Olivia Bennett

There was snow the night that I left. Blood dripped hot down my cheek and drilled red holes into the snow, an incriminating path leading right to me. I had to nearly hike my knees up to my chest to run through the snow, cape in tatters dragging behind me. Almost there, almost to the treeline. I glance back, but my hood catches on the wind and obscures my vision. The elven camp glows and flickers like a star against the snowy, navy night. Hopefully the diversion was enough. I’m not important anyway. I’m just another soldier, another tally mark, another pawn to be sacrificed for someone else’s selfishness.

I squint against the wind and snow. The ice slaps my already numb cheek, digging its fingers into the wound I created myself. The trees grow closer, massive towering shadows with arms reaching to the heavens. My heart runs ahead of my body, already safe and sound in the woods. I glance back once more, but trip on a hidden root deep beneath the snow. I careen forward, hitting the snow with my bad cheek. It stings so badly I inhale the snow flurries around me and cough. Pulling myself up piece by piece, the first thing I see is my half-sister, dagger poised at her chest. I barely recognize her in the frosty darkness. She too is in full soldier getup, but her voice is what confirms it for me.

“Morwyn!”

“You can’t stop me,” I hiss. Blood and snow have leaked into my mouth, so I hack and spit it out. I finally make it to my feet, hands half-raised in the air. “So don’t even try.”

“Why? Why are you doing this?” she pleads with me. Her voice tells one story, yet her body tells another. It’s the middle of the night. She should be asleep, not in her best war clothes, holding a dagger up in defense. It’s almost like she knew.

“I’m here against my will, Arianni. Don’t you know that?”

The clouds part just briefly, and as the moonlight glints on her blade, I see it trembling ever so slightly between her clenched hands. Is she afraid of me? Has she been put up to this, and will she be punished if she fails? We’re still a few yards apart, so she can’t charge at me without me being able to pull out a weapon of my own first.

“What will Father think?” she pleads. Her eyes nearly glow hazel green in the afterlight.

I spit again in contempt. “I don’t give a fuck what he thinks. He sent his children off to war.”

A particularly hard gust of wind cuts right through us, and Arianni stumbles to her knees. My boots are planted firmly in the snow, and I falter, but don’t fall. Not now. I’m growing tired of this. The longer I stand here talking to her, freedom falls further and further from grasp. I can’t let her snare me back in. I love Arianni, of course I do. It’s our father and her mother I have a problem with. I’m drowning, and she can’t save me. Not that I’d let her, anyway.

So I do what I must. In the moment that Arianni stumbles, I slowly pull out my bow and draw an arrow. Immediately her hands go up, and we find ourselves in opposite roles from how we were just moments ago.

“I don’t want to have to do this,” I warn.

“Then don’t!” Arianni cries out, standing up and positioning her dagger again. I take one last glance back at the camp that has been my home for the last two years and train my eyes on Arianni.

My fingers tremble at the string and the tips go numb from the cold and pressure of the bow. For a moment, we say nothing, do nothing. Sometimes, when I’m particularly lonely, I feel that I’m back at this moment, in limbo. Before I had done what I did, what I can’t forgive myself for. She didn’t deserve this. None of us do.

Someone back at camp blows a horn and I startle. They’re coming for me. They know. With a snap, the arrow flies from my grasp and hits Arianni in the stomach with a smack.

I gasp and run over to her, suddenly not caring that I’ve now officially gone rogue. She’s heaving, slumped over onto her back, staring up at the gray clouds that race by. Frost kisses her eyelashes, and the best I have in my blackened little soul is an “I’m sorry,” before stealing her dagger and running. I cross the threshold of the woods, but I don’t stop sprinting until my lungs nearly burst. There’s a fire burning inside my chest, and it fights tooth and nail against the cold winter. I’m soaked in a cold sweat, and my cheek has begun to throb. I look around me. There’s nothing but the dark, silent wood, but no one is following me. The snow has nearly already covered my tracks.

With a cry of pain, I collapse onto a fallen tree. I bury my face in my hands and sob. My cheek is ragged and nearly frozen over, and the saltwater stings, but I can’t stop. To this day, I don’t know if I killed Arianni or not. I’m not sure I care to know. It might just make me feel worse, because there are two options: either I killed her, or she hates me now.

With the flapping of wings, I look up from my shame and sniffle. Has a scouting hawk found me? But silhouetted by the moon is a large barred owl, mottled with white and brown. All I can see is his beak and the reflection of the moon in his pitch eyes.

He hoots at me a few times, and the fire begins anew inside me. My breath puffs out in icy tendrils, and the owl extends his wings at me once, before taking flight. He nearly disappears into the snow, but screeches again. In a second, I’m on my feet, following this bird deep into the woods, where there’s no one else to find but myself.