Winter Haven's Dyrpath - 2. Chapter 2

The clouds started to clear as soon as I came out, bringing more light to the lumpy terrain so I could easily avoid the pitfalls around the chopped off stumps and the baby trees. I went around the orchard and started my trek up the hill; it was the way toward the closest town. There, maybe the snowy owl with the black-flecked wings would go unnoticed.

She flew on silent wings across my path, stopping on the stump of a fence ahead of me and to my right about two arm’s lengths away.

“Go away, shoo!” I hissed. I waved my arms.

“Whoo? Me?” she asked. “Or are you running away again?”

That stopped me in my tracks. I’d only ever heard a few words from her, things I could dismiss as my imagination. “Y-you talked.”

“So did you,” she said. She turned her head one direction, then back almost all the way the other. “Nooo one else here to say anything, dyrpath.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.

“Are we not talking?” She flipped her wings open and then shut again, tucking them against her back. “Is that not what youuu are?”

“No. No, no, no.” I shut my mouth tight, clamping any more words behind my lips and behind the walls of my teeth, despite the desire for them to chatter with the freezing chill. Ill-omen indeed. I’d likely die out here, in the cold, before I ever reached the town. That didn’t stop me from hurrying on in the same direction I’d been going, away from the owl, from it’s ill-luck and drop in my fortunes.

Master Vado had never taken me to town once I’d been dropped off on his doorstep, passed along by another distant family member, from yet another family member, from the time my own parents had sent me off three winters past. The only place I’d gone was the casting shed, on the edge of his property where the hedge wizard worked, the cold storeroom for my meals, and my tiny attic space. No one suffered my presence long, not once the ill-omens appeared.

The animals were bad enough, with my ghostly appearance and dark locks. Ill-luck, their glances would worry as they skittered away, before the predators began to grow in number. At the first bloody corpse, the looks would give rise to whispers, and with the first livestock that went missing or dead, I’d be taken away under cover of night before the family who’d been stuck with the misbegotten ill-luck demon-kin would be blamed as well.

Usually with more than a few bruises to nurse for their trouble.

I hadn’t asked to be born. Glancing up at the sky, at the sickle of the moon that limited my powers these few nights, I cursed the fates that had sent me to this moment. Why had this been my life? The magic in my veins wasn’t something I could access, it just was, but the wielders could use me as a source before they became too wary of the flavor of my power and believed it tainted by the ill-luck that haunted me for three long years.

Since the eve of my fifteenth birthing day, the coldest and longest night of the year, when the magic of the moon held sway and the beasts did her bidding, including me. A dyrpath. A demon who speaks with animals, who does their bidding and tricks them into doing his. Ill-omen at birth, my mother had strove to keep the village from learning the night of my birth. She’d bleached my hair, dying it with red elder berries to lighten the hue, but blood will always tell.

On my darkest nights, I worried that the smoke I thought I saw that night, the first time I’d been sent away and the last time I’d seen them, meant they’d been burned out of their home or worse. My two little sisters, with their red curls and peeping green eyes that never judged me, hadn’t deserved that fate, the one I ran away from then and now in my nightmares.

A sob burned the back of my throat, but I suppressed it ruthlessly. I was magic, but I was not this corruption that everyone feared; I did not bring down death and destruction with my very presence.

The little voice inside of me that whispered all day, every day, as the villagers refused to meet my gaze despite the looks and whispers behind my back, whispered again, just so I could hear over the rising whistle of the wind… “Liar.”

A blush briefly warmed my cheeks, then faded. The light began to fade as well, making it hard to see the path. I squinted, floundering in some of the deeper snow as I stepped to one side. I paused, gasping for air, and then tried to orient back to the path.

Spinning, I cried out. “No!” I’d lost the path. It was hidden from me, and all round me were tall trees ringed with strange pokey spines. I stumbled into a clearing, desperately looking up for a sign of the moon or a glimpse of the stars to orient myself.

The ill-luck swept across, just over my head, from one tree to the next. “Here,” she called. “This way.” The tree began to glow, lighting up and then it lifted from the ground, spinning slowly.

No. That was not a direction I was willing to go. But no matter which way I turned, the first steps I took led me toward that spinning tree. “Why?” I cried out. “Why won’t you leave me be? What do you want?” Just like every time I’d asked that question in despair before, there were no answers.

The closer I came, each grudging step dragged forward by invisible forces, the glow in the sky grew behind the tree. My heart stuttered, but my feet did not, and the ill-omen hooted as it finally captured me. "Youuu."