Chapter 75

Night Flowering Jasmine

There are two things I have to do before I can reclaim Fairhaven and wipe the floor with Javier’s icy nether regions. Two important tasks.

Firstly, and most importantly, I need to transfer my soul to a secure location. Secondly I need to discover and destroy Janvier’s own phylactery, and thus his soul. Preferably before he locates mine. The black rooster as a phylactery is just too unsafe of a keeping place. I suspect the only reason it has survived this long is that his highness couldn’t believe I would keep my soul in a chicken. Not that it was a conscious choice. All in all, the hand fate played me has served me surprisingly well. Now it is time to upgrade.

If I do not destroy Janvier’s own soul vessel, killing him at Fairhaven will ultimately be meaningless. Satisfying, but meaningless. We will attack each other, forever locked in a stalemate of death and resurrection instead of attending to the important things - like crafting and gardening. The sooner I accomplish these tasks, the better and I must accomplish them quietly. I am under no illusions that Janvier is sitting idle on his icy throne.

First things first.

I am a little nervous about changing the physical location of my soul, but I know how to do it, and I already know the spells. It’s simplicity itself. In theory. The grimoire has given me instructions and reassurance (for the price of a barrel of gizzards, one wooden rattle and a sugar bun).

I bid farewell to Jenkins and my mother.

There is a small chance that this will go wrong and I am actually saying goodbye to them for the very last time, but I’m trying not to think about that. Messing with your own soul is not for the faint of heart. Another advantage to being organless, but all levity aside, the less people who know the location of my soul the better. Even those I trust are better off ignorant. Even Roland. I don’t want him to worry.

Setting off for Little Downing, I walk beneath the snow caked boughs. It is a long way. The forest path winds and twists, even with the strength of my legs eating up the miles. If only I had another portal candle. If only I had several portal candles. All in good time, I suppose. In the future that I hope I will have.

Once at the village, I do not disturb the sleeping humans, only raising my hand in shadowy greeting to the watching draugrs on the boundary wall.

It takes me some time to locate the black rooster. His oily black feather blend in with the night, and I suspect he feels enough through our connection to be wary. At last I locate him on a rooftop and pluck him off of it, with some swearing. He does not want to come with me, and I worry that he will wake everyone with his squawking. After a brief tussle, I manage to tuck the struggling bird under my arm and clamp my fingers clamped around his beak.

Nodding once more to the curious watchmen, I take my leave. Then through the forest we go, swiftly, swiftly to find a place where I can be reasonably sure of some privacy.

“I know you didn’t ask for this,” I comment as I stride. “But neither did I. Neither one of us expected anything like this to happen to us! And well. Here we are. You are just a ridiculous chicken, but you’ve done a good job, in difficult circumstances. I am grateful. I thought for sure that you would have been killed when the village was burned down. Thank you for keeping my soul safe.”

The rooster struggles and lets out a muffled squawk.

I might be losing my mind, but talking to it eases my mind. I’m not entirely sure what is going to happen, and I must confess I am a little afraid. It is not an emotion I feel often and I don’t like it.

The trees pass by like silent sentinels as I venture deep into the woods.

My theory is sound, and the grimoire confirms it is possible. Really, I have to consider that if it all goes wrong and I die my final death, that would be fine. Regrets I would have aplenty, but I think it's fairly safe to say I have lived more in the last few months than I did in the previous two decades. Just because I was breathing didn’t mean I was alive.

If I do go to see the Whisperer for the ultimate journey, I just hope I get the chance to punch him in the face a bit, before I go on to whatever happens next. If there is anything. I am unsure what happens to good liches when they pass on.

I arrive in a twinkling glade. The trees here are dark and hollow, long since sacrificed to feed my appetite. Looking around at the frosted boughs I decide I have come far enough. This is the heart of the forest, far from any village or settlements, untouched by loggers, free of bandits without even a solitary hermit or witch. The moon is rising, casting flickering light between the branches that bob in the chill wind.

I hope I survive to see the spring. I hope I survive to see all the springs and all the summers, and then the falling leaves and a million frosts.

But here I am truly and blissfully alone.

It is just me and the trees and the moon. And the rooster, I suppose. Although, arguably the rooster is just a part of me that runs around in shiny black feathers being a menace. For a moment I think I see the glint of eyes in the trees, the outline of elongated, upright ears but it is merely a trick of the light.

I set the undead rooster down on a flat rock and the vicious thing lunges at me, taking a triangular chunk out of one of my fingers. We glare at each other, both hissing.

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it?” I say. The rooster leans back its monstrous black head and nearly deafens me with his cock-a-doodle-do. He does not want to die.

“Hush!” I say. “Not long now.”

I wait patiently for midnight.

It soon arrives, swathing the world in thick shadows.

“It’s time,” I say, absently. Now or never.

I lower my voice to the gentlest whisper. Softly, softly now. Carefully now.

“Decipula alma.”

Light pools on my fingers, sparking their way along the length of my outstretched index finger. The rooster lets out a gasping squawk, lurching forward as if tugged by invisible strings. Gleaming beads of light and darkness stream towards me, mingling with the moonlight, pouring into my body first in ribbons and then in a torrent.

The faithful cockerel gives out one last, mournful croak and tumbles over. His feathered body lies bleak against the snow like a pitiful shadow.

My soul tastes like regret.

It tastes like regret, and dust, and just a hint of something sweet. Like nightflowering jasmine scented from far away.

The lights consume me.

Pain crashes into the empty shell of my being, a tidal wave of feelings and emotions, raw and bitter and stinging. I fall to my knees. It hurts. Oh god it hurts. It hurts so much.

Fear floods my arteries, rushing through every fibre of my being, scouring me, eating me alive. What have I done? My eyes sting but I cannot cry. My entire body is wracked with dry, heaving sobs. Oh god it hurts, I have to make it stop. I have to make it stop.

My soul is not meant to be here.

It is too much. I was not meant to be whole.

It will destroy me, it is destroying me, this mountain of pain. Stop. I can make it stop. I can do something. Spreading my palms wide, shuddering and sobbing I dig my fingers into the snow. Scrabbling I dig, searching. Searching. There! Inches down, the earth! Frozen solid and as hard as ice.

“Nooooooo,” I moan.

I dig till the skin on my fingers is shredded, then grab a rock, smashing it down, over and over. At last I can touch the naked soil. I thrust my hands against it.

“Resurgemus iterum,” I whisper. It is difficult to keep my voice low. I want to scream. I want to wail to the stars, but I keep my voice low. I must. I must. “Resurgemus iterum, resurgemus iterum! Vita mutatur, non tollitur, vita mutatur, non tollitur, vita mutatur, non tollitur!”

I push with every ounce of my being.

My soul does not want to leave me.

It clings to me, wrapping me in its pitiful, powerful, human emotions, fiery fingers burning me to my core. The pain bleeds through the ice to chisel into my very being. I am being ripped asunder with every moment that passes.

“Resurgemus iterum.” I urge. Look what a nice place I have found for you!

It goes. Trickling through my fingers like an anxious creature, thoughtful, inquisitive, shy, then greedy. My soul flows through my palms into the loam, into the forest, into the very heart of Downing. Into Downing Forest, my first and only true love. Into the trees, into the bark, into every bush, and rock and creature.

My soul leaves me.

I fall back with a groan, staring up at a single star that shines its uncaring light through the cobweb of branches above me.

My soul has left me, but I can feel it in a way that I never felt the rooster.

It settles… and now… I can feel the forest. I am a tiny figure lying in the snow and I can feel everything. Not the all consuming pain of the soul union, but the uncanny sensation of what it feels like to be a forest. For the first time in my existence I know what it is like to have trunks. To have copses, to have glades. I feel the frozen arteries of winter streams. I feel the nocturnal creatures scamper along my boughs. I feel the moonlight on my leaves, the weight of the snow, warming me, helping me slumber. I am so sleepy.

I am sleeping till the spring. No, not me! Parts of me are awake. Here, the vibration of feet, the snore of a mouse. Four feet, racing, frantic. A deer? Chased by wolves on the western boundary. One of them stops and howls, feeling my presence.

My attention moves on. What is this? A sweet pressure. Foundations. Stones. A garden. I know what it is like to have houses! There is my cottage! My ghostly flowers, my draugr bees a gentle hum. Far to the north the earth groans under the weight of a great structure. Almost I don’t recognise Dunbarra Keep so alien does it seem from this perspective. The many feet pitter and patter about, giving it the feeling of a craggy beehive.

I sigh, whether in delight or fear, this is yet to be seen.

It is overwhelming.

When my soul was in the rooster I felt nothing. At least, I don’t think I felt anything? But then did I ever really pay attention? This casting was different, an intentional act, binding me forever to the place I love. Does that count for something? Perhaps it is just the shock of transfer, the after effects of the spell. Perhaps soon I will feel nothing again.

I find myself… disappointed by the notion.

The feeling is beginning to fade. I grasp at it blindly. I want to be the forest.

It settles in me, gently, reassuringly. The presence is less urgent but it is there if I concentrate. Like the process of breathing for a human.

My tiny body relaxes, staring upwards blindly, exploring the sensation of the forest in my soul. Did I take the forest for my own or did I give my soul to the forest? Semantics. It matters not.

For the first time I can fully comprehend the spread of my blight. The dead trees, the rotted earth, the sickly decomposed corruption has spread in uneven drifts for miles upon miles. It splays outward in a radius like an evil star.

There is beauty in that death… and yet. I mourn for the living forest.

I am both the living and the dead. How is that possible? Something has happened in the transfer. All the parts jumbled together. Perhaps the forest considers itself whole, all the parts together, both living and dead.

I lie for some time drinking in the sensations, feeling the swish of the wind through my treetops and enjoying the peaceful joy of hibernation.

This is going to take some getting used too.

After a while, I get up.

Not because I want to, but because I can tell something is happening at Dunbarra Keep.