valravn simply being apart traveling alone

That is why they do not keep him in check.” “The Valravn gives presents to his favorites. Like trapped magic.” Ivy refills her flask from the spring. Though the day was dark, it glimmered like a firefly. I saw that she wore around her neck a curious new stone. “I didn’t tell you this, little one, but when I delivered cheese to the mayor’s house, the mayor’s wife – the chooser of hearts herself – invited me in out of the rain. If Sweetbriar is unmistakably puppyish, Ivy is so slight and inscrutable, it would be hard for a stranger to guess her age. He gives his acolytes what they want.” Ivy pauses to toss back the hood of her cloak and drink water from her leather flask. “Because the Valravn doesn’t give the people what they need. “Then how come you told me the Valravn never gave the village a single thing we needed?” But nothing – we should wish it was nothing.” “What the Valravn gives, consumes more than it provides. The Valravn doesn’t give anything to anybody. “But Sister, you don’t believe what the elders say. “Every mouthful we take before he lies slain, the deeper we sink into his debt.” “We eat none but what the Valravn gives us,” Ivy replies firmly. “It’s hard to have adventures on an empty stomach.” “We should not stop to eat, not till weakness claims us. “I’m hungry, Sister,” Sweetbriar says, outstretching her arms to balance on the wet stones. By noon, Ivy carries Sweetbriar’s cloak and slippers as the latter wades in a babbling brook. The girls walk through the cool of the morning into the heat of the day. He sears the hearts before he eats them, so the flesh cracks and blisters and the inside gleams back to life. He lives in a cave with all of human history painted on its walls in arcane symbols. He stands on two vulpine legs like a human man and his pelt bristles with thick black feathers. They know where the riches of these households come from. These two sisters have their own opinions about that. The Valravn, the community’s captor – but also, the elders maintain, their benefactor, bestowing riches not of this world, filling their wells with healing elixir, fecundifying their soil and their barnyards. Every chosen villager cursed and screamed and begged for their lives. They never went willingly, not when their number was called, not the blacksmith, nor the schoolmaster, nor the tavern’s proprietress. The Valravn craving ever more from their community’s lifeblood, a beloved soul hell-banished each time. For the last three years, it has been the heart of a human being, selected by raffle at the festival. Since long before the sisters’ conceptions, the people of the village have made a yearly sacrifice to the Valravn. But sometimes a bold child must step up to address what the adults will not. It is out of the ordinary, the quest of two young girls to slay the Valravn. This is the first adventure they’ve gone on. Ivy steadily knits while Sweetbriar rolls yarn balls for their kitten, or tries to stand on her head, or clumsily plucks the lyre and sings, for many verses, songs she makes up on the spot all by herself. They spend cool evenings by the fire in the big room of their simple stone cottage. Their father is the milkman and their mother is the cheesemaker. The sisters live in a village at the edge of the wood. Solemn as a salt pillar beneath her hooded cloak, even as she refuses to look back.

Ivy consults her compass, checks the dagger on her belt. “Sister,” whispers cherubic Sweetbriar, rosy-cheeked in the chill of the morning dew, still rubbing her eyes awake, “do you really think we can slay the Valravn?” Complementary flavors, the two varieties of female success. Perhaps sisters naturally tend to arrive in sets of two, like seasoning shakers: paragon and renegade, preservative and spice. One serious, law-abiding, scientific or religious – the other a madcap dreamer. One sense and one sensibility, as it were. Pairs of sisters in stories tend to be these types, I’ve noticed. Sweetbriar is the fanciful, feral one, sheltered under her protection. Ivy is the prim, plain older sister, the keeper of wisdom. I will gift them names: Ivy and Sweetbriar. Barely dawn, when these sisters enter the wood with their snail buckets. This is the early moon, crescent as a fingernail, snagged in the silk of the still-pale sky.

Valravn simply being apart traveling alone