Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  The Short Story

  Books by Bryn

  A Better Fate

  D. N. Bryn

  For every girl who feels trapped,

  waiting for her happily ever after.

  When I was alive, I etched my name into my forearm. Only half remains now—three ragged black letters. Their ink brands my rotting brown flesh, tracing my forgotten past between the tears in the withered skin: H A L. The rest once scrawled further down the underside of my arm. Now, a long gash in the blackening muscle cuts through it instead. Now, I am just Hal.

  Hal the Undead.

  A stormy breeze groans through the forest. It tugs at the final strands of my tight black curls and gusts around my few remaining pieces of dark leather armor. Its caress is the only touch I can recall, though that’s hardly a sign of anything when my decrepit memory goes back barely a day. But no matter the decay plaguing my brain, I will always know the purpose of the garish green gem in the center of my chest. An Avenger’s Enchantment—proof that vengeance was more important to me than the afterlife. Losing sight of that goal would mean losing the last piece I remember of myself.

  Another gust of wind hits me square in the face. It brings a song along with it: a woman’s voice, lifted in a chaos of melodies, as high and light as the whisper of the leaves and as dark as the shadow of the thick canopy. Its familiarity prickles my ears, whether due to the singer or the tune, I don’t know. I shift my grip on my hulking sword. It’s better suited for living muscles, and I have to fight to keep the nick in its blade from catching on foliage as I push back the underbrush, revealing a small meadow.

  In its center, a singing dryad crouches at the base of a tree so large it can only be her Heart Tree. She tucks a young sapling into a cleft at its massive base. As she plants it in the ground, its flailing branches calm despite the wind that churns above us. A flash of lightning rips through the dark sky in a violent green that couldn’t be more different from the soft grassy tinge of the dryad’s skin. She looks up. Her curved eyes narrow. The host of purple flowers in her bark attire quiver.

  I watch her, hoping for a sign: did I know her once, or not?

  The storm continues to build. Lightning blazes again, this time diving toward the meadow. It hits the grass just behind the dryad, and a flame springs to life. The sight of it sparks a little fear and a lot of instinct.

  With as much fury as my weakening legs can manage, I rush into the meadow, my jaw tight and my sword aloft. The dryad’s flowers snap closed, and her song turns to a scream. She raises her hands over her face. I bring the sword down, slapping its blunt side against the flames near her feet.

  Smack, smack, smack.

  A small burnt patch remains, a blackened scar like the marks of decay on my own skin. The dryad shudders, both palms now pressed to her chest, but her stance softens as her purple eyes dance between my sword and the scorched earth. A vibrant laugh leaves her, and her eyes twinkle, as though she’s been meaning to give me this smile all her life.

  “Are you my heroine?” she coos.

  I feel like a stumbling fool, disgracing her fiercely bright grin with my buffoonery. “It was only—only a small fire.” I stop my explanation before I can cut my decrepit tongue on my proverbial teeth. “I’m Hal,” I say, hesitant, as though we are just meeting. As though I won’t introduce myself anew tomorrow if we run into each other again.

  “Cedara,” she replies. “A pleasure.”

  We must not have known each other after all. That’s for the best. She isn’t yet suffering from my forgetfulness.

  Even amidst the encroaching gale, Cedara shines. The flowers in her outfit rebloom, starting with the half dozen that trail down her elegant neck and following the scoop of her tree-like form, until only those woven into her silky braid remain as buds. She nudges them tenderly. Beneath her touch, they too relax.

  “If a gift is given in the woods,” she says, “it must be reciprocated. You’ve put out a flame in my meadow. What might I do for you in return?”

  What might I do for you? If my heart still beat, it would pound like a war drum, and if my blood still flowed, it would make my cheeks burn. Maybe death has its benefits? I clear my throat and prop the blunt of my sword against my shoulder, even though the muscles the pose shows off are a mess of fabric-wrapped decay. I take it back—death is the worst. “I accept only gratitude.”

  “Then my gratitude you’ll have.”

  But she continues to watch me, that twinkle in her eyes again. They gleam like the shine on my Avenger’s Enchantment.

  My arms sag. “There’s actually one thing, if you have the time.”

  “I have all the time in the world for you.”

  It sounds so wrong, yet so right, too intimate, yet not personal enough. “Well, um, this undead brain, you see, doesn’t hold onto things. I should be looking for the person who killed me, but I’ve forgotten them… and most everything else. By the state of my body, it must have been a while ago, maybe far outside the domain of your forest, so this might be a fool’s errand. But if you could help me backtrack as far as the edge of your wood, that would at least be a start…” It sounds like an overwhelming ask the moment I utter it, the whole thing taking up too many words. “Right before my memories give out, I recall a brook with a small rocky waterfall, if that helps? You could just, like, point me in the right direction?”

  “Perhaps…” Cedara glances at the blistering grey sky as another flash of lightning rattles through the clouds. “I take back what I said about the time.” She smirks, a teasing little grin. “I need one moment before I’m all yours.”

  Turning away from me, she hums a deeper tune than before, a song more than sound. It feels like the soft curls of moss, smells like the leaf floor, vibrates like sap moving through trees. The canopy around the little meadow grows before my eyes. The Heart Tree and the rest of the forest reach for each other. They clasp like a pair of lovers, becoming one great shelter from the storm.

  Cedara beams, and her lips quirk. “That will shield the poor grass.” She offers me her elbow. “Now, shall we?”

  I stare at her arm, at her smooth copper skin with its green shine. The way her willowy limbs flow even in her stillness, she could be made of knobby sticks and still look graceful. I yearn not just to accept her arm, but to sweep her closer, fit my palm into the gentle slope of her back and lean over her to smell her hair.

  What in the damn skies is wrong with me? Did I leave behind a lover when I died, someone my body is ignorantly trying to fill the place of, or was I always so foolish with longing, falling hard and fast for the first woman to flirt my way? I shake the ridiculous desires to the back of my mind, half hoping they’ll deteriorate with my memories. But only half. I take Cedara’s arm in mine.

  I should be her stability—me, the warrior, the hero, the avenger. But Cedara guides my weakened body like a happy breeze, tugging and nudging and directing ever so gently as we move through the trees, around berry bushes heavy with fruit and over rocks with glittering veins. Even the rolling thunder barely fazes her.

  “You humans call this the weather of fate,” She tips her chin down, and her heavy brows tug up flirtatiously. The wind ruffles her flowers. “Though perhaps that’s only because it usually kills them if they don’t find shelter.”

  It also pulls the end of the fabric binding my upper arm free. I tug the makeshift bandage back in before it can unravel entirely. “You believe that—the fate stuff?”

  “I want to. I want to believe there’s more than the repetitive cycles of our lives, that the changing winds might whip us down a fresh course. And perhaps they will. This weather already led you to me, after all.”

  “My legs did that first, you know.” I stop to wiggle my big toe through the hole at the tip of my boot. Its nail falls off. I cringe. “Why do we need fates and winds to choose a way for us? If you want to walk a different path, maybe just do it?”

  Cedara’s smile remains, but the light within her seems to cloud over. Her dainty shoulders bounce. “It takes more than legs to chart your own way in life,” she says, simply.

  She changes the subject then, drifting between giddy explanations of plant relationships and stories of her mischievous unicorn herd. There’s so little I can say in return. So little I remember, beside the way a sword ought to be swung and the best cleaning methods for different kinds of armor. And what does a dryad care about those things?

  The raging wind overwhelms the stream's soft trickle until we’re already upon it. It flows through tumbling grey rocks, mist coiling in their crevasses while droplets sit like diamonds on the ferns growing along the banks. It matches with my memory, a perfect replica but for the wind.

  “I’d climbed up these rocks before stumbling into your clearing.” But where had I come from? Where did I think I was going? I search back through those flashes. A new feeling hits me: the sensation of running my hand over smooth, cold bricks. “I’d come from a human-made building, I think.”

  “There are the ruins of a home if we keep walking for a while longer. It’s the only human-made structure in the whole expanse of my forest.”

  “People don’t come out here much, do they?”

  “The outskirts of the nearest civilizations only reached me around the time of that farm.” Cedara’s gaze drops. “But they… they don’t come here anymore.”

  “That must be lonesome. I’m sorry.” My apology harbors self-pity like a deep bay. I may not have been alone in life, but whoe ver cared for me in my past has vanished like the breath in my lungs. The sorrow on Cedara’s face makes me crave a fresh start here, with her—a replacement for whatever love I might have lost in my forgotten past. Or maybe I’m simply that easy to sweep off my feet. Either way, that path is closed to me, no matter where the wind blows. I have a murderer to kill. “I guess I’ll head to the house, then.”

  As I step away from the water, my leg gives out. I slip, landing lopsided on a rock. My sword clatters beside me. The skinny bone in my lower leg pokes out through the dead flesh, let loose by the now-drooping wraps that normally hold it in place.

  Cedara squeaks. I cringe and gather words of consolation, but before I can speak them, she drops to her knees at my side. Her fingers work free the bandage. With a series of precise nudges, she rights the bone. I feel only pressure at the change, but the softness of her skin comes through with each firm wrap of the fabric back into place. She knots it perfectly.

  Questions spring to mind: you aren’t put off by my rotting flesh, and how do you know to do that so well? But what comes out is something like, “I, um, think that’s another gift. I should give in return, shouldn’t I?”

  Cedara smiles, innocent as a lamb and sly as a fox all at once. “You were right; I was lonely. So, give me the gift of your company a little longer.”

  A little longer. A little more time to walk at her side. “Yeah… sure.”

  I can't help the quirk of my lips. My cheeks may not redden anymore, but the need to fidget overwhelms me. I shuffle a hand through the remains of my curls and tug at the leather covering my chest.

  As my fingers glide beneath the armor, they catch on a peculiar line of ridges. Cedara heads into the trees, but I pause to twist the lip of the leather inside out. Two sloppy words carve through the rough hide, repeating over and over and over: Kill her, kill her, kill her.

  Kill who? My eyes go to Cedara, to the only her in my current stream of memories, but my gaze catches on the sway of her hips, the graceful slope of her back, and those long fingers that so tenderly bandaged my leg. She’s far from the only woman on this continent, and the command in my armor looks like it was carved months ago, its scraggly edges worn down. But it does tell me the gender of the person I’m to avenge myself against. That helps, if only a little.

  I return the armor to its place, letting the words rest against my heart again, crowning my Avenger’s Enchantment. My death will not be without retribution. Whoever this her is, I will find her. And I will kill her, even if I have to rediscover the words a hundred more times before I finally manage it.

  I pick up my sword and follow Cedara, propelled by a fresh bout of determination. She immediately strikes up the conversation again. All that I felt Cedara wouldn't want to hear, she now coaxes out of me; she knows just what to ask. The terms for different pieces of armor and a variety of swords roll off her tongue with ease as she fires questions about fighting methods and the origins of certain cleaning oils.

  As we talk, the sky darkens further. I can barely see the writhing mass of black clouds through the canopy, but the light that reaches the forest floor lessens even further, as though night falls in the middle of the day. The flashes of green lightning, now littered with blue and orange, seem all the more bright for it, the thunder all the more deafening.

  “The storm won’t hurt you, will it?”

  Cedara laughs, her voice stronger than even a hurricane. “The magic of my forest is the cousin to this storm’s. It can’t harm anything beneath my canopy.” She hums into a tangle of blackberry shrubs, and they shift for her, pulling into an archway.

  The remnants of an old brick house sit beyond, sheltered by the branches of Cedara’s magical forest. No ceiling remains, but a burial shroud of vines cloak its half-fallen walls, their white flowers like a funeral bouquet tossed to the wind. The pair of wooden doors on the cellar entrance are about as rotten as my legs.

  I move with soft steps, as though this place might turn me properly dead if I exist in it too solidly. “Where did this come from?” I whisper.

  “I helped the family build it, nearly a century ago, when the forest was just old enough to support a consciousness. I was still very young.” She twists her fingers, and the white flowers wind themselves into a bunch, which she plucks and places with care into the home’s empty entrance.

  The grief in her motions is so heavy that I fear the answer, but I have to know. “What happened to them?”

  “They tried to cut me down.”

  I see her age in that moment, all the pain that has built into her over the years, scars upon scars. I see, too, the three rugged rocks piled in an orderly row to the side of the house, faces worn smooth. Graves. I touch my fingers to my forehead in a mourning sign, even if I don’t fault Cedara for her decision. She gave them a home yet they were willing to murder her.

  A little of her former joy returns as she approaches the cellar, motioning for me to follow. My feet slide on the slippery brick steps and my eyes take a while to adjust to the dimness. The ghastly glow of my Avenger’s Enchantment glints off shelves of tiny jars.

  They sit in ordered rows, each section with a different colored substance filling its containers. Cedara reaches into a gap where a row has been picked down to a single jar and pulls out the final one. She wiggles off its lid and plops a metal spoon into it.

  Waggling her brows, she offers it to me. “Try this. You’re going to love it.”

  I prop my sword against the cellar wall and gingerly take the container. My nose wrinkles as I stir its thick purple goop around. Cedara snorts and steals the spoon. She presses it to my lips. I part them.

  The bright, tangy flavor of plum fills my mouth, lighting up taste buds I’d forgotten I still had. I close my eyes, letting it consume me. It’s the first thing I can recall eating. A memory prickles though, just beyond my reach, of this same flavor in a past life. “I think this used to be my favorite.”

  Cedara grins with pride and something more, something knowing behind her smile.

  I offer her a spoonful. “Share it with me?”

  “I’ve nothing to taste it with.” She laughs. “I’m made to eat only the light. The sound of your voice is sun enough for me.”

  I duck my head. “You are sweeter than these preserves,” I mutter, wishing my tone would mimic hers, so confident in her flirtations. So confident in who she is. My only sense of self is my sword and the chest of the villain I’ll someday gouge it through.

  To hide my embarrassment, I shovel in another mouthful of jam, then a third and a fourth, until my spoon clanks against the bottom of the jar. I wipe my lips and contemplate licking what comes away off my skin, but my fingers may be the next thing I eat if I try. “Can I have another? Though by the looks of the rows, I’ll have to try a new flavor...”

  Cedara taps her fingertips to my bare stomach. “I wouldn’t for a few days, if I were you. Your enchantment may keep parts of you running but some of these organs will be unhappy later.”

  She takes the empty jar from me, placing it in a pile with a dozen of the same. A dozen eaten preserves. A dozen days where someone created happy memories, perhaps ones that defined them in their future. Memories like the ones I no longer have. Like the ones I’ll never have again.

  What will happen days after my vengeance, when I can’t even remember the way it feels? Will I fade into the earth then, or will I rise to walk the world once more, determined to avenge myself against a villain I don’t know has already died? There’s another question that comes with those, one I can’t bear to think on long: What if my fears have already happened?

  Am I an avenger or a vagabond?

  Who am I at all?

  Cedara’s gentle fingers trace up and down my arm. “What is it, Hal?”

  “It’s just that this is a nice, and I…” The words catch in my dusty throat, sticking there so hard I wonder if my vocal cords have finally torn. But Cedara waits for me, her skin lingering on mine, her gaze soft. I pick up my sword, hoping to feel stronger with its power beneath my fingertips, but its heavy form only proves how useless my degrading muscles are. “You’ve been flirtatious with me, but I’m afraid it’s all for nothing. By the time this storm passes, I might not remember this conversation, might not even remember you.” I grip the hilt of my sword tighter. “All I have—all I am—is my vengeance. No matter what I want right now, no matter how much I enjoy this moment, that’s the only thing I’ll recall tomorrow.”

 

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