Mary-Cade Mandus - The Spell Bound

It was finished…done.

Fingers deadened…loosen.
The knife released
glances off a boot toe.
Eyes reflexively lower…
linger on hands…
now unnaturally dark in the moonlight…
then skitter away
balking at identifying the cause
only to light upon…the body.

Reason shuns…
body recoils.
Horror…overwhelms…fells.
Cleaved by shock
knees buckle…collapse.
Uncontrollable tremors seize.
Stomach disgorges
seeking to expunge shame…disgust.

Into the maelstrom of anguish…
comfort comes…
two arms lovingly encircling…
reassuring…consoling…supporting.

Comprehension came slowly, having to filter its way through grief and self-loathing, but when Torin finally felt the embrace and realized its meaning he gave a strangled sob and slumped in limp relief within the arms that cradled him.

It had worked. It was over. She was safe.

The arms slowly withdrew and he shivered at their leaving. Rising unsteadily he scrubbed his bloodstained hands against his thighs in an unsuccessful attempt to rid them of the mess. Giving up, he turned and reached out to clasp Solace in his arms, but instead was lifted off his feet and crushed against Fortenbrass’ sturdy chest.

Torin could not keep his hands still. Like a blindman’s, they explored his brother’s face, establishing identity as fact, because his eyes would not believe or trust what they saw. Fortenbrass threw back his head letting out a whoop and tousled his young brother’s hair. Torin joined in and cuffed his arm. Soon the glade was filled with their laughter as they rolled and tussled like bear cubs, jubilant in their incredible reunion.

Finally, high spirits abating, they collapsed, panting and grinning foolishly at each other. With a sharp cry Torin jumped to his feet, his face beaming in anticipation. Eagerly turning this way and that, his eyes hungrily scoured the area. Fortenbrass’ own elation rapidly subsided when he saw his brother’s grin stiffen. Rising quickly he stepped to Torin’s side, heart sinking when he saw the bleakness in the younger man’s eyes. Glancing down he gasped in dismay when he saw the torn body that lay discarded in the grass. His fingers gripped his brother’s shoulder in silent sympathy but Torin frantically threw his hand off, his eyes riveted on the now empty rock.

Like a madman Torin tore through the glade and surrounding forest searching for the Maiden and screaming out Solace’s name. Unable to stand his brother’s pain any longer, Fortenbrass stopped him with a hard fist to the jaw. Laying Torin’s limp body on the ground, he stripped off his shirt and placed it beneath his brother’s head. Kneeling beside the still form, Fortenbrass bent his head and attempted to gather his jumbled thoughts.

Events had taken an astonishing turn…for the better and for the very worse. This was not what was supposed to happen. Where was Solace? Disbelief seeped through his confusion: Odette could not have sent Torin on a quest she knew would end in tragedy!

A plopping from behind caused him to wheel about. A figure sat upon the faery’s rock casting beads of quicksilver into the pond. Relieved that the Maiden had returned, Fortenbrass hurried towards her with questions, demands, and pleas leap-froging for position. She turned and he stumbled as the light revealed Odette’s face instead. He hesitated before her, his sentiments plainly exhibited on his face.

Odette nodded in appreciation and beckoned him to her side. Salvaging his self-control, Fortenbrass scaled the rock, chagrined to find his equine surefootedness replaced by human clumsiness, and warily settled some distance away from her.

Gently she chided him for worrying. Reminding him that the faery had advised that all would be well. After all, Torin had justified Solace’s trust and love by releasing her from a tortured oppression at great peril to his sanity. She reassured him that Solace was quite safe, only detained by magic’s capriciousness.

Guessing the skepticism that lay behind the dubious glance he cast toward the cat’s mangled remains, Odette sighed and attempted to explain that White Maidens emulate their mothers’ charitable, sympathetic, kind and overtly romantic natures though they hide it beneath an ascetic veneer. There was no way the faery could refuse Torin her assistance once it had been requested, and in Fortenbrass’ case, even if it had not.

Fortenbrass’ brow furrowed and Odette, chuckling softly, continued. The faery had sensed that both enchantments, cat and horse, were fruit from the same perverted tree…the results of the same witch’s pitiless spite [her voice did not slow even though his face registered his shock]. The Maiden, whose senses are finely tuned due to her sightlessness, had perceived his humanity beneath the animal hide and the sorcerous link with the cat. Her compassionate heart had been touched and being incapable of disregarding her lineage’s disposition she had restored him to his true state. Odette paused and Fortenbrass leapt in quickly with the question that was burning his tongue.

If the same witch, he demanded, had placed both spells why had he been restored so quickly and Solace had yet to reappear?

Patiently she clarified his question. The witch, mother to both enchantments, had taken time to craft Solace’s, while his had been impromptu. Solace had been placed under a spell very nearly unbreakable, for unlike him she could give no evidence of her condition and elicit help. For reasons unknown, Odile’s influence at Swan’s Rest had somehow upset the spell’s balance and Solace had been able to manifest herself and reach out to Torin through the Dream, although her speech had been confined to the recitation of her rescue plea and her mobility denied.

The terms of her entrapment stipulated that only through death at the hands of one who truly loved her could she be set free. To ensure that improbability, the conjurer, in her heartlessness, had made sure that the requirements called for to break the spell would be so abhorrent that a lover would find it impossible to bring himself to try. But, thankfully, she had miscalculated and Torin had accomplished the dreadful tasks and liberated Solace.

Now, Odette stressed, was the time for fortitude and faith. Solace is safe, made whole again and no longer at the mercy of the witch, however [Fortenbrass tensed, the set of his mouth implying “I knew it”] each curse or hex abides by its own individual code of behavior. Solace would be rendered up but at a time of the curse’s choosing and not before.

The witch had obviously been distracted or harried when casting her spell upon Fortenbrass and had not fully prepared the conditions thus addling the curse to such an extent that the White Maiden had easily toppled it. In its confused state the curse had surrendered him instantaneously.

While Fortenbrass mulled over her revelations, Odette rose, descended the rock and crossed to where Torin lay. After a few minutes Fortenbrass joined her. Both contemplated the unconscious man, one with fraternal concern, and the other in quiet approval.

Fortenbrass stiffened when she placed a hand on his arm. Staring pointedly into his eyes she cautioned that the days ahead would be difficult ones for him as well as Torin. His brother would be inconsolable, but no matter what occurred he, Fortenbrass, must not lose heart but must accept as true that the delay was simply the spell working itself out.

She turned to go, but Fortenbrass placed himself firmly in her path. He didn’t wish to appear ungrateful for he knew that it was through her machinations that he’d regained his human form and had found true love with Jessamine, but why, he begged, could she not alleviate his brother’s and Solace’s pain and bring them together without delay. She was, after all, a witch herself.

Odette, her expression atypically somber, linked her arm through his and nudged him into a walk. In a low, gentle voice she related that in dying all of her powers had been passed onto Jessamine. Even had she retained them it would have made no difference, she would still be impotent, for could the sum of all the magic of all the witches, warlocks, sorcerers and enchantresses that were or had ever been in the Nine Kingdoms be combined, they could not alter Torin and Solace’s destiny. For Destiny was unshakable and unmalleable. However, one device had been granted her, that of second sight, which gave her the ability to offer counsel and guidance. She could see what had been, what was to be, the cause and its effect, but was powerless to make any adjustment or correction.

Close at hand an owl queried. Fortenbrass automatically looked over his shoulder and when he turned back, Odette had vanished. He stood immobile for a moment, reflecting upon all that she had conveyed, then, rallying, retrieved Torin’s knife from where it had dropped and with a heavy heart set about the grim task of digging a grave.

Some time later, he surveyed his handiwork. The cat’s grave, so pathetically small, had barely shown above the grass, so with stones gathered from the pond’s bank he’d erected a cairn over the mounded earth. The stones were heavily veined with fool’s gold and glittered warmly in the moonlight. Resting his hand for a moment upon the stones he silently said goodbye to his ally and friend, for though he was striving hard to believe Odette’s assurances, part of him remained doubtful.

It grieved him that Solace was gone for they had shared a common bond. She had known his identity and he hers, as Torin had confided in him about the Dream. It had hurt not being able to tell his brother of her humanity but such had been the nature of their curses. Whenever he’d attempted to tell Torin about Solace, as well as about his own Dream and Jessamine, a strange paralysis would steal through his body and he’d find himself unable to make a sound or sign, and finally he’d given up. He’d been overjoyed that Torin too had found love. But sadly it seemed that only his and Jessamine’s Dream would come true.

Lifting his still unconscious brother across his shoulder, he lit the lantern and gave the glade and its solitary tenant one last look, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the trees.