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It moves. Kicks, twists, a half-leap that turns it around, its hooves finding purchase on the cool soil underfoot. Zakariya, the thrice-accursed fool, draws his sword and stumbles forward. His feet scuff at the looser earth; grass is kicked up behind as he tries to run.
The shadhavar does not stumble. It is grace incarnate as it breaks from its half-turn, straight into a gallop, twisting around the dense-packed oaks…
Then it is gone.
And a second later so is Zakariya. He regains his footing and follows. Lurching around bough and sapling. Swallowed by the dark of the woods.
He is not grace incarnate.
I stand alone in the flickering of the fire’s warmth. Where safety is. Where we should stay.
Running alone into the forest at night is the path of fools. A quick route to an early grave.
This is what happens when men are allowed to act without restraint – preferably the sort that chain them up and keep them silent. Women might actually get things done without everyone killing each other to prove who has the biggest sword.
Incidentally, the answer to that is “me”. I have the biggest sword. Men tend to start feeling quite inadequate when I use it.
I sigh.
Losing Zakariya to the wahsh, the wild and untamed world beyond, would not bother me. But it would deeply upset the Guardian. And so, once more, I do what I would not choose to do. Venture from safety to a threat I would have naught to do with. And all to save a fool from his own choices. Because it is expected of me by others.
There is a reason I have spent much of the past few hundred years alone.
But I do care for the Guardian. For the unnecessary kindness he showed me from the day I showed up at his door. And for the Druze who took me in when the wahsh, the wild, inside of me became too loud. When the threat of it becoming all of me became too strong. It is essential for us to remember our humanity sometimes, to reconnect. It is too easy, otherwise, to forget there is value in any life. In anything but ourselves.
I will not be consumed by the dark. I will not fear it.
And so I sigh. Pulling on my talent, I send out a dancing were-light that bobs and weaves round bough and branch, lighting up my path. I follow the tracks of a fool into the night’s embrace.
I am not a shadhavar in grace. Thankfully, neither am I Zakariya.
Chapter Two
Mount Lebanon, 3 May 1211
I do not flow through the forest gaps. Do not leap and pivot through the awning of leaves. The bracken fronds break under my feet. They do not spring back as at the shadhavar’s light touch.
I could not have tracked the creature. Not in this light. Not even with my magic. Luckily, I do not need to.
Zakariya has marked his passage well. Cracked branches hang from every tree like a man after the drink has taken his belly – bent double, heaving out his poor choices. Longer grasses are torn, strewn about left and right. As I continue, I smell the tang. A smell that takes me to the fetes in Al-Jadida, when sheep are given up in celebration, half-muttered side-words offering them as sacrifices to those gods we worshipped before.
That takes me back to those happy times. Among my people. Leading the celebrations. Slitting the lamb’s throat to the cheers of all.
And it takes me elsewhere to. To a room full of drunken Portuguese pirates. Acting for my people. Dancing. Seducing. Kissing lips. Before cutting throats, though none cheered me on.
I know the smell of blood.
So tracking my charge isn’t difficult.
The fronds may break as I pass, but they are like those raiders were in their final moments. No sounds of protest. No raising of alarms. The trees do not rake at me. Their slimmed and longer reaching twigs may be like claws, but I am the wind. I dance around them as they whistle. No shadhavar, perhaps. But I have grace enough. Sufficient that the forest and I might whirl around one another, and neither leaves a mark.
Deep shadows flitter. The moonlight breaks through the canopy enough for that. All it does is add depth, make the umbra undulate, though it’s still solid and impenetrable. Almost. There is a path to the heart of the dark. Walk it only if you are sure.
I am not. One day, I might walk that way. Out of the world men have built. Cementing their asinine braying into the very earth itself. Structures constructed from ego and power. Worthless as a whole.
But not as an individual. That is what I seek. Not the masses. Too often they disappoint. And their leaders? Almost always. Even when achievements are laudable, oftentimes their motivations are laughable. And those led are so often reduced by those above. By force. By choice. I’ve not seen much to convince me otherwise.
No. I’ll not be kept human by the whole of our species. Instead, I seek out singular value. Find me the exception, not the rule. The open hand offered out. And not for praise. Not in expectation of return. But because it is right.
