Page 42 of A Thousand Burning Ravens

Nor would she forget the way they all cried out in pain when she called upon the Voice of the Gods that night. It was the one and only time she defied the King. In his bed, with courtiers watching. The room had trembled violently, and the stones of his floors cracked. The courtiers left then, and he struck her. She learned that night the difference between love and duty, and how those were very different touches.

Emotions swell and her nose stings with tears. Myla has come to terms with her parents’ agenda. She could rationalize that. The pain she still feels lies deeper than the places his body touched. There is a word for it, one she struggles to name, but the closest she has come is betrayed. And that is something she can not rationalize.

Myla recalls feeling, in that moment, that her marriage began with a betrayal. This powerful man, capable of making whatever changes he wanted to any situation he saw fit, allowed her, a scared young woman, to be a visual feast to the men of his court.

An evening, months after her wedding, over too many glasses of wine, Myla had confided these feelings to Elsa, who had responded profoundly, “Abuse and manipulation hurt no matter how pretty a package they are wrapped in.”

Myla shudders and stands, throwing a handful of linens back into their basket before trudging outside, feeling like her insides need to be purged. Kicking off her boots, Myla wiggles her toes in the garden soil until they make an indent in the ground, rooting herself with nature. She takes a deep breath and urges the vile feeling to pass, as she has done so many times before. One bad moment does not define the entire experience.

She has tried to convince herself so many times that their consummation ceremony was supposed to be uncomfortable, a gruesome fact she can sometimes explain away, until she lands on the realization time and again that it was not just the consummation that was uncomfortable, but nearly every night after. This internal struggle always ends with her simply diverting her thoughts before they spiral into anger at her parents for allowing it all to happen. Anger that her father, a nobleman himself, knew exactly what would occur and allowed it anyway.

The following morning, Myla would wake up and sit across from the King, drinking tea and forcing herself to be pleasant while a dark cloud of shame built inside her. Shame she could not name or explain. Shame she now realizes was self-loathing for not having the courage to say, “I do not like this.” Shame for averting her eyes every time she saw a face in broad daylight that was lit by candles, watching her that night. But most of all, owning a shame that was not hers to own, but theirs.

“I wish for you to be comfortable here,” Caius had said with a kind smile. What Myla wanted to say was: “You should have thought of that before burning the image of my naked body in your friends’ minds.” Instead, she had sidestepped the uncomfortable truth and smiled. It had taken a long time before she was comfortable after that.

Overhead, an owl hoots, its dismal call caught up in the deep whoosh of wings as the bird of prey swoops down to dig its talons in a mouse. “Yes,” Myla agrees, imagining she speaks to the Goddesses. “I agree. It is time to stop being the mouse and start being the owl. Or better yet, the talons.”

Two days have passed, and never before has Myla known time to drag on in such a way. Though she has found a rhythm, Myla discovers quickly that purpose and rhythm are vastly different things, quite capable of existing one without the other.

In the last two days, Myla has found a fondness for tending the garden. Solitary creatures as the monks are, forming friendships has proven difficult, although she feels she has made progress with Ethstan who tends the garden with her. His expressive features seem to make up for what he lacks in conversation. Myla has managed to learn he has two living siblings, but his parents are long since passed. He has not shared his age, but Myla figures he can not be less than sixty. He enjoys the rain more than the sun, and he has a favorite bard.

As it so happens, the young man Myla thought sang beautifully seems to rub Ethstan the wrong way. When the older bard sings, however, he wears a pleasant smile. When Myla asked him about it, he answered in the usual way: with a shrug. No amount of questioning seems to get her any closer to understanding why he does not speak, and Martin insists it is not his story to share, though he alludes to Ethstan atoning for something. Over breakfast, she brought Ethstan a quill and sheet of parchment, hoping he would answer with written words. He politely declined.

On the sixth morning, Myla steps outside the monastery to find the breeze carries a chill. Glancing up the mountain as she does every morning, hoping to see Bryar returning, she takes note of the yellow creeping along the edges of the leaves and a sense of contentment settles in her. To pass an autumn in this place, does not seem so terrible. Her green dress ripples in the breeze and her toes tingle, cold against the earth where a thin frost has collected. Today, she and Ethstan will harvest the gourds and store them, but first, offerings.

Since the night her soul raged and the owl came to visit her, Myla has begun her days with offerings in the woods. Today, she brings a small decanter of mulled wine to the base of a tree.

Some late summer flowers wilt in a twisted wreath from a few days’ past. Other offerings include sigils, a pinecone, and various stones. Myla had washed the tree’s exposed roots in moon water as an offering yesterday, and today, she places the wine beside the buns. This one is for Elsa. Mulled wine at the autumn equinox was her favorite, so today, that is what she will have.

Myla sits down, crossing her legs and begins drawing sigils and runes in the dirt, letting her fingers move as they will intuitively until she has enclosed herself in markings she has never seen. When she was a child, her mother taught her all of the runes and their meanings. These seem to be an entirely different language, something conjured from an unknown place inside her.

Myla stands, moving outside of the circle, careful not to disturb the intact swirls. Observing it from a few paces back, Myla’s skin prickles. The earth rumbles violently, and a heat forms beneath her feet. The runes take on a life of their own. The dirt caught in the trenches of the designs begin rolling smooth like a stream until the entire circle is warping into something completely different than drawings in the dirt: a portal has formed.

A deafening crack, followed by a violent plume of smoke rises from the sky behind the mountain, presumably where the Seer lives. Myla gasps, her breath catching in her lungs as a rippling black mirage separates around the figure of a rounded woman. Her skin a dark bronze, with bright, caramel eyes peering out from beneath long eyelashes. Auburn hair, smooth as silk, drapes long down her body, cascading over the rounding of her breasts and past her curved hips. She wears a simple white frock fastened by gold rings at the shoulders and a crown of bones and forest foliage sits atop her regal head. She shimmers in the light, seeming one with nature. The Spirit Mother.

“What—” Myla presses a hand to her chest, and she steps backward, her free hand instinctively cradling her belly. “Where did you come from?”

Her voice is not that of a human. It is a siren, carrying words on the wind, an echo of a memory more than audible sentences. “I go where I am needed. Here, it seems, is where I am needed.”

Myla ventures closer, hesitating at first. “Did I summon you?” Of all the incredible feats she has carried out in her life, Myla is certain that summoning the Spirit Mother would surely be at the top of the list.

“Not exactly,” she replies, taking a step toward Myla, her round face full of a gentle smile. “But here you have been, night after night, in search of someone to give you hope. So, I came.”

“Is Bryar with you?” Myla glances past into the portal, half expecting to see a small herd of armored men clamoring through.

“He must return to you the way he came. I do not come bearing your captain; I come bearing a path to set your feet upon.” As her words drip forth like a slow spring, the earth around them prepares for the Spirit Mother’s guidance, a deep wind stirring up leaves around them and the wildlife scattering and silencing themselves.

“I do not understand,” Myla protests. “I have worshiped you my entire life, and I have never summoned you. You could come to us the whole time . . .”

“I could not,” she corrects, her voice reprimanding. “You called for me, and I sensed the need, so I came.”

“But how did I know to do . . . this . . .” Myla gestures to the still moving etchings upon the earth.

“These are not the answers I have come to give you. You must listen because your portal will not remain open long.” Myla urges herself to be silent despite the questions begging to be answered. Content with her silence, the Spirit Mother speaks again. “When the captain returns, tell him to follow the fire. This will lead you both to answers you will need if you are to succeed.”

“Follow the fire? And he will know what this means?” Myla feels a panic rise in her chest as the round cheeks of the Spirit Mother stretch into a warm smile.

“He will not. At first.” Then she is gone, like a mist swallowed up in a vortex, the Spirit Mother retreats through the portal, leaving behind a cloud of disturbed dust and twigs.