I'm sorry for the late update. I was a fool and got myself caught up in too many stories again. *sigh* But I made it a nice, hefty 2500 words! I offer this as a sacrifice to appease the great god readers...*bows and offers chapter plaintively*
Chapter 11
Days passed by me quicker than I could count, like water running out from between my fingers. Luda, Renado's quiet daughter, patiently walked me through the steps of keeping myself and a house in the evenings as her father watched and asked me questions about myself and my memory. During the day I wandered after her into town, ashamed to have to depend on a child to find work. Being a charity case was proving to be more painful than the brief flashes of memory that turned the sun unbearably hot and bright and my blood to lava.
Though, speaking of my memory, I found that recalling the memories I had already obtained did nothing to me. This was both a blessing and a curse, as I found myself drifting back to that image of Link in the sea of sand and stars, his cheek beneath that small hand that looked nothing like my own. His smile had been soft as the sand, and his sharp eyes told me a gentle secret I wanted to hold close and never open, as even then, in that distant memory, I had been wary of what suffering would occur should I know what was inside.
Occasionally, as I wandered my scant memories, I'd go too far. Usually I'd be in bed at night, so no one noticed my brief seizures. But once, as I was helping a barrel chested villager tear out the old trees of graveyard, glancing at a shifted gravestone sent a zap of cringing lightning through my system, even as I remembered horrible, monstrous insects sparking with purple light. A wolf had been beneath me, lunging at it, jaws agape, furry mane all but swallowing my body.
Wolf. Why did I keep thinking of a wolf?
Poor man. He'd almost been as startled as his mule when I collapsed at his feet, probably writhing and foaming, for all I know. I've never seen myself when such happened.
He did gingerly finger my arm and mutter something about my skin.
Once I had recovered, however, he wouldn't let me continue working for him. Seemed to think I was some delicate thing, which was a pity. I was finding I liked hard labor. There was something intrinsically soothing to my pride in feeling my muscles strain and feel dirt on my skin.
Renado had a talk with him, and after a day of mind numbing rest in which I cleaned Renado's home ceiling to floor, he took me back.
I also found I had an excellent memory for whatever I read. Within days I had every book and scroll in the village read, so Renado gave me access to a set of medical tomes, which were precious to him. I drank those in, loving the feel of my mind easily grasping every concept and drawing wells of knowledge I didn't know I had from the depths of the hole in my memory. With this I found something about myself that I could actually appreciate: I was intelligent.
Days. Weeks. It couldn't have been too long. My skin eventually tanned to a warm cinnamon from day after day of working in the sun doing odd jobs for various villagers, who seemed to find my willingness to do hard, hot, unpleasant jobs qualification enough, and I was paid well. Eventually I took up residence in one of the abandoned homes, though I still slept in Renado's house for a good three days while I patched it up and slew pests that had made it home in the time it was empty. Then, I used my hard earned rupees on my own bed, my own clothes, and other essentials. Though I had only learned three or four recipes in my time with Renado, they were enough.
The little house was only one room, with a little kitchen in the corner on the ground floor and a ladder leading to a loft where I pushed in the bed through a peculiar hole in the ceiling. I had mended that up straight way, having learned about fixing roofs from one of the odd jobs.
Despite having given enough to make me their indentured servant till the end of time, Renado and Luda gave me a beautiful weaved rug as a home welcoming gift. I really did like those two.
But sooner than I knew, I found myself where I wanted to be: in my own place, earned by my own hands, with my pride more or less returned to me.
During slow evenings, I'd write to Link, telling him whatever inane bits of my life I felt could be of some use. His replies were few and frustratingly short, mostly just to assure me that he knew how to read and had gotten my letters. Whenever I asked questions about him, he either ignored them or gave few word answers. After the fifth such letter, I was beginning to seriously doubt the drama I experienced in being separated from him. All that wasted energy and the idiot man was just going to up and forget about me anyways. It wasn't like I'd liked him in…that sense, you know?
Course, that lead down a road with all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts.
Among those thoughts were the various young men who I had met during my odd jobs. Hard labor, after all, was more of a man's thing, and four out of the five had done a fair bit of staring and pointed remarks towards me that were far too close to flirting for my taste.
I didn't trust men. Horny, stupid, smelly lot of them that would no sooner jump you like a wild animal then sleep the rest of the day away.
….Where I had gotten that opinion, I didn't know.
And yet…Renado had pointed out something the day I'd officially moved out.
"Hopefully you can build on the house if you need to, though children are more adaptable than many give credit. They'll grow wherever you plant them."
Children…I guess…life includes family, right?
Which was where my brooding led me the first night I wasn't too exhausted to stay up and do some soul gazing with the fire. Link's letter was a week late in coming, which was usual for him. Despite knowing it would hold nothing for me, I still felt a small tremor of hope and excitement that the odd pang of loneliness hadn't stamped out. I tried to imagine myself with children, and just couldn't. In fact, I couldn't imagine any future for myself. I had been so caught up in getting my own feet under me and my own home that I hadn't stopped to think about what it was I wanted.
But now that I was here, satisfied, but still empty, I still knew that he was my reason. The idiot who didn't seem to miss me at all.
As the fire died down to coals, I couldn't find the will to climb up the ladder and to my bed. The handful of memories I had shifted through my mental eye like well visited pictures. Like always, I lingered on him in the desert with that sand-soft smile and starry sky. And, like always, I couldn't get any further than that.
I clutched at my chest, eyes burning. It hurt. This gnawing, hungry ache in my chest. It hadn't gone away with him, but rather, grown worse and worse by the day. I had even come to the point where I wished I hadn't regained any memories of him at all, let alone one so beautiful.
"Din, it's hard to breathe in here," I muttered, if anything than just to hear my own voice. I got up, pulled a light, second hand shawl around my shoulders, and stepped out into the night.
There was something calming about darkness, or more particularly, the moment of twilight that I found endlessly comforting. I had just missed twilight by a good half hour, but it still goldened the horizon above the edge of the spring. Hung in existence by my own confused pain and longing, I wandered down the empty streets. Pebbles pressed into the bottom of my soft-soled slippers. A breeze brushed a bit of my orange hair across my cheek, longer than it had been when I had arrived here. Usually I kept it tied up in a no-nonsense knot on the back of my head, but one strand must have escaped.
Maybe a bath? I thought as I drew nearer and nearer to the spring. I was more likely than not to be in need of one, but I had left my soap at home. I hesitated just long enough to realize I didn't care and kept moving towards the water. Once I reached the spring's edge, I followed it to a small cave that opened up at the end to a pool connected to the back of the spring. Luda had brought me to it as a private place for a cool bath if I didn't feel like climbing to the hot spring atop the hotel, which was where most people channeled their bath water from. Since the hot spring's water had healing and rejuvenating qualities about it, people rarely thought of taking a bath in the chilly spring waters.
The evening gloom was just enough to see by as I reached my destination and numbly slipped out of my clothes. A stray thought said I should have brought a lamp, but it made barely a ripple in my melancholy.
Of course the water was nigh freezing, but I dropped in to my chin anyways and let my eyes wander the mysterious swirling patterns of one of the tall guardian stones of the spring.
Eventually, I got use to the cold, and was able to watch the first stars come out. I closed my eyes, let my mind wander, feeling the pebbles beneath my thighs.
Over the gentle hushing of falling water, I heard a rock drop into the water.
The hairs on my neck shot up. A familiar, yet unknown instinct told me I wasn't alone.
For what seemed to be an eternity, I waited in silence, too terrified to turn around, too angry not to. But just as I started to turn, a man's voice spoke.
"You cut your hair."
Keeping my arms crossed firmly over my chest, I turned only my head.
The first impression I had was of a cobra, arched with crest splayed out and fangs all but hidden within a lipless mouth. But no, this was a man, tall and slender, with a face like the moon and smooth, too-soft features. He barely had a nose, and his eyes were round and inhumanly dark.
Neither of us moved. The white of his face seemed to glow, despite the shadow of the cave enshrouding him. He wore strange, skin tight clothes that were more like tattoos than actual clothes, except for a sprawling, cape like cloak embroidered with turquoise, tribal patterns.
Eventually it became apparent to him that I was going to run, for he took a step towards me, though his feet stopped a hair's breadth from the water. Something told me he couldn't come into these waters.
"I suppose you do not remember me," he said, voice like sticky silk. "But I'm not surprised you found a way. You're…resourceful, like that. Or perhaps just stubborn."
"Who are you?" Thankfully, I managed to sound strong and not terrified out of my mind at being found naked and alone by a strange man who didn't look human.
"Would it matter if I told you?" he said. "Don't worry, I will not hurt you."
"Then how about you go away?" Underneath the water I manage to curl my hand around a decent sized stone.
"Ah, no. I'd rather not. My time is short here, and I need to bring you home."
That made me jerk a bit. Home? Where I was originally from?
I managed to push out a bark of dry, humorless laughter. "After all I sacrificed to get away from there?" And all Link had sacrificed, or seemed to have sacrificed, to keep it that way? "I'm not an idiot who's going to trust you just because you say you know me. Go away before you regret it."
That seemed to amuse him, though his dull features made it hard to tell.
"But your purpose has already failed. Why not come home? Your kingdom waits on you, and if you won't return of your own will, I can always take you back by force."
I took a gamble. "How? You can't touch the spring."
"This is true," he said, unfazed. "But I could always do this."
He raised a white hand, wrist draped with black bracelets. Black squares, with no shadow or reflection, popped into being and crashed together. The air around me darkened, and even the stars started to flicker out.
"What are you doing?" This time I didn't do so well keeping the fear out of my voice.
"Just sifting out the light around you," he said calmly, even as his figure became more and more pronounced in the shadow. "Ordinary humans react to the touch of our world in two ways, you see: by either turning into a monster or digressing into a spirit. Since you are not normal, I wonder…"
Sharp pangs stretched along my joints and blood. It wasn't unlike when I remembered something I shouldn't, but this time there was no flash of light, no bleaching sun, no burning sky. Just me tilting into the waters, hot with agony, screaming as images galloped through my mind. Monsters of shadow, outlined by neon reds and turquoise, masked, menacing, flapping and bellowing strange sounds. My fingers twining in streams of levitating orange light, drifted through with bright yellow and shadow. The blood of my ancestors. The magic.
Then, all at once, it was gone, and I was back in the spring, naked, and floundering to get my head above the surface. Over my gasps for air, I heard him.
"Now, come to me, quietly."
I couldn't see straight. Still, among the fear, among the hysterical alarm, my ever present pride boiled up in rage, spitting and hissing.
The moment I got my vision straight again I crawled, not towards him, but deeper into the spring, my teeth clenched. I heard him give a subtle grunt of irritation and more felt than saw the light of the stars beginning to dim once more.
It wasn't till I was chest deep in the water and my head had begun to spin once more with pain and memories that it occurred to me that I had just signed my own death. I couldn't swim like this, and even as my knees buckled I inhaled a lung full of water against my will. My foot slipped and I was sinking, sinking, sinking into the blackness he brought.