Page 3 of Orn and the Real Girl
I dove into my blankets, squirming and wriggling until the softness was piled around me just right, then unrolled the sheaf of parchment and lost myself in the story.
Everything was peaceful and cozy for long minutes, perhaps hours, until it was shattered by a frantic pounding at my door.
CHAPTER TWO
SARA
I WASnumb and exhausted like never before, pain trading places at intervals with a thick nothing that scared me. I was no longer sure that I was still alive, my spirit trapped in this hellish snow-choked forest, eternally searching. Searching for help, for something that I couldn’t even name but that felt soclose.
I checked the strange compass sitting in the palm of my hand, sending a precious spark of warmth into the shallow dish to keep the bloody liquid pooled in the center from freezing. The thin bone needle still pointed ahead of me, the sharp tip certain that ahead was the way to help and safety. It was a spell all the witchlings in my coven learned early, just in case. My whole body hurt at the thought of my missing mothers and sisters.
I didn’t know what I’d find when I reached where the compass spell was taking me, but I prayed to the gods that I found it soon. I felt like I’d been slogging through this storm for ages; I had to be getting close, now. The stretch of the Kellaides mountain range my coven lived in was sparsely inhabited, but it wasn’tuninhabited.
I had one hand holding my compass, and the other was shoved into my layers of clothes to stroke the smooth, scaled spine of Lena, my sweet hognose snake familiar. Her body was far colder than I liked, but she shifted and breathed gently undermy palm, her snaky thoughts twining through mine with little reassurances:fine, am okay, cold but safe, love you much.
I was trying to get us to safety, to find help somewhere on these godsforsakenmountains, but my coven’s choice to settle someplace remote and uninhabited to avoid the wrath of small minds may have proven our doom instead of a smart way to avoid the persecution that hounded all witches.
Aggie. Mother Tonn. Brekka...My heart twisted painfully in my chest, the faces of my coven swimming in my mind’s eye. I should have been with them, should have been there to add my strength to theirs to banish the evil that had found them and taken them. But it had been my turn to gather fat-of-the-moon, a rare mushroom that only showed itself in moonlight, and so I was gone when that evil found my sisters and mothers. I didn’t know whocouldhave taken an entire coven of witches. But for there to be no bodies and our entire hamlet burned to the ground they would have had to have been either very powerful or very smart. The gods knew that there were plenty of people in the small hamlet in the valley below, Thrul’hein, who wanted us gone. But could any of them—evenallof them—have done such a thing?
I felt so small, just one witch wandering the mountains in the hope that I could find somethingthat would help. Since the bastards who’d abducted my coven also torched and tore down our home I hadn’t been able to stay there, even if I’d wanted to try and find them all on my own. I’d come to think though, over the long hours of my searching, that I should have stayed put anyway, that I’d made a huge mistake by setting out like this. But when I’d sought out the wisdom of the aether it had shown me the necessity of a journey, had shown me a roaring hearth and a feeling of warmth, of belonging—of home. Lena’s little tongue flicked at my fingertips, a wave of support and love comingthrough our bond as she sensed the turn of my thoughts.Good Sara,she thought at me,we safe soon.
“How do you know?” I asked aloud, my lips so chapped I could feel them crack and bleed.
I know, was all she said, so I tamped down my irritation and impatience at her vagueness. She was a wonderful familiar, but shewasstill just a snake, after all.
But as time went on my doubts only grew. If anyone else was living on this mountain close enough to help me, then surely I would have found them by now. And if there was no one here, no stranger whose kindness I could call upon for food and water and shelter from the storm, then neither me nor Lena was going to last much longer out here. But the gods would not have saved me from one calamity just to end me this way, surely.
Lena curled tighter into herself, pressing her long body more firmly against my belly, and my heart shattered knowing I was failing her, my sweet girl getting dangerously cold out here while I wandered aimlessly. I lifted my numb face to the stars, concealed by the clouds and the snow, wanting to scream my frustration to the heavens, but as I did I spotted something ahead through the trees.
I froze, using my compass-holding hand to shield my eyes better from the thick snow and wind. It was weak, barely a flicker in the oppressive darkness, but it—
It looked like a light.
My heart stuttered in my chest, then began to pound with hope and excitement, energy flowing into my stiff, numb limbs for the first time in hours. I hurried forward, slipping several times in my haste, almost falling on my face, and that got me to slow down; I didn’t want to crush Lena in my carelessness.
Through the gloom, a structure melted into being, a small cottage made from rough-hewn timber and slathered in pitch. The light I’d glimpsed proved to be a lamp, left hanging bythe door, caked in snow and ice despite the flame behind the glass. Smoke curled from the chimney I could just barely spot crowning the sloped roof, the smoke a slightly darker shade of gray from the rest of the world. I began to shiver in relief and anticipation instead of just cold and exhaustion. I was risking a lot by turning to a stranger for aid, being a witch, but if this person lived so far apart from the rest of civilization, up in the mountains where witches were known to dwell, then surely they weren’t so easily spooked as the denizens of Thrul’hein.
And of course, I could always lie. Most people didn’t have the skills to sniff out a witch, so why invite trouble by announcing it? I didn’t like the idea of lying to someone I was depending on for kindness and generosity, but if I was attacked, then my coven would truly be doomed. I took a deep breath, bracing myself, and shot a silent plea to the gods that I wasn’t about to try and solicit help from a violent criminal.
I staggered up to the door, falling against it with a heavy thud, and once I’d made one noise it was like something unlocked inside me. I was pounding on the door, shouting with my hoarse, near-gone voice. I didn’t even know if I was saying words, everything in me desperate beyond conscious thought. Lena caught my excitement, uncurling a little from her tight ball to wind around my wrist and between my fingers.
I was so focused on getting the door open that I failed to take in some of the details about the door itself. Like the fact that it was huge, the top edge looming over me by at least one head but closer to two. The breadth of the thing would easily let two of me through shoulder-to-shoulder. And it was aheavydoor, solid in a way I didn’t think I’d ever encountered before, barely shifting or rattling even with me putting everything I had into it.
So, because I didn’t notice those things, I was shocked when the door finally opened and a massive orc man took the door’splace, enormous battle axe clutched in one huge hand and dark eyes peering at me in the weak light.
“What do you want?” he growled, and though I knew fear and dread were the correct response, all I could manage was exhausted defeat.But also—
There was something else, something warm and fluttery, that was almost as surprising as the appearance of the orc himself.Yummy?Lena thought at me, and I felt my numb face heat up. I ignored her, shoving that unexpected feeling to the back of my mind.
I did my best to pull my exhausted body up straight, to lift my chin and strengthen my voice. But in the end all I could manage were four words in a soft rasp: “Please. I need…help.”
CHAPTER THREE
ORN
THE LASTthing I’d expected when I opened my door was a small human woman. She looked half-dead, bundled in layers of clothes and with a satchel slung across her chest. One hand clutched at my doorway, the other buried in her layers to clutch at her belly.An injury?I wondered with a sharp spike of panic. The gods knew I was no healer, and there was no one else for leagues; if it was up to me to keep this woman alive, then she might have been better off taking her chances with the wolves.
Another strong gust of bitter-cold wind blasted into us, and the woman staggered forward, sagging at the threshold, and I moved to catch her without thinking. My axe clattered to the ground, but I managed to keep the woman more or less upright.
