The Devil You Know
Chapter One
XIII Death
In the beginning, there was the mountains and air that was so cold it as though the sky would crack like ice. The dying sun was vanishing beyond the peeks, draining the colour out of the world and turning the horizon bloodless. A town sat between the hips of two ranges, fires burning in hearths and roads turned muddy from the activity that happened during the day. It would freeze soon, into grooves and bumps and lines until movement melted it again.
The trees of the woods were towering, ruffled conifers with needles that stuck to fur cloaks that looked dangerous in the fog of the evening, and thin, sickly pines with black eyes and desperate fingers that reached up towards the grey sky, begging for the warmth to return. A mound of snow fell from branches and landed with a muffled thud swallowed by the cold and sounding like distant thunder.
Faint lamps made the white glow amber and lit everything up as if it was a cruel mockery of the day. Places closed their door to the wind that was trying to sneak its way through cracks, but there was laughter beyond the walls and in the light, far from the shadows and the stories that followed them.
Stories of eyes and wolves and a genie in a bottle made of darkness polished by snow and gleaming like a crescent moon.
Hunk Palahiko stayed in one of the small, mostly empty hotel that wasn't in the middle of the town but not far from the edge either. He felt like one of the dumb people in every campfire story ever told; someone hunting for hard to find treasure and that was going to end up frozen, alone, in the empty, white wilderness. It had snowed earlier that day, sticking to his hair and cheeks and he missed the warm ocean of the south. But the train was heading north and in the morning he would be going farther into the trees and the mountains.
He couldn't quite imagine that the weather could get worse than the blizzard starting outside his window and he fell asleep as the wind turned to howls and fires burned low.
In the morning, there was a full new foot of snow on the ground, the mud had hardened, and the puddles turned into rocks. His heel slipped during his walk to the train and it was only one of the cold light posts that steadied him. It took a moment for him to get the wool unstuck from the cold metal. He ignored the laughing glances from the people who walked past and pretended that the red across his cheeks was just from the biting wind.
It was nasty, but tolerable, so Hunk got on the train and headed further north. And then further. And further again.
The weather got colder; it got drier and wetter and the snow glistened like the tips of spears, cracking beneath his boots, and he wondered, not for the first time, what he'd gotten into. At the end of the week, he reached the end of the tracks and found out from some quiet, nonchalant chatter between two workers that the train had ended the lives of two people who decided the cut of train wheels were better than another bitter winter.
Weight settled like rocks deep in his stomach and there was some sort of deep set horror in Hunk's mind that he hadn't even known—that somehow he should have, that there should have been a sign. But the trains hadn't paused, hadn't shifted, hadn't bumped, and so everyone else went about their lives.
He wondered how many more the train would take on its way back south and then promptly felt sick just from thinking something like that. He wondered what the shame would be if he just went home? Forgot the mission the princess had given him and just left?
Hunk walked past a man, frozen, on the side of the street, buried underneath rags that were too holey and worn to keep in any sense of warmth. He didn't stop to look—he couldn't. And all around him, people did the same; heads ducked low, not seeming to care.
They conserved their own warmth and wasted none on the dead.
There were four more; hidden away in the side of buildings, propped up beside piles of trash.
He found one of the taverns, one with hot food and drink with fires burning in two places along the walls, and escaped the death and grey. Frost thawed around his shoulders and his clothes were damp from melted snow. He ordered a drink, he ordered food, and then he watched the snow fall through the window and shivered as it swallow up the outside world.
"Southerner," a woman said, mouth forming the words slowly as if it had never passed her tongue before, "you are far."
Piss off, he wanted to say, not really in the mood to deal with her or anyone for that matter while death knocked, knocked, knocked upon the door. Underneath her heavy leather he could see the high collared necklace of someone from the east and the long, black tattoos spiraling and jagged on her hands. "So are you," he said, because everyone was there for something.
Her eyes flickered up to him, dark and brown and cold as the snow outside. "The Witch."
He was sure quite a few people were in that village on the very edge of life for the Horror of the Woods. They said the creature would do anything for a price. The woman and her people had come up to bribe for a warmer winter. Safe travels. Something or another.
Everyone wanted something.
Snow had started falling outside, the weather having warmed up just enough to let the clouds release their burdens. Fire crackled. Hunk took a long drink of his mug.
"What are you up here for, Southerner?"
He looked back over at the woman again and leaned back, elbows resting on the counter of the bar, and thought over what he wanted to say. He was supposed to locate Balmeran crystals—something that could only be found in certain mountains. Find one, bring it back. It seemed like a foolish adventure now. A fool's errand.
"Dragons," Hunk told her, because that seemed more believable. Only an idiot would brave the mountains for a rock.
He was probably an idiot.
To be fair, the North hadn't sounded so bad in the stories—the cold could be dealt with. Wear enough, stay out of it, take care.
It wasn't so easy now that he was surrounded in it. Someone else might have been better; Lance, for one, or even Keith who had a bit of skill surviving on his own. But the Princess had asked him—something about earth and yellow and 'destiny'.
The hag nodded because there had been rumors of dragons. Left, the witch, right, the dragons, and in the middle was a mountain that vanished up into the clouds. He didn't quite know where the crystals were. Did it matter? It felt like this quest was over before it even began. Maybe he should bring the princess back a dragon instead.
"Too bad," she said and placed some coin on the counter. Stopping before she was fully out of her seat, she eyed him and then huffed. "We can take you to the fork, Southerner."
Hunk's eyes went from his dark drink to her shrewd smile.
"Free."
"Fine." He had nothing better to do anyway.
Free was an illusion. Nothing was ever free. People always wanted something; information, secrets, stories. And everyone had a price. The ride wasn't free, Hunk kind of expected that. He sat in the caravan the next day anyway, huddled under his cloak as a lantern swung too close to his head. The woman was sitting at her makeshift-nailed down table, cards hissing as she shuffled them in her hand. She reached a hand out to him.
"Don't be shy, Southerner," her smile was toothy. "I'll read your fortune."
He wondered if it was worth it. The lantern swung as they hit a bump. A horse snorted.
Hunk got up and walked over to the table, his head low to not hit it on the ceiling.
Later on, when he can't figure out when, exactly she had drugged him—perhaps it was in the prick of his finger as she offered him her cards to shuffle or the burning whiskey that blazed down his throat—Hunk woke up in the woods, left of the god forsaken mountain, with three chests of stolen gold around him. There's snow, blinding and white under the noon sun, all around him, towering naked trees with black eyes watching him. The air burned his cheeks and blistered his skin. Every breath was painful as it cracked and carved down the back of his throat.
Before that, though, the woman placed the cards on the table, painted with images that probably mean something but he can't quite make out anything other than a dancing skeleton, the skull of a ram with two, curling horns, and a fox staring up desperately at a moon.
"You bring home no dragons," she told him, her voice a hiss, "nothing but misery, do not return to the south!"
He had to. "Course," Hunk told her and she smacked him on the shoulder as if he was a misbehaving boy.
"It is evil, that which follows you home. Do not take it there. Die. Die in the north." Her cracked nails dragged against the old wood of the table and caught on the edges of her painted cards. She was leaning towards him, close enough that he could count the wrinkles around her eyes and make out the streaks of gold in her irises.
"Maybe it's an evil dragon."
She bared her teeth in a snarl and glared at him.
Witchcraft wasn't real; just an illusion. These people were going to bargain with a person who couldn't change the weather of the world and when it just gets worse they'll blame the witch but seasons will pass and the cycle will happen all over again.
Hunk shrugged sheepishly under her angry eyes.
The hag flipped over another card and shrieked, sent her arm across the table, and sent all the cards falling to the floor. For a moment, Hunk was pretty impressed with the theatrics.
She looked up at his face.
Cursed, something whispered up from underneath her table and then Hunk remembered nothing except for sleep, cold, and waking up alone in the middle of the woods, snow falling, and the tracks the woman and her people created long covered.
A sacrifice for a witch.
Crazy old Hag.
At least they left me with my clothes, Hunk thought, grateful for something. The thin trees around him offered little to no shelter from the cold and he breathed into his mittens before pulling the collar of his cloak up around his neck.
He left the gold behind and started walking, looking for something other than dead trees and snow.
oOo
It was following him.
The black shape.
Whatever it was.
The thing had been following him, had been watching him since he woke up, and was walking slowly, dripping soot that vanished underneath the blizzard. It wasn't a silhouette in the shadows or a bit of dead branches that created illusions in the corner of his eye; no, it loomed and it stalked, slowly, with no worry, treading over the snow and leaving a line of black against the untouched white.
Green eyes glowed, tiny beady things, and they watched him.
Light was fading.
Hunk inhaled nails with every breath. He had been running from it for a good couple of hours now. He can't feel his hands or his feet and his face must have been carved off by the cold long ago. The only part of his body that he seems to feel is his heart and it beats painfully in his chest like a bird trying to escape his rib cage and the thing.
Still, it stalked. Kept its distance, moving slowly but without pause, a wolf hunting starving prey. Hunk knew it would happen, but the way the cold overtook him surprised him anyway.
It ripped through him with a howl and he stumbled down into the snow. His arms shake, the white and black blur into grey, and then all he can see is the green of those eyes as they watch him and come ever so closer.
He will throw his fists at the thing when it comes.
He will die here.
Sleep,the cold whispered through the wind and the snow and the fading sunlight. Sleep. It was warmer in dreams.
The creature walked at Hunk through his own carved line in the snow and he saw nothing but oily feathers and tattered rags before the black sky comes down to swallow him whole.