Chapter 2
The Unexpected Encounter
Having walked several hours into the night, Zandra finally decided to stop and set up a place to rest for the night. She found a little clearing and set up several wards at each of the directional points, then quickly connected them with a small barrier that spanned over the small area. If it rained that night, which seemed likely, she would have ample warning to find better shelter. The wards weren’t very strong, but they did provide her with what she needed to get relatively comfortable. Two years ago, she would have chosen to stay in an inn – she hated camping with a passion – but after two years without anywhere to hide away, Zandra craved time to herself more than the comfort of an inn.
As she looked at the area that was her current resting place, the witch felt pleased with what she had accomplished. It felt so good to use something other than healing magic that she started doing the smallest things just to experience the sensations of being free to use magic. She began to dance around, waving her hands and making food whiz around her, spitting and cooking as it did. The feel of the dance began to seep into her subconscious, and the witch soon forgot about everything except for the exhilaration of being alive.
Losing track of time, she danced and sang, her heart feeling lighter than it had in a long time. Zandra knew that she needed to grieve, but that was why she was heading to Sukhothai. If she could just keep it penned in until then, she might be able to bear the pain a little better. Falling down on the ground, Zandra laughed until a few tears trickled from her eyes. She gave an unsteady hiccup as the laughter faded.
“Well, this was certainly not what I expected.” A familiar voice burst into her thoughts, causing Zandra to sit up quickly. She looked around but saw nothing. Even as caught up as she was in the moment, if anything had stepped within the wards, she would have been immediately alerted. But knowing that voice, her eyes soon turned up.
Sitting in a tree just over her little area was the one person who could bring her crashing back into the moment. It was ironic given what he was and his general tendencies to lose track of reality.
Zandra simply blinked as her eyes met the beautiful greyish-blue eyes of Anani. Unsure if she should smile or apologize and move in, she waited for him to say something else.
“Not even going to say hello?” His head tilted to the side. His hair swayed, creating a hypnotic effect, like watching clouds. It was slightly longer than when she had last seen him, although that had been a couple of decades ago. The way the whitish ends swayed, blending into the black roots, caused her heart to skip for a moment, but she quickly stomped out any of the other sentiments. That kind of thinking about Anani had already caused her more than enough heartache – heartache that she knew she had deserved.
“I’m sorry, Anani. I didn’t realize that you were in the area.” She stood and began manually packing up her things.
A small breeze blew through her hair and she knew that he had landed just outside of her wards. “I’m so sorry.” She waved them away and continued to pack.
“And yet you still haven’t said hello.” His voice had no malice or anger in it, which was strange.
Zandra stopped packing and looked at him. “Are you feeling alright?”
As if in slow motion, he began to fall to the side. Rushing over to his side at an inhuman speed, she kept him from hitting the ground.
“Gods! Anani, what happened to you?” In her rush to start packing up, Zandra hadn’t noticed the blood stains covering most of Anani’s shirt. He leaned heavily on her as she muttered a few incantations. “Anani, Anani!” She tried to help steady him as his eyes threatened to close.
“No, no, no. You can’t do this. Anani, so help me–” She stopped talking and immediately began chanting to create a little cushion to prop him up so she could recreate the wards. No matter how much he was bleeding, getting the wards up was the priority. This far into the forest meant plenty of creatures that would be attracted to the smell, especially of a shifter.
Zandra focused on the wards so that they would be as strong as she could make them. If they could do a bit more than warn her of something coming, it would give her time to do more. Sending a quick flash of fire at the weakest place, she was satisfied that it would hold for an initial assault. Quickly mending the damage from the fire, she turned to Anani. His eyes were following her, but she wasn’t sure how much he was actually seeing.
Ripping part of her dress, she drew water from the air and soaked the middle of the rag. Her hands worked furiously on the wound, and she did what she could to help stem the flow. The fact that most of it was dried gave her mixed emotions. On the one hand, it meant that it had been a while since he had sustained the injuries, but the fact that some of it was wet meant that the wounds had not fully closed.
“What have you been doing to neglect yourself so badly?” She muttered this without expecting an answer.
“A little bit of this. A little bit of that.” His voice sounded like a breeze on a cool day, and she looked up into his face. It was impossible not to smile at the reminder of the mischief she used to cause him with that answer.
She shook her head. “Well, you ought to know better than anyone that is never the right way to go.” Pressing on the wound with her bare hands, Zandra began to recite a chant she hadn’t used in a very long time, not since she had last been reckless enough to injure Anani. Watching and mentally praying to any gods listening, Zandra waited for the skin to start stitching together. It took a few minutes, but with a little coaxing, the skin finally started to close over the wound.
“What happened that you were so badly wounded? I mean, I’m not the strongest witch, but it shouldn’t have taken minutes for this to heal, not with your abilities.”
Anani pressed a hand on hers, which still rested on top of the wound. He simply closed his eyes.
Shaking her head, Zandra pressed a little more. “Minutes, Anani, minutes, to close. That means that you were really torn up inside too, and I cannot say that what I did will be enough.”
“It’s fine. I can feel that it is fine. Just a little rest and my body will take care of the rest.”
“I don’t know if I trust your judgment at the moment.”
He gave a faint laugh, then rolled over and fell asleep.
For the next few minutes, Zandra watched over him, waiting to see if he was going to be alright. When a faint sound of breathing echoed within the wards, she felt sure that he would be alright by the time he woke.
With a heavy sigh, she leaned back against the ward. The two had a really rough history, and it was mostly her fault. She had no idea what had caused him to finally choose to speak to her when he was clearly in dire need. There were plenty of his kind around who could have done so much more in much less time. She was a complication that he had told her two decades ago was unnecessary in his life.
So what had happened?
Part of her wanted to pick at the edges of his mind to find out what he had been thinking, or at least to read his aura. But she couldn’t. He had blocked her from reading anything about him, and any attempt now would wake him up and possibly cause him more harm. All she could do was stare and hope that it wasn’t anything as serious as it looked.
No longer tired, she picked up her lute and began to strum a lullaby. After a few bars, she began to sing, her voice winding its way through the notes as they hung in the air. On his cushion, Anani relaxed a little, a small smile gracing his lips for a moment. From where she sat, Zandra did not notice. For an hour or so, she sang into the night until she was tired enough to finally rest.
The bard rose and placed the instrument gently on top of her few belongings. With Anani sleeping so close, it wasn’t a good idea to use magic. Any disturbance in the air current caused by magic would affect him. It was one of the things about his type – they were incredibly sensitive to changes in the air. Not that she would have magicked her lute over to the spot anyway. It had been the first gift Akeno had given her, and the entire reason she had chosen to become a bard. He had built it in a way that it enhanced her voice and tugged at the heartstrings.
Unsure of how to feel about the odd twist in her situation, Zandra turned her back to Anani, and pressed up against the barrier. With so much blood loss, it was entirely possible that he hadn’t realized that she was actually there and not a hallucination – not that he was likely to have hallucinated her.
It was strange, and she slept fitfully into the early morning, the pain of the last two years and uncertainty of her current situation mingling together in a haunting dream that kept her from feeling like she slept at all.