dark fantasy – Pen of the Damned

Ana had little, but enough. Her home was small upon the village hillside, but she had dreams enough to fill its cozy corners with worlds upon worlds, with wonderings that spilled out through the shuttered windows and down through the forest paths. Her clothes were plain and humble, yet ample enough to warm her in the cold of winter journeys, or to protect against the heat of summer sun. Her shoes were patched and resoled, but sturdy enough for her wistful wanderings, fleet enough for her tireless chase after wonder. She had little promise in marriage prospects, yet she had faith enough to believe in fairy tales—to believe in hope and courage and happily ever after.

Yet when her mother promised her to the butcher, she had tears enough to flood the village. Ana wept in earnest amid her mother’s empty words of comfort.

“You’ll never go hungry. You’ll want for nothing.”

Ana knew that her mother feared the empty cupboards more than anything, feared a life of nothingness for her daughter. It was true that the butcher’s home was the finest in the village. No carriage gleamed more brightly than his. No table held more food and drink and decadence. Still, when Ana thought of him—his hands bloody, his eyes cruel—her weeping turned to sobs.

Yet her tears were not enough to turn her mother’s heart. The day passed in weeping, and the evening came with heavy resignation. Despite herself, Ana packed her modest trousseau, gathered her meagre dowry. Her coins were few, but enough. When she counted them in the moonlight, they glowed with silver possibility.

The very young and the very old of the village had long whispered of a moonlit caravan, warned of its silver horses that trotted on moonbeams. The worldly and respectable scoffed, but still the whispers and wonders persisted. Ana had never had courage to test the tales. She had never left her cozy home after nightfall. She had never had reason to brave the darkness for a moonbeam or to worry about the lure of the otherworldly, the warnings against beings that traded unknown destinations for silver. But now the warnings returned to her. And in those warnings, hope.

All she owned was packed for a new beginning. Her mother had dreamed of finer things for her: of clothes and carriages and comfort. But Ana knew there was no love in her fear of him, no love in his hunger for her. She was not willing to lose herself to him, not for all the finery in the world. Ana did not fear empty cupboards, empty tables, empty stomachs as her mother did. She feared an empty life: a future without hope and courage and happily ever after.

Ana had so little, but perhaps enough. Hope enough to dry her eyes. Courage enough to find her way into the night. Silver enough to trade for safe passage on a moonbeam, into a happily ever after of her own choosing.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

He had never learned to dance. Perhaps a lack of skill, perhaps a lack of opportunity. Perhaps only a lack of courage—he did not know. But he felt his lack most keenly when he watched the others. They moved without thought, without fear, without shame. He wondered what that must feel like: a body unencumbered, a mind unbridled, a life untethered. His wonder reached out to them, but his fear drew him back into himself.

Perhaps . . . he thought. But it was always an unfinished thought. Instead, he hid himself and watched the others from his secret place.

The village was filled with stories of the others, but no one claimed to believe. Those who knew best said that the others were only air and tales, only good for filling the empty spaces, for filling the hollow places in village life with imagination and possibility, for filling the dreams of the gullible with childishness and fancy. Yet all those wise and worldly minds did not risk going out in the rainfall, did not dare to visit those places where tales danced at the edge of the wild. No, for all their certainty, they did not risk encountering those things they did not believe.

And so he always came alone. The forest was dark and dripping around him, alive with the sound of rainfall. Yet he did not mind the wet chill as he crouched and peered out into the clearing. He only saw the others dance when the raindrops fell. He could hear their footfalls among the patterings of rain as they danced between the drops. They moved like a mist, furling and unfurling beneath the moonlight, their mesmeric undulations filling the empty spaces. He crept through the trees and shadows to watch—alone, but not unseen.

She was fresh as the rain, ancient as the rain, timeless as the rain. She knew all the creatures that scurried through her forests, and he was no exception. She had seen his soul-deep hunger, seen the joyless scraps life had fed him. Through the music of the rain, she could hear the rasping, rattling knell of his spirit’s hunger pangs. It was a sound that she knew too well: time after time, soul after soul. Souls that had found their way to her forests, begging for scraps of a new beginning. Souls that had struggled, choking, against a life too tightly wrapped about them. Souls still young, still fledgling, encaged in bodies of dust and bone and age. Countless souls she had gathered into herself, tended, restored. Lost souls, now found.

On these nights, she breathed those souls into the rainfall, spun them amid the falling drops. There, they found their steps, their freedom, their life. There, they would soon find him, recognize him as one of their own. They would be the ones to draw him in, step by dancing step. But she would be the one to draw him out—out of his mortal vessel and into their endless dance.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison