Damsel Knight (8 page)

Bonnie stumbles back a step, both hands shaking around the hilt of the sword. Her heart pounds in her chest. For a moment she wants to do nothing more than drop her sword and run, but she can’t do that. Neven is out there, so is the princess. Neither of them have a sword to defend themselves.

“Give me my friends,” she says again, trying to keep her voice from shaking as much as her hands. “Or-”

“Or you’ll take my life?” The sharp smile twists into something unnatural. Its features blur, becoming less recognisable. The cloak is gone, the clothes replaced by something shapeless. It laughs, and for a moment it’s her father’s laughter, then Neven’s, then Ness’s, then the twin’s childish tones, until it becomes all of them warped together.

She swipes the sword through the thing’s middle, almost falling when the blade passes through with no resistance. The thing turns from shapeless human to mist, then that wisps away. She spins, but there’s nothing around her but black.

Her breath comes in frozen bursts, more out of emotion than exertion. It took her father’s face. It knew things she’d never told anyone. How could it know those things? And more importantly, where is it now? She’s not naive enough to think it might be defeated by one swing of a sword. Scared off if she’s lucky, but not defeated.

“Bonnie?!” Neven’s voice calls out of the darkness. “Where are you Bonnie?!”

He sounds scared, desperate, and alone. It could be a trick. The real Neven could be dead already for all she knows. There’s no way to tell, except to follow the voice and find out. Follow the voice or walk away?

She follows, sword kept firmly in her hands. This time she keeps a steady pace, using her blade to find and avoid trees. Roots are more difficult to avoid. They seem to appear out of nowhere. Her mother’s dance lessons come in handy for keeping her balance.

Finally she sees him ahead, bright in the solid black. It’s only seeing that black curtain surrounding them again that she realises that it hadn’t been there while she’d been walking. When had it gone? It was there when the thing was talking to her, she remembered, but after she’d cut it, the wall had gone as well. She files away that thought.

“Bonnie!” Neven says, sounding relieved. “I couldn’t find you. I looked and looked, but there was all this black. But I think I saw some smoke coming from over there. We should go. It might be someone who can help.”

“You don’t want to help,” Bonnie says. She slices her sword through his body, neck to groin.

He stares at her with wide brown eyes, then fades into a bright white mist and disappears. The black curtain goes too. It’s still too dark to see her hand in front of her face, but it’s less heavy. And she can hear Neven again - the real Neven - from the direction she’d been walking.

She starts on her way, quicker this time. It won’t be long until it comes back.

“Neven?”

“Bon-Bonnie?”

Close. So close. She fumbles her way to him in the dark. He’s standing with his back against a tree. She might have walked right past him, were he not hyperventilating. She’d have to be deaf not to hear the racket he’s making - or separated from him by that curtain again.

“It’s me Neven,” she says, reaching out a hand to touch him.

He clings to her arm like he’s drowning, and she’s the only thing keeping him afloat. His grip is painful, but it’s also real. That thing wouldn’t feel like this, she knows somehow. It would be cold, she thinks. Beyond that she’s not sure, and doesn’t think she wants to be.

“I thought it was Ness,” he says, the words clumsy and stumbling. “It sounded like Ness, and it looked like him. He was dressed all in uniform. He was covered in blood Bonnie! Every inch of him from head to toe, like he’d bathed in it. And - it - he - I think he was dead. He kept asking ‘why did you leave? Why didn’t you take me with you?’ Why didn’t we Bonnie? We could have. What if he goes to war and never comes back?”

“It wasn’t him,” she says, finding his shoulder and clasping it tight. “It’s something else. It must have lured the princess away like it did us. It wants us separated and scared. We have to stick together and stay calm.”

“It’s not him now,” Neven says. His voice hiccups wetly, like he’s been crying. “But what if it’s showing us the future? What if Ness dies like my father? What if everyone dies because of what we did?”

“King Robin is a just King,” she says. “Everyone says so. The soldiers attacked your father because he attacked them. Everyone else fled. As long as they can’t prove they were involved, they can’t hurt them. Ness will go off to war and have as much of a chance as everyone else - more even. He’s young and strong. Were he born into riches he would have already squired and become a knight.” What she doesn’t add is that he would have trained since toddler-hood with a sword as she had to get that knighthood. Ness may be strong, but strength doesn’t compete with years of training. They have to hope whoever he faces has as little training as he does.

“And what of my mother?” he asks. The tears stay out of his voice, but his heavy breathing tells her it’s a struggle. “A woman on her own has enemies, and no one to protect her from them.”

Bonnie doesn’t say what’s on the tip of her tongue: that she may already be dead. Witnesses would have seen her hurry them away. If she didn’t give a convincing enough explanation, that may be enough to convict her. “We find the princess. We kill the dragon. We get out of the forest. With the reward money we’ll be able to claim her and keep her safe. She can live the rest of her days with food in her belly and silks on her skin.”

She can practically hear Neven turn the words over in his head. “We find the princess.”

Silence buzzes in her ears. She looks up to see the heavy blackness around them again. White mist materialises, forming the rough shape of a human. It swirls, constantly moving, as if it can’t decide whether it’s short or tall, fat or thin. “We find the princess.”

Bonnie keeps a hand on Neven’s shoulder. She raises her sword with the other, her muscles feeling the weight. There’s a click that tells her Neven has his arms out, those metal shooters at the ready.

The mist rushes together, taking on shape and colour. One moment it’s formless mist, the next princess Alice stands before them, her dress bright blue under Bonnie’s brown one. Her green eyes go wide. “What are you doing? You’re scaring me.”

“Where is the real Alice?” Neven shouts. There’s fear in his voice, but anger overshadows it. “Tell us where she is!”

“You have a good heart son,” Neven’s father says, strolling out of the black wall to stand at Alice’s side. White mist trails behind him. He’s younger by a few years, his skin not quite as weather roughened. He has the clothes on he wears to market; cleaner than his usual. “And life takes no greater pleasure than destroying people with good hearts. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve told you to ignore her, but since you won’t listen, you take this on yourself. She’s your responsibility. Make sure she keeps her head down. There’s no-one more at risk in this world than a woman who can’t follow the rules.”

He’s talking about her, she realises. When Neven saw her scrounging for food at the market and decided to take her in. The figures fade in and out between mist and person.

Her father joins them, smiling and asking if she wants to see what he brought back for her from his trip. Her mother materialises beside her, launching into a tirade about the state of her clothes, and the pout on her face. She doesn’t notice her haircut or the sword in her hand. She’s scolding a younger Bonnie, not her. Jack joins them, then the pig farmer, Neven’s mother, Ness, the twins. They form a circle around them, blocking them in from all sides.

Bonnie tugs Neven away from the tree, pulling at him until they’re back to back. They fled before her sword before. All she needs to do is cut a hole and they can run through it. But, there’s so many of them. What if they chase after them? What if she loses Neven running through the dark, or one of them trips and breaks something?

And where do they go? There is nowhere to go. For all she knows they’ve been running around in circles this whole time. Each way looks like the other. She’s no idea which way might lead her to the princess, or Gelert. The dragon could give them an edge if he’s still under the spell, but first they’d have to find him.

The things - whatever they are - start moving toward them, closing the circle. Her parent’s outfits change to the ones they wore the day they died, covered in blood. Ness is as Neven described him; drenched in red from head to toe. Alice’s face turns gaunt, her black ringlets limp and dull, as she would’ve been if they’d left her to starve after her spells broke. They keep talking; one voice overlapping the other to create wave after wave of sound.

“Why did you open the door?” Her father asks at the same time her mother asks: “Why did you open the box?” “Why did you let us die?” They ask together. Mr Moore asks the same thing, and his wife breaks into sobs.

They reach out their hands toward them. Their eyes fill with mist. It drips down their faces like tears. “You can make it better,” they say as one. “Give us a taste of life.” “Only a taste,” her father adds, the ends of his blond hair trailing mist. “It’s so long since we’ve been warm,” the haggard Alice says.

She waits until they’re close enough to feel the cold leeching from their skin, then she slashes her sword. Three of their arms disappear at the elbow in a blur of white. The rest of their bodies turn back to that indistinct white mist. Behind her Neven’s shooters give a high pitched whine as they fire at their target.

Bonnie spins, slashing left and right. Each one she cuts turns back to formless mist, but this time they don’t disappear. There’s no opening to run through, only a wall of white, surrounded by the wall of black. They’re still trapped. The things press in closer. They have no mouths, but she can hear them whispering in languages she doesn’t recognise. One has the high pitched cries of a child calling for his mother. Another sounds like the desperate prayer of a woman, the words pushed together like she's scared she won't have time to finish.

The sword does nothing to stop the progress of the mist. The white parts for her blade, then closes afterwards. Tendrils reach to touch her face, drawing a freezing line down her cheek. It has a wetness to it, like being touched by snow, except no snow would bite so deep. It feels as if it reached through skin and muscle to turn the bones of her skull to ice.

"We have to run Bonnie," Neven chokes out behind her. "Bonnie we have to-"

He grabs her free hand and tugs so hard she almost drops her sword. It's white all around them, but he's right. They have no choice. Together they run toward one of the patches of mist. They duck their heads as they pass through, her trying to cleave them a path with her sword.

The metal passes through the mist easily. They don't.

Cold air forces its way into their lungs. She can feel them shrivelling as they make their protest. They stumble through the white to the other side, then Neven falls to his knees and she follows.

She tries to take a breath, but it won't come. Her lungs are too small for air, and her throat and mouth are so dry she's sure her whole airway must be cracked open and bleeding. Every inch of her is numb, from her face to her toes. A glance down at her hands tells her they're a blotchy mess of purple and red, some of the fingers stark white. Somewhere along the way she's dropped her sword.

Neven looks up at her weakly from his hands and knees. Ice clumps his eyelashes together, and frost gleams across his clothes and hair. As he shivers, his messy brown hair moves little, each strand frozen in place.

Bonnie's eyes widen as she takes in the reason why she can see him again in the darkness. One of the mist forms is crouched right next to him, wrapping itself around him. It swirls as Neven shivers, his eyes fighting to stay open.

"Stop," she tries to say, but her mouth won't move. "Leave him alone." She tries to grab it, and overbalances, collapsing forward onto the hard dirt.

It might have heard her anyway, because a moment later agony blazes through every nerve ending. It's as if she's been stabbed in a dozen places with icicles, each one spreading a path of cold throughout her body.  

The pain lasts seconds, then a heavy feeling replaces it. A drowsy warmth tingles to life in her chest. Every finger feels like it weighs as much as her dragon. All she can see is a hazy mix of darkness and light, and Neven surrounded by a soft glow.

It hurts to think. There's something she has to do, but she can't remember what. The dragon? She had to kill the dragon, and she can't remember why. She pushes the thought away. It's not important. Gelert is her friend. Why would she want to kill him?

A flash of white blinds the sky.

Air burns as it trickles into her lungs, and with it the noise floods back into the world. Screaming makes her wish it'd stayed silent. A dozen different voices cry out, some in anger, but most in anguish. A stab of pity hits her, even with her tingling limbs and pounding head. They sound broken, like they've lost everything.

They have, she thinks, drawing in a breath that doesn't freeze her lungs. They've lost her and Neven. Something made them let go.

The white light flickers into blue, then red, then burnt orange. She pushes at the ground weakly, her muscles standing up to the task about as well as if they were made of watery porridge. The light is warm on her numb face. It dances above them like flame.