Barter

As Mara descended the stairs into darkness, she felt nothing. She had felt nothing for a long time.

The night Lord Erebus had attacked her village, killing her parents and kidnapping her sister, Wina, she had sworn an oath to herself. She would not rest until she held her sister in her arms again.

It wasn’t a new oath. When Wina was a child she had fallen and fractured her skull above her eye. Their parents hadn’t expected her to survive. Mara had stayed by her bedside day and night until she’d recovered, promising to always be there, to never leave her. This merely continued that vow.

Now she marched below Erebus’s fortress, deep into the underground labyrinth where he kept his riches and those he’d kidnapped, both stolen from the lands he’d invaded. It had taken three years, but she was finally here, the flames of her torch cutting through the thick dark.

She should have felt elated or relieved. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

To get her sister back, she’d known she would need something more than weaving skills and the burned remains of the last harvest. She would need a way into Lord Erebus’s domain. She would need to clear the path once she was there.

She would need a weapon. But she couldn’t fight an army by herself, no matter how long she trained, no matter how impressive of a sword she may wield.

On the first new moon after her sister had been taken, Mara stepped into the forest near where her village had stood before Erebus burned it to the ground. Mara felt her way through the dark woods. She could bring no light. Light would scare them away.

She found the tree, an ancient hawthorn. A barn owl sat on one of the branches. It watched her steadily as she neared the trunk. Three lines were etched into the bark, innocuous enough they could be mistaken for cracks. Mara traced each line with her finger.

The world around her changed. Where once had been nothing but trees and underbrush now stood a colorful bazaar, with tents and stalls growing out from the trees and ground. Hovering dots of multi-colored lights fluttered around the shops like fireflies, lighting the forest. Figures covered in dark cloaks mingled with brightly dressed beings that looked almost human. Almost.

The barn owl was still there, though, watching Mara silently from its perch as she made her way through the bazaar.

“What are you doing here, girl?” said a voice from behind her.

Mara turned to see an old woman. Except she wasn’t old, she was young. No…she was both yet also somewhere in between. It was like watching a person age over time but all at once, her features firm and youthful, then wrinkled and sagging, her hair jet black then graying then stark white.

“You should be careful,” the woman said, her green eyes—the only constant in her shifting face—focused unblinkingly on Mara.

“I’m looking for something,” Mara said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

“Everyone is.” The woman gestured behind her at the shoppers bustling around the bazaar. “Be sure you are looking in the right place.”

“I need a weapon,” Mara said, voice growing firmer. She stood up tall, straightening her back, but still did not reach this strange woman’s chin.

“You should seek a blacksmith—”

“No. I need something different. Something to defeat an army. Something to defeat a man of pure evil.”

The strange woman tilted her head, studying Mara. She still had not blinked. “Evil is a relative term. We don’t use it among my kind. Actions either have negative or positive consequences. Often both. Plucking a flower for your lover nurtures the love between you—a positive. But for the birds and bees who depended on that flower for sustenance, they have lost their food—a negative.”

“Well, this man has never done anything positive in his life.”

“I’m sure he would disagree.”

Mara clenched her jaw. “He kills people. He killed my parents. He took my sister—”

“Oh.” The woman’s eyes lit up with something, gold tinging the green. “You’re seeking revenge.” She smiled, an unnerving, toothy smile. “Come with me.”

The woman led Mara deeper into the woods, away from the main center of the bazaar, the firefly lights growing fewer. Mara looked back briefly as she was led away from the crowd. The barn owl cocked its head, still watching her, but she ignored it. She had something she needed to do.

Tucked away by a hazel tree stood a plain tent of unbleached muslin. The woman ducked inside. Mara followed.

Inside the tent was not a tent. It was a cavern filled with stalactites and stalagmites reaching toward each other like teeth. A single lit candle sat on an ebony table in the middle of the cave.

The woman sat on the ground on one side of the table. She gestured for Mara to sit across from her. The ground felt cold as Mara settled onto the dirt.

“I don’t have the weapon you seek,” the woman said. She held up a hand to stop Mara from protesting. “But I know where you can find what you need. And I can give you something to trade for it.” From out of the darkness, she pulled a long, thin copper rod. “This is the missing piece of a scepter an old friend of mine has been searching for. He can lead you to your weapon.”

“Thank you.” Mara reached out but her hand burned as if she’d touched fire. She jerked her hand back, looking for welts, but her skin was clear.

“I’m not giving this to you,” the woman said. “I’m selling it.”

“I don’t have any money… But I’m willing to barter.”

The woman’s eerie smile made a reappearance, her teeth growing sharper. “That’s what I was hoping for.”

Bartering with the Otherworld was dangerous. The Fae didn’t want embroidered dresses or exotic foods. What they collected was something more abstract, something that could be harvested for a power humankind could never comprehend. But Mara was prepared to give whatever was needed.

For the copper rod, Mara gave the woman her sense of nostalgia. Never again would Mara watch a sunrise and feel a longing for when her mother had watched it by her side. Mara didn’t consider it a loss. She didn’t need to feel pangs for a past violently torn from her. She took the copper rod and left to find the woman’s acquaintance.

But he didn’t have the weapon either. He offered Mara a mirror she could trade with an ogre on the other side of the realm. All she had to give him was her empathy. Mara handed it over and took the mirror.

But the ogre didn’t have the weapon either.

Mara had known it was a risk to deal with the Fae. They were never straightforward, and some enjoyed teasing mortals to the point of death. But it was a risk she was willing to take if she could get her sister back.

Mara traded parts of herself for different odds and ends to barter with the next person. She gave up her sense of adventure, her glee, her self-worth, her sense of taste, and a dozen other things, things she’d never realized she could give up. Things she’d never realized she could live without.

As she traveled back and forth through the Otherworld, seeking the next person or creature promised to trade with her, she felt something shift within her. She started traveling at night because her skin now grew boils in the sun. After the first time she brushed a hand over a bush full of ripe berries and it withered to the ground, she began wearing gloves. Eventually, whenever she spoke, she would see something escape from her lips, like puffs of frozen breath in winter. Those who were near grew ill and ran from her. She now wore a mask.

She’d lost count of the vendors and traders she’d visited. But she recognized the bazaar when she came upon it again one night—the floating lights, the hawthorn, the barn owl sentry. She’d arrived for another trade, told by her last encounter a woman named Irune had the weapon she was seeking. Mara walked toward Irune’s tent.

It was the same tent from before. The woman who shifted between all ages at once. The woman with the unblinking green eyes.

Inside was the cavern. Irune waited for her by the ebony table.

“Welcome back,” Irune said with her pointy smile. She gestured for Mara to take a seat.

Mara clenched her fists, refusing to sit this time. “You said you didn’t have the weapon. I’m not going to waste my time—”

“You haven’t wasted any of your time. You’ve done exactly what you needed to gain what you wanted.”

Mara glared at Irune. She wanted to storm out, but confusion warred with her anger. “What do you mean?”

Irune opened her hands like a flower blossoming and pointed them toward Mara. “You already have what you need. You have the weapon you seek.”

“No one gave me a weapon. I have nothing. I have less than what I started with—”

“Precisely. What you gave away has transformed you. You don’t need a weapon. You are a weapon.”

Mara stared at her gloved hands. She could no longer touch anything without it dying. Her own breath left plants wilting and people bleeding from their eyes. With power like that, she could take on an army without them even knowing she was attacking.

Irune’s eyes glowed gold when Mara looked back up.

“You understand now,” Irune said. Her teeth elongated into fangs, her eyes burned. “It’s time for you to leave this world and return to yours. Good luck.”

Returning to her own world, Mara tracked down Lord Erebus’s fortress. She’d heard her sister was being kept beneath it. Mara marched to the castle walls and removed her mask.

It only took a matter of minutes. No one survived. She found Lord Erebus himself slumped over his throne, his skin blackened, blood flowing freely from his orifices. She hadn’t even been in the same room with him.

Her pathway clear, Mara grabbed a torch from a sconce on the wall and descended into the labyrinth.

She passed mountains of gold and jewels, piles of food that would now go to rot. The darkness pressed around her, her torch barely slicing through it, but darkness didn’t scare her anymore. Nothing did. She’d traded her fear along with everything else.

Mara’s footsteps echoed as she descended yet another stone staircase. She’d climbed down seven of them, deeper and deeper below the fortress. She’d put her mask back on, but she hadn’t come across another living thing.

She knew she wouldn’t.

She knew what was beneath Lord Erebus’s fortress. The crunch under her foot when she stepped off the final staircase confirmed what she had long suspected.

Mara lowered the torch to the floor. Bones littered the dirt, some half buried, some lying there as if flung from the top of the stairs. Mara strode through the ossuary, searching.

The torch lit upon a small gold locket, shaped like an egg. Mara knelt and stuck the torch into the dirt to prop it up. She removed her gloves for the first time in months. There was nothing alive here for her to kill.

Gently, she picked up the skull lying beside the locket. She traced the fracture above the right eye.

“I’m here,” Mara whispered. “I told you I would never leave you.”

When Wina was taken, Mara had known she would never see her alive again, but that didn’t stop her. She would not let her sister turn to dust in a forgotten grave.

And she’d made a new promise. To ensure no one else would lose a sister to Lord Erebus again. A promise she had kept, Lord Erebus now incapable of doing anything other than gathering flies.

Cradling the skull to her chest, Mara did not shed a tear—she couldn’t, having sold them a year ago—but something black and tarlike seeped down her cheek. She brushed the back of the skull as if it still held golden curls.

Slowly the torch flickered out, leaving Mara in darkness. She did not move. She didn’t even notice.