Veles, page 20
He navigated them through the thinning trees as she glanced at him from the corner of her eye and watched their surroundings. She was getting better at keeping track of their movements, and with the sun in the sky she could confirm their direction of travel. Yet even still, she knew that she would have been lost without Aiden, and with each step she took, she started to realize that she would have been lost without him years ago. Mizuki had grown far more attached to him than she had realized, and even though she didn’t always show it or even acknowledge it – she needed him, and she couldn’t help but feel like maybe he needed her too.
They didn’t reach the riverbank below Glass Lake until nightfall, and by that point, despite the slow pace that they had maintained all day, they were both struggling to walk. They stopped along the bank to refill their water pouches, washing their faces, feet, and shoes in the cool stream and allowing themselves a few minutes to breathe before they crossed into the forest and took the final steps out of the wolves’ territory. They had gotten lucky in their second pass not to encounter the desperate and starved creatures, but they didn’t want to spend any more time in the Woods than they had to.
“We’ll need to walk through the night,” Aiden whispered as they made their way into a small clearing and dropped down to the ground by a tall maple in exhaustion. He slid the pack and quiver from his shoulders and grunted in pain as he pulled off his wet, freshly washed boots. “We lost too much time in the rain yesterday and with taking the land path through the swamp. Gifting day is tomorrow, and we have to get back before sunrise, or we won’t stand a chance of sneaking in and finding my uncle.”
“I know.” Mizuki nodded, grimacing in pain as she stretched out her legs and bit back a groan.
The objective remained the same – they needed to find Keller O’Kane and try to swing the man to their side. She just hoped that Aiden’s uncle was as decent a man as they both believed him to be and that he would listen to them. Failing that, if he refused to stand up to the other Praetors and support them, they hoped that he would have enough kindness in his heart to at least allow them to make a run for it with Maebh before the rest of the village woke.
It wasn’t much of a plan.
If Keller refused to help them, they would not get far, and that was assuming that he let them go. They were both too injured, too worn, and too tired to sprint through the forest and evade the Village Guard – but at this point, they didn’t have any other options. The situation had changed, and the village was so much more complicated than they had realized. They had stepped into the middle of a deeply-rooted feud that the Elders had been fighting for decades. They had been naive and foolish to think that bringing Earnan home would change anything, and the old man had all but shattered their hopes of success while opening their eyes to the ruthlessness of the village Elders.
The truth was, Mizuki realized, that they had been doomed to fail from the start – and slowly, in the most heartbreaking way, she was starting to understand why her father had said what he did that night by the fire. It was a losing battle. One that had already been fought and lost time and time again because the Elders had control, the Praetors were happy, the world around them was harsh and brutal, and the village was too afraid to try anything else.
No one cared that there was a sacrifice every ten years so long as it wasn’t them or their family, and since the Elders used it to remove problems from the village, the practice was accepted.
She forced the circling thoughts from her head, knowing that dwelling on them and the situation would do her no good. They were where they were, and now they simply needed to deal with it and be prepared to fight tooth and nail when they got back to the village. Maybe they could convince Keller to go find Earnan’s body with them and bring it back as proof. Maybe they could reveal the crop shortages or show the unbounded map to the rest of the villagers who didn’t already know about it before the Elders realized they were back. Maybe Keller had allies they could appeal to, and maybe her own father would finally take a stand.
All she knew for sure was that she would try anything and do anything to make them listen – because after six days in the Wild with Aiden, and after everything that they had been through, she would not stop fighting until the village saw reason or until the Elders took her life.
She just hoped they were able to realize the first option before the second.
“Do you think they will have any patrols out in the forest?” Mizuki asked, glancing over at Aiden, who was collecting small sticks from the ground around them and gathering them into a tiny cluster. She removed her wet shoes and pulled out the last of Earnan’s herbs and linen wraps from their combined pack. Then she set about making a new woundwort paste in her small wooden bowl as Aiden started the tiny fire.
“I don’t know.” Aiden shook his head, finally answering and glancing up at her as the small fire sparked to life. The flames wouldn’t last more than a few hours with the modest collection of wood he had assembled, but she didn’t suspect that they were planning to stay here very long. He took some of the woundwort paste that she offered him, smearing it over a sizable blister that covered his heel as Mizuki tended to her own injured toes in the dim light. “They don’t usually have patrols, but with the ceremony tomorrow, it’s hard to say. There will likely be a guard stationed at my home, but I doubt they are out in the forest looking for us. By now they will have assumed that we deserted, but even if they are out, they wouldn’t be this far east. So, at least we have that in our favour – if we cut northwest from here through the rest of the forest, we should come out near the bottom of the village below the crops. We’ll be able to sneak around to my uncle’s while staying away from the trails near the lake.”
“Alright,” Mizuki agreed, wrapping her foot with fresh linen strips and pulling on her last pair of socks as Aiden did the same. “How long do you think it will take?”
“If we run – a couple of hours. If we walk, maybe five or six?” Aiden said, stretching out his legs and looking off to the north. “I’ve never been in this area, so the truth is, I’m not sure.”
“Then we shouldn’t chance it,” Mizuki said, packing away their supplies once more and pulling out the last of their food after rinsing her hands clean. She handed Aiden a strip of meat and pulled her knitted hat down over her ears for extra warmth as the flickering firelight danced across her skin. “We need as much time at the village as possible, so we shouldn’t stay here much longer.”
“I agree,” Aiden said with a sigh, his gaze returning to her and tracing over her body. Even in the low light of the small fire, she could see his worry. “Can you make it?”
“Does that matter?” Mizuki asked, a sad smile shifting across her lips as she looked at him. He looked terrible. Absolutely beaten and worn, and she knew that she must look just as bad. “Whether I can or not – I have to. There is no other choice.”
“I can carry you.” Aiden offered again, gesturing to the pack that sat between them. “We’re almost there. We can leave the pack behind and just take the books.”
“No, you’re just as exhausted as I am, Aiden.” Mizuki shook her head. “But we should empty the pack anyway, only bring the books, the water, and anything else we truly need.”
“Alright, if you’re sure,” Aiden said as he looked up to the sky.
She watched his expression grow tight as he stared into the night. She couldn’t imagine what must be going through his head as he let out a low sigh and closed his eye. As much as this affected her, it was his sister they were trying to save and his uncle that they depended on. She knew the apprehension must be tearing him apart, and if Keller refused to help, Aiden would be devastated more deeply than most of the people in the village were capable of understanding.
“We’ll rest for just a few hours,” Aiden said finally, opening his eye once more and shifting across the ground to sit by her side. “Then we’ll head out at a steady pace until we get within an hour of the village. Once we’re there – we go as fast as we can for the final stretch, and we don’t stop until we reach my uncle’s.”
“Alright.” Mizuki nodded in agreement, leaning forward to pull out the books that Earnan had given them.
She handed one to Aiden at random, then took another for herself and leaned back against the tall maple behind them. The cool night air grew colder as the stars grew brighter in the sky, and her breath started to crystallize before her nose. She felt Aiden shift closer. Then, as he had done the past few nights, his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and she realized that she had been shivering. She murmured a quiet thanks, keeping her eyes on her book as she felt his warmth start to inch through her body. She had no idea how he was so warm all the time, but as much as her heart beat nervously at the contact, she was grateful for it, because the small fire was doing little to keep her from freezing.
She did her best to focus on the book, her eyes struggling to stay open as her mind grew weary in the low light. Yet with every page she turned, she only felt her heart sink in sadness, and her mind burned with more questions. A good number of the words contained between the pages she couldn’t read. They were either smudged, too poorly written to be legible, or she simply didn’t know what they meant. Even then, she could glean enough to understand the image that they painted of the village. This book was Earnan’s journal. A personal account of what had happened within the village over the last few decades. It documented key events, and it specifically named people who were involved in the feud within the village and which sides they had taken. Miku’s name came up a lot, and twice she found sections written in symbols that had clearly been entered by her great-grandmother directly.
There were too many pages for her to be able to read them all, so she skimmed as best as she could while Aiden absorbed the one beside her. Neither of them spoke as the pages flipped more quickly, and their bodies grew tense with dark realizations until Aiden slowly closed the book on his lap.
“They’re having issues with the soil because they’re not rotating the crops enough,” Aiden murmured as he stared into the small smouldering fire. He subconsciously gripped her tighter, his thumb brushing along her arm as his brow furrowed in thought. “Earnan noted that the land was never very good to start with. I guess they had a really hard time getting anything to grow when they first started. Earnan said they would need to take years off, let the land grow wild for a season and then clear it again in order to restore the nutrients, but they refused in the last few decades. They didn’t agree that it would be a problem, the fallow years were too hard on the village, and they didn’t want to go looking for new grounds or food sources.”
“Earnan suspected that the Elders fabricated the crop shortage shortly before Dante and Anya broke from the village,” Mizuki replied. “And it wasn’t the first time. There were several notes in here about unexplained food shortages or things being spoiled in the past over the last several decades. It always seemed to happen when tension in the village was at its highest – and it was always blamed on Miku or anyone else who defied the Elders. People struggled in the winters, and in one case, Earnan noted that someone died from eating something that had gone bad. And there wasn’t just one hunting accident in the forest, Aiden – there were several, and those are just the ones that Earnan knew about. There were a few other families that were starting to listen to Miku toward the end, but then someone died while out hunting, and two others were injured.
“Then the Lears lost their son in the Gifting before my brother. Mrs. Lear’s husband had started to side with Miku, Aiden – that’s why it happened,” Mizuki said quietly, her heart sinking in her chest as she thought about the way that the old woman glared at her every time she walked past. They sat in silence for a moment before Mizuki swallowed and forced herself to continue, revealing to Aiden the other piece of information that had shaken her to her core. “At the start of his journal, Earnan mentions the first betrayers – that was what Kiren had mentioned when I was stealing the map, remember?”
“Yes.” Aiden nodded, his gaze flicking toward her.
“I didn’t know what he was walking about, and I’m still not entirely sure of the details.” Mizuki hesitated, her eyes dropping down to the book in her hands once more. “But based on what’s in here, I think they were the very first people to split from the village. He mentions family surnames that don’t exist in the village anymore – the Kozaks, the Kades, the Gills, the Tangs, the Browns, and a few others, including his own family name. His name was Earnan Sanchez, Aiden – and he didn’t have any family within the village.”
“You mean there were others that left before Dante and Anya?” Aiden asked as he twisted around to face her fully.
“Yes,” Mizuki confirmed, looking up at him once more. “A lot of others from the sounds of it. Dante’s last name was Boyko, and Anya’s was King – they left with the Hill and Scott families. Aiden, this has been going on for generations, and our village keeps getting smaller. Earnan noted that the first betrayers left shortly after the village first formed. Apparently, Miku’s mother believed that they crossed the chasm to the east to find a new home. They left after a fight broke out, and they were never seen again. My great-great-grandmother was the one who told Miku and Earnan about them.”
Mizuki stared at Aiden as her brow knitted together, and then she dropped her gaze back to her lap as her voice grew low.
“I don’t know why Miku never told me,” Mizuki whispered. “She never once mentioned the first betrayers.”
Silence passed between them until Aiden let out a low sigh, and she felt his body grow limp by her side.
“It’s so much worse than I thought it was,” Aiden whispered, and she felt him lean his head against hers as his voice grew rough. “How are we going to do this?”
It wasn’t truly a question, and even if it had been, she didn’t have an answer for him. So she sat there on the hard ground leaning gently against his side as they both stared out into the cold silence as the last of the flames died out. She waited until Aiden moved – until he couldn’t sit any longer, and he finally shifted to get to his feet. They left everything that they didn’t need on the ground by the tree. Then they re-layered their clothes, tied on their mostly dry shoes, and carefully packed the books. Mizuki made sure her small paring knife was still securely in her jacket pocket before she pulled her hat down over her ears once more and ditched the damaged bow on the ground as Aiden donned the mostly empty pack.
Then they set off into the night.
She didn’t question it when he took her hand and gripped it tight. They moved in silence through the trees, steady but quick, ignoring the groan of their muscles as they made their way toward the village. Despite it taking hours, time seemed to race by as they grew closer and closer. Before she knew it, the village was upon them, and her heart was racing in her chest. She wasn’t ready for this, and she could feel her stomach knotting in sickness as they started to run through the trees and dart through the bushes.
The crops were almost in sight. She recognized the land as the first light of morning broke through the sky. Aiden moved faster and faster, his feet still nearly soundless as they cut around a cluster of trees and darted under the low maple branches. Her heart was thudding now. Her legs were screaming in pain as she forced her limbs to keep up with his impossible pace. The muscles in her side spasmed. She could feel her knees threatening to buckle as the empty fields came into view, and they darted up toward Aiden’s uncle’s home.
They were almost there.
The dull light grew brighter, and the first morning birds began to sing as Aiden dropped her hand so they could both begin to sprint.
She could see it.
Her feet ached in pain. Her lungs were burning for air – but she could see it. Keller O’Kane’s house was just in the distance.
They darted into the next section of trees and cut around a collection of oaks as they made for the brush that would lead them up behind Keller’s home. Her legs were going to give out. Her lungs could barely breathe. Surely her heart would fail with the next painful thud. Just as her feet skidded across the ground and they banked around a large oak and darted to the north, she heard the snap of a twig before something collided across her chest.
All the air was crushed from her body, and she dropped to the ground with a heavy wheeze. Aiden screamed out in pain; the sound sliced through the air like a knife as something thudded to the ground by her side. Her vision blurred, and her mouth fell open in a silent scream of agony as her body refused to inhale. Blinking rapidly and gagging as a desperate wheeze finally left her lungs, she looked up to see a tall blurry figure standing above her. Then everything started to happen all at once, and it moved too quickly for her to track.
A deep voice sounded to her right as she was hauled from the ground. They did it so easily she felt like a small child, and it took her brain a moment to process what had happened. A Village Guard had struck her across the abdomen and knocked her to the ground as she and Aiden rounded the oak tree. They’d shot him with their bow. She could see the arrow jutting from his thigh as more voices sounded in the distance, and suddenly they were being dragged into the village as Aiden screamed her name.
“MIZUKI! MIZUKI! LET GO OF HER!!”
Her head rolled to the side as she finally caught her breath, and her legs instinctively began to kick at the man who was carrying her.
“AIDEN!” she screamed, trying and failing to get her bearings as she scratched at the man who was holding her.
There was so much commotion.
Too much movement.
She kicked and clawed as they dragged her across the ground, and her hat was lost to the chaos. Her eyes rapidly darted around as more voices broke out, and she tried to see what was going on as the sky grew lighter. Aiden was being dragged across the ground to her left, still trying to fight against the two guards who were holding him despite the arrow lodged into his leg.
