~Chapter Fourteen~
The group turned as one and saw me emerging from the marsh, my clothing torn, my hair and face muddy. But most importantly, they saw the small boy I was carrying.
“Joni!” Sammy called desperately as he spied Petre.
Petre turned, slowly, as though he didn’t believe what he was hearing. He saw Sammy in my arms, straining towards him, dirty, but alive.
“Sammy,” was all he said before lifting him out of my arms. Both brothers clutched each other, and I couldn’t stop the tears of relief that trickled down my face.
“Are you alright?” Dena was frantic, trying to see if anything was wrong with me.
“I’m fine,” I said. I saw tears of happiness in Petre’s eyes. “More than fine, actually.”
Dena hugged me out of relief, and I almost let myself collapse; I was exhausted. My limbs trembled now that the adrenaline had left them, and I felt hollow.
“Sky, I can’t even...” Petre broke off, kissing me fiercely on the cheek instead.
“She killed it.” Sammy said from atop Petre’s hip.
Petre pulled back and looked at me, as though seeing me in a whole new light.
“You will never, ever, cease to amaze me.”
We rode back in a whole new frame of mind than the one we’d arrived with. We’d been expecting to have to kill the Du’rangor and then find Sammy’s body so we could put him to rest. Instead, Sammy was going to grow into a strong, healthy boy, who could claim that he’d outlived the Du’rangor that attacked him.
When we reached the manor house and Lord Hugh met us in the entrance hall, I couldn’t hold back the tears again as he saw the son he’d thought he’d lost. A door opened on the side hall, and a woman emerged.
“What’s all the fuss about?” she asked, her face pale and thin.
“Mother!” Sammy called, and the woman looked like she was going to faint.
The family gathered around each other, and Dena and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing; we should leave them to their reunion.
We nodded and moved swiftly up the stairs with Ispin and the girls. When we reached the second floor, Theresa and Yasmin wanted to know the whole story, but Rain saved me.
“She’s exhausted,” she said, taking my arm to steady me. “Come on, Sky.”
She led me to the bathroom we shared as the other girls followed. For the next half an hour I was pampered, as Rain carefully washed mud and bits of the marsh from my hair. Dena set about drying it and then brushing it. I let myself fall asleep, properly, for the first time in days.
When I woke I was in my bed. I sat up, confused, wondering what had woken me. Another small tap sounded at the door, and I quickly swung my legs out of bed, noticing someone had dressed me in my pyjamas.
“Come in,” I called, trying to smooth down the thicket that was my hair.
Petre’s mother entered just as I lit the candle next to me.
“Sorry if I woke you,” she said.
“Not at all,” I replied, patting the bed next to me. “I think I’ll be able to sleep better from now on anyway.”
She smiled, coming to sit next to me. In the light of the candle, I could see her resemblance to Petre straight away.
“I’m Matilda; I’m sorry we haven’t met before now,” she apologized. “I’ve been grieving for my youngest son. But now, because of you, I don’t have to.”
I smiled uneasily; I wasn’t really sure what to say.
“Is there anything I can do to thank you?” she asked, but I was shaking my head before she finished the sentence.
“No. I wanted to help my friend, that’s all.”
We sat in silence.
“You’re an unusual mage, Sky,” she said finally. “Petre tells me this is the second Du’rangor you’ve killed.”
“It was.”
“For any mage to claim to have killed one of the beasts is impressive; two is verging on legendary. I find it curious that before now we have not seen them in Lotheria at all, and now two have been killed within months of each other.”
For a second I wondered if she was accusing me of importing them or something. But then I realised she was just confused.
“I don’t know how they're getting into the country,” I said quietly. “I’m from the human realm; I’ve never been to Gannameade. The first time I saw a Du’rangor was when it was trying to kill me when I was stuck in a tree.”
She fidgeted, her hands sitting on her stomach and I noticed that she was pregnant, the bump just beginning to show beneath her magenta night gown.
“I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be the end of these dark occurrences,” she said finally. “I think it’s just the beginning.”
She stood up to leave, but then turned back just as I was beginning to slide back under my covers.
“I’m carrying a girl,” she said, patting her belly. “She’ll be named Sky.”
She left before I could say anything. My emotions were raging, and I wasn’t sure if for a second I was going to break down and cry. Instead, I blew out the candle and pulled my blankets up to my ears.
It was a long time before I fell back to sleep.
The next morning, the whole manor house seemed to be buzzing. The elderly lady who had shown me to my room brought me breakfast and a pot of tea, beaming at me as she did so. As she left my room, I thought I caught glimpses of other servants in the hall and I heard a snatch of excited gibbering until my door was closed again. I ate the steam buns – these ones had bits of apricots and peaches in them – in thoughtful silence. I got dressed as I drank my tea, dressing in the same breeches that had been laundered, but pulling on a white shirt this time; my green one was beyond repair, as part of the material was still out in the marshes attached to the claws of the dead Du’rangor. I left my hair down for once, impressed by the soft shininess of it after Rain had washed it. It smelt like fruits, and I made a mental note to ask her what shampoo she used.
All mental notes fled my mind as I opened my door. It seemed as though every servant that worked in the manor had found an excuse to be cleaning something outside or near my room, and when I opened my door they all stared.
I avoided their gazes uneasily, trotting down the stairs and praying that I wouldn’t fall flat on my face with everyone watching. Still peckish, despite the rolls and tea, I headed for the dining room, finding the others seated around the enormous table which had been decorated with a large bowl of red chrysanthemums. The others were already eating, their chatter reaching my ears just as the smell of bacon and eggs did.
“There she is,” Lord Hugh said, spying me in the doorway. “Our hero.”
He swept over to me and kissed me on the cheek as Petre had done.
“I’m not anyone’s hero,” I mumbled, embarrassed. “I did what anyone at this table would do.”
“You did what we couldn’t,” Ispin said, fixing his glasses on his nose. “None of us wanted to go off by ourselves, even though we suspected you were right, that the Du’rangor wouldn’t go after us as a group.”
“He’s right,” Rain said, echoing her soul mate. “Deny it all you want, Sky, but the fact is that you have courage that we just don’t.”
I couldn’t respond, so I just stood awkwardly, shuffling from foot to foot. Dena rescued me by pulling an extra plate towards her, beginning to load it up with toast, bacon and eggs. Lord Hugh pulled out my chair for me very gallantly, which just made me even more embarrassed. I felt better as I started eating, though.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Yasmin advised. “Because I don’t think it would be very wise to mention this when we get home.”
I looked up from tearing a fruit roll in half. Had she guessed that Iain and Netalia wouldn’t be pleased with us? Her eyes glinted and I knew she had.
“I just d
on’t think Jett would be very pleased to know that we came here to risk our lives,” she explained for everyone else’s benefit.
“So only here we can call her the Du’rangor Slayer,” Petre said, grinning widely in my direction.
I pointed a rasher of bacon at him very threateningly.
“Don’t you dare.” I replied darkly.
We were saved any more comments by Sammy’s arrival in the dining hall. Despite his father and brother’s presence, he came straight to me and crawled up into my lap, completely at ease. He began eating some of my bacon as Lord Hugh started the conversation again.
“Samlin will be going to the magic tester in a few days,” he said proudly, the glow of fatherhood warm in his eyes. “The day he turns five. Who knows, maybe we’ll have another little mage in our midst.”
Sammy, completely unperturbed by this, finished the rasher of bacon and leant forwards for half of the fruit roll I picked up for him. I wondered if the little boy in my lap would grow up to be a Petre; spoiled and lofty on the outside, soft and caring on the inside. Now that I’d gotten to know Petre, gotten to know what he truly held dear, I couldn’t look down on him like I’d used to. I looked across at Rain on a whim, and saw such a look in her eyes as she looked at him that I felt embarrassed for a whole new reason, like I’d been intruding on something private. I looked down at Sammy in my lap instead. His golden hair had been washed, and I could already see it beginning to darken, so that he would have the same coloured hair as Petre and his father, a hue not so far from my own dark hair. The boy ate ravenously, and without prompting, began to tell about his take on the day the Du’rangor had stolen him.
He’d been playing in the gardens at the end of the estate. His father had told him not to play there many times, but that was the only place the stream flowed through, and though it was a meagre flow, it still created enough mud to make mud pies. As he’d been stretching towards the trickle of water, he’d looked up to see large red eyes in front of him. Immediately he began to scream and wail in terror, but he’d been too far from the house for anyone to hear.
Rather than clawing or biting him, the Du’rangor had lifted him off the ground by grabbing his shirt in its mouth. Carrying the wailing child, it had begun its slow walk towards the marshland just as one of the dry electric storms that so plagued the city began to build.
By the time the beast had reached the swamp, the storm was in full swing. During one particularly loud crack of thunder, Sammy’s shirt had torn and he’d fallen to the ground and taken off running. The Du’rangor, distracted by the lightning, hadn’t noticed him fall at first. These seconds were crucial for Sammy, who’d flown through the sparse undergrowth, trying to find a way out. Instead he’d managed to stumble into the midst of the marsh, and resorted to climbing a tree, the one I’d found him in, and staying there as the thunder and lightning clashed and the Du’rangor began its search for him.
For the next week he huddled in its branches, too afraid to move. He could hear the hunting parties searching for him, but he knew that the Du’rangor had to be close, and so he daren’t make a sound.
When it rained, he’d drunk as much as he could catch, the water filling his belly, but it was hollow succour for a growing boy. He’d tried eating a few of the bitter leaves from the tree he was hiding in, but they’d stung his mouth so he’d spat them out. As it was, he spent a total of nine nights in the tree, not moving, not making a sound.
He’d been asleep one morning when he’d woken up to the sound of the Du’rangor very close. He’d watched it stalk closer from under the brush, until it was right beneath his tree. And then he’d glanced over, and seen me almost face down in the mud.
“I didn’t think you were real, at first,” he admitted to me. “I thought you were a goddess come to take me away.”
One of the servants bore him away as his eyelids began to close, his small body drooping; he was exhausted after telling his story. I made eye contact with Petre.
“Not a word,” I said sternly, knowing I would never be able to live down being called a goddess, though I don’t think many of them made a habit of crawling through swamp mud.
Despite that, Sammy’s steadfast belief that I was going to save him and his unquestioning acceptance of me had melted my heart, and I knew I couldn’t think of myself in the same way ever again. I was still Sky, who couldn’t create objects or fire arrows accurately to save her life, but I had saved the life of a small child, and I’d never be the same again.