The Spirits of the Forest

Chapter 7

Harriot

I find her sitting on the same cold stairs, except that this time, the stone soldiers around them seem to guard the building from me. Still, I try to sit up straight under their judgmental eyes.

"Your name is Tamara," I say a little bit too enthusiastic. As the girl turns her dark gaze toward me, I swear that I can see how the soldiers close their eyes as if to give us privacy.

"Has my time already come, death?" Her lip shakes as she speaks. I look at my childhood friend's face and don't understand what wave hit with such an unexpected fear the shore of her features. But then I remember that, for the first time in my life, I'm not sure what I look like. Water is probably flowing from my wet and shattered clothes, that, instead of covering, reveal my body. Besides of the cloth around my left hand - cause of course I was too stubborn and angry to keep Sirius's bandage - the proofs of my self harm are as visible as the light. Quickly, I look at my reflection pictured in the glass of one of the building's windows. A drop of sweat falls on my cheek ; and it stops there. Cause my neck and ribs are translucid bones held together by irregular pieces of skin. My right eye is surrounded by dark veins pulsating uncontrollable. And my iris... it's white and empty. Not even the darkness of the pupil remained spared. I close my two different eyes, one a forest and the other a forest without trees, at the same time that a guardian curiously opens one stone eye to stare at my funny appearance.

"It's Harriot," I murmur, painfully opening my eyes. "We were friends." I try to find the right words to prove my statement, but I get stuck between letters because the memories - all these suddenly open doors of my brain - are still so new and at the same time so old for me. I clutch the necklace with the dead bird and wait for it to lead me. "Your mom was a good woman. But your father was... a witcher. That's why other rich children didn't like you. Because you inherited some of his magic. You can.... "

"... see the future of people if I touch them," Tamara finishes my sentence. This time, when she looks at me, her eyes are no longer magnified by fear. "It seemed to me that you looked familiar from the moment I saw you walking on this street with the bandaged hand. But you changed a lot, my friend."

The girl stands up from the stairs, and I implicitly follow her. "You changed, too," I say. "You disappeared after... your father's death. I tried to find you, I looked at the cemetery after you, too, but I couldn't even find his grave. Where were you hiding?"

Tamara turns her head to me. "You know what I always liked about you? Your innocence, your belief that every action is simple, without secrets or own interests." A remark that felt too much like a reproach to my mistakes with Sirius. But she continues to speak in such a friendly tone that I have to bury my doubts and regrets deep inside me. "What do you think a girl must do when her father dies? I had to get married, so my mother and I wouldn't lose our social status."

"But you can't be a wife! You're only 20!" I exclaim. Tamara laughs bitter at my reaction.

"Exactly. It's the perfect age for a man to look at you. But except for my beauty and age, I wasn't a good match. As you said, my powers weren't really appreciated among the good people. And about the same time when my father died, witchers began to fall in disgrace." A sigh leaves her soft lips. "My father was really lucky to die when he did and not to catch these days. These days, I truly live at my husband's mercy."

"And who is he?"

"Oh," the girl blushes. "He's Usterius."