DAUGHTERS of the CROSSLANDS

1

THE LAMPFLAME on Senya’s mantel quivered and then righted itself, yearning for rough wood rafters less than an arm’s reach overhead. Retrieving her ladle from its hook, she dug deep into an iron pot over the hearth. The seething stew heaved. With three good stirs, she pulled to fill a wooden bowl, set the ladle against the pot’s lip, and placed the steaming bowl on a modest table in the middle of the room. Several straps of smoked meat and braided garlic dangled above. Turning back to the fire, she crouched with a firm grip on a sharp iron poker and plunged its hooked tip into the core of the coals, shoving them tight to the center. Flames rose and swirled in response. Satisfied, she leaned the poker beside the hearth and dropped a fresh log on the fire.

Stepping to her sideboard, Senya moved a pair of root vegetables out of her way and sliced off a chunk of yesterday’s bread. Firelight splashed trembling light over the clean stone floor. Her narrow bed lay in shadow to one side. Retrieving her mug of herbal brew, she stepped to the table and sat.

Her day had been long and exhausting. Out in the lambing shed since well before dawn, she’d struggled to help two of her favorite ewes manage their labors, and proved helpless while a third passed away immediately after giving birth. Three others had agonized for hours before pushing out a collection of puny sickly lambs. So much worse than usual. A few had managed to stay alive, but even those were born weak and feeble. It had taken everything in Senya’s waning power to keep them breathing. She’d sung. She’d nursed. She’d scooped sludge from mouths and struggled to clear tiny airways. Nothing had worked, not like it used to.

She ate slowly, trying her best to savor the stew. The fire swayed and churned, coals pulsing with fresh heat. A sharp unease had plagued her all through the day, growing worse into evening and the coming dark. As dusk had fallen, she’d caught flickering movement out of the corner of her eye—a figure, standing among the trees, just beyond sight. A woman, maybe. Pale skin. Shining blue eyes and a long gray cloak. A second woman had appeared several paces from the first, and both seemed to shimmer and glint. When Senya had spun to get a better look, to shout and ask their business, both had vanished back into shadow. Hockby had followed her gaze and asked if she’d seen something. But she’d only stood and stared, hesitant to speak.

“Just the fog playing tricks,” she’d said.

This sense of dread wasn’t anything new to Senya. Strange and disturbing visions had come to her ever since she was young—shifting glimpses of faces and voices flashing into view and then disappearing, typically things only she could see, brought to her from the living and the dead alike. A body walking upright but not quite alive, maybe a wraith of some kind, maybe something else. Sometimes she would witness an event before it occurred. She never talked much about any of it. Better to keep quiet. People found her odd and different enough already, and mentioning this sort of thing just made her that much more of an outsider.

Hockby had been good to her though, even when she’d first arrived at this remote settlement, worn out and guarded, nearly three years ago. He’d remained her friend ever since. Hockby was a good man. He took her seriously, but some things were better left alone.

The fire hissed and cracked. Senya finished her stew and ran the spoon along an empty edge to retrieve the last loose bits of meat. Stepping to a cupboard beside the table, she rinsed her bowl in a bucket and wiped it clean. Set it back in the cupboard to dry.

A loud knock at the door shattered the quiet. Stepping cautiously, Senya paused and listened. This was awfully late for visitors. Almost nobody came all the way out to visit her in this cramped little house, nestled next to the stone sheepfold wall. She preferred it that way. This remote corner of a remote settlement gave her just the right kind of solitude.

She listened. No footsteps creaked her timber porch. No sounds on the stony path beyond. She heard no voices, no movement outside. Nothing but a breeze in the trees. She slid open a narrow viewport in the door.

A tall woman in a long gray cloak stood at the edge of the lamplight, pure white and completely hairless—as if formed from the strange night mist itself. A chill ran down Senya’s spine.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I am sorry,” the visitor replied. Keen sapphire eyes glowed in the dim, both pupils vertical black slits—eyes of a cat, made for shadows. “I realize my arrival is somewhat… un… orthodox…” She spoke slowly, as if rising from a deep sleep. “You are Senya, yes?”

“I might be.”

“Sorry, of course…” The woman glanced down to her left. One hand idly reached across to tug at her opposite elbow. “I am not well versed in… pleasantries. I do apologize.” She returned her gaze to Senya. “I am called Cevellica. I have come for your brother.”

“My brother?”

The woman’s long pale fingers pulled at the fabric of her gray sleeve. “Yes,” she said. “For Raedwin.”

For Raedwin.

Her brother’s name sounded so unfamiliar and odd when spoken in this woman’s heavy, disjointed accent—not as though from a foreign land, but as if speaking itself was a foreign act. Senya slid the viewport closed.

“My brother is not here,” she answered through the door. She’d not seen her twin in a long time and had lost the thread of his whereabouts years ago.

“Sorry… not for…” The visitor hesitated. “I have come… on his behalf. To ask… a favor…”

Raedwin had so often drifted, asking questions that were better left alone, looking for answers and dabbling in things well beyond his control, wandering into places prudence would never normally allow. He liked to push the boundaries between this world and the other, between knowledge and insanity, between safety and menace and simple misfortune. None of it ever seemed like a good idea, and Senya had told him as much every chance she’d gotten. They’d argued about it nearly all their lives.

“Please,” Cevellica begged through the closed door. “I realize this must be most… disconcerting… but I am hoping you will at least listen to what I have to say…”

Senya had long suspected Raedwin’s dubious paths would eventually come to something like this—a confusing plea sent through vague and mysterious channels in the middle of the night.

“He needs your help.”

Senya’s breath caught in her throat. Of course he does. Her heart hammered.

“He has become lost,” Cevellica added. “Forces conspire against him. You are his twin sister. His blood. The only one who might be able to reach him. To take his hand and bring him to the light. Guide him away from trouble, and bring him home.”

Senya’s forehead fell to the door. She let out a long, uncertain breath and shook her head, rolling it against the wood. Raedwin was never about simple, practical approaches—a letter from the village post or word from a friend in the daylight like everybody else. Or reaching out to her himself. Of course he would send disturbing news of some disastrous end via some ethereal messenger who made no sense. Raedwin had finally gone too far, and this was how he’d chosen to communicate.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I can help you.” Her voice emerged muffled and weak. “Raedwin doesn’t live with me anymore. This is not his home.”

She was met with silence. No sounds of the visitor retreating nor of stepping forward onto the porch planks. Nothing.

Senya had seen all of this before. Raedwin needing help was nothing new. Always excited about what the unknown could bring, her brother had gotten into plenty of trouble in the past, his curiosity plaguing him all throughout their childhood. Tighter and tighter spots, with messes that grew trickier for Senya to fix as the years went on. Venturing out time and again, no matter the consequences. After their mother had passed, he’d had almost nothing left to hold him back.

Far to the north in Stronhaven, a cranky old alchemist had caught him stealing an instrument of some great value, and by the time Senya had arrived to deal with it, the man held her brother strapped to a chopping block, ready to take his hand. Senya had intervened and promised her own hand instead. The man had inspected his prize with a lewd grin, groped her as he jeered, and agreed to the exchange immediately. But as soon as he’d freed Raedwin, they both had run. They’d sprinted through the muddy streets, out the city gates, and south into the countryside with nothing but the belongings they held in hand. They kept running, away from Stronaway and the Far North altogether. They’d never returned and never looked back.

Maybe they were both still running.

Senya waited. Roof timbers moaned with a gust of wind off the lake. She slid open the viewport again.

Cevellica remained as before, unmoving. “Your brother is trapped,” she said slowly. “Held. Lost. And those who wish ill of him will soon be in complete dominance…”

Senya swore in silence. “I’m sorry,” she called. “I’ve never really been able to help him, so I don’t think there’s any way I can really help you. Not anymore.”

“I realize this is unpleasant, but the needed task is quite simple…” Cevellica’s words came carefully controlled, managed, as if set by a predetermined script.

“Nothing is ever simple where my brother is concerned,” Senya said.

“Which is why we have come to you. We have tried many other avenues… but all have…”

“All have failed, and I’m your last great hope?”

Cevellica nodded. “Yes, perhaps…”

“Well, maybe not.”

The woman’s face twitched as her head cocked to the side. She frowned. “You really do not wish to help?”

“Whether or not I wish to help doesn’t matter. I wish a lot of things, especially for my brother. But I can’t help you. It never matters what I wish. I told you. I’ve never been able to help Raedwin in the past, and I don’t see how I can help him now.”

Maybe her brother had fully gotten lost this time, and maybe some catastrophe was indeed headed his way, but what did it matter? What could Senya do now that was any different from a lifetime of failed attempts to keep him safe? Years ago, he’d alluded to a plan to go somewhere south beyond Cellenway, maybe past Dunnenwyr as well, to find some new rumored knowledge hidden away down there. Maybe that was Cevellica. Maybe it was someone else. He never would tell her exactly where he was, and Senya had long ago lost her sense of him. The feeling of his presence had faded away over time and then eventually had gone fully dark. She’d sensed nothing of his whereabouts in well over three years.

Her worry over him had risen to panic at first and then diminished to simple concern, which resolved over time into a vague, settled sense of loss. She couldn’t be sure if it was her own diminishing abilities at fault or if the same was happening to Raedwin. In any case, he would do what he did, and there was not much she could do about it. Maybe it was better that way.

She had to let him go. She had to. Sooner or later, Raedwin had to live or die in whatever way he chose for himself. She didn’t want to battle with him anymore. Or have to save him again. She didn’t want any more messengers in the middle of the night. She wanted a safe little home and a small quiet life and never to have to look away. Sometimes she wanted to erase all the things she had ever seen and all the places she had ever known, maybe forget who she was to the eyes of this world, and remain a little lost.

“I am sorry,” she said finally. “Thank you for your concern for my brother. But I have to ask you to leave now. I am going to close this window. Please do not come back.”

And with that, she slid the viewport closed.

…