Chapter Text
There’d been pain, when Eilonwy lost her eyes. Terrible pain and an inexorable pressure , the feeling that any moment her head might burst like an overripe melon. The sudden darkness had come with a sense of palpable relief. The pain was not just physical-- the shouts of the villagers, her friends and family, had hounded her into the woods. She had not thought that anything could hurt more than the loss of her eyes, but the sound of Joss the baker screaming “Witch!” had been a dagger in her heart. She’d bought a loaf from him not three hours before. And Marelda, who’d been her best friend since childhood… worst of all was her mother’s voice, shrill and fearful. “Witch!” they’d chanted. “Witch! Avaunt! Avaunt!”
So she’d fled. What else was there to do? Stumbling, weeping blood from her ruined sockets, she’d run as fast and as far as her legs would take her. She made for the woods out of some half-remembered childhood fable. That was where the Wicked Things dwelt, and in the eyes of her community, she was now Wicked. She would go there and live in the shade under the ancient, gnarled oaks, and she’d… what?
She had no plan. There had been no time. One second she was waiting in line at the well, the next she could feel the power rising inside her again, only it was too much , far too much this time, and she had nowhere to hide and wait for it to bleed out. She’d screamed and screamed while crackling arcs of corposant wreathed her limbs and earthed themselves against the iron hitching post.
She thought that was when her eyes had gone.
She splashed through the stream that bordered the village, soaking her legs to the knees. She hadn’t dressed for this, and soon her thin cotton dress was plastered to her thighs. She was out of breath by the time she reached the edge of the forest, but deep-down survival instinct told her that she had to keep going. As long as she could feel the sun at her back, she wasn’t safe. The villagers might be in shock now, but their fear would soon curdle into hatred, and if they found her they would burn her. And as much as she hurt now, she wasn’t ready to die.
She had to slow down, though. The forest here was thick and primordial. The villagers preferred to get their lumber from a grove at the top of the hill; they spoke in hushed tones of the forest spirits, the hexen and the boggarts and the schattensoldat . Knights of the Last War, they called them, the shadow-soldiers, bound eternally into their armor, great clanking things that towered over the tallest man and ate human flesh. Eilonwy had never seen one, but she knew they were there as surely as she knew that the sun rose in the east, or water flowed downhill, or that the Book of Right Living taught you shall not suffer a witch to live .
She knew all that. But she wasn’t a witch. She didn’t know how she knew, or even what it meant, but she knew it in her bones. She wanted to live. So she took a few deep breaths and forced herself to slow down. Her head was still pounding and throbbing and she felt a warm wetness trickling down her cheeks that was not tears, but she forced herself to slow to a walk. If she ran headfirst into a tree and knocked herself out, that would be it for her. She could still hear the roar of the mob, but it was curiously muted, as though by stepping into the forest she had entered some kind of bubble. She paused and tore a strip of fabric from her dress. It was soaked with cool water from the stream, and she hissed in pain as she tied it around her eyes, but she found that the pressure and coolness helped. A little.
The power was still inside her, she could feel it, but it was ebbing. It seemed to pulse out of her like blood from a fresh wound. With each step, each breath, she felt it weakening. As it drained out of her, fatigue poured in. She paused for a moment to lean against a tree. She struggled for breath, but she couldn’t seem to fill her lungs. How long had it been? It felt like hours, but she couldn’t even track her progress by the sun in the sky. Was it getting cooler? She couldn’t tell.
Birds twittered overhead and in that moment hatred filled Eilonwy. It was pure, primal, wholly irrational. She was trapped in a cage of darkness while these birds were free. They could go anywhere, do anything. They could see the world in all its summer splendor. She clenched her fists and willed them dead.
The song cut off abruptly. A moment later there was a quiet pattering, as of rain on a thatched roof. Eilonwy let out a choked gasp and raised her hand to her mouth. Guilt welled up inside her, guilt so powerful that it momentarily displaced her misery and fear. “I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I didn’t mean it!”
Nobody responded. She was alone.
She trudged onward. The only sounds were birdsong and the wind in the branches overhead. She found a stick at one point and used it to feel her way forward, but it was slow and tenuous going, and more than once she had to back up and reroute herself. She quickly lost all sense of direction. Was she heading back to the village? Who cares , she thought dully. Let them kill me. It’ll be quick, at least . She kept moving, though, one foot in front of the other, until she could move no more. She was more exhausted than she’d ever been, her head throbbed, her eyes burned, and her heart was cracked in two. She sank to her knees and curled up into a ball on the loamy forest floor. Oblivion beckoned.
--
Agon walked. He walked and saw. Many walks, each day. Many times seeing. It was his Purpose. To walk and see. To see and walk. Small lives saw Agon, and walked away fast. If they did not, he fulfilled his other Purpose.
He dwelt in the Place. Walking the Place was his Purpose. The Place was part of the Purpose, and you could not have one without the other. In his more philosophical moments, Agon wondered if his Purpose could exist in another Place. But of course that was foolishness. There was only this Place.
He walked every day. That was part of the Purpose, too. Always the same walk. He had counted the days, once. That had not been part of his Purpose, but he did it anyways. He did not know if the Others did that, as well. He had seen Others, once. Before he received his Purpose. Before his Creator had left him in place. He did not speak to them, and they did not speak to him. Did they count? He did not know. In any case, he had lost count ages ago. Sometime after one hundred thousand. Now, he just walked.
This walk was like every other walk. He saw and was seen. The small lives fled before him. He did not pursue. That was not his Purpose.
Then, all at once, this walk was not like other walks. There was… something, in the Place. Someone. He stopped short and stared through his visor. At first, he thought what he was seeing was merely part of the Place; a new type of toadstool, perhaps. But it wasn’t. It was… it was…
An Other.
Well, he knew what to do with Others. That was part of his Purpose. His jaw unhinged and his long black tongue slid out from between fetid lips. He raised his arms and took a step forward. The Other was within arm’s reach, and not even moving. It would be the easiest thing in the world to--
It whimpered.
Agon froze.
It was high-pitched, that whimper. A feminine sound, not a cry of pain-- he had heard enough of those in his time-- but the merest whisper of discomfort. It stayed his hand for just a moment, but in that moment he sniffed, and he smelled Her. The Other. Her scent filled his nostrils, her blood and fear and sorrow, and something below those that shone like a pearl in muck. He stood statue-still for a long time. It was hard to tell what, if anything, he was thinking, but he seemed to come to a decision. His tongue retreated and his visor dropped into place. He bent and scooped up the pale white bundle with delicate care.
Agon’s memory was a fragmented thing at the best of times, like a china dish shattered and mended by inexpert hands. But that voice… and that scent… they touched something inside of him, something buried, a rare coin in the dross of his soul. If he owned such a thing. He had, once…
In any case, he had been walking and seeing for too long. Perhaps there was more than one Purpose.
Eilonwy shifted in her sleep, and Agon gently laid her head into the crook of his elbow. Then he turned and headed for home.
