Before the Fall - Matthias' Story

*I was young when they first began-no older than 12. Most nights, I would awaken in a cold sweat, the vision of that terrible beast devouring the sky slowly fading from my mind. Fear of sleep drove me from my bed and into the cool night, and curiosity (stupidity, I call it) pushed me to stumble around the western wood.*

*It took three nights for ruin to find me. It came in the form of a bent-backed old woman, bathed in a pool of moonlight which trickled through the canopy. She was squatting over a ring of mushrooms, humming a-melodically, and picked at them, one by one.*

*I stood watching her for some time as she nitpicked over the toadstools, examining each in turn with her cataractic eyes. One eventually caught her fancy- she sniffed and hummed happily, and then placed in a stained leather pouch at her side. Her movements, languid yet precise, seemed to leave traces of herself in the moonlight.*

*Was it that I gasped, or maybe I had been holding my breath and finally let in a gulp of air? Either way, she turned to me, those grey-white orbs coming to rest on me.*

*Terror struck me dumb; as she turned, the rags around her torso came loose, revealing the horror beneath. Old scars marked her chest with ominous sinuous  shapes, each outlined in scarlet. Fresh blood leaked from a new cut along her side, a new marking to add to her countless others.*

*“And who are you, my little boy,” she crooned.*

*I ran back through the trees, pushing past branches and jumping over logs. As I scrambled through the brush, my leg became tangled in by a vine, and I fell, hitting my head on a outcrop of dead wood.*

*I opened my eyes to the bright glare of sunlight; it was morning, and my head hurt. I lay in a clearing near the edge of the woods, my body laying on a bed of birch leaves. Standing over me was a girl, not much older than I, with shoulder length hair the color of rich chocolate, and eyes like amber. She wore a loose fitting smock, the bottom resting just above her knees, her legs smooth, with only a single, strangely shaped cut on her left ankle.*

*She told me her name was Volva, and that her grandmother, Kona, had sent her to find me.*

*I nodded.*

*She told me that I should not wander the woods, as it was not safe for a village boy.*

*I nodded again. I could not stop staring at her.*

*She blushed, smiling, and told me that, should I wish to explore the woods, she would guide me. Every night, when the moon was highest, she would be in this clearing, collecting flowers for her grandmother’s tea.*

*Then she left me, leaving only the smell of lilac behind her.*

*My father beat me when I returned home: my nightly walks had always ended before dawn, and my late return had worried my mother to tears.*

*The beating was not strange. I was a clumsy child and not robust, growing tired easily at all kinds of physical labor, so my father saw fit to punish me harshly for my weakness often. Today’s tool was a long reed switch- I swear he had made it specially for me.*

*7 lashes he gave me. They hurt, and I could not stop tears from welling in my eyes.*

*I found myself in the clearing the next night, having been awoken by the image of a massive snake, it’s body coiling around the world, crushing the world as it devoured its own tail.*

*I met Volva there, sitting on the log of a dead oak. The massive tree had been uprooted in some distant past, it’s roots curved toward the earth in a desperate bid to find nourishment. Dead leaves lay scattered across the forest floor, the moonlight cutting through the canopy like a knife through leafy flesh.*

*She welcomed me with a radiant smile and offered me a handful of blood-red berries. They were by turns sickeningly sweet and unbearably tart and as I ate, I found the leaden exhaustion that comes from many sleepless nights flow out of me.*

*She led me through the forest then, and we laughed and ran and talked of our lives. Her mother had died at childbirth and she’d been raised by her Grandmother. They had always lived in the woods, farming in a small plot outside her Grandmother’s hut and foraging for food in the leaner months. She had never met a boy before; her Grandmother forbade her from going into the village.*

*Our talks were cut short by a growl from the deeper wood. A large wolf, it’s body scarred by mange, emerged menacingly from the treeline. Its red tongue lolled from its maw as it growled, low and guttural. A bloody froth foamed at the edges of its snout.*

*I was terrified, Volva, merely alert.*

*The beast stalked threateningly toward us, it’s pack instincts seemingly overwhelmed by a need to feed on us. Then, suddenly, it pounced.*

*And Volva spoke.*

*I could not understand the word, only that there was a profound will behind it. The wolf, already in midair, flew back and smashed against a tree, the bones in its spine broken by the impact. I, too, was not spared, thrown bodily away from Volva. Terrible pain wracked my body as I smashed into the ground nearby, the bones in my right arm cracking either from the impact or the terrible force of Volva’s word.*

*She was at my side immediately, one of the berries in her hand. She shoved it in my mouth and forced me to swallow it; I was too insensate from the pain to do it myself. The berry’s tart juices filled my mouth, and the pain immediately subsided.*

*“How… how did you do that?”*

*“Matthias, you are hurt. Delirious. I did nothing but frighten the wolf away.” The beast’s body lay broken not ten feet away, it’s black blood smeared on the tree bark.*

*“Volva… I don’t want to be powerless anymore,” I murmured, my eyes locked on hers. “Teach me how to do that.”*

*Uncertainty crossed her beautiful eyes.*

*I pleaded pathetically. “Please…”*

*“You would regret it,” she said, the uncertainty still in her eyes. “You would hate me for it. Do not ask me to teach you what you don’t want to know.”*

*I said no more. Laying my head onto the ground, I began to cry.*

*No bones were broken, but I was sore all over. I was slower and clumsier than usual at my work, and my father’s beating was extra brutal. He forbade my mother from feeding me that night.*

*She did not feed me.*

*More dreams; a ship of nails, crewed by the dead and captained by a laughing man with a burned face, sailed across the skies, it’s prow cutting through the firmament. The sky bled crimson rain onto the land below, drowning the fields in ichorous filth.*

*I walked through the dark to the clearing, knowing that Volva would not be there to meet me. I was wrong.*

*In the middle of the clearing, splayed across the fallen oak log, lay the corpse of a deer. Blood still flowed from it’s neck, dripping sickeningly onto the living grass and dead leaves.*

*Volva stood in the middle of the clearing, naked except for a necklace of bone and feathers. Her body was painted red with circles and runes and other, stranger patterns. Her arms were a mess of red gore. A bone knife, now more scarlet than ivory, rested loosely in her left hand. She looked at me intensely.*

*“I will teach you.”*