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Do not walk the cornfields at night.
It’s the first rule, the one told by town elders to children, woven into bedtime stories. It’s what parents plead to those young and restless, full of that wild, youthful energy and far too much confidence.
No matter how much the things within the corn call to you, no matter how safe and inviting the tall golden stalks may seem, as soon as the sun touches the horizon you do not step foot past that barrier, from the relative safety of the hard-packed dirt road into the almost invisible pathways that lead you deeper, deeper, deeper.
Do not walk the cornfields at night, the townspeople warn, because you never know what might be waiting.
-
Imogen comes to town abreast of a storm, but if it’s one of nature or in her own head doesn’t really matter.
She’s staggering with exhaustion, dizzy with heat, and her head pounds in time with her heart. Her water ran out a few miles back, and her mouth's as dry as the ground beneath her boots. She thinks leaving home may have been a mistake. She’s unsure if she can bear turning back.
Her father used to tell her she had a wanderer's soul. She used to laugh when he told her, used to disagree even as she felt that call to the road. Where would she go? She was born in Gelvaan, as was her father, as were her grandparents before him. For a long time, she saw her life mapped out, a life of working in Master Faramore’s shops, of living in her same small house, of eventually being buried in the cemetery, her gravestone one of many that carries the Temult name.
That was before, though. Before the town got too loud, before people started looking at her with distrust and whispering behind her back.
Before the bags beneath her father’s eyes became dark and deep, and she knew they were caused by her.
But her father’s words are true.
She is a wanderer, has felt that tug behind her ribcage, leading her onwards, onwards . Leading her here, to these dirt roads and deep, slow rivers and seemingly endless fields of corn. She comes here, and that tug in her chest relaxes for the first time in her memory.
She comes here, sunburnt and roadsore, and feels as if she’s on the edge of something.
-
The town is small, and the townspeople watch her with untrusting eyes, and their thoughts are tinged with the sharp edges of suspicion. Imogen is not surprised. She comes from a town like this, where strangers are few and far in between, and their intentions are questioned before their mouth even opens.
Still, though, it sends prickles down her spine and tendrils into her thoughts, but she walks with her shoulders set and her head tall, and eventually, the locals return to their own business.
Only one speaks to her. A tiny slip of a thing, a woman who looks barely Imogen’s own age, despite the silver wedding band glinting on her finger. She introduces herself as Nelly, and takes pity on Imogen, bedraggled and dirty, and she offers Imogen a bed, a meal, and a warning.
“Do not wander the cornfields at night,” Nelly says, in a voice as delicate and crystalline as shattering glass. “For things lurk in the shadows.”
“What sorts of things?” Imogen peers out the window of Nelly’s house, searching for hints of movement in the tall, golden stalks. A cool night wind rustles them gently, and she sees no danger in the plants.
“Unnatural things, unholy things,” Nelly says with a shudder. “Things that are best kept in the shadows where they belong.”
It is not the answer Imogen desires, and curiosity stirs in her chest. But Nelly seems to sense this, and she scolds Imogen, as if she was still a tiny child thinking of causing trouble.
“It is not good to wonder, or wander. The road keeps us safe, and the fields of sweet grass keep us fed, and we have no need to discover what lies beyond the barrier between road and corn.”
And for now, Imogen listens.
For now.
-
She meets her for the first time at sunset.
Imogen has been sent on an errand by Nelly, asked to gather ingredients for dinner. She does this easily; well used to the way small towns trade and barter. A half dozen eggs for a loaf of bread, a jar of dilly beans for a cut of stew meat, wrapped in brown paper. Imogen has her parcels, tucked carefully into a basket, and she’s on her way back to Nelly’s house when she sees the woman.
She waits just off the road, the corn dappling her hair with warm sunlight. She is beautiful in the way a lightning strike is beautiful, sharp and deadly and electric, drawing all eyes. She’s tall and thin as a rail and pale as a ghost, and she smiles in a way that suggests she has too many teeth.
Imogen is mesmerized. Not by the way she looks, exactly, but by her eyes, dark as midnight, black as pitch.
“You are new to the road,” the stranger says, and Imogen stops, toes at the edge, where the hard-packed road falls away to the rich, dark earth of the cornfields, Nelly’s warning not to cross the barrier echoing in her head.
“I am,” Imogen admits, a little ashamed this stranger saw her newness so easily. “I arrived two nights ago.”
And it’s habit, more than anything, that makes her shift her basket to one arm and offer a hand to shake. “And tell me, what is your name?”
The woman reaches out her own hand, fingers long, nails painted black, and shakes Imogen’s gloved hand. “I suppose you may call me Laudna.”
And it’s hard at this proximity, to keep others' thoughts out, to not let hers stray too far, wiggling into the consciousness of strangers. She is used to it by now, the unpleasantness that comes with it, the way the unfamiliar thoughts grate against hers like nails against a chalkboard.
But Laudna’s are different.
If asked, Imogen would describe Laudna’s thoughts as music. They drift through her senses, the rustle of wind through trees, the low hum of a single pressed piano key. It rocks Imogen, the gentleness of this woman’s thoughts.
She fumbles, grasps for words, gloved hand falling away.
“I am glad to meet you, Laudna,” she finally says, more out of habit than anything else. “Perhaps we will meet again.”
“Perhaps we will,” Laudna says, just as a flock of blackbirds let out distress calls and take to the air, calling Imogen’s attention to them. And when she looks back, Laudna is gone, having left as silently and as suddenly as she came.
-
Nelly offers room and board in exchange for someone to clean the house, to tend to the gardens, to feed the chickens. The house is much too big, as if the walls are bars, the doorways mouths ready to swallow Nelly up.
“It was my grandparent’s,” Nelly explains, “and then my parent’s, and now it is mine.”
Imogen does not need to read her thoughts to see the grief, and so she does not pry.
Nelly is not alone in this house. She has a husband, and his name is Fairfax, and he is tall and broad of shoulders and thick with muscles, and he makes Nelly look even tinier in comparison. He looks over Imogen with a sort of barely hidden distantain, wrinkling his nose in distaste. His thoughts creep into Imogen’s mind, and she does not like the shape of them, does not like the way they twist, possessive and jealous. It takes everything Imogen has not to let her dislike show on her face, because she does not want to make Nelly angry, and Nelly is her warm bed and food in her belly.
On the road, Imogen has learned what it’s like to be cold, to be hungry. She has no desire to return to that if she does not have to.
Fairfax is a rather unpleasant man, loud and arrogant and annoyingly sure of himself, but Nelly is absolutely enamored by him. She hangs on his every word, a star-struck expression in her eyes as if she cannot believe her good fortune to exist at the same time as him.
“We’ve known each other since we were children, grew up in houses side by side,” Nelly tells Imogen one day, as they kneel side by side in the garden, cast in the shade of a single, struggling tree. The oppressive heat beats down, and Imogen regrets her heavy gloves, the need to hide away her hands, as her palms sweat and itch beneath the leather.
“I had a crush on him starting very young,” Nelly admits, adding a weed to a slowly growing pile. “And I thought it was unrequited for so long, but I suppose it wasn’t, and I can’t imagine life without him.”
Imogen hums noncommittally. She doesn’t understand why Nelly is so taken with him, doesn’t understand that feeling of infatuation. When she considers it, it’s an alien feeling, something that belongs in a storybook, something that belongs to someone who isn’t her. But then that night, she stands in the window, and looks across the road, and there stands Laudna under the corn, with her mesmerizing eyes and musical thoughts, and maybe, that feeling isn’t quite as alien as she thought.
-
The night air hangs heavy and hot in the house, only the slightest wisps of breeze sneaking in through open windows. Imogen stirs, blankets discarded, overheated and restless because of it, tossing and turning until she finally gives up sleep. Carefully, she opens her door, descends the staircase and goes out the front door, into the night.
It’s cooler outside, not by much, but the air is fresh and feels clean in her lungs, rather than stagnant and heavy. For a moment she just breathes, eyes closed, and lets the air wash her thoughts clean. But when she opens her eyes again, she notices them.
Creatures watch her from the corn, with eyes that burn red like the storms in her head. And she watches them back, searching for the dark shapes the eyes belong to, her feet urging her close, her curiosity telling her to search, to find.
“Imogen!” Nelly’s voice is sharp, cutting through the night like a knife. Imogen turns, and Nelly stands behind her. It surprises Imogen, faintly. This tiny a woman should not be able to carry so much fierceness in her voice.
“What are they?” Imogen asks, because even as she turns her back, she can feel the prickle of their gaze down her spine.
“There is nothing there,” Nelly says, angling herself so she stands between Imogen and the corn.
“But…”
“There is nothing there!” Nelly snaps, her voice growing shrill, carrying a touch of panic. “There is nothing there, Imogen, and there never has been, and never will be. There is nothing in the corn.”
And perhaps it's the fear in Nelly’s voice, perhaps it’s the unease that has settled in Imogen’s gut, but she allows herself to be led back into the house, and does not look back.
And the eyes watch, unblinking.
-
His name is Julian, and he offers up salvation.
“Are your souls clean, my friends, my family?” He cries into the air, hands waving. “Will you be welcomed into the afterlife alongside your kin?”
Imogen does not know what god he claims to worship, can see no holy symbol on his clothing. She does not like him. He looks her up and down slowly, in a way that makes her skin crawl. She blocks out his thoughts as best she can, having no wish to find out what he thinks of her. They poke at her defenses, slick as oil, heavy as tar. Her corners in, a manic light in his eyes, wearing a leer that’s pretending to be honorable.
“You are new to the road,” he says, stepping closer even as she steps away. “You are Imogen.”
She does not like the way he says her name. As if he is tasting it. As if he wants to eat it.
“Tell me, Imogen,” he says, leaning in, washing her face with his sour breath. “Do you want salvation?”
Imogen says no. She does not want to know what kind of salvation he is offering.
-
Imogen is not used to the heat, not used to the way it clings to her very bones. She’s not used to the way that moisture hangs heavy in the air, even as walking down the road coats her boots and her tongue in dust.
It’s cooler by the river, and by the river, Laudna waits.
“Where do you come from?”
“Gelvaan,” She says, and seeing no recognition in Laudna’s face, elaborates. “It's a small town, with fields of sweet grass and pastures of horses, and more cows than people.”
Laudna’s eyes fill with a wistfulness, a strange sort of wonder. “It sounds lovely.”
“Where do you come from?” Imogen asks, and Laudna smiles, wry and a little sad.
“I come from Whitestone,” she says, “a city in Tal'dorei, a long way from here.”
“What was it like?”
“I left long ago,” she says, “it becomes harder to remember what it was like every year.”
And suddenly, Laudna looks lonely, down to her very bones.
“Why don’t you ever come into town?” Imogen asks, and Laudna laughs. It’s not a pretty laugh, but Imogen likes it more for it.
“Julian says I’m a witch,” Laudna says, “he has made the people afraid of me.”
“Are you? A witch?”
Laudna considers this. “Do you think I am?”
And Imogen looks at her, standing up to her knees in the river, collecting leeches in a jam jar. She has a dead rat with a raven’s head at her belt, and a rock pick in her hair, and while Imogen tans and freckles in the sun, Laudna is as pale as ever.
“You look like you could be,” she admits, “like a witch from a picture book.”
Laudna looks positively delighted. “I do?” she splashes a little closer to the river bank, a little closer to Imogen. “Julian has made the townspeople afraid of me. Are you scared of me?”
“No,” Imogen says, earnestly. “You are not who I’m afraid of.”
Satisfied with this answer, Laudna resumes her hunting, humming under her breath.
Imogen sits on the bank and watches. She does not pretend to understand Laudna’s task. She listens to Laudna hum, listens to the way her thoughts hum along. Around her, dragonflies buzz, and it seems as if they are trying to whisper to her. But no matter how hard she listens, she can never understand.
-
Imogen returns to Nelly’s home flushed and dizzy and nauseous. Nelly calls it heat sickness, but Imogen does not particularly care what it is called. She simply knows she feels awful, her head throbbing, her stomach churning. She lies on her bed, and thinks of the river.
She thinks of Laudna.
-
Nelly brings her dinner even though she is not hungry. Along with it she slides a cup of tea across the table, and Imogen chokes on her sip. Confusion churns in her belly along with the nausea.
“What’s wrong with this?” She asks, staring down into her teacup. Nelly looks at her as if she’s lost her mind.
“It’s mint tea, of course, for your stomach,” is the answer, but Imogen does not think it is. Beneath the flavor of mint lies something dark and dank, mildew and rot and long-stagnant water. It is not just mint in the tea.
But Imogen tries to not think too hard about what the other flavor might be.
-
Julian preaches of hellfire and damnation, of demons and devils in disguise, of dark magics and betrayer gods. He scares and soothes the crowd in equal measure, whipping them into a wild frenzy with fire in his voice before calming any rattled nerves with words smooth and silky. Imogen doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the way he seems to thrive on the control he has.
“Tell me, friends and family, do we wish to return to the old ways?” He cries, fingers stabbing. “Do we wish to return to such savagery, as if we are no better than mindless rodents?”
Imogen asks Nelly, later, what he means by the old ways. She shies away, her answer a short and brisk I don’t know, but Imogen thinks she does. She can tell by the way she shrinks into Fairfax at her side, by the way he glares at Imogen, after.
So Imogen asks Laudna.
It’s in that strange place between day and night, not quite yet twilight, but the sun’s rays have turned red and drip like blood, washing the hard-packed dirt of the road with crimson. Imogen could almost swear she smells iron on the air, taste it on the tip of her tongue.
“The old ways,” Laudna muses, petting Pâte at her side. She stands bathed in the shadows of the corn, her shoes covered in the soft, rich dirt at their base. It seems cooler, under the corn, away from the suffocating heat of the sun, but Nelly’s warnings ring in her head and she thinks of the eyes that glow red in the night, and she stays on her side of the barrier.
“Who brought them up?” Laudna asks, and Imogen wrinkles her nose.
“Julian,” Imogen admits, and Laudna’s own face twists, as if she’s just smelled something particularly foul. Apparently Imogen’s feelings for the greasy, unpleasant man is shared.
“I wouldn’t listen to his warnings too closely,” Laudna says, scorn dripping from her voice. “He’s drunk on his own power, having convinced everyone to somehow believe the garbage he’s saying. He’s cobbled together the beliefs of many gods, and thinks himself the creator of his own religion, and he thinks he knows the way the world works.”
“And he doesn’t?”
“Of course not,” Laudna says, suddenly quite cheerful. “The world is far more vast than Julian could ever consider in his tiny, insignificant brain.”
It’s a strangely comforting thought. The two women are silent for a moment, watching as the sun sinks closer to the horizon, before Imogen repeats her original question.
“The old ways,” Laudna says, “are simple enough. Eye for eye. Blood for blood. Life for life.”
Imogen still does not fully understand, but she doesn’t think she wants to. And for now, she’s happy to spend her time with this woman, with her beautiful, hypnotizing eyes and her musical thoughts. She does not want to think of matters of blood and life and those things given and taken.
-
Imogen walks back to Nelly’s house, and along the road, the red eyes watch her from the corn. She throws her shoulders back and keeps her head high, and pretends she cannot see them, although their gaze burns a pathway down her spine.
And the eyes watch, unblinking.
-
They find his body in the morning.
At first glance, it’s almost as if he’s sleeping. A still, strange sort of sleep, but still…sleep. And then you get closer, and notice that his eyes are half open, that his clothes are dark with blood. And you get closer still, and you notice that his limbs are bent at unnatural angles, muscles splitting and bones breaking. And even closer, you’ll notice that there are chunks of him missing. That no dagger, no greatsword, no battle ax could make wounds like this.
They find his body in the morning, and Nelly screams.
Imogen has never heard such an awful sound, as if something is physically wrenching the sound from Nelly’s chest. She collapses to her knees, as if her legs can no longer hold her body up, crying out as if someone is slowly removing her organs one by one.
Fairfax lies in the middle of the road, his blood staining the dirt beneath him, and Julian stands over his corpse and looks triumphant.
-
They bury him in a graveyard as old as the town itself, and Nelly weeps. Imogen stands near the back of the crowd, letting the breeze ruffle her dress, and shivers despite the warm air. The thoughts of those around her are suffocating, tainted sour by grief and by fear.
She feels as if she is being watched. She keeps thinking she sees movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns, there is never anything there, just gravestones bleached by sun and by time.
Imogen doesn’t believe in ghosts, not really. Once someone dies, they are gone, no matter how much you wish some piece of them, some vital, flickering bit of soul remains, and stays behind. Or, so she thought. Thinks. Standing in this graveyard, she’s not really sure.
It feels haunted, as if a piece of everyone buried here remains walking along their final resting place. It’s unsettling, and she does not want to be here.
Julian stands over Fairfax’s fresh grave. He uses it like a stage, this place of mourning, and uses the death of the man Nelly loved to further his own voice.
“We need to remember the road protects us,” he says, a strange, dark satisfaction crackling in his every word. “But we also need to remember there are things that lurk in the dark that the road is unable to protect us from.” He scans the crowd, and his eyes, sunken and yellowed, settle on Imogen. They hold eye contact, and Imogen is the one who breaks it.
“Take this as a warning, my friends!” he crows, seemingly indifferent to the visible outpouring of grief from the woman at his side. “There are things that lurk in the dark. Do not follow them. Do not let them seduce you with their unholy abilities.”
He rises up, a mad light shining in his eyes. “Never let them get in your mind, my friends! Do not follow them, do not trust them, and do not give them your name.”
Imogen can’t hold back a shudder.
-
“It’s strange,” Imogen says, “but I don’t think I’ve ever grieved for my mother.”
She and Laudna are on the edge of the river again, lying on their backs in the shadow of a leaning tree, listening to the soft sounds of the river burbling at its edges.
“Do you remember her?” Laudna asks.
“Sometimes I think so,” Imogen admits. “Sometimes I think I know her voice, or remember her kissing my forehead, or the feeling of her skirt when I hid behind her.” She digs her fingers into the ground, but can’t feel anything but the leather of her gloves. “But I think that’s mostly just wishful thinking.”
Laudna shifts, her elbow bumping against Imogen’s. “I remember my parents, but I don’t know if they’re dead or not so I never bothered to mourn.”
Imogen twists so she can look at the woman beside her. “Really? Did you ever go to check?”
Laudna shrugs. “I don’t think I’m welcome back in Whitestone, and I have no other way to know.”
And maybe it’s the brush of bare skin against bare skin, or maybe Imogen’s starting to let her walls down, or maybe it’s just because it’s Laudna, but memories that aren’t hers flash behind her eyes.
A carriage draped in purple, a large, ancient tree, a swinging noose, a manor on fire, dirt in her nose and under her nails, and the thick, sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh. It’s a strange, nonsensical combination of images, gone as quickly as they came, but it fascinates Imogen. Everything about Laudna fascinates her, and she wants to know every single thing about her. The thought raises a strange, warm feeling in her chest, familiar but unfamiliar at the same time.
It’s a tickling, trickling warmth, making her feel as if she’ll never be cold again, as long as she has this strange, creepy, fascinating woman beside her.
Laudna is staring at the sky, and the light of the setting sun casts shadows across her face, sets a fire in her beautiful eyes, and Imogen is mesmerized. In the background, the dragonflies buzz, whispering their secrets Imogen can’t quite understand, and Laudna turns so she’s facing her.
“You never…” Laudna starts, then stops, pausing for a long, long moment. “I still don’t know your name.”
The realization hits Imogen in a rush, as well as the shame.
“Imogen. My name is Imogen.”
“Imogen,” Laudna says slowly, turning the name over in her mouth as if she’s tasting it. It’s the same thing Julian did, but different, because while Julian says her name like he wants to own it, Laudna says it as if she wants to savor it.
And in Imogen’s chest, that warmth grows, and grows.
-
She walks back to the house, and in the corn, the eyes watch, unblinking.
-
Nelly disappears in the night. When Imogen wakes in the morning, Nelly’s bed is made and her coffee is cold, as if she has not been there in hours.
They find her that night.
It takes three people to pull her from the river, bloated and blue, and Imogen nearly throws up at the site.
“The river took her,” the town elders whisper, tucking their grandchildren close to their sides.
“The river took her,” Julian says, standing above her grave. “This is why you keep your emotions close, my friends. The river sensed her grief, and it took her.”
-
Imogen goes back to an empty house. The space stretches too big around her, and she stares at the photo over the mantle, of Nelly in her wedding dress, arm in arm with Fairfax, and Imogen wishes she is not alone.
-
“I saw that Nelly died,” Laudna says, as the river innocently flows behind her.
“They say the river took her,” Imogen says. The river took her. As if it has some sort of sentience, a brain not unlike her and Laudna’s. As if it targeted Nelly, could feel the wideness and the vastness of her grief, and lured her into the depths because it was so desperate to taste it.”
“The river didn’t take her,” Laudna says, and Imogen blinks, turning to look at her. “Everyone is saying that, but it’s not true.”
“Did you see something?” Imogen asks, and Laudna hesitates long enough for Imogen to get her answer.
“There are dangerous things here, Imogen,” Laudna says, “and the corn holds them close. But to say that they are the only dangers is untrue. And sometimes…”
Imogen does not need her to finish. She shivers.
“Are you cold?” Laudna asks, and Imogen nods, once. The sun is setting, bathing them in its crimson, bloody light. The air holds a suggestion of autumn chill, a welcome change from the suffocating heat of the afternoon.
And then slowly, carefully, as if scared Imogen will jump away, Laudna presses against her side. Imogen stiffens in surprise, and then melts into the touch. Laudna, while not warm, exactly, is a solid presence at her side, and she smells of damp, rich earth and sweetgrass and the sun-warmed river, and her thoughts are rain dripping into a puddle and the crunch of leaves underfoot and the first note of the bow dragged across a violin, and it’s intoxicating, fills Imogen’s head, and warmth rises in her chest.
-
Imogen walks back to the empty house that used to belong to Nelly, and the eyes in the corn watch, unblinking.
Until they don’t.
-
First, there’s the smell. Rot and mold and pond water, strong enough to make her gag.
Then, it goes silent. Imogen didn’t realize how loud the crickets were chirping until their song is suddenly gone, snuffed out like a flame in the rain, and she freezes, every instinct screaming at her to run, to get out of there soon, as quickly as possible.
She doesn’t have time, the feeling comes too little, too late.
The creatures are ugly and terrible, gray-skinned, red-eyed, and sharp clawed, with mouths full of too many teeth. They snarl and slobber and charge, and Imogen reacts without thinking.
The magic comes when she calls.
-
She drops to her knees in the dirt. Purple lines spider up her arms, veins of glowing power. Her eyes pulse in time with her heart. The dirt beneath her feet is scorched and dead. The creatures have been skilled or scattered, in search of easier prey.
The eyes on her now belong to humans. The townsfolk came at the noise and now they press closer, closer, closer.
Their thoughts curl through her brain, sick and dark and churning, and she knows, with sudden clarity, that she is going to die. She knows that with sudden, bone-deep clarity, that these people are going to kill her. She is too strange, too powerful, for this town. In the morning, someone will find her body, curled in the road. They will bury her in an unmarked grave, and Julian will use her death to further his own agenda.
She curls forward, hands over her ears in a desperate, ineffective attempt to stop the influx of thoughts that are not her own. She closes her eyes, shaking, depleted of magic, queasy with adrenaline. Maybe if she doesn’t fight, they’ll make it quick, these people of the road.
And then, she hears Laudna.
And she opens her eyes.
“Not her!”
Laudna stands between Imogen and the mob, arms flung wide, eyes blazing. And as Imogen watches, Laudna shifts and changes, her cry turning into a furious scream.
“Not her!”
And the townspeople see, and they flee, vanishing back into the darkness from where they came.
-
Laudna is terrible, cheeks sunken, undereyes gaunt, mouth stretching too wide, limbs stretching too far, something too dark to be blood dripping from her eyes, her mouth, gathering at her fingertips. She appears human, but in all the wrong ways, a child’s nightmare come to life, the thing at the end of your bed in waking hours.
She is terrifying and terrible, and she is the most beautiful thing Laudna has ever seen.
“Laudna,” Imogen says, and Laudna seems to shrink down into herself, bones popping back into place, wiping away the dripping goo.
“Dear Imogen,” Laudna says, voice dripping with sadness, unable to meet Imogen’s eyes. “I could not let them get to you.”
Imogen steps forward, and Laudna flinches away, as if expecting Imogen to lash out. And Imogen can feel Laudna’s fear, her grief, that she has shown Imogen this terrifying side of herself, and now Imogen will do what too many people have done before, and leave.
“I guess I’ll say goodbye, now,” Laudna says, sorrow tingeing her voice. “They won’t let me stay, now. I know how it works, so now I leave before they bring out the pitchforks.”
“And you aren’t going to take me with you?”
Laudna blinks. And Imogen, in a sudden fit of bravery, of want, of the deep desire to not be alone anymore, rips off her gloves, presses a bare hand to Laudna’s cheek. Laudna’s skin is cool and smooth beneath Imogen’s bare palm, and she lets Laudna feel.
She shows her how much she wants to go with her. She shows her how she is not afraid. She lets her thoughts, her feelings, seep into Laudna's mind, lets them be simple, unmessy, conveying her desire in a way she doesn't think she could articulate.
Laudna blinks, again, startled, a sudden tangled wave of emotions washing up and over both her and Imogen.
“Are you sure?” She asks, and Imogen smiles.
-
When the town talks of the incident later, they tell of two women.
One, who talked soft and sweet, who seemed to be a good girl. A little quiet, sure, a little odd, but no cause for concern.
The other, they knew was a problem from the start. She lived in an abandoned shed out in the corn, and some thought she was a ghost, or some undead thing, or a witch, whispering curses.
But both women, they say, turned out to be dangerous. They ran them out of town, the townspeople say. They didn’t want any harm to come to the children, couldn’t have such dangerous people around.
They did the right thing, they all decide, patting themselves on the back. They protected the road, and the people who live along it.
-
Somewhere down the road, two women walk. They’re arm in arm, weary with travel, but talking cheerfully, laughing and familiar.
They’ve both been alone for a long time, before now. Too long, really.
And Imogen doesn’t know who to thank for bringing them together. Maybe it was some god pulling the strings, or maybe it was their magic seeking similar power out, or maybe it was a total twist of fate, a meeting of two people in a small town along a dirt road edged with corn.
She doesn’t really care, though.
It doesn’t matter, in the end.