Another dream. Just when she'd believed them to be over, when she'd realised they were a creation of fear and nothing more, they appeared again and more confusingly so this time round. Yet, ever since Eirik's death, she had parted with fear. She had made a conscious effort to and now, when there was nothing but happiness, they still reappeared.
They were vivid, too; she could remember every second, every word and every feeling like she could remember the events of her own life. People she'd never known before enveloped her every thought, concepts she'd never heard of swamped her mind, hurt and betrayal were at the very core of her heart, though, for the life of her, she could not understand why.
She was Hillevi returned. Asta shook her head. She had been Katja, yes, for that temporary moment, but she had not felt as if she belonged there, in that body. During her meetings with Maja, she had been there, as Asta, though she'd not been known to go by such a name, whereas here she'd borrowed a body that did not belong to her.
This was all very well and worth mulling over when the day began but there was something else, something that required more thought than anything else: Katja's words. Those words she'd spoken, those words that had brought about Solfrid – Asta, even – from her lifeless state, those words that still felt warm on her tongue:
Where their breathing bodies fell, may they rise and breathe once more.
Sighing, she crawled out from under the weight of the furs and slunk over to the window. The day was nice enough and the clouds, though blanketing the entire sky, seemed vaguely transparent to the sun's rays. The morning dew and frost sparkled in the courtyard and, just beyond that, were the rolling fields and trees now open to her. When a servant called with breakfast and newly crafted clothes, she wolfed down the broth as quickly as she could and dressed alone to the maid's dismay, anxious to catch a glimpse of the morning's frost before it faded.
She hurried down corridors to make her way outside, politely declining anybody's offer to share their company for the morning. Of course, she hadn't meant it rudely – ask her any other time, and she would've smiled at their sudden, uncharacteristic display of hospitality. Now, though, with Katja's words running time and time again through her head, she couldn't risk it. She was bound to mess up and slip into her thoughts while they were talking, dealing more damage than good.
The fields outside the castle weren't as rugged looking as those Sigurd and neighbouring farmers of the north owned. They were neat and populated by sheep who kept the grass trimmed, lined with well-built stone walls and streams. It was picturesque, as she'd always pictured farming in the south, and seemed miles away from any type of blight or famine.
Watching the sheep trundle about distracted her for a minute at most, and even though she swore she'd never torn her eyes away from their pristine woollen coats, Katja managed to wheedle her way back into Asta's thoughts. Over and over again. It was as if dyed into the wool were the words she'd said, or that they'd been dug into the fields or written in the clouds. Somewhere, there was something reminding her of everything that had passed in that dream and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't forget about it.
"Where their breathing bodies fell," she muttered, uncertainly, "may they rise and breathe once more."
She glanced around, unsure as to what she should expect. It was, after all, just a dream and dreams were known to be fooling and mischievous in nature; she remembered as an infant dreaming there was a wolf under her bed... how disappointed she'd been to discover only the corpse of an ugly spider, who'd likely been chased around by her maid and forced to take a refuge of starvation. Yet, this had felt so real. The wolf had been a product of hope, more than anything, and she had convinced herself that it might be real through hoping, but this was different.
Besides, she didn't know if she hoped it was real. It was witchcraft, evil magic, to raise the dead from the soil. If she could do it, what did that make her?
Shuddering, she turned away and walked onwards to the stream. This was something she wanted no part in, she decided, and those were words she'd never repeat again.
The pattering of water running over rocks was soothing to say the least, gently drifting along a slow, slow current until, after miles of travel, it reached the ocean. The water was so very clear that Asta could spot the little minnows wriggling about at the bottom. Here, everything was clear and everything was beautiful. The south was where nature flourished best, where the temperature and the climate allowed things to grow properly, instead of waiting for them to grow a while before sending gushes of floodwater over everything in its wake.
She took a seat on the streambank and dragged a hand through the water, watching as the fish leapt about her fingers in a frenzied panic before returning, almost instantly, to a state of serenity when she withdrew that hand. That serenity was broken again when a gull landed sloppily into the water and began to splash about the rocks.
"How graceful," she commented with a smile.
"I don't see anything graceful," said a cold voice and her head snapped round in her neck to see who its owner was. How long had they been here? Did they hear the dreaded words she'd spoken moments before? There was no way to misinterpret their meaning – they made clear what they wanted and what they wanted was strictly forbidden and outlawed as witchcraft. She couldn't have rumours of witchery flying about her. There was no telling how long she'd last if that were to be the case.
Standing just behind her was a queer looking man with a greyish complexion and a sincere expression in his eyes. He was awfully thin, his ribs protruding from under his ragged shirt like he had not an ounce of fat on him, and seemed as though he'd shatter from the slightest impact so fragile did he appear.
He seemed to be gnawing on the inside of his cheek as he watched her through a visor of dark, greasy hair, and she never saw him blink.
"A joke," she explained to him. Nervously, she scanned his heavy-set face, which seemed to have collected a thousand shadows in its every hollow bone. "I was joking about how clumsily that bird was walking."
"I see," he nodded and sat down next to her, but seemed on edge. All the while, his eyes leapt like the fishes around them, flicking from the forest to the castle to the fields. She waited for a little, but he didn't say anything more, seeming more preoccupied with watching.
"Who are you?" she prompted.
"What does it matter?" he replied and continued his watch with a rapid intensity, biting on his cheek as he did so.
"Well, I suppose I'm just curious as to-" He leapt up midway through her explanation and she turned to watch him. "That's the friar," she said. "Do you know him well?"
The friar seemed to be approaching them, marching forward with a notable haste. He was not a man who charged about; he was an old man who believed in taking his time and walking with purpose and calmly at that. Anger and haste gave rise to impulse, and impulse was what caused feuds and wars that lasted years.
The friar may have been quick, but the stranger was quicker. Asta had thought he was going to greet the friar; she couldn't have been more wrong. The man's walk quickened to a run, which, in turn, quickened to a sprint and a charge. He was charging at the elder, and from the way his fingers had balled into fists, he was pressing an attack.
Asta got up from her seat at the stream, chasing after the insane man and calling breathlessly for him to stop. He didn't seem to hear her at all.
"Stop, stop, stop!" she yelled, clawing at the air as she tried to propel herself faster. It didn't seem to work – she couldn't seem to catch the stranger, who was gliding through the air quicker than she'd ever seen before, and effortlessly, at that.
The stranger grabbed the friar, who waited with a calmness that made Asta's eyes widen.
"Just as is written," he breathed, looking upon the man with wonder in his face instead of fear. When Asta reached them, the look of wonder was tarnished with blood from the man's fist. The fragility he'd seemed to possess was just a figment of her imaginings – he was stronger and quicker than any man she'd witnessed.
"You won't touch us," said the man with an icy smirk. It wasn't cocky, humorous, mocking. It was empty. He glanced back at Asta and nodded. She frowned.
Us?
"He's a friar!" she cried, exasperated. The man was no short of paranoid if he thought an old pacifist would try and hurt them. "He won't touch us." Cautiously, she approached the stranger, half afraid he'd turn around and attack her too, and relaxed a little to find he allowed her to. She attempted to shift his grip on the friar's collar. It was as unyielding as if it had been crafted from the essence of a mountain.
"He must die," insisted the man, dropping his hold of the collar in preference for the head, which he yanked back. His fingers rooted in the friar's scalp, he lurched his thumbs forward towards the eyes.
"No!" Asta yelled, grabbing the man's wrists to pull him away but he was strong, so strong, and could easily resist her, shrugging her off as if her attempts were nothing. She landed a punch at his mouth, where still he was chewing at his cheek, and then at his stomach and chest, but he didn't react to anything, he didn't seem to feel anything. It was all she could do to try and wrestle his hands away and protect the friar's sight.
She thought a while. There was no doubt that this was not a man – this was what Katja had tried to summon, surely, and this was the product of her incantation: a crazed loon who wanted to kill anything he sighted, except, that was, Asta herself. But how could she reverse the words? He would not be changed by any command and his goal was fixed, so he had to be disposed of... but how?
"Where their breathing bodies rose," she said, blindly, as she fought the dead man, "may they fall and breathe no more?"
Of course, it wouldn't be as obvious as that. Witchcraft clearly had limits and that limit was sending the bloodthirsty corpse back where it belonged.
"Alas, there is no reverse," said the friar, though his speaking was inhibited by the angle at which the stranger forced his head into. "He must be killed again the way he was killed before. Anything else will have no effect. It is a curious thing indeed."
"You sound as if you've seen it all before," she said through a pounding heart, restraining the man and searching for a clue as to how he died all at once.
"Seen it?" the friar chuckled. "No, no, dear girl. Read about it, of course, and heard of it, but never seen it."
The corpse was delusion, sure, but the friar was something else entirely. While he was but an inch from death he was laughing and smiling and utterly calm. Why wasn't he fighting back? He was fascinated, yes, but why that wasn't diminished by fear of imminent death Asta couldn't work out. She watched the stranger, how his nervous habit had all but worn away. Just moments ago, sitting by the stream, he'd been gnawing on his cheek so that she had half expected him to spit out blood.
The further from the stream he got, the less nervous he became. That stream was the source of his tension. It made sense to say that that stream, which seemed so peaceful, so serene, was the source of his death.
"You know," said the friar, a glint in the film on his eye, "that stream has dried out over the years. It used to be a river, plentiful with trout. People couldn't fish there, though – the current was so strong it could drag them off their feet."