Page 9 of Where the Shadows Land (Garden of Hope #1)

MAIRUK

A week came and went with the human in Mairuk’s garden.

They did not speak to her again as they worked beside her, and they had not had to gather her a second time.

Astoria had not bathed, brushed her hair, or changed clothes since her arrival.

Yet, they still found their eyes wandering over to the human, anyway.

Her body curved so unlike their own. The fleshy mounds on her chest squished whenever she leaned into something, and they wondered if she was as soft as she looked.

Astoria’s softness waned with each passing day.

She came in plush and soft, but she seemed slighter in the days since her arrival.

Her skin held little color to begin with, but it continued to pale.

The little fox she called Bastian worried for her.

All of his cries and concerns focused on her.

She offered him many hollow smiles and returned to her work.

Her help with the wall came more from her company than any true assistance.

At full strength and optimal health, which Mairuk knew she was not, Astoria would remain too small to be of any true assistance.

That did not matter to Mairuk, and they kept her anyway.

The existence of another being within their garden was an assurance their traveling companions never gifted them.

Cardilan, Leri, and Idelic never stayed more than a night, and never within the borders of the garden.

Mairuk loved their companions, and seeing any of them always brightened their day, but not a single one of them stayed long enough to chase the loneliness away.

The Twelve who Made Mairuk were alone with themselves most days out of the year.

They didn’t mind most of the time, but the more finished the garden became, the more they wished for companionship.

The little human who would not speak a word to them brought peace with her presence.

She eased the never-ending ache of the deathly silence simply by being alive.

She breathed. Her heart hummed under her soft chest. Those strange human feet shuffled across the ground as she moved.

Her nightly cries and the hushed words she shared with her fox.

How she sang to herself when she thought Mairuk wasn’t around.

Everything she did reminded Mairuk they were no longer alone with themselves.

Her presence eased most of their worst fears, but brought others along with it.

The human was not well. She smelled of rot and decay.

The stench ripened further with each passing sunrise.

She hadn’t requested food. Mairuk was not sure what humans ate, but all living things ate something .

They had not seen her visit the well, either.

The coldest phase of the winter passed a month ago and spring reached up from the roots of the forest. The chill would remain for another moon, at least. Despite not dressing for such cold, the human never asked for wood to build a fire.

Humans were such fragile creatures in the grand scheme of things.

They lived brief lifespans, had thin flesh that was mostly soft meat, and their bones were delicate.

Humans broke easily and easily fell ill.

Mairuk spent much of the time they worked, going over all the ways their human could vanish from their garden.

So much could kill her. Astoria’s death would nourish the starved land that ached for life so it could take root, but if she died, Mairuk would be alone. Again.

Mairuk did not care if the human was happy.

Happiness abandoned them when their garden burned and took every ounce of their hope with it.

The human deserved to suffer for what her kin had done to theirs, yet they struggled to remember that.

Each night, the human cried. The sound screamed of the kind of grief that took part of the soul and left the heart so battered and bruised the person suffering it wished they would die.

If only to stop the pain. As much as they hated it, her grief echoed their own.

A loss so deep there was no escaping the weight of it.

They did not care if she was happy, but Mairuk was not cruel enough to wish that kind of ache on anyone.

Including the human. They pushed the sympathetic ache in their chest back down and growled at their weakness.

They understood her grief, and it was horrible, but the humans deserved to suffer for what they did, didn’t they?

Bastian pawed at Mairuk’s leg and whined.

The communication danced between them with the language all living things spoke.

It reflected his concern for her and clarified that she needed to eat multiple times a day, yet had consumed nothing in three and a half days.

She refused the kills Bastian brought her.

Fire burned under their flesh. How dare she willfully not eat!

Wasting away into the chill embrace of death was one of the most miserable ways to die.

Yet, she chose it over the death they offered her?

She chose do waste away instead of finding any gratitude that Mairuk allowed her pitiful human lungs to breathe their air?

‘Why trade her blood for life if she wanted to die?’ Eleventh asked.

‘We should kill her if she does not want to live,’ Fifth argued.

‘She would make a beautiful corpse. Her blood is rife with magic. Bleeding it into the ground would feed the roots that hunger,’ Eleven said.

‘We could use her body to grow our spores. Create new life and companions out of her remains,’ Seventh hummed through their body .

‘Restrain yourselves,’ Fourth said, soothing the others of the system. ‘She is aching. Do we not remember what it was like when our grief choked us? Perhaps she needs a push?’

“If you wish to die, human starvation is a slow and painful death,” Mairuk said, their voices sharp and biting as they sent the words into her mind. “To work, you must eat. Or do you no longer want the life we have so graciously allowed you to keep?”

“What food is there to eat? I am not permitted to leave without you. You only focus on the work. I cannot hunt at night after you finish for the day. To hunt, we would need to take a break. Would you allow that?” Astoria asked, her voice just as malicious as theirs.

“Your fox has brought you meals, and you refused them. Is what he brings you not suitable?”

Astoria’s sharp glare at the fox made the creature whine at Mairuk’s feet. She ran a hand through her hair, then looked to the sky. “He deserves to eat his kills. I am capable of hunting for myself with the correct tools. Which I also do not have.”

All three of Mairuk’s eyes narrowed at the stinking human.

The rotting stench rolling off her signaled illness.

Deep bags sat under her hollow green eyes and the only clothes she wore were tattered and stained.

Her magic returned, but like the rest of her, it was weak. “You are not well enough to hunt.”

“I could hunt from my deathbed. If you give me a bow and some arrows, I can feed myself fine.”

“You are lucky we possess the materials. Come,” Mairuk ordered.

~

The afternoon sun hung high in the sky by the time the two of them finished creating Astoria’s bow and thirty arrows.

The human moved with shocking skill once they gave her the materials.

Mairuk watched her from under their cap and mirrored her movements as she made the arrows.

They preferred their meals already dead, but some of their kin said it tasted better when the kill was fresh.

It was a brutal process, but Mairuk found it fascinating all the same.

In the deepest secrets they only shared with themselves, there was much the humans did Mairuk found fascinating.

A few in Bounoss kept humans as their loktossi — a lover of sorts.

The loktossi did not have many freedoms, yet the ones Mairuk saw seemed happy as their Ardelok led them around.

Mairuk watched the various loktossi often when they went to Bounoss, but they never took it further than observation.

Some Ardeloks had their loktossi work within a brothel, but Mairuk’s curiosity didn’t go that far.

There may have been human women kept as loktossi, but most of them were male or nondescript in their appearances.

Human men caused Mairuk too much heartache to appeal to them in that way, but all humans fascinated them.

How their bodies moved. How their lips changed shape when they spoke their words.

Their small fingers and how they moved them while crafting or speaking.

Most of all, Mairuk liked their hair. It was not like the fur of their animal cousins, but something that looked much softer.

Mairuk watched Astoria and wondered if her hair was soft.

Thick tangles and a thick layer of dirt covered her from head to toe, but if she was clean, they wondered if she would let them touch her hair.

As loathe as they were to admit it, their human was an interesting creature.

Her tiny hands moved quickly with practiced movements.

She hummed quietly as she worked, a song unlike any Mairuk heard from the trees, flowers, or creatures of the forest. The song was hers.

It initially made Mairuk’s gills twitch, but the longer it went on, the more they enjoyed it.

It pushed the time forward a little faster.

Astoria finished with the arrows and wrapped a spare bit of leather around the handle of the bow. Using the other scraps, she fastened a basic imitation of a quiver. “Do you have more leather?”

“Why do you need it?” they asked.

“Clothing,” she said .

“Some. We will deposit what we can spare at your doorstep and tomorrow you will work on what you need to survive. You are no use to us broken and half dead,” Mairuk grumbled.