Chapter 5: Badgering Brings the Gift (cont'd)

 

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    Her day’s raid behind and a whirlwind of dreams before her, Bao stormed through the thick forest, crushing saplings and the rotting remains of ancient wood alike beneath her boots.  She felt her joy burst with every devastating step as she scanned the forest for her confirmation.

    “Come, my little coward!  The blood is gone!  You may peek through your narrow knuckles and greet me with your sighs and jokes!”  Her voice, filled with ecstasy, bounded into the trees alongside the force of her stride. There was no one left to pounce upon, no one left to run from the sound of her. “It is a different day, Quentin!  Come and face it with me!”

    She halted briefly to take stock of her surroundings.  He seeks the peaceful, pretty places, she thought to herself, and chuckled softly through her teeth.  As is his precious ritual, he’ll seethe in regret until she finds him, greet her with his litany of reproach and entreaty, and should she enlighten him, he will finally learn who spies upon him through these flowering boughs he finds so comforting.  And should her Bishop raise his dumbstruck gaze, up past the blooms and to the sky with his wizard’s eye....   Bao snickered.  It is a shame he would not see the beauty in it.  Suddenly it struck her that this might be the place where they would finally part after so many long and tortuous years, and her smile faded for a moment, but she soon reclaimed it with a hearty, glorious howl that lingered in echo around her. 

    As her echo made its last call to him, Quentin emerged from the trees, so slowly as though not really moving at all but the forest instead drifting behind him.  At once she rushed onto him, attacking him with ferocious glee. 

    “You must come to camp at once,” she barked as she grasped his forearm.  Her heart sank at how limp he felt through his robes, so she grabbed both his shoulders and shook him a little, to dispel his resignation.  He met her gaze.  Yes... he saw in her eyes that something had happened.  His shoulders squared between her hands. 

    Quentin took a deep breath as he commonly did before speaking, “Well, if it is a different day, your cheer confounds me and makes me feel a little silly for leaving so soon.  Did you choose a poor king to rob, on this different day?”

    Bao grinned and turned towards camp as Quentin followed reluctantly, “Poor king indeed, Quentin.  The battle was especially fierce under a summer’s evening sun.  I do think the heat gives incentive to our more worthless boys to fight a little harder, if not to see the blood run quicker, then to see themselves out of their private little ovens.” Having already silenced the crickets and owls, the rapid cracking of the twigs beneath her boots shattered what remained of the evening’s peace.  

    “I spent the afternoon bathing in a cool creek chewing wild berries and singing battle hymns.  Do you think that such a routine might inspire the boys?  I mean only your very least valuable.  We could send Noss out to collect the berries...”

    Bao exhaled heavily with irritation, “Mock me not, Quentin.  Like I said, this is a different day, the magnitude of which you do not recognize.”

    Quentin’s robes and lanky body stumbled to a halt. “At that both strange and predictable statement, you have revealed this magnitude.  Tell me now, Bao.  What have you seen?”

    The gravity and force of Quentin’s tone caused Bao to stop in her tracks, and for the first time the forest was silent.  She turned to see Quentin standing still, arms at his side, like a statue frozen at a pose of great tension. 

    She approached him slowly and whispered with wild intensity, “I have cause to believe we have crossed over, my friend.  It does not offer us choice...at least this is what I interpret from its little gift to me.”

    Bao opened her hand to show Quentin the glistening moisture still clinging to the lines of her palm.  From the deep red trenches caused by her finger nails, Quentin realized that her hand had been clenched in a tight fist since the battle.

    Quentin hissed, “You show me nothing unusual.  Nothing that is not self-inflicted.  I believe it is your pathetic superstitions, again, turning sweat into salt.”

    Bao grabbed Quentin once again, but pleaded, “Use your craft, Quentin.  Use it to see the sky truly, and then call me pathetic.”

    Quentin closed his eyes, dropping his head slightly.  He laughed wearily.  “Do you not hear the desperation in your voice?”

    She did not answer, and in her silence Quentin recognized the desperation in his own voice.  His tone turned harsh, “Revel not, if you are right, Bao.  You are bound to perish like a common sheep at the hand of your own pitiful madness.   I do not need to cast to see the sky truly.  It is truly there, above us.  Blue or crimson, it matters not.  The sky cares not what color we see, only how we tremble beneath its weight. Your hateful attempts at glory mean nothing to a crimson sky.  It will rain death on us regardless!”

    Bao’s expression twisted with anger as her entreaty quickly dropped to a deep, dangerous growl, “It crouches with us now, drinking your fear, and feasting on my frustration.  There!  Beside you!  And it would swallow you whole if it did not consider me a worthy foe.  If you do not stand with me now, I will forsake you and spit you from my gut, for then what worth are you?  Another face on its wall.”

    Slowly, Quentin’s shoulders dropped once again.  For a long, grim moment, he held a distant, empty gaze.  He could hear her heavy breathing, but saw past her, into shared memories.  

    Bao searched his face for an answer, barely able to stand still against her agitation.

    “Very well,” he muttered. He glanced briefly at Bao to see, as he expected, smug satisfaction spreading across her face.  She is a child, Quentin thought, who badgers for a gift and thinks that it is the badgering that brings the gift.  He stepped away from her, toward camp, and listened for her heavy footsteps behind him.  Without seeing her face, he constructed her features in his mind... her fair, evenly complexioned skin that flowed like waves over her muscled jaw, surrounding her full expressive lips and bright green eyes.  Her brown hair, near black, was cut short and blunt, falling in jagged locks across her forehead and just below her ears.  When Quentin conjured her image, he nearly always did so accurately and completely, omitting only the aging scar that snaked down her cheek, from the edge of her eye to her broad chin, and never did he see the smeared spatters of blood that so often defiled her magnificent appearance.  

    So young and strong.  Quentin ached from her presence.  This creature that could find delight in the thought of battling their hideous demon beneath its crimson sky.  

    “You will cast for me, tonight,” Bao demanded.

    “I will cast for you,” Quentin replied.  Then to himself, as the resignation pulled his bones closer to the earth, “If I am to end on its wall, I can only hope you are the victor.”

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An excerpt from the novel in progress The Apparitions' Tale, by Theresa Davila.