The wildcourt

No one knows where they came from. It is said that one day they appeared from the forest, wearing brightly colored clothes and singing so beautifully that the birds fell silent to hear them.

There were hundreds. They did not have a God because they were one with the trees of the forest, with their animals and the fire; they were the swamp, the grass that was stepped on and, even so, they were hunted from their very birth.

They stopped stepping into cities far from the ancestral green, because that was where they were weakest. In the end, there were only three left: an echo of what was once a joyful village, joined to music like the wind. The world was not good, even to the forest. Why would it be to its children?

Even now, when the trees were replaced by large buildings and the asphalt covered everything, Arianne was not Edgar and Caleb's blood niece, but the three of them were what was left of the Wild Court, and they cared for each other. Edgar, Caleb, and Arianne kept the green alive and breathing.

"Hey! Your documents."

Arianne's expression changed as soon as she saw the policeman approaching Caleb, who was selling to a group of teachers further away. A pang of alert, sharp and shared, shot through her chest as she watched Edgar's shoulders tense twenty paces away. They were three strings of the same bow, and someone had just stretched them

Caleb raised his arms in a gesture of peace.

"We have the municipal permit.Let me take it out of my pocket," he said, in the serene voice of one who has already been through this too many times.

Both Arianne and Edgar began to walk towards the officers. It was an automatic impulse, a choreography of distrust etched in their bones, in their shared blood.

A few steps away, they saw one of the policemen push Caleb against the table. Harshly. The amulets fell to the floor with a dry sound, like broken glass. The world trailed away for a moment. Something clicked not only in her chest, but in the intangible space that bound them together.

"Hey! We have the permits! They're in the pocket!" Edgar shouted, approaching with both hands up. He didn't show it, but fury boiled behind his eyes, and Arianne could feel its warmth as if it were her own.

"What I see," said one of the policemen, in a mocking voice, "is that your people are always making trouble. Pack up your things."

Caleb barely managed to protest, but another uniformed man grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pushed him against the table, scattering the amulets on the floor.

"We have the permits!" Edgar shouted again, but the policeman closest to him took the paper and threw it on the ground to step on it later.

That's when Arianne saw red. Or maybe it was Edgar who, through the bond, passed the torch of his helpless rage to her.

"No," she thought. She didn't measure the consequences. Fury completely clouded her. She threw her whole body at one of the cops, scratching, pushing tooth and nail. There was no magic, there was no calculation. Just anger. Pure anger. The same one that burned in her uncles' throats.

"Stay away from them!! Don't you dare touch him!!" she roared, her voice broken with helplessness. She felt the arms of another officer lift her as if she weighed nothing. She kicked, she screamed, but it was useless.

"Let her go right now!" Edgar's voice rumbled with a firmness that was out of tune with his usual temperance. It was a brother's order, not a spectator's plea.

"She attacked a law enforcement officer," the police officer said, adjusting the handcuffs with unnecessary force.

Arianne, between sobs and with clenched teeth, began to murmur in her old language. It was a guttural, ancestral whisper, loaded with contained rage. There were tears in her eyes.

"Bənê feyda nabe... Edi ji xwe re bibira..." she whispered, as if each word were an invisible thread.

"Arianne!" Caleb's voice held a desperate tremor, his hands still up. He shook his head, pleading. Not from fear of what she might do, but from the pain of feeling her staggering alone on the edge of the abyss.

"No, no, we'll get you out. Don't get into any more trouble," Edgar said, his jaw clenched, though his voice trembled. It was a promise, not advice. A promise that resonated at the very core of his being.

They took her by force. Her feet dragged on the loose earth as fury vibrated in the air, as if the square itself held its breath. Somewhere behind her, two hearts were beating with a panicked rhythm that only she could hear.

She was seated in the back seat of the patrol car, handcuffed, her knuckles still tense. Arianne did not lower her head. She kept her gaze fixed on the rearview mirror.

She listened to their whispers, as if they hadn't just arrested someone unjustly. As if her fury didn't matter.

Her uncles were no longer in sight, and rage filled her chest like a war drum. She was fed up. Tired of being chased. Of being singled out for existing.

The smell of sweat and dirt on the seat told her it hadn't been cleaned in months. Her throat closed. They were discussing a game, about Cheryl from Human Resources. Something about hoping the woman wouldn't accept the young man's appointment.

"Look how serious she is," said the younger one, as he settled into his seat, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

His partner, the one who drove, let out a short laugh.

"Don't worry.At the police station we'll make a special request for you," he said, and the younger one laughed again. "It's going to take the seriousness out of you."

Arianne didn't even flinch, although she was terrified by those words. But the fury she felt seemed to be blinding her, as if they didn't care that she was a person. She felt a pressure in her chest and an anger that drowned her.

Without ceasing to hold the gaze in the mirror, she began to whistle. A single, uniform note.

A dark fog began to surround the patrol car, thick and dirty, as the wind hit harder.

"What the fuck...?" one of the men in the front seat managed to say, while the other leaned towards the windshield, unable to see beyond his own reflection.

Arianne murmured an ancient spell, inherited from her lineage, born of nights on the edge of fire and tongues that no one remembered anymore. She didn't move her hands. She was simply there, doing nothing. Her power was in the air, in the earth, in the atmosphere itself. And in the strength that two wills, joined to hers from afar, lent her.

She felt the emotions of those who had stopped her: the trembling fear, the covert rage, the helplessness. All of it fed her. She was empathetic, yes, but not passive. Her energy was nourished by what was around her. And by the cold, protective rage of her uncles.

And when the cops turned around, they saw her eyes.

Black.Deep. Empty as a crack in the night.

"Damn!" one of them shouted, clumsily backing away, while his partner pulled out his gun.

But nothing in her shrank. Nothing faltered. How could it, if they were three in one? She could hear the footsteps coming towards the ditch. Strong. Determined. And she felt them in the tremor of the bond, as an echo of Edgar's determination and Caleb's silent ferocity. That anger was not going to diminish; it was crying out for revenge.

And with each step, the fog thickened a little more.

The sounds of footsteps grew louder, like an echo rattling in the skulls of the two officers and shooting outwards, to no avail.

The roof of the patrol car creaked. Not as metal crunches in the rain, but as if something—or someone—had landed there with the gravity of judgment. The roof of the vehicle sank under the weight.

Footfalls.They were slow. Heavy. The entire vehicle was shaking, as the fog thickened so much it seemed solid. And yet, Arianne kept muttering.

"Bənê feyda nabe... 'dî ji xwe re bibîra..." she kept saying, her lips dry, her eyes glued to the front. She was no longer in that seat. Or maybe she was more there than ever.

Because at that time, the Wild Court manifested itself through her.

"Come on! GET OUT NOW!" shouted the policeman in the front seat, opening the door awkwardly, but without daring to touch her.

That's when Arianne turned her head. Slow. Deliberately slow. And smiled.

But it wasn't her smile. It was something else, as if something else inhabited her at that moment. A crooked, cynical curvature, a smile that did not belong on the young girl's face.

"Didn't you want to see our permits?" she said in a firm voice; her voice was not sweet, it was a mixture of several, all seeming to fight their way out of her.

In front of the patrol car, the fog opened like a curtain, revealing what appeared to be a spirit. Tall. Bony. Its long arms like dry branches. And above its head, horns rose like black branches out of hell.

It had no face. Just a polished skull where eyes should be, and from it hung talismans made of rope and teeth.

One of the officers shouted and fired. Then the other did too. The bullets pierced through the creature without harming it. No blood came out. It didn't fall. It wouldn't back down. It advanced.

"She's a witch!" one of them shouted, but the word was lost in the roar of the wind.

The spirit raised a hand.

And the roof of the patrol car just… came undone, as if it had been made of old paper. As if it had no more will to sustain itself.

The screams of the officers were swallowed by the fog.

They tried to run, but the creature didn't move like a living thing. It did not walk: it floated, it slid, as if the fog itself pushed it. When it raised its long, bony hands, there was no time to beg.

"God, it touched us!"

And it was like time was bending backwards.

Their bodies fell without force, without marks. They just stayed there, trembling, eyes open, but not looking at anything.

And then, with one last whisper, the spirit turned, as if responding to a voice that only she could hear. Arianne's eyes, now a deep green, followed its gaze into nowhere, seeing what the others couldn't: the faces of her uncles, nodding in the distance.

"Be careful in your steps," she said. Her voice was not a voice: it was an ancient warning, spoken a thousand times in the language of the woods.

Then she disappeared, swallowed by the fog just like everything else. When the wind blew away the haze, there was no trace of Arianne left.

Just the echoes of something that shouldn't have woken up. And the dull beat of a bond that, far from breaking, had been strengthened in the fire of need.