Darkling (8 page)

I start to feel guilty as I notice the piece of fabric Tristan left on the hearth. Lace from my mother’s wedding dress stained with blood. Tristan may be simple, but that naiveté is the reason I’m still alive. He helped me for no reason other than I am human being. He fed me because I was hungry. Right now we are locked in a room, I am injured, and never once have I thought that he might try to force himself on me. I’ve never suspected it because though he has a body, he’s never had the impulse.

That’s why he’s so attractive. It isn’t just his looks. It’s because I’m a Listener and he’s half spirit.
An innocence clings to him so intently that I can’t help but be charmed by it. Now that I know the truth about him, I feel a desire to protect him. He could have easily turned into an angry, dangerous entity like the corpse, but he hasn’t. He has chosen the difficult route of resistance.

I climb to my feet and cross over to him. He stops reading the titles on the spines of his books to look at me. He offers me a small smile, as if he can’t read my face. Considering how many human customs he has forgotten, it’s remarkable that he can communicate with me as well as he does.

I take his cool hand in mine and squeeze it. “I want to help you.”

His smile fades. He shakes his head.

“This isn’t right. Tristan, this isn’t fair. I know she cared about you once, but she’s no longer the person you knew. She must have been very selfish to have done this to you.”

I wonder if she was his mother and thinks she’s still lingering to protect her son, like Megan’s grandma. He tugs his hand out of mine and crosses over to the other side of the room by the bed, as if he’s trying to get away.

“She doesn’t belong here,” I continue. “Her spirit should be with the rest of the dead. We need to help her – or force her – to join them.”

Tristan whips his head around to look at me. “Force her? No, no, no, no…” He begins pacing.

“Then abandon her. What would happen if I was to take you with me and we left this place behind?”

He stops his pacing and looks rather self-conscious.

“Tristan?”

“I don’t always have a body.” He is often cold, sure, but I just held his hand. It was solid. And he couldn’t heal to the point of scarring if he didn’t have a body. He cuts off my response, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “When I’m weak after she has fed on me, I don’t have a body.”

I blink at him. As hard as his mere existence is to grasp, my experiences in this house are starting to make more sense. It was his screaming that I head when I first entered the dwelling. “That’s why I never saw you when I first searched the house…”

“I was here,” he says quietly. “You just couldn’t see me. And I was too weak to say hello.”

I don’t know why, but that makes me smile.

“She’s unstoppable, and when she’s angry, she…” He trails off. I want to know what he was going to say, but he looks pained enough as it is.

“She left me alone for hours,” I say, “waiting for me to starve. That’s when you recovered your strength.”

Tristan nods and folds his arms over his chest as if he’s cold. “She knew I helped you.” His hugging of himself is growing neurotic as he grabs at his clothing. “She was upset. She uses the candles and lamps for her own energy yet snuffs them out when I dare.” He’s now grabbing at his vest and shirt. “If not for this fire, I would never have recovered enough.” He looks like he must be hurting himself.

I cross over to Tristan and rest my hands on his to stop his fidgeting. “Is that why you were bleeding?” I ask as I gently pull his hands away from his torso.

He nods. “I wasn’t whole. Old wounds…”

I reach up to brush his hair away from his temple and he flinches. There isn’t any trace of a mark.

He crosses over to the fire. “She can summon me whenever she wants to. The only reason she hasn’t yet is because she is sorting out what to do.
Or trying to. She knows she can’t get you in here. So she’ll come after you again the moment you step out.”

He looks around the room, as if realizing that it is there, and I wonder if he sometimes slips in and out of the spirit world, even while he has a body.

“Are you hungry? I should catch you more rats.”

“Don’t you need to eat as well?”

“Yes, though not as often as I did when I was alive. Not nearly as often.”

I sit down on the bed. “That’s why you took the dead animals from Sacrifice Rock.”

“At first I thought it was hunters being generous with their catch. They kept leaving it out so I helped myself. In fact, I still have some smoked pork in the larder if you’d like some.”

I haven’t had pig in so long that I am already salivating. “I’d love some.”

He grins. “Then I shall bring it to you.” He steps over to the door.

“Wait,” I say. He pauses. “The last time you went out, she hurt you.”

Tristan looks confused. “Because she summoned me. She hasn’t summoned me now.”

“Let’s stay here for a while. I still have a rat,” I say.

I sit down on the hearth and stick the rat back into the fire, above the flames, to heat it up. Tristan sits next to me and places his folded hands between his knees. When the rat is warm, I tear off a leg and offer it to him who puts the whole thing in his mouth and swallows. Trying not to stare, I offer him the other leg but he waves it off.

“I am full, thank you.”

He sighs contentedly as I eat the rest of the rat. And if I’m not mistaken, he looks rather proud.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” he says.
“You, me, the rat, the fire.”

I laugh until I realize he’s not joking. He doesn’t seem to notice my slip.

“I didn’t know what I was missing all this time. Of course, I knew it was something. But that something was so difficult to grasp that it evaded me for ages. It would have been easier were I not so forgetful. Which is probably why I couldn’t remember what I wanted.”

This is the most he has ever spoken about himself, and unprompted, as well. I wonder if spending time with the living is restoring his mind.

“And what was that?” I ask, licking the grease off of my dirty fingers. I need to wash.

He grins.
“A friend.”

I can’t help but grin back.
A friend indeed. I start to feel guilty when I realize that he has been out here all of this time, so lonesome, while an entire village sits on the edge of his woods.

“If you could go as far as Sacrifice Rock, then why can’t you come live in the village?” He has that self-conscious look on his face again. “When you have a body, I mean,” I add.

His expression relaxes and his eyes look timid. He leans in towards my face but I don’t back up. “May I?” he asks, even as his forehead presses against mine.

I don’t have time to answer before I hear whispers in my mind.

“I’ll show you.” His breath puffs against my lips. The whispers grow louder and I realize they’re his. That they were what I heard outside the forest and approaching the house. That he was the one asking for help all along. Not her.

The whispers weave around my mind like vines and then something happens to me that never
has before. I live his memory.

I
am Tristan. I am hiding in the house, in a corner by the fireplace. I am one with the darkness. I have no body. I feel the dull, exhausted ache that comes after the fade of intense pain. She has just fed on me. I am weak and can’t move.

The candle flames around me begin jerking as if dancing a jig. I feel them changing. I know that means I am losing focus and losing time. Hours have passed suddenly. I feel better.
Stronger. I drift out of my hiding place and through the door. I think it was the door. I can’t see it. But I know it’s there.

It’s thrilling to glide. I feel like the bottom of my stomach is perpetually falling out, giving me shivers inside. But then my gliding slows to jerking.
Jerking to thumping. I can hear footsteps. My footsteps. My body is returning. I am walking.

I can feel the cold. I look down at my hands. White-hot pain sears my arms where my scars are. I don’t have the strength to fight it. Not right now. So I accept it and let my scars remain. My sleeves hurt them. I roll back the fabric. They feel a little better now.

The woods are dark, but I still have my spirit senses. I don’t need to see where each tree is to know it’s there. It is a rare cloudless night. I stop in a clearing. I can see the moon and stars. I am filled with wonder. From the tips of my fingers to the depths of my heart. It consumes my mind and senses. I lie down.

I gaze up at the crescent moon, attended by stars. Time passes. It is just the grass and the wind and the heavens.
Just the joys of being alive. I can’t remember anything before this moment. There is only the moon and the outside. Clouds stream in and veil the sky. I wake up. Am I a tree? Am I grass? I move. No, I am man and the moon is gone. I am disappointed. So disappointed that I sulk for some time. Until my clothes are damp with dew. Then I am restless. I get up and start walking. I don’t know where I am going until I see the lights in the distance. The village.

I approach quietly, resting my cheek on the bark of a cedar. I can see nearly a hundred houses. They glitter like little flames.
Warmth and family. I want to be in one of those little homes. I want to feel the fire. Smell the soup. Hear the baby trying to talk. I want to see happy faces. Where did my happy face go? Someone used to smile at me. Who was she?

Wait, what am I doing here? Where am I?

A door closes. I see a young lady. She has a scarf on her head. The hair underneath is yellow. She is shaking out a blanket. I can’t look away. She is alive and young. She is bones and rushing blood. She is warm. I step towards her. Step. Yes, I have legs. I am a man. Now I remember.

She folds the blanket up. I want something. I feel cold and hollow like a jack-o-lantern.
Because I want. I want. I want her… to feel me. So badly. Because unlike the others, I can feel her. Warm strength like fire. She slows in her work. I know she can sense me. She can help me with the emptiness within. She can hear me calling to her.

I lift my foot to take another step. I hear a voice behind me. It is a man. I dart back behind the cedar. I notice the light from a lantern in the woods, several yards away.
Then another light. Hunters. I look back to the girl, but she has gone inside. The hollowness is now a hole. I am alone. No one listens. No one listens.

The hunters are my friends. They take care of me. They leave me food. They are kind men. I slip through the forest towards their lights. I don’t make a sound. I am good at being quiet. Is that what I am? Am I quietness?

One of the hunters is a young man. His hair tied back. He is behind the others. Three men are with him. One is sitting on the stump of a felled tree. He is examining his boot. The other two lean against trunks, waiting. They have a dead rabbit, but that is all. I pause a few yards away and peer at them from behind a tree. The youngest is the boy with the hair tied back. He is the only one listening to the woods around them.

I watch. He slowly turns his head and looks at me. I smile. He has seen me. But it must be too dark for he doesn’t react. He didn’t see me after all. One of the other men speaks to him.

“Draven, rabbit’s yours.”

The boy shakes his head.

“Don’t play games,” the man says. “We’ve got a system. It’s your turn.”

I step closer.
Games? Games with a dead rabbit? I’ve never heard of this game. I can’t remember any games, though. I don’t know any games. Maybe the hunters can teach me.

The man on the stump sighs. “My boot’s worn clear through.”

“Hello,” I say but none of them seem to hear me. I try again, louder this time. “Hello.”

“My brother left me a pair that might fit you,” one of the men continues.

Why can’t they hear me? The boy they called Draven is looking my way again. His eyes are so dark they seem like they are made of night. I tilt my head to the side and wonder if he sees me. He steps over to the others. “We need to move,” he says.

The three men pivot to look at him. They rely on his senses more than their own. One withdraws a knife. Draven’s eyes flick in my direction. The others tense.