The Huntress and the Enchanted Tome

I’d just killed a man, and I wore his remnants all over my huntress tunic. Shredded, as though his claws hadn’t been trying to kill me, too. Blood-soaked, both mine and his, as though we were tearing away our layers so that we could get to the soul, vulnerable and exposed, and slice it apart.

I got there first, it seems. And when I got home, I was met with disdain.

“Not again, Evra,” Nove barked at me, “when are you going to cease with this childish behaviour?”

I rolled my eyes at Nove’s spine. “When I no longer am a human with the biological need to eat to survive. I have to hunt Nove. It’s not like you can do it for me.”

Nove sniffed at my tunic and her pages wrinkled. “The gods of ink and parchment know that’s not why you’re doing it. You humans don’t eat human flesh. You’re just an animal.”

“He was a wolf! It’s not my fault he changed back into human form just as I attacked.”

Nove, as all truly enchanted books do, threw open a page then and flung herself into my line of sight, so that I could “learn something” or “find my way” or something convoluted like that. It read:

Know not who you are in your riches, but who you must become in your time of need. No longer a pedigree pup, nor a savage beast on the street. Find your strength. Lead the pack, if only it be a pack of one.

Great. Very thematic.

“How moving. Thank you, Nove.” With a tiresome groan, I slumped into the wooden chair beside the lit fire. “Did you really pluck that one out of yourself just because I mentioned a wolf?”

Nove snapped herself shut, hovering mid-air as if deliberating on something. I could see she wanted to tell me off, reprimand me further, but the mere state of my blood-encrusted attire turned her from a fiction of horror to a gentle and nurturing lullaby.

“What will we do with you Evra,” I closed my eyes when she neared, feeling her pages soft against my shoulders as she pulled away the scraps of material that remained. Using her covers, pinched together, she pulled at any stuck buttons, threw my battered tunic onto the fire and then hurried off to collect my oldest nightdress from my room. I waited by the fire, eyes still shut as the heat prickled up my skin. I was stained with blood, but sewn with exhaustion. The former could wait until tomorrow.

Nova’s pages fluttered as she draped the nightgown over my head and shuffled against it until it fell around my body.

I sighed, sleepily. “Nove L. You truly are the greatest. The very book that changed me, both literally and figuratively.” Nove slid two of her pages together to replicate the sound of a huff.

Peeking up through my lashes, I watched as she settled herself on top of a stack of fantasy novels on the shelf, readying herself for sleep, too. My tiredness was contagious.

“Evra, you’ll never change. But maybe you’ll learn. Go put the huntress to bed for the night, won’t you?”