Forbidden To Fall

“The carriage gave a shock of a hustle and down she fell, right to the bottom of the ravine floor,” I couldn’t help a scowl as I looked over at my sister. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing inside the Duchess’ fireplace. Her grey hair fell in a long sheath from the slightly peaked top of her head down to the floor. I watched the strands run a lover’s touch across the sooted bricks before swinging backward. 

“I knew you would be scowling,” Ben said, turning to look at me. She rose slowly from her bruised knees. In her hand she clenched the hand brush, in the other a blackened rag. 

“It's times like these that I wish you would speak,” She sighed, walking over and cupping my face, cold from her words, in her hand, “Yet I understand why you don’t.” She let go and returned to her bucket of supplies. She grabbed a new rag and returned to scrubbing. I focused on the waltz of her hair as she moved back and forth, and not her words, of the insinuation of pain. Pain I was causing her. 

My tongue was removed when I was seven. It was a clean procedure, purposeful. My family has long been tied to the Duchess’, and when, as a child I would not shut my mouth, she threatened to set fire to my family if they did not stop me from speaking. So they stopped me in the only way they knew how, with a serrated blade. I have not spoken since then. 

“I apologize. The room is needed” My head snapped to the door where Victor was standing, arms crossed, black toed boot tapping. I desperately wanted to look away. To not feel the way I did. To not feel this way would have been a gift. Because I was addicted. To the vines that snaked across his arms, the bark that clung to his face. His hair was black and lay heavy like leaf stems, and his eyes were a blue to be drowned within. 

And. My mind begged. And so, so much more. With him there were so many Ands. 

And his body moved with grace and power despite the roots always reaching for the earth, ready to pierce the soil. 

And his voice was honeyed mercury, delightfully poisonous. Always on the tip of my nonexistent tongue. Always wanting more.

“We’ll leave, sir,” Ben stood, bowing slightly as she swiftly gathered up her materials and grabbed my hand. She pulled me from where I sat on a small wooden stool, knees nearly to my chest. 

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Victor grinned a smile that only to me was cruel. Cruel for making me wish I could speak.

“Why don’t you take the day off?” Ben flinched as she looked back at me. Imagining emotions I did not feel. She had somehow come to learn how much I loved trailing her through her day. Only when the Duke and Duchess Wentworth were not home. Victor saw her look, the way my eyes grew hooded and downcast. 

“You’re my age aren’t you?” Victor asked, head tilting so I could see a thick strip of bark climbing from his collarbone to his high cheekbones. Victor was a man, but a man slowly being consumed by a tree. It was a deadly condition. Few could master a djinn such as he was. It was for this reason he was with the Duchess. To train the djinn within himself and maintain his humanity. His humanity which deemed him just over twenty years, even as the djinn that had stolen a part of his soul made him eternal. 

“She is,” Ben said before I could so much as nod. I gave her hand a sharp pulse. I wanted to nod. I wanted to communicate with him. We had communicated in nods before, Victor always being far too kind. I had joined him on walks around the estate when his parents were gone. I am far too eager to nod and shrug as he speaks to me of the world beyond his family home.

“Would you like to join my friends and I? We are drilling for the Appealings. I told you about it,” I got my chance to nod, and I did so enthusiastically. The Appealings were a festival of war and forgiveness. Those who wished to harbor a djinn would compete in a series of trials to be deemed worthy. Sometimes it was enough, and a djinn would take the competitor they were most besotted with. Other times a Lashing would occur, and a djinn would find a spectator, a child, anyone nearby and take residence within their soul. That is what occurred with Victor, and while he may compete in the Appealing, it is only to conquer his djinn. For if he proves himself the equal of the djinn within him, the djinn will no longer consume, but rather it would be enslaved to him. Permanently. 

“I don’t know,” Ben said, having not seen my nod, or the look of betrayal curling my lips downward. She trails off, eyes roving from his ankles where the roots stick out like gnarled hands, to the tops of his arms and the vines throbbing against a thick layer of bark. She did not know of our walks.

“A tree. That is what I am. I am a tree,” Victor held no malice or condescension, only good humor. 

“Yes. And she cannot speak. I worry that if you and yours frighten her, she will not be able to tell you so,”

“And you fear I will not listen,” Victor adds and Ben does not cower from the truth, she stares him straight in the eye. 

“Yes,” Victor takes a step toward us and I feel Ben’s hand tighten ever so slightly. The air is fresher when he comes close and I smell the sharp scent of the earth, saccharine wind, and something akin to freedom. 

“Give me a chance. She nodded behind you. Please,” And something in his face must have changed Ben’s obstinate mind because she drew me into a hug without ever looking away from Victor. I felt the muscles in her arms tighten around my shoulders.

“She is everything to me. My final blood. My only friend. She may not be able to speak, but I will know. If she is anything but smiling at the end of this, you will die. I will kill you and damn the Duchess, but it will be done,” Ben took a step to him, drawing the small blade she carried around her neck into her fist. She pressed the edge to her palm and a small bead of blood edged down her wrist. I stared wide eyed at the blade. We were forbidden from holding blades. It was treason.

She pressed her palm to the back of my head, her blood absorbed into a small black circle at the base of my neck. She has given her promise to me. If she should fail, her bones will crack and disintegrate. And I would be the holder of a debt, one that her nearest relation should have to pay off. Only to Victor would she risk using abilities forbidden by the Duchess. 

I hugged her back, nuzzling slightly into her head to let her know I would be okay. With one last squeeze, she left, bucket chiming against her leg. 

In the room alone with Victor I am shocked at how glad I am that I cannot speak. For even if I could, I would be unable to find anything meaningful. There is just too much I want to have meaning. Too much I want to be, that I fear any words of mine would find him of an opinion I did not wish him to have. 

“Alright. Everyone should arrive soon, why don’t you take a seat?” I do, back on my stool, as is appropriate of a Vixia in a room soon to be filled with Mitad. A small crease mars the perfect space between his thick eyebrows. They are like interwoven twigs, thick and snaking through his forehead. 

“You can sit in one of the good chairs,” He says and waves to the five lounges dotting the space around the behemoth of a fireplace. Bookshelves stacked with old tomes line the walls, no knick knacks to lessen their dominance of the room. Besides the leather lounges there is little else. A foot table in one corner. A lamp in another. But beside that, the space is open. For training. 

I move to one and sit. He sits beside me, not close enough so we touch, though I wouldn't mind if his leg touched mine. To feel the bark beneath his corduroy pants. 

“The Duchess is said to speak with The Lady,” He murmurs and a jolt of fear races down my spine. Whatever ease I had felt sitting beside him is gone and I sift backwards, pinpricks dotting the underside of my thighs. Instinctively my back straightens, hands tingling with the need to defend my Queen. 

“Or, I’m sorry, you call her the Mother? Mother Nature or is it Naturaleza?” He says partly to himself, eyes on mine. I stop squirming, arrested by the eagerness of his gaze.

“I’ve been studying your people. They believe that Mother Nature controls the djinn, right? She is the one you bring offerings to?” He was talking about the Grinning. A day of worship for Mother Nature, the Queen of Life. To him she is a rebel, a false monarch. To my people, the Vixia, she is our eternal ruler. I do not blame him for his opinion. There is slumbering djinn within him, he is the enemy of Mother Nature, and he has been raised to be such. 

Mother Nature has been in hiding for thousands of years, her words ringing from the auroras on the night of the Grinning. A night banned by the Mitad but celebrated nevertheless. I was a child at the last Grinning, my parents offering me to Mother Nature rather than keep me within the mortal world. The Queen gave me her blood, a piece of herself so I might protect the flora and fauna of the land. This was before the Duchess kidnapped my family. Before my mother was forced to cut my tongue to keep me from speaking of what they had done. It was too late for Ben, she had been born of Mother Nature, a gift to my parents when they struggled for years to birth a child. 

She is no goddess and we do not blame her for leaving us to the Mitad. Those mortals who worship the Lesser Djinn. If Mother Nature could save us, she would. But she must protect herself first. Without her, there would be no more Vixia left to protect mortals from the domination of the djinn. 

I only nod to his words, unable to say further. Not that I would if I could speak. It was his people who have sought first to hunt the Vixia and then to preserve, only now in their homes and beds. Victor opened his mouth, to ask, to speak, what I don’t know, for in that moment the door swung open and three men stumbled inside, all in various states of undress. Their tunics were stained and bloodied, their hair disheveled, clumps of mud and skin, blood and bone sticking out from their locks. Their arms cradled one another as they fell to their knees. 

“Victor,” They gasped and he went to them, kneeling by their side.

“What happened?” He cursed hands prodding and checking. The veins around his fingers flexed before extending outward. Wrapping around their bodies. I forgot he could do this. Feel the emotions of others, the pain and the hurt. A Vixia can heal and soothe. A djinn offers a myriad of abilities. Far more powerful than those of the Vixia. 

“You’ll live. You will all live,” he says obviously relieved. Jolted back to reality with his words I came beside him, a hand on his shoulder. I should not touch him. I am but a slave, but I cannot help it. There is so much pain in his voice.  

The three look up to me with bared teeth, but I do not flinch. Victor understands my meaning because he steps back and points for me to go to the ankles of the one with the blood matting his red locks. His nose is upturned, face boyish and curled in a scowl.

“Get the witch away,” He spits and slinks further to the floor.

“Don’t you dare speak to her like that. I don’t care if you are dying, if you’ve just been stabbed by djinn, you don’t talk to her like that,” whatever warmth I would have felt in my chest dissipates when I see the pure hatred in the red head’s eyes. He truly won’t let me touch him. And just because I worship Mother Nature and not the cruel demons he dreams will one day take his soul. 

“Vixia filth,” This from the blonde haired one, whose tunic bares his chest, a jagged scar running from his left pectoral down below his waistline.

“Just grab the red head’s legs,” Victor says and I do, while he scoops under his armpits. When I touch his bare skin he flinches before his body relaxes with a sharp huff. 

“Just don’t curse me,” I can’t help it then. I dig my nails into his skin until I feel blood pooling in my hand. He screams and I drop his legs with a jolt, looking to Victor with big innocent eyes. 

“You deserve it,” he says and in a manner not all that nice, drops his friend's arms. The other two are silent as we move them onto lounges. I go to the fireplace and kindle a fire to life with nothing but my hands. They watch me with strange looks as I do so. The Mitad and Vixia are different only in the cost they pay for their abilities. The Mitad are chosen by the djinn and must surrender part of their soul, they must share with the djinn. The Vixia are born from Mother Nature and given to mortal parents to be raised as a protectorate of the land and the beings within. 

The Vixia were once the rulers, caring for the seas and the Mitad, the mortals and the fauna. However, the djinn grew sick of Mother Nature’s power and decided for a change. They joined with mortals by force, rather than will, and spurned them into taking power from the Vixia, and to their own puppets.

It is the reason that even though my body aches to love Victor, I never could. For it is not only him I would contend with, it would be my mortal enemy, a djinn. A djinn that can dominate him if the mood strikes. 

Victor sits beside his friends, quietly asking them questions that I should not hear. I am the enemy. I will always be the enemy. I raise the fire slightly before stepping around a lounge and walking to the door. When my hand is on the handle I look back. Victor was too kind to invite me. I do not know what happened to his friends and I wish them to be alright even as I wish them hurt. Their blood is normal. The djinn are fickle creatures who attack without cause. They simply do and the mortals and the Mitad have learned to content with it all. It is only the Vixia who do not relent. 

I wish myself in love with him, even as I know there is no place for that within this world. As I watch his head move, distracted, forgetting of me, I remember Ben’s tale. The one of the girl on the train who sat up from her seat, climbed to the roof of the carriage and walked along the top. She did not understand her need to be right there, the wind in her face, the panic in her heart. Why she wanted to feel afraid and dangerous. Right to the edge she walked, until she forgot her doubt and fears and fell down into a ravine. 

That is how I feel when I am by Victor. Wanting panic and fear yet knowing the second I allow myself comfort, allow myself the freedom of being unafraid, I will fall too far to return.