Damsel Knight (7 page)

Bonnie clenches her teeth together and looks at the dragon. He's giant now, where before he would barely have reached his own ankle. But the more she watches him, the more it seems the height is the only thing that's changed. His eyes are the same dark pools, his scales as bright a red as ever. The way he looks at her sometimes; like he knows who she is. It sets her heart on edge.

"So you agree with Neven?" Bonnie asks her. "You think I should kill him before the spell breaks?"

Alice flushes red. She ducks her eyes, as if only now remembering her station as a woman. "I would not presume to tell you what to do, and I'm sure your skill with a sword is unparalleled."

"But?" Bonnie prompts, deciding once and for all that she prefers the girl when she forgets herself. She's roughly of age with herself, but holds herself to expectations others had of her before she left for the tower when she was little more than a child. Sometimes she even forgets those expectations.

"But if you don't kill him soon," the princess continues quietly. "I worry that he'll never give you the chance to."

Chapter 9

It's the cold that wakes her as much as it is Neven's hand shaking her shoulder. She sits up groggy, cold burning her lungs when she breathes in. When she breathes out it shows by the light of the fire as a white mist.

"It's the princess," he whispers. "She's gone."

Bonnie blinks, looking about her. Sleep clings, making the meaning of the words trickle down into her consciousness slowly. For a moment she expects to see the paved yard at the back of her large stone house, where her father used to teach her swordsmanship. 'Remember,' he'd say to her at the end of each lesson. 'Don't tell your mother.'

Instead all she sees is darkness in every direction. The only spot of light is the fire, burning low. A few feet around it the shadows swallow the glow. Far away she can hear the dragon's steady breathing.

"Maybe she has business to attend to?"

Neven flushes red at the suggestion his true love has bodily functions like everyone else. "I told her to wake me if she had to - you know."

Bonnie's almost tempted to say she doesn't and have him explain it, just to see how red he can go. What is it with the two of them and blushing? Part of her wonders if that is how your true love is found, whether they blush and shy from confrontation as much as the other does.

"Have you tried shouting for her?"

"I don't want to wake your Gelert," Neven whispers. "And I waited ten minutes before I woke you. If she's nearby she would've come back, and she'd definitely hear that -" He points at the dragon. He doesn't snore, but he is very big. Every one of his exhales sounds like a gale of wind strong enough to blow down every roundhouse in their village.

"How do you mean to find her without shouting?" It's now that Bonnie realises that without knowing it she's been whispering too. But it's not because of the dragon. It's the feeling on the back of her neck, like she's being watched. It's in the question of why it's cold enough to see her breath and freeze her fingers on a summer's night next to a fire.

There's something out there in the forest, and she doesn't think it likes her.

Neven raises one of the longer sticks from the fire. The end stays burning bright.

She shrugs off the stupid superstitious thoughts. Magic is real, and so is black magic, but that doesn't mean that every childish whim is real too. Neven's more into that kind of thing than her, praying to the ancestors every day and giving offerings to the other world. If he's not mentioning it, then she won't.

"Prepare me a stick too," she says. "We'll walk the perimeter and see if we can see her."

They walk through the black with only the torches in their hands, the dot of fire, and the sound of the sleeping dragon to tell them they haven't wandered off too. They meet behind the dragon's back with nothing to show for it.

"We need to find her," he whispers. "If we don't find her soon she'll be lost forever. Anything could get her."

Bonnie tries to ignore the feeling that ‘anything' is out there right now, watching them. He's right. They need to find her. There are too many stories of people going into the dark forest and never coming out. A long time ago after the purge of dark magic, King Robin sent armies into the Dark Forest to rid the circle of the last remnants of evil. Not one man who stepped into those trees ever stepped out.

They need the princess. In her focus on the dragon she'd forgotten the importance of that. The King needs the dragon dead and the princess returned to him before he'll give them the reward. Bonnie doesn't care about inheriting the circle, and Neven can wed the princess, but the riches and a knighthood do matter to her.

Her birth isn't that bad if she can prove her origins. Her mother was from one of the lesser houses, but her name still holds some respect. Her father, despite his low origins beyond the circle was a great knight. A dragon slayer. Were she a boy that might be enough to win the right to squire for some knight, and eventually become one. But she's a girl. Anyone who can verify her birth will verify that her parents only lived long enough to have one female child.

The only way she'll become a knight is if she proves her worth with no background to support her, like her father did. For that she needs the princess.

"We stick together," she says firmly. There's something solid about the black that surrounds them. It's childish, but she can't help the fear that if they step too far away from the fire, the darkness will swallow them whole like some living thing with thoughts and feelings, and a taste for blood. "We'll widen our perimeter, keeping the fire in our sight. If that fails, we may have to chance waking the dragon. The spell may bind him to her, and aid him in finding her."

"Wait," Neven says, turning his head toward the darkness. "Did you hear that?"

She strains her ears. Aside from the dragon's heavy breathing, and her thumping heart she hears nothing but the silence. The silence is as thick as the darkness, and carries its own noise, so loud it hurts her ears to focus on it. It's a hollow sound defined by its absence of sound. It seems to suck at her ears in a way that reminds her of the patches of quick mud around her village, or Neven's black holes of magic he says are out there in the stars.

"There it is again," Neven says, moving away from her, into the trees. The shadows close around him before he's taken two steps, torch and all. It's like he's stepping through a thick black curtain. "I know that voice. It's-"

His torch is gone, then his face and voice, then his head and body, until the only thing left is his right arm, trailing behind him. Panic stabbing at her chest, she grabs for it. Her fingers grasp his wrist a moment before the hand vanishes.

Then all at once she can see him again, dim but still there, as he should be. Had she imagined it? She takes her hand off his wrist gingerly, but he doesn't disappear.

He turns back to her, annoyed. "Are you coming or not?"

She opens her mouth to tell him what she saw, then closes it. He's mad enough with her already, for the cruel words she spoke, and for the whole situation with the dragon. She could explain that - or part of it, but those words hide away as well. "I'm coming," she says instead. "Just hold my hand. It's dark."

He looks at her curiously, then closes his hand over hers. He asks her no questions, which makes her love him more.

They walk together, side by side. He seems to know where he's going, weaving around trees that range in size from as round as the house they'd shared, to as thin as her arm. The sword is a comforting weight on her back, making her glad she'd thought to bring it along with the shield she'd plucked from the graveyard. Neven still has the metal cuffs attached to his arms, and the pack jingling with spare parts when he moves. Her pack still sits beside the fire, and with each step she wishes she'd brought it along too.

At least that black curtain is gone, she thinks before she happens to glance backward. The fire is nowhere to be seen. It could have disappeared behind a tree, or even the dragon if the angle was right. Only, she can't hear the dragon either, and given the noise he makes they should hear him for another hundred meters at least.

The light from their torches doesn't travel as far as it should. A few feet around him, the darkness seems to engulf it. The black curtain isn't gone, she realises. They're inside it.

"Neven," Bonnie says, tugging at his arm. "This is wrong. We have to go back to Gelert."

"Can't you hear him?" Neven laughs, breath puffing white. Laughing, in a place like this. "It's Ness. He must have followed us."

She hears nothing but that deafening silence. "Ness is marching to King’s City to be trained for war. He's not here Neven."

"Yes he is," Neven says, pulling his hand from hers. The movement overbalances him, and he drops his torch. The flame dies on contact with the ground as quickly as if it had been dosed in water. It hisses steam up at them. Neven barely seems to notice. "He's right there. There-"

His eyes go wide in the dim firelight. Before she can grab for him, he runs off toward - something. She catches only a glimpse of it. It's an indistinct figure as tall as a man, with a body made of mist that stands a stark white against the black.

Then it wisps away as quickly as if it'd never been, and the black curtain swallows Neven whole.

"No!" She cries, running to where Neven had disappeared. The darkness recedes before her flickering torch the same as any darkness should, but an arms length away it turns stubborn. It keeps up its inky black wall around her, moving with her racing feet.

It's trying to separate us, she thinks wildly. Whatever is out there is trying to split them up, and then what? She doesn't know. She doesn't want to know. She just wants to find Neven and get out of here. Whatever her many reasons for killing the dragon, they aren't worth Neven's life.

Pain explodes in her head and shoulder, and she falls backward onto the cold ground. The torch flies out of her hand. "No!" She cries again, lurching toward it, but it lands and gutters out into steam on the cold ground.

Hesitatingly she puts her hand out to see what she ran into. Bark as cold as ice greets her fingertips. A tree. She ran into a tree.

Tears sting her eyes, hurting almost as much as her screaming head and throbbing shoulder. Something warm runs down her cheek, and she doesn't know whether she's crying or bleeding.

She wants Neven. She wants Gelert. She wants her dead parents. She wants Mrs Moore with her constant scolding and warm hugs, she wants Mr Moore with his simple no nonsense approach to life. She even wants Ness, though she doesn't know whether she'd hit him or hug him.

She can't do this. It's too much. She's no knight. She's just some girl whose father entertained with a few sword lessons. She can't fight dark magic, just like she can't fight a dragon. She was just kidding herself because of -

Because of the blood. Because of the box.

She's a girl. Girls can't be knights. All girls are good for is waiting around for some man to come and take care of them. Her father may not have thought that, but her mother did. All she wants right now is some knight in shining armour to come and save her and Neven.

"Wipe those tears Bon, and I'll tell you a story."

She spins around toward the voice, her hand reaching over her shoulder to grasp the hilt of her sword. She freezes.

He stands over her, looking as solid and real as he always had. He's tall with a strong build like Ness, and he has her bright blond hair and blue eyes. His face is clean shaven, something not common among knights.

"Da?" Her voice trembles.

"A story about dragons, knights," he crouches down to her level. He smiles that warm smile of his, and his eyes really seem to see her - for everything that she is. "Magic, and fierce maidens. Would you like that?"

She would. She wants that so badly, but something's not right. He’s too solid, too real. Non-existent sunshine lights up his face like it would on one of their bright summer days at the stone house. Her mother had hated moving even the short distance away from their roundhouse to the city, but she loved the way the stone house captured the sun as much as they did. Around her the darkness wraps so completely that she can’t see her hands.

“What are you?” She whispers, her lungs tight with cold and fear.

He frowns at her, puzzled. “Why, I’m your father Bon. Now, how about we see if we can drag that beautiful mother of yours out of the kitchen? She’ll work herself to the grave, dutiful thing that she is.”

No she won’t, Bonnie thinks. But she’ll die all the same. When he reaches out his hand to her she remembers how comforting his large callused hands felt wrapped around her small ones. How safe she always felt in his arms. She wants to take that hand, and go with him to see her mother again. She’d throw a fit over her clothes and hair, and scrub the mud from her until her skin was scoured pink, but she’d do it out of love.

Instead she takes a deep breath and draws her sword. It’s light for its great size, enough to hold and even swing it one handed for short periods, but she holds it in two. It makes it easier to pretend her hands aren’t shaking.

The thing pretending to be her father laughs. “Do you want to play swords now? We should wait until your mother is at her sewing. You know what she’s like when she gets a project into her head. We shan’t see her for hours, and when we do she’ll have more pretty dresses for you to wear.”

She raises herself to her feet, levels the point of the sword at the thing’s neck. “What I want is my friends back. Give them to me unharmed and you might keep your life intact.”

The thing’s mouth twists into something too sharp for a smile. “Life?” He stands up, brushing non-existent dust off the red tunic and blue trousers her mother had sewn her father. His blue eyes fade until they are balls of mist. The merry tone drops from his voice, and it becomes something different - higher and stranger, but with enough of her father’s sound to make her cringe. “What do you know about life? Taker of life is what you are Bonnie Ceana. Tell me. Why did you open the door? He told you not to. He told you never under any circumstance to open the door, yet you did. You opened the door, like you opened the box years before. You did this!”

All at once the front of his tunic is torn. The gash spreads dark over the red of the cloth, and the cloak around his shoulders is as pale a pink as any she’s seen. Blood drips from his mouth, torso, and cloak. Whenever a drop hits the forest floor, it hisses and vanishes.