Dare mad bad sad

The ride blurred into a half-riding nightmare. Mud swallowed the sound of hooves, and Daniyah’s breath came hard, white plumes torn apart by the wind. The forest bled into fields, the fields into hard road. The road bled into mist and gravel, a grey vein winding through the corpse of a valley. Somewhere along the way, the sky became too bright, and the ground too soft. She barely held on, fingers locked in the reins, eyes stinging from sweat and blood.

By the time she reached the town of Thornbrook, dusk was just a smudged pink smear across the horizon. The place looked half-dead: shuttered windows, smoke rising from crooked chimneys. But lanterns burned behind shuttered windows, warm, yellow fingers of light reaching out to the street. Dogs barked from alleys; somewhere, a drunkard sang to no one. The smell of hearthfire reached her, then the malodorous stink of tanneries and tallow. She slid from the saddle with a grunt, boots sinking ankle deep into the muck. Pain flared sharp as broken glass up her thigh, she had to grab the saddle to stay upright. The thief’s blood was still drying on her clothes, and Garrod’s shadow still loomed in her mind.

The healer’s house wasn’t much to look at, stone leaning into the steets, timbers warped, roof sagging and herbs gone brown in the boxes. The sign above the door swayed faintly in the wind, a healers mark painted in a sunbleached blue. Good enough.

“Don’t you dare fall,” she hissed to herself. Her hand found the doorframe. Leaning hard against it, she lifted her hand.

Knuckles met wood. Once. Twice. A third time, harder. Somewhere behind that door, she thought she heard footsteps.

A silent autumn rain started dripping from the eaves, and in the distance, the mutter of thunder could be heard.

For a healer that dabbled in the occult with their creased tarot cards and little voodoo dolls made of shepherd dog fluff, it was a shame that they didn’t have a knack to see the dead. Reyna watched the healer shuffle about the room, going over a book that they had gotten from a fresh trade of bubbly pink vials of sexual encouragement for more knowledge. Reyna floated above the table, the book opened flat on its spine. The pages showed a recipe and spell for a potion to clear up ear infections.

The healer’s large bun overflowing with black curls bobbed against Reyna’s stomach. Unpleasant but not painful, like a mosquito bite that needed to be itched. No matter how much one itched, the need to itch more, even if it meant drawing blood, never quite went away. Reyna watched one slender finger trace over the words, moving her lips along without sound, as if the shape of the letters would help her remember all the ingredients. It must have because this time, the living woman brought back three clay pots with lids.

The woman opened the lid of one pot, breathing in deeply a dried herb that was a mixture of pungent onion, rosemary, and ash. She set everything on a table, checking all the ingredients she had brought over, double-checking the quality of them all before grabbing a small cast iron cauldron. A faint smell of whatever the healer had made before still lingered within the black pot, but if there was anything more left over, it was hard to tell. The inside was like layers upon layers of shadows, a pure black that was nearly reflective like pupils.

“Just need the snot of a mule,” She mumbled to herself. Reyna snorted, looking back at the book, balking when she saw it written it out. Why a mule? Why not a horse—why not a unicorn? Wouldn’t unicorn boogers be better than mule boogers? The ghost floated up higher, flipping herself over so she could stare at the ceiling filled with bundles of drying flowers and long-stemmed herbs that hung from twin tied to the rafters. Smoke stains would forever remain in all the corners from the small potion cooking fire at one side of the house, the small hearth in another corner had cleaner ceiling corners.

There was a knock. In tandem, both the healer and the ghost looked over at the door. The healer looked nervous for a second, as if the man clad in heavy furs had tested out the pink potions already and found them to be unsatisfying. She closed the book, wiping her hands on her faded brown apron as she went to open the door. Dark brown eyes regarded the wounded woman with an analytical calmness that spoke volumes of her experience more than words ever could.

“You can pay?” The healer asked. Reyna floated closer towards the door, peering from her lofty position closer to the ceiling than the floor. She whistled low, crossing her arms behind her transparent, weightless head as if she might take a nap under the sun. The healer looked her newest patient up and down.

“Can you heal?” Daniyah asked back. Without another word, she pulled her coin purse free. The leather was stained dark with travel and worse things, heavy with the clink of hard-earned coins. She tossed it to the healer. The lady did not have the fast reflexes... the purse landed on the floorboards, just in front of her toes. “That should cover whatever it costs,” the cazadore muttered, swaying slightly where she stood.

Daniyah's eyes drifted past the healer to the ghost hovering near the rafters. Pale thing, curious and useless both, like all the dead who lingered. Her expression didn’t change, if anything, it hardened. There was no room left in her for awe or fear. The world was full of restless ghosts, and she was too hurt, too spent, too tired to care what haunted this place.

The smell of herbs and burnt oil clawed at her lungs as she straightened. The healer looked from the purse to Daniyah, perhaps weighing greed against pity, superstition against skill. Daniyah didn’t care which won. Her eyes were already dimming, her stance wavering. The healer snatched the coin purse from the floor with a fast hand, thumb brushed across the rough leather and the weight of the purse tested before she tucked it somewhere beneath her apron. “This way,” she said simply.

The monster hunter exhaled, something like a laugh scraping up her throat and dying halfway. Her vision swam as she stepped past the threshold, the injured leg dragging across warped planks that moaned under her weight. The door creaked shut, cutting off the last of the cold night air. The air inside was thicker, hotter. Herbs hung from the rafters in twisted, dry bundles. Lavender and wolfsbane, belladonna and verbena... and more. Bottles of strange hues lined the shelves, some shimmered faintly in the dim candlelight.

The healer gestured to a low table beside the hearth. Daniyah sank onto the table, teeth gritted as pain clawed its way up her leg. The room spun, and she had to catch herself on the edge of the wood. Her consciousness only managed to take in breath, blood, and the sound of the healer’s tools clinking together. Black shadows crept in from the edges of her vision, slow at first, then all at once, swallowing the world. Her body sagged where she sat, fell to her side, and landed hard on the tabletop, her shoulder taking most of the impact.

Brows rose. This one was feisty. This one had looked at her. It wasn't often that Reyna was perceived. Not as rare as when she was noticed and purposefully ignored. The ghost was still, movements uncannily slow despite her human appearance. Her hair no longer moved as if waves pushed it forward and back like she was in the ocean instead of in some healer's smoky home. Neither the healer nor the ghost was surprised when the woman fell over, though it definitely prompted the healer to move a lot faster as if the clunk scared her into action. The coin purse was left on a table, slumping over as it was forgotten.

The healer went among her shelves filled with jars and pots, boxes and books. She reached above her for Solidago, got on her hands and knees to pull out a sewing kit and a wooden case filled with bandages. Placing every item she needed on a table, going back for more, and grabbing tools like a white mortar and pestle from Aetochi. Reyna hadn't seen one of those in a long time. Her father had purchased a whole shipment of them and had gone into a rage when they arrived with nearly half the stock cracked due to a freak storm. She wondered if one of these had been purchased from her family.

The last thing the healer pulled out from her many wares was a large vase filled with long red thorns. The thorns themselves looked delicate, but they had a sheen to them that resembled hardened blood before turning into scabs. The healer got to work in removing everything she could from the woman, mapping out all the wounds found in a body that had weathered the world better than most knights in their metal armor. Armor and cloth, sullied with the grime of the woman's profession, were pushed away from the table with slippered feet.

The healer put on a pot of clean water, warming it from the fire beneath. She cleaned her hands with gritty rocks, murmuring something. Reyna wafted over to the healer, more intrigued than she had been when she was about to make a potion. She grabbed pieces of cloth from a drawer before walking back to the woman lying supine on the short table.

"The rope cannot be pulled from both ends at once," She said, again and again, drying her hands before taking the vase of red thorns. She took the woman's hand, wiped the palm clean with a piece of her dress. She picked a thorn between her fingernails, holding it up to angle it just as she needed. The tip curved like a claw beginning to curl. It punctured through the woman's pale palm, and a bead of blood had bubbled up before being leeched into the thorn. Ancient words were whispered, from a time no one living on Khurun now would remember. The thorn turned black and wilted before hardening like a twig suitable for tinder.

"What a mess." The woman hissed, sucking in air through her teeth, shaking her head. She tossed the black thorn into the fire, and for the briefest of moments, Reyna could've sworn the flames turned pale blue. The healer inserted another thorn deep into the unconscious woman's palm, then one for each finger and thumb, thorns absorbing the blood and whatever else was in it. This time, no words were muttered, evoking the shroud in a way Reyna had never felt before. The healer got up and then she got to work with haste.

---

The dark-haired woman had made a series of poultices and broths. Some were forced down the sleeping woman's throat, others were slathered onto her body, and only a few were used for their fumes, the steam blown into her face. Bandages had been used as well, with herbs and odd symbols layered in between. A mud-soaked family of roots, the tiny ends twisting into each other, rested on the pale forehead, fair hair pushed away from the pallid face. The long red thorns peeked out from around her shoulder and leg. One was sewn through her belly button, a red mark in the center of a series of red fingerprints left by the healer, a bloodied rose blooming wide all over the woman's abdomen.

Hours had passed, not that Reyna ever bothered counting them. She watched the woman go from her table to the one by the hearth, fingers nimble and sure with every press and assessment. Her voice had been firm, the words and phrases whispered with dignity belonging to a tragic hero's soliloquy. Reyna wondered if, when the sleeping woman awoke, she would know that the healer had taken some of her blood in a crystal vial, set against the window that always received light from the moons above.

Thornbrook earned its name honest, a village wrapped in a living wall of bramble and blackthorn that had been there longer than any of the villagers remembered. These weren’t hedges in the ordinary sense. Not shrubs, nor the sort of bramble a farmer might curse at for creeping into his field. Old, knotted walls of thorn and vine that had long since taken root. Deeper than soil. No one cut them back.

The hedge bloomed crimson in spring. They’d rustle though there was no wind. Some nights, people swore they saw shapes moving within. The townsfolk didn’t fear it. Not exactly. They left offerings at its roots, milk, bread, straydolls and locks of hair, sometimes even a drop of their own blood. A fair trade, they said. The hedge kept Thornbrook safe. No wolves crossed it, no bandits broke through, no plague ever took root here.

Daniyah’s breath hitched, shallow and dry, as the waking world dragged her back from whatever blessed pit of oblivion she’d been tossed into. Her eyes fluttered open. Light knifed through them. Morning. The fire in the hearth had burned low, leaving only the red glow of embers. She lay there a moment, listening. The rhythmic drip of water dripping onto the windowsill, the faint hum of flies gathering near a bundle of something smelly and wet. She lifted her head, barely and saw the thorns still jutting from her skin, dark now, brittle as charcoal. She pushed herself upright, muscles stiff and plucked the thorn from her belly button. It fell apart in between her hand, and fell like fine black dust from her fingers.

The healer sat nearby, already awake, grinding something dark and sticky in a stone mortar. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing arms scarred with thin, silver lines. “You’re lucky,” the healer said simply.

For as long as Daniyah could remember, she had seen spirits and ghosts. As a child, they terrified her, but fear dulled with time and she came to learn the ways of those who simply could not move on. Most were harmless, no more dangerous than a draft through an open window. Harmless as fog, mumbling about things that did not matter anymore. Few ever found the strength to touch the living world, to move a cup or slam a door. The ones that could hurt the living were rare, and the ones that wanted to hurt the living was rarer still. The wraiths. The phantoms. The kind that never truly forgave the world for letting them die.

"Who's the girl?" Therefor Daniyah asked, reaching for her clothes as she spoke.

"What girl?" The healer had many gifts. She was clever and could read, having picked it up from her grandmother, who came from a well-bred family outside of the town. She had a good memory and learned early on about the healing properties of the natural sort. Then, there was the bonus of having the knack for weaving. A gift she had to cultivate on her own, as no one in Thornbrook could mentor her on something they didn't have. Wanderers would pass on brief pieces of knowledge or trade in scrolls and books, and sometimes, in her dreams, things would become clear instead of muddy. Perhaps if she had been tutored by a sorcerer or even a witch, she might have learned how to use The Sight to see spirits.

The healer would have certainly had the talent and dedication for it. Of course, perhaps it was fate that took her down a different path steeped with Rootwork. She had lost people; it would have been worse to be reminded of her failures by watching them haunt and float until they could pass on. No one needed reminders like that.

"I'm not a girl," Reyna said, crossing her arms over her chest. There was no need to explain that the healer couldn't see her; her response was proof already. "I am clearly a woman. A lady, even. These are just my comfy clothes." She looked the woman up and down as she dressed. "Which you don't get to enjoy. Shame. You're missing out." Reyna kept some distance, in case the fair-haired woman decided to throw salt at her.

“You really don’t see her?” she asked. “Because she’s been watching you work, glued to your shoulder.”

She lifted her gaze toward the empty air the ghost occupied. Her fingers fumbled on the boot lace; everything still felt a little unreal, like her body wasn’t entirely hers yet. “A lady..?" She grinned a little and continued lacing up her leather boots. "I humbly ask for pardon. Never before seen such noble, comfy clothes."

“Some spirits don’t understand the rules yet,” she told the healer, though her eyes slid deliberately toward the space where Reyna drifted. Gestured with a hand that trembled slightly from lingering strain to different objects in the cluttered room. “Everything in this world, stone, herb, blood, breath, holds a little current of power. Small springs to drink from." For death, it is the big Nothing. Death gave nothing. Nothing. There was no current there. No springs of power to drink from. Nothing moves, nothing breathes, nothing feeds. No sparks. That is why the dead alone cannot sustain. Only with the living pulse of stolen suns in their veins. They drink life, because death gives nothing.

Daniyah exhaled slowly, tugging her shirt over her shoulders as she spoke. Words aimed at two different listeners. “Give them enough time, and they learn to sip from those currents. That’s what the dead reach for when they want to speak, to touch the world again. A voice in a quiet room. A shape in the corner of your sight. A cupboard slammed in the middle of the night. Or a sparrow knocking at the window for someone they used to love." She adjusted her stance, wincing as her muscles protested, she wanted sleep for days.

“This one,” she said, a hint of impatience threading through. “seems not to know how to use the currents. Otherwise…” She let her pale eyes rest on the faint outline of Reyna while talking to the healer. “I am sure you’d have known she was here the moment she arrived.”

A line cast into the dark, waiting for the faintest tug. “Show us, little lady. Let us know you are here.”