Appointed Night
Written for Bradley Ramsey’s Power up Prompt #29
The mist came at twilight, as it always did, but on this night—the night of the autumn equinox—it came with purpose.
Lydia stood at the edge of the forest and watched the fog roll toward her, white and thick as wool, swallowing the twisted oaks and blackthorn thickets one by one. It moved against the wind. The breeze blew east, carrying the scent of woodsmoke and dying leaves, but the mist crept west, toward the house, toward them. Toward her and Thomas.
She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, though it wasn’t the cold that made her shiver.
“Lydia?” Thomas’s voice came from behind her, small and uncertain. “Mother says we’re to come inside. She says it isn’t safe.”
Lydia didn’t turn. She kept her eyes on the forest, on the way the mist seemed to pause at the boundary stones, those ancient markers that ringed their stepmother’s property like broken teeth. The fog pressed against an invisible barrier, testing, searching for weakness.
“Since when,” Lydia said quietly, “has our stepmother cared about our safety?”
Thomas came to stand beside her. He was twelve years old, four years her junior, and still possessed that terrible innocence that Lydia had lost somewhere between their father’s death and the day their stepmother’s eyes had begun to gleam with something that wasn’t quite human. He tucked his hand into hers, and she felt how cold his fingers were.
“She seemed frightened,” Thomas said. “I’ve never seen her frightened before.”
That, Lydia thought, was because Thomas had never learned to look properly. Their stepmother wore fear the way other women wore perfume—sparingly, and only when she thought no one was watching, but Lydia had been watching for three years now, ever since the night she’d woken to find their stepmother standing in the garden at midnight, speaking to the mist in a language that made Lydia’s teeth ache.
“What do you see when you look at the forest?” Lydia asked her brother.
Thomas tilted his head, considering. The dying light caught in his dark hair, turning it copper at the edges. He had their father’s eyes, gray as river stones, trusting as a lamb’s.
“Trees,” he said finally. “Mist. It’s beautiful, in a way. Like something from a story.”
“And what kind of story?”
“The kind where magic is real.” He smiled up at her, that gap-toothed grin that still made him look like a child, though he was growing tall and gangly, all elbows and knees. “The kind where anything is possible.”
Lydia’s throat tightened. She wanted to tell him the truth, that magic was real, but it was the kind of magic that demanded payment, that took and took until there was nothing left to give. She wanted to tell him about the journal she’d found hidden in their stepmother’s room, the one with pages that seemed to writhe in the candlelight, filled with words in that same aching language. She wanted to tell him about the bargain, but how did you steal innocence from someone who had so little else?
“Come,” she said instead, tugging his hand. “We should go inside.”
They turned toward the house—that grand, impossible house that had appeared seemingly overnight after their father’s funeral. Lydia remembered the cottage they’d lived in before, small and warm and smelling of bread and her father’s pipe tobacco. She remembered her father’s laugh, the way he’d swing Thomas onto his shoulders and call Lydia his “little scholar” because she was always reading.
Then he’d died. A fever, the physician said, though it had come on so suddenly, so violently, that Lydia had wondered, and three days after they’d buried him, their stepmother—who had been beautiful but poor, who had married their father for security and nothing more—had led them to this house at the forest’s edge.
“Our fortune has changed,” she’d said, and her smile had been sharp as broken glass.
The house loomed before them now, three stories of gray stone and dark windows, wrapped in ivy that never seemed to grow or die but remained perpetually the same. Candlelight flickered in the parlor window, and Lydia could see their stepmother’s silhouette, pacing back and forth.
“She’s been like that all day,” Thomas whispered. “Walking and walking. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t even look at me when I asked her what was wrong.”
Because today is the day, Lydia thought. Today is the day the debt comes due.
She’d found the journal two weeks ago, hidden in a locked drawer in their stepmother’s dressing room. Lydia had learned to pick locks out of necessity—their stepmother often locked them in their rooms when she had visitors, though Lydia never saw anyone come or go. The journal had been wrapped in black silk, and the moment Lydia’s fingers touched it, she’d felt a shock run up her arm, sharp and cold as winter lightning.
She’d almost put it back. Almost, but then she’d opened it, and she’d read, and she’d understood.
The bargain is struck, the first entry read, dated three days before their father’s death. I have offered what was requested. Two souls, young and untainted, to be delivered on the autumn equinox when the veil grows thin. In exchange: beauty that will not fade, wealth that will not diminish, and years beyond counting.
The Forest Spirit has accepted. The price is set. The children will be claimed when the mist comes calling.
Lydia had read it three times, her hands shaking so badly the words blurred. Then she’d read the rest, page after page of her stepmother’s increasingly frantic entries. Descriptions of rituals performed at midnight. Lists of herbs and stones and whispered words. And, most damning of all, the date circled again and again in red ink The Autumn Equinox.
Today.
“Lydia?” Thomas squeezed her hand. “You’re hurting me.”
She loosened her grip, realizing she’d been clutching his fingers hard enough to leave marks. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
They climbed the steps to the front door. It opened before they could knock, and their stepmother stood in the doorway, backlit by the warm glow of the house. She was beautiful, she was always beautiful, with hair like spun gold and skin like cream and eyes the color of summer sky. Tonight tho, those eyes were wild, darting past them to the forest, to the mist that pressed ever closer.
“Inside,” she said. Her voice was sharp. “Now.”
They obeyed, because they always obeyed, and their stepmother slammed the door behind them with enough force to rattle the windows. She threw the bolt, then the chain, then pressed her back against the wood as if she could hold back the entire forest through will alone.
“Mother?” Thomas ventured. “Are you—”
“Go to your rooms,” she said. “Both of you. Lock your doors. Don’t open them for anything, do you understand? Not for anything.”
“What’s happening?” Thomas asked, and Lydia heard the fear creeping into his voice now, finally, too late.
Their stepmother’s laugh was high and brittle. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” She pushed away from the door and began to pace again, her silk skirts rustling like dead leaves. “I gave everything. I did everything right. The ritual, the words, the offerings. It should have worked.”
“What should have worked?” Lydia asked quietly.
Her stepmother’s head snapped toward her, and for a moment, just a moment, Lydia saw something ancient and terrible looking out through those blue eyes.
“The binding,” her stepmother whispered. “I bound you to the house. You shouldn’t be able to leave. You shouldn’t be able to cross the threshold without my permission, but the magic is slipping. I can feel it slipping.”
Thomas looked at Lydia, confusion written across his face, but Lydia understood. Their stepmother had tried to keep them trapped, to ensure they’d be here when the Forest Spirit came to collect its due, but something had gone wrong. The binding had weakened.
They could run.
The realization must have shown on Lydia’s face, because their stepmother lunged forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t even think about it. If you run, if you break the bargain, it will come for me instead. Do you understand? It will take me, and I will suffer for eternity in your place.”
“Good,” Lydia said, and was surprised by the venom in her own voice.
Her stepmother’s hand cracked across her cheek, sharp and sudden. Thomas cried out, but Lydia barely felt it. She was too busy watching her stepmother’s face crumble, beauty giving way to something desperate and ugly.
“You don’t understand,” her stepmother said. “You’re children. You don’t understand what it’s like to grow old, to feel your body betraying you, to watch everything you are fade away. I was beautiful once—truly beautiful—and men would have given anything for a smile from me, but beauty dies, Lydia. It withers and rots like everything else. And I refused to let it go.”
“So you sold us,” Lydia said flatly. “You sold your husband’s children to a monster.”
“I sold you to a spirit,” her stepmother corrected. “There’s a difference. Spirits can be bargained with. They follow rules. And the rule is simple, two souls, delivered on the appointed night, in exchange for what I was promised.”
“And what happens to us?” Thomas asked in a small voice. “After we’re... delivered?”
Their stepmother looked away. “I don’t know. The journal didn’t say.”
Liar, Lydia thought. She’d read the journal cover to cover. She knew exactly what happened to those claimed by the Forest Spirit. They became part of the mist, part of the forest itself. They forgot their names, their lives, everything they’d been. They became hollow things, beautiful and terrible, luring other travelers into the trees to feed the endless hunger of the woods.
“We’re leaving,” Lydia said. She grabbed Thomas’s hand and pulled him toward the stairs. “Pack a bag. Only what you can carry. We’re leaving tonight.”
“You can’t!” Their stepmother’s voice rose to a shriek. “The binding—”
“Is broken,” Lydia said. “You said so yourself. The magic is slipping. Which means we can cross the threshold. Which means we can run.”
“And go where?” Her stepmother laughed, that brittle sound again. “The forest surrounds us for miles in every direction. There’s no town, no village, no help. There’s only the trees and the mist and the Spirit that waits within. You’ll be running straight into its arms.”
“Then we’ll take our chances,” Lydia said.
She pulled Thomas up the stairs, ignoring their stepmother’s protests, ignoring the way the woman collapsed against the door and began to sob. They reached the second-floor landing, and Lydia pushed Thomas toward his room.
“Pack,” she said. “Warm clothes. Food if you have any hidden away. And Thomas?” She gripped his shoulders, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Whatever happens tonight, whatever you see or hear, you stay with me. Do you understand? You don’t wander off. You don’t trust anything the forest shows you.”
“I don’t understand,” Thomas said, and tears were streaming down his face now. “Why is this happening? What did we do?”
“Nothing,” Lydia said fiercely. “We did nothing. This is her sin, not ours, but we’re the ones who have to pay for it unless we run.”
She kissed his forehead quickly, then pushed him into his room and closed the door. Her own room was at the end of the hall, small and sparse, with a narrow bed and a single window that looked out over the forest. She moved quickly, pulling her traveling cloak from the wardrobe, stuffing a bag with an extra dress, her father’s pocket watch, the small knife she used for cutting herbs.
The journal.
She’d hidden it under her mattress, and now she pulled it out, weighing it in her hands. Part of her wanted to burn it, to destroy any record of her stepmother’s evil, but another part—the part that had learned to survive in this house of lies—knew that knowledge was power. The journal contained the words of the bargain. It might contain the key to breaking it.
She shoved it into her bag.
Outside her window, the mist had reached the house. It pressed against the glass like a living thing, and Lydia could see shapes moving within it, tall, thin figures that might have been trees or might have been something else entirely. She heard singing, faint and far away, in that language that made her teeth ache.
The Forest Spirit was calling.
She turned from the window and nearly screamed. Thomas stood in her doorway, his bag slung over his shoulder, his face pale but determined.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Lydia nodded. She took his hand, and together they crept down the stairs. Their stepmother was still by the door, but she’d stopped crying. She sat with her back against the wood, her beautiful face blank and empty.
“You’ll die out there,” she said without looking at them. “The forest takes everyone eventually.”
“Then we’ll die free,” Lydia said.
She reached for the bolt, and her stepmother didn’t try to stop her. The chain rattled as Lydia pulled it free. The door swung open, and the mist poured in, cold and damp and smelling of earth and rot and something else—something sweet and cloying, like flowers left too long in a vase.
Lydia stepped over the threshold, pulling Thomas with her. The moment her foot touched the ground beyond the house, she felt it—a snapping sensation, like a rope pulled too tight finally breaking. The binding was gone. They were free.
Behind them, their stepmother began to laugh, high and wild and broken.
“Run,” she called after them. “Run fast and far, little ones, but know this, the Forest Spirit always collects its debts. Always. And if it cannot have you tonight, it will hunt you through every night that follows until the bargain is fulfilled.”
Lydia didn’t look back. She pulled Thomas into the mist, into the forest, into the unknown. The trees closed around them like fingers, and the singing grew louder, closer. She could see lights now, dancing between the trunks—pale blue and sickly green, beautiful and terrible.
“Lydia,” Thomas whispered. “I’m scared.”
“I know,” she said. “So am I.”
They ran.
The forest floor was soft beneath their feet, carpeted with moss and fallen leaves that muffled their footsteps. The mist was so thick that Lydia could barely see three feet ahead, and she kept one hand stretched out in front of her to avoid running into trees. The other hand gripped Thomas’s wrist so tightly she knew she must be hurting him, but she couldn’t let go. If they were separated in this fog, she’d never find him again.
The singing followed them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes all around. It was beautiful, achingly beautiful and part of Lydia wanted to stop, to listen, to follow it deeper into the trees. She remembered the journal’s warnings about the Spirit’s voice, how it could enchant and beguile, how it could make you forget everything you’d ever loved.
“Don’t listen,” she gasped to Thomas. “Don’t listen to the singing.”
But Thomas had stopped running. He stood frozen, his head tilted, his eyes distant and dreaming.
“Thomas!” Lydia shook him. “Thomas, look at me!”
“Do you hear it?” he whispered. “It’s so beautiful. It’s calling my name.”
“It’s a trick,” Lydia said desperately. “It’s the Spirit. It’s trying to lure you in.”
“No,” Thomas said, and he smiled—that innocent, trusting smile that broke her heart. “No, it’s not trying to hurt us. It’s lonely. Can’t you hear it? It’s so lonely, and it just wants someone to talk to.”
“Thomas, please—”
He pulled free from her grip with surprising strength and walked into the mist. Lydia lunged after him, but something stopped her—a wall of cold air that felt solid as stone. She pushed against it, screaming Thomas’s name, but he was already gone, swallowed by the fog, and then the mist parted, and Lydia saw it.
The Forest Spirit stood in a clearing she hadn’t noticed before, in a place that shouldn’t exist. It was tall—impossibly tall—with limbs like branches and skin like bark and eyes that glowed with that same pale blue light, but its face was beautiful, heartbreakingly so, with features that seemed to shift between human and something else, something ancient and wild.
Thomas stood before it, small and fragile, and the Spirit reached down with one long-fingered hand to touch his cheek.
“No!” Lydia threw herself against the invisible barrier, and this time it gave way. She stumbled into the clearing, placing herself between Thomas and the Spirit.
The Spirit regarded her with those glowing eyes, and when it spoke, its voice was like wind through leaves, like water over stones, like the forest itself given sound.
“The bargain must be kept,” it said. “Two souls were promised. Two souls I will have.”
“Take her instead,” Lydia said, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. “Take our stepmother. She’s the one who made the bargain. She’s the one who should pay.”
The Spirit tilted its head, considering. “The bargain was specific. Two souls, young and untainted. The woman who called me is neither young nor untainted. Her soul is twisted with greed and vanity. It would poison the forest.”
“Then the bargain was unfair,” Lydia said. “She had no right to offer us. We’re not hers to give.”
“And yet she gave you,” the Spirit said. “And I accepted. The words were spoken. The price was set. Such things cannot be undone.”
Lydia’s mind raced. There had to be a way out, some loophole, some trick. The journal had said that spirits followed rules. If she could just figure out what those rules were—
“The bargain said we were to be delivered on the autumn equinox,” Lydia said slowly. “But we weren’t delivered. We came here of our own free will. We crossed the threshold ourselves. Doesn’t that change things?”
The Spirit was silent for a long moment. The mist swirled around them, and Lydia could feel the weight of the forest’s attention, as if every tree, every creature, every blade of grass was watching, waiting.
“Clever,” the Spirit said finally. “Yes. You came willingly. That does change things.”
Hope flared in Lydia’s chest. “Then we’re free? The bargain is broken?”
“No,” the Spirit said, and the hope died. “The bargain is merely... delayed. You have bought yourself time, child. But time is all you have bought. I will hunt you through the days and nights that follow. I will call to you in dreams. I will wait at every crossroads, every threshold, every boundary. And eventually, you will come to me. They always do.”
“Why?” Thomas asked suddenly. He’d been silent this whole time, but now he stepped forward, looking up at the Spirit with those trusting gray eyes. “Why do you need us? What did our stepmother promise you that’s worth all this?”
The Spirit looked down at him, and something flickered across its inhuman face, something that might have been sadness, or regret, or hunger.
“I need you,” it said, “because I am bound. Long ago, I made my own bargain, and the price was my freedom. I am chained to this forest, to this mist, to this endless hunger. The only way I can feel anything—joy, sorrow, love, pain—is through the souls I claim. They become part of me, and for a brief, beautiful moment, I remember what it was to be alive.”
“That’s horrible,” Thomas whispered.
“Yes,” the Spirit agreed. “It is.”
The it did something Lydia didn’t expect. It stepped back, releasing them from its presence.
“Go,” it said. “Run while you can, but know that I will follow. When you are tired, when you are lost, when you have nowhere left to run—I will be waiting.”
The mist closed in again, and the Spirit vanished. Lydia grabbed Thomas’s hand and ran, crashing through the undergrowth, not caring about direction, only distance. They ran until her lungs burned and her legs shook, until Thomas was sobbing with exhaustion and she had to half-carry him.
Finally, they collapsed at the base of an enormous oak tree, gasping for breath. The mist was thinner here, and through the gaps, Lydia could see stars—real stars, not the false lights of the forest.
“What do we do now?” Thomas asked.
Lydia pulled out the journal with shaking hands. She opened it to the first page, to the words of the bargain, and began to read by starlight.
There had to be an answer. There had to be a way to break a bargain made with a creature that was itself bound by an older, darker promise, and as she read, as the night deepened around them and the forest whispered its secrets, Lydia began to understand that their stepmother’s bargain was only the beginning. The Forest Spirit was not their true enemy.
It was a prisoner, just like them, and somewhere in the mist, something older and hungrier was watching, waiting for them all.
Stay Weird. Love You. Mean It.
