Fated Desire

Twelve - Stray from the path of Fate

Sastra closed her eyes. Her stomach felt as though it was tied in knots, bile twisted and threatened to rise up the back of her throat. Her lungs were squeezed, unwilling to take in enough air. She concentrated on the warm soft fur of her horse beneath her hands. Molly the horse had so far been a good companion. Sastra inhaled carefully, she imagined Jason stood beside her, looking up with that earnest expression in his blue eyes. He would tell her to breathe. So that’s what she would do.

Sastra focused on putting aside her panic before looking up and around again. She was still lost. Endless trees stretched in all directions. They were all just…trees. When she’d raced through between them, there hadn’t been time to take notice of what was around her. Could she find the direction that they’d come from?

Twisting in the saddle, she tried to take notice of the ground. But the undergrowth was thick and lush with flowers and summer grasses among the leaf litter. Where there were patches of barren ground, the earth was hard and dry without signs of hoof prints. After taking the time to slowly examine all the ground around her, panic threatened to rise again. Why wasn’t she better at this? Sastra tried to swallow her frustration, anger wasn’t going to help her now. Hunting and tracking weren’t really her skillset. That’s okay, she told herself. It wasn’t possible to be good at everything and these weren’t skills she’d needed in her previous life, but she hated feeling useless. It made her vulnerable.

What had Jason said? What was the plan if they became separated? To find the nearest dwelling and wait in sight of it. Them, if more than a day passed, she was to journey South alone. Sastra looked up at the sky. The clouds had closed in, it was going to be a humid, sticky evening and an unbearable night. But at least, even now she could still orient herself south.

It was easier to breathe, Sastra pointed her horse south then looked directly back, North. Sure enough, where she hadn’t been able to spot it before were the signs of her journey through the three, a number of broken twigs, snapped off from where Molly had thundered past. She could remember back before the attack looking out over the rise of trees, and seeing a twist of smoke in the distance surely that would be the best place to wait for Jason. Sastra took a deep breath in, held the air in her lungs. She waited until the trembling of her hands had faded. Finally, she noticed the horse forward, circling around through the forest toward the distant spiral of smoke.

Although she moved slowly, taking care to listen out, Sastra couldn’t determine what had happened to Jason. No, could she hear any signs of scuffle or pursuit. The evening was drawing in dark and quiet, taking care to cover her tracks meant that it took far longer to close the distance than riding in a straight line. No birds sung from the trees. The hum and busy life of insects had ceased as she picked her way forward. Always alert. Wondering constantly what has become of the Knight.

At a slower pace, it took over an hour to approach the source of smoke. She could feel that Molly’s legs were tired. The horse was sluggish as she moved. So Sastra dismounted, leading the animal on foot. It was then that all the hairs lifted on the back of her neck. The skin on her arms horripilate and Sastra stood absolutely still. There was not a sound from the forest for the trees of surrounding her, not a whisper of life. Not even the pressure of the breeze through the canopy of leaves. Even the millions of tiny flies had fled and left the air empty except for the heat. Utter silence and stillness as though the woodland held its breath. Waiting.

She felt as if fate stretched out it’s hand, within the dim light in the shadows of three thanks. Thick clouds blocked out any chance of seeing the stars, but the air remained hot. Sastra lifted her chin, and set her shoulders back. Jason had left a knife in the saddlebags and she took the time to turn into Molly, and slid her hand into the leather pocket. Her fingers brushed the woven strap of the handle and she pulled it into her palm, before turning enough to look over her shoulder. Her long hair swung from it’s ponytail in a shimmer of gold and she peered into the darkness. Her heart squeezed, heat rising along her collarbone as though something stirred her blood. Something like excitement, or desire. But Sastra knew she was neither excited or feeling amorous…she felt exposed.

There was something between the trees, a faint glow of light. She stared at it, a firefly? She nearly laughed at herself, but couldn’t find the breath to make a sound. The rising smoke was to her right, over the next rise she expected to find a house or farmstead, and hopefully Jason. Her journey back to a meeting place had led her North again, but the firefly that lingered in the trees was due South.

Sastra turned away, she’d stow the knife, mount up and get to the farmstead. No more thoughts or time spent on the strange feeling that was creeping over her skin. But even as she released a knife, that same unyielding sense of fate crept over her body once more. As though she stood in a pool of water with gently rising waves lapping over her limbs.

Without knowing why she took hold of the knife once more and pulled it free of the bag. She turned to study the firefly that lingered between the trunks of two mighty oak trees. Each twisted and gnarly, trunks growing away from each other before their branches connected and over years had effortlessly intertwined.

What is it a firefly? Satra stepped forward, knife held lightly in her grip. Molly knickered, huffing as she watched her rider step away from their route and into the forest. Impatient curiosity how did the Duchess placing one foot in front of the other picking her way across the living floor of the forest. The firefly hadn’t moved and as she approached, Sastra could see more clearly that it wasn’t a firefly at all. No insect or bird could linger so perfectly in the air without sound. A small circle of golden fire. It burnt without smoke or heat. Magic. It could be the only explanation. But how could they be Magic so lost in the regions of the forest?

It seemed unlikely that a great magician or Myst would be living in the farmstead. And if so, why were they so keen on captivating her attention? Standing before the fiery ring, Sastra could feel the light upon her face. A gentle touch, like a welcome beam of sunshine on a cool spring day. Strangely, she felt no sense of danger. In a reckless gesture, she suspected Jason wouldn’t appreciate, she lifted her hand to touch the circle. It felt deliciously warm like a soothing bath. This is ridiculous, Sastra try to tell herself yet unusual curiosity continued to win out. I’ve been spending too much time among Knights, she thought. Otherwise, she would never go looking for strange things in the forest alone.

Part of her, was distantly aware that the horse Molly was no longer behind her. Had she strayed further from the path than she knew? Looking back at where she’d left her mount, it seemed as though the horse had been lost to the forest. But it was the sudden darkness as she straightened that took her by surprise. The floating fire had vanished, or had it moved?

There, due south once more was a ring of fire, silently burning. Sastra pressed her back teeth together, she didn’t like mysteries. Or things that she couldn’t explain. Nor did she like the sense that she was being compelled to follow the trail of magic. She set her shoulders back, whatever, or whoever was behind this, was going to get a piece of her mind. Sastra moved forward again, with less hesitation as she strode along the path picked out by the fire, this time before she could get close enough to touch the circle faded before appearing further away. Sastra walked faster, picking up her stride as she jogged through the trees, ducking under the arm of an ancient, fallen chestnut in order to follow the dancing circles that lingered always just ahead.

She ran, breathless, sweat sliding down the back of her neck and gathering at the curve of her spine, the sensation of pleasant warmth increasing with every circle she closed down. Everything in her body telling her, in a language her mind didn’t understand, that this was right and good on a primal level. Something as ancient and comforting as the standing stones that littered the kingdom, was calling to her. Had she ever heard it before? She wondered as she ran. Her breath in synchronicity with the movements of her body, in a way she usually only experienced when she was dancing. Sastra dismissed that idea just as quickly. There was something exhilarating about running through the trees in the dark, unafraid.

If there had ever been such a call before, Sastra knew herself enough to know that she would have been too afraid to answer. All that she knew, was that something powerful waited at the end of the magic trail. Until suddenly the ground dropped away beneath her. All her certainty vanished as she fell, dropping down over the edge of a cliff she hadn’t seen whilst running in the dark. Her shout echoed through the gully, where the river had carved itself passage over thousands of years. She dropped her body length onto hard dry ground and tumbled. She scrambled, struggling to catch hold of anything. Her hand was caught in the v of a root and she cried out. Her wrist took the weight of her body as she kicked against the dirt and heaved herself up, rolling onto the ledge.

She crawled over the narrow platform and set her back to the cliff wall. Dust and dirt showered over her, making her cough as she stared out in the darkness. Her wrist throbbed, her soft palms were grazed and stinging. Sastra tried shaking the dirt from her hair and face but it only made more scatter and tumble from overhead. What was she doing here? What in the world had seen her turn away from the farmstead and chase after magic in the night? Magic that had led her straight over the edge of a cliff. She could hear the river on the ravine floor below, far below. The magic had felt…friendly and familiar in a way she couldn’t define. But it had tried to kill her. Panting, struggling for air, sweat beading her brow as the warm night smothered her, Sastra felt chilled.

Despite her exertion and the temperature, she felt as though a chilled touch wrapped around her neck and pulled the heat from her body. If she hadn’t managed to land on the ledge… if her wrist hadn’t tangled in the roots, she would be dead.

Across the ravine, she saw the glow of a fiery circle, persistent and mocking. It lingered on the far side before fading away when she made no movement to climb back to her feet in the dark, or try and jump across the valley to reach it.

But then, once the trail of bitter magic faded, she could see some standing where it had been. Sastra held her breath. The ravine was not insignificant, the width of at least a large barn, it was possible that whoever stood there couldn’t see her, huddled in the shadows of the cliff, hidden in the tangled roots of the trees that grew far too close to ruin.

The shadowy figure moved and her heart missed beats. It wasn’t a person at all, was it a wolf?