The Spirit of Sorrow Plains

By Cassandra Hamm

Eerie caterwauling split the air, making Aisha’s skin prickle and her bones melt. The ghost cat.

She eyed the swaying brush, lit silver by the moonlight. Dark bloodstains lingered on the dry stalks. Her hand tightened around the hilt of her useless knife.

“Zawadi?” The shrieking nearly swallowed her quavering voice. “Is that you?”

A chill slid across her skin. Aisha whipped around. A flicker, a silver wisp. The blade slipped from her clammy fingers and thudded to the dirt of Sorrow Plains.

The wailing halted, leaving gaping emptiness. Silver spread across Aisha’s vision and solidified into a shape—muscular flanks, flicking tail, flattened ears, bone-white eyes. A spirit paka, cat of the plains.

She knew that face, translucent as it was. The mount she’d ridden into battle, her partner and equal, the missing piece of her soul.

“Zawadi,” she breathed. “You are the one haunting the plains.”

Zawadi’s spirit jaws opened to show long, curved teeth. Aisha stepped back, boots crunching the bloodied grass. Could his translucent fangs tear into her mortal flesh?

He surged toward her like an angry fog, his claws sinking not into but through her forearm. Vicious, burning cold shot through the left side of her body.

She gasped, cradling her arm. No marks on her dark skin, no blood, just ice in her veins.

Zawadi circled her, silvery tail lashing.

Aisha shivered uncontrollably despite the sweat drenching her skin.

“Zawadi, I…” Nothing felt right. How could she explain the shame that coated her body as thoroughly as her sweat?

Don’t think about it. Not now. But being in the plains again, plus Zawadi’s icy touch and unblinking eyes, seemed to summon every detail of the gods-forsaken battle.

Arrows whistling through the humid night air. Screams that cut off too quickly. The desperate, broken yowls of paka who’d lost their riders and gut-deep sobs of warriors who’d lost their cat mounts. So many sightless eyes staring into the sky.

At least the others had kept their vows. They had followed through with their promise and joined their partners in glorious charges. We are one, even in death––the Shujaa vow.

The vow I broke.

Shoulders shaking, Aisha dropped to her knees. The skies had been dry since the battle, leaving the bloody grass as a reminder of her cowardice. Tears pricked her eyes. “I should have stayed with you.”

Zawadi said nothing. And why would he? To speak with her would require him to reopen the channel of communication between them. She didn’t deserve that.

“I was just so scared, and then you were… and I couldn’t…” Shivers wracked her frail, mortal body. “I couldn’t watch you… die.”

His blood had been so warm, gushing from his rapidly heaving chest onto her shaking hands. His terrified, trusting eyes had met hers. Stay with me, Aisha, he’d said in her mind. Please.

But a different thought had been louder––her own. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!

So she’d jumped over the bodies of her fallen comrades and prayed that the arrows would find other targets, trying to forget the betrayal in Zawadi’s eyes. As if she could outrun her fate—one even in death.

Coward, her mind said, but even that didn’t burn as much as her paka’s final thought––You said you’d stay until the end.

She’d lost her honor, her status as a Shujaa warrior, even her place in the tribe, all on the plains renamed as Sorrow. But none of that was punishment enough. You said you’d stay.

Now, Zawadi moved closer to her, his pale eyes searing into her tear-stained soul.

Her hands felt warm, sticky, as though once more drenched in his blood. She wiped them on her tunic, again and again, rubbing them raw and burning. More pain. More!

Stay with me. Zawadi’s voice, still echoing in her head. You said you’d stay with me.

Of course he hated her. She hated herself.

“Do with me what you must.” Aisha pushed the words from her throat, as dry as the grass of Sorrow Plains. “But please, Zawadi, move on from this place and find peace. I don’t want you to live like this. Not because of me. You deserve more.”

Head tilted, tail ever flicking, he watched her with those piercing eyes.

What had she expected, forgiveness? No, of course not. But to see him like this, full of rage and bitterness, unable to move on… All because of me…

“Please. I just want you to be at peace.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. How did a spirit kill? Would he possess her? Would he sever her life force?

A familiar, deep voice trickled into her mind. Aisha.

She gasped.

Zawadi moved so close their foreheads nearly touched, his ghostly fur whispering frost across her skin. You came back for me.

Aisha’s heart broke open. She longed to bury her face in his fur, breathe in his musky scent, curl up by his side. The way he spoke to her with such tenderness, his eyes no longer lit by the glow of rage… You came back for me, he’d said, like that was enough.

You were right to choose life for yourself, Zawadi said. It was the leaving that broke my spirit. But you’re here now.

 “I’m here now.” She choked back a sob. “Always.”

I will move on from this world now. Zawadi curled his tail around his paws, studying her. But we will be together again. Did that mean he wanted to be with her in the afterlife, despite what she’d done? Her cracked soul drank in his forgiveness like rain in a drought.

“Wait for me in the after, Zawadi,” she whispered.

Always.

As he melted away like dew in the sun, she heard the spirit whisper, Peace, and she knew it was as much for himself as for her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassandra Hamm is a psychology nerd, art collector, jigsaw puzzler, and hopeless romantic who spends most of her time lost in another realm. A mental health advocate with a passion for social justice, she writes about shattered girls finding their way in the world. Her award-winning work appears in various anthologies, including Havok Publishing’s collections, Warriors Against the Storm, Aphotic Love, Fantasea, Sharper Than Thorns, and The Never Tales, Volume One.

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