Ada watched the water slip between her fingers. She wondered if she stopped fighting it if her fingers would slip into the pool and mix with the runoff. She could yield to older, greater forces than she could contain. Would she be better off melted into a puddle? She could float along, doing her part to carve the valleys.
She turned her head to see if Mavin had finished. The water still ran red downstream as he scrubbed his hands together. Ada’s lip curled in disgust. Not this water. She didn’t want to become this water.
Mavin went through the motions of cleaning the blood from his hands long after any trace remained on his skin. It was a relief, watching the old ritual, him scrubbing at the stains only he could see. If he ever stopped, then she would know that it didn’t matter. She wanted it to matter.
Having finished his atonement, Mavin gestured to the corpse lying face down in the stream. “They’ll be looking for him soon. We have to keep moving.”
Ada nodded. “Moving where?”
Mavin scowled. “Anywhere but here.”
She pressed her arms tightly to her sides as he skirted past her up the steep incline. He hated to touch her when she wore a man. It didn’t help that he had just finished killing said man. Fifteen years ago, he would have held her stolen hand, smiled at her, said something reassuring, but the golden years had passed. Passion had faded. The very humdrum mechanics of survival had taken its place, but at least he still scrubbed at his hands as if somehow it could really all wash off.
Ada fell in line behind him as they wound through the trees and brush. Thorns scored her new skin and tore at the old, filthy garments of the stranger who had so unwittingly stumbled upon them. They had gotten lucky.
Snapping twigs and rustling foliage filled the silence between them. Sunlight soaked through the tree branches, fanning light across the shadowy forest floor. Ada felt the tension in her stomach. The day was running low. Soon they would be trapped in place as night’s dark mantle settled around them.
Ada hated the night. It always provoked a clawing panic inside, and the campfire did little to quell it. If anything, the small beacon of Mavin’s fires only made the darkness pressing in seem more insurmountable. Ada tried not to think of what was ahead. Instead, she listened to the sounds of the wood, taking it all in while she had light to do so.
A deer peered at them in the distance. Ada reached to grab Mavin’s sleeve to tell him, but thought better of it. She was hungry, but she knew he would be cross with her at the request. He wouldn’t be willing to shed any more blood. Tonight would be left over bread and bitter berries. Ada let her hand drop next to her side and kept walking.
They continued to the summit. Everything was melting into shades of gray as evening spread it’s ink over the landscape. Ada panted from exertion, sweat tickling the sides of her face, but Mavin didn’t slow down. He kept his pace until they had reached the top.
When he finally stopped walking, Ada didn’t wait for the pronouncement that they would make camp. She went and sat in the cool grass. After a moment, she decided that wasn’t nearly enough, and she sank back to lay on the ground. The branches overhead swayed and creaked, and she smiled. She was hungry and thirsty, but this was enough. The sky overhead and the cool earth beneath her was enough.
“We should gather firewood,” Mavin said as he dropped his pack on the ground, always pragmatic. He took a drink from his flask and brought it over to her.
“Yes, we should,” she said. She took the offering and washed the dirt and salt from her mouth, feeling the water slip down her throat to settle in her stomach.
She watched him begin the preparations, but she didn’t offer assistance right away. Instead she watched him work, manual labor its own kind of foreplay. She enjoyed his furtive glances her direction, waiting for her, desiring something from her. After the stack had been well-established, she stood up and began adding her own contributions. When they were finally fed and rested, they both lay back on blankets and watched the stars travel along the outer sphere.
Mavin folded his hands together on his chest. “When I was little, my mother told me that when a fairy passed, it went on to shine in the heavens forever.”
Ada smiled. “How old were you when you stopped believing that?”
Mavin kept his gaze on the burning lights. “Who says I did?”
Ada’s smile faded. She wanted to chide him over pretending to hold something sacred. She wanted to say something angry and accusing, but need won out. Instead she said, “Where will we go tomorrow?”
Mavin turned his head to look at her. “They are hunting us to the east, so we will head west.”
“They are hunting you. How could they hunt me? What would they hunt for?” Ada asked. She regretted it as soon as she had said it.
He turned away from her, back to the celestial display above him. “A trail of corpses I guess.”
Ada’s mouth dried. He said it casually. He said it as if he didn’t hate her. “West it is,” she whispered.
He reached out and grabbed her hand, locking his fingers between hers, not like the tender union of lovers, but like an oath shared by the damned. “You need to get some sleep. We will have to start early in the morning.”
Ada wanted to say something, anything, but nothing came out. She fell asleep with her lips parted, desperate to speak. For all her trouble, all that came of it was a dry mouth and a struggle to swallow the next morning.
As usual, the morning greeted her with fear and uncertainty. Mavin was already up, looking for ways to keep himself busy. She stretched and squirmed, a collection of knotted muscles. As she raised her arms above her head, she saw the patch of rotting flesh. She shrieked in surprise, and Mavin stopped what he was doing to watch her.
It was already happening. Her new shape was decomposing. Mavin crossed the distance between them and grabbed her arm to survey the damage.
He let it drop and stepped back, his eyes burning. “It’s too soon. You just took this one.”
She sat up. “It’s not my fault. I’m not causing this.” She covered the damage limb in her sleeve so she wouldn’t have to see it.
Mavin shook his head. “I don’t understand. Your forms are wearing out faster and faster.”
Ada’s mouth pressed into a thin hard line before she spoke. “I know that, Mavin. What are we going to do about it?”
Mavin crouched down and held his head in his hands. “I don’t know. We’ll find another.”
Ada looked around. “Where?”
Mavin stood and began shoving belongings into his bag. “What else can we do? Start walking or sit there and rot. Those are our choices.”
Ada looked out into the distant tree line. Rot, and then what? If only she could answer that. Perhaps the rotting would be bearable. She shivered.
Mavin was already on the move. Terror forced her limbs into action. Somehow being left behind was even more terrifying than the rot. She scrambled to keep up as they made their way down the mountain.
The morning’s light brought color to the world around her, the hues of green mocking her with life. She told herself to appreciate it, to study each and every shapely leaf, but all she could think about was the death eating away at her flesh. By lunch, she could eat nothing. Even water seemed to stick in her throat.
Mavin studied her as he ate. He didn’t insist she try to eat, didn’t lecture her about keeping up her strength or any other hopeful trifles. That was when she knew that she really was going to die this time.
“Are you ready to walk? If you want, we can rest here a bit,” he suggested.
He meant she could die here if she wished. If this spot was lovely and idyllic enough, this could be where she breathed her last. She struggled to speak. Her lips felt loose and ungainly, and she wondered if they would come unglued. “Not here. We could still find a village ahead. We could find someone.”
He smiled the weak, patronizing smile that loved ones give the dying. Mavin finished chewing the last of their food. He walked over and reached out to help her up. “Okay. We’ll keep going.”
She let him pull her up, bits of skin flaking off in his hand. He brushed the flesh away as if it wasn’t grotesque, and Ada loved him for it.
They went west.
By midafternoon, the world was turning a filmy gray again, but twilight had not yet reached them. Here eyes were dying, a thin layer of scum covering those things people said led to the soul. She stumbled, and the bone in her leg snapped.
Ada tried to scream, but it was more of a muffled gurgle. She sucked in a breath to try again, wishing to express something far more primal. She was disappointed to find that even now, nothing more earth-shaking broke from her collapsing lungs.
Mavin closed the distance between them. His face contorted with the smell of her, but he held her anyway. His arms felt like cords cutting into her damaged body, but he was there, really there. He finally looked at her again, without resentment, without doubts. He finally looked at her as he had so long ago when they first met, and she tried not to think about what it meant, that he could afford such a luxury now that the weight of her was almost free from his shoulders.
She tried to hold onto her love for him as her lungs struggled to suck in air, as dread filled all the empty spaces within her. She tried to hold onto them, hold onto her, hold onto anything, and then she was reaching. She didn’t want to be a drop in the ocean, a light in the heavens, or a damn grain of sand on some infinite beach, and so she reached.
She felt the hilt in her hand. She pulled the blade out of the sheath, and then she did the unthinkable. She wanted to tell him that the blade sticking out of his chest was just as shocking and unbelievable for her as it was for him. As the light seeped from his chest into her, forming her anew, she wanted to tell him so many things, but no words came out. Even now, she could find nothing to say, and so she held him until it was over. And then it was, over.
She laid him gently on the ground, face up, so that she would have to stare into his face, into her face, into all the unanswered questions that must be lingering underneath.
Ada began scrapping at the dirt, willing her hands to be strong enough to break through the stubborn clods of earth to give him somewhere safe to rest. It wasn’t enough. Mavin’s hands were strong, but not strong enough to dig a grave in a timely fashion, and time was of the essence. She stood and looked around for something to represent a burial shroud. She settled on a few fallen branches, a suggestion of covering. Time was of the essence.
Ada continued down the mountain until she reached a stream. She surveyed the streaks of dirt and blood covering her. She bit at her lip to keep from crying. It was too late for that. There was no one to hear her anymore, not gods, not fay, not Mavin. Ada washed her hands until they looked new. She scrubbed until it hurt, until the fresh, pink skin was raw and stinging.
She went west.