﻿ Last Night A Short Story Jennifer Powell Copyright 2011 Jennifer Powell A Clary Books Presentation Smashwords Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Dedicated to my husband, Fabrice Echelard. I couldn’t do it without you. * * * * * * * The wildwood loomed before them solid as stone, an ancient presence, dark and heavy against the night. Even the bitter wind was rebuffed by that tangle of limbs and thick-leaved vines. Overhead the sky was scattered with stars, while the black mud of the road beneath their feet told of the storm that had swept through earlier. The two women stood at the edge of the woods, surrounded by the damp scent of trees, cloaks pulled tight and hoods forward. The wind whispered to them, tugged at their clothes, but the two said nothing. Deyant considered the best way to enter. Tall and stringy with hair cut short beneath her hood, she leaned into the wind and toward the trees. Her eyes were closed and her face eager, but tension showed in the lines of her mouth. Nothing had gone quite right this evening. Something was wrong between them and this night was so important. It was the last they would ever really have. “Over there,” she said, hand held out to the left. “That’s where the hidden path lies.” She turned to her companion, eyes open now and gleaming. “With both of us working, we’ll follow the path easily.” Mrinda leaned away from the wind, away from the trees, her face drawn and her eyes relentless in avoiding Deyant’s own. “I’m sure you could handle this easily by yourself.” She hesitated. “If you had to…” Mrinda was as tall as her sister, but no one noticed much. Her softer figure and softer manner helped ease her way in the world. A strand of dark curls trickled from beneath her hood. We are so little alike, Deyant though, no one would believe us sisters. Mrinda met her eyes at last, and Deyant felt her spirits rise with remembered joy. Once this work had been the primary bond between them, but that was years past. Tonight was their last chance to share that again. “Deyant, Dey… I have to tell you something.” Mrinda’s voice shook and she spoke slowly. “I don’t like being here, but I want so much to help you.” “Don’t worry. All will go well.” Deyant’s smile was dazzling, and she wound her arm through her sister’s. “You’ve been listening to tales in the market again, haven’t you?” Mrinda turned her face to the night sky, her voice now a whisper. “Johnah says we are touched by the forest. He says that we should be content with holy prayer, that we are wrong to take this on ourselves.” Deyant’s chest burned, bile crept over her tongue as it always did when she thought of her sister’s betrothed. “We have always done this, always been protectors.” “And you still are, I know.” Mrinda took Deyant’s hand between her own and pressed it tight. “This is the work I have chosen. Our people need me.” “I know, Dey, I know, but you must understand…” “I understand enough.” Deyant laid her finger across Mrinda’s lips, then began to move away. “We must move on now. Look! Ki’rin is already up!” She pointed to where the creamy light from the small moon slipped past the dark bulk of the forest. Where moonlight stroked the trees, blue sparks leapt up. Soon the whole wood shone with luminous blue light. Mrinda nodded. The aura of blue confirmed the rumor that had brought them here. She sighed reluctantly and said, “Let’s go then.” Deyant warmed to the touch of Mrinda’s mind, as they twined their thoughts together, absorbed in the work they had come here to do. Even with the necessary powers, a focused mind was needed to enter the wildwood. Without magic, no one could come here at all. The forest had been enemy to their folk as far back as memory ran. Once the whole world had been carpeted with trees and thickets, or so the tales told. Back then humankind clung to the shoreline for survival, where salt water kept away the woods and their spawn. For the wildwood was not simply a place of plants and silence. Everyone knew that the wood was a whole thing, alive and hostile to their kind. Even now when half the world was covered in human fields and homes, the ancient woods held the forest spirit, strong and wily and utterly intent on its own purposes. Deep in the heart of the forest are meadows, great wide spaces with waist-high grass and wildflowers. Year-round flowers grow and bloom in those enchanted places. Some hear a deep murmuring there, though for Deyant they had always been silent. They are spawning grounds for the forest spirit, birthing places where the will of the woods takes form. In those meadows from time to time shrouds of mist will appear, deep silver-gray and shimmering. The cocoons are somewhat round with soft edges, and they incubate the forest spirits. Those spirits are born in forms both deadly and playful—at best heedless, at worst maniacal foes of all beyond the forest boundary. For many years humans could not oppose the wildwood creatures. They had no powers but iron and fire, not strong enough to combat the fiercest children of the woods. Then, some generations ago, children with magical gifts began to be born, who could at times enter the forest and emerge unharmed. They could walk down paths others could not see, and they could find the living meadows. If they were strong, and careful, and lucky, they could kill what they found there. In time their failures grew few, their successes many, and the forest retreated. Less often now did the spirit-children emerge from the woods. Only in the oldest places would a patch of forest shine blue in the moonlight, announcing the presence of the new life within. Mrinda and Deyant had that gift. From earliest childhood they had walked the forest paths, felt them like a living map within their minds. They knew the forest ways, all but unseen until they walked upon them. With untaught agility they learned to reach out, to somehow bring the paths into view by the force of their combined will. With an ease born of familiarity, the women settled into a careful pace, breaking stride only to avoid the rocks that always seemed to thrust up to trip the unwary. Now and again they would pause, eyes closed, and bring a bit more of the path into view. "Do you remember, Dey, the fluttery ones we found that first spring?” Mrinda asked during one such stop. “I think of them sometimes when the seasons change.” With their minds so closely woven, Deyant could sense Mrinda’s inner shudder. Her sister’s aura was clouded with distress, but at that moment Deyant did not care. She could see now the hidden place in her sister’s heart, secrets deep inside. Once there had been no secrets between them, and Deyant could not hide her anger at this new betrayal. Everything had changed since Johnah had come. Now Mrinda loved him, had agreed to marry him. Catching a glimpse of the forest spawn in Mrinda’s memory, Deyant scowled. “I remember them well,” she said. They drifted through time for a moment, back to the first year of their gifts. The two of them had been always together; Deyant ached to recall how young they had been, and how bold in their innocent power. The rainbow-colored creatures had been an early kill: fragile, beautiful, and painful to destroy. “Who knows what they would have become?” “Johnah says that if we trust in the Great God, He will send the forest away.” Something in Mrinda’s face was especially beautiful when she said his name, but Deyant felt only the secrets and her anger. Light fell around them, cream from Ki’rin above filtered through the eerie blue sheen of the forest night. “I remember, too, the teeth on the baraata,” Deyant said with a harsh tone. “All sharp and as long as my fingers. That one was easy to kill.” Back then the work had brought them closer. Mrinda sighed, closed her eyes to focus on calling the path, calling while the forest pressed close around them, the cold air flecked with sparks. They walked on a few steps before Deyant shouted, “I can’t believe we will never do this work together again. I should never have left you here, never have gone off to Harrilli…” Mrinda interrupted. “Don’t fuss, Dey. You could never have stayed. You needed the training for your work, and I had no wish to go. We’ve always been different that way.” Deyant trembled, hot with awareness of the distance between them. “The powers leave all of us eventually,” Mrinda continued. “You know that. Even yours will grow weaker with time.” Deyant bowed her head before that hurtful truth and could only nod, throat clenched with pain. “What matter then if I, if I lose some of mine a little early, especially when I gain love and a new life?” “Johnah.” Deyant spat the name. “Yes.” Deyant filled with restless anger. She did not want to think about the future. She could not bear the thought of Mrinda given to someone else, could not imagine her own work lost, as would inevitably happen with age. Chastity was the only way to present the full range of their powers into adulthood, but all would fade with time, regardless. Around them the forest sizzled quietly, hummed to itself. “Deyant,” Mrinda said, “please listen for once. Before we find the meadow, you have to listen…” But Deyant did not want to listen, did not want to understand. “No!” she shouted, and rushed off along the path, forcing Mrinda to hurry behind. Almost at once blue light flared around them, so their faces were coated with color. Before them stretched an ocean of azure grasses, needle-sharp and waving gently in the still night air. “Stay by me!” Deyant stepped out into the sparkling meadow. The blue grass hit her thick boots and the bottom of her cloak. Blades of the tallest grass and the blue flowers whipped around her as if a tornado filled the clearing, though the air was still. Where the grass struck Deyant’s cloak, sparks leapt into the night with a whine. Overhead Ki’rin was invisible behind a dull blue haze, and no stars could be seen at all. Directly ahead a silvery sphere sat suspended over the flower tops, which curved around to caress its soft, translucent surface. “Mrinda, hurry up!” Deyant already sounded thin and distant. She could not take her eyes from the living sphere which seemed to fill the broad meadow completely. “Deyant, you have to listen to me,” Mrinda pleaded. “You don’t really need me.” Her words tumbled over one another. Deyant had to strain to hear her, and with an effort she turned to meet her sister’s gaze. “Deyant…Dey, I can’t go in with you.” Deyant could feel the creature inside the cocoon, so close as it awaited the time of entry into her world, and she was distracted. She wanted only to go to the creature, to move her mind into the cocoon in that way she had always known. The forest-spawn called to her, and Mrinda’s words made no sense at all. “We must go in now,” Deyant urged, eyes blazing. “Deyant, I can’t go into the sphere with you,” Mrinda repeated, her voice firm now. As she stepped at last onto the grasses of the meadow, blue light swirled in her wake. “I can stay here. I can hold the paths for you, but I am not strong enough to enter.” Her tone faltered. “Not anymore,” she finished in a whisper. Deyant, attentive at last, looked at her sister with dismay. “You can’t mean that.” “It is the truth. Johnah and I have been lovers since Half-Night." She hesitated before Deyant’s angry face, but her sister remained silent. “Johnah says it is better this way. I wanted to tell you,” Mrinda whispered. “I tried to tell you.” Deyant felt her sister try to hold their mingled fields, to come closer, but she was unmoved. Hurt ran around inside her chest like water, and she turned back to the sphere, gazed at the shimmering surface where something living seemed to speak in the silky gray mists. She felt hot and yet clammy. She shook with anger and the sphere was so soothing. In all the world, it held the only light. She walked away from Mrinda without a word, toward the cocoon. As she walked, she reached out with her fields. She felt the warmth within the soft surface as her mind brushed across it and began to probe inside. She laid her cheek against the sphere, only dimly aware of her sister behind her. The grasses slapped and stung against her clothes. Deyant let her cloak fall among the waving blades. This time was no different than any other—the pull between Deyant and her enemy was terrific. At these moments Deyant could well believe that something within her was forest-touched. Heat flooded her chest, and the mists scorched like acid. Only skill born of long experience kept her fields in place as she was sucked into the cocoon. Inside all was still. Much like the outside it was pale silver and soft, endlessly wide though Deyant could have touched the sides with her fingertips. But she looked only to the other, the one who stood before her in a guise she knew well, and feared. From outside the cocoons, you could never tell what creature the forest was birthing. Sometimes it created entirely new forms. At other times it would repeat some older pattern of terror. Like a favorite plaything, now and then an image would be reborn. Before her now was a figure rimmed in orange flame, a figure squat and thick with a wide gaping mouth and eyes like embers. “Oh la…” she chanted to her foe, surprised to find it lovely. “Ah la, burning one.” This was like the monster Tyree had failed to conquer, down near Riverways and the mountains there. The area was still charred down to the stones, and nothing grew where this creature had walked. Tyree had failed and that was the end of him. Unlike Deyant, Tyree had already been growing old for this work. Once the creature emerged whole and strong, it had taken five of the talented, working in concert, to bring it down. The burning elemental was still half-formed, limbs no more than a promise of arms and legs to come. It could barely move—only the eyes shone with intelligence and danger. What good fortune to arrive before it was fully formed! She might be able to dominate its will for the seconds needed to reach out, reach inside to the one precise spot where she could twist the monster back into non-being. “But they never told me you were beautiful,” she murmured to the forest child and then shook her head to cast off the disquiet. Tyree will grow no older, she reminded herself. Nor will the ten thousand who died when a monster, a monster just like this one, ravaged the villages of Riverways. And that fool Johnah thought to tame such things with prayer! Deyant forced her attention back to the task, struggling to bring her fields into the proper alignment. The hurt she felt at Mrinda’s betrayal and the seductive beauty of the flames before her made it difficult to focus. Instead she stood staring into sweet, red eyes that urged her to enter. She yearned toward the creature whose beauty only she could see. “I’ve come to kill you,” she said aloud, and still she hesitated, caught in her heart’s cauldron. When she reached out at last to touch its mind with her own, instead of the cautious wisps she had been schooled to use, something stronger burst forth and she felt her fields rush full strength into the monster. At once she knew her mistake but she could not stop. The creature felt no confusion; it absorbed her easily, with a small inner sigh. It fed on her emotion, but she was caught by more than a monster’s power. Her anger answered the call, and melted unresisting into the alliance of human and forest-spawn. Her sense of betrayal, her fury at her sister, joined with the forest’s blood-thirst as if they were one thing. With her strength to draw on, the creature began to grow and change. Its body swiftly developed to full form. As Deyant’s fields joined with the beast’s, her human body dropped to the ground unnoticed. The newly bound pair stretched huge arms above a head haloed with flame, then cried out in a voice full of firestorms. Molten rock flowed through their veins, and at that moment they shared only one emotion—a passionate hatred of the puny, water-filled folks who swarmed across their world like vermin. The cocoon burst leaving only a slight mist that vanished with a acrid stink. They stood cloaked in fire, surrounded by the wildwood that welcomed them, and their flames did not burn the blue-sparked meadow. Mrinda crouched in shock at the wood’s edge while the tall grasses lashed out to strike her full in the face. Deyant, who was the monster, reached out with one flaming hand to crush the woman. Deyant saw her sister, while the forest-spawn saw only an enemy to be destroyed. They roared their hatred as one. Mrinda did not try to run, but looked back and forth from Deyant’s crumpled body to the monster moving toward her, horror in her eyes. “Protect me, Father,” she prayed aloud, “from this your creation.” Deyant stopped their arm in mid-reach, while curious visions passed through their mingled minds, visions that meant little to the forest-spawn, but everything to Deyant. She saw her own human home, built of dark stone carved from the mountains that edge the town of Terrilli. She saw Terrilli itself as it would be springtime with markets full of food, the smell of roast meats, and the sound of the people as they talked and laughed together. The forest-spawn, glimpsing Deyant’s memories in its own mind, was filled with a murderous rage. Deyant thrilled to the raw anger. Once more they reached out for Mrinda, who stood before them calmly. The portion of the monster who was Deyant saw her sister’s lips move silently, and joined with the forest’s own power she recognized again the places in Mrinda that were hidden from her now, dark and full of secrets. The answer so strong in the entwined creature they had become was cut short by a flood of sorrow, as all of Deyant’s hurt despair washed through them. Deyant felt herself alone for a moment, separate from the burning creature, and once more she stopped their arm from killing, entranced as human memory flooded them. Again she saw Terrilli, this time as it had been when she and Mrinda were young, with the dreaded woods thick right up to the road and only a few farms where today there were many. In her mind she returned to their childhood, and walked with her sister into the forest. Easily she and Mrinda brought into view the paths of the forest, limned with blue light. Deyant was heedless, exhilarated by her powers. Just as she often had, she taunted Mrinda in a singsong voice, “Try to keep up, you silly thing!” The two reached the meadow and the young Deyant danced through the lashing grass and the flowers, toward the sphere, drawn as always to the creature inside. That slowpoke, she thought as she stood by the sphere. I wish she’d hurry up. She trembled with impatience, but soon the two sisters stood together, arms and minds linked. Deyant did not wait to complete the focus before she leapt inside, pulling Mrinda along. They arrived to instant terror because the baraata was fully formed. Its sharp teeth tore at her legs, ripped through her leather shirt as if it were gauze. Deyant, her fields in disarray, screamed and tried to focus as again and again the baraata bit. The she noticed the wicked thing was slowing, starting to fade, as Mrinda in her graceful way reached out to the point where the forest and the creature entwined, reached out and twisted the connection until it broke, and at last the monster vanished. The two were alone in the crumbling meadow. Deyant bled in a dozen places, and with some irritation realized that she owed her life to her slower and more careful sister. Memory broke as the creature grew weary of diversions. They took one step forward. Mrinda spoke very softly to herself and her God, while Deyant fought for control. Mrinda couldn’t save her this time. If what she’d said was true, Mrinda would no longer have that strength of fields. Deyant realized at last that it was not only the forest she fought—she was herself the enemy. Anger flared again as they looked at Mrinda, helpless where she stood at the edge of the wild blue meadow. Deyant kept herself a little more separate this time. When the monster reached out for Mrinda, this time she swiftly forced a halt. Once more memory floated before her, and Deyant held the monster still as in her mind she returned to her first summer in the forest, returned to yet another clearing like this one, inside another sphere where they held a young and fluttery thing with wings the color of the sunrise and eyes like stars. “Ah, la, little one,” Mrinda crooned as she stroked the soft wings. “Oh, Dey, can’t we just let this one go? Look at it, how can this sweet thing be dangerous?” Deyant’s heart sank as she looked into her sister’s imploring eyes, then at the tiny colorful beastie with its shining face and weak limbs. There was only one choice, and Mrinda knew it. “Pledged to defend the people,” she said. Mrinda turned away, would not watch as Deyant reached inside the utterly helpless creature, twisted the energy inside just so. The wee thing shimmered and vanished, leaving behind a slight glow and sadness thick as fog, so that the two girls found themselves in the inevitable dying meadow, each with tears chill on her face. Deyant returned to the present, and with a sob she snapped the link between the burning one and herself. She felt her spirit once more slide into her fallen body. The young monster collapsed into its own unfinished form. With her energy withdrawn, it became the lumpish thing it had been before, with only a dim and smoky flame. Slowly, carefully, as the thing screeched inside her mind, she reached into its fields, deep into a place only she could see. Careful now, she twisted, and the forest-spawn thinned into a fine line then vanished entirely. Deyant found herself lying on the ground looking up into Mrinda’s face. Her heart was still sad but she felt some peace as she studied her sister. Maybe I don’t have to lose her, Deyant thought. We still have all the time before, and maybe we can salvage something from this. Overhead Ki’rin shone golden now through the night. They watched as the cold, luminous blue faded from the trees and grasses. Already the meadow looked dull and lifeless, crumbling into dust. Mrinda took her sister’s hand. “Are you alright?” she asked. Deyant swallowed hard through the lump in her throat, and nodded. “Exhausted,” she said. Mrinda bent down and picked up Deyant’s cloak from the ground. Pieces of dead grass clung to the edges. She helped her sister rise and draped the cloak around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Dey. I never meant to let you down like this.” Deyant looked closely at her sister. Bright welts showed where the grass had burned, and Mrinda’s eyes were dark with pain. Why, she looks like a stranger, Deyant thought. She almost looks old. “It doesn’t matter, not now,” she said aloud. “But if I—” “No!” Deyant almost shouted. Then, in a softer voice, “Let’s go home. Please.” She reached out with her fields—slowly, carefully—and brushed Mrinda’s own with her concern. “If we don’t have this anymore…” Deyant hesitated. “Then we’ll have to find something else. You’re still my sister, after all. And I want…” She shook her head then chuckled. “I want to get to know you.” And she smiled an honest smile. Mrinda smiled back and took her hand. They started back along the path they could both see clearly, across the disintegrating meadow and through the ancient, crowded forest, the path that led home. * * * * * * * About the author: Jennifer’s childhood was split between Toledo, Ohio and rural Mississippi but, through dozens of moves and many different houses, she always carried notebooks full of stories she wrote for herself. Later she escaped her family and lived for several years on a communal farm in the Missouri Ozarks. She then moved to Tucson, Arizona where she worked in food co-ops, became a typesetter, and devoted many days and nights to political and community organizing. Over the years she submitted her stories to publishers, receiving responses that ranged from the usual form letters to casual encouragement to “Great story, but not for us.” Eventually she set fiction aside, discovered the Internet, wrote tech articles for magazines, and worked several years as a host and manager of various online communities. Now married and living in Colorado, Jennifer started reading ebooks and then heard about the bright new field of electronic self-publishing. She decided to roll out her stories, dust them off, and send them out into the world. She’s very happy to see them find new life at last. Connect with me online at the Clary Books Blog and on Smashwords. Table of Contents Title Page and Copyright Last Night – A Short Story About the Author Table of Contents