They came north and south with only minutes between them, so as she tended to her garden (the calendulas were growing marvellously, Carissa noted with pride) she watched the village divide its attention; some went north to greet the merchants who’d just arrived, their eyes full of curiosity. Others headed south, near the road, the least occupied portion of the village, and Carissa didn’t even need to look to know that Ayarann had returned. Everyone who lived here learned to avoid the southern side of the village, past Carissa’s garden. It was an ugly place, where one could see the barren lands beyond, and know that there was nothing but empty space between this village and the horrors that would soon creep from the Deadlands towards what remained of Coloratus.
Carissa set aside her gloves and shears, and placed the herbs she collected on a small vial, storing it on her buckled belt. Some of its leather had worn out over the year. Soon she would need to purchase another one, but each time Rismatia at the head of her caravan, her prices would swell, and now their value was almost too high for such a miserable village, one that didn’t even have a name. It might be that, with the turn of the year, the caravan would not return at all. It was a harsh journey from the heart of Fusarishuisen to the farthest corner of Coloratus, drought with peril, from bandits to monsters to the weather. All that for a few coppers and the goods a small village could produce, which made for very poor business; if not for Rismatia’s fondness for Carissa, it was doubtful they would even travel this far at all.
It was Rismatia she should meet first, for it was her kindness that helped this village survive for so long, so far from the Colored Plains and so close to the Deadlands. And yet it was remembering that kindness that set ablaze her hatred and her rage. That her scorn would be repaid with help and love only made it burn more fiercely. Not only Rismatia, but Katya and Teris. None of them had done anything to harm her, so when she met their tenderness with spite and they continued to love her even as she turned her back on them, she only felt more vile and bitter.
She had decided, then, closing the door of her little wooden fence, that she would treat Rismatia like dirt, and would first receive Ayarann instead. She could not explain that whim, nor did she care to. She also chose not to care that it only sharpened the cuts of guilt and self-hatred. Let her hate me, let them all hate me, she thought ruefully, as she made her way towards Aya, and may this hate lead them to forget me.
It wasn’t easy to reach Ayarann; Carissa had miscounted just how many people had approached the merchants, because she saw now that almost the entire village huddled around Aya. She moved past, roughly shoving them aside, a gesture more likely to hurt herself than others given her frailty. When she faced Ayarann, she saw droopy, tired eyes. Only afterwards did she take notice of what was on her hands. She hadn’t seen a color so vivid since she left Fusarishuisen and her partners behind, nor the brightness of the runes shining gold upon the jewel.
“So you not only survived but succeeded,” she said, tail instinctively twirling and smacking the legs of some villagers. Aya only nodded, and when she forced herself to smile, the joy didn’t reach those exhausted eyes of hers. “I figured you’d be far more pleased with yourself. Thought you’d want to rub it on my face, for doubting you.”
“I’m tired, is all,” Ayarann said, an unconvincing lie. “Don’t look at me like that. I just need to get some rest. Come, let’s go home. I’ll lay down for a while, and you’ll brew me something nice, how about that?”
“Fine, fine,” Carissa played along, then turned to sneer at the rabble. “Come on, you leisurely curs, scram! Gossipy lackwits, the whole pack of you. Go, go tend to your work, leave the poor girl alone.”
Groaning, they did as they were bid. The lone advantage of being the only person in the village who was literate and who knew how to work a mortar and pestle without brewing a vomit stew or poison was that no matter how callously she acted, the unwashed masses had to tolerate her, because she was the only thing standing between them and the shittingpox. As far as Carissa could tell, she and Rismatia were the only Nightshades stupid enough to march so far south. To the rest of Mahenvort, this place might as well not exist.
“So,” she said to Ayarann once the crowds were gone, “you want something to sleep, or just something for the nerves? It might help me if you tell me what exactly it is that’s troubling you.”
“I told you,” the fool insisted, “I’m just tired.”
“I’ve seen you tired before. We were talking, and mid-sentence you simply collapsed on my bed and there was nothing I could do to get you out,” though that was most likely because of Carissa’s pitiful physical state. “That’s not how you look now. You look miserable.”
“Just give me something to sleep,” said Aya. “Do you know anywhere safe to store the Melody?”
“Of course. Let me get my safe and guards,” she snapped. “It’s not getting any safer than my cabinet, I’ll tell you that much. This isn’t exactly a castle. Have you thought about shoving it up your Blossom arse?”
“I just need somewhere I can keep it for a while,” Ayarann ignored her insults. “So strange… It’s grown silent. It called to me with a gentle song, but now there’s nothing. Yet I still feel the magic inside it, and the warmth…”
“Suit yourself. As long as this thing doesn’t explode in the middle of the night, I don’t care what you do. But I can’t trust this magic.”
“You trust me,” Aya said. “My Voice, too, is magic, of the same nature as this Melody.”
“Th-that’s different,” Carissa looked away, and at once she came to regret it, because Rismatia was standing right in front of her, by the door. She felt a jolt from head to tail, and almost gasped, startled. “It’s you. I didn’t notice.”
“It’s good to see you again, Rissa,” Rismatia smiled so sweetly that it was vexing. “You appear well. I see your garden has grown in good health. That’s impressive, in this land.”
“Yes, well, I’ve never been one to give up because something is difficult,” she said, not even believing her words. “Though crops don’t take to this soil with ease, it is not impossible with our magical gifts. Ah, but of course. You haven’t met Ayarann, have you?” She shook her hand. “Ayarann, meet Rismatia. Rismatia, meet Ayarann. There, all done. Now leave me alone.”
“Carissa told me much about you,” Aya told Rismatia, and Carissa had to hold back the urge to tell her to shut up and die.
“Good things, I hope.”
“Oh, of course, what else? I only say the most gracious and kind words. As if any uncouth words could ever pass these lips,” Carissa said, recalling the time Teris had remarked that if she bit her tongue, the poison would kill her. “You look, well, I think…”
She hoped to offer some feigned compliment, but the truth was that Rismatia looked as though she had been used as a latrine. Not only was her hair a tangle, but its block was spotty with the brown of mud and twigs and the green of leaves, ugly colors that reminded Carissa of something the butcher’s boy had retched out after having a bad reaction to one of Carissa’s medicines. And there were cuts on her cheek; fresh ones, recently opened, mere days ago.
“I look bad. I know. We were attacked,” Rismatia said. Carissa tried to hide her concern. Come to think of it, the caravan was smaller than usual. Only two wagons, and only four companions to accompany Rismatia. How many had been lost on the way? “Some of our own chose to desert. Well, the brigands have fed the soil, so their misdeeds cost them dearly. But all these sorts have grown bolder of late. Malefactors have few talents but they never fail to notice weakness and identify an opportunity to gain. Neither does Princess-Magistra Ysaura, for that matter. The borders we know may not remain fixed for long.”
“What do you mean, opportunity?” Carissa asked. Rismatia’s eyes were miserable, avoiding her gaze, and Aya’s.
“I knew that news would not travel this far south,” she said, “but I dared to hope that it needn’t fall onto me to utter these words. I don’t know how to begin. I suppose I’ll begin with you,” she turned to Ayarann. “You are the Blossom, yes? The emissary of the Rose, come to strengthen our bonds and share in our secrets.”
“I am. Though I have betrayed my oath by staying after my duties came to an end.”
“Yes. That was fortunate,” Rismatia breathed in deeply, for the longest time, lips quivering and her voice coming as isolated sounds that forged no words. “I must be blunt. Tragedy befell your Ruby Blossom. Foul magics spun over the World-Wound in the frozen far north have claimed the lives of your bloom-sisters.”
“W-What?”
“Almost all Blossoms have been culled. Us Nightshades have received the news only when it was stale, after a long and fearsome silence from our earthly kin. Though our pact demands that our domains be separated, some of the Magistras considered an expedition to the Stonetree to find the truth. But we heard the truth from one of the few surviving Blossoms. There is no doubting the scope of this calamity. Only some scattered dozens were spared the darkness.”
Aya tried to say something. Carissa tried to offer her a gentle, comforting hand. Neither succeeded. Words failed, tenderness failed, and then Ayarann’s legs failed her. Unblinking eyes stared at nothing, just as nothing gleamed behind them. It was luck alone that kept her from hitting her head on some table or cabinet. Carissa and Rismatia held her up by the limbs and laid her on the straw bed left on the furthest corner from Carissa’s herbs and brews, for Aya had never grown used to their smell the way Rissa did.
She was a flare of color in this dreary home, in this village. Ayarann was that for all of Mahenvort, in truth. It was almost annoying how pure she was, clad in white and her hair a light pink falling loosely in twin cascades… A truer Blossom could not step out from a painting.
“Do we know details of what happened?”
“We? No, not all of us. In the Cathedral they might know, but someone like me has no access to messages from our mundane kin. But still I was tasked to bring you back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” she said what she had repeated a thousand times before. “I can’t go back. I’m tired.”
“We have no right to turn away from the life we chose,” she said, then, catching herself, corrected, “or the lives chosen for us. You will be a magical girl until the end. There’s no escaping that.”
“If you stay here and don’t look back, then you can escape,” said Carissa, bitter. “There is always escape, an abundance of it. To turn away is the only righteousness you can have in life.”
“Was it righteous to crush Katya’s heart?” Rismatia asked. Carissa would have struck her if she were not too great a coward. “As she wept, so did you. It was bad enough that you left her when she loved you, but you loved her and still abandoned her. That is the most heinous thing.”
“Do not dare use her heart as a weapon to shame me,” she snarled.
“What of my heart, then?” Rismatia shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I cannot best your melancholic sophisms. We’ll do trade and I will set out north to return to the Cathedral. I’ll bring Ayarann with me, so if you truly wish to be all alone forever, you can stay here until you die. My tears cannot touch you, can they? If they ever could, you would not have abandoned us.”
“If you opened your eyes you’d understand that life is something to abandon,” Carissa lamented. “We are born children left in foundling wheels, never rescued, convincing ourselves that the cold and the dark have become our home, that our togetherness is that of family when it’s merely a mass grave.”
“I figured you’d say that,” despite everything, Rismatia couldn’t hide her tears. “You were always my sister, even if I was not yours. Teris, too, named you kin. And Katya…” Carissa made a fist. “If you change your mind, you are welcome to join us as we set out, come next dawn.”
Carissa said nothing. There were no more words to say. And yet she wished she could find them. Words to kill her pride, to shred the roots binding her to the lifeless soil, to give life to ghosts she had almost forgotten were ever alive, once.
