For a moment, I felt my head split open. Now, of course, I’ve never really experienced it before – but that’s like saying you don’t know what Ice cream would taste like having only eaten ice. It’s cold. And this was painful. Oh, dear god, I almost felt my soul slip through the crack!

Indeed, I felt some sort of gas escape through my head.

But, just like that, everything stopped.

When I finally found light entering my eyelids, I saw a furious silhouette against the backdrop of the moonlit lawn. She was tall, perhaps as tall as I was. Her arms were extended: one stretching to cover the eyes of Finora, the other ready to strike and break even the toughest metal. Iron hath no strength like a protective older sister.

Her eyes were aglow with the colour crimson. Even her fist began to glow. Now, I don’t know where you’re from, but that’s not a sign of pacifism in my book.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I cried, raising my hands as a sign of my utter surrender. “I am completely harmless!”

“Must I believe that from a stranger?” she said. “Cloaked and waiting behind my little sister while smelling like”, she sniffed the air a few times, “like-like that!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “If you only told me where the bath was!”

“Shut-up! You smell like,” she gave sniff again. “Like nothing. You’re annoying my nose! And I don’t know how to kill you while saving my sister from the sight of your naked body! Are you some kind of pervert?”

The force of the blow had undone my makeshift cloak of curtains. This was embarrassing.

I repeat, this was very embarrassing.

“I am glad that my smell, or lack thereof stopped you, my good miss,” I said. Nobody knows better how to kill time with words. “And pardon me but, I assure you if I could do something about this situation I would. I am completely harmless. Please! I beg you, ask Finora.”

At this, her breath intensified. The growling stopped. Her voice, unlike ice on the window, actually made me feel cold.

“What” she said, enunciating every word, “were you doing to my sister?”

On her arm five rings appeared. I cannot tell you what they were. They started turning around her arms in a high-pitched hum, like that of a jet engine.

“No, please! I give you my word!” I was, as of that moment, panicking. “Just ask her once!”

“What is he?” she asked Finora.

“One with no name.”

Goddammit girl, add some details!

“Is he from within?” the older sister continued.

“Could be” Finora answered.

The hum went away faster than when it started building up. And I was quite relieved at not having to think of how another split skull would feel.

"Cover yourself. And tell me how exactly you -- wait, what?" she looked aghast at Finora. "What do you mean 'One with no name'? He didn't tell you his name?"

"No," Finora replied. "He's nothing."

“By which she means,” I added, while getting myself out from that rather ridiculous situation, “that I am nothing dangerous.”

“Quiet!” Elder Sis said. But at least the standoff had progressed. Finora’s eyes were free from the fretting palm of her sister. I noticed her eyes had turned a shade of blue.

“I really don’t have the time for this,” Elder sis said. “There are more pressing matters. I should warn you, man without a name, if you try to harm my sister or myself, I will proceed to decapitate you.”

I bowed down. One must be always gracious, especially of trust from others. Trust, unlike money, fame, or even health, cannot be regained. Once earned it must be maintained.

“I am glad you give me a chance,” I said. “And, I assure you, I felt that blow quite right in my head.”

“Then that makes us reach an understanding,” she said. “Finora, the frost cellar!”

Finora moved to one of the walls that lay concealed in darkness. She did something to the wall, that I couldn’t see of course, and the wall beside me started to move. It opened, folding inside, with a large heaving sigh of hinges being moved by an unseen force.

I got off the ground as fast as I could. Even though I couldn’t feel the cold coming from within this new opening, I could see a diffused fluorescence of a certain type of white light. It beckoned to me. It stirred inside me a memory of another time. Or was it even time that I remembered? Wasn’t it just the light of a tube, blazing my eyes apart? I couldn’t place the memory anywhere in my head. It hurt to remember, just like a gash of a bad wound that still hurt, even though the skin had come back on.

I felt my knees wobble, and I had to steady myself by putting my hand on the wall. Perhaps they thought this was an effect of my crashing onto this beautifully finished stone wall? Perhaps. It was not. It was these terrible memories. Not that I had a problem with them, but they didn’t feel like mine. I felt that two and two didn’t indeed add up to four.

But the vast moose had also stood up. It moved! Fascinating. It plodded on, hoof after hoof, towards the opening, down stairs that clearly were going far deeper than what I thought was possible. But then, I didn’t even know what sort of place I was in.

“If you are still there, strange man, I must insist on a name,” the elder sister said from behind the moose. Her hand was on one of the large thighs of the beast, and her eyes were again luminescent. “Finora’s name is Finora. My name is Fangira. You must have one. Or else, make one up.”

“Fangira?” I said aloud to myself. “Terribly derivative, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, good Madam Fangira”

“Just Fangira. Please. I insist.”

“Fangira” I said, in a final nod. She did have a rather ‘Fang’-like personality. How appropriate.

“It is just,” I continued, “that I do not have one. As far as making it up goes, how about Cold Man?”

Miss Fangira turned around to me. Her red luminescent eyes caught mine and stared at them for what could have been ten seconds before saying a definitive “No.”

Ah, my heart, my heart. The bleeding drops of red. The coldness, the fury. The icy stare of cold murder just quickens the beating! And this I stood repeating to myself. She was quite the antithesis of a Gothic damsel. Of course, my dear reader, you will now remind me that I, in fact, may not even have a heartbeat to quicken, and you would be quite right, but I should think literature gives the author some licenses.

And these particular ten seconds made me realize what a truly marvellous situation I was in.  This was a gothic castle, and I had a very dead point of view in it. And there is, among the many memories of whatever the other life was, a certain mention of a certain poet with such a name as Edgar.

“Well then,” I said. “I am now called Edgar Crow.”

“Fancy name, Crow,” Fangira called from the bottom of the stairs. The dead moose had walked them down, even more skilfully than a live one.

Inside, I noticed the white diffused light coming from a series of panels set into the ceiling of that chamber. It had arches of stone, and many tall two-panelled doors. It was, as Fangira had mentioned, a cellar. And it was a very large one.

“Fancy cellar,” I said.

“Yes, the Manor is very strange in the basements,” Fangira said. “But come now. We need to work tonight.”

The moose slipped out of my sight (into one of the many closed two-panelled doors, I assume) and so did Miss Fangira. Was she going to skin the moose? It was dead too, right? Only held aloft by a magic I did not understand. Right?

But my idle speculation ended as she came back into view.

“Nora!” Fangira called as she climbed up the stairs. “Get ready. We must waylay a party of Imperial soldiers. Too many of them around at the same time.  And I think one of them may have found a way to the estate.”

“Imperial Soldiers?” I asked. “Is this supposed to be a secret castle?”

“Not from everyone,” Fangira replied with nonchalance. “Only from those who we don’t want. Which reminds me, where did you come from?”

“From a library on the fifth floor”

“Of this Manor?" her eyes narrowed and her eyebrows scrunched up. "Which wing?”

“I did not know there were wings to this place. I could see the grounds of this ‘Manor’ as you put it. The large window overlooks the east. The other end overlooked the quadrangle.”

“The first or the second one?”

“This place is really rather large.”

“Yes,” Fangira said. She washed her hands and pat her face with water from a running water tap in one of the basins of the Kitchen. “This was the residence of the famous wizard Echolocus. I’m sure you know of him?”

“I do not,” I said. “You see, the circumstances of my being he—”

“Figures” Fangira cut in. “I would buy your story – but there are no libraries on the fifth floor of the East Wing. Although, it is true, sometimes the walls morph.”

I would sweat, if I could. And yet, I felt the heat of her glare.

“We, that is Finora and I, are the guardians of this place. Caretakers, whatever you call us. We have been left in charge. And this place is important. But right now, time is too. We must make haste, now.”

“To fight the Imperial Soldiers?”

“To put them on a false trail. No need for us to fight. They just should not find how to get to this place. But, for as long as we keep talking, this will not happen. Finora! Are you ready?”

I turned around to see Finora standing beside the open door. To my surprise, her wings were now giant. They reached up over her shoulders and were somehow more – demonic? Is that the word I should use about this otherwise very normal looking girl? They were thicker, sharper, and more fearsome, and I could only imagine the terror a human would feel looking at them.

“Yes,” she answered, nodding her head.

“Wait,” I interjected. “Take me with you.”

“You’ll be a hindrance, Mr. Crow, or whatever name you made for yourself,” said Fangira. “And I cannot assure your safety.”

“Why, I don’t think from the tone that this is something unusual. You have done this before, right?”

“Plenty of times. But speed is important. Would you be able to run?”

I flexed and stretched my calf, and didn’t find anything wrong. Well, to be fair to her, that was a problem. I remembered that I did struggle to move around, and I hadn’t tested whatever this body was in a sprint or a run.

“I don’t think—”

“Finora!” cried her Elder sister. “Get him one of the Ranging boots.”

Finora vanished from the door without a second sound of her footsteps.

“We’ll give you boots, Mr. Crow,” she continued. “Ranging boots. Made by Echolocus, of course. The forest of Winterburne is large, and the paths shift. At first, most people think that this forest is not dangerous. After all, it is not that dense. It is open. It looks easy. You’re going on a path that curves this way and that but there is always a path. Or so it seems, Mr. Crow. You keep going and going, hoping to head to a direction North or East or West. But you’ll be going on for hours before you realize that you are truly lost.”

Miss Fangira walked up to me. Her eyes caught the moonlight and I looked into them. They were not luminescent or red, but a dark deep brown. They were eyes filled with the love of life; eyes that had seen a lot of it. Her face was uncomfortably near to me.

“That is the Forest of Winterburne. Those it doesn’t like wander in its paths for years, decades, and centuries. It hides many secrets. Many, many dangerous secrets, Mr. Crow.”

She grabbed my curtain-cloak, and pulled it tighter towards her. “I don’t have clothes for you. These boots, though, will help you run as swift as the cold wind that blows frost on the leaves. But the question is whether you could keep up.”

Finora came back with these large high ankle boots. Large, leathery and glossy black. I tried not to compare it to her wings.

I put them on, and did feel much better. Not the cold aspect, of course. Just the comfort of them. The fitting. I wore them without any socks, and I made a mental note of buying new socks as soon as I could. I would never do this again. Not the going out into a dangerous forest where I had been warned with a threatening monologue by an impatient guide, but the wearing-shoes-without-socks part. Never do that.

Dangerous forests though. Eh.

I walked into the lawn under the crystal blue moonlight. There was a carpet of snow blemished only by the footsteps of a dead moose and a woman. The stars glimmered bright, even with the full moon shining with all its reflected might.

I looked at Finora, who stood beside me with a smile so slight, that from afar no one would notice, but a smile so warm, that it could melt even the large glaciers.

“You were afraid she wouldn’t like me. Does she now?” I asked her.

“I think so,” she replied.

Perhaps I was the only interesting thing that had ever happened in this young girl’s life. That is a very sad life.

“But keep up, and be close to sister Fan,” she added.

Finora added a sentence? This ranging thing supposedly was serious business.

Speaking of the devil, Fangira stood beside us.

“Speed is of essence,” she said. “And whatever happens, if you see the Bloody Knight, you run into the forest, out of the path.”

And then, she headed off in a sprint across the grounds and out into the shadows at the edge of the forest where I couldn’t follow her by sight. Finora had vanished as well. This was to be a long night.