sparrow and lion

Chapter 25: the path backwards

Leo's dress was blue today. It was only right. Today was the day she would die, after all.

Leo smiled to herself. The irony was not lost on her. All those years ago, she had been running away because she wanted to live. Now she understood that living was not the most important thing. It was power. There was no point in being alive if you didn't have power.

Leo had always lusted for power. She needed it more than she had ever needed anything. She had been granted a gift when she had run into Wren in that alley. Money and fortune and connections were the greatest key to power. And she was only days away from obtaining it in truth now.

And yet she continued to climb.

Maybe it was because a part of her had learned to be happy in those years before the mountain. She had been warm and fed. She had awoken from every nightmare to Wren's fingers curled around her own. She protected him from frivolous frights in the day. He defended her against the demons in the dark. There had been something so magical about being loved.

The lady, of course, had been quite useless, though well meaning. Leo had always liked that. Kindness was a rare commodity. The lord had treated her with dislike, but she had appreciated even that. Because of him, she had Wren. She would have withstood anything to stay with Wren. It did not matter that his father's insults became self-fulfilling prophecies. It would not have mattered if the lord had made good on his threats of turning them out into the streets. She could have protected them both. She would have done anything for Wren to keep looking at her like she was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

But then he had met Eileen and Leo had ruined it all.

She had been strong and ferocious and clever all her life, but the streets had taught her to be something else, too. Covetous. She knew how to want. She was consumed by it. She had nothing and so she wanted everything. Until she had Wren. And all she wanted was to keep him.

But she had seen how Eileen would take him from her.

And she had dragged him to the mountain, so she could have him all her life. And it had killed her. That was where her greed had gotten her. Death was a gift to a weather witch.

"The path is set," the witch had told her. "First the witch, then the bandit, then the priest." The weather witch had smiled at her. "And then you shall come of age and the end will come at last."

She had argued against the weather witch. She had screamed and wailed and shouted and threatened. Even with that new badness raging through her veins, Leo had battled her. She had tried to pull the heart from her chest and give it back to Wren. She had begged. She had cried so hard that no tears came out. She had promised and cajoled. She had tried to kill herself and been stopped by six words.

"If you die, so shall he."

And so Leo had stopped fighting. She had told herself that all she needed was to get Wren back to the estate alive. She could protect him. She could defy the witch's curse and make sure he never walked that path. She could be good. She could make sure he was bad. She would do whatever it took to keep him from being stolen from her.

And then he had run away and come back with such a strange story of an old sage. It had been such an amusing tale. But he had almost forgotten one thing. Almost as though the memory had been all but erased from his mind. There had been a raccoon. And, though she had smiled as though nothing was wrong as Wren fell back to sleep, she could not wipe that image from her head: the face of a raccoon with its dark bandit mask.

She had known then that Wren now walked the witch's cursed path. That was the first time the pain in her head had brought her to her knees. As Wren slept peacefully after his strange adventure, Leo had tumbled from the bed, her head in her hands, and screamed so silently it shattered the world.

Leo shook herself from her memories. The was nearly at the top of the mountain. Her pack of dogs had, somehow, found their way back to her when she'd left Wren bleeding in the dirt. She thought of him with mild annoyance. This could all have been resolved if he had just stayed home. Perhaps it never would have made it this far if he had simply been normal. She had taken him to that festival so long ago, had led him right into a brothel, and he had run away. Was it really so difficult to go to bed with a prostitute? She had done it after he'd left that night, just to see, and it had been easy enough.

"In following the trail backwards, you have slain a thief and a wiseman," a voice said. "How clever of you."

Leo's rage consumed her again, but she stopped and waited. She counted her angry breaths, but did not waste the air to call out. The weather witch appeared as if from nothing. "I have missed you, my dear." A broad, cruel smile split the witch's face. So at odds with the façade she had presented to them all those years ago in those caves. The woman peered over her shoulder expectantly, as if Wren would appear behind Leo at any second. "Where is your sacrifice?" she asked. Leo just smirked.

By now, Wren would be halfway to the estate. She had gotten him to promise to go home before she'd struck him. And one can never break a promise to a witch.

Leo did not respond to the witch's question. "Hello, mother," she said instead.