The air was burning cold. It was mucky and humid, and she felt her dark clothes and her short black hair cling desperately to her small, flimsy, sweating body. She was breathing sharply, and the air sliced her throat frigidly. She knew how cold it must be from the ice stinging her stumbling bare feet, but her blood was hot, boiling and bumbling under the surface.
She fell against a tree to wipe the ice off her cheeks. Her tears were freezing. She suddenly shut her eyes and slid against the tree into the snow, letting a small whimper of desperation seep from her lips. Her hands were numb, but she could feel the blood still. There was no color like the crimson of blood, no feeling like the thick, warm liquid engulfing her fingers. She had never hated the color more. On the contrary, she had never loved it as much either.
The internal conflict of it all made her start all again. She buried her face in her skirts and cried, pulling the bloody hands over her head as if that, somehow, protected her. From her fears, her thoughts, her world. Sue cried out for a mother that wasn’t there, a father that didn’t care, a hope that was too rare.
She heard footsteps accompanied by voices and started. They were calling out to her, no doubt, calling her all the things she was. Witch. Murderer. Demon.
She couldn’t help it.
The girl pulled herself up by the tree trunk and ripped the peeling bark. Throwing the strip on the ground uselessly, she started off again. She was tripping, stumbling, and still crying all the while, but she was moving.
They were faster. She knew they’d catch up with her soon. She knew she’d die.
“Please!” she shouted to no one, her feet stumbling into each other. If she was a demon, a witch--“Why can’t I save myself?”
“Good always wins in the end!” They were too close now, taunting, laughing. She avoided petty conversation and ran, simply ran.
“Where are your powers now, hellion?” she heard them yelling behind her. “Where’s your ruthlessness now, demon?”
Her mind had two voices. The first, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and the second, “Please don’t try this, don’t make me do this!” She voiced the second. They laughed in response.
“It’s a girl!” one voice chortled. “I was unsure, but don’t you hear it? A girl.”
“A young girl,” one other added. The company laughed. “We’re hunters! We can take any adolescent we please!”
She ignored the pains in her side, the blurring of the world and stumbled heavily, pushing off the trees for support and speed like a drunkard. Her left foot went stiff but she carried it on, dragging it while swaying as the world did through her eyes. “Let me go,” she reasoned with herself. “They’re fine, leave them.”
She didn’t listen.
Her right leg went stiff and she fell to the ground. The world was pounding and spinning, closing in on her and her sides, her sides were splitting. She grabbed the snow with her bloody hands.
The group was upon her. Laughter, stomping, taunts. She counted five voices. All of them familiar.
The lightest of footsteps and the softest voice abruptly stopped. Slowly, in turn, the others did too. She was familiar to them too.
Her name was on all of their lips. She could feel the impending questions, the fear--the fury.
She was so enveloped in pain that she didn’t feel it, like one who adapts to the temperature in a room; soon it isn’t evident. She was changing, and she knew it. Perhaps it was bad, terribly bad, and she should do all she could to prevent it. But perhaps it was good, and she should let it happen, let it go…
“Hey.” The softest voice, the lightest footsteps, sat down next to her and took her shoulder. “Get up, please. I’m your friend, remember? It’s me.”
She couldn’t. Her human self could, but her real self couldn’t. She fought with it for a while.
Tristyn. That blonde haired, blue-eyed boy. She remembered him well, so well. Her closest friend since she had moved to that town at her young age. She could see him, so very well… she knew him. But then she didn’t, and she couldn’t. Her skin was getting thick.
“Get up.” He was shaking her again. “Come on, please, get up.”
She bit the ice in desperation. Tristyn. She knew him. What had he told her? He had told her--no. Who was Tristyn? She didn’t know.
“Please!” he screamed it now. “Get up, please, please!”
What did he say? Who is he? Tristyn, Tristyn, she knew him. No, she doesn’t. Who is Tristyn?
“Get away from her!” She couldn’t see herself, but she knew how far her transformation must have gone from the father’s voice, echoing in desperation. “Tristyn, get up!” Yes, get up, Tristyn, get up, get away from this monster! No, no Tristyn, stay here, where I can reach you…
“No!” He was being dragged away by his father. The other footsteps were retreating. “No, Dad, you can’t leave her here, she’ll--”
“I don’t care what that monster does or doesn’t do.” His voice was sharp, clear as a needle. “We are getting you home before something happens.” A cover was falling over her eyes. Her hair was going brittle.
“Dad!” Her nails were sharper, longer, her body in scales, full of them. Her teeth… she licked the sharp teeth in fear--and in satisfaction--and drew blood from her thickening tongue. “Don’t you see her? We have to help her!”
“I’ll help her, alright.”
“What? Dad, what are y--?”
“Tristyn, get out of the--”
“Dad, please! NO!”
It was one noise. Quick and simple. Echoing off the trees, piercing through the snow. She hadn’t felt anything, though she knew what the noise was. She opened her eyes and saw the world, through green, and turned to see Tristyn, standing there, shaking. Something was spilling out of the center of his body and onto his jacket.
“Tristyn.” His father stood there, heart in his throat, pale as ghost, unmoving as he held the still steaming gun in his hand. “Tristyn, I--”
Tristyn fell to the ground, holding the wound, but not crying, not screaming. She loomed over him and the father, who had gone to hold his fallen son, jumped back at her sight. He looked for a minute and, tears running down his face, stumbled away, throwing the gun down in terror, using the trees for speed like she had done when she was a human. He yelled to his crew of hunters, yet they were too far back to the village to hear his plea.
The human in her was screaming out, so much so that it overpowered the real her and the real her, for once, backed down. Her transformation remained, but for the first time in her life, she could control it.
“Tristyn. Tristyn, do you hear me?”
He opened his eyes but didn’t respond. He stared at the sky, unmoving and blank.
“I can save you. I can heal you.” His attention was sparked and he turned his head to look at her. Feeling stupid, “Do you want me to?”
He nodded in the snow, and it creaked beneath him. A stream of red blood was falling out of his lips.
“But… you’d…”
“I’d be… like… you….” he panted hoarsely, almost choking on the blood and nodding at her. “I… know.”
She wanted to question how he knew, when he knew--but now wasn’t the time or place. She put her hand on his wound and closed her eyes, reciting the words her mother had taught her over the cauldron that brisk day seven years ago in the past.
“It’s the healing spell,” she had mused softly to her daughter, stirring the broth for dinner that night. “Repeat after me. Heile dieses gefallenen Liebe.”
“Hell-e de-ses gef-all-e-nen lie-b-e.”
She had laughed. “Close enough, angel. Ersetzen Sie das Fleisch mit den meinigen. That, too?”
“Er-set--…”
“It’s Erzet.”
“Er-zetzen… see… daws flea-is-ch mit den mein-ni-gen.”
“Machen Sie einen lebendig fühlen. Ersetzen Sie die verstrichene Zeit.”
“Mommy, that’s too much!”
But now, she knew it, and now was her time to use it.
“Heile dieses gefallenen Liebe.
Ersetzen Sie das Fleisch mit den meinigen.
Machen Sie einen lebendig fühlen
Ersetzen Sie die verstrichene Zeit”
Over, and over, and over again.
Tristyn sat up. His eyes were awake, and he touched the site of the wound suddenly. It was as good as new, as if it had never been tainted by the bullet of a gun. He smiled at her, then his face fell when he saw hers. “Hey, are you okay?”
The monster was back as soon as the good deed ended. She fought with killing him, undoing her work, and turned around to run off. She ignored his confused screaming, ran faster than he did after her, and soon his words were memories, echoing off the remembering of her brain.
And for the rest of her life, no matter what she did, whom she killed, how many deaths her uncontrolled monster caused, she’d lay in the snow on that spot and whisper, “I saved Tristyn.” And she hoped that maybe, one day, that would help her save herself.
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