A Plague of Shadows (5 page)

“She knows a good thing probably,” Rorick shrugged his broad shoulders.

The day was warm and the breeze was steady, tossing her hair around and cooling Abagail despite the heat of the sun filtering through the canopy above. Mama Coon followed them further into the woods, an ever present trail of dried meat being tossed behind them to keep her fed.

In the woods with Rorick it was almost possible for Abagail to forget about the shadows she’d seen lurking in the depths just the day before.

She liked Rorick’s company. When she was with him, no matter how strange their adventures seemed to be, Abagail was able to forget everything about her family that was strange. Rorick knew about Leona and Skuld, and either he thought it was just Leo still growing up, or he didn’t believe her powers were darkling. Rorick also got along with Dolan fine, and they would have long discussions about the Gods and the Light Guard that they probably shouldn’t be having. It seemed out of all of them, Abagail was the only one concerned with their heretical jabber.

“Why so quiet today?” Rorick nudged her with a shoulder and smiled at her when she looked up to him. “I mean, you’re normally quiet, but there’s an edge to your silence today.”

“I didn’t know silences could be edgy,” Abagail said, a smile ghosting across her face.

“Certainly, there’s happy silences, content silences, and edgy silences. You, my friend, act as though a darkling might jump out at us any moment,” Rorick said.

“That’s a strange thing to bring up,” Abagail noted after a few moments of silence that was broken only by their feet clomping through underbrush.

“Do you think there’s darkling around here?” Rorick asked.

The short hairs on the back of Abagail’s neck stood on end. This was turning out to be one of her least favorite ventures with her neighbor.

“Why do you ask?” she questioned, her heart in her throat.

“No reason, I thought I saw something yesterday,” he said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand. Or maybe he was swatting at a bug.

Abagail had stopped where she stood, her thoughts racing far ahead of her. “What kind of something?”

Rorick drew to a stop and turned back to her. He leaned against a tree and peered up through the canopy of leaves toward the blue sky. “Well, I can’t be sure, but I thought I saw a shadow, or something. It was in these woods, lurking behind trees, almost slinking.”

Abagail didn’t know what spurred her. Before she could stop herself, she had turned and was racing back toward the house, Rorick’s voice calling out behind her, urging her to stop, wondering what she’d seen, but she kept running. She wasn’t trying to get
away
from Rorick, just trying to get away from the woods.

It was one thing to
think
she’d seen a darkling, but it was something else completely to know someone else had seen it. And lurking in these very woods.

Why would he come in here?
Abagail wondered. That wasn’t hard to answer, Rorick was always going headlong into danger. Likely he thought he’d run into the darkling and he would best it.
Stupid
, Abagail thought.
What does he think he is, a Light Guard?
She scoffed.

Branches slapped painfully at her arms and face, she made little attempt to keep them at bay, her attention diverted to the sudden swirl of dark clouds high above. A storm was blowing in out of nowhere, and she would have to make sure Hafaress’ Hearth was built up against a possible deluge.

Fat drops of rain slapped her in the face, and in the distance came the warning rumble of thunder.

“Abbie, wait!” Rorick yelled.

Panting, Abagail drew to a halt.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting together. Thunder rumbled louder overhead, and the rain hit the canopy above heavier, trickling down onto them, plastering her short dark hair to her forehead, and standing out on Rorick’s beard in beads.

“I saw it too,” she panted over the thunder. “I saw the darkling.”

“Now?” He asked, glancing around them as if it would bound out of the trees behind them.

“Yesterday,” she said. Her head spun, so much was happening: the dreams, the room, the butterfly, the bees, the darkling. She bent at the waist and threw up into the bushes. She hadn’t eaten yet, and for that she was grateful, all she produced was bile.

Rorick grimaced and looked away. “But how could they be here?” he wondered once she wiped her mouth. “We are so far away from where the fire fell.”

“That was ages ago,” Abagail said. “You don’t think the darkness would stay in one spot do you?”

“But darklings are just the shadows of the evil people that died when the fires came,” Rorick said.

“And evil spreads when the All Father turns his Sleeping Eye on the world,” Abagail pointed out.

Rorick frowned. “What are we going to do?”

“We need to get home. We need to build the fire up before the darkling comes back for us,” Abagail said. She crossed her arms tight over her chest and stared back toward her home. Through the trees she could see Hafaress’ Hearth burning strong.

“What’s the matter?” Rorick asked, resting a hand on her shoulder. The rain poured down heavier.

“I think the darkling has already visited my home,” she whispered. He could barely hear her over the thunder.

Lightning flashed closer.

“How, what makes you say that?” he asked.

“Our bees are dying.” Abagail went on to tell him what she’d seen, what had happened with the bees. He grabbed her hand and looked her fingers over, inspecting her nails and her palm. She didn’t mind it when he did it. She didn’t pull her hand away like she had when her father had shown the same concern. Her posture relaxed at his nearness. Warmth spread through her as Rorick’s callused fingers probed the depths of her hand, searching out anything that might—

“Has this always been there?” he asked her, bending closer to her hand.

This time she did yank her hand away, and studied the spot he had been looking at.

A speck of darkness.

“Maybe it’s dirt?” Abagail wondered, her heart hitching into her throat. “Maybe I got stuck by something?”

“I don’t know, do you remember it being there before?” he asked.

“What do you think I’m being overcome by the shadows?” Abagail tried to laugh, but it sounded hallow and forced. She cleared her throat and tried to smile the notion away. She tucked her hand into her pocket as her eyes began to sting.

“This is serious Abbie,” Rorick said, pulling her hands back to him.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Abagail tried pulling her hands away, but Rorick had a firm hold on them. His fingers were no longer safe and secure, but instead worried and tense. He no longer made her feel warm.

“We need to hide you, if the Light Guard finds out about this!”

“I know, they will purify me,” Abagail closed her eyes. “They rarely come out this way,” she soothed. “I’m as safe as can be with Father and Leona.”

“And me,” Rorick said. Normally that statement would make her heart soar, but not this time. She only felt cold.

“What are we going to do?” Abagail asked, as close to tears as she could ever remember being. “What’s going to happen to me?”

He pulled her against his firm chest and wrapped his arms around her. “I won’t let you go into the All Father’s Waking Eye,” he confirmed. “We will figure this out.”

“Maybe it’s nothing?” Abagail said, shivering against him. “Maybe my shadow isn’t leaking out of my skin.”

“Yea, maybe it’s nothing, it could just be dirt,” he conceded, though she didn’t believe him, and it sounded like he didn’t believe himself either.

“You need to do it,” Abagail said. “If it gets too far along, you need to—”

“Shhh,” he soothed. “I won’t let your father or Leona do it. But I’m not giving up on you. If this is the shadow plague, we will find a cure for it.”

Abagail didn’t want to spoil his reassurance by telling him there was only one cure for the shadow plague, and that was the light of the Waking Eye.

Rorick walked her back home in silence. She sat on the porch, under the eaves watching him toil in the rain. She normally loved her days alone, she would get her work done as quickly as possible, and then have the day to herself without her father nagging her with chores, and without Leona nagging her with stories of Skuld.

But right then she would have given anything for the calming presence of her father. She needed him to look at her palm like he’d done last night and tell her that it was nothing, just a spot that had been there since she was born. She needed him to tell her myths that the Light Guard had forgotten on how Vilda had found another cure against the shadow plague and brought it to the All Father. A way of curing it that didn’t concern the Waking Eye.

Rorick sat with her for a while in silence, just a presence beside her was enough to help soothe her spirits, but she was lost in thoughts too deep to claw herself out of and talk about anything. Everything seemed so trivial now. What would they talk about? Whenever she thought of speaking her stomach knotted up worse than it already was, and so her words died on her lips.

She looked to the bee hive. Had she known what the shadow taking the bees was, she wouldn’t have touched them.
But I had gloves on,
she thought. How could it happen if she had gloves on?

As the sun reached the western horizon, Rorick pulled her close and kissed her forehead.

“I can stay with you if you want,” Rorick said.

Abagail shook her head. “Not with a darkling lurking around.” Her voice was tense, almost strained.

She was dying.

She closed her eyes against a wash of tears.

Rorick sighed and pushed to stand. He looked between the wooded path to his home and her.

“I can stay the night,” he suggested, but Abagail shook her head. As much as she wanted him to stay with her, he had to think of his own family, and likely her own household wouldn’t be worth any kind of company that night, not with what was happening.

“I will see you tomorrow then,” he said, only hesitating a moment before he headed off toward his home.

Abagail sat for a while longer on the porch, watching the rain sluice over the land. It was a rain that was much needed, but at that moment she would have given anything to stand in the slumbering rays of the Waking Eye, and pray that the darkness would leave her palm.

She stared into Hafaress’ Hearth and wondered if that’s where her fate lay. Was she to be conscribed to the flames? She should just get it over now, throw herself into the fire and let fate take its course. She would be better for it, instead of living in fear, and making other people take care of the shadow plague inside of her. She could save them all the heartache, if she wasn’t such a coward.

But it was getting darker, and she needed to get inside and prepare for Leona and her father’s return. What would she even say to them?

Abagail didn’t want to think about it. She pushed to her feet and sought the safety and familiarity of home.

She shut the door behind her and went to the kitchen, her actions spurred by fear. She found the largest, sharpest butcher knife she could and stared at the blemish on her palm. She lay her hand down on the counter, her palm up, and pressed the edge of the knife to her wrist. One quick chop, that’s all it would take, and she would be free of the plague, she would be free of it ever spreading across her body.

Abagail wasn’t sure if it would work, but she raised the blade high and brought it down with all of her might.

But before it cut through her flesh, she stopped. She couldn’t do it. The knife clattered to the floor, and she stumbled back away from the scene, revolted at what almost happened.

The silence of the house intruded on the moment, which might have been why she heard the movement upstairs even though no one was home with her.

At that moment, if she could have sank into the wall and escaped all of her problems she would have. Her head thrummed with a question she never thought she would ask. It was a question designated for people far weaker than herself:
why me
.

Why was all of this happening to her? Hadn’t she been good? Hadn’t she stayed as far away from talk of darklings as the Light Guard dictated? She kept her family safe, she didn’t concern herself with oddities like visions and sorcery as some people did. She kept Hafaress’ Hearth burning in their yard, and she cared for the animals in their charge.