Chapter Four: Goddess Under the Earth
Good Lord, I swear these updates are going to get faster. Thank you for your patience and for reading! It's wonderful to have you here!
For my cub.
Full work summary: Cast out of his village and freezing to death in the snow, Sparrow finds himself rescued by a mysterious and beautiful woman, living in a grand house in the mountains. As he falls under the spell of his strange host, he finds himself brought into a dark world that presents a destiny he never could have imagined. Submission to a vampire is only the beginning.
Previously: Sandu interrupted Sparrow and Vestalia's love-making and spoke with Vestalia in private, referring to a territorial border set out in an old treaty. Sparrow overheard Sandu demanding the return of prisoners, while Vestalia denied any knowledge. Sparrow burst in on them and drew Sandu's curiosity. Vestalia turned Sandu away and reclaimed Sparrow as her own, sending him to bed in bliss and confusion. Sandu set out for a mountain village to break her journey home.
Chapter summary: Sparrow discovers Vestalia's dark secret, while Sandu investigates his.
CW: Dub-con through vampiric hypnosis. Blood.
"I'm scared to go to sleep."
"That's good."
"No, it isn't! I need to sleep!"
"Yes, you do, and you will. But it's good to be frightened from time to time, Little Bird."
"Why?"
"Because fear means you still have a chance. Fear is your body and soul saying 'Hey, I'm alive and I belong to myself, and I want to keep it that way.' The only way you stop feeling fear forever is by giving yourself up to the darkness. And we can't have that."
"This is stupid. I'm tired and I don't want nightmares. Or monsters."
"I wouldn't worry too much about the monsters you don't want. It's the monsters you do want that are the real danger."
"I don't want any monsters."
"Not tonight. But the vampire is a seducer. Most of the people lost to the vampire begged for it with all their being."
"That's horrible."
"Yes, it is. So stay frightened."
*
The air is as fresh as if the world has just been made, just presented clean by the artisan that crafted it. The first spray of purple crocus flecks the pale green grass, making it prettier, the way freckles and blushes and blemishes do people. Brooks trickle through the crags of the rocky ground, the vitality at the core of the thrumming mountain bubbling through its sparkling veins. Around and ahead of him, the goats bleat tonelessly, their block teeth grinding on scrubs of grazing. Sparrow ambles among them, watching them in their utter ignorance of the rapturous beauty around them - the purifying turquoise of the cloudless, spring sky, the way the peaks above them stand proud and ancient and powerful. The song of bleating and babbling water skips under his feet. It turns his gait into a light, lazy dance. The occasional whistle of a wheeling swift whisks the tune higher and draws his voice with it in nonsensical, rambling hums. He lets it carry him a little away from the herd. As long as he can hear them, he'll know if something is amiss.
He fits his feet along one of the crooked streams ribboning through the grass, walking childishly heel to toe with his arms spread. He twirls his staff in his outstretched hand, giggles popping in his chest whenever he nearly topples. The stream giggles with him, spurring him on,
Play with me, Little Bird.
He takes a deep, invigorating breath of the cool, fine air and lets it out in a happy, relaxed laugh.
Play with me, Little Bird. Flutter your wings and I'll flicker my waters.
He spins on his heel and hops with the bounce of sunlight on the waves.
Let's dance, Little Bird, let's dance, dance with me, da-
The water runs red.
I hurt, Little Bird.
Sparrow's breath stops. The stream has flooded crimson, running like spilled wine, dying the fringe of grass dipping into it. He goes cold, cold at his core. He breaks into a run, panting like a dog, as his heart drums his larynx. He hastens over the rocks. They bite at him as he skids. He follows the red thread, like Theseus. He doesn't know he's already lost. He runs upstream and rises over a mound in the crooked land.
There.
Just at the crest where the brook flows down over the rise.
There's a body. A body leaking blood into the water.
Sparrow dashes to it and falls to his knees, his staff clattering to the ground, tears already stinging his eyes. It's a girl. Her rust brown hair is tangled with dry grass and matted over her face. It gums into a deep wound in her skull, the bone shattered and peppering the ghastly, black, mulching hollow with glinting white. Sparrow's stomach heaves.
"No..."
The girl is sprawled on her front, her limbs thrown out around her, as if caught in the middle of some macabre, fiddle-and-flute jig, her clothes streaked with dirt and blood. People speak of the peaceful sleep of the dead. But this is not peace. There is no mistaking this for sleep. Her body is broken and dragged and misshapen by death, left as nothing but a collection of crumpled odds and ends. Everything that made her Forina is gone. Sparrow will never feel her drum her hands on the ground in front of the bonfire. He will never see the stars reflected in her pupils. He will never hear the way she snorts like a boar when she laughs. The horror of it overwhelms him, it is inside him, it tunnels through him, it bores new cavities into his being, another hollowness for another loss. Death always does this to him. But Forina was only a child. The best sort of child. The messy, loud, rude, gleeful, dreaming sort of child. The really alive sort of child.
"Forina..."
His shaking hand moves for him. His eyes swim, his throat and nose clog. He steadies himself, touches her as lightly as possible. He strokes her hair from her face.
His stomach heaves more violently and he recoils. Her eyes are open, their glassy, unseeing, doll-like gaze haunting and so piercingly sad. He presses his lips together around a sob. He touches her cheek.
She cannot be dead.
It is wrong for her to be dead.
How can everything have its time if a time can look like this?
Death is a robber. Death is heartless. There is no forgiving death.
It starts to snow. The flakes fall on Forina's grey cheeks.
Life is a gift, so death should learn to cherish it.
