You guys I'M SORRY FOR STRESSIN YA'LL OUT I swear everything is going to be okay just trust the process!!! We still have more chapters to go after this. :) I won't let ya'll down!
I should have known what she would say when she pulled me aside into a darkened room. I should have known from the look in her eyes, pity and pain. I should have known.
But it still felt like the sting of suddenly stepping on broken glass. Jagged edges ripping apart skin.
"She's been poisoned." Was what she had said.
"Well that shouldn't be a problem." I said. "You're a doctor. Can't you help her?"
"I don't have the ingredients I need to make an antidote, and I can't get them here. I can give her something to make her more comforta-"
"No, you're not trying hard enough." I said.
"Judith, I've run through every possible thing I can think of. Fate is cruel, and uncaring, but it is just-"
"Well I don't fucking accept this fate!" I shouted. "I won't!"
She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers in a feeble attempt to comfort me.
"I'm sorry Judith, if there was anything I could do for her, I would." She said.
"I'm sorry as well." I said. "Because I'm not going to be told that there is nothing I can do. I won't accept it. I will go to the afterlife myself and claw her out of the clutches of Death with my bare hands if I have to, I swear it."
"Judith... Sometimes, if we hold onto a rope too tightly, all we do is hurt ourselves."
I snatched my hand away from her and took a breath to try and calm myself.
"Have you talked to her already? Does she know?"
"Of course. She deserves to know her own fate."
"Did she ask for me?"
"Obviously."
"She wants to turn me, doesn't she? So at least one of us will live."
"Yes."
"Does she have the strength to do such a thing?"
"She feels okay right now." Imanthi said. "She has the strength to do it, but it will take away from the time she has left."
I winced and nodded.
"How long does she have left?"
"About a week."
She might have said more. We might have said more. I wasn't sure. Everything was a blur. I went to see her, knowing I would lie.
But this was one last lie I knew I had to tell.
I went to her and she was there, sitting on a bed. One hand was resting carefully on her neck and the other in her lap. She looked down at the one in her lap, shaken. It was clear she had been crying.
"Greta." I whispered.
"Judith—"
She pulled me into a tight hug immediately. My face was pressed against the bit of bare skin that was exposed on her chest, and I did my best to savor the sound of her breathing and feeling of her skin.
"Has Imanthi told you?" She said.
"Yes." I breathed against her skin.
"Let me turn you. I can do it. You deserve to live."
"Of course." I said. "Of course, Greta."
"Then here, let me-"
She started to roll up her sleeve.
I stopped her, gently.
"Just a moment." I said. "I need to get something, and I'll be back, alright?"
Her fingers slipped away from mine.
"You'll be right back?" She pressed. "You promise?"
"Of course."
But of course it was a lie. I did not come back. Instead, I snuck away, only grabbing my bow, the warmest clothing I could find, and the page from my journal with the flower.
In the distance, I looked for the tallest peak in the distance and headed towards it. It was foolish, I knew that, but my foolish heart couldn't be stopped.
I wasn't sure how long I had been traveling for. The feeling in my legs had left me long ago. I didn't have much time, and I wasn't going to stop until I was back at the village with the flower. I wasn't going to stop until I knew I had saved Greta. I would fight against anything for it.
But the whiteness was all consuming.
There was nothing in the landscape around me but a thick, inescapable fog of white, of chill that bit viscously at my cheeks. Still, I pressed on.
I didn't know where I was going. For all I knew I was stumbling straight into the clutches of Death. But there was a burning inside of me, an anger that I was unable to suppress.
And it told me to keep going.
And I kept going, until I no longer could. Weakness came over me and fell forward onto traitorous hands and knees that shook just to hold up my own weight. I screamed in the lonesome white and punched the ground in anger.
"Please, Goddess." I choked out, crunching fistfulls of snow in the thick gloves I wore. "I spent so many years dedicated to your name, and I felt so many times that you had forsaken me. I called out your name and you did not answer me. Time and time again, I cried out, and my only comfort was my own quiet sorrow. While others have tasted all of the sweetness that life had to offer, I went without- gladly, even. Do you not owe me even just a small bit of respite?
Please, please. I beg of you. I humble myself before you. Please give me the strength to save her. If you do, I will do anything you ask of me. Anything."
A sudden warmth came over me, but it wasn't from within. I blinked up, away from the ground. There before me there was a trail of shimmering light, golden and warm. It twisted and turned, snaking its way off into the distance, to a point I could not yet see.
"Thank you." I gasped.
I pulled myself up, up to my knees at first, then back to my feet, my boots shaking in the snow. Somehow, I found the strength to take a step. And another, and another.
I continued on the shimmering path, step by step, for an unknown amount of time. Maybe the amount of time was unknowable. I hardly had time to think about what I was doing until something began to tug at the back of my mind.
A sense of paranoia had begun to come over me. I couldn't help but feel that I wasn't alone on the mountain. It was like I knew there was someone else there watching me, just out of sight, though when I turned to look, there was no one to be found. It was almost as if I could feel a hot breath on the back of my neck, as if some person was there, ever present, but always behind me.
Overcome with fear, edging just into panic, I whipped around. No one was there. I was alone. I let out a shuddering breath, then turned back to the trail.
"Ah!"
Patrice. She was just in front of me, off to the side, just out of the touch of the shimmering golden light. Her eyes were hollow and they held no expression.
"Patrice?"
"Judith, why did you send me off?" She said, "Do you know what they're going to do with me there?"
"No, no. I'm just delirious." I said, taking a step back from her.
Another person appeared behind her. It was William. He said nothing, only stood there, blood pouring from his neck and mouth, gurgling and choking and staring blankly at me.
"You always acted so... pious." She said taking another step towards me. "But you're not good and you're not holy. You are a murder and a liar and selfish harlot, just like I always knew you were."
Up close, it looked like Patrice. It looked so much like her... but something was off. I couldn't pick it out exactly, but she was wrong somehow. It was like there was a certain hollowness to her. Maybe her hands weren't quite right. Maybe her eyes didn't track the things they saw just right.
I pulled my weapon and aimed it at her.
"Come no closer." I said. "Vision of exhaustion or not, I'll kill you."
Before me, the arrow came to life with golden magic. Holy magic. Startled, I let it go. It lodged in her chest, but no blood came. She stood there, unreacting and dead eyed, before suddenly bursting into a puff of gray smoke.
"Frost spirits" I whispered.
I used another arrow on William, and he vanished at the cut of it.
I checked back behind me, and there was a figure in the distance as well. I couldn't quite make it out, but the person seemed small, the hem of a dress billowing behind them in the fierce mountain wind. They weren't close enough to hit, so I ignored them for now, and pressed on.
I pressed on until I came upon three more figures, standing there in the snow. As I drew closer, I recognized them immediately.
Mother Agatha and the two guards, the ones who had beaten me. They had no faces, exactly as they did in my memories, the ones that bubbled up even when I didn't want them, when I couldn't push them away to the dark corners of my mind. I didn't need to see their faces. I knew it was them. There was blood on their hands, and I knew somehow that it was my blood. Perhaps I remembered it, though I wished I did not. Their knuckles were bruised and tender from hitting me.
Bile filled my mouth, and I instantly felt sick. I felt fear and panic and despair and disgust. I needed to leave, to get away. It was like they were already holding me down.
"Come child, and all will be forgiven." Mother Agatha said.
Behind me, I could see the figure that had been following me, and now I was sure of it. It was me. She stood there, dead eyed. Purple veins crept up her cheeks, and a trail of blood had started to coagulate along the side of her mouth. She shivered in the dark gray dress she wore.
For some reason, turning back and facing her seemed more frightening than them.
I turned back to the three spirits in front of me.
"I'm not scared of you anymore." I told them. "And without fear, you have no power over me."
They each disappeared as I cut them all down, slowly and carefully, until the path was clear again.
And again, I continued. I ignored the girl behind me, the girl in the gray dress. The girl with the bruised and gaunt face. The girl who shivered with fear. The more I ignored her, the closer she grew.
I kept my eyes down, focusing as much as I could on making my way, until my eyes fell on a familiar pair of black boots. Tears pricked at my eyes as I followed them up. Up into the stormy gray eyes of Greta.
"Judith." My name left her mouth like a sigh of relief, her frown quickly folding into a smile.
Startled, I took a step back. She took a step forward, and opened her arms.
"Why don't you come here, sweet little thing?" She said, "Come, stay with me."
I took a step to the side and walked past her.
"I will stay with you." I mumbled, "That's why I have to keep going. So I can save you."
"Well, it's your fault that happened to me, isn't it?" She said.
I stopped in my tracks.
"What?"
"You could have chosen to love me months ago, but you loved yourself more." She said with a click of her tongue. "Now look at what you've done. But what's done can be undone. You can stay with me. You can wander over into my arms, and we can stay together for an eternity."
"I'm not going to give up." I said.
"Selfish." She said, "Just give up already."
I didn't want to shoot her, even just as a vision of my own torment, but I turned around anyway and drew my bow.
"Hopelessness will not prevail, for it has not yet met someone as strong as me."
The arrow shimmered as it sailed through the air and landed in her throat. She looked down at it, then back to me, before vanishing in a puff of smoke. I breathed a sigh of relief, and even the wind itself on the mountain seemed to calm and cool in respite.
Then, up ahead, I saw it in the distance. A subtle orange glow.
I ran as best I could, a hysteric laugh bubbling up in my throat. Yes, it was the flower, peaking out of the snow like a ray of hope, like the break of dawn after a long, black winter night. It was real and it was here and I had made it.
But just as I grabbed it, it vanished. In it's place stood the goddess. She opened her palm and held it before me, a golden bottle resting there. Without hesitation, I reached out and touched her.
The touch of her skin burned, but in a way that caused no pain. I took the bottle, and clasped it tightly in my fingers.
"Thank you." I whispered.
"If you choose to save her, there won't be enough time to save yourself as well." She said, "Do you understand?"
"I—" I turned and glanced at the vision of myself that faded in and out with gusts of snowy wind. She stared blankly at me, her gaze flat and unfeeling. I winced and turned back to the goddess.
"You can heal yourself. You've come this far, after all."
The vision of myself crumbled away into dust, her eyes unblinking, unfeeling the entire time. I swallowed.
"I understand what will happen if I save her."
"Very well." She leaned forward and kissed my forehead gently. "May your will be done."
There was a light, somehow brighter than that of the snow.
And just like that, she was gone and I was outside of the village, the golden bottle clutched tight in my hands.