Agnieszka
The rhythm of the sea crashing below is usually enough to quiet her mind. She is accustomed to anxiety and avoids its triggers whenever possible. This means that she is often solitary, lingering on her clifftop where she can be found by those who are truly looking, but never surprised or stumbled upon. Well, almost never. She cannot think about the last time someone had surprised her there, her head is already too full, too loud with threat and worry. She should leave Nerine and go to a sanctuary.
So she picks her way down the cliff, a familiar path but not one to be taken carelessly. Though she sometimes leaps down the last bit to land in the grey sand and race to the water she doesn’t do so today. The surf is roaring, cold, a tumble of sound and dark water. Bull kelp churns shadowy in the glassy swells, serpentine. Her chest heaves and she hesitates on the shore. This is not the best place to leave from, and its then she realizes that she has no intention of going anywhere. As if to test this she charges towards the receding surf (but there, in the motion of throwing herself toward the water, a black memory claws its way up her throat). She whirls, lets the water’s foamy edge chase her back up the dark sand. Again (the memory stays away), and turn, and flee. The rhythm of this play steadies her, draws all her quavering parts back together until she is just breath and motion, dapples on fading black chasing hypnotic waves down the beach.
When Wane comes, the sight of him drawing down the beach towards her takes her out of rhythm a little, though she does not break away to meet him immediately. In her mind he cannot be coming to meet her, though she recalls their last encounter in a hazy warm way that plants a seed of brightness in her even as she frets. Clearly her time spent chasing the waves has not wiped the worry from her features--he sees it--and she wonders what that means, why should the variations of her expression halt his questions about the woman who will be mother to his child? She doesn’t dwell on it in the moment.
Words spill from her with little encouragement then, and she tells him all that she knows about the plague settling over Beqanna. She almost tells him that she is afraid, but that vulnerability is more terrifying than the idea of a pestilence leaving them all as bones and tattered skin on these dusky shores. Instead she asks where he thinks Khuma might have gone, because she is certain his thoughts are with the serpent woman again as her disappearance and others are easily attributed to the sudden threat of illness. Or the illness itself, but this she will not mention. Instead she follows his gaze west, to the distant white isle.
She is about to ask if he will go, and tries to guess if she can make herself follow him, or if he would even want her to.
When the fairies call them, Eszka is watching Wane. She is frozen under the weight of the summons but his eyes draw slowly back to her own and he is not frozen. She knows he is going to turn inland and she cannot let him go alone. Her jaw is pressed to his, a brisk embrace. And then they are turning up the beach and leaving for the mountain.
The scent boundary of Nerine would have turned her back were she alone, she has not left the coastal kingdom since her arrival. They’d crossed the length of the country in no time, familiar paths falling away under their hooves. When she drops back from him, under the guise of sniffing at the boundary to see if anyone else has broken across it ahead of them she instead focuses on the pounding of her heart, trying to urge herself past the hesitation of crossing out of Nerine. Its Wane, drawing away, that calls her beyond it finally. A Nerine where his is not suddenly lacking the safety she had attributed to it.
Side by side, sometimes single file, they pass through the desolate country between Nerine and the mountain. Of course this stretch of Beqanna is mostly forest, but in the light of day and with the mystery of their summons heavy in her thoughts she doesn’t balk when entering the trees.
Seeing the sick for the first time draws her back alongside Wane, where she brushes the side of her face against his broad neck. Sheltering in the closeness of the stallion, filling her lungs with the scent of him, of the sea, instead of the cloying perfume of rot and sickness.
Eszka wants to go quickly, and Wane obliges her, just as eager to reach their destination. The directness of their trip, first through the endless trees of the Taiga, and then up through the mountainous Hyaline, is sometimes impeded by the need to circle around or all together avoid the sick or those who might be. The initial thrill of urging herself beyond Nerine faded following their repeated sightings of the sick. The pair of them are mostly quiet, it serves to avoid drawing attention and also to allow them to wander through their own thoughts. She cannot say for sure why she is going, but the dark thing, sitting quietly in its walled prison could--not that the two of them talk. The dark thing knows about pestilence, she has seen it, caused it, removed it. They might be quarantined from one another but the two of them are still called to the same things. Water and power most frequently, disaster not far behind.
She does consider the possibility that she has seen all of this before. One more dark moment echoing out of the unreachable past.
Wane calls her out of these musings, prevents her spiral into all of the unknowns. He teases her and she finds her smiles come easily for him, her laughter pushing back the Taiga’s fog, and scampering silvery up Hyaline’s frozen slopes. They distract one another when the silence of Beqanna feels too heavy and so they survive the mystery hanging over their heads and arrive at the mountain after their few days travel.
She had seen the mountain from a long way off, kept her eyes on it as it grew larger and larger. But she is certain she senses the very moment that she tresspasses on it’s soil. There is a song she should hear, but doesn’t, the ghosts of its lyrics make her ears flick but there is nothing for her. She is glass, insulated, meaningless, no lightning rod for the magic that lives within these borders.
And so there is nothing for them to take from her that has not already been taken. She stops beside Wane, looking upon the ancient creatures who wait even higher up the mountain. Once she would have known their names (not true names, but what their kind were called and ways to avoid irritating them as mortals are wont to) but now they are a entirely foreign, distant and fierce in their power. She has even forgotten how much she should fear and respect them--even as she fears and respects them. They take from the others all around her things that she can see and things that she cannot and when it is done and their task has been given and the fairies have disappeared and left the grey slope somehow darker she looks around at each of the others. She’d smiled when Wane had winked at her, the two of them sharing a silent pleasure at not having anything excised. Now though, seeing the strangers check for missing wings or close their eyes and search for less tangible gifts, she feels a pang of recognition and sadness, and cannot look anymore.
Most of them were quiet when the cold blue fae addressed them, save for a single child, whose chirruping voice rose up into the thin mountain air. Agnieszka does not see her until she appears ahead of them, the path away from the mountain disappearing behind her. They’d all begun to descend, and some move past the girl without paying her any mind. Eszka is surprised at just how young the child is. Wane is captured, as are others, one of them a pale painted stallion that she does not know. Eszka greets the stranger politely and then the group of them move off, the filly in the lead. Wane knows the way perfectly well, and she herself could retrace their steps without too much trouble but they form a party anyway. She follows the child because Wane does, yes, but also because she cannot let the spirited girl go on this journey alone, even if she knows the way. Had her companion tried to go on seperate from Briella she’d have dragged him right back to keep pace with the child. She is charmed (is she not perpetually charmed by him?) that he elects that they follow the girl before she can say a word.
The trip down the mountain is more difficult than the ascent in many ways. Their hooves slide and stones clatter and tumble away beneath their hooves, the avalanche of detritus cascading into the feet of the horse ahead. Their little band drifts apart some, to avoid tripping each other up. Wane is somewhere behind her, and she keeps an ear turned back for him. Ahead, little Briella is as nimble as a goat--at least compared to the adults who plod too near the soft edges of the trail sometimes. Agnieszka tosses a look over her shoulder at Wane once, hearing him send a spray of loose stone down over the edge. Her violet gaze unamused, chiding him for trying to fall off the mountain when they’ve barely begun their quest.
The wind pulls at their coats, cutting to the skin on the exposed mountainside, whistling in ears and numbing extremities and when at last the lowlands rise up to meet them she cannot help taking a moment to stretch and try to coach some feeling back into her muscles. Their child-leader makes up her mind on a direction rather quickly and they are delving into Hyaline, taking a route that is similar enough to the one that the two Nerinians had tread coming the other direction.
All the effort to avoid the sick and now they are following closely after Briella whose little muzzle drips red, and whose body quickly wastes with illness. Eszka watches her with concern, considers that they have clearly expedited their own infection by choosing to join the girl but the more time she spends roaming through Beqanna the more she understands that they will be unable to avoid exposure to the infection. It is everywhere, she glimpses the hollow eyed and ghostly in Hyaline, and knows why she must get to the isle. She does not wish this plague on anyone. Well, no, she isn’t that altruistic. As long as they can cure it, it might be alright if all of Stillwater’s hair falls out. Though she does not consider him with any such levity.
After a river crossing during which she is grateful to be following a child when it means they don’t hurry to cross a deeper and more difficult place, and a bit of marveling over some funny chesnut rodents, they break for food. She can’t bring herself to graze and roams in a circle , head down, snorting over the sheltered greenery. Her stomach revolts at the thought of the sickness all around, at the imagery of blood dripping into blades of grass. Her companions crop the grass and clover quietly, taking the opportunity to refuel and she decides she is being an idiot. So she eats what she can, quickly, without tasting anything.
At Hyaline’s lake the fading light bids them to rest. The filly chooses a place for herself, the pale Santana remaining nearby. Agnieszka drifts away looking out over the valley of Hyaline, watches a liver chestnut in the distance who stops to watch their group in turn before disappearing into the trees along the river to the south. Hyaline’s residents do not approach them, this is odd and also perhaps a kindness. She is looking out quietly this way when Wane comes to her, and there is an intimacy in the way that they fall together, talking, finding humor where they can to warm one another. When that intimacy appeared between them she isn’t sure. If it were in the water, or on the beach, or someone during the miles of this journey. Does he feel that? She does wonder, especially as she catches him looking at her again like he’s just discovered her. She doesn’t think about her scarred face, or realize how steady she’s been since they left home on this mission, she only feels a moment of silence between them waiting for a touch or a word to settle into it and turn this into something else.
Nature has other plans.
Her attention is rent from Wane, and the two of them shy away almost in unison, a ballet of surging muscle and churning hooves. The cats smell of predator, musk, and pine. The winter has pushed them down looking for food and sickly horses seem easy prey. Perhaps they’ve already taken someone and it’s made them bolder about attacking.The cat that has chosen her leaps at her hind end but she manages to kick away and the animal twists to avoid her flying hooves. Escape is the only thought pulsing through her mind as the cat drives her into the trees to the east and away from Wane, Briella, and the others. She crashes through the underbrush, loud and frantic. The river snakes up ahead and it’s clear the feline means to drive her against it, expecting that she will turn back from the deep fast water, or try to run up the length of it a path that is too winding and varied to facilitate escape.
The decision is made the second she thunders up to the steep embankment. She doesn’t stop, or spin away, or try to turn and fight. She is long limbed, and strong, not as heavy bodied as she could be considering her lineage and the leap is a long and fluid flight that could have sailed her over most any obstacle. Except this one. When the tobiano mare lands in the riverbed, a few strides from the opposite edge her front legs slide away on the slick round stones and her body splashes down hard in the freezing water. The breath is torn from her chest by the impact, and Agnieszka squeals in fear and frustration as she flounders to her feet stumbles up the bank. Wild eyed she looks back towards the opposite bank where the large feline stares at her, trying to gauge her injury. It is not inclined to try and cross here and dashes south along the river, as if it knows a place where it can cross and come after her. There is no time to wait for it, and Wane will turn North toward home if he loses his pursuer. Cold and aching, she sobs a pained breath hoping he has escaped.
Little known to her Wane runs a lot longer before he loses his pursuer. Agnieszka runs until she reaches the north side of the lake and then trots along its edge in the dark. They are lucky that the animals were expecting them to be sick and weak, she can run much longer than the cat can and it seems to have given up on her. In the dark she cannot see the others across the lake and will not go back to the southeast side to try and find them, it is too dangerous to backtrack and risk running into the predators or leading them back to the small Briella. Coming to the river she follows it north until she finds a place to cross into the redwoods.
The cold and wet hasn’t left her since the fall into the river after her jump. Splashing through another river is not something she relishes but its dark and she is tired and no one is going to cross this much cold water to try and eat her. She laughs darkly to herself as she shakes herself on the muddy taiga shore, well there is one creature that would. So much for not thinking of him with levity.
Taiga is a maze, a forest going on and on into the dark. Visibility (or what visibility there is) is cut down further by the the fog that rolls among the trunks and leaves her guessing with every step. Her time beneath the trees, until now, has been in Wane’s company, or spent in a live-or-die flight. She stops walking. Her heart, finally having slowed after her flight, begins to beat a different cadence, and the fear that accompanies its bird-in-a-cage beat is quite unlike the pounding that came with fleeing from a hungry cat. She has all but forgotten this terror, the way the trees press in as though they are not trees. In her nightmares they are not trees, but blurs of other things, like a memory that her brain feels but refuses to unearth.
But home is on the other side of these trees, and Wane too, he must be.
Some mercy turns the wind her way, bringing her first the distance sharpness of salt water beneath all the redwood needles and damp. Moving again is difficult, and she urges herself to the swiftest pace she can maintain until she gets to Nerine, guessing at north and willing herself to be blind to the passing trees, deaf to the creaking echoes in the dark. What monsters those trees were made of would not come out so long as she did not slow or look too long at them.
The night grows colder, the fog more dense and she plunges on, starting to flag..she has misjudged her pace and she has no idea how much further she has to go. Only the effort of racing through the Taiga toward the scent of the sea keeps her from mad panic, and even that is tenuous. When she pushes through the fog toward an indistinct shape--suddenly there in the dark--that turns out to be a rich bay colored stallion she startles and skids to a stop in the needles and mud. His laughter is so welcome a sound, chasing the night and her terrors back and back. Her own laughter comes out choked at first, but relief makes her eyes water. She slides up alongside him, and when they get their bearings they fall into step, no longer lost in the fog but headed toward Nerine at a much more acceptable pace than the one that had brought her to him.
They talk about escapes. Wane’s cat is a lot bigger in the retelling, and she humors him with a sarcasm that he calls her out on. She asks about the others, he doesn’t know any more than she does and they hope for the best with a solemnity that carries on through the night.
Morning and Nerine arrive simultaneously and they make a decision to rest after their individual flights yesterday. They had sped along towards home and tired themselves. Perhaps each of them needs a chance to recover from the things they have seen and the dark thoughts summoned up by dark times. When he goes off alone, she guesses to look for his returned sister, Agnieszka stands on the shore looking towards the distant shape of the isle. Their journey thus far has been hard, but she shifts uncomfortably under a feeling of foreboding. There will be more difficult tasks ahead...or so they should expect.
Nightfall comes too soon, and sleep begins tugging at her relentlessly. She climbs up the beach with Wane and he suggests that they bed down in his cave. Despite days of pushing through her fear and anxiety she cannot sleep in a cave, and even if she could she would be horrified for Wane to witness her night terrors. She turns her ears back, tension racing through her muscles and flatly refuses the invitation. Guilt immediately follows and she looks up towards the cliffs and considers suggesting they retreat to her rocky shelter above the waves. Only then, the idea of going back there with him calls up shameful memories of another night and another man on those cliffs.
So she compromises and chooses a place to lie down near the sheltering mouth of the cave. He doesn’t go in either, but lays down beside her. Before she closes her violet eyes she looks back and again wonders when this happened, but her sleep, dreamless and deep, takes her before she can overthink it.
In the morning he irritates her for the first time (probably not the last) when he asks her to stay. Pleads with her to remain safe in Nerine. Her refusal is blunt and she walks away from him with an indignant switch of her tail, heading north and denying him any further opportunity to be sentimental. Her temper fades and soon they are talking and walking together again. When he discovers Khuma’s trail she joins him in tracing it, the two of them murmuring over the ripples in the snow, calling out to one another as the lose and find it again.
The trail is lost to the sea when they clatter down a beach that is rockier than the one they frequent. There is no doubt where his snake-woman has gone. She knows he is worried, but she trusts him to remain focused on their task, though she hopes they can discover that Khuma and the egg made it to that distant frozen shore quickly, for Wane’s sake.
Care to join me? He asks, that crooked grin making her heart thump as he calls her back to that warm day in the surf. Here they are then, and she isn’t wondering how they arrived.
Agnieszka plunges into the water, through the icy gap he had broken. The cold claws of winter sinking into her flesh, reaching and reaching for the warmth that Wane had left blooming in her chest. The water is not still and the swells try to cover her head and smother her. She cannot see the white shore or make out her companion as she struggles to keep her head up and find her stroke.
It is impossible to avoid going under but when it happens she kicks hard for the surface and continues, blowing saltwater out of her nostrils with harsh snorts followed by hard breathing before the sea tries to drag her down again. These moments repeated again and again are what get her across the channel. She keeps kicking even when she cant feel her legs anymore, forces her head up even though she thinks she’s keeping it up as high as she can
She is shocked when her hooves touch bottom and she stumbles, coughing and shivering up the beach. The current has pushed her south and she has not landed where she’d expected. It is not the first time she wishes she were a stronger swimmer. Her voice is strangled but she calls out to Wane and picks her way higher up the beach, dripping and shivering. She’s made it, but they are separated again.
an unequaled gift for disaster
