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Children do foolish things until they are old enough to understand they are foolish—until
DARKNESS LEAPS FORTH LIKE A predator, swallowing the world.
Panic seizes her, followed by a delirious sort of amusement. That’s it, then, she thinks. I will die and become ghastly décor.
“Are you a fish?” the stag muses, a sound far too predatory to belong to such a gentle creature. “No? Then do not gape like one. A name is a simple thing, yet you cannot give it. Are you simple? If you are, then I shall be glad. It will make my job far easier.”
“I can hear the skips in your heartbeat, little liar. Try again.”
Yes, a single year at the whims of a wood demon is worth a lifetime of belonging.
He grimaces. “I preferred you when you were quiet.” “And I preferred you when you were a deer.”
His is a treacherous beauty, a rusałka’s beauty—enthralling and deceitful, good for nothing but tragedy.
The hidden room is a library.
Beeeeeaaaauuuutttyyyyy and the beeeeeeeaaaassssstttt
That is the difference between a spirit and a demon. Spirits gain power from offerings of food, demons from human flesh. Spirits are given power, while demons take it.
“Ah, so I did sense something after all. My unruly hearth-spirit.”
calcifer more like it
Like how a thorn, if not pulled out, will be swallowed up by the body and grow into it, the Leszy’s sorrow has become embedded in him. Bringing it to the surface like this must be agony.
“All of this is my doing. Therefore, all of it is my fault.”
“A clever weapon for a not-so-clever fox,” the Leszy comments. With his sleeves rolled up to show vein-traced forearms and his overlong hair tied back, he is all lean prowess and formidable poise.
Tick, tick goes the clock of peculiarities. It is time for the next mystery.
Magic, at its fundamental level, is a heightening of the senses. People born with magic are capable of seeing things others cannot, so they can manipulate things others cannot. What they are sensing is the międzyświat, the in-between.
“I’m complimenting you. I chose the field of battle, and you disarmed me nonetheless. You do that frequently, I find. It’s actually quite annoying.” A sudden frustration boils up in Liska. “You trapped me in your sentient manor, and you find me annoying?”
Golden banter
Liska tilts her head. “What are you doing?” “Making sure my not-so-clever fox is as fine as she says she is.”
The reality of his age strikes Liska suddenly. She tilts her head, seeing him in a new light, a glowing veil of epochs and histories and lifetimes. This demon, this boy, has fought in wars from hundreds of years ago and known ancient kings.
The way he looks at her, it is like she has spoken absolution to a man condemned.
The past: a weapon, her protector.
She turns on her heel. “Maybe for you, but I have standards.”
You tell em
Remember what you did last time? her mind whispers. If you free it, you will truly become a monster. “Fine,” Liska hisses, blood leaking down her arm. “Then let me be a monster.”
“All changes in the world but the ways of men,”
The wood must always have a warden.”
“If I look like a monster,” he says roughly, “then no one will be surprised when I do monstrous things.”
Her sins are demons that demand blood sacrifice, and she knows that to summon them, she must bleed herself dry.
“There is a thing we do,” the Leszy says, “where we rearrange ourselves, cutting off pieces here and there to fit a mold that was never meant for us.
if the world has not prepared a place for you, you must take up a hammer and chisel and carve one out for yourself.”
“You are not a monster, Liska Radost. You are sunlight, and you breathe life into everything you touch.”
just asked it politely,” she says, wiping her hands on her skirt. “She asked it politely.” The demon makes a sound that is half laugh, half wheeze. “I resent you, you absolute madwoman.”
“I must tell you, my dear fox,” says the Leszy, “that you deserve someone far better than me. And yet—” His fingers brush the tip of her ear, linger there. “And yet, and yet and yet, I am a selfish creature, and I do not want to let you go.”
“Do not go back to that village, Liska.” He holds her gaze, steadfast. “Stay here with me. Stay, and you can have all the power and magic you desire. Stay, and you can be anyone you want.”
ILL STAY, SIR
She wonders if kissing a demon is an appropriate thing to admit at confession.
The Leszy is right, she muses. For that brief splinter of time, the Driada feels like a different world entirely—a transient place where the dark stands still, waiting for the light to arrive.
Absolutely appalling, Jaga comments from the oven. So much for caution, girl. A wilted turnip would have been a better choice.
Jaga does not approve
Frustrated, Liska snaps. “We kissed, you incorrigible antlered tragedy! You think I can just put this out of my mind? This happened because of me!”
ANTLERED TRAGEDY
Liska’s chest swells with affection. He is taciturn and inscrutable, her Leszy, but also strangely charming as he hunches over his desk, looking more like a wizened man reading ledgers than a formidable czarownik.
HER. LESZY
You have heart, mortal. The sound that fills the temple is history given voice, treasuries of enigma and millennia of knowledge folded between each word.
Though they stand on solid ground, they might as well be drowning—they look like people who have swum too deep, then realized they do not have enough breath to reach the surface.
“Stop.” With sudden frustration, she grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulling him closer. “Stop that. You are the most dreadful boy I have ever met, but you are mine, and you will not be taken by a cantankerous old god.”
“What is fate but an excuse to surrender responsibility?
Something heavy falls around her back, startling her out of her thoughts. The Leszy has laid his sukmana over her shoulders. “You’re trembling,” he says quietly.
STOP THATS CUTE
“I…,” he says. She hears his breath catch in his chest, and for a moment she is afraid he won’t say it. But he does. “I love you too, Liska Radost.”
(Of women, he’s heard it said: “She will be the end of me,” or “She will be my undoing.” None of that is true for Liska Radost. She is not the end of anything, but the beginning of everything. He has been dead a long time, and she is his resurrection.)
This is the quote
She has always thought herself foolish for loving so much and so easily. Yet now it is her strength.
He surveys his surroundings, head snapping left and right before his attention lands on Liska. “You,” he seethes. “Me,” she says pleasantly.
You are my soul, Liska Radost. I lived seven hundred years to find you.”
Grief is a bit like a chronic ache, I think—it’s always there, but sometimes you notice it more and sometimes less, and sometimes it’s unbearable and sometimes you think it might be gone for good.”
But Liska is not proper. She is a czarownik with butterflies in her chest and a forest in her veins, and she has carved out a place for herself that is fully her own.
