Iridescent Fury by Zachary James

Author:Zachary James [James, Zachary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780578602059
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

She’s running away. I’m not sure who it is or where she is headed, but my eyes cling to the edge of the billowing cloak and the small strands of black hair streaming past the hood to vanish in the air like a tendril of smoke or a withering shadow.

The Equadoria seal—a warhorse with a wreath of ivy crowning its head—is elegantly sewn into the back of the cape. The moonlight falling from the sky illuminates it.

Whomever she is, she leaves the gates to Equadoria wide open, the all too familiar path clotted and covered in trees, vines, and brambles before her. I’m shocked at how quickly the girl sprints into Elkwood Forest’s shadows. She doesn’t take tentative steps and isn’t deterred by her lack of shoes, even as sticks and thorns and rocks cut open the bottoms of her feet. She runs, and she does not turn back.

I think I’m a bird, the raven, flying low near the ground, far below the canopy of leaves shadowing Elkwood Forest and dappling its mossy, lichen-covered earth. Following her is too easy; the loud sobs breaking from her lips is like a cry for help, a beckoning call to all of the monsters amongst these tall trunks, but I watch the Equadoria seal, the silver warhorse rippling across the fabric like it is my only source of life.

Her sadness is intensely familiar to me, as if it is beating in my own chest. For a minute I think her sobs are fearful, fear of the unknown, fear of the beasts lurking in the shadows that tail her noisy departure from my kingdom, but I know it can’t be true. Even as I think it, I know agony alone rattles her ribs and tears screaming sobs from her mouth as she runs, and runs...and runs.

The forest doesn’t grow familiar, just more and more foreign as she moves southeast through Elkwood Forest, bordering the Scarlet Sea. She keeps her eyes peeled, occasionally glancing over her shoulder. She looks up, but I don’t think she sees me. I don’t know if I am actually visible to her or a spirit of sorts.

After a long while, she stops running to catch her breath, to let out skeleton-rattling sobs that shake fellow birds from the boughs and branches overhead. Bats even soar out from beneath the protection of the canopy as if preferring the open night sky to the loud, tear-filled forest.

She drops the cloak from her shoulders, her black hair falling down her back in waves so familiar to my own.

I realize this is my mother.

It's the night she ran away from Equadoria. But...that’s odd. From what I remember, Father said she never left the protection of the city’s walls before she was mutilated.

I watch with restrained fear, waiting for a Wendigo to leap out from behind a tree or a Wood Nymph to crawl out from beneath a fallen log, but no monster comes. No Dreag prowls in the shadows, pacing and waiting for my mother to trip or become unguarded.

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