thunderstruck | book #2 | discontinued

prologue

***

"Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life!"

- Alfred Lord Tennyson, 'Ulysses'

* * *

There was no cry. Hilda had waited for almost half a minute, suffocated by the heavy silence that lingered mercilessly throughout the room. It was only her first child, but she was no fool. She knew that babies were supposed to cry after birth, so why wasn't hers?

"Alastair," she pleaded to her husband, who was cradling the child above her bed, uncaring that he his once pristine white shirt was now covered in his wife's blood. His blue eyes were dark and watery as he looked down at his newborn daughter. "Why is she not crying? What is wrong?"

"I..." He trailed off before he had barely begun his explanation.

"What is it?" she breathed, her heart pounding in both exhaustion from the pain she had just undergone and the fear she was enduring now. Sweat clung to her red hair and dripped down her forehead, her blackened eyes hooded from fatigue. "Please, Alastair!"

"She is fine. She is alive," he assured, though his tone was filled with disbelief. "Listen. She is sleeping, I think."

Hilda did as her husband had told her and listened, trying her best to control her ragged breaths in the process. A moment later, she gasped. Alastair was right; the child was gurgling softly in his arms, unfazed by her entrance into this world.

"Give her to me," she ordered softly, holding her arms out. "Let me hold my baby."

Alastair obeyed, perching on the edge of Hilda's bed and passing over his daughter with eyes still wide from shock. "She is beautiful," he murmured.

Hilda soon saw that he was telling the truth. Already, the child had short auburn curls matted with blood, and the corners of her ever so tiny mouth curved into a small smile. Still, Hilda felt uneasy. Wasn't she supposed to feel something? Love, perhaps, or some sort of maternal connection that meant she would protect this small creature with her life? All that she felt was an iciness that started at the crown of her head and travelled down her spine excruciatingly slowly. "But why hasn't she cried, Alastair?"

As though in response, the newborn's eyes fluttered open, and Hilda could do nothing but gasp at the sight. Alastair frowned, too, frozen beside his wife. Peering up at her among the pale green blankets were two eyes, black as night. They were not unfamiliar to Hilda. Her own eyes had been just as hollow only a few months ago, before she had decided to throw away the very key that had caused her addiction to dark magic. Now, her eyes held flecks of her natural emerald hue, and very slowly, her magic and herself was lightening again.

The same could not be said for this child.

There was something completely certain about the way that she looked up at her parents, her irises darker than black, if that was possible. It was not so much the colour of her eyes, but the way that they seemed to swallow light as though they were made of the same thing as Nil Lake, a place rumoured for its void portals and black waters. More than that, the child did not blink once as Hilda gazed at her and allowed her tears to fall freely.

"There is something wrong with her," she whispered through a sob. "Her eyes. They are completely black."

"Perhaps they will change in time," Alastair responded, tracing the pad of his thumb along the child's nose and lips. "They do not matter, Hilda. Look at our daughter. She is spellbinding, just like her mother."

Hilda allowed herself the grimace of a smile at this, and nodded, using her free hand to play with her daughter's tiny hands. "It is my fault, though, isn't it? The key—"

"None of that, please, Hilda. We will raise her to be good. The key no longer matters. She is all that matters now."

Hilda wished that she could agree with her husband. She wished that she had enough faith in herself to believe that she could raise this child to be good, but she simply did not. The child was tainted. She had been the reason that Hilda had given up her dark magic, and it had not been enough, for the darkness would always follow her. It was her own fault, too. She had poisoned her own baby and created a monster.

If that had not been clear before, it was when Alastair bent towards his daughter to kiss her forehead and instead cried out in pain. He clutched his face, standing up and staggering away from the child. When he took his hand away to point at her, she noticed that soot stained his lips as though a fire had been lit and charred his skin like wood. Beneath that were blisters.

"Alastair," Hilda gasped, looking from him to the baby.

"You were right," he shouted, his lip curling up in contempt. "There is something wrong with her, Hilda. We have created a monster, one that burns all it touches."

"No. We can fix her." She held her child protectively towards her chest, but she knew as well as he did that there was nothing either of them could do for this child. The damage had already been done.

"I wanted this child, Hilda. I promised to stand by you, but I cannot raise this—this thing. How can I look into its black eyes every night? How can I pretend that I love it, when it has burnt me like this? When it looks like Hecate, like a demon?"

Hilda shook her head, for she did not know the answers. She had dreamt of being a mother, and instead of a child she had gotten something Other. Something that she knew she could not love, for it was the very parts of her that she hated about herself. All of the bad that she had tried to pull away from was in front of her now, tempting her with those large, black holes for eyes.

"It is my fault," she said again, numbly. "What kind of mother am I, if I give up on the thing that I created? What will we do, Alastair? How can we just give up on our baby?"

Alastair hesitated, turning away from his wife to face the wall and running a hand through his tangled black hair. "I do not know," he muttered finally. "Perhaps there is somebody out there who might help her better than we can. And then, when she is cured, she can come back to us."

"But she is ours. Our responsibility. Our mistake." She hated calling her daughter a mistake, even as she said it. She wished, more than anything in the world, that she did not think of her that way, but she could not help it. Even as she examined her again in the hopes that her eyes had lightened, she saw how her veins were black beneath the translucent parts of her skin. She was filled with dark magic. Even her tiny fingers had begun to blister Hilda's skin where she clutched onto her. 

"We cannot help her, Hilda. You are too tempted by the darkness and I was never prepared for this. She deserves to be raised by somebody who can give her a chance to be good."

Hilda nodded and closed her eyes, placing her daughter down on the bed. She couldn't look at her, nor could she say goodbye. She had never been so ashamed or conflicted. She had never been both so heartbroken and so unable to mourn all at the same time. She had never felt so empty.

"Take her," she said, unable to feel the child in her arms a minute longer. "Please, just take her."

There was shuffling then as the weight was lifted from her arms, and she forced herself to open her eyes. Alastair was cradling the child again, but this time where he should have been happy, he was filled with despair.

"What about her name?"

Hilda did not think she had earned the right to name her child, but she had known for months what she had wanted to call her baby if she was to be a girl, and could not help herself now. "Erika. Her name is Erika."

He nodded, looked at his wife once more, and then was gone. When he returned, Erika was not with him. Still, the image of a child with empty, black eyes would be burned into Hilda's memory, and even five hundred and ninety years later, she did not—could not—forget them.