“Two scents,” he said. “His. And… us.”
“Us?” Skonk frowned.
Twobble pointed with his chin to the mushrooms, to the vine lattice, to the moss where our boots had left faint, clean prints. “He’s following our following. Like a dog chasing its own tail.”
“Well, foxes don’t do that,” Bella said.
“Goblins don’t, either,” Skonk added. “That’s a human trick.”
I looked downstream
“Maeve,” Bella said, voice dipping into the register she used only when she meant to be kind and couldn’t afford it. “If he’s circling, we should split. You and I follow this drag, and the goblins take the high path and watch for crossings. If the Wilds want to keep him, they will try to fold the paths. We’ll need more than one thread.”
I nodded, relief and dread tangling. “Twobble, Skonk—”
“High path,” Twobble said, saluting with two fingers and more bravery than sense. “If I see him, I’ll squeak exactly once. Twice if I’m being eaten.”
“By what?” I asked.
Twobble shrugged, and Skonk tipped an imaginary hat before they left.
Bella and I took the lower route. Every so often, a mushroom stood like a watchman on a root, pulsing us past.
We found more signs like another thread of hair snagged on thistle; the half-print of a palm in damp silt, the fingers long and elegant even in ruin.
“He’s afraid,” Bella said. “Not of us. Of himself.”
“I agree,” I said, and my voice cracked. Because I did know. Because I’d seen that same fear in Keegan’s eyes when his wolf raked the inside of his skin and he bit his lip to keep fromhowling. Because I’d seen it in my own reflection when the Wards spun wrong and I believed, for a moment, that my magic might break what I loved more than mend it.
We rounded a sweep of witch hazel. The air changed again, and my skin prickled.
“It smells like smoke,” I whispered.
“Shadow-scorch,” Bella said, nostrils flaring.
Yet another thing I would have to look up in the library.
We followed the scorch to a stand of yews hunched together like conspirators.
I caught a twig twisted into a loop, a feather black as pitch with a single white bar, and three pebbles, flat and moon-pale, stacked carefully.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s making anchors. Little proofs saying I’m here, I’m here.” She glanced at me. “He must know he’s going in circles.”
“We see you,” Bella told the empty clearing, and her voice didn’t shake at all.
Something flitted at the edge of sight. We spun. A branch lifted and settled. The feather quivered. For a single heartbeat, I heard the shape of my name wrapped in silence.
Maeve.
I didn’t call back. Not with voice. I set my palm to the yew’s bark and let the truth move the other way.
“Close,” I breathed.
The mushrooms here were few but bright as spilled paint. One pulsed slow-slow-fast, slow-slow-fast, as if trying to teach me a code.
We rounded a final bend and stopped as one.
