Page 1 of The Heart of Nym (The Twisted Roots Duology #1)
A Story In Verse
Sit down, dear child, and please come nigh.
For I will tell you the tale of the Thief in the Night.
The Demon, The Devil, The Dastardly Beast. I will tell you of Life and the fate that she weaved.
Laith was upon them and with it came monstrous storms that shifted peace to calamity—darkened clouds swarming like a harbinger of the heartbreak that was to follow.
The Beast did not purposefully stumble upon the Maiden of the Laith.
Even if not purposeful, it must have served purpose to his fate, for nothing ever happened just by mere happenstance.
Our story begins many years ago, when the lands were called different things, and where old flowers no longer grow.
He watched from below, where the sea met the land, where boulders of waves crashed into rock and sand. He saw her in a bonnet and her shift, hiked to her knees as she trudged through mud and weeds.
He saw her plucking sea aster for her altar in the grove. He saw her cave and the sparkling eyes that glowed. Silver like her hair, like the flowers upon her skin, that silver flashed bright to warn others of the power within.
They called her The Maiden, hair like silk spun moonlight, when she saw him again, he was, indeed, a thief in the night. He stole her away into his hallowed home. She screamed and cried, though he told her “fret not, for the demon of the forest has claimed what he sought”.
The Maiden looked upon him and saw but a man with horns curled from his head and black veins upon his hands. She showed him her flowers, the silver engravings on her skin, he traced them with awe, not his menacing grin.
They called her The Maiden of Laith, though she went by many names. She went by darkness, by angel, by Life, and by Grace. But there was one name that she whispered, most precious of all, “My real name is Anam, by which you shall call.”
And so it was written, all those years ago. The story of life and death and the truth we shan’t know.
Mortem, they called him, was neither friend, nor foe. He stole the souls of those wicked and coddled those woe. He loved the dear Maiden, our Anam, our crow. He walked beside her in Life and took those ending below, for where Life could not travel, Death would surely go.
This is where the story ends and begins, for nothing truly ends, my friends.
Anam was known as The Maiden of Laith. The people of the village told tales of a witch, of the wings of thorns that sprouted from within. They spoke of the demon that followed her ‘round, they spoke of his horns, and his rot in the ground.
Though they were only there to help these terrified foes, the fools did not listen and let their hatred grow.
Anam was killed upon the stone in the Crie, with a knife to the chest and a shout at the sky. When the villagers learned what they’d done to the woman they’d slain, they offered themselves to the demon that claimed.
There, upon the stone, in the forest of Crie, Mortem carved his love’s story into the stone with his knife. He slashed and he sobbed and he screamed and he cried, but he etched it all out until the moment he died.
Nothing happened by mere happenstance. A moment is purposeful just as a seed to a plant.
The Maiden awoke and believed that her love had taken her life, for he appeared right in front of her with his chin held high.
“They did not understand what we were trying to do.”
She wanted to listen to her love, but there was something inside of her that said this was not true. She forced herself to hate him, believing that her death was not because of what the villagers did not understand, but because of what they knew.
They were not human, they were not creature, nor animal. The world had been without rule from above and from below. And since that dark day, the swell of corruption ceased to slow.
And so, our dear Anam, sewed that first seed of hate. Life would hate Death, but that was not their fate. She believed that they could meet again, in another life. In a time when the world needed Death and the land needed Life.
She spoke to the villagers in a near-translucent form, appearing to them, as they cried and she, scorned:
“Retribution doth come from the branch with twisted root. The corrupt will know no mercy at the hands of death’s son.
They will not be rewarded by the hands of life’s daughter.
Destined to hate, but fated to twine, the son of Death and the daughter of Life will cleanse the world of the traitorous swine. ”
The curse of Anam started a cycle that would pass through generations of godlings, Life hating Death, until fate’s behest.
It is said that a maiden with the blood of good and the blood of evil shall love the beast that is birthed from purity and raised in fatality. We have scoured the earth for the end of this fallacy. But is it fiction if it is said to be true?
Turn the page, my dear friend, and discover the conclusion that grew.