Chapter 14

Poor, poor, Evangeline, she's not having a good night at all.

“Don’t matter how much it hurts, honey,” Evangeline’s mother whispered from the depths of her memory as she leaned against a tree looking skywards, grunting from the pain. She was holding her leg, feeling the warmth of her blood wash over her hand, quickly becoming cold in the deep mountain air. She watched the trees wave at the stars, and for a moment, she wished to join the dancing stars in the great void, but she couldn’t give up. She took a deep breath, wince from the pain, looking down at the metal sticking out of her leg.

                “You get over it,” her mother’s voice said, “you keep going, you keep fighting, you hear me?”

                Her mother had made sure Evangeline was as tough as nails. Evangeline had learned from an early age the world was cruel and no one was going to look out for Evangeline except for her and her mother, which her mother was dead now. She would take her on long camping trips, making sure Evangeline could hike for days, build a fire, and make a tent from nothing.

                She was planning to teach Evangeline how to hunt; she knew how to fish and kill, but her father stopped the hunting trips before Evangeline could learn anything; he didn’t trust the camping trips.

                “You got to keep going,” the voice said. Her mother had one rule: she would show her how to do something once, Evangeline had to try it a second time, and her mother would help, but the third time, Evangeline had to do it alone, no matter the outcome. “Now, Evangeline, move it.”

                She pushed herself off the tree, limping down the side of the mountain. She was not sure where she was going, but all she was doing was what Abel told her. He told her to move, to get away, and he would find her.

                She trusted him. She wasn’t sure why, but there was goodness in his eyes.

                The gunshots from the men who ran them down could be heard in the wind. They were far away, but she knew they were dying. She wasn’t sure why Abel was so good at killing, but he did better than anyone else.

                She put her hand against a tree, looking down at the nasty metal sticking out of her leg and the blood rushing all down her pants. She went to take it out.

                “You got any way to stop it from bleeding?” her mother’s voice asked.

                She sighed, pushing herself off the tree and heading farther down until she saw the dark shape of an old cabin. She started to head for the cabin; she had to get out of the cold, find a way to get the metal out of her, and stop the bleeding.

                There was a good chance something was in the cabin as she fell to her knees outside it. She punched the ground, shaking her head and trying her best to stop herself from crying out loud. She pulls back the cry but not the tears. She took a second before she got up, crashing into the cabin. She lay there for a second, staring at the ceiling.

                “I’m starting to think You don’t like me, sir,” Evangeline said to the ceiling, but she mostly talking to God. Her mother was a deep believer in the Lord, but Evangeline had her questions about the Man Up There, and even more so now that she was laying on the floor, letting blood leak out from her. She wasn’t sure He was there, and if He was up there, then the Bard was right about the world.

                O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

                Evangeline was sure the Good Lord cared nothing about the world below, turning His holy gaze away. It was the reason, after all, why magic was dying. God had taken His blessing from the people.

                She sighed with the agony still chewing on her leg, which was good. It meant she was alive and hadn’t bled out too much.

“I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave,” Evangeline mumbled from the Good Book.

“Stop it, child,” a sweet whisper spoke to her, and she felt as if a warm hand was petting her hair, “your woes have been heard. He has sent you as a hero of the ages.”

Evangeline sat up, looking around for the voice, the person, but only the darkness sat with her, and the cold wind blew in from the door, but when she looked to her right, where the voice had come from, she saw a medical kit. She crawled over to it and pulled out the tourniquet and bandages. She jerked the metal from her leg while biting down on the collar of her jacket to block out the scream of pain and then quickly got to work to stop the bleeding. The metal sat in a pool of blood while Evangeline was sitting there. She was almost going to close her eyes when the shouts of boots coming into the cabin made her open them.

“Look here, boys,” a man said with a nasty face and a rifle in hand. There were two other men on his side. “We found our girl.”

“Sure did, boss,” the one to his left said, smiling at her.

“She looks a bit wounded,” the right one said, taking a step forward and kneeling, “but good enough for us.”

She looked between the men, seeing in their dark eyes what all the wicked men had seen when staring at her. They saw her as a toy who was meant to be used and abused, and they have evil thoughts. She couldn’t get away from them, and there was no point in trying to talk them out of it. She was too wounded to make it but saw something she almost couldn’t believe.

A man looking like a native stepped out of the darkness behind the three men with plans on removing them from this life; the thief the Good Book called Death pulled free a long blade, smiling at Evangeline as he cut the men down before they could gasp for air. She watched them crash to the floor, holding their necks, crying from the wounds there and their eyes as Mr. Crow stood in front of Evangeline.