Curses and Will Chapter 8: Chapter 2: Her Shadowed Sky

Read chapter 8 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

I came back to consciousness the same way you surface from deep water, slow, fighting the weight of it the whole way up. The ceiling again. White and pale blue. Already familiar, which told me I'd been out long enough for things to become familiar. I sat up carefully. The pain behind my eyes had settled into a dull, constant pressure instead of the sharp detonating thing it had been, which felt like progress. Thin afternoon light came through the window at a low angle. I'd been out for hours. The old man was gone. The room was quiet. I stood, crossed to the window, and looked down into the garden. She was still there. Or she was back. I couldn't tell which. She stood near the cherry tree with her hands folded in front of her, looking up at the bare branches, her white hair loose around her shoulders. From up here she looked younger than I'd thought at first. Or maybe not younger. Just quieter. The thing above her had not moved. It sat where it had been, patient in the way that things without needs can afford to be patient, its fixed grin unchanged, its black eyes catching no light and giving none back. Looking at it for too long made the pressure behind my eyes sharpen into something with edges. I looked away before it could get worse. A knock at the door. Then, without waiting for an answer, it opened. The old man again, carrying a tray with both hands. Warm bread, a small bowl of fruit, a ceramic cup steaming with something that smelled faintly sweet. He set it on the low table beside the bed with the efficiency of someone who had done this specific thing thousands of times. "You should eat," he said. "Your body has been through considerable strain." "How long was I out?" "Several hours." He straightened. "You collapsed twice within a short window. The second time was more concerning." I sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked at the tray without touching it. My mind kept pulling back toward the window, toward the garden, toward the thing hanging above her like a stormcloud that had decided to become a permanent fixture. "That thing above her," I said. "The shadow. What is it?" He was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that isn't empty but is instead someone deciding carefully how much to say. "What did it look like to you?" he asked. "Wrong," I said. "The shape of it is wrong. Its head bends too far. Its eyes are completely black, no white, no iris. It grins but not like anything that has ever actually smiled before." I looked at him. "It sits above her like it owns the space. Like it's been there long enough to start calling it home." Something shifted in his expression again, that same small movement I'd caught before, a crack in the composed surface. "You describe it very precisely," he said. "I can see it clearly. It's not difficult to describe when you can see it clearly." He moved to the window and stood beside me, looking down at the garden. His eyes went to the girl, not to the space above her where the thing crouched, and I understood then that he genuinely could not see it. He wasn't pretending not to. It simply wasn't there for him. "It is a curse," he said finally. "That is the simplest and most accurate word for what it is. It does not come from this world, or any world adjacent to it. It arrived with her family's bloodline and has been with her since she was very young." He paused. "It has taken things from her. People, primarily." "Her family?" "Yes." Below us, she turned her head slightly, as though she'd heard something at the edge of hearing. The thing above her shifted when she moved, tracking her the way a shadow tracks its source, except shadows don't have eyes. "She found me," I said. "In the woods, you told me. Why was she out there?" "She often walks in the evening. The grounds and the surrounding woods are familiar to her. She prefers to be outside when she can manage it." He glanced at me. "She saw you and had you brought in. She does not turn away from people who have fallen, as a gener