The Danu
Authors: Kelly Lucille
Text
Copyright 2016 Kelly Lucille
All
rights reserved.
Katrine
had known about fear from her first breath of outcast air. It was no new
experience for her. Now, lying before her was the death of any safety she
could count on. She closed her eyes for a moment to mourn a good man. The
only words that came to her were
thank you, thank you, and thank you
.
Not for all the things he had taught her, and not because he kept her safe when
she was too young to do it herself. No, the thank you was because her debt was
paid. She was free.
"There will be a
brief mourning period and then you will move your things to my tent." The
voice dripped with its usual malice.
Renault.
Katrine did not bother to
look up. She kept her head bowed over her dead husband. Renault would think
her overcome with grief. Katrine was trying to control her rage. It would not
be good for this man to see it, or the fear he had always so easily produced in
her. He would like it too much.
She had known it was
coming. Renault had threatened for years what would happen when his father no
longer offered his protection. She was a little surprised he didn't plan to
take her over Denis' still cooling body. Perhaps the stench of the sick room
was even too much for his depraved palette.
"How brief?"
She smoothed the blanket she had meticulously woven and dyed over her husbands'
craggy features. He had been fortunate, really, how many outcasts ever
survived long enough to grow grey hair? He always claimed her witchy ways had
preserved him past the age of reason. When she asked which ways he meant, her sewing
or her weaving, he laughed and said it was probably her skill with knives.
"As long as it takes
for him to burn." The thinly veiled satisfaction in his voice was obvious
and nauseating. "You can spend that time washing the stench of old man
off. I'll expect you in my bed by the time the last ash flies."
"With your wife
watching?" Katrine laughed. It was a cold bitter sound. "What will
she say about that?"
The rough fist flew out
snapping her head to the side. Even as pain flashed, she was reaching for
knives that weren't there. She cursed her own stupidity as he hauled her over
his father’s corpse with a bruising grip on her arm.
"She will do what I
tell her just as you will." His free hand wrapped around her slender neck
and squeezed until she was sure he would leave his mark. "My father is
dead. Long live the new King." He squeezed just a touch harder and she
was afraid he might break something, whether he meant to or not. Then, just as
fast, he released her with a shove. "Clean yourself up."
While she was still
gasping for breath, and willing herself not to retaliate, Renault pulled open
the chest she kept beside her bed and claimed possession of the knives laying
on top. Then he riffled through, throwing her possessions about until he found
all of her hardware. "You won't need these anymore. My father might have
encouraged your unnatural ways. I will not."
As soon as he was gone,
she stood on shaky legs. She straightened herself up as best she could with
hands that were less than steady, checked that her head wrap was still in
place, and nothing of her unusual amber hair was showing. Then, with one last
sorrowful glance at the shroud of her husband, Katrine left the tent. If
anyone had asked she would have told them she was going down to the lake to
wash. Nobody asked, they just looked at her with the same suspicion and fear
they always had.
When she reached the
cover of the green, she turned north, toward the river. No one would think
anything of it, because everyone knew it was suicide to veer too far away from
the harshly rutted paths, or the occasional small patch of space around the riverbanks
not claimed by the wilds.
Just beyond the river
that flowed close to the road here, lay the invisible boundary of the wilds.
The green was what some called it. The great forests that covered most of the
North were just that, a great green space of overgrown forests, wild animals
and magic. If you were smart and more than a little lucky, you might survive
inside that magical boundary for a few hours, but no on survived for long.
Even the outcasts who
made their living catching and training horses in the wild grass plains of the
East knew better than to stay overnight within its boundaries. An unarmed
woman alone would never survive the wilds or its beasts. Not in these
predatory times. However, Katrine was not an outcast born; she was something
else entirely. That they forgot that meant she had done her job well these
last long years. Oh, they never let themselves or her forgot that she was
different, born of magic users, Danu born, called witch by most, but they had
no real idea of the power she held locked tight inside her. She had been
careful over the years to give no reminders. Everyone believed there were no
real Danu left.
Sold to Deni and married
at the tender age of eleven, it was assumed that she knew very little of the
forest craft her people were famous for, or the magic. Renault would have
chained her like a dog if he knew that the Danu trained their children from
birth. In the twelve years she had spent as Denis' wife he had trained her
still further in secret, not in magic, as the outcasts had none, but in
everything else he could think of that would help her survive once he was gone.
She had learned fighting, weapons and the brutal ways of survival as a nomad
outcast. More, he had protected her from his sons' unholy lust.
From the moment an eleven-year-old
Katrine had been brought to the camp with her Danu Amber hair and serene forest
green eyes a twenty-year-old Renault had wanted her. Only the lie that she
was wife in all ways to his father had kept her out of reach. Among the
outcasts, family was everything, and sleeping with another man’s wife would get
you killed quicker than the nightmares that roamed the green. Of course, the
same lie kept Deni safe from rumors that he could no longer pleasure a woman.
Such a show of weakness among the outcasts would have had the same result as
walking alone and naked into the deep green. A quick death and a new King. So,
they struck a deal between them, the aging outcast and the child Danu, and
Katrine had seen it through to the bitter end. Long after she could have
struck out on her own and survived, she stayed for Deni, because by then he was
already sick, and she owed him too much. Now, Deni was gone, her debt paid.
She was free.
Katrine found the marks
she had carved on the stone a few miles down the river. She pulled out the
travel bag she had placed there as soon as they stopped, knowing it would be
soon. She yanked off the layered robes of the nomad outcast stomping on them
for good measure. As much as she had cared for Deni, she had hated everything
about the confining garments their woman wore. The head wrap got an especially
brutal stomp.
In outcast society, a
woman did not show her hair outside the tent once she was married. Even a
single escaping curl could get you beaten. It was with profound relief that
Katrine freed her hair then twisted the long length into the intricate braids
the Danu favored for travel and work.
When she was naked, she
cleansed herself in the river as Danu women had done for generations.
Carefully applying the creams she made herself from moonlit forages in the
surrounding forest. The first removed unwanted hair and the second treated the
skin, removing her own personal scent for a few hours so that no spore was left
behind to track. It had the added bonus of leaving her skin soft and smelling
of sweet herbs and the green.
When she was clean, she
hurried through the rest of the required prayer of thanksgiving and safety,
aware of time ticking away from her. Even now, she could smell the funeral
fire carried on the breeze. Soon they would be looking for her.
The clothes she pulled
from the bag were as close to traditional Danu forest wear as she could make
them with only childhood memories to guide her sewing. Tight against the skin
for easy movement through the trees but with enough give that they were easy to
move and fight in. She had dyed these varying colors of the forest as she had
learned as a child. There was a long sleeved top, pants with bands at differing
intervals down the sides, gloves and soft-soled boots for gripping tree
branches. The undergarments consisted of a flexible soft fabric that breathed
well and kept all movement to a minimum.
She pulled on the clothes
giving thanks as she did for the animals that had donated to her weavings.
Then she pulled out the four knives, treated until they appeared black and
without glare in the sunlight or moon glow. She strapped them into the bands
she had sewn at her thighs for just that reason. Two more knives came out of
the bag and fit into the tall boots. One last knife, an arm length black blade
went into the holster at her back so that the blade could be pulled with one
hand at her shoulder.
She heard the men long
before they were a threat to her. Katrine vaulted up into the trees, jumping
and twisting from branch to branch until she was high enough to be hidden from
the people on the ground, high enough that the branches were too thin to carry
a woman half her size. A woman that was not Danu. Within a few minutes, she
heard them approach from up river.
"There are her
clothes." The voice belonged to a particularly nasty scout named Bal.
"Come out witch and show us what you've been hiding all these
years." He yelled it across the water with a laugh.
"Renault will kill
you if he hears you talking like that." The other voice was Mil. He had
been Renaults shadow for years.
"Renault has a
wife. Everyone knows he plans to make the Danu witch his whore. There's no
reason we can't have a little fun before he gets his. Besides it's not like
he's expecting a virgin in his bed."
"She's a fast one
with those knives of hers." Mill sounded worried, but there was lust as
well.
"He said he took her
knives away. Said 'she's defenseless as a babe. Drag the witch back by her
hair if you have to, but don't mar her skin. She belongs to me now.'"
Bal snorted at that. “As if she'll have any of that soft Danu skin left when
he's finished with her. No, I say we pump her now and then drag her back. If
she says anything, we'll deny it. It's not like anyone will believe her."
"Except…" Mills
voice was hesitant. "Where is she?"
"Split up, she can't
be far, not without clothes."
In a few minutes, they
were both back. "No tracks." Bal growled.
"They say Danu don't
leave them."
"She's not that kind
of Danu. She never had the training. Look, she leaves tracks right up to the
river."
"You think she
floated down river?"
"Without clothes?
In this cold water? A woman alone? It would be suicide."
There was a telling
silence.
"If she drowned
herself..." Mill started weakly.
"Danu don't kill
themselves." Bal growled.
"You said she wasn't
that kind of Danu"
There was another silence
as they grasped all the implications. "Renault will lose his mind."
Deep in the tree above
them Katrine stayed perfectly still, letting the magic of her heritage flow
freely. It wove around her and out to the tree she perched on until she was
bound into the fabric of the forest itself. A part of herself she held apart,
as always. It was enough.
Katrine’s breathing
slowed until she sat in a partial trance she had learned from the cradle and
practiced in secret. She did not shift her weight or fidget when Renault and
all the men from the camp came to help find her. Even his roar of rage did
not touch her. Many looked up into the trees, but she was a Danu in the heart
of a forest, the outcast clan that had adopted her may have forgotten what that
meant. She had not.
The dogs were useless
milling around and then returning again and again to the river to bark. He
ordered everyone from the smallest boy to the oldest man to head down river and
find the tracks where she had left the water. Hours later, when they had given
up she heard the roar of anguish even from the tree where she perched. The
smile that drifted across her face was the first sign of movement since she had
settled.
Katrine waited longer,
woven into the fabric of the forest as she was she could feel when the last of
the searchers gave up and returned to the outcast camp. She took a long
breath, as if waking from a deep sleep and pulled herself out of the weave carefully,
if not completely. For a Danu never really lost all connection to the natural
world around them, not without pain, and weakness. That was their greatest
strength and their biggest weakness all in one.
The magic of the Danu
wove itself naturally into the weave of the great forests, but eventually, if a
mature Danu stayed too long, as they were prone to do by their very nature, the
weave would become unbreakable, and the secrets of the green would open up
before them. Animals and plants alike would answer their call. Their magic
would work itself irrevocably into the very fabric of the green world, and a
Danu would become everything they were meant to be. The price for truly
becoming one with the natural world they inhabited meant that any damage within
the boundaries of the forest was damage to the Danu who settled it. And once
that unbreakable bond was made, there was no leaving the territory that had
been claimed.