Chapter 15 Enough Lies to Last a Lifetime
"That's funny cause I don't remember you raising me." His smile falters and I feel some satisfaction in it. "If you are really my father than where were you just now while I was being attacked? What if I didn't get out of that just now, what would you have done, 'dad'?" I snap letting my anger get the best of me and press the knife harder against his neck. "Would you have let me be raped, again?" The words tumble out of my mouth as hot, angry, tears prick my eyes.
"That was never the plan, I wanted to see how well you could fight." He says with a simple gesture as if it was nothing, I can hear the lie drip from his tongue like acid.
"You wanted to see if I was worthy to be your daughter. I hope I failed because I would never want to be your daughter." I pull my knife away and step back then thrust the blade into his gut and run to the back of the tent cutting a hole and escaping into the forest. I know Wolkif will follow me because his loyalties lie with his king and family before me. That has become apparent. I just hope he gives me the head start I just made for myself.
I run for a while using the full moon to see and not bothering to clean up my tracks or be subtle, he'll still find me if I crawled up a tree or crossed an ocean. Finally when I get too tired I slow to a walk then stop completely when I feel a drop of water on my hand. Thinking its rain I look up but not a single cloud hangs over me only stars who have no idea whats happened tonight.
"Why are you crying?" I turn my head to the sound of a woman's voice. She stands half behind a tree peaking out at me.
"I'm not crying." I say but lift my hand to my cheek anyway and feel the wetness. "Oh." She smiles and comes out a little more. "I'm having a rough night." I say shrugging.
"Well, at least it will end soon."
"That sounded a little threatening, but you're not scary so I don't now how to feel." She laughs and comes out from behind the tree and more into the moonlight. Her light brown hair turns silver and her skin even seems to glow in the moonlight. She is heartbreakingly beautiful with her soft features and gracefully long limbs. As if she knows why I'm starring she blushes a faint pink adding color to her freckled cheeks.
"I'm not threatening you at all, I just mean that the night will end and a new sun will rise."
"I guess that's true enough, but what's been done tonight won't just go away with a new sun." She nods sympathetically.
"I'm not much help. Perhaps you would just like to talk about it?"
"It's a long story."
"I have a long night." She walks closer to me then past me making me follow her. We walk, well she floats and I stumble into everything trying to keep up, to a little meadow where she lays down in the tall grass and waves me over. I lay down beside her. "Don't you love full moons?"
"Yeah they are pretty nice." She smiles and I'm struck again by how beautiful she is.
"That's enough awkward small talk, tell me about what's going on." She says as if we've become friends instantly and already over the awkward stage of it. Oddly I don't think we needed the awkward stage at all, it feels as if we've been friends for much longer than we know.
"Where should I start? The part where my whole life might be a total lie? That I got kidnapped by a man who murders people and carves into them? Where I beat the shit out of another man who said he loves me?" She giggles at the last one.
"Boys are hard to handle and that sounds like the most fun part, but how about we start from the beginning?"
"That's the longest part."
"Shoot, I hate the longest parts."
"Well, I'm a human princess in the beginning of this one, I hope that makes it more interesting." She props herself up on her elbow looking at me.
"You don't seem like the princess type." She says looking at my mangled shirt and sloppily patched hand.
"What can I say blood is my color." She nods approvingly.
I tell her the rest of my story not skipping anything even telling her about my dragon scar and Wolkif. She listens to it all even trying to comfort me when I talk about my mother.
"You were right, the beginning was long." She jokes awkwardly. "What happened tonight?"
"I was taken to the fae camp to meet the leader and he told me he is my real father, that I'm not human anymore, and that the man who raised me isn't my father. My whole life was ruined by a man I just met who kidnapped me just to tear me apart." She sits up and looks down at me grabbing my hands and pulling me up too.
"I know you probably think I'm not from that camp, and I'm not, but I know the people in it. The leader is a good man I promise, what he's done to you tonight was probably out of desperation." The news doesn't shock me, she's anything but human.
"I cant be his daughter, I was raised by someone else. If its even true he gave me up, in my eyes he's not my father anymore." She takes my hands.
"I'm not going to ask you to give him a chance, I just think you should listen to him, let him tell you what happened. There are different sides to every story." I take my hands back.
"I haven't told you the shortest part yet. I would have been more than willing to listen to him if he hadn't let a Karnith try to rape me." I stand up and turn away from her walking back the way she had lead me.
"I know you are hurt but when have you ever been one to give up? You could have laid down and died when you were a child in the woods, but you got up and walked yourself back home still covered in the poison of that witch." I look over my shoulder at her sitting in the grass begging me not to go.
"How did you know about that?"
"The trees never forget one of their own." The cryptic message makes me want to stay and ask her what that means, which is what I should really do. But my pride forces me to go. Once I walk back over the line of the clearing I feel like I'm walking through a thick syrup then suddenly I pass through it and it feels like a soap bubble popping against my skin.
I keep walking only wandering and feeling the trees around me. Thinking back to what that woman said, I'm not a tree or a tree spirit. I don't believe in them either. They're only stories mothers would tell their children to make them feel protected and safe, but also to fear the forest. Walking through them now I only feel the silence and peace. The trees feel like home.
Stepping over the roots of a huge oak using the thick trunk for balance I find a little dip between 2 of them and decide to sit in it for a moment, just to rest before really finding my way out. I run my fingers over the smooth exposed root letting my fingers wonder over it feeling the grain and soil dusted on it. Feeling an odd rough patch I look down seeing a little carving in the slight moonlight. It looks like a little butterfly resting on the root. I remember a blue butterfly landing on my arm as I sat in a tree like this one, it's a hazy memory barely even my own but the thing I don't remember is the lace dress mother would always make me wear as a child. She hated to see me and my sisters in anything but the finest silk or lace, I would alway ruin the silk so she only gave me my sisters old lace dresses. I wore my own the most, until it wore out. It was the softest cotton I had ever felt and it was ruined the night I met Wolkif.
I look closely at the carving recognizing it from the other carvings Wolkif showed me he did, he would teach me about the fae by carving the stories into dead trees. Sitting here among the roots of this great tree I feel peace for once. I feel their stories come to life around me, it saturates the air letting me breath it in and feel it warm against my skin.
They play out in images behind my eyes, like a memory I've forgotten. I close my eyes hopping they'll slow down so I can watch them. I feel the soft caress of a spring breeze against my cheek, it brings the smell of fresh rain on wet soil. My hair lifts off my sweaty neck for a moment and I feel cooler. Opening my eyes I find I'm no longer in the forest but on the uneven stone steps of a temple, the weight of the sword at my side feels odd and makes me just as uneven as the steps, like I've never worn it like this before, no, like its too heavy to bare. I walk down the steps slowly and alone, the image changes for a moment, the steps crumble under my feet and vines appear growing in their place. I feel rain on my skin, soft droplets pattering over my arms and soaking my hair.
Both images overlapping each other suddenly vanish and I'm yanked back to reality by a large hand hulling me out of the roots. "Are you out of you fucking mind?" Wolkif roars grabbing my shoulders and shaking me when I don't answer, "Huh?"
"No, but you are. Let me go Wolkif, I want to go home." He must hear the desperation in my voice or see it pouring from my eyes like tears because he lets go of my shoulders.
"I can't let you go just yet, you have to know the truth."
"The same truth that twisted your mind? The truth that I have to fight for with my own soul? Some truths aren't worth a life."
"But this one is. Syl, you need to know everything."
"Thats not going to make any of this better, don't you see? Knowing the truth wont make my life easier, it wont even make my fight easier. I will still have to sell my soul just to survive and I will sell it sooner knowing the truth." He just shakes his head at me, "Isn't that what you did." I say dryly. His eyes go flat and cold instantly shutting me out.
"You weren't there." He says accusingly.
"You weren't either." I poke his chest and cross my arms.
"Who's fault was that?" He seethes.
"You're the one that left knowing I couldn't come with. Yet you asked me anyway and when I said no you made it my fault and decided that I should die then left anyway." I say wanting to scream but this forest is no place for this fight. "You left me first. You didn't come back for 5 years, I thought you were dead!" The words pour out of me quickly and violently. I had been waiting years to shout this at him, to ask him why.
"I wished you were." He speaks so plainly that it sounds like he's talking about the weather. Once his words register in my mind all the fire and anger deserts me leaving me cold and numb.
"Well, I'm right here. So you can stop wishing and kill me." I spread my arms out making myself a good target.
"I don't wish for that anymore." He turns away then and starts walking into the woods. Probably expecting for me to follow as always. I do.