A Dagger in the Winds

Chapter 2 - Otylia

Chapter 2 - OtyliaI hate festivals.

THE BLACK HELLEBORE FLOWER on my bedroom nightstand seemed to suck away the candlelight as my toes met the chilled dirt floor. Most hellebore would never bloom so early in the spring, but I’d channeled the power of Dziewanna, goddess of the wilds and spring, to keep this one alive year-round. Unlike most girls and their pretty red and blue flowers, it wasn’t a decoration.

It was a reminder of Mother’s death.

Mother had loved the festival around the Drowning of Marzanna. Every year, after the arrival of the spring gods, she’d led me deep through the woods at dawn to welcome spring’s warmth against our bare feet.

Her dark brown hair like that of a sprawling willow would cascade down her back as she’d freed it from her headscarf. Married women in our tribe were supposed to cover their hair at all times, but Mother had claimed it was best to experience spring’s birth free, if only for a moment.

As we’d wandered, she told stories of beautiful girls finding their love in the moons following the equinox. I’d lamented I would ever be a wife.

“Oh, my little Otylka,” she’d said with her hand at my cheek. “Even the wild goddess was forced by her father to be wed. But when your time comes, the man you marry will be of your choosing. Dziewanna’s spirit is yours, and no man will tame you.”

When Mother had died just weeks after the spring equinox four years ago, the festival lost its meaning of new life. She’d suffered from the illness we called Marzanna’s Curse since the end of winter, and her potions hadn’t been enough to keep the curse at bay.

The day after she passed, I’d found that black hellebore next to me in the woods as I wept. I still didn’t know whether it was a fluke or a gift from her wandering spirit as she traveled to the underworld of Nawia. It didn’t matter which. I’d never stopped missing her.

This morning, I’d heard the commotion outside before the sun had even risen.

Every spring the tribe’s chiefs came to Dwie Rzeki with their eligible daughters and strongest sons. Every spring they thanked Jaryło for protecting the crops and ending the thaw. And every spring they forgot Dziewanna—the one who actually killed Marzanna and ensured there was anything left to restore.

With a deep breath, I gripped Dziewanna’s amulet of an hunter’s bow on my necklace and said a prayer, asking the goddess to give me the strength to make it through the day. I’d need it.

The hellebore held my gaze as I tied my long black hair into our tribe’s traditional braid. The weave signaled that I was unmarried—and as of tonight, eligible to be wed—but the bone talismans I wore within it usually kept boys away.

Once I finished, I changed into my simple gray dress, blew out the candle, and grabbed my herb bag.

Our house’s main room was quiet besides the meowing of our sleek black cat, Maryn, and the crackling of the fire in the stone stove as I pushed aside the cloth separating it from my small bedroom. I crouched for a second to scratch the cat’s head. He was a stupid little thing that knew only how to knock the ingredients for my potions off the table. Father said cats protected their homes from evil spirits, but as I looked down at Maryn, his purring filling the space, I doubted he would be any use against a mouse, let alone a spirit.

Over a dozen wood-carved statues of many of the gods lined the room, their eyes watching me as I moved to the door. Father’s staff was missing from the corner. He must’ve been away, helping prepare for the festival’s rituals already. He would come home soon, and I didn’t want to be there when he did.

Our cottage was bigger than most in the village. As high priest of our tribe, Father received land, the house, and all the food we needed. I had continued potion-making after Mother’s death, but the bartering barely earned enough to trade hunters for their spare animal bones. They always raised a brow at me but accepted.

I stepped into the early morning daylight and scowled at the villagers hobbling by. While they drank and danced, I had work to do.

I served as one of the szeptuchy, whispering sorceresses able to channel the power of the god who had chosen us. It was our responsibility protect the gods’ altars and do what they asked. Every channeler trained from a young age to prepare for initiation when we turned twelve, but the gods never chose many of those who went through with the rituals. No szeptucha had ever channeled more than a single god.

I channeled two.

A group of stumbling boys, likely no older than me, eyed me as I ducked through the village’s eastern gate and into the woods. Their taunting whistles followed, and my fingers twitched. I could strangle them.

Dziewanna was my primary deity. Mokosz, her mother and the goddess of women and divination, had also chosen me, but my connection to Dziewanna was the strongest. With the wild goddess’s power, I could whisper to the trees, waters, and animals, calling them to my aid. There would’ve been a thrill in shutting up the boys. But I had better things to do.

I headed toward the deeper parts of the forest, away from the drunkards in search of herbs. The festival guests would need relief from their sickness when they drank themselves into a stupor.

Even before I could channel Dziewanna, I’d had a keen sense of where to find the right flowers, herbs, and fungi to use in potions. Mother had always sent me to collect them for her before…

Tears threatened my eyes as I knelt to pick an edible mushroom. Gods, I miss her.

When Father had scolded me as a child for running into the forest with my hand clasping Dziewanna’s amulet at my collar, Mother had smiled and encouraged me to get so lost that only the goddess could guide me home. Father was a follower of the eldest god, Swaróg, and didn’t approve of me serving Dziewanna. To him, she was nothing but the headstrong, rogue goddess. I didn’t care what he thought.

I ripped the mushroom from the earth and threw it into my bag. Then, with my dress’s skirt sweeping behind me, I stomped through the woods, crushing the leaves underfoot as I went.

The festival had me agitated. It happened every annually when the tribe ignored Dziewanna, but this year was worse.

On top of the drunk boys eager to put their hands on anything with breasts, I had plenty of motivation to avoid the crowds. I was sixteen now. Despite Mother’s claims I would choose my husband, Father wished to marry me off to another influential priest or chief to increase his own standing in the tribe. That just encouraged me to stay away even more.

Even now, when I knew them well, the woods were a rare haven. They were Dziewanna’s realm, untouched by the corrupting hand of man. As far as I knew, she had never chosen a szeptucha before me. That made serving her lonely. But I liked it that way.

With each stride I took deeper into the wilds, my array of bone-carved amulets rattled against my hips. Besides helping me connect to the gods, they did a fine job keeping people away. Still, I’d heard the villagers’ whispers through the years.

“There goes the witch of the woods.”

“Maybe those bones are human.”

“I bet she poisons us all with her potions.”

I would only smirk and shoot them a glare in response. They blindly believed me to be a witch. While witches used spells like szeptuchy, they channeled dark spirits for their selfish magic. A szeptucha’s power, instead, was useless if she acted against her god’s wishes.

Many of the unclaimed initiates pursued witchcraft after their rejection. That power didn’t make them like us, but that didn’t matter to the simple-minded villagers. To them, I was a sorceress. Whether I channeled the gods or black spirits didn’t matter. I was strong—a girl with power they couldn’t have—and that scared them.

Maybe that was why they excluded Dziewanna too. She’d dared to challenge Perun’s rule over the Three Realms: Prawia, Jawia, and Nawia—the lands of the gods, living, and dead. When she’d failed, Perun had forced her to marry his rival, Weles, who was the god of the lowlands and underworld. Father said that was how to tame a wild girl. But no one could tame Dziewanna, not even Weles. I would be no different.

I shivered and pulled my sleeves over my forearms. The breeze was cool this morning. Odd. Dziewanna and Jaryło should’ve started to warm the earth by now.

My hand drifted to the dirt alongside a willow as I whispered to Dziewanna, calling for her connection to nature. Through the goddess, I sensed everything within the tree, its vast system of roots underground, and the wilds that stretched around it. The forest was part of me—joined with my soul. I craved that. I was whole with Dziewanna’s power flowing through me and nature’s senses mixing with mine.

Frost stung the ends of my fingers and raced up my arm. I staggered back, breaking the connection. “What are you doing, Marzanna?” I whispered into the winds.

Marzanna’s death was the only thing I looked forward to during the spring equinox. Her illness had taken Mother from me. Burning her effigy and watching it drown in Dziewanna’s river was my annual bit of revenge.

Marzanna was Dziewanna’s sister and Jaryło’s twin. No one knew why she was bitter rivals with her spring siblings. Some claimed she hadn’t always brought despair, but Father and the other priests dismissed them.

Tribal customs banned the channeling of Marzanna’s power, and the priests had exiled her worshippers to the cursed Mangled Woods in the far east of our lands. Many of her szeptuchy hid after their initiation. Like all channelers, though, they bore their goddess’s mark on their neck. Anyone with a Frostmark who refused to leave was executed.

It was stupid. There were rumors that those Frostmarked had established a cult in the Mangled Woods. Pushing channelers into their arms was asking for trouble. But I was just the weird witch girl. Why would my opinion matter?

After an hour of collecting herbs, I’d filled my bag, but I wasn’t ready to return. Dadźbóg was still early in his journey across the sky. I had time before Father would expect me.

I pulled the skull of a muskrat from my bag and placed it at the base of an oak. The hunter I’d traded with had demanded I cure an infection on his foot in exchange for the skull. After I’d narrowed my eyes and started chanting to the trees, he’d settled for a potion that would help him sleep. The last thing I’d wanted to see was his disgusting foot.

Bones were powerful when used correctly. Since they still held elements of the animal’s life force, or žityje, they helped channel a god’s power—or strengthen a witch’s own. They were especially helpful with Mokosz’s divination rituals.

On the day I would jump the fire, I needed to know what Father had planned. Tension balled in my stomach at the thought of what type of man he would arrange for me, but curiosity was stronger than my fear.

Mokosz’s Mothermark—four diamonds divided by a X—stared back at me from my wrist. I traced each of them, anticipating the rush that came with her rituals. All channeling brought power coursing through me, but divination was seeing what would be—or at least what could be—and nothing was like it.

Mokosz’s diviners, like all szeptuchy, were women. The men had their doubts. That never stopped them from visiting me in search of the future when it suited their purposes.

“Great Mother, bring me your sight,” I whispered in the old tongue of the gods, clutching Mokosz’s amulet with one hand and hovering the other over the skull. “Show me what is to come and what is done.”

The world faded as darkness swallowed me. The ritual understood my will, my desire without words. Mokosz led me into the river of time, guiding me toward what she wanted me to see. I surrendered to her.

When the vision formed around me, I stood deeper in the woods than I’d ever gone. A thin layer of frost covered the hard ground, and the surrounding oaks lacked their leaves as their dark, dead ones meshed with the frozen earth.

I sighed. This isn’t Father’s plan. Why are you showing me this?

Something cracked in the grove ahead. My hand snatched Dziewanna’s amulet, and I hesitated before creeping forward, not sure what I was about to find. Within Dziewanna’s power, I sensed a spirit—one I had only felt once before.

The leszy stood amid a snow-covered clearing. Before him trembled a scrawny blond boy, dressed in a dirtied brown tunic.

“Half-Chief?” I asked, using Wacław’s nickname, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. What was High Chief Jacek’s second-born son doing so far from the village with a forest guardian?

I studied the frost covering the leszy’s typically lush body. The towering spirits were supposed to be friendly to Dziewanna and Weles—as the masters of the forests—but another deity’s mark stained this one. A shiver ran down my spine as I recognized it.

Marzanna…

The leszy spoke, but when his words pierced the air, the ground split. I cried out as the darkness pulled me away.

“I needed to see that!” I shouted to Mokosz with my fists clenched. “Marzanna is planning something.”

“Oh, little one,” she said in my head, “you will see all of it in time.”

When I opened my mouth to reply, everything spun. My stomach turned as the void faded and more visions flashed before me.

In the first, a whirlwind caught Wacław in the forest, lifting him off the ground. Air rushed from his lungs as I fought my way to him. Each step felt like an eternity. The gale’s power tore at my arms, forcing me to collect. Then, I let loose a scream with a strength that came from neither of my goddesses. The gusts ceased, and when Wacław dropped to the ground, the vision slipped to another.

I stood at the edge of a moonlit pasture in an elaborate dress. Rain poured. Wacław knelt in the muck and stared through the storm at a zmora, one of Marzanna’s undead minions and the most frightening type of demon I’d ever faced. Blood dripped from his arms and chest. His breaths were shallow, weak, and when he struggled to his feet, the monster snarled and lunged.

They never clashed.

Instead, light swarmed over me, and I found myself back-to-back with Wacław in a forest I didn’t recognize. Snow blanketed the ground and shouting filled the air as warriors charged at us with blood in their eyes. I swung my dagger and reached for Dziewanna. But her power was distant, fleeting. I was defenseless as the warrior’s blade streaked toward me.

A moment before the blade struck, Wacław slid his shield into my grasp. Now vulnerable himself, he spun through a group of trees as he sparred with a warrior of his own. When my voice called after him, Mokosz pulled me away once again.

Why are you doing this?

I begged for it to stop as the tide of time drowned me, yet the goddess’s grip would not relent. She forced me deeper, and my mind followed.

I floated in an endless pit of darkness, but this wasn’t time trying to drag me away. It was cold, deathly still. Neither Dziewanna nor Mokosz answered my call as a sharp crackling encircled me.

Then came the pain.

A being of pure light clutched my throat, choking me as sparks surged from its fingers and seared at my skin. I kicked at the creature, but no matter how hard I fought, it wouldn’t relent. Wacław knelt nearby—his eyes glowing as lightning arced through his veins. I sensed his power in my soul, unlike anything I’d ever felt.

When he stood, time swept away the light once again and left me drifting in its wake. Every part of me shuddered at what I’d seen.

What is he?

Many in the tribe had nicknamed Wacław the Half-Chief—the concubine’s son that nobody bothered to respect. I had wondered if that was why we’d been so close growing up. Despite our fathers’ disdain for each other, he’d always defended me when people called me a witch, and I couldn’t have cared less about who his mother was. He had been kind and understanding when others scoffed at me for hoping to serve Dziewanna. Had.

A hundred memories filled my mind of our time as children, running from our fathers’ quarrels. We’d been Wašek and Otylka, a warrior and sorceress adventuring through our imaginary worlds and slaying demons—he with his soul-form and I with my channeling. Besides Mother, he’d been all I had as a child.

That night four years ago had changed everything.

Somehow, I’d channeled before completing my initiation. The power had been raw, as if I’d unshackled something inside me in my desperation to save Wacław from the wolves. Even now I didn’t understand it.

There had been fear in Wacław’s eyes that night, and the next day, he’d trembled when he met me at our usual place in the woods. He’d worn a black eye and bruises on his neck that hadn’t come from the wolves. When I’d asked about the wounds, he’d shook his head. “They were there when I woke up.”

Wacław had always been quieter than the other boys, but the few days after that, he barely spoke. He insisted we meet where no one could see us, refusing to answer why. Then, one overcast morning, he came with tears in his eyes.

“I can’t be seen with a witch anymore,” he said without meeting my gaze.

Though I tried to take his hands, to ask him why, he gave no answer. After that, he avoided me like the other foolish boys, and when Mother died only a week later, he didn’t come to comfort me.

In one moon, I’d lost my best friend and Mother. I knew Jacek had kept Wacław away, but his betrayal still felt like a knife in my gut.

Pushing away those memories, I spoke to Mokosz, “I don’t understand. All I wanted was to figure out Father’s plan.”

“That is not what you wished to see, only what you believed you needed to see.”

“What?”

One last vision rushed through my mind.

Wacław stood with me under the crescent moon. Snow drifted through the air, obscuring the rolling plains as I shivered and looked from the moon to him.

His hair was longer than usual, oddly unruly for the son of a chief, and patches of red covered his face and the tips of his ears. Passion shone in his light blue eyes as he stared at me. I hated it. And when he stepped forward, wrapping his arms around my waist and leaning in, I screamed and tore myself from the ritual.

My heart hammered my chest as I dug my hands into the cool dirt, clinging to reality. I’d seen war and murder in my visions before. This was worse than all of them. Anyone but him…

When I raised my head, the forest no longer felt safe. I saw his gaze everywhere I looked—the gaze of the boy who’d abandoned me when I needed him most.

No, I told myself. Father had despised whenever I went near Wacław, and that was no different now. It didn’t matter what he’d been like when we were kids. We’d changed, and Mokosz only ever showed what could happen.

Gripping her amulet, I shook my head. “I’ll never kiss him.”

An animal’s panting approached.

I shot to my feet, ready to channel. The blur of orange bolted through the corner of my vision, darting between the trees. It circled around me, and when it stopped a few strides away, I let myself breathe.

It’s just a fox.

Most red foxes were friendly with Dziewanna, and I sensed her connection with this one.

“Follow her,” Dziewanna said, her voice swirling through the branches.

“Where?”

“Don’t ask questions. Go!”

The fox took off, heading deeper into the woods. I groaned. The festival hadn’t even started, and I was already sick of the day. But Dziewanna had given me a command, so I forced away my reluctance and ran after the fox.