Harvest 8, 855
Buu slumped onto a log, holding his hands out to the meagre fire he and Aru had finally coaxed to life. The hike to Three Lakes University should have taken only a few days, but Buu’s continued decline made the going slow. By Aru’s estimation, they would arrive the next day, for the second day in a row. A snowflake stuck to Buu’s eyelashes as he shivered.
Headache, fatigue, aches, chills. Buu recited to himself. Sluggishness, numb fingers, numb toes.
Rubbing his hands together, he watched Aru scribble in one of her notebooks, a habit she had maintained at every stop they made. She furrowed her brows when she concentrated, pursing her lips in a way that reminded Buu of the grumpy toads that would migrate into Red Birch during a drought, occupying the wells and gutters.
He tried not to look at the grimm. The beast had made itself comfortable by their fire, head resting on its paws, glowing eyes showing just a crack behind drooping eyelids. With fewer people around, it had travelled closer and closer to them each day, checking in on them regularly between hunts. Buu wished that he could let the monster fade into the background, but no matter what he tried the grimm had a way of pulling Buu’s gaze to it. The blood around its muzzle didn’t help.
“How long have you had magic?” Aru asked, startling him.
Her notebook lay closed in her lap, her pen marking the last page. She had that frog-dissection look on her face again as she studied him over the edge of her scarf.
Buu started to shake his head before remembering that he did, indeed, have powers. The attack on his village felt dreamlike and distant. An impossible nightmare. But he came here for answers, and if he could get them before reaching the university , he wouldn’t need to bring the grimm close to all those people. Buu cleared his throat.
“I didn’t know I had any until the other night.” Buu swallowed, mouth going dry as he remembered the feeling of the general’s frantic heartbeat giving up under Buu’s mental assault. “How did you know? Nobody else has guessed yet.”
Aru shrugged, not breaking her stare. “It fits. Between how frail you are and the beating you took, you should have been a corpse, but you walked into that house under your own power. Magic often manifests in times of stress, so that’s actually not that unusual.”
Buu inhaled sharply, a flutter in his stomach. “So it’s normal? What’s happening is normal?” He couldn’t keep the hope from sneaking into his voice.
Aru glanced skeptically at the grimm. “I doubt anything in this situation is ‘normal,’ but your magic choosing that night to manifest is downright textbook. How did it manifest? Does it have anything to do with…?” She jerked her chin at the dozing grimm.
Buu bit his lip, head spinning as he picked through his recent past, trying to decide what, if anything to leave out. Aru could help him, he could feel it, but he still didn’t know her. Would she still help him if she knew he was a murderer? Would she turn him over to the Thavens when they arrived at the university? His stomach rolled and he tasted anxious bile in his throat.
“Well…” Buu refused to meet Aru’s intense stare. “I was attacked, and they were taking me into the woods. I didn’t want to go. I could feel his heart beating, and I imagined that I could grab it and stop it — I didn’t think it would do anything, I was just mad.” Each word spilled out faster than the one before, the relief of telling someone pricking his eyes with hot tears.
“I felt his heart like it was in my hands and it started beating so fast. He fell over and I kept going, I didn’t know it was me doing it at first, I was just happy that he wasn’t taking me anywhere anymore.”
Aru nodded as Buu spoke, one finger resting against her jaw as she listened. Her brow scrunched like it did when she studied her notebook. Her expression didn’t change as he told her he had killed someone.
“Then I felt his heart stop, and his body stopped moving. He was really dead. That’s when I realized that no one else was around. It must have been me.”
“I see,” Aru said. “That’s an unusual place to start, but not unheard of. If you have a proclivity for the human body, you might make a good healer one day — they’re always in high demand.” Aru shifted, sitting up straighter as she looked at the grimm. “And him?”
Buu squirmed, rolling the hem of his coat in his hands to keep them busy. “Maybe he likes magic?”
Aru’s gaze swept to him, an impatient flicker behind it as she blew out a long breath through her nose. She chewed her lips for a moment, eyes closed. Buu could almost hear her counting out her frustration.
“Buu. I’ve had the displeasure of working in the same battalion as the grimm for a while now. I’ve seen him kill mages, work alongside mages, and totally ignore mages. But never — never — have I seen him take an interest in anyone that wasn’t strictly violent. The general had a leash on him, but that’s the closest I’ve seen to him paying particular attention to someone.
“If something happened that might explain this,” she waved a vague hand between Buu and the grimm, “then I need to know. I don’t want to march that thing into a school full of other young people if I don’t have to.” After a moment more of studying Buu, she added, “I promise not to be mad.”
Buu watched the ground between his feet, swallowing and breathing fast. A handful of snowflakes drifted to stick to the forest floor, crystalline an d perfect. He wished he could be a snowflake. Snowflakes don’t kill people. Snowflakes don’t have to decide who to trust. Buu cleared his throat.
“Well… I— umm… The person I… The person who hit me…” He swallowed again, turning slightly on his perch to face away, wishing he could run. “Well… it was the general.”
Buu risked a glance at Aru, expecting her to rage, despite her promise. He had killed a military general, after all. But her face didn’t change, didn’t even flicker with surprise. She seemed to work through the new information with the same cold calculation that she used for everything.
“Okay, that explains the rampage I suppose — no one’s got control of him. But unless you somehow inherited that control, his interest in you still doesn’t make sense. The grimm avoided the general like the plague unless he was forced to come closer for orders or…” Aru made a face, “… meals.” She shook herself. “Are you sure there was nothing else?”
Buu hadn’t wanted Aru to shout at him, but the total absence of any reprimand put him off balance. He committed murder — murder — and they breezed past it as if he’d just confessed to spilling milk.
“Wait, that’s it? I killed somebody and you’re just… okay with it?” Buu felt a breeze against his teeth, realized he was gaping, and closed his mouth.
Aru shrugged, “It’s a war. People get killed all the time.” She must have seen the dismay on his face as her features softened. “Buu. He’s been responsible for lots and lots of death, on and off the battlefield. Honestly, you probably saved lives by taking his.”
Buu felt flushed, unconvinced. Fever?
“Look.” Aru looked around as if searching for an idea. “You believe in Anaya, right?”
Buu nodded; the idea that someone other than the Easterners might not believe in the goddess-queen made him queasy. Nausea?
“And the general hit you before you did anything to him, right? You thought he would kill you?”
Buu nodded again.
“Well, I know Anaya is against murder, but she’s all over righteous vengeance, right?”
Buu sat back, staring into the shadows of the woods as he thought this new angle through. Anaya ascended to godhood when the home she worked in was attacked. She walked through the fire, her lord’s sword in hand, and struck down the villain ordering the attack.
She gained a throne when she led the Zadyan armies against the southern raiders, taking back stolen land and repaying the barbarians for the pain they visited. After she died, she sent burning plague to the houses of those who plotted against her.
“… I suppose…” Buu conceded, nodding slowly. The more he thought about it, the lighter he felt. The thought that Anaya might actually approve of his actions, rather than damning him for them, untwisted a knot in his gut. A wave of fatigue washed over him, the guilt that had propped him up eroding away.
“So…” Aru prompted, and when Buu looked confused, continued, “What else happened that caused the grimm to follow you?”
“Oh. I… umm… some soldiers were coming and I made the general’s body hide itself,” Buu explained, sheepish. “It got up and walked away.”
Aru stared at him, one eyebrow quirked. “You made a dead body walk?” she asked, voice measured in a way that gave Buu goosebumps. “Show me.”
With one quick motion Aru’s hand shot out, making Buu flinch. The grimm opened one eye, lazily watching as Aru squashed a beetle that had been picking its careful way along the log beside her. She grabbed the dead bug between her thumb and forefinger, bringing it as she sat beside Buu and placing the bug between them.
“You want me to make it walk?” Buu asked. “Isn’t it dangerous to use magic without any training?”
Aru waved Buu’s concern away. “It’s not nearly as bad as people think. The university just says that so wou ld-be mages turn themselves in. Having a monopoly on magic is kind of their thing.”
“What’s a monopoly?”
“Not important — focus. See if you can make it do anything,” Aru ordered, pointing at the beetle.
Buu couldn’t help but notice the note of skepticism in her tone. The challenge. The gentle condescension of an adult who thought he had misunderstood something he actually knew better than they did.
Buu’s face warmed, teeth tight as he rolled up his sleeves.
It took a few tries to find a connection to the bug, the absence of adrenaline and its alien nature adding to the challenge. But eventually, Buu felt the click in his chest. The rush of power and strength. The control.
“But… its legs were broken,” Aru marvelled , prodding the beetle’s body as it paraded back and forth before her in awful jerking motions.
“I don’t think that matters,” Buu said, remembering the soldiers in the square rising with their broken bodies. “Nobody’s home, so I guess they don’t care about the pain?”
Aru put her fingers against her eyes, chanting softly. When she opened them, they glowed, their soft brown shifting to vivid violet. Buu sucked in a breath of surprise as she scrutinized him with her strange gaze. He waited to feel pins and needles, or burning, or itching under the otherworldly examination, but nothing came.
Aru hummed thoughtfully after a minute, seeming immune to the awkwardness of the long silence. Buu breathed a sigh of relief when she moved her study to the grimm. Keeping low, she shuffled close to it, getting within arm’s reach before it opened one languid eye and lifted its lip in a tooth-filled sneer. Aru didn’t budge, apparently unfazed, and tilted her head from side to side.
“What do you see?” Buu asked, patience stretching thin. “Can you get it to leave me alone?”
Aru turned, blinking the magic from her eyes in wisps. “I need more of my instruments from the university. Without them I can’t know anything conclusive.”
“You’re a doctor, you must at least have a theory,” Buu pressed. In his experience, doctors always had theories.
“Well, let’s just say I don’t think you’re getting rid of the grimm anytime soon.”