Lily wouldn’t have to return to the forest for weeks, months , and for a short time, everything could be as it was before.
Crickets chirp. Lily’s lungs expand and contract, her teeth grinding together as she clenches her jaw. Her pulse skips as the deer rises, shaking its mighty head. Long, spindly antlers bend upwards at odd angles to sweep into elegant, deadly points sharper than any blade Lily could ever hone. Muscles bulge within its legs, and it kicks up leaves as it drags one of its great hooves through the dirt.
Not a deer at all.
A stag.
A very large one. Sublime in its beauty. Hide of copper, with a fuzzing of white in its mane. Tendons run ribbons down its neck, the sinews of its evident strength weaving into the tapestry of its remarkable physique. It’s wide and tall and long, the sheer height of it enough to scale any man in the village in one great leap.
It’s now or never.
The bow lifts in Lily’s hands as if guided by a phantom force. Eyes narrowing, she stares down the stag, fingers white knuckling the bow and the arrow scratching the side of her face. A cool breeze licks ice around her wrists and ankles, a chill creeping into her bones.
She has no aversion to killing for her meal but this? This feels wrong. Feels like taking more than she’s owed, and if Lily knows anything about the forest, it’s that it only gives what is rightly earned. To take something so grand would leave her indebted and she’s not so foolish as to tempt fate.
Lowering the bow, a wayward sigh tumbles free. Nettled by her own principles, sliding the thin, white coif from her head, Lily scrapes a hand through her mess of unruly locks. Crimson strands spill over her temple and catch in her fingers before dropping to the earth.
The stag looks up, its gaze seeming to land on her. Mouth parting, Lily shrivels as its head tilts and a shadow passes over its face. It looks… fascinated.
But that’s impossible. Doesn’t make any sense.
The stag’s nostrils flare, clouds of its heated breath staining the air like smoke from wet wood.
For a small eternity, the two stare at one another, predator and prey in another life, but equals somehow in this one.
A noise erupts behind Lily and she whips around, spitting a slew of expletives as the voices of the villagers echo through the woods.
Hunters.
When she turns back, the stag is gone.
Disappointment floods her belly. Footsteps resound and Lily swears again, ducking into the brush before they can discover her out where she shouldn’t be.
Dark cloaks come into view first, the fabric swishing around their ankles as three young men appear. Why they’ve come this far into the woods, she hasn’t the foggiest. Usually the hunters keep as close to the edge as possible. These ones must be more daring than the rest. Or stupider.
“I’m not afraid,” one of them barks, as if they’d heard her thoughts. “I’ll stay out here all night.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” another drawls. “The spirits will eat your soul if you remain after darkness falls.”
The third laughs, the sound cold and cruel as nails on a chalkboard. “That’s just an old wives tale.”
The hair on Lily’s neck spikes up. No. Not them. Anyone but them.
“It’s not,” the first pushes. “We could risk bringing a curse upon us, same as the Evans girls.”
“Ha!” the third snorts. “Everyone knows why the Evans were cursed and it wasn’t because of anything the spirits did.”
They come into view and Lily’s gut churns.
There’s three of them. Two tall. One silvery blonde, the other dark. The third is shorter with mousy brown hair and a wide stomach.
The silvery one — Lucius Malfoy — she knows, is son to Abraxus, Governor of Weald, their home the grandest and most ostentatious in the village. He’s a cherub looking thing, fair and rosy cheeked with soft pillowy lips. His hands are uncalloused, his body having never been made to see a hard day's work in his miserable little life. His presence at the hunt is merely for show. Lily doubts he could so much as catch a dead rabbit.
The second — Vernon Dursley — is son of the Reverend, a fiercely devout zealot. Rotund as a ripe berry, he practically has to waddle his way through the trees, the racket he’s creating not at all conducive to hunting.
And the third — Tom Riddle — comes from a less than savoury upbringing though he’s moved up in the world since becoming a ward to Abraxas after his mother passed. Pale as sun bleached bone, his eyes are like ice and the dark curly hair that spills over his temple is set to rival crow feathers.
Together the three are untouchable. Spoiled and used to getting everything they want. They need not ask, for the village provides, ensuring their handsome sons are well fed and dressed and pampered beyond measure.
“What?” Vernon asks sharply. His head tilts and he approaches him. “What do you know, Lucius?”
Lucius rises up haughtily. “I have it on good authority that their mother was whoring herself to half the men in village. Insatiable she was. Couldn’t keep her legs closed. Bet those daughters aren’t even blood related to their father.”
Tom snickers. “That Lily is pretty though.”
“Not like her horse-faced sister,” Lucius agrees.
“Don’t talk about Petunia like that.”
“Sorry Vernon,” Lucius rolls his eyes for Tom who laughs again. “I know you’re sweet on her.”
“I’d marry her if I could.” Vernon scrubs a hand down his face. “But I asked mother and she said she wouldn’t have a — “ here he lowers his voice. “ Witch, in the family.”
Lily’s eyes widen. She had no idea Petunia had a beau. It’s not as if she’d tell Lily. She doesn’t tell Lily anything. It’s more than apparent she’d rather not have her around most of the time.
“Witch bitch,” Tom snorts. “Bet Lily is just like her mother.” He turns his sparkling gaze on Lucius. “I just know if I went around to that house of theirs, she’d be begging me for it.”
“Oh she’d be on her knees without a second thought,” Lucius agrees with a nod. “I’ve seen her walking around with twigs in her hair and dirt on her face — she’s half mad already, we’d be doing her a service.”
“Think she’d want us to have her at the same time?” Tom asks snidely.
“Who cares what she wants?” Lucius returns with a leer. “It’s what she deserves, always thinking she’s smarter than everyone else. Proper girls aren’t stupid enough to be that clever.”
“I’d show her where to stick that mouth — “
“You’re disgusting.” Lily’s shooting up before she’s aware she’s moved.
Rage races through her, making her blood pump liquid hot. She sneers openly at the three boys, each who regard her with shock.
Tom recovers first, blinking twice before breaking out into a spider smile. “Would you look at who it is? Lily Evans in the flesh.”
“Are you wearing trousers?” Vernon splutters. He shoots a horrified look at his friends.
They ignore him.
Tom’s mouth twists, his tongue sliding over his teeth. “Shouldn’t be out in the woods all by yourself.”
Lucius’ eyes narrow, and his fists whiten as they curl into balls. “What are you doing out here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing out here?” Lily bites back. She jerks the bow in her hand. “Hunting.”
“You're not supposed to hunt out here,” Vernon clicks his teeth.
“And you’re not supposed to be able to stand and talk at the same time,” she cuts back. “Yet there you are shocking us all.”
He frowns. “What?”
Lily rolls her eyes. “Who says I’m not allowed to hunt?” she juts her chin. “There’s no rule against it.” Not exactly, that is. She checked.
According to their laws, the forest is off-limits except to those who hunt. And she is doing just that. Hunting. Certainly whoever wrote said rule assumed only the men of the village would have cause to hunt and left out anything more specific.
More fool them.
“It’s just the way of things,” Tom notes. Shrewder than the others, he’s quicker to catch on. “Everybody knows that.”
“And you haven’t got a blessing,” Vernon adds, indicating the large cross looped about his throat.
“I don’t need one,” Lily folds her arms.
“Why’s that?” Tom’s head tilts. “Are you insinuating you need not fear the spirits?”
“I — no.” Lily glowers at him. She’s not foolish enough to take the bait. Only evil creatures would be safe from the wicked woods at night.
Tom grins. He takes a step towards her. “Ah c’mon there Evans. There’s no need to be coy. Did you follow us out here?”
“You’re delusional.”
“Are you spying on us? Hoping we’d pay a little more attention to you. I see how you look at me in church. All big eyed and pining.”
“I think you’ve mistaken me for the other girls in the village,” she drawls. “Pick one of them, I’m sure they’d be happy to moon over you.”
“Yes but you’re here now and looking,” he exhales appreciatively. “Absolutely decadent.”
He takes another step towards her. A stick cracks beneath his boot, the sound making her jump.
Alarm bells rattle through the back of Lily’s head.
Without hesitating, she lifts the bow, aiming an arrow directly for his heart.
“Woah,” Lucius lifts his hands.
Tom’s eyes heat, his smirk becoming fanged. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
Lily glares at him. “Care to try me? Take another step. Let’s see if I’ve got the guts.”
His mouth tilts into a lazy smile. “You’re no fun, you know that.”
“And you’re a pig.” Lily scoffs. “All of you.”
“That may be so,” Tom hums. “But I’ve figured something out that you haven’t yet.” He lifts his foot from the ground tauntingly. “You see — you’ve only got one arrow to fire. And there’s three of us.” His face changes, a spider grin pulling his cheeks wide. He leans forward, lip curling back. “Run little deer. Run, run, run, as fast as you can. The hunters are coming.”
Lily doesn’t even think. It’s something in his eyes. A promise that if she stays Bad Things will happen.
The wind sighs and Lily takes off like a spooked rabbit. Whirling, she sprints deeper into the woods as if the very hounds of hell are on her tail.
Sounds of them following echo in her wake. Branches snapping like bone beneath their lumbering feet and shrill hoots as they laugh and caw, the three of them cheering each other on like howling wolves.
A rogue bough snatches the white linen cap from her head and Lily barks, hand slapping up to try to catch it. She’s too slow and the coif gets stuck. Much as she wants it back, Lily dare not stop.
Vernon falls behind first, not unsurprising, but the other two keep up a steady pace, their heckling reverberating all around her as if she’s caught in an echo chamber.
Lily’s heart bangs against her ribcage fierce enough to snap her sternum in two.
They won’t hurt her. They wouldn’t do that. They’re just being silly. Trying to scare her. Right?
Much as she wishes she could, she can’t seem to convince herself of this. Exhaustion drags at her muscles, but she keeps going and going and going. Leaping over large roots and felled trees. Ducking under branches and generally barrelling her way through the thicket.
The trees grow larger, their trunks thicker, taller. The world around her darkens as the canopy blocks more light. A chill builds, icy air slapping at her face and slicing knives down her throat.
Blood roars in her ears and it’s so loud, the sounds of her pursuers fade under the pounding of her own pulse. She keeps running.
The forest changes.
The shrubbery becomes thorned, tiny spikes sticking to her clothes and the long-reaching branches, which before had been whipping and cutting her face, twist and bend as if they’re inviting her in. The earth beneath her feet softens to silk and the rich scent of the soil punches up her nose.
Quite unexpectedly, the woods open up, revealing a strange clearing of barren space.
Lily skids to a halt.
There’s a large tree nestled within the centre of the oval-shaped glade, its trunk as wide as ten men laying on their side.
A figure stands before it.
Robed in black, the tattered fabric draped over its large skeletal frame, is frayed at the edges, the heavy, stained material flapping under a phantom breeze. An eerie stillness filled with malice swarms her and Lily’s perspiration turns to ice on her skin.
A prickling sensation crackles all along her nerve endings. She doesn’t know what it is she’s looking at, only that it’s enormous . Taller than a house.
Slowly it begins to turn.
It looms, silent as stone and sturdy as a cliff, its face obscured by shadow. She catches bits and pieces of a pale, elongated visage. Parts of it are pitted, the rest curved as a glazed bowl freshly heated from the kiln or hollow as the inside of an eggshell.
And protruding from its head…
No.
Surely not.
Antlers?
Massive white antlers that weave together and spiral up and outwards like the wings of an angel.
All the air explodes from Lily’s lungs.
These are larger than the stag’s. More intricate too. A netting of interlacing bone that resembles the gnarled, twisted branches of a tree. If anything they’re malformed, jutting in and out irregularly, the silhouette distorted and crooked in the half light.
Eerie vibrations lick up her spine and an uncanny umbrage takes over. Closes in. Lily is completely paralyzed. She’s coming apart, the stitches unsticking. The air around her pulses. Pulls . Her temple throbs and her fingertips tingle.
A hiss slips through her parted lips. Lily’s vision bubbles, fatigue rushing in. She’s run so far. So far and so deep, she’s too tired to understand how afraid she should be.
Determined to stay alert, Lily scrapes in breath after shaking breath. Her fingertips tingle. Numb. Everything’s numb. There's drumming, a wild, wild drumming. Her heart or —
A crack in the distance. There’s the sound of rattling panting. Or humming. Or hissing. Hard to say with any level of certainty. Everything’s so far away. Sunken-in and wrinkled like an overripe apple left out under the hot sun.
The figure watches. There’s a look in their gaze. A question Lily can’t answer.
Vibrations slither up her spine and the world tilts on its axis as she goes down. Lily’s legs give out and she collapses as darkness closes in.
Drowsy and discombobulated, Lily wakes amidst the brambles, cheeks scratched, hands chaffing from stinging nettle. There are red welts peppering her skin and her muscles ache from running.
Blinking away the fatigue, she notes she can’t hear her pursuers anymore. She can’t hear anything actually — nothing but the forest.
The hum of wind pushing through leaves. The crack and groan and keen of the trees frailly swaying. There’s the yip of the faraway fox and the snuffling sound of a rabbit. The hiss of the snake and the hoot of the owl and it’s all melding together into a cacophony of sounds that ring as true as they would’ve done on the seventh day of creation.
The sun is setting.
The twilight is damp and cool and freckled with a sinister emerging mist. Far off in the distance, Lily can smell smoke from the fireplaces in the village. Her sister will be there, tucked away and safe, waiting at the window, a candle burning low as she peers out into the dark. It won’t be long before she sequesters herself beneath the decaying floorboards, plugging her ears with sheep’s wool until the morning comes.
Lily’s heart kicks against the underside of her ribs. There’s a dull, pink hue kissing the underbrush, but it’s fading rapidly. That’s why she can’t hear the others. They’d never travel this far into the forest, not with dusk closing in around them.
Grasping her side, Lily staggers to her feet. Pulse skipping, she begins to lumber in what she hopes is the way home. Her boot gets caught in a rogue root and she nearly loses her footing twice.
She can’t be here. Can’t be alone in the forest in the dark. Panic grips her around the throat and she begins to run.
The honey locusts sway alongside the willows and the beech as well. Leaves skitter and catch around her ankles. Small animals run with her, their tiny feet leaving barely-there indentations in the soil. The canopy hangs heavy, branches reaching down, snarling in her hair, her clothes, tearing at her flesh in bites and stings that make her hiss.
She barely makes it a few feet before she skids to a halt, heels kicking up a wave of earth.
There’s a man.
Maybe.
He’s golden as the stones of ochre by the creek but his hair is dark and spiky as an oxe. He wears nothing but a plain bit of cloth looped about his neck and waist, the material flimsy and far too thin for the cold kiss of night.
He studies Lily with eyes that feel more ancient than his youthful face. Amber glows around his edges, alighting him in a surreal haze that sears her vision.
Time shudders, an aura old and arcane unspooling in tantalising tendrils. The dark, like water, like ice — it reaches for her, nips at her, moves with her, swaying and swaying and swaying .
A blink and the man is right before her. His face shimmers, his features painted by iridescent whorls. Dark lashes flutter over his cheeks and his eyes — there’s no light. No colour. Nothing but twin pools as endless as the deepest point of a dream.
An eldritch haze billows in a vignetting around him. Makes him ethereal and phantasmagoric to behold. As if he’s glazed. Shrouded.
At first, she thought the antlers an elaborate crown. On closer inspection though it becomes evident they’re part of him, the horns blooming from his scalp and slithering out from under his erratic thatch of hair like creeping vines.
Lily folds back into a sleek, polished lump of satin. Enters a trance-like state. Her limbs grow heavy as if she’s guzzled a whole bottle of belladonna.
He’s lovely. So lovely.
“Who are you?” the question springs from her lips and gallops up and off into the stars.
His eyes shimmer. “I have many names.”
When he speaks, his voice rumbles, the sound akin to an earthquake, a rockslide, waves crashing against the shore. It pounds against Lily’s eardrums and her knees go weak.
A hand snatches her forearm, to stop her from collapsing. His gaze is loaded, enough to make her feel as brittle as treebark.
Lily’s mind fogs, all her senses honing on where skin meets skin. Fatigue cracks like an egg over her skull, the feeling like warm runny yolks trickling through her extremities.
“You’re beautiful,” she manages. It comes out as a croak. A rasp.
He smiles. “I chose this form to be pleasing to you.”
“And how do you really look?”
His brow cocks. A pause. “You’d be frightened.”
Lily shakes her head, movements sluggish. “I wouldn’t.”
“You say that now.”
“Won’t you show me.” She wants to see. To know.
“Perhaps,” he muses with a strange amount of familiarity. Lily feels it too. The brink of forever sliding between them as if they’ve been here before. “One day.”
He extends his hand and Lily glances down to find her white cap, scrunched and torn, resting in his large, calloused palm.
Frowning, she takes it wordlessly.
The embroidered lily her mother stitched into the back is still there. A secret ornamenting all her coif’s. The reason she loves them so much.
“What are you?” she asks. Desperate for an answer from this wraith that’s crawled out of nothing to fill her up like wine overflowing.
“I am the spirit of this forest.”
Lily nods as if that’s obvious. Because of course. What else could he be? “Why are you here?”
He leans forwards, plush lips an inch from her own. An earthy scent rolls over her like a wave to the shore. “I have a gift.”
Heat buzzes through her veins. “A gift. For me?”
He nods.
“Why?”
“Because you chose beauty and wonder over death.” Dappled light spills over his cheekbones. “You chose life. A gift as well, do you not think? One that you gave first. I merely seek to return the favour.”
Lily's eyes are so heavy she can hardly keep them open. Vibrations run up and down her arms and legs and a weighted pressure pushes at her from all sides. “You mean the stag?”
The stranger smiles and nods again.
He lifts his arm and Lily startles as metal glints. A blade slices through his wrist and blood spills. It’s darker than her own, rich as currants, the scent somehow sweet.
“Drink,” he murmurs. “It will make you strong.”
Lily shakes her head. No, she tries to say, but can not form the words. No, I can’t.
She expects him to be angry but he merely continues to smile.
“For now.”
Leaning forward, he kisses her, stealing the breath from her lungs.
Darkness blots out her vision for a second time and then there is nothing.
“Get up.” Petunia shakes her. “I said get up! Lord, are you planning to sleep all day.”
Lily blinks herself into awareness. She’s curled up in bed, her shift tangled around her ankles. Petunia glares down at her, face screwed up and lips pursed in irritation.
“I can’t believe you slept up here last night. So irresponsible. If the Reverend hears about this!” she continues to berate, but Lily is not awake enough yet to process anything.
Though of the same blood, the sisters can’t be any less alike. There’s Lily with her pale skin, freckles, hair the colour of fire and eyes as open and green as the forest itself in the heart of spring. And then there is stone-faced Petunia with her charred black curls, unblemished complexion and her dark eyes shrewd and cruel enough to cut diamonds.
Where Lily is soft, Petunia is all sharp edges. Where Petunia is tall and sinewy as a reed, Lily is two-heads shorter and decidedly less elegant. Both beautiful in their own right, they might as well have been moulded by hands desperate to craft the other different in every possible way.
“W — what?” Lily croaks.
“You heard me,” she gives her another shake, though it’s hardly necessary. “Get up. Didn’t you manage to catch anything… by the lake? I checked and there’s nothing in the barn.”
“Oh,” Lily swallows, her throat dry as a desert. “No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? You’re not hiding food from me are you? Because that would be — “
More berating.
Lily groans, scrubbing a hand down her face. Her memories of the previous day are hazy. There’s flickers of images. She recalls being discovered by Tom, Lucius and Vernon. She remembers running and falling. After that…
A face.
A golden face.
Lily’s pulse skips a beat.
Petunia is staring at her as if she’s simple. Her cheekbones are pronounced, her eyes sunken and patched with purple. She must be so hungry.
“No,” Lily splutters. “No, I didn’t catch anything.”
“Well what good are you!” Petunia stands, stomping to the door. At the jamb, she whirls, long fingers white and uncalloused, clutching the wood. “I’ve got a caller coming today. Be out of the house or I’ll — “ her nostrils flare. “Just be out of the house.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily’s eyes sting. She feels awful. Guilty for returning empty handed. And… weird. Weird as if she’s been recently dunked in fermentation brine. Aches throb all along her extremities. “I’ll go into the woods again. Right now. I don’t know what happened. I was so close — “
Petunia sneers, silencing her. “ Close doesn’t put food on this table, does it. Now get out. I don’t wish to see you for the rest of the day.”
Lily stands at the edge of the wood.
The trees sway, leaves rustling and long grass tickling her fingertips as the wind gathers up in her palms. The heavy fabric of her weighted homespun skirt flaps against her ankles and a lock of auburn hair spills from beneath her linen cap.
Carefully unlooping the skirts, she lets them fall past her legs, revealing her fathers old trousers (pinned and hemmed and stitched here and there to fit). Snatching a glance back towards the village, she bundles the material in a ball, tucking them into the roots of a tree for her return.
As always, her fingers trace the hem of her coif but she can’t bring herself to remove it. It's the one part of herself she struggles to shed even if she’d be more comfortable without it.
The sun is still high overhead, trickling warmth beating down on her scalp. The autumnal air has a bite to it, but the rays keep the cold at bay. For now.
A patch of dianthus ripples by her feet, the petals gathering on the dirt in coils of reddish brown that resemble recently extracted viscera. As Lily stares ahead at the elms strangled by vines, a distorted silhouette flickers between the trees.
It looks like a person.
Foreboding swamps Lily and her eyes shoot wide. Gasping, she twists away, tendrils of terror gripping her about the throat. When she gets the courage to finally look back, it’s gone.
Did she imagine it?
The spirits wear many faces, her father’s voice rumbles through her head. Trust not, lest you be caught in their web of magic.
But the spirit she met was kind. He helped her. Perhaps her father was mistaken. Perhaps everyone is. It wouldn’t be the first time they were wrong. They are about her.
Lily digs the heel of her boot into the soil, indecision worrying her brow. Clouds gather in the distance over the mountains, a grey stain blooming like spilled watercolour paint.
Swallowing, she takes a gradual step into the woods, the thicket instantly gobbling her up. She proceeds cautiously, careful to pick her way over roots and rocks. A few steps and she can hardly see the village behind her.
“You came back.”
Lily gasps, whirling around to discover the stranger standing behind her. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she says.
“I like that you are.” The strangers face blurs and warps then resolidifies.
He pinches his lips together, whistling like a happy bird. Those above them join in, music erupting in a swift burst of sound. The tune is familiar and yet Lily can’t say why. Only that she could’ve sworn she’s heard it before.
Lily’s presses a hand against a beech to steady herself. “Where are you from?”
He grabs a fistful of long grass and rips it from the ground. “Here.”
She tilts her head to the side. “Are you evil?”
“No.” He lifts one knee, balancing on one leg, arms extended so he doesn’t wobble. “Are you?”
“No,” Lily giggles.
There’s something roguish about him like he’s built from mischief and bad intention. It sprinkles his features with sparks as if he’s plucked from the first pop and crackle of the flame. It burns through his eyes, his lopsided grin. Stiffens his spine in a way that’s willful and defiant and born to run .
Lily bites the inside of her mouth. Questions frolic through her head. “ What are you?” Lily has to ask a second time. To be sure. “You should tell me now.”
The stranger smiles wider. “I told you already.”
“Yes but — “
“I brought this for you,” he steps to one side, vanishing behind a tree. “See.”
His voice comes from behind and Lily spins again. If his general aura hadn’t convinced her yet of his otherness, his ability to ostensibly leap through space is more than enough.
Lily gapes, unsure how to process any of this. It’s yet another indication that he’s simply not…
Human.
Grinning like a praised dog, he extends his hand, lifting a fox up by its tail. It’s dead, unmoving except for its red fur which ripples in the breeze.
“Oh,” Lily stares at it gormlessly. “Thank you, but no I couldn’t possibly — “
“Why not?” he frowns. “Aren't you hungry?” Her stomach growls at his question and his grin returns. “You are hungry. Take it.”
“No,” Lily shakes her head. “No thank you.”
“But why not?” he stamps his foot, clearly annoyed.
“Because it’s bad luck for humans to take food from spirits! It’ll make us sick.” It’ll twist her mind, she doesn’t say. That’s what the Reverend tells them.
His frown returns. “You think I’m trying to trick you.”
“I’m not!”
“You do. But I’d never trick you. Not ever .”
His voice jumps up with petulance and his eyes flash red as a lady beetle's shell. A greyish hue paints his complexion a frightening shade as pale as a water-bloated corpse and the trees all around them rustle as if agitated.
Greatly perturbed, Lily falls back a step, her pulse kicking up speed.
The stranger’s brow puckers and his gaze dips to her chest as if he can sense her rabbiting heart. A shadow crosses his expression and Lily wonders if she should flee again. Instead, exhaling, the stranger closes his eyes, breathing deep.
Ten seconds pass and when he opens his eyes again, they’ve returned to a dull onyx and the golden light bleeds back into his skin.
“I could help you hunt,” he offers instead. “If you don’t trust me not to poison you, I could do it with you instead. That way you know it’s safe.”
“I really shouldn’t.” She should go home. Flee from all this magic that will no doubt only lead to woe.
Home to where it's quiet and where Petunia stares at her with judgemental eyes and pats her stomach, complaining of her hunger.
Lily’s stomach sours at the thought.
“I can show you anything you’d like,” he presses, sensing her indecision. “It can be fun.”
Lily lifts her chin so she can meet his eyes. He’s so much taller than her. Someone she could depend on. Lean on. Maybe.
When he smiles a dimple forms in his cheek, the shape a sliver resembling a crescent moon. Lily wonders what it feels like to trace her finger over the contour. To know its shape.
I chose this form to be pleasing to you.
“You offer me your help without asking for anything in return,” she hedges. “I can’t accept without knowing the terms.”
He ponders this. “Then I propose a bargain.”
“A bargain?”
“I will teach you to hunt and you will teach me your songs.”
“My songs?”
“I hear you humming,” he smiles broadly. “Many different tunes. Teach them to me, one every day, and I shall make you the greatest hunter in the wood. No man shall best you.”
Lily blows out an inaudible breath. It would benefit her to learn more about hunting. No one ever taught her how, not really, it was something she learnt out of necessity. She’s not bad per se, but she’s not exactly all that adept either.
Once, many years ago, her father gave her a few pointers after she begged him incessantly. But it was one afternoon, firing at stationary objects perched on their fence.
Her bows are prone to snapping as she’s only able to whittle them from flimsy branches, and the arrowheads she makes by hand aren’t always sharp enough to kill as smoothly as she’d prefer.
She doesn’t want to cause pain.
“Alright,” she agrees. “But what is your name?”
He only smiles bigger, if that’s even possible.
“Well,” he grabs a branch and lets loose his legs so he hands like a monkey, swinging to and fro. “I go by Leshy. Sometimes He or He Himself, and more often none of these at all. The trees call me Borovi and the rocks call me Miško Velnias because they think they’re funny you see, the nerve — but the creeks and the rivers, well they prefer to call me Lesnoi Duk.”
“And what should I call you?”
“You?” his cheeks stretch wide and he stands again, reaching up to pluck a flower from the tree. He extends it, placing the white lily in her open palm. “You can call me James.”
Lily returns home with two rabbits and Petunia almost gleefully makes a stew using cabbage from the garden and a very large potato she digs up from under the house. They eat until they’re forced to fall back groaning against their seats and Petunia even chuckles when Lily pokes her belly.
The fire crackles, flames mouthing at the logs in the hearth and spilling warmth into the lonely little house. There’s hardly any furniture left, most of it sold to make ends meet. Only the table, two chairs in the kitchen. The walls are riddled with holes and dark stains blot the panelling where portraits used to hang.
It’s the first time in a long time it’s felt like home.
I’ll go back tomorrow, Lily thinks as Petunia curls into her side where they sleep in their shared bed under ground. I’ll go back the next day too. We’ll never be hungry again. I swear it.