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The Heart Within
By Sulova
Chapter Four: Deals
Charon woke at the sound of crashing that accompanied the sound of the tower striking the second hour of the morning. The sleepy, middle-aged man entered the kitchen, rubbing his eyes, only to find a crazed Fakir tearing apart the contents of the cupboard above the leaking sink at the corner of the room.
"Fakir! What on earth-?" Charon gasped, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"She's gone!" Fakir cried, tossing a tin of spices over his shoulder. "I can't find her!"
"Fakir, who is-"
"Ahiru! She disappeared! I can't find her anywhere, Charon!"
"The duck…?" Charon asked, bewildered. He remembered that the duck was important to Fakir, but he could not remember why.
Fakir turned to Charon at this, white-knuckled fists clenched at his sides. His shoulders shook violently, his breathing ragged. Charon's breath left his body as he caught sight of Fakir's wild, fearful eyes. Charon had only seen that look on his adopted son's face once before: the day that Fakir came into Charon's care. On that first day, little Fakir had entered Charon's house at his bidding, shaking uncontrollably. His eyes darted about wildly as he looked for unknown terrors lurking in the shadows.
Charon had watched Fakir grow up into a young man in the eighteen years that they had been together. Watching Fakir excel in all of his classes and grow up into a contemplative and stern young man alongside Mytho, Charon had thought that he would never see that same look of agony on his adopted son's face ever again. The guilt of having been responsible for some great tragedy.
And yet, the look on Fakir's face was unmistakable as he stood there in the kitchen at two in the morning. All of the terror and pain that he had felt at his parents deaths had returned tenfold. Charon's heart ached with sadness as he saw Fakir return his attention to the cabinet, throwing out its contents frantically.
Charon knew that Fakir had shut him out long ago, perhaps when he had begun growing into a young man, perhaps when he felt it became his duty to protect Mytho and felt that he himself no longer needed protecting. Now, Charon knew that he could no longer comfort Fakir with an embrace, nor encourage him to move on with promises of stories at bedtime. He stood speechless, at a loss for how to help his son. He started as Fakir suddenly threw down the last tin of black tea, scattering its contents across the floor, sprinted out of the kitchen, and opened the door that led outside.
"Maybe she tried to go to the pond…?" his voice cracked in its desperation. He hesitated and then lunged into the night.
"Fakir!" Charon ran after him, but Fakir had already disappeared.
Was there ever anything but darkness? Was there ever anything but nothing?
She cried, but ducks couldn't cry tears, could they? She floated in a vast darkness, neither standing, nor sitting nor flying, merely suspended. Somehow this vastness was more terrifying than ever before.
"Little Duck!" a voice called distantly.
"Hello?" she responded, her voice human. Her eyes lit up and she looked around hopefully, searching for a break in the darkness.
"My greetings, Little Duck." The voice was close, right next to her.
She flapped in surprise, turning back and forth, but only nothingness met her eyes again.
"Who is that?" she called, hearing her own voice echoing. "Why am I here?"
"There is something you want, is there not?" The voice called out. "I suspect that is why I have found you here, in this place of dreams."
She gave up turning. "Dreams… That's right! I'm dreaming, aren't I?" She allowed her body to float freely. "Who are you?"
The voice sounded bemused. "I am the one to whom dreamers come, when they yearn for something they cannot have."
She hung her head, viewing her feathers from the corners of her eyes. "There is nothing I want," she said, but her voice came out as a loud "Quack!"
The voice chuckled softly, sadly. "I suspect that is not quite true."
She raised her head defiantly. "I am happy!" but again, only a "quack" came out.
Another tired sigh swept through the space.
She looked down at her webbed feet. A knot stuck in her throat, but she forced words from her bill, grudgingly. "What's the point of admitting it?" This time, her voice was human.
"Ah." The short sound had a taut quality, as if coming from a smiling mouth.
She raised her eyes to the darkness. "I am unhappy. Why admit it when nothing will change?" Her fear of the darkness vanished.
"Because, perhaps, something can change." The voice said. "Perhaps I can make that happen."
She fell silent. She had not allowed herself to think of what she wanted for a long time. Long days and evenings in her wicker basket flashed into her mind. She thought of the hours spent waiting for the boy with the stories to come home. She remembered wandering about the town on the fringes of conversations that never acknowledged her. Feeling invisible, feeling unheard, lonely beyond belief. Seeing only blankness in the eyes of the one who promised to stay by her side, calling out, and yet seeing the distance grow in the absence of her voice.
"Ah," said the voice, "I see."
She jumped, flapping her wings at the sudden intrusion to her thoughts. "You can see my thoughts?"
The voice laughed. "Where else are your unbidden thoughts to go than your dreams?"
She fell silent, feeling silly. The image of the boy's eyes stayed with her, green and dark and distant. She wanted to call out, to bring their comprehension back to the surface, but she knew that she couldn't. He wouldn't understand her.
"Now that's no way to think," the voice reproached, but there was a hint of teasing there. "Perhaps, this is what you want?" the voice suggested.
To call out to him, yes. "I don't know if he understands me anymore," she admitted, breathing out all at once, and she felt tears spilling out over her cheeks. She gasped and her breath shuddered within her. Clumsily, she reached up to her face and wiped the tears from her eyes with trembling fingers.
At the touch of her fingers to her cheeks, an electric feeling jolted through her body. Her eyes flung open wide. She held up her wings for inspection, eying the yellow wing feathers, but she knew what she had felt and what she had seen, if only for a moment.
"Ah, so this is truly what you desire," said the voice, close by now.
Memory stirred in her, of another time, and another voice which had promised her everything she had ever wanted. But in return…
"What do you want from me?" she demanded, her eyes bright and fierce.
"What have you to give to me?" The voice responded evenly.
She looked down at her feathered body, and closed her eyes. "I don't know. I'm only a duck."
The voice sighed, suddenly sad. "Ah, dreamers never have much to give, do they?"
She felt angry now, upset that the voice had pried this deepest secret from her, this desire she had been hiding for so long. "Well then, I guess neither of us can be happy," She uttered bitterly.
There was a long silence, and she thought the voice had gone when it chuckled again. "Well, I do suppose we might work out a deal."
"How?" she asked firmly, hoping that the rising excitement within her wouldn't be a visible as her thoughts had been.
"I will grant your wish, if you will perform for me me one task." The voice replied after a moment, sounding as if it had just decided. "If you will swear to that, I can make you into a-"
"—Human." She finished the sentence, her heart swelling. Her head felt light, dizzy with the possibility.
"Yes." The voice whispered. "But should you fail the task you have agreed to complete within a year, the magic will no longer hold and you will return to your true form."
Somewhere in her dazed mind, his last words twanged at a memory, long ago. "My true form…" she murmured. "I made a promise…" she said the words, but she felt the excitement inside her thrilling high in her chest and fluttering low in her stomach. She knew she should consider the consequences.
But wasn't this a dream? If so, what was the harm in allowing this voice to grant her wish? At least here, she might live out her fantasy.
A human girl. She could talk again, to the raven girl, and the shining prince she had once loved so much. She could dance again, and she could call to the distance in the eyes of the boy with the stories, and maybe, just maybe, he might come back to her.
The voice interrupted her thoughts. "Our deal is as it is. I will return you to your human form, with your agreement to my task. Upon its completion, you will remain human forever, should you desire it."
If she could have, she would have been biting her lip. To be able to dance and talk, and live—
"So, do we have a deal?" The voice asked.
She closed her eyes lazily and nodded.
The voice was pleased. "Then swear your oath."
"How?" was her only question.
"Pluck a feather from the tip of your wing," the voice instructed.
She hesitated a moment, then leaned forward. With her beak, she nuzzled aside feathers until she had just one in her beak. She closed her eyes, bit down, and pulled her head away sharply. The sting made her want to cry out, but she held in the sound, the feather clamped in her mouth.
"Now touch the feather to your heart."
She did so, and the feather rested against her feathery breast for a moment before a warm wind gusted over her. The feather disappeared from her grasp, as if pulled from her.
A warm glow bloomed into being before her eyes, suffusing her in its rosy light, as solid and apparent as if it had been there all along and merely on the periphery of her sight. The breath went from her body.
This was... This was...
Eyes wide, she reached forward to cradle the smooth red stone with her outspread wings. The pendant's chain swirled weightlessly for a moment, then pooled into her grasp. It gleamed richly as she had always remembered, smooth and small enough to fit in a human palm. It was large in her feathered embrace.
"Very interesting," the voice mused, before continuing."This is the token of our contract. Keep it close. You will need it."
She hardly dared to breathe, fear suddenly blooming at the pendant's significance. Her throat tight, she choked out, "Who... Who are you?"
"Keep it or cast it away—the choice is yours," said the voice simply, and in the silence that ensued, Ahiru knew that it was gone.
The pendant looked the same, and yet it felt different. Something in Ahiru was drawn to its light, and something shrilled high and thin at the back of her mind. Had the voice somehow known to give the token the shape of her pendant? It had seemed surprised. Had the pendant's shape come from her then? Would there be other consequences if she chose to wear it?
She could throw it away right now, she supposed. Perhaps this was just a dream anyway. She wanted to dismiss the idea, but her instincts told her that this choice was important, no matter what. As though her choice would change her forever, even if she woke up and was merely dreaming. She stared into the crimson depths, and found that her chest ached at the thought of throwing the pendant away. Consequences or no, her decision had been made long ago.
She shakily raised the pendant and slipped the chain over her head. Even as the weight of the pendant pulled the chain against her feathered neck, she felt her body surge with an invisible breath and she breathed in with the sensation, feeling her lungs expand and her limbs lengthening, and her feathers falling away.
"AHIRU!"
Fakir stumbled into the forest, branches tearing at his face and clothes. His dark hair had come loose from its tie and whipped out behind him as he called Ahiru's name again and again. Despite the fact that he could see nothing in the absolute darkness of the night, he plunged onward through the woods.
A white, blinding panic enveloped his mind, powered by the mere thought that he had caused Ahiru to disappear, perhaps forever.
When his throat grew too hoarse to call her name, he continued to call her name over and over in his mind, searching for a flash of the color of her feathers or the sound of flapping in the night. A tree root caught at his foot and Fakir fell across the forest floor, another tree root crushing the air from his lungs.
Struggling to breathe, Fakir shuddered as raindrops fell in icy pinpricks across his body. "Ahiru…"
The forest only responded with the sound of wind and rain.
Author's Note:
Ahh, this has been fun to write. Fakir!Angst is just so delightful, and I found it interesting, trying to incorporate Ahiru's usual naive foolishness with her newfound wariness.
Next chapter, we'll get to see their reunion. Will there be lightning? Will there be thunder? Read and find out. ;)
Please leave reviews! I live for reviews!