The Chosen Soul (2 page)

Alastair’s cry of despair joined hers and he was instantly kneeling by the side of the

bed, his wife’s hand clutched so tightly in his that he could no longer feel his fingers.

“What must we do? We’ll do anything –
anything
! Tell me what to get for you! What

do you need? Help her, Anna. Save my child!
Save my wife
!”

Anna moved from her position at the foot of the bed to stand by his bent and shaking

form. She placed one hand gently on his shoulder and squeezed. “Master Alastair, right

now, you must allow me to work. Leave the room and have faith in the gods. I will do all

that I can. I promise.” She spoke as gently, as persuasively as she could, but even so, he

heard only half of what she said.

Somehow, he managed to rise. His numb fingers loosened their grip on his wife’s

hand and as her arm dropped back onto the sweat-soaked mattress, he stepped away. He

moved automatically, torpidly, without real knowledge of what he was doing or where he

was going. In a few moments, he found himself in the hallway.

Alastair entered the living room, his eyes downcast, his gaze unseeing.

The stranger watched him for a moment and then spoke.

“I can help you.”

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The Chosen Soul

Alastair glanced up. His gaze focused and he blinked, remembering the man in black

travel clothes that he had let into the house earlier that horrible night.

The man smiled gently. “I can help you, Alastair Grey. Both of your children can be

born this night. Your wife can live many more years. You can be happy.”

Alastair blinked again. “What?”

“Allow me to help. And all will be well.” The stranger stood, one slow fluid motion,

and Alastair noticed for the first time that he was very tall. Long blue-black hair fell in waves past the stranger’s shoulders. His skin was so fair that it seemed nearly translucent.

His eyes were the bluest that Alastair had ever seen. They shone and glittered in stark

contrast against the almost bluish tint of the stranger’s face. Alastair’s brow furrowed.

How had he not noticed that before?

The stranger moved around the table and came to stand before him. His tall figure

towered over Alastair’s, but Alastair did not step back. The stranger had said he could

help. Alastair tensed as another cry rang out from their master bedroom.

“What can you do?”

The stranger smiled. “Tell the midwife to step aside. She is of no further use to you.

Allow me to see to your wife.”

Alastair stood stock still through yet another of his wife’s horrid agonizing wails and

then backed up a step. He nodded, resolutely, and turned down the hall. The stranger

followed silently behind him.

When they entered the room, the midwife glanced up, and her gaze fell upon the

stranger’s form. She froze in place, her eyes widening.

“Anna, he is here to help. Please move and allow him to see to Sarah.”

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Heather Killough-Walden

The older woman shook her head once, but Alastair’s raised voice cut off her

protests. “
Now
, Anna! Sarah does not have the time that you are wasting!”

In stunned silence, the midwife stepped back from the foot of the bed and was joined

against the far wall by her two apprentices. The stranger moved to the side of the bed.

Sarah gazed up at him. Apprehension and exhaustion warred with each other in her

amber eyes. The stranger smiled at her and it was a kind smile. She blinked. He was

beautiful. The world seemed to melt around them, to slow down to the point of stopping.

He spoke and it was as if he spoke to her alone.

“Can you feel her dying?” He spoke in a hushed tone, but the sound was louder,

more clear than anything Sarah had ever before heard.

She did not answer. The pain in her abdomen receded, leaving behind a heavy,

deadened sensation. The fear that rode her system was paralyzing, and the blue fire that

leapt in the stranger’s eyes held her mesmerized.

“Your daughter’s life slips away, Sarah, as does yours. But I can save you both. Will

you let me save you, Sarah?”

She nodded. She would do anything to save her child.

The man’s smile broadened. He rested a gentle hand on her stomach and closed his

eyes. Sarah stared as a strange bluish light grew, pulsing steadily, beneath his palm. She

could feel its heat radiating through her skin and into her swollen abdomen. It was warm,

like a campfire in winter and Sarah closed her eyes. Little by little, its warmth melted

away her fear as if she’d been frozen solid beneath the weight of its cold paralysis. Sarah felt a small kick in her belly as the warmth reached its mark. An unanticipated peace

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The Chosen Soul

began to fill her middle, spreading outward over her whole body until every inch of her

no longer hurt but felt, instead, light and strong.

The stranger removed his hand, at last, and Sarah opened her eyes. There was new

life within her. She could sense her little heart beating, feel her tiny lungs breathing.

Time sped up once again and the stranger moved back just as the midwife once more

stepped forward, a sharp retort on her tongue. This time, he stepped away from the bed,

allowing the older woman to do what she felt she needed to do. Alastair looked from the

stranger to his wife and then hurriedly knelt once again at her side as another contraction tightened through her belly.

Sarah gritted her teeth against the expected pain, but it hurt far less than it had only

moments before. She pushed when the midwife told her to push, and her eyes, no longer

cloudy with pain, glanced up, her gaze locking with that of the blue-eyed stranger.

He nodded at her once and turned, silently leaving the room, his long black cloak

billowing out behind him.

She took a deep breath and pushed one last time as the midwife leaned on her

swollen belly and, quite suddenly, like the break of dawn at the end of a truly horrid

night, an infant’s cry rang out through the darkness.

Laughter and sighs of relief mingled with the irate wails of the second infant as the

midwives cleaned her off and wrapped her in blankets as they had her brother. They then

handed both children to their father. Sarah smiled and held out her arms. Alastair, crying

full, fat tears of a kind of joy he had never before known and would never again realize,

brought their newborn son and daughter to his wife and laid them, side by side, in her

outstretched embrace.

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Heather Killough-Walden

The Chosen Soul – Chapter Two

… Twenty years later…

Raven and Loki Grey looked nothing alike. Whereas he seemed to have absorbed his

mother’s hair, fine and blonde, she possessed long hair of the deepest black, shot through

with bluish streaks that contrasted with her fair skin like night against day. Loki was short and stout, strong and steady. His sister, on the other hand, was tall and lithe, graceful and unpredictable. Loki was of average appeal, possessing of a face friendly and open but

otherwise un-remarkable. Raven, on the other hand, was a rare and exquisite beauty. Her

skin was fair and perfect, her cheeks always slightly flushed, her lips full and red. Though their parents’ eyes were brown and amber, Raven’s were a sultry midnight blue that

would turn black when she was angry.

For twins, they could not have been less similarly inclined. Loki enjoyed the sun,

summer, and his favorite color was yellow. Raven, however, was fond of the night,

winter, and the crystalline white of fresh fallen snow. He relished in the gay speed and

tempo of the fiddle. She, the sweet sorrow of the violin.

Yet, despite their differences, the brother and sister were the closest of friends. There

was no where the one went that the other could not be found nearby. And so it was that

morning, as they rested by the water’s edge, listening to the brook babble the incoherent

secrets it had carelessly told for decades.

“Sooner or later, you’ll have to make a decision.”

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The Chosen Soul

She shrugged. “Very well, then. I’ve chosen not to decide on any of them.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Mother and Father are beginning to worry.”

Raven smiled. “It isn’t as if I’ve ever pretended to be interested in the prospect of

marriage. I’ve told Mother and Father how I feel. Loki, do you know any husband and

wife in our village, other than our parents, who are happily married to one another?”

Loki blinked. Then he looked away, irked that he actually could not think of any.

She laughed. “There. You see? It’s for fools. I’ll not have any part in it.”

In the distance, chapel bells sounded, six in a row, marking the twilight hour.

“We had better return. This time of day always makes Father nervous.” Loki stood

and began making his way back to the trail, stepping over brambles and tree roots as he

went.

Raven frowned. “But this is the best part of the day!” She peered down into the

water, which always took on a strange reflective quality at around this time. Then she

looked up and gazed across the river’s breadth, to the twisted forest that lay beyond the

boundaries of her village’s territory.

She sighed in frustration. The night’s approach called out to her in a whispered

language that only she could understand. The reprieve from summer’s unrelenting heat

caressed her skin like a cool rag on fevered flesh. She rose, hesitantly, and sighed again.

“Come on, you!” called her brother, already several yards down the trail.

She stood there for a moment more, her eyes searching the wooded shadows across

the river.

“Raven,
now
!”

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Heather Killough-Walden

Raven bit the inside of her cheek, cast one last longing glance into the unknown and

turned on her heel. Her long white dress billowed out behind her as she easily leapt over

branches and tree roots, making her way to the trail as if there were nothing in her path.

Loki stood still on the trail, his hands on his hips, shaking his head.

“You continue to run through the countryside like that, and you’ll break a limb for

sure. I’m amazed at how you never manage to do so.”

“You fuss entirely too much, Loki. Go on then. Lead the way.” She stopped beside

him and gestured for him to continue walking. “I’ll follow obediently behind you.”

Loki sighed, shook his head, and turned down the path. Raven smiled to herself as

she followed in his footsteps, but her gaze often strayed to the river’s edge, and the

tangled woods that beckoned beyond.

They reached the village road just outside of town, but she was so engrossed in her

own thoughts that she didn’t notice Loki had stopped in front of her.

She ploughed into him, stumbling back a step. He didn’t move to help her, and that,

more than the stumble itself, was what made Raven look up in surprise.

Three young men were blocking their path.

Raven’s gaze narrowed. She knew all of them well enough. The young man in the

middle was the eldest of them, at twenty-seven. Brayden was the blacksmith’s son, and

appeared it. He stood a full foot taller than Loki, his work shirt as tight across his chest and around his upper arms as his father’s was known to be. The other two were younger,

but like Brayden, had become her hopeful suitors nonetheless. Selby was the spoiled son

of a land owner who resided in a fairly large manor house on the outskirts of town. Cael,

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The Chosen Soul

the tavern keeper’s only child, was somewhat quieter than the others, but was constantly

harassed to marry by a mother who desperately wanted grandchildren.

The three of them glanced from her to her brother. Loki barely breathed.

“What do you want, Bray?” Raven asked.

Brayden’s gaze slid down her long form and up again. His gray eyes sparked. Beside

him, Selby smiled the degenerate smile that most of the young women in the village

knew all too well. Only Raven had managed to stave off the infamous depravity of a rich

man’s heir. Cael, however, simply looked down at the ground. He seemed to not want to

be there.

“I think it’s best if you three return to your families.” Loki said, his voice low and

calm.

Selby snorted, tossing a strand of long blonde hair away from his face. His blue eyes

flashed menacingly.

Brayden spoke up. “Get out of the way, Loki. We’ve no business with you. Your

sister, on the other hand, owes us a little of her time.”

At this, Selby laughed out-right, and took a step forward. Raven’s heart beat sped up.

She ducked further behind Loki.

“Back off!” Loki ordered. His amber eyes flashed a warning at Selby. His stance

widened, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Raven swallowed the lump that had

formed in her throat and began to search the ground around them for something to throw.

“Stay out of this, boy!” Brayden bellowed at Loki. Then he came forward, and with

more speed than either of them had been expecting, he shoved Loki to the side, where he

stumbled, fell to one knee, and came back up again, facing the blacksmith’s son.

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Heather Killough-Walden

Raven dove for the nearest good-sized rock, but before she could palm the weapon,

Selby had her by her upper arms and was spinning her around, pulling her back and