Perhaps it was dumb luck that made me try to rob Verity. Creeping and crawling into her townhouse in the dead of night, looking for food or gold or anything I could use or sell. But another part of me wants it to be the work of the Fates. I often thought about the fact that anyone could've found me the way she did and could've, with every law on their side, killed me right then and there. But for some reason, Spirits knowing, it was her, and she took pity on me. For a while at least.
She sometimes called me a street rat, when I did something to piss her off or didn't do as I was told. She tried to teach me how to read and write and count. Math was easy, the other two a little harder. And when I had enough of that, she gave me a bow and a knife and taught me all she knew.
We lived on an island then, known for juicy pink peaches from the farms and Dragon stones from the mountains. There was trouble like anywhere else, but we all knew each other, in the bigger cities at least. It was easy to blend in and cause trouble where we needed to.
When the war came, I helped her collect money and other things from people with "more than enough". It was a loaning business she said, she provided the needy with what they needed (usually money) and then we collected what they owed, with interest (usually food or wine or cigarettes, and one time a cat). Before we knew it, the business we continued was less loaning money to the poor and needy, and more of a "grab and ask no questions" situation. Thievery, murder, stalking, protecting, retrieving, and so on. I was fifteen when I used my knife on another person for the first time, and twenty when I killed someone.
The war changed us, and everything around us. Most of it was burned to ashes, rubble, and dirt, and death seemed to follow wherever the glorious knights fought. And then the rape and kidnapping and organ harvesting, and then the darkness.
Something went wrong, something or someone that should've been left asleep was woken up, and – after that came the beasts. Monsters and Darklings. Creatures of death and shadow. It swept over the continent, contaminating the living, leaching on them, on their essence. Scaring away our sacred spirits and divinities.
But it was contained on our small island. With the cities burned to ash and farms pillaged, we abandoned the island the second we were granted passage. Not everyone was as fortunate or could afford the passage, Verity tried her best to get a living from her small farming village to join us. Some came, and others stayed. Said that they couldn't abandon the dead, and in case they came back, someone needed to tell them where we had gone so they could find us.
We didn't say that it was the dead that had come for us all.
--
The man brings me broth, cooked from the bones of some animal I have not even seen him slaughter and takes a big bowl for himself. It has been three days already, and I am almost completely healed, except for the hollowness in my eye socket. I do not know if severed flesh can miss each other, but it would not surprise me.
"You were a healer during the war?" I ask though it sounds more like a statement. My voice is almost back to normal.
"Something like that," he says. His eyes peer at me as he sits across the small space of the cottage, next to the fireplace where the cauldron with bone broth is still boiling. It makes the room smell like death. Or maybe it is me. He opens his mouth to speak and takes a deep breath but then changes his mind and takes another sip of the broth. I have barely touched mine. I just look at the cup in my hands, twisting it, smelling it.
"Why would I poison you after spending two days taking care of you?" I shrug, but I am not convinced.
"Why did you save me?" I ask and look at him. Steel gaze meets mine.
"Should not I have?" He chuckles and I wonder what he is thinking about. "I have never seen a person try to fight off five dredge hounds before. I was out hunting when I saw the shadows changing, heard the bellowing, and followed it. You put up a good fight though. Two of them laid dead beside you." I cannot remember. All I remember is the smell of dirt and taste of it before the moon hit my eyes and then… that voice sang to me, sang and said that death was coming.
"So, you are a hunter now?"
"Something like that," he says again and tries to smile.
I let a displeased sound leave my throat and stare at him.
"You were pretty out of it when I got the hounds off you… devils more like it," his voice changing, hardening. Behind that steel gaze of his, I think I see what could almost be pain. Perhaps he has lost someone to those hounds before.
"I have fought worse and survived, but this time…"
"You were unlucky."
I reach for the hollowness in my skull, touching it with my fingertips. My body is dizzy and nauseous at the touch.
"I don't know your name," I say and clear my throat. Put down the bowl of broth on the small end table next to me. Untouched.
"Mikhael."
"I'm Elyse," I answer, and he nods to me as if to greet me, officially.
--
It comes to me in a dream and tugs at me, drawing my consciousness towards it. I wake up covered in sweat, a panic ticking beneath my chest. The book. The book. The book.
Has he seen it? Has he taken it? Has he known what it is? I look around, the silence of the night stretching out through the room where I stay. Panic continues as I try to feel for it, for my belongings. Has he left it? Thought that it isn't important and left it out there for the fiends to come back and take it?
A shiver goes through me as I hear the voice. The dark, hoarse voice taunts me.
"You didn't lose me, murderer. Thief. Murderer and liar. I am right here." As I turn around looking for it, I fall to the floor and under the bed, I see a green mist emitting from a metal cover.
I can hear the foxes bark in the night and their prey squealing loudly, as I pick up the book and stroke my fingers over it. Cold metal against my clammy skin. It burns and beckons me. I feel its power surging, ebb and flow like the ocean. A wolf howls.
On its cover is a horned animal skull, which could be an ox. I feel the tenderness the creator had put into it as they had carved their way through the thick gray metal. As they ornamented it with gleaming green emeralds and smaller crystals. On the side of the book, the pages are held together by a lock, keeping the entirety of the book safe from prying eyes. Its creator, had they known what this cover is to be used for, what book it will keep safe? This is the Book of Death, and it holds something much more than just words.
I put the book down beside me in bed and try to fall back asleep, Dawn is still a few hours of sleep away, and I can leave at the break of it. Mikhael doesn't need to know. I can thank him later when I find my way back to Verity and get the payment. Send him some of it. The book vibrates next to me as if it has opinions on my plan.
"You can't take me back there," it says. "Bring me to my creator." Its voice echoes inside me.
"I can't do that," I answer, my voice soft, I don't know if I have to speak out loud for it to hear me when it seems to be perfectly capable of reading my mind.
"You have to, if you want to stay alive." It laughs at me, rough and cold. "Little murderer, do you want to live?"
Why did Verity take this job? That question is still lingering within me. She has her doubts about the authenticity of the book from the start, knowing more than she has let on. Her name is indeed Truth, but in a dead tongue, no one speaks anymore. She can lie, to me, despite that name of course.