Victor

I wake with a start to stillness and silence. It’s dark yet, though the sound of a few waking birds tell me dawn isn’t far off. I look around but sense no one. I rise.

My body feels… good. I flex my hand and it doesn’t hurt at all. All the sweat and grime from my battle with the treant, all the blood is washed away, revealing a new layer of perfect skin. My bones feel whole, my muscles too. I am completely well.

Around my waist is a kilt of finely woven grass, secured with a cord of honeysuckle vine. It’s softer than any garment I’ve ever worn, and for a moment I am in awe of its craftsmanship. Then my mind goes to the only one that could have woven such a garment, and I am recalled suddenly to the sleeping maiden.

I look to my left, but the hollow in the earth where she slept before is empty and dark.

Panic grips me. I let her get away!

I take a few frantic, faltering steps. Then I stop. I turn with a kind of knowing to where the great treant fell in our battle yesterday. And I see her.

The forest spirits give her away, glowing faintly with white light as they rest silently atop her shaking shoulders. She is huddled in the branches of the tree on her knees, weeping softly for her fallen friend.

I approach her on silent footsteps, becoming suddenly aware of the impossibly long trail of ashen colored hair that leads to her. With a pang I realize it’s been cut off from her, and I stoop with curiosity to feel its silken strands fall between my fingers. Judging from the length winding through the forest, I have to guess it’s well over one hundred feet long.

For how many centuries has it been left to grow like this? I wonder. For how long has she been asleep?

Like every other child on the island, I grew up hearing the stories of the sleeping maiden waiting in the forest for her true love. And like everyone else I’d dismissed the tale for fantasy. Certainly I never dreamed I’d head out in search of her one day. Indeed, I wouldn’t have bothered chasing such fairy tales at all, if not for the witch’s orders.

 The maiden senses me then. I stiffen as I watch her back move, and she sits up slowly from where she’s knelt beside her fallen guardian.  

I don’t know why, but I hold my breath as she turns to face me, coming slowly to her full height.

She’s real, I think, somewhat dazed. A living, breathing legend, now standing right in front of my eyes.

Is she beautiful? I can’t tell. My sense of beauty has been obscured since I’ve taken up with the witch.

She is tall for a woman, stately. The spirits illuminate her otherworldly features in perfect clarity as she steps towards me, green eyes piercing me with such directness, as though hooking into my very soul and leaving me rooted where I stand.

“Thou hast… awakened.”

Her voice is soothing but halting, as though she’s forgotten how to use it. I blink at the sound, let out the breath I was holding.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask, recalling my healed injuries and the grass kilt. Even the dream I had, so long and peaceful, it all seems to imply I’ve been unconscious for quite some time. Weeks, months, even. But no, she shakes her head as though guessing my thoughts.

“Only for… the night.”

“My wounds—”

“Are no more…”

“In such a short time? Impossible.”

“Not for me.”

“You did this?”

She nods solemnly, still holding my gaze with an eerie intensity.

The sun is coming up now, its pale, watery fingers lightening the ruined glade. To my astonishment I look around to find the fallen trees have already been covered over with moss and vines. All around us springing from the earth are new tender shoots of trees, growing up before my very eyes, little by little, shaking, stretching toward the heavens. Some of them creak faintly and pop as they grow faster, encouraged by the first light of day.  

It’s impossible, I think, looking around in wonder. Where there were broken splinters, delicate curling ferns have sprung up to hide them beneath their leafy fronds. Where there was ash, flowers bloom.

“Did you do this, too?” I ask, gesturing around us in disbelief. She nods again.

“I… possess such power…”

“The legends,” I gasp faintly, still disbelieving though I see it with my own eyes. “They’re really true. Every part…”

“Legends…” she says softly, as though the notion pains her. “Prithee, what year is this, Sir Knight?”

“I am no knight. And the year is 217 A.B..”

“A.B.?”

“Anno Braxtus. He was the king that united Lusemia. The new calendar was implemented the day his reign began.”

“The island united,” she says with a kind of wonder.

“Well, it was united. Didn’t last. It all fell apart about fifty years ago, divided amongst the four great houses. The Witch keeps them in check now.”

“The Witch?”

“Mirantha Veil, the Crimson Witch. You’ll meet her soon enough,” I say gruffly, realizing I’ve been talking a good deal rather than doing my job. This isn’t like me, I think a bit angrily. I don’t usually find myself so disarmed by the mere presence of another person.

“I’ll take you to her castle,” I say. “But I’ll change first. You might think you can get away from me in that moment, but don’t waste my time trying to run. You’ll never escape me.”

“I would never run from thee,” she answers with a kind of simple certainty that makes my hair stand on end.

“Listen, lady, let’s get one thing straight. I’m not your true love.”

She blinks at me wordlessly.

“I know the story, alright? I know what they told you when they put you to sleep or whatever, that you’d wake when your true love fought the tree— but that’s not what’s happening here. I didn’t come to free you from your spell. I never would have looked for you in the first place if not for Mirantha’s orders.”

Don’t look at me like that, I plead silently as she continues to watch me with inscrutable thoughts. Don’t look at me and imagine I’m some sort of shining hero, because I’m not. I’m the exact opposite of that. The most miserable, stinking wretch in existence. And an absolute villain.  

“Thy name?”

The question catches me off guard. How long has it been since anyone has asked me anything about myself? Certainly not since I came into Mirantha’s possession.

“Thy name, Sir,” she prompts me.

“Victor,” I answer at last in a low voice, looking away from those eyes that seem to see right through me. “Victor Crusoe, son of Martin Crusoe, Lord of…” I trail off, finding myself unable to complete that line.

“Crusoe. That name is familiar to me.”

“We were a great house, once.”

She nods thoughtfully. Then she speaks.

“I am Fion Endellion, only child of Fionnghall and Mairead Endellion. I am honored to make thy acquaintance at last, Victor Crusoe.”

“What do you mean, at last? Weren’t you listening to a thing I said? I’m not the one you were waiting for.”

Fion says nothing, only watches me with her big green eyes.

“Ah, whatever,” I grumble, messing my hair with a furious hand. “Anyway, what I said before about not running— you better not forget it.”

Still, she does not answer me.

With a weary shrug of my shoulders, I take several paces back to give myself room. I am at once in perfect tune with my body, and the strength of the bloodline flowing through my veins. A powerful feeling, there is joy within me as I give myself over to it, and pain.

I am conscious of heat in every part of me as my body stretches and builds, easily outgrowing the woven kilt Fion made for me. It rips and falls uselessly to the ground. My tan skin turns to golden scales as tail and wings burst from my back, shimmering in the early morning sun. I feel my claws sinking into the earth as I’m weighted down by more and more powerful muscle, and I tear at it experimentally, feeling one of my claws tangle in the cut ends of Fion’s long hair.

Fion herself shrinks before me. Once a stately young woman, she is reduced to a child’s height in my eyes, though her quiet, watchful expression remains the same as she continues to stare me down.

All on its own, my forked tongue flicks out between my teeth to capture her scent. She smells of sweetness, of earth and of blossoms. Not like a human at all. In that, perhaps, we are alike.

“You don’t seem intimidated,” I observe in my deep guttural bass tone. She says nothing. “Aren’t you surprised?”

Fion shakes her head. “Azariah whispered thou wouldst be a dragon.”

“Azariah?”

“Him,” she points to the fallen treant, and I feel a strange pang of guilt.

“You were friends?”

“He was my guardian; he spoke to me in my dreams. For centuries, he was my only companion.”

“I see,” I answer gruffly. Then I surprise myself by adding more quietly, “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, her eyes filled with tears. “Azariah’s heart was glad when thou camest to do battle with him. Though he would not disparage me, methinks he’d grown weary of his long task. Do not let your bowls be consumed with guilt on his behalf. He should not wish it upon you.”

My bowels?

I think she’s trying to console me, but if I’m honest, it’s a struggle to keep up with half the words she says. At any rate—

“He was glad for nothing,” I answer her callously.

“Even so, I thank you, Victor Crusoe. For rescuing me at last.”

“This is no rescue,” I sneer, rising up on my hind legs to scoop her into my claws. “I’m kidnapping you, and bringing you to my mistress, at whose hands you may yet suffer a fate worse than death. Do not thank me for what I am about to do to you. Curse me instead.”

“So long as thou art with me, Victor, it matters not where we go,” she states simply as she hangs from my grip.

I snort with contempt as my great golden wings begin to beat the air, lifting us out of the Aelph forest and into the light of the yellow dawn…