A Warning

This chapter is the most violent and most disturbing so far. (Same goes for the pictures.) There’s nothing in this chapter that won’t be revealed later, so you may skip it if you prefer to avoid that sort of thing. 

The elf held her hand, gently at first, and led her along paths she could not see. No matter how steep the bank – no matter how impenetrable the thicket – just as they reached the point where she was certain they would have to turn back, the way would appear.

He led her quickly, down below the castle and then through the foothills towards the south. The elf’s cave was high on the mountainside to the northeast. Catan had pointed this out to her companion early on, but he had told her the blind elf had fallen far from home.

After a moment’s consideration, she decided this made sense. Her friend had told her that he knew the hills around his cave well enough to go to the lake at a run, blind as he was. If he had fallen into a hole, he must have been in unfamiliar country.

Thus it was not until the elf began to get rough with her that she started listening to her cat’s instincts.

He walked ever more quickly, and with his long strides and her heavy skirts, she found it ever more difficult to stay upright, much less keep up with him. Over time his grip on her hand grew painful, and he was not leading her so much as yanking her. She bobbled along behind him, at times breaking into a halting run.

But it had all happened so gradually that she did not protest until she was enduring far rougher treatment than she would have permitted if he had acted so from the start.

“Stop it!” she cried at last. “Slow down! Where are you taking me?”

“Come here!” he growled. He walked faster, almost running himself.

“Stop!”

Cat planted her feet, thinking she would drag him to a halt. Instead he pulled her off-​​balance, and she fell. He still held her hand in an iron grip and simply dragged her body along behind him. He was as strong as a horse, and she far lighter than a plow.

The ligaments in her wrist and arm were stretched taut as harp strings, and her shoulder was burning, straining against its socket. But with her skirts and cloak beneath her, there was no way for her to get her footing again.

“Stop! Stop!” she howled.

He let go of her hand and turned back to her. Before she could scramble away, he hooked his hands beneath her armpits and hoisted her to her feet.

“Now you come. It is fast walk for you.”

“No!”

He took her hand again and jerked her along. Catan screamed. This time he gave her arm such a tug that he whipped her around him, but he stopped her as she spun past by smacking her across the face with his other hand. Cat’s head went one way and her body the other, and something in her neck seemed to tear as it tried to do both.

The elf caught her cloak and did not let her fall. “No man can hear you,” he growled. “And tonight no elf can help you. Now come quiet, or it is stop here for you.” He released her cloak, but his hands hovered over her.

Catan screamed.

The elf barked some command in another language, and Cat heard a rustling in the bushes behind her. She put the terror she knew at her back and turned to look.

There were three new silhouettes against the sky, looming taller than the pines on the steep slope behind them.

Cat panted so rapidly the cloud of breath before her mouth did not have time to dissipate before she blew another. Her heart and lungs were out of her control.

The tall elf behind her planted a hand on her back and shoved her forward, sending her stumbling against the other three.

He spoke to them, but she understood only that what he said was cold and mocking. The others responded with a predatory chuckle. They moved around her like wolves, circling her with their bodies and keeping her between them.

Catan screamed, and they laughed.

The first elf spoke again, sending one of the others off into the trees. Catan scarcely noticed him, for she was busy dodging the knees and hands of the other three, but after he made a few trips back and forth between this small clearing and the forest, she understood that he was fetching wood. He lit it in his hands as he went, and he piled it near their feet.

She realized then that they meant to take her no farther, and she screamed long and loud, emptying her lungs of air and even straining her empty throat after the sound had gone out of it.

They laughed.

One of the elves, a red-​​haired giant, pulled her against him and twisted his fingers in her hair to hold her head against his.

“Do you love elves, woman?” he breathed, filling the space between their faces with a firelit cloud. “Here is happy night for you. Here is four elves for you.”

Catan could not scream any longer, but every panting breath came with a whimper. Her breath was as rapid as her heartbeat and so shallow that she scarcely blew a fog into the air.

One of the elves moved behind her and lifted one of her breasts in his hand. He made some comment that got a laugh out of the others.

As he slid his hand down her side, she realized that he was about to find her knife. It was only then that she remembered she had a knife at all.

She appeared so helpless in her terror that none of them bothered to hold her arms. She moved to whip out her knife as her father had taught her, but the first elf caught her arm while it was still in her cloak. Her hand clutched convulsively around the hilt, and when he yanked her arm free, the knife came with it.

He pried it from her hand, and the fair-​​haired elf behind her pulled her arms behind her back and held her fast.

The tall elf held the knife between her face and his and studied it a while in the firelight. “A claw for a cat,” he murmured.

Catan squeaked like a mouse with every shallow breath.

He slowly moved the knife to the side, slowly revealing his face, slowly up and to the right – and suddenly he brought it down and to the left, slashing across her chest, slashing through her cloak, slashing through her gown and shift, slashing through skin, slashing through muscle, slashing through veins and nerves, slashing down to the bone.

The grating of steel against ribs resonated in her chest as if she were a bell he had struck, tolling for herself. There followed an uncanny silence. Even the elves had stopped laughing for a moment, as breathless as she.

She understood they did not mean to let her go after they were through with her. Perhaps the other elves had not known it until that moment.

She knew she was dying. The wound gaped, tugged open by the weight of her breasts. The front of her dress was soaked at once in the first rush of blood. In spite of the crescendo of pain that was bursting up from her chest, the rest of her body was suddenly, briefly hypersensitive, and she could feel her blood draining away, tickling its way down over the tiny, translucent hairs that furred the blood-​​warm skin of her belly.

Her legs trembled and her head swam. She fell slowly forward against the elf’s tall body, but he shoved her off of him with some foreign word of disgust.

She felt herself floating slowly down a great distance, like a feather down a well, until her head cracked against the frozen earth and she remembered her body.

The blood began to flow in every direction – down her sides, back over her shoulders, and up onto her neck. She lifted a hand to touch her throat, wondering at this blood that seemed to be flowing upwards, but the elf lay himself down upon her, and she remembered she was lying on the ground.

He pulled up her skirts, and the air was cold upon her bare skin. Everything was cold. The earth beneath her was cold. The fire on her face was cold. His body was cold between her legs. His breath was cold on her face. Her blood was cold on her throat.

She knew she was dying. Behind the elf’s head she could see the swan star sacred to Dana. When she died, the swan would carry her soul away.

Catan fixed her eyes on the star and began to pray. “Ar n-​​Athair a tha air nèamh…”

The elf growled at her.

“…gu naomhaichear d’ainm…” She did not have a voice to speak, but as long as she breathed she could whisper.

The elf began snarling at her in his own language, and Catan stopped to listen, turning her eyes to the dark shape that was his head.

It seemed to her she ought to understand, but she realized she had never heard this language spoken. She had never asked her friend how to tell him she loved him, and now he would never know. Perhaps that was all that had lacked after all. Perhaps she had not known how to make him understand.

“Thigeadh… do rìoghachd…” She could not remember how to pray as her father had taught her.

Her breath was coming faster and shallower, and the elf’s faster and deeper, and between their faces there grew a cold cloud. It was bright at first in the firelight, but it grew darker as the fire dimmed, as the sky dimmed, as the stars dimmed. She was going blind.

There was one thing she had learned to say, and she said it, whispering the one word over and over until her breath had run out.

“Pashrí… pashrí… pashrí…” It is dark… it is dark… it is dark…