Sam Bowring - Prophecy's Ruin

Shivering, he went back inside. There, he stared at the bed for a long moment. Then he glanced from left to right. As he tore the sheets off the bed, confusion fast became horror.

The child was gone.

•

Corlas clutched his beard. Had he gone mad with grief? How could a child vanish? Had he moved the child and not remembered? Surely that wasn’t possible.

It was a small hut that Corlas had built, just one room with simple furnishings – a bed, table, rug by the fireplace, and the cot he had made for the new arrival. It took only a moment to sweep it with his eyes and find no sign of the child. He kneeled down and looked under the bed.

Amber eyes stared back at him.

Corlas fell backwards in surprise. Under the bed, on hands and knees, the child was alive! The boy regarded him curiously, with open, seeing eyes. Corlas stared back in disbelief. He didn’t know a lot about babies, but he certainly knew they did not see and crawl and … climb off beds? …when they were but hours old. The child had blue hair, the same shade that Mirrow’s had turned with her pregnancy. Was it the work of spirits or demons? No, surely not. Corlas had grown to trust Whisperwood since he’d come to live here and he didn’t think it would allow such a thing.

The child burped, and giggled at its own wit. Suddenly Corlas relaxed. This child was no demon spawn. This was his son. He blinked as the thought sank in, then reached under the bed to seize the child under his chubby arms and hoist him out. Standing, he awkwardly arranged the baby against his chest, staring down in wonder. The child, unnaturally aware, stared back at him.

‘A son,’ Corlas breathed. He rocked the baby, who cooed gently. Corlas smiled, cracking the lines of grief on his face. Happy tears fell, and splotches of dried blood on the child’s skin ran afresh. ‘A son,’ he repeated. ‘I have a son!’ He held the baby aloft and shouted the words. The baby looked a little worried and Corlas laughed with joy.

Setting the boy carefully on the bed, he busied himself stoking an almost faded fire back to life. The room began to warm, and Corlas heated water in an iron pot. He bathed the child, rinsing his downy blue hair.

‘I thought you might escape me, boy,’ Corlas said. ‘You lay so still.’

His drowsy eyes slid closed, and he dreamed of his wife. Most his time with Mirrow had seemed like a dream anyway.

His eyes opened. He was sitting on the banks of a clear stream just outside Whisperwood, against a willow tree in the shade. The heat was slow and thick, and running water the only sound. For the first time in a long time, he was at ease. The ache of the wounds given to him at the Shining Mines had finally begun to fade.

Movement by the water caught his attention. On the forest side of the stream, someone emerged from the trees. She kneeled by the water, singing in a language Corlas hadn’t heard before, but which resonated with him somehow. It was beautiful. Her wild hair shone gold in the sunlight, her small ears were pointed. She ran her hands through the water, fingers slim and graceful. She looked up and saw him watching. He felt awkward, a hulking battle-scarred warrior sitting in the shade, staring silently at a beautiful girl. He thought she would run and was filled with sadness. Instead, she smiled in greeting.

‘Are you from the healers’ valley?’ she called.

‘Yes,’ answered Corlas. The word floated by itself, oafishly alone.

She jumped to her feet and began to wade into the stream with no regard for her dress. He tried to rise, but his body creaked, and before he knew it she was kneeling at his side.

‘Don’t get up,’ she said. ‘You’ve been hurt.’

‘Some months ago now, miss,’ he said, dumbfounded by how bold she was. ‘I’m almost healed.’

Her blue eyes were shot through with orange flecks and turned up slightly at the corners. He realised she had Sprite in her blood, and a strong dose at that.

‘The wounds, yes,’ she said. She touched him where his flesh was tender, and his surprise doubled. ‘But not returned to vitality, I think. You should spend some time in the wood – you’d quickly return to your full self.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

She laughed heartily. ‘Why, because of your Sprite blood of course! The wood looks after its own.’

He chuckled, though confused. ‘I have no Sprite blood, miss.’

At this she laughed even louder. ‘You don’t even know that you have Sprite blood?’

‘I don’t see how I could,’ said Corlas. ‘I have none of the marks. Though you do, stronger than I have ever seen.’

‘Seen? Seen?’ she repeated, eyes flashing. ‘Do you mean pointy ears and twice-coloured eyes? I am talking about the blood underneath your skin!’

She reached up to put her hands on his forehead. He froze, unwilling to move lest he startle her.

‘ There it is,’ she exclaimed. ‘Bubble, bubble. You need to learn to look underneath the surface, my fine fellow.’ She leaped to her feet. ‘I think you should come for a walk in the wood!’

Corlas was enthralled. Right then he might have joined her if she’d announced she was walking to the moon. She grabbed his arm to haul him to his feet, and he rose clumsily, still marvelling at her forwardness.

‘Are you not afraid to go walking alone with a strange man?’ he said.

‘Alone and with?’ She chuckled. ‘You make no sense. Besides, you are not just a human man. I certainly wouldn’t allow one of them to catch sight of me by the stream.’

He allowed himself to be led into the water, the flow soaking his trousers.

‘And I never,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘would let one hear me sing that song.’

‘What did it mean?’ he asked. ‘Your song?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ she said.

‘I have not heard it before.’

‘Not with your ears.’ She smiled and thumped him on the chest. ‘But maybe your heart remembers.’

She sang again, and something within him stirred.

They walked into the forest, which he hadn’t left since.

The Lady Vyasinth wafted through the trees above the hut. She would have to become more involved again, she knew, as she had been when Mirrow was very young. Back then Vyasinth had appeared to the girl almost every day, to look after her and teach her the ways of the Sprites. Mirrow had been supposed to pass the knowledge on to her children, a plan which, sadly, had died with her. Vyasinth now regretted having ignored Corlas, offended by his refusal to believe what he was. She would have to put her qualms aside, unless she wanted the child to grow up in ignorance, as good as an end to all her hard work. Yes, she would speak to Corlas, but not now, not yet – for there were strangers in the wood, presences that pricked at her far-reaching awareness. Why are they here? she thought, even though she knew the answer, knew with a horror like an inversion of the joy she’d felt when Mirrow’s hair had turned blue with her pregnancy. Arkus and Assedrynn coveted that which was hers.

Her ire increased as she thought of those two. Everything was their fault! How she longed for the days when there had been only one type of magic in the world – Old Magic, as it was now called – which had existed when the two gods had ruled together. Arkus, God of Light, and Assedrynn, God of Shadow, had once lived in duality and balance – night and day, water and fire, certainty and uncertainty, truth and dreams. There had been only one Great Well, where all souls journeyed upon death to become part of a collective. That had changed when the gods had gone to war. They had closed their domains to each other, and come to one final agreement that made it possible for one to destroy the other: to break the Great Well. Each god had drawn out his own aspect from the Well, shattering the duality that had previously existed. The souls of those not fully dissolved had suffered the most, their very beings wrenched apart. Vyasinth remembered vividly their cries.