The First Keeper

Mother died that winter. She had given us every last morsel from her own mouth, though there was little to give. Her body grew thin and brittle as frost, and one morning she did not wake. Father had not returned from the war. He had promised he would be home before the first snowfall, but as the snow buried our town in white, we knew the battles with the Shadow Beings still raged far away.

Tristan and I stayed, waiting for him, even as the other villagers fled toward warmer and safer places.

I rationed what little remained, but I was a child who had never been taught arithmetic and had miscalculated. Soon, I was cutting my own portions to feed Tristan. The houses around us stood hollow and bare, but sometimes I found a forgotten tin or jar—small mercies that bought us a few extra days. But winter was long.

Each day, the cold deepened, and Tristan faded.

By midwinter, he was too weak to rise from bed, his body a bundle of bones beneath every blanket I could pile on him. He no longer laughed. His eyes looked past me, as if he were already slipping away. At night, I watched his chest strain for breath, fearing the silence that would take him as it had Mother. I started sharing the bed with him; hunger might take him, but not the cold.

On the morning that I made plain rice porridge, it was all we had left. I felt him slipping past me to where I could not follow, and I knew he didn't have long. I sat by his bed and fed it to him, made sure he ate every spoonful, even my own portion. He swallowed with difficulty, coughing in between mouthfuls, his ribs rattling with each breath. He looked just like Mother had right before she went to sleep and never woke again. And I knew then, I would do anything to keep him from being taken from me, too.

I remembered the townsfolk had whispered of a Witch in the eastern woods. We were forbidden to play there, warned she would snatch us up and eat us, though it had never happened. Most believed it was only a story to frighten children and keep them from interfering with hunters. Witches had been hunted to extinction after the first Shadowlands War; there could be no chance one still lingered. But for Tristan, I had to look for her.

The woods were a tangle of black ribs against a bruised sky, the snow hard as old bone beneath my boots. I followed the path the hunters once took, then the path no one took. Here, the trees didn’t grow upward but bent and twisted, as if they wanted to pull their roots free and run away. Their branches reached out like desperate hands, seeking company.

The witch’s house was smaller than the stories said, nestled in the middle of those warped trees. Stone walls smothered in moss and vine, though the forest around was barren. A door like a hewn mouth. A single round window that stared without blinking. Smoke writhed from a crooked pipe, but no light warmed the glass.

I stood at the threshold, heart hammering against my ribs. Inside was dark, as if light could not pierce it. Tristan’s smile flashed in my mind, and I heard his laugh in the trees. I should have been afraid. I should have turned back and accepted our fates. But I was a child who did not want to be alone, so I stepped inside.

The house was colder than the winter outside. I felt eyes watching me from every corner. A chill blew through the room, brushing my cheek like fingers. The room was bare except for one high-backed chair near a fireplace, which held no fire, though smoke had risen from the chimney outside.

The door slammed behind me. I rushed to it, pulled on the knob, and banged on the splintered wood. It would not open.

“Leaving already, child?” a voice croaked.

I turned and found myself in a room both the same and not the same. Bookshelves crowded with leather tomes and jars of herbs lined the walls. In the middle of the room was a long table strewn with loose sheets and inkwells. Candles burned in candelabras in every alcove, pushing the shadows into the deepest corners. A fire glowed in the hearth, and over it a black crock bubbled with something that smelled delicious.

My stomach groaned.

Sitting in the tall chair before the flames was a woman. Beautiful, but frightening so. Her skin was pale, translucent, like Mother’s when she awoke no more. Her hair was a sheet of blood-red flowing to her thighs. Her eyes were molten gold, flickering like the firelight. Nails long and sharp as needles. She wore a black dress that pooled around her feet like spilled ink.

My voice snagged in my throat, but I forced it out—for Tristan. The words tumbled, tripping over each other. The only thing that came clear was: “My brother needs to eat. I need to feed him.”

“Feed him?” She strummed her nails along the chair’s arm. “Nothing grows in winter, child. There is only death.”

“I’ll feed him anything,” I pleaded, glancing again at the crock. She had food, and it smelled delicious—she must be able to help. “I can give him whatever you used for that.” I pointed with trembling hands.

She rose, her head nearly touching the ceiling beams as she loomed over me. The train of her dress flowed beneath her like smoke. She bent toward me, her sharp finger tilting my chin as she stared into my eyes.

“You are hungry, too.” Her voice was soft, melodic. I couldn’t stop myself from nodding.

Before I knew it, I was seated at the long table, a bowl of stew before me, the witch hovering close. My mouth watered.

“Eat it,” she crooned in my ear.

“It is my brother who needs to eat,” I whispered, though my insides gnawed at themselves.

She inhaled sharply and smiled.

“So sweet, so innocent, so pure,” she whispered, breath hot on my skin. Her eyes glowed—not from the fire, but from within. “Eat, and you shall have what you came for.”

The stew was delicious. It warmed me as it slid down my throat, and I devoured it greedily until the bowl was clean.

When I was done, the witch held my face in her cold hands and stared into my eyes.

“I give you eyes that reveal what hides. Hands that catch what flees. A voice to soothe the broken. When you bring down death, he will eat, he will drink, he will be fed.” Her lips curled into a smirk. “Accept it, and your brother will live. Refuse, and you will lose him.”

Tristan’s frail form flashed in my mind. I had nothing to give her in return, but before I could say so, her sharp finger pressed against my lips.

“Your light is what I will collect, if you accept.”

Her words made little sense, but I wanted to believe she could help me.

“Do you promise I’ll be able to keep him from going hungry?” I asked, needing reassurance.

Her fingers wove through my hair, just as Mother’s had when I couldn't sleep. My eyes fluttered closed.

“I promise,” she whispered in my ear.

“I accept it.”

She leaned in closer, her lips parting as she exhaled. It was sweet, filling my lungs, dizzying my head. Her hands, cold as ice, covered my eyes, and when she swept her fingers across them, I was outside again, among the gnarled trees. The house was gone.

The cold bit at my lashes as I stumbled from the woods. My breath burned my throat. The path glittered with frost and old tracks. I thought of Tristan’s hands, the purple crescents beneath his eyes. I thought of Mother’s slack mouth on the pillow, Father’s empty chair at the table. Of rationing, of jars like secrets, of the hollow sound the house made each morning when I woke to hunger.

At the edge of the trees, I saw them: rabbits nosing through a patch where the snow had thinned. Their bodies were white as the drift itself, but I saw them clearly. We had not tasted meat in weeks. But I had neither a snare nor a bow.

“Please, stay,” I whispered. My voice sounded strange in my ears, and I touched my throat to be sure it had come from me. “Don’t move.” The words rose warm and certain.

The others bounded away, white feet flickering over the snow. All but one. I spoke again. It was all soft nonsense, the way I soothed Tristan after nightmares: hush now, you’re all right, it will be quick, I won’t let you suffer.

Its red eyes held no reflection of me, only the branches above. But I felt it settle, as though a taut string inside it had slackened.

I scooped it up and felt its heart battering in my palms.

By the time I reached the house, the sun had gone. I shut the door against the wind and set the rabbit on the table. It lay breathing fast, but did not try to flee.

Tristan coughed from the back room, a harsh, rattling sound. The bed creaked.

“Are you going to kill it?” he asked, stepping into the doorway. He had not stood upright in a week, yet now he leaned against the frame. His skin was the color of milk left too long in a pail. His eyes, though, were bright. Not fever-bright. Something else glowed within them.

“I don’t know how,” I admitted.

“You hold it by the ears. It will kick. Don’t be afraid. Use a stick. A quick blow. Or cut the throat. Kinder, they say.”

“Who says?” I asked.

He smiled, and I did not know that smile. “People who know hungry things.”

The voice was his. The words were not. Something watched me from behind his eyes, older than the stars.

My hands shook as I gripped it by the ears. Its feet pressed weakly at my palm, not to scratch, but to plead. “Don’t struggle,” I whispered again in that strange voice, and it went limp in my grasp.

I used the knife.

The blood came in a hot rush, spraying my face faster than I could turn away. It was warm on my cheeks, mingling with tears. I heard its last breath escape through the wound.

Tristan stood very still, eyes wide as he watched. His breath slowed, as though he were the one bleeding out. Then he laughed. A deep belly laugh that bounced off the stone walls and sent a shiver through me.

“Good,” he said softly. For a heartbeat, his face was not his own, but that of a stranger—pleased, satiated, terrible. “Very good.”

I skinned it clumsily, remembering how Mother once did, one winter when she traded mending for a brace of hare. I set the meat to stew with a stub of carrot and a handful of dried onions. The smell filled the house like a memory I had half forgotten.

Tristan did not want the stew. He sat and breathed in its scent, eyes half closed.

That night, he slept without coughing.

In the morning, there was life in his cheeks.

I went into the woods every day. Tracks revealed themselves to me without searching. Creatures startled, then softened, when I spoke. I learned to wield the knife quickly. We ate, and we lived, and I believed the worst had passed.

Winter broke, and Father did not return. Soldiers came, but he was not among them. A captain brought a letter sealed in wax and a medallion heavy as a small heart. I couldn’t read, but I understood.

They took us with the others to the capital. We were given a stipend for Father’s service, a room with a window, and we weren’t alone or cold anymore. For ten winters, we were even happy.

But it was hard to hunt in the capital. I purchased live chickens or rabbits from the market; my hands no longer trembled as I killed them swiftly, but it wasn’t enough for Tristan.

I would often find him in the places where light was snuffed by shadow: alleys where men argued with knives, the river stairs where drunks slipped, or the scaffold raised in the square for a thief who had stolen bread. He sometimes asked me to soothe the lost men, but the words never made it to my quivering lips.

He began studying broadsheets like scripture, pointing at small paragraphs seeking a missing person or detailing murders: It was the landlord, or Look at the butcher’s hands. He was right often enough to frighten me.

“Why do you like that stuff so much?” I asked once.

He looked up, the boy I’d grown beside was there—the softness, the rueful tilt of his mouth. “Because it’s savory and always satisfying. That moment when something ends. Can’t you taste it?”

“No,” I lied, but I had, and it scared me how delicious it was.

Tristan ate less and laughed more when the streets ran red, and shrieks filled the night sky. But when the city grew peaceful, he thinned again. His eyes hollowed, his cheeks sunken, and he was restless, irritable, and not himself.

One winter, when the city was calmest of all, Tristan unraveled completely. I found him shaking on the floor. His eyes were bloodshot, lips torn, neck bleeding from where he had scratched. His palm left a damp print on the boards as he fell apart.

“There’s something wrong in me,” he whispered.

Nothing I fed him was enough. I was losing him.

I took him to the forbidden woods. The trees tangled around us, branches clawing my clothes and hair. The deeper we went, the heavier the air felt. We were being watched. I felt eyes on us, patient, tracking every step. I thought I saw a flicker of red between the trunks, a shadow slipping out of sight. I tightened my grip on Tristan, my heart hammering.

The house never appeared.

I was lost.

Then I heard a branch snap, and the forest held its breath. It wasn’t the witch but a Hunter. His axe hung heavy at his side, the blade slick with blood, though he carried no game. He reeked of sour beer and fear.

I shoved Tristan behind me and spread my arms. If I had been alone, I would have run. But Tristan could not.

“Leave us—” I began.

At the sound of my voice, his face twisted into a sinister expression. He raised his axe and charged.

I dodged, barely, as the blade split the earth where I’d stood. He wrenched it free and turned his eyes on Tristan.

"Witch-spawn!" The hunter yelled as he poised for another attack.

“Stop!” My voice rang out, shaking the trees. The hunter froze, arms locked above his head. “Drop the axe.” His grip slackened. The weapon clattered to the snow. “Don’t move.”

I ran to Tristan on unsteady legs. He had slumped to the ground, sweat beading his brow, his skin clammy. His face contorted in pain. His eyes had gone black, veins spidering from them. His lips shaped a soundless plea: help.

He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the hunter. His voice was soft, only for me: “Feed me, sister.”

The words clutched my heart. His hand dropped, and he convulsed, writhing in the freezing snow. My tears fell hot, I was frozen in place as I watched Tristan twist in pain.

I would do anything to keep him from being taken from me.

I seized the axe.

“Kneel.”

The hunter dropped to his knees. His body trembled, pleading.

"Don't struggle." His eyes held no reflection of me, only the branches above.

I swung fast, strong, sure. Blood sprayed warm across my face, just as it had that first time, many winters ago. But this death was slow.

“You have to take the head off completely, or he’ll suffer.” Tristan was sitting upright now, the black veins gone, his eyes calm. But it wasn’t him looking through them.

I swung again and again. Each strike a wet shudder, until the air was heavy with iron and both of us were drenched.

Behind me, Tristan stilled and breathed slowly and steadily.

“Good. Very good.”

I smelled it, again: savory, delicious, familiar. The witch’s stew. I inhaled it deeply, and it filled me, and when I exhaled, it carried something away.

I turned to Tristan and saw life had returned to his face. He smiled at me, that boyish grin I could not live without.

I smiled back. And I laughed, that deep belly laugh. He would never go hungry again.