DAUGHTERS of the CROSSLANDS

1

THE LAMPFLAME quivered and then righted itself, reaching for rough wood rafters just over Senya’s head. She retrieved her ladle from its mantel hook. Digging deep into an iron stewpot hanging over the hearth, she gave three good stirs and pulled to fill a wooden bowl. The seething stew heaved. Setting the ladle against the pot’s lip, Senya placed her steaming bowl on a modest table in the middle of the room. With a firm grip on the sharp iron poker, she crouched and plunged its hooked tip into the core of the coals, shoving to center. Satisfied, she leaned the poker beside the hearth and dropped a fresh log on the fire.

Senya stepped to her sideboard and laid aside some root vegetables before slicing off a chunk of yesterday’s bread. Several straps of smoked meat and braided garlic dangled overhead. Firelight splashed trembling light over the clean stone floor. Her narrow bed in shadow to one side. Retrieving her mug of herbal brew, Senya 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 just after giving birth. Three others agonized for hours before pushing out a collection of tiny, sickly lambs. So much worse than usual. A few had managed to stay alive, but most were born weak and feeble. It had taken everything in Senya’s waning power just to keep them breathing. She’d sang. 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 day, and had only grown into evening and the coming dark. As dusk fell, 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 away, and both seemed to shimmer and glint. When Senya had turned 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. This sense of dread wasn’t anything new to Senya. Strange and disturbing visions had come to her ever since she was young—a body walking upright but not quite alive, maybe a wraith of some kind, maybe something else. Shifting glimpses of faces and voices would flash and then disappear, typically things only she could see, brought to her from the living and the dead alike. Sometimes she would witness an event before it occurred. She never talked much about any of it. Always kept quiet. People found her odd and different enough already, and mentioning this sort of thing just made her that much more of an outsider.

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

Hockby had always been good to her, 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 always 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 tiny house, nestled next to the stone sheepfold wall, and 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 timberframed 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 her door.

A tall woman in a long gray cloak stood just beyond the reach of lamplight, pure white and completely hairless—as if formed of 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, holding dark almond pupils. 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.

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

“My brother is not here,” she answered through the closed 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 always drifted, always asked questions that were better left alone, always looking for answers and dabbling in things well beyond his control, wandering into places that prudence would never normally allow. He always 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. Senya had told him as much every chance she’d gotten. They’d argued about it nearly all their lives.

“Please,” Cevellica’s voice 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 always suspected Raedwin’s dubious paths would eventually come to something like this—vague news of some disastrous end.

“He needs your help.”

Senya’s breath caught in her throat. Of course he does. Her heart hammered. 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 even reaching out to her himself. Of course he would send a plea for help through some ethereal messenger who made no sense. Finally Raedwin had gone too far, and this was the way he communicated.

“He has become lost,” Cevellica said. “Forces conspire against him. You are his twin sister. His blood. The only one who might be able to reach him. 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 breathed and shook her head, rolling against the wood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I can help you.” Her voice felt 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’s curiosity had gotten him into plenty of trouble in the past, all throughout their childhood. Tighter and tighter spots, messes that grew trickier for Senya to fix as the years went on. Always venturing out, no matter the consequences. After their mother passed, he had even less holding 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 intervened and promised her own hand instead. The man had looked her over with a lewd grin, groped her as he jeered, and agreed to the exchange immediately. But as soon as he freed Raedwin, they both ran. They ran through the muddy streets and out the city gates, south into the countryside with only the belongings they held in hand. They kept running, away from Stronaway and the far North altogether. They 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. Finally 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 control…” 

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

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

“Nothing is ever simple where my brother is concerned.”

“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 with a frown. “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 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 than a lifetime of failed attempts to keep him safe? Years ago he’d alluded to a plan to go somewhere south beyond Cellenway, maybe even past Dunnenwyr, to find some new kind of rumored knowledge down there. Maybe that was Cevellica, maybe it was someone else. Something else, someplace else. Whatever it was and wherever he was, Senya had long ago lost her sense of him. The feeling of his presence had faded away over time, and then had finally gone fully dark. She’d felt 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 waning abilities that were 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 need to try and save him again. She didn’t want any more messengers in the middle of the night. She wanted to just have a safe little home and a small quiet life and never 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 even forget where she was, and just stay 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.