Page 8 of These Eternal Bones

Homesick Demons

Molly

This is maddening. I am almost certainly going mad.

Utterly and entirely mad.

I glare at the door, knowing any second now, another round of supplies will be dropped off just before the sun rises.

Three times a week. Like clockwork. When I step out to grab them, the ever-pervasive eye of the woods will cloak around me, making my pulse quicken.

Visions of dark eyes and sharp features, spice and cedar.

Even from a distance, my benefactor is… pulling .

Most days since I’ve journeyed to the inky lighthouse, my eyes dart time and time again to the balcony where he stands, a king ruling over his castle, and what a castle it is.

As dark and foreboding as the jagged and sharp rocks below the cliffs and the lighthouse that lords above it all.

He stands, watches, and I can nearly feel his hands, hear him humming that strange, lovely song.

One with a tune I can’t quite replicate.

That isn’t the part that maddens me.

That has me pacing the confines of my- his cottage, refusing to step outside.

It’s his eyes.

It’s that night in the woods when my blood froze and bubbled under my skin…when I felt myself cease .

It was him.

It was real…

I’m sure of it.

Perhaps the stories were true. Perhaps there are monsters lurking in these woods. My denial of that fact is quickly fraying. I know once it slips, I’ll lose what’s left of my sanity. I’ve been in the woods now for…weeks, a month?

It’s been long enough. It has to be, but admittedly, I keep losing track. Quiet days blend into quiet, lonely nights until exhaustion takes me, the oddest…most heartbreaking dreams playing behind my eyes before I wake and wait for dawn and dusk again.

The strap on my bag gives a tug as I rip it off the bedpost, its knots straining with the overwhelming load of food as I head toward the creek.

I’ll follow it back the way I came. That should get me close enough to the town.

I’ll keep my head down, check the docks for the Tabot.

Tread carefully, find work, lodging, and never set foot in these woods again.

I tug my cloak tighter around me, the chill from changing seasons setting deep into my bones.

I’d refused to bring the dresses in, although my heart had hurt, leaving the lavish fabrics just sitting outside.

He’d delivered more, in different styles, and they sat.

Sometimes in the rain, much to my horror.

I’d panicked that morning, looking at the soaked, expensive garments, scrambling to hang them on the clotheslines.

He’d gotten the message though. I will not be dolled up like a princess by some mystery man while scraping out my survival in his aged cottage.

That was where the line etched in the sand.

It felt too…accepting. Like an offer for more.

More that I wasn’t willing to give when I had not yet learned the cost of this , whatever this is.

Spitting in the face of self-preservation, I find I’m…

seeking him out. Day after day, I hike to the lighthouse, and day after day, he watches.

I feel him in the woods as sure as the cloak around my shoulders.

Something has changed, perhaps it’s the isolation.

Maybe I truly have fallen ill in the mind to feel such immoral things from the thought of being stalked through a misted forest.

At some point, he became more of a silent companion than a dangerous, shadowed benefactor. We spend our days together and apart and as quiet friends as I wander around his woods. It has become too easy to talk to the hidden man in the forest.

Five days ago,

Him

Her cloak catches on the thorned bush of those barriers she collected earlier on when she’d arrived.

Although they’ve long since succumbed to the cold.

I suppose part of me should be thankful for the fox.

How many days of this life would’ve been wasted apart from her?

Had he not sparked my attention that night? Had he not saved her?

The thought makes rage bubble in my gut, my claws lengthening alongside my fangs until they score the bark of the tree I’m lounging against.

“You must think me rather odd.” She suddenly says out loud.

My head snaps up at the sound of her soft voice. The unexpected cut of her words keeping me frozen in place. Seven hundred years…hundreds of languages over hundreds of lifetimes, and I cannot find a single phrase to respond. My tongue knotted and tied in my mouth.

“I couldn’t blame you. I am, after all, hiding out in a rundown cottage in my middle of the woods. Talking to the fish in the creek and drawing pictures in the dirt. I wasn’t always odd, though. Perhaps a little…different, so I’ve been told at least.”

I dismiss my tendrils as they make a snap for her, growing large and thicker than usual before they mist away.

“I miss home.”

Home.

What an odd sensation, a pang of something in my chest when the word leaves her soft lips.

The pang so strong that I bring my fist to the offending spot, kneading the unyielding throb.

How selfish of me to only wish to hear that word from her when it’s in relation to me.

Like nothing that came before matters because nothing that came before matters to me.

All these years in between are forgotten the moment she steps into the woods.

For hundreds of years, I have been painted in shades of gray, where she has always existed vividly, in colors created only for her.

Molly

My feet ache the longer I walk. These past weeks lounging around and crafting by the creek have done little to prepare me for the journey that nearly took my life the first time.

Even now, the cut on my leg is a nasty red mark, one that will surely scar, not that it matters much to me.

I sing to myself as the sun hits its highest point, wondering if my benefactor will be grateful to have finally gotten rid-

“My lighthouse is the other way.”

I scream, my feet tangling in underbrush until a strong, unyielding hand vices around my upper arm, stopping my fall.

My heart slams around my chest as I twist, my hair acting as the slightest buffer to the man towering over me.

His features are unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Sharp and severe, his inky black hair is half pulled up on his head, the rest falling into his dark monolid eyes.

My mouth opens and closes at least twice before I find my words, “I-I don’t–” I swallow, righting myself, but he doesn’t release me at first, his hand tightening its hold instead. “How did you get here?”

This…this is him.

His brow raises. This time, when I tug my arm, he lets it go, straightening before tilting his head to the side. “You’re not far from the road.”

“The road?”

Disbelief tunnels through me, momentarily wiping away the shock of him. There's a road?! Of course, there’s a road! Why wouldn’t there be!?

He follows me silently as I stalk toward the direction he gestured, my skin prickling the way it has for weeks now.

Pulse fluttering wildly. Definitely just to confirm there is a road and not to avoid acknowledging him.

It takes a fair bit of stomping until I see it, the graveled pathway, mostly overgrown.

It’s hard to imagine I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t heard him.

He’s in front of me suddenly, pushing the brush and branches out of my way so that I can step through, my mouth hanging open like a dead fish as I take in the well-hidden road and the impossibly large stagecoach pulled by an even larger horse.

Its monstrous dark hooves beating the ground with impatience.

“How did–”

“Where were you going?” he asks, his voice like liquid tenor in my ears.

I glance up at the hooded driver before turning back toward the man. "Uh, town?” My mind swirls wildly, the answer leaving me more like a question.

My eyes dart down to the tick in his jaw, the odd network of lines…

dark veins peeking out from underneath his high collar.

“Then come, as was I.” I barely have time to protest before he’s opening the coach door, staring at me from underneath thick lashes.

Nothing about this man invites argument, but I recognize the feeling in my gut.

This , this is the cost of accepting his gifts, of stowing away on his estate.

He's come to collect.

I shake my head, taking a step back. “No, thank you, I’ve got the road now. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Syringa, if I wished to harm you, I would’ve by now.

” His lips quirk, my eyes zeroing in on a pair of sharp canines that make my core heat in the most unsettling way.

The wrong way. The way I am meant to avoid.

He steps forward, his gloved hand finding my back and all but guiding me toward the open door.

“I really shouldn’t–”

“The woods can be dangerous at night; you should stick to your clearing.” He orders, his voice soft and stern. My clearing.

“It’s the middle of the day,” I push back, my eyes widening on the lavish interior but most of all the smell. Spice and cedar explode on my tongue, making my mouth water as I reluctantly and entirely against my will take a seat .

He chuckles, gracefully climbing up after me, shutting the door to seal us in. Immediately, the air is thicker, decadent, albeit tight in my lungs. “Of course, but it won’t stay that way. Especially not for your journey home.”

Home.

Right, okay, breathe. You’ve technically known him for weeks, right? While incredibly ominous, there was truth to his words. If he meant to harm me, he could’ve. In fact, he’d done the opposite.