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She meets him in the forest on the day she means to die.
That’s the only reason she’s in the forest at all. It has long been said that no one who enters ever makes it out again. There’s a beast there, they say, a monster. She sees it in their bodies, the way they hide and cower and skirt the edges of the trees, the way they cross themselves and hush their voices to take water from the spring that hides among the brush. There is something in there that scares them; she knows, because she has been that something. She has seen the fear, has caused it. She has been raised all her life to kill. Cassandra Cain, feared assassin—the taste of it is bitter between her teeth.
She thinks the poetic thing to do is to die, so that she can never kill again. To take her father’s tool and break it, so she will finally be free.
There is a monster in the forest… and she intends to find it.
She enters at dusk, walking past the torches set on spikes, flaming points aimed for the dark heart of the forest that the sun never quite touches. The trees cast shadows long like claws, rending the light into slashed and shattered pieces. The further she goes from the safety of the village the less pieces there are, until she can see nothing of the flames and guides herself by the light of a slowly rising moon. Soon, not even that is visible, the treetop canopy overhead too thick with shadowed black leaves.
She has no problem with the darkness. It is her friend—she has long since trusted it to get her where she needs to go. It has for years covered her skin, an ink like tar, left her intangible to her victims. She does not need light to move, silent, like a predator. But tonight she is no predator—she is the prey, and when she strikes her match and draws it to the wick of her lantern it is to guide the monster by the light. It is the only thing she carries, a beacon to draw her doom to her.
The forest, she finds, as she sets one foot in front of the other, is quiet. It is a peaceful place, or would be, she thinks—she wonders if the weary travelers who lost their lives here felt this way. She thinks maybe not—they are scared, when the only sound is the rattle of the wind through the branches above. No animals, no insects… an unnatural stillness of sound. There is something here, something that keeps all the natural things at bay—her monster, she’s sure.
She hopes it finds her soon. Before she’s too tired, and is lulled to sleep. She would like to meet its gaze. She would like to read its intent before it takes her life, see the end in the monster’s face, just as so many have seen it in hers.
The trees are larger here. She raises her lantern and the shadows play, small inky gaps between thick, gray trunks. It’s here that she hears it—something in the distance, like a howl and not a word, but somehow human all the same.
She tilts her head, frowning—there shouldn’t be anyone out here. Not in this forest, not in the deep and the dark. No one but her. Her… and the monster.
It strikes her, suddenly and surely, like lightning to a flagpole, that maybe her purpose… is not death. She came here expecting to die, but there is someone else who may be in danger, their voice rising again in the distance even as she falters. It soars in anguish, it wails in anger… she hears the howl, and—
Her hands were grown to kill. She was a tool. She has murdered, has snuffed the very life from men and children alike. But maybe… just maybe… she is here in this silent forest not to be slain…
…but to save another from a that same horrible fate.
She pauses for a single second, breath held and eyes wide. Then, as the howl rises for the third time, she digs in her toes and she begins to run.
It’s not so easy. The branches are thick, thorned like reaching fingers that tug at her tunic, her crimson cloak, her raised hood, yanking her back. She fights each in turn, lantern held aloft, focused solely on following the sound of the voice. With each step it grows louder, louder, and louder again, until it feels like it’s echoing all around her. She’s almost desperate with it, desperate to find its source, when she rounds one last massive trunk and suddenly finds herself in a clearing.
It is no ordinary clearing. There is a smell, sharp and pungent—decay, a scent she is well acquainted with. The howls are so close now that she can tell they must be coming from here, from this place. She steps out into the grass of a meadow, and in the gaps between the shimmering gray blades she spies bones—dozens, hundreds, all in tiny little pieces. They crack beneath her feet as she takes a step.
The howling has changed now. Higher, wounded, like an animal caught in a snare. There is a tree, lying crooked across the center of the clearing—they are coming from the space underneath, thick with darkness and filled with an agony she can only imagine.
She crouches down to see into the shadows, and there she meets… him.
He’s curled up on his side, all tension and ache and exhaustion. Wearing the rags of clothes, all of them muddied and torn… except for a helmet on his head, which shines brighter than she dares think natural. When he catches sight of her, his howls turn to snarls, growls, still without words but with a human depth that she knows from the timber of her own voice, wordless as it is.
She wishes she could speak, to soothe him, as she crouches down, but she hasn’t the luxury of knowing words. Instead, she hums a low crooning sound, like that of nesting birds she’s heard.
The helmet is a thing of beauty, grotesque and intricate, catching her attention. She recognizes the shapes of it as her lantern illuminates them—two large round black holes where eyes would be, two long slitted nostrils, the pale white curve of a bird’s beak, leading into a sharp point… and below it, between that and the center point of the lower jaw… a grinning, spitting, howling wolf face, red as blood, with teeth bared, shining, in the light. The bird’s skull has opened to reveal a beast within—and she understands.
This is her monster. This is the human she was meant to save.
She knows the moment she lays eyes on the helmet that it holds a curse, terrible and wicked. She’s seen them before, been privy to the snaking tendrils of a magic that broke men stronger than she has ever been. Never has she used them herself—she’s always done her job with nothing but her bare hands—but she knows of them well enough to know that she cannot break it on her own.
But she can help. She knows she can. There is someone out there who knows how to break this curse, and she can find them. She will find them. If only she can get this creature to trust her, to follow her away from this place. There will be no healing here, not with the silence and the decay and the madness that has permeated every leaf on every branch on every tree.
The sounds coming from his heaving chest have been constant, a low warning, as she studies him. When she raises a slow hand, the sounds rise as well, thicker and louder, lips spread wide over a wolf’s bared teeth. When she pulls back, he slumps, the ache and the exhaustion trumping the tension of his body. His head lolls even as he growls low in his chest, as if he might fall asleep where he’s lying.
He’s been here a long time, she realizes. He’s a man, young, but his ragged clothes are that of a boy. She wonders how often he’s slept, if the pain of the curse will let him drift. He’s tired—so tired. She can see it in the lines of his body, the helpless way his dirtied fingers curl as if seeking something they will not find, some solace, some reprieve.
He seems like he has almost dozed when he comes back to with a jerk, snapping his head up. She tries to usher him back down, keeping her distance, but he’s spooked, pushing himself until he’s sat upright on his haunches, clawed hands digging into the soil and his head bowed under the bottom curve of the tree. He snarls again, snapping his jaws.
She has never used her hands to comfort before. Choking, yes—slitting, maiming, hurting. Comfort, though… not once. She has never done this before… but she’s watched through lit windows, hidden in the shadows of the night, as mothers put their babies to sleep.
She thinks, maybe, she can do it. She thinks, maybe, she can get him to sleep, and then maybe he will trust her.
So she tries. She raises her hands again, keeping them loose and turned so the backs are to him, no hint of claw or nail. The growls rise again in turn, thrumming deep in his chest—she can see glowing eyes, the wolf’s eyes, hidden just under the ridge of the bird’s open beak, staring hard at her. He does not mean to hurt her, but he will if he’s pushed—she can read it in the tension of his shoulders, hands ready to lash out.
But she keeps at it. Edging forward, small bits at a time. When he snaps his jaws at her, she avoids them, forcing herself into stillness—but when he stops, watching, she carefully moves.
It takes a while. A long time, by her father’s standards. If she took this long to kill a man who her father had not willed to die a slow and painful death, she would have been punished. But this man is not meant to die, and she has all the time in the world. So she goes slow, as slow as he needs, getting closer and closer until the very tips of her fingers brush one grimy shoulder.
He shudders, the growl in his chest curling upward into a whine. This close, she can see marks at his throat, some old and scarred some fresh and scabbed, made as if by desperate fingernails. She imagines him, clawing and clawing at the underside of the helmet and only rending flesh instead. If she were to examine his nails, she’s sure she would find years and years worth of a fight waged against himself, and not a scratch to the helmet that had caused all this grief.
Crooning again, low and gentle, she rests more weight on the hand that has touched him, until her palm is pressed to his flushed, heated skin. He snaps again, but not in anger—it is confusion, and pain, and still, always, exhaustion.
Sleep, she wants to tell him. Go down into slumber and be rested. But she does not know the words, her tongue a weight in her mouth. All she can do is slowly begin to stroke up and down his arm, shoulder to elbow and back again, willing him to settle and rest.
It takes a long, long moment. She thinks that his growl will never cease, but eventually it does, her monster realizing that she means him no harm. As soon as he does, his head begins to droop, tilting until it is hanging loose to one side. His body follows, slumping back to the ground, his hands open and limp.
He sleeps. And Cassandra Cain… the tool of her father, a girl made to kill and not speak… sits beside him and lets her hands comfort him and her voice soothe him, until long after the sky has lightened and the sun come out.