Page 3 of The Arrow and the Alder

S eph returned to Harran’s front gate much later than she would have liked. She’d taken great care through the wood, not wishing to intercept the kith riders again, and yet despite the now falling rain, it seemed all of Harran was gathered in the streets.

The kith must have arrived.

Seph could only guess why they had come. More fighters for their blasted war? They’d already bled all of Harran and the surrounding hamlets dry these past three years. Or perhaps the kith’s arrival had more to do with whomever they’d been hunting in the wood? Alder? Whatever their reason, Seph didn’t trust anything where kith were concerned, especially now that she’d seen them in person, and so she shoved the bloodied sack beneath her coat to hide the evidence of her transgression as she headed home. There wasn’t much to be done about her bow and quiver, and she prayed no one would notice her as she slipped into alleyways and down the side streets, skirting the baron’s pompous estate until—finally—she made her way through her front door, sopping wet and freezing.

Mama looked over from the stone hearth where she crouched, feeding the small fire with fresh kindling. She didn’t ask; she already knew, and her small mouth pinched into a frown. While Mama lacked the temerity for breaking the law herself, she wouldn’t turn away a profit from one already broken. Her weary gaze landed upon Seph’s damp and bulging coat, and her eyes filled with hope.

Seph pulled the bloodied sack from beneath her frayed lapel, and her mother’s posture relaxed.

“How’s Nora?” Seph asked, heading straight for the old workbench, where she dumped the sack. She peeled off her wet coat and hung it on a hook near the fire to dry.

“Sleeping. Finally.” Mama stood and wiped soot upon her apron. Tendrils of graying brown hair curled out from her temples, though she tried futilely to push them back. “Her lungs sound better, at least.”

Seph returned to the bench, pulled the jackrabbit from the sack, and slammed it on the bench top with a thud.

Quiet.

“Is that all?” Mama whispered.

“Aye.” Seph mentioned neither the stag nor the kith. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her mother, but Mama might speak of them in front of her middle sister, Linnea, and, well, Linnea’s loyalties were up for debate these days.

“Where’s Linnea?” Seph pulled the paring knife from her belt.

Mama exhaled her growing despair, then moved about the room, drawing shutters closed to shield Seph’s crime from prying eyes. “She left to see if Lord Bracey knew why the kith are here.”

Seph tensed, blade in hand.

Mama misread Seph’s reaction. “Oh, that’s right…you wouldn’t have seen them. You were…” Mama hesitated as if this confession were the only thing that might incriminate Seph for the bright red blood staining her hands. “They arrived not half an hour ago.” Mama leaned in and spoke a bit softer. “A kith high lord is here. He’s meeting with the baron now.”

Seph hated the way her mama said that last part, as if a visit from a kith high lord was anything to be proud of.

She pinched the rabbit’s skin, made a small incision, and set down the blade. Her hands trembled. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know. That’s why Linnea left.”

Seph gathered the fur on either side of the incision and, in one decided motion, ripped the skin apart. Flesh tore free of muscle; blood drained and pooled upon the bench.

“Don’t be so hard on her, Josephine.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t have to.”

Seph flipped the rabbit over and repeated the process on the other side.

“You know what it could mean for our family if he proposes,” Mama added, beseeching.

Seph set the pelts aside and began cutting away the bits of fur that still clung stubbornly to the rabbit carcass. Just like her hope, always clinging to dead things.

Mama took a step closer, and Seph knew what was coming next, even before her mama said, “You won’t have to do this anymore.”

Seph swallowed her rising emotion. It was a geyser of grief and despair, always simmering at the surface, reminding her of all she’d sacrificed, and all she sacrificed still. “I like doing this.” And she did—or at least she’d learned to. As much as she hunted for Nora, she had also grown to love hunting for herself. Nature was the only thing that could bring peace to Seph’s restive spirit.

The only thing that could remind her what freedom felt like.

In the woods, there was no king or queen. Titles didn’t matter, gold held no value, and flattery fell upon deaf ears. There was no posturing. Nature was never trying to be anything other than what it was. Trees were subject to season, creatures to instinct, neither beholden to man, because the law of nature was simple: survive or die.

Seph liked simple.

“Sephie, I know you do, but…” Mama sighed. “I want more for you than this, and with the baron’s support…well, perhaps you might be able to move on and finally start a life of your own.”

Seph knew Mama was referring to Elias Sandenford. The young man Seph had fancied and might have loved someday had the depraved not torn Elias’s body apart just one month into battle. Seph had grieved, but not properly; she’d been too busy filling the various roles her papa and brothers had left behind.

Mama was mistaken if she thought Seph could just move on. It wasn’t that she still felt Elias’s loss as she had in those early days, but more that she’d lost so much that she didn’t even know how to want anymore. There was no space for it in her life.

“I think I’d rather stay here with you and Nora,” Seph said. She almost believed it.

Mama sighed with old frustration. “Don’t you wish to marry and start a family of your own?”

Saints, not this again. “Honestly, nothing could be further from my mind.”

“Well, you’d do well to bring it closer! You know it’s only a matter of time before the baron catches you!”

“Yes, well, I refuse to sit here and accept this prison of an existence while we starve to death.”

“Which is why I’m suggesting that you?—”

The large high-backed chair behind them creaked, and they both glanced over to where Seph’s grandfather sat, slumped and unconscious. He’d been like that ever since his wife—Seph’s nani—had passed six months ago, as if Nani had gone to heaven and taken his soul with her, leaving this empty shell of a man behind. Sometimes his eyes would flutter open only to stare, his lips mumbling things too low for anyone to hear, and then he’d slip back into this deep state of unconsciousness.

It broke Seph’s heart.

“I’ve got it.” Mama strode to her father-in-law and adjusted him in the chair so that he didn’t fall out of it.

Seph hated seeing her grandfather like this—a man who’d always brought such verve and levity to their lives. He’d been a lamp for them all, shining all the more brightly when the world felt darkest, and without his whimsy and good cheer, their circumstances seemed bleaker than ever. Seph had tried everything she could think of to bring him back—they all had—but nothing could reach his spirit, and Seph couldn’t figure out why he still clung so stubbornly to this world. Of course, she didn’t want him to pass on, but watching him rot like compost was almost worse.

Seph finished cleaning the jackrabbit, chopped the meat, and added it—and a few bones—to the leek and barley pottage they kept simmering over the fire. The stew had grown thin, she noticed. Too much water and too little substance. She remembered that magnificent stag with some regret, then wiped her hands on a rag and started for the small door in back, ignoring hunger’s dull and persistent ache.

Their home was built of two rooms: one where they cooked and ate, the other where they slept. When Mama had become pregnant with Seph’s older brother, Rys, Seph’s papa added the loft, which was where all five of their children eventually slept—including Seph, who’d arrived a few years after Rys. Levi came shortly after that, then Linnea. Mama assumed they were done adding to their brood until sweet Nora arrived nine years ago. It was crowded, but they’d been happy. Now that Seph’s papa and brothers were gone, stationed at the Rift by order of Baron Gazinno to fight a war that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with helping the kith and filling the baron’s deep pockets, the place felt empty, hollow. Seph’s grandfather and nani had moved in after her papa and brothers left, but even they hadn’t been able to fill that space completely. And when Nani passed, taking Grandpa Jake’s spirit with her, that hole grew even larger.

Seph put a hand on the small door and listened as rainwater plinked into the bucket near her feet. The leak was getting worse, but she hadn’t had time to fix it.

Sighing, she pushed the door inward.

The space was dark, save the candle burning atop a small table beside the bed where Nora lay buried beneath a pile of old woolen blankets. When Nora’s lungs had succumbed to a nasty illness a few months ago, they’d moved her to their parents’ bed, where she could be near the fire, out of the drafts. The bed was too large for her little frame and her skin looked wan despite the candle’s warm glow, but her breathing wasn’t labored anymore, thank the saints.

Seph approached the end of the bed and slipped her hands beneath the blankets, reaching for the stones she’d placed earlier. They’d gone cold. She pulled them out and set them aside, then sat on the edge of the bed and brushed the dark hair back from Nora’s sweet face.

All of her siblings possessed that trademark black hair—hair they’d inherited from their papa, who’d inherited it from their unconscious grandfather. All of them except for Seph.

Hers was white. Not flaxen, but white . The same soft ivory as the bones she boiled and sometimes carved into arrowheads. The white of bishop’s lace that bloomed in spring and blanketed Harran’s small pastures like snow. Seph might have been concerned over her parentage, except she’d incontrovertibly inherited her papa’s blue eyes, which he’d inherited from Nani.

Nora’s dark lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes just a crack. “You’re back,” she said, trying to sit up before a fit of coughing took her.

“Shh—shh.” Seph stroked her sister’s hair, waiting for the coughing to pass. Mama was right. Nora’s lungs sounded better, but those coughs were still too big for Nora’s little body.

Once it subsided, Nora leaned back upon her pillow and closed her eyes.

“I caught a rabbit today,” Seph said gently, trying not to dwell on Nora’s wilting frame. “No more broth for you, little lion. Tonight, we feast like queens.”

If only she’d killed that stag, but as she considered it, perhaps the saints had been kind to her after all. There was no way she could’ve carried pieces of that beast through the crowd this morning without being spotted.

Nora’s lips twitched into a small smile, and she curled into Seph, who resumed stroking her hair. “Tell me a story, Seesee,” Nora whispered.

“A story.” Seph sifted through the arsenal of fanciful tales passed down from their grandfather. He’d always had a passion for stories, one Seph inherited, though where he sourced them, only the saints could say. “Let’s see. Shall we do the one about the alder tree?” It had always been a favorite of Nora’s for its romantic flare.

Nora shook her head and said, “The twin princes.”

“Oh, but that one’s so dismal.”

Nora settled in, clutching Seph’s arms with both of her hands. Seph smiled and resigned herself to the whims of her sister, leaning back on Nora’s pillow as she began.

“Deep in the woods, there stood a palace, and at this palace lived a little family: a father, a mother, and their two children. Twins, both sons, one as beastly as a bear, the other handsome and full of mischief. They had everything their hearts desired, for they lived in the Court of Light, the grandest of all. The celestial father of the kith, Demas, had made it so, blessing them with light that came from the stars, and from those stars, the sons were granted power that the other kith courts did not have, which, as you can imagine, brought them unprecedented riches. But the brothers did not understand—as very few do—that it is not riches that give one wealth. It is love, and the relationships rooted within it.

“As the decades passed, the princes grew bored in their court of always light. First came the parties. Lavish things you can’t even imagine, with plates of gold and endless vats of wine and goblets rimmed with gemstones from every region. They danced beneath a tapestry of stars while entertaining and indulging to their hearts’ content, but still, this did not satisfy, and they grew bored once more.

“And so, they turned to games. Tournaments and competitions, from archery to the arcane. They fought against targets; they fought each other. Enchantment and sword. Each battle growing more brutal, more deadly, until boredom grew again.

“They decided they did not like rules anymore, that it made things too predictable, so they stopped heeding them. They plundered and killed for sport—this was a very dark time, even by kith standards—and they eventually crossed the veil into the goddess Ava’s realm—the mortal world—where land was ripe for the taking, and mortal kind was defenseless against them. One day, after the beastly prince had slaughtered an entire village of men, women, and children, Ava’s saints finally heard the mortals’ cries. They interceded for their children and Ava demanded Demas reprimand his.

“When the princes returned home, an old woman arrived at the palace gates. She had a face like wrinkled linen and eyes like small moons, and she requested an audience with the twins. They suspected the woman was not as fragile as she appeared, for they could sense her eloit —the special connection that ties all kith to the well of Demas’s power—and it was much stronger than any eloit they’d ever felt.”

Nora’s little hands squeezed Seph’s arms at this part, and Seph realized that this was why Nora had asked for this story. Because of the power that existed in a body so frail.

Seph continued, “‘I have heard of your conquests,’ the old woman said, ‘only I could not believe it. I came for myself to see if my sister’s claims were true, for my sister is First, and she has seen you with her Sight, but I am Second, and though I cannot See, I can Speak, and, at the behest of Demas, I have come to vindicate those you have tormented.’

“And so she spoke the curse that has plagued both kith and mortal kind for over a century: ‘ Through blood, by blood, may your sins be paid, spent from a mortal heart, the heir must claim. A babe wrought by harvest’s light, and virgin be, by immortal’s sight, holds the only path to your salvation .’” Seph paused here for emphasis, as their grandfather had always done. “And that was the day the mist and monsters came.”

And that was the beginning of the kith’s long and arduous war with the depraved—winged, demon-like monsters that infested their lands. Of course, mortals could not possibly know the breadth of that war; the veil had become an elusive thing, opening only every seven years until closing completely, which is how it’d remained these past sixty years. But in that time, the kith had suffered , and when the veil had unexpectedly reopened three years ago at a place called the Rift—so named for the gaping hole that it was—the kith had stormed through and into Kestwich proper—the mortal lands—demanding aid and fighters, before the curse bled into the mortal realm too.

Which was where her family and Elias, and so many others had gone.

Nora sighed into Seph’s arm and said, “I wish the veil had stayed closed.”

Seph knew Nora was thinking of their papa and two brothers, Rys and Levi, who’d been stationed at the Rift, caught up in this war and age-old curse.

“I do too, little lion,” Seph whispered as this morning’s hopelessness settled upon her once again.

Suddenly, the front door opened and slammed shut, and voices erupted in the next room.

Linnea .