Metaphorically Speaking

As the force of the storm bearing down on the hillside intensified, the sturdy mountain ponies struggled to pull their covered carts. And when the world turned white around them, the ponies decided they’d already had quite enough. The caravan came to a halt. 

“Gods above,” said a low voice, coming unexpectedly from the front seat of one of the carts toward the rear of the party. “Your own bloody carts are holding you up. How do you manage to get anywhere at this rate, O Good King?”

Callum, otherwise known as the Good King of Doenall, shifted in his wool cloak and furs. Beneath cozy hat and dark, messy hair, a grin stretched across his pleasant face. “That’s a funny way to say ‘thank you for rescuing me from local landholders who wanted me dead and bringing me away from their stronghold with you, Callum!’”

“And that’s a damned weird way to say ‘oh no, help, guards, Saints preserve us, the horrible villainous demon has escaped her prison and expects to ride shotgun in my cart!’”

“‘Shotgun?’” Callum puzzled, but at the same time seemed content not to understand. He smiled down at the woman beside him, who was short, slight, heavily bandaged, missing one eye, and indeed a demon. In the onslaught of snow around them her silver eye looked like ice, while her dark blue skin and scales marked her like a shadow on the sun. “Are you feeling better, then, Midnight?”

“Listen, if you’re not going to yell -- poor choice on your part, all I can say -- then I’m going to be the one asking questions,” the demon Midnight retorted. She hunched down on the wooden bench, stared out at the rump of the pony before them, and squinted against the snow in a way that clearly said she’d chosen to ignore Callum scanning her various visible bandages. “What’s the deal, O Hero? What’s with the rescue and ensuing whisking-away-into-an-infernal-blizzard?”

“The blizzard wasn’t foreseen.” Callum paused -- a pointed pause -- and then added lightly, “Are rescues not something heroes do?”

“Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, you went and rescued the wrong person, dimwit. Oh, don’t tell me -- the Court Disease has gotten you too, hasn’t it? Downright cursed scary, how Stupidity spreads these days.”

“Ah, well. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be a hero.”

Callum’s tone had been suspiciously cavalier, and Midnight’s narrow-eyed gaze flicked over him. “Gods know you’ve bolloxed this rescue, anyway,” she said in begrudging agreement. “We’re not even moving. You haven’t managed to whisk me anywhere, except some ruddy hillside half a day’s walk from town. If we stay here any longer the damn Baihs will probably be out here themselves, ready to collect me and you this time for dishonoring their precious dirty Saint.”

“Maybe they would be . . . were they not still mulling over the fact that I threatened to bring them up in front of the Council for refusing to turn over a known criminal, therefore undercutting the Crown’s authority. Oh, and to cut off all trade to this particular region of the country.”

“Look at you.” For the first time Midnight grinned, a sharp and wild expression in the fierce night. “Not a hero, you say, but they’ll make a King of you yet.”

“Perhaps.”

For a moment Callum gave up talking. He licked snow from his lips, and twitched the reins -- more to make sure they hadn’t frozen than anything else; still, the beleaguered pony took one obliging step. The cart in front of them loomed as a dark grey splotch in a world of whirling white, not close enough that anyone could hear the King’s unusual conversation, but present enough to be reassuring. 

Midnight had assumed the King was being humble, and therefore -- to her mind -- boring. But in a voice which cut underneath the persistent wind, Callum said, “What they were doing to you was wrong, Midnight.”

“So that’s what this is, is it?” Midnight sat up, snow sliding from her shoulders in a tiny avalanche. Her one good eye glinted. “You just couldn’t stand all that business about revenge? Too damned good to take an eye for an eye, are you? Their motives come across in shades of grey, whereas yours are as white as -- well, as white as this gods-cursed storm you have us mired in?”

“It wasn’t just an eye for an eye.”

“No, it was going to be my life for their bloody saint’s.”

“. . . The Saint who, may I point out, Midnight, might have been of some use in clearing up this storm.”

“You think I care? This is nothing. I laugh at storms like this. Don’t you give me one of your godsforsaken lectures! I have my motives, and what I want to know is--”

“That’s enough,” Callum interrupted. Startled, the cartpony hopped forward, its long hair dragging in the snow. “Ahem. If you’ll excuse me, Midnight, may I point out that I know exactly what you’re saying. I may not be a very good hero, but I like to think I can at least follow a metaphor. White, snow, me; black, night, you.”

He said the words ponderously, as though they did not bear stringing together any further than that. 

Midnight rallied at once. “So you’re admitting it, then? You rescued the fucking villain because somehow you thought it was the right thing to do?”

“I stopped inhumane treatment in the streets, and insisted upon true justice being done.” Beneath the heavy frost on his eyelashes, Callum’s eyes dimmed. “I do not see why this is difficult, Midnight.”

“Of course you don’t. Gods, Callum, how are you such a ninny? You’re making it bloody difficult because you don’t seem to understand that a Good Hero needs an Evil Villain.”

Callum pressed his lips together, whether in frustration or amusement no one could say. “You have told me as much before.”

“Right, well at least you aren’t losing your godsdamned memory too.” Midnight blew out a breath that fell in icicles, and spoke as though to a child. “And sooner or later the story has to end, which means the hero has to kill the enemy.”

This time when Callum’s mouth twisted it wasn’t hard to tell why. “I really don’t think--”

“Oh, there’s no chance you’ll get me before I’ve finished all my plans,” said Midnight, rather smugly for a person wearing a convalescent’s tunic while riding on someone else’s cart. “So don’t you worry your pretty head about that. But I get the feeling you aren’t giving this the proper effort, O King. I mean, you are going to be able to put up a good fight at least, aren’t you?”

“I -- I don’t --” Callum gave up. He turned to Midnight, focusing hard to see her face amid the swirling snowflakes. After a moment, smiling, he reached out and dislodged a veritable mountain of ice from her hood. “You say you have plans, my friend? Well. I have some plans of my own.”

 “Oh you do, do you.” Midnight sat still while Callum brushed shards from her cloak, swaying only when the cart lurched one more step forward. “Well that’s just great. Gods above! How’s a demon supposed to get any damned villainy done around here when you’re too good to be Good?”

In response to her annoyance, Callum only chuckled. Glancing ahead, he saw the carts making careful progress over the hill; glancing above, he thought the snow might almost be subsiding. The King clucked to his pony, and then turned to Midnight once more. 

“Since we’re likely to be here awhile, what say you to a game of ‘mine eyes spy’?”

“That’s damned insensitive, you know, to someone who’s just lost an eye.” Midnight straightened and looked around, silver gaze sparkling. “I call first turn!”