Aisling Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The morning after the festival, a shadow came to Willowbrook. It slid along the stone walls and over the cobbled streets. Children stopped playing. Market lamps guttered out at noon. Aisling felt the cold before she saw it, a wrongness that raised the hair on her arms. Melora leaned hard on her walking stick beside her, still weak from her sickness, and studied the dark stain moving through the square. "That is no wandering ghost," Melora said. "It came for someone. You must guide it to peace before it feeds on the village." Aisling nodded, though fear locked her throat. She knew only pieces of the rite. She led the shadow to the round lake at the village edge, near the wooden dock, and drew a ring of salt on the stones. She lit dried herbs and sang the cleansing song her mentor taught her. "Return to the light," she said. "Let go of what holds you here." The shadow gathered. It pulled itself upright and took a shape. A small girl stood inside the darkness, thin arms hanging, ragged dress torn at the hem. Two red eyes opened. Her mouth split into a wide, jagged smile. "You cannot send me to the light," the child said. "I am not dead. I am you." Aisling's song broke. "That's a lie." "Nyx," the girl whispered. "That is the name you gave me when you were small. I am the part you buried by the forest. The baby left in the boat. The girl no one wanted." Every cut Aisling had hidden opened at once. The parents who abandoned her. The years of wondering what was wrong with her. She had pushed it all down until it grew teeth in the dark. Her salt ring meant nothing now. You could not banish yourself. Melora's voice carried across the stones. "A shaman meets the spirit and asks what it wants. Do it, girl." Aisling stepped over her own salt line. She knelt on the cold dock, level with the shadow child's red eyes. "You're right," she said. Her voice shook. "I hated you. I was ashamed of you. I wanted you gone." She reached out one wet hand. "But you kept me alive when I wanted to quit. I won't throw you away again." Nyx's smile faltered. "You would keep me?" "You're mine," Aisling said. "All of you. Even this." She pulled the shadow into her chest. Cold poured through her, then eased. The darkness sank into her skin and stayed. The square's lamps flared back to light. The village warmed. Aisling stood, changed. She felt the old grief still there, but quiet now, folded inside her instead of clawing out. Melora limped to her, breathing rough, and gripped her arm. "You faced it," her mentor said. Then she swayed and coughed, a wet rattle deeper than before. "But my chest… the sickness is back, worse. You'll need more than herbs this time, girl."