Crimson Bound
Authors: Rosamund Hodge
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Love & Romance, #Family, #General
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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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For my mother,
who taught me one half of how to be brave,
and my father,
who taught me the other half.
Contents
THIS STORY BEGINS WITH ENDLESS NIGHT AND infinite forest; with two orphaned children, and two swords made of broken bone.
It has not ended yet.
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“I
n all your life, your only choice,” Aunt Léonie said to her once, “is the path of needles or the path of pins.”
Rachelle remembered that, the day that she killed her.
When Rachelle was twelve years old, Aunt Léonie picked her to become the village’s next woodwife.
Rachelle had been to her aunt’s cottage a hundred times before, but that morning she stood awkwardly straight and proper, her hands clasped in front of her. Aunt Léonie knelt before her, wearing the white dress and red mantle of a woodwife.
“Child,” she said, and Rachelle’s spine stiffened because Aunt Léonie only called her
that when she was in trouble, “do you know the purpose of a woodwife?”
“To weave the charms that protect the village,” Rachelle said promptly. “And remember the ancient lore.”
Rachelle thought she would like weaving the yarn through her fingers. She knew she would love learning the old tales. But she wished that woodwives still went on quests. She wanted to
live
the stories, not just tell them to the village children.
“And who was the first woodwife?” asked Aunt Léonie.
“Zisa,” said Rachelle. “Because she was the first person to protect anyone from the Great Forest, when she and Tyr killed the Devourer.”
“And who is the Devourer?” asked Aunt Léonie.
“The god of the forestborn,” said Rachelle. “Father Pierre says he doesn’t really exist, or anyway he’s not a god, because there is only one God. But whatever the Devourer was, he had the sun and the moon in his belly until Tyr and Zisa stole them and put them in the sky.”
Father Pierre said that part of the story wasn’t true either, but Rachelle didn’t see how he could be so sure when he hadn’t been there three thousand years ago. And she liked that part of the story.
“He is the everlasting hunger,” said Aunt Léonie in a voice of grim resignation. “And yes, once he held all the world in darkness, and once all mankind was ruled by the forestborn, who hunted us like rabbits.”
A thread of uneasiness slid through her stomach. “Tyr and Zisa killed the Devourer,” she said. “Zisa died, and Tyr became king.”
“No,” said Aunt Léonie. “Tyr and Zisa only bound him. And that binding is nearly worn out.”
She said the words so simply, it was a moment before Rachelle understood them, before she felt the awful, sickening lurch of real fear.
Quietly, relentlessly, Aunt Léonie went on, “One day soon he will open his eyes and yawn, and then he will swallow up the moon and the sun, and we shall live in darkness once again.” She met Rachelle’s eyes. “Do you believe me, child?”
“Yes,” said Rachelle, as her heart beat,
No, please, no
, but when she met Aunt Léonie’s eyes, she had to think,
Maybe
.
It’s all right
, she told herself.
Aunt Léonie will save us.
But Aunt Léonie didn’t plan to save anyone.
For three years, Rachelle sat obediently braiding charms in the cottage. She learned
to ward off fever and keep mice out of grain, and to prevent woodspawn—the animals born in the Great Forest, suffused with its power—from wandering into the village and attacking people. But none of it mattered, because when the Devourer returned, no charm would be strong enough to protect anyone. Aunt Léonie told her so again and again.
“What can we
do
?” Rachelle always asked.
Aunt Léonie would only shrug. “Sometimes abiding is more important than doing.”
Zisa hadn’t abided. Zisa had fought the Devourer and saved the whole world, but apparently woodwives weren’t supposed to save people anymore. They were supposed to sit in their cottages and braid insignificant charms and never, ever dream of changing the world.
Rachelle clenched her teeth and furiously dreamed. Every day the cottage felt more like a prison.
Until one day she was walking home from Aunt Léonie’s cottage and she realized that something had changed. The shadows had grown deeper; the blue flowers by the side of the path had begun to glow. The wind felt like fingertips tracing her neck. Shadowy, phantom mushrooms studded the ground; a deer made out of black cloud peered at her from between the trees, its eyes glowing red.
She blinked and it was gone, but her heart was thudding and her veins buzzing. She had seen the Forest. Not just the woods around her village—she had seen a glimpse of the Great Forest, the Wood Behind the Wood. You could wander for days beneath the trees and never see it, because it was not part of the human world; it was a secret, hidden place that sat just a little to the side. Sometimes its power trickled and oozed out through the shadows of tree leaves or the hollows carved by tree roots.
Usually it could only be seen on solstice nights. Aunt Léonie had told her that. But maybe all those rules were wearing down.
And then she heard a voice, like butter and burned honey: “Good afternoon, little girl.”
She turned around.
Between two trees stood a man, shadowed against the glow of the setting sun behind him.
Then he took a step forward, and she realized that he was not a man. He had a human face, pale and narrow. He wore a dark, rough cloak like any villager might wear. But she could sense the predatory, inhuman power beneath his skin. When she glanced away from him, she couldn’t remember anything about his face except that it was lovely.
She looked back, and his eyes met hers, glittering and alien. He was a forestborn: one of the humans who pleased the Devourer, accepted him as their lord, and were remade by his power into something not quite human anymore.
“Little girl,” he said, “where are you going?”
Her heart was making desperate spasms, but Zisa hadn’t been afraid, or at any rate hadn’t let it stop her. They said Zisa had learned from the forestborn themselves how to defeat the Devourer.
Maybe Rachelle could do the same thing.
He was only a pace away from the path now, the path that was lined in little white stones to protect it.
“Little girl,” he said, “what path are you taking?”
“The path of needles,” she whispered. “Not the path of pins.”
And she stepped toward him off the path. Her mind was a white-hot blur. She couldn’t even tell anymore if she was afraid. She only knew that he was part of the shadow that had lain across her world all her life, and she wouldn’t run from him, she
wouldn’t
. So she stared into fathomless, inhuman eyes and said, “You can kill me, but you can’t hunt me.”
He laughed. “Maybe I won’t. What’s your name, little girl?”
“Rachelle,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Nothing human anymore.” He circled her slowly, examining her, and Rachelle’s spine straightened, even though her skin prickled with fear.
“They say you were human, once,” she said.
“Then why do you dare speak to me, when you are human still?”
“I’m the woodwife’s apprentice,” she said. “I was born to protect people from the Forest.”
Again he laughed. “Oh, little girl. You were born to be prey for my kind. You were trained to sit plaiting charms against fever until you become a half-wit old woman. What you choose—is up to you.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, but there was a sudden emptiness in the air, and she knew before she turned around that he was gone.
Rachelle wondered if he had come to hunt her. But when he found her on the path the next day, he still didn’t even try to touch her.
She met him again and again, and every time she stepped off the path. Always she kept a pace between them. Always she wore the charms embroidered on her cloak and
woven into her belt.
She could never remember his face. But she could remember that he answered her questions and never tried to hurt her.
“Tell me about the Devourer,” she said. “What is he, really?”
“The breath in our mouths and the hunger in our hearts,” said the forestborn. “Be patient, little girl. You’ll meet him yourself someday.”
“Have you met him? Is that how you became a forestborn?”
“What did your aunt tell you?” he asked.
“A forestborn puts a mark on a human,” she said. “The human must kill somebody in three days or die. If he kills somebody, he becomes a bloodbound, which means the power of the Forest is growing in him, until finally he gives up the last of his human heart and becomes a forestborn.”
“That’s true enough,” said the forestborn. “Would you like to try it?”
“No,” said Rachelle, and tensed, wondering if he would finally kill her.
But he only chuckled. “Then answer my question. What did you mean when you said the path of needles, not the path of pins?”
He remembers what I said
. The realization slid through her, terrifying and sweet at once.
He thinks of me when we are apart.
“Something my aunt told me once. She said that you always had to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins. When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That’s what it means. The quick and easy way, or the painful way that works.”
That’s what Aunt Léonie said, but really she had chosen the path of pins. All her aunt’s charms could do was pin the world together—keep people a little bit safer, give them a little more time.
Rachelle wanted to sew the world back to safety, if she must use her own bones for needles.
It ended on a moonless autumn night, when the wind was moaning in the trees. The forestborn stood on the opposite side of a little clearing, his breath frosting the air. He looked as remote and foreign as the stars, but Rachelle was determined to have his secrets before dawn.