I wake a little past six in the morning, the cold autumn light brushing across the sky and flying through the trees. There is little time, the last two days Mikhael has gone out hunting or foraging around this time, and I have to get a head start. Back to our city. Back to Verity.
We have said very little to each other during the days I spent in his small cottage. I am thankful that he saved me, unsure how I am still alive. But the smells emitting from the cauldron that boil from dawn to dusk tell me more about Mikhael than he does. A healer during the war, but before that? I don't know. He told me that he is much older than he seems. A spirit perhaps? Demigod trapped in the realm of mortals for some crime. He didn't entail, nor did I want to ask and step on some toes.
It's not only the smell of herbs and dirt on him I realize, but it's the smell of magic. In a heartbeat, I can feel some of it leave his body when he removes my bandages the night before and tells me it will be fine now. He is pulsating with magic, so strong and raw I feel it under his skin. He keeps a tempest at bay in there and my skin tingles as that speck finds its way to where my left eye had been and settles there. Vibrating through my bones. I haven't received help from a healer in many years, and the feeling is both comforting and gruesome.
The book beckons me not to take it back, but I have little choice. Or, I do have a choice, but I would rather not let an enchanted book force me to go looking for someone who would be over five hundred years old, or even dead at this point. The nagging, however, drains me. I have no way of turning it off, shutting it up. All night it calls me a liar and thief and murderer and as it goes on, it starts to call me in my own voice. Twisting at me like a knife in a wound.
As I get dressed in the outfit I wore when Mikhael found me again, I realize he fixed them, and sewed them together where the hounds clawed and bit me. The tunic though was turned into shreds and probably used for the bandages that held my face together while it healed. I put my leather vest over my naked torso, it will do, I think. For a day or two. My hair is like a weed tumbling through an arid desert. I haven't bathed nor brushed my hair or any other parts for days. Blood and sweat and nightmares cake on my skin. The smell of me; if it weren't for the herbs Mikhael had brushed over my wounds - I would smell like death.
I look towards the small stairwell that leads to the little alcove where Mikhael is sleeping. I owe him so much, and the way I am about to leave him makes something churn in my belly. A conscience perhaps. I hear his steady breathing, sleepy and calm. I wonder what he is doing out here, so far from everything. If I stayed for one more day I could ask him, could ask for directions, for aid perhaps. But… he has done enough, and I need to get to Verity so I can get my money and pay him back.
"Little murderer, little liar," the book echoes in my mind. My head aches at its claws running through my head, tampering with my thoughts. I need to get to Verity and get this book as far away from me as possible. As I silently open the door to slip out, a murmur goes through the house, as if the wood itself is talking to each other, and as I take my first step outside, I don't even have time to think about the crisp morning air, as a snare tightens around my ankle, and I go up, up, up.
--
"What the fuck are you doing!" Mikhael exclaims, both shock and relief in his voice, sleep still in his eyes. He is barely wearing pants, holding them over his undergarments. I am looking at him upside down, blood rushing to my head, whizzing in my ears.
"I was just…"
"You were sneaking off? Without as much as a thank you or a goodbye… Do you know how dangerous these woods are?" His voice now… disappointed? I can't tell. In my mind, the book is laughing at me. I point toward my face.
"Obviously, I know these woods are dangerous," I sigh. "I just… I must get back to town, get my money, and then I can come back… to pay you I mean. For the trouble." The pulsating of my heartbeat grows harder in my ears, whooshing, gurgling. I think blood starts to drip from my nose, from my hollow socket. I hear Mikhael make a noise and I fall through the air. I close my eye and wait to hit the cold hard ground. But instead, a warm embrace. Mikhael makes another unknown noise as he catches me from slamming into the dirt. His skin against my cheek is warm. Rugged from battle or something else. Scarred and tattooed. I hadn't seen that before. But I feel it isn't really for me to know, what he looks like. Not like this.
"Had I known you were going to try to sneak off this early in the morning I wouldn't have bothered with the trap," he says with a laugh in his voice. I wipe off the blood from my face with the back of my jacket. Mikhael takes notice, I think, of the fact that I'm not wearing a tunic under my vest, as he quickly lets me off to my two feet.
"You okay?" He clears his throat and looks over the ceiling of his small cottage and then at me again. He looks worried, I smile a tight-lipped smile at him.
He lifts my chin with his fingers, looking straight at me, through me. "If you want me to take you to town, let me know. But don't try to sneak off like some…" His brown eyes are intense as they pierce through me.
"Also," he adds and lets go of my chin, looking toward the cottage again. "You need to work off a bit of your debt."
"Excuse me?"
"If you feel well enough to sneak out and get yourself in trouble again, you're well enough to help me with some chores. As payment for my treatment, of course. Then I can take you to town – if that's what you want."
--
We spend the entire forenoon picking herbs and chopping wood. My hands are calloused and used to hard labor, and yet… my muscles ache with every chop. Every splinter. I throw my entire strength into the chopping, but I am stiff and hardened from the injuries. Making more of a mockery of the hard work we used to do on the island than helping Mikhael.
"Lazy little thief. Lazy murderer," the book sings to me.
I go over to Mikhael where he stands, drinking water directly from the little creek that runs close to the cottage. The woods are alive, thick, and thriving. I haven't seen a forest like this in a while. I listen to the wind singing between the branches, making the leaves fall and rustle. The sound glitters at the peaks, light dancing through, dancing on the ground like spirit light at the Moon festival. The forest is alive around me, and I hadn't noticed just how much I had missed nature.
"Here," Mikhael says and gives me a cup of water from the creek. "It's said to be running down from the Mountain of the Deities. Magic water." He flutters his fingers, emphasizing that he doesn't quite believe it's magical water that runs through the creek.
"You're not a Believer?" I ask and fill the cup anew.
"I don't know. What do you have to do to be a believer?" I shrug.
"I'm not… I'm not sure. If the Deities had stayed with us... if we had enough power then the Pink Island would still be the Pink Island, not a part of the Shadow Isles. We'd still have a home where our ancestors were laid to rest. I would remember the taste of ripe pink peaches and brew my peppermint tea during summer. Instead, we were driven to the plague-infested disgusting Pits in town. Refugee after refugee just piling on. Death and disease following in its wake."
Mikhael goes quiet for a bit, perhaps he has lived here too long to remember the Pits, the echoes of war and misery that follow you wherever you go. How mothers tried to make the wheat for bread last longer by adding bark from trees, leaves, and whatever nonsense they could find outside of the walls. Scarcity doesn't even begin to cover it.
"I'm sorry," he says after a moment of silence. "I knew the Pink Islands from... before. It was beautiful."
He claps his hands again and tells me to get back to work. I splash water on my face and go back to my chopping. Steps harder now, tougher to take. The thought of my home island. What it once was, the sheer beauty in its simplicity.
When you must run you just run, you don't think about it too much, don't consider what you're leaving behind at the cost of your life. I saw what the shadows did to our people, and I had no qualms about leaving, and yet – when I think about it now, it hurts. A hollowness aching inside my chest, beating a knife into my memories at every chance.
I can't stop the tears that run down my cheeks as I continue to chop wood and let the task swallow me up. Before I know it, the sun is setting behind the treetops to the west, and a dark blue moon rises in its stead. Mikhael pats me on the back and says we can go to town first thing tomorrow if I still want, and I say yes.
We sit in silence for a bit as he boils water for my bath, saying it's a favor to himself more than me since I smell so bad, and I can't even be mad at him for that. He doesn't say much, and I churn on the questions for him but don't dare to utter even one. As I leave to take my bath, I mention that we used to take baths in the hot springs on our islands during winter, calm and soothing.
"When you say we… do you mean you and your spouse? I heard you cry their name once or twice in your sleep. Verity?"
I let a laugh slip through my teeth and shake my head.
"No, Verity is… well, my employer and friend, I would say. She's old and smart and not afraid to play dirty."
He nods.
"Old and smart you say, yet she sent you after that book all alone?"