“Did your father cause it?”
“Not to know. She went to his bed willing enough, from what little I did hear, she came out whole, and in the first few years I remember she was…” Toinette searched for a word, shrugged again, and let her hand fall back to her thigh. “Fine. Sad, of course, and ashamed, as an unwed girl with a babe might well be, and even then I think she was jumpy, but we got along.”
Erik kept his hands steady on her back, not presuming to hold her closely but not wanting to let her go either. After a little while, she spoke again.
“People see too much. And eight years isn’t such a long time—a woman of twenty-five who looks like a maid of eighteen might pass as merely well preserved. We both know that. When that woman never gets a fever or a cough, never has a bad tooth or a cut that festers…people notice.Shenotices. When she’s no better than she should be, to start…”
“There were rumors,” Erik said.
“There were rumors. She listened. And then there was me. Too strong, too healthy, strange eyes. By the time I was ten, Mam…she went to mass a great deal, and when she wasn’t there, even when she was home, she was often…gone. Sitting, staring at the wall, not moving. For hours. The priests would come and feed her, when one of them was feeling kind. I did it otherwise.” She stopped and swallowed. The green light washed over them again, making sharp lines out of every shadow. “When I transformed the first time, she stabbed me.”
“God have mercy.” Erik pulled her closer, and Toinette leaned her head against his chest.
“I can’t blame her now,” she said. “Her child vanished. There was a monster in its place. She probably thought I’d kidnapped her daughter. It was brave, considering. And she was sorry for it when I turned back. But that’s when I thought I’d better leave. I left word with the priests to look in on her.”
“And you came to Loch Arach.”
“I did. After a while.”
He could imagine, and couldn’t imagine, whata whilewould have held for a girl of twelve, one without the knowledge to control her own transformations, without a known ally in all the world. Erik lifted one hand and stroked Toinette’s hair, half expecting the touch of it to burn him, as though he’d lain his fingers on a holy relic. “I’m glad you found us,” he said, because he thought she might hit him if he said again that he was sorry or called attention to the wetness on her face.
“Me too.” Toinette cleared her throat. “I never thought I’d tell that. I never met the person who needed to hear it. But I wanted to say it before we went in there.” A jerk of her head indicated the temple. “I wanted to tell you. I hope the knowledge isn’t too great a burden.”
“An honor, rather,” he said.
For once, she didn’t make an irreverent reply or try to shrug off the moment. Her embrace tightened, and then she leaned up to kiss him lightly. “Go to sleep,” she said. “I won’t let this place have you.”
Thirty-Two
Of course there were dreams, and of course the dreams were far worse than they had been. Even in the midst of the nightmare, Toinette wasn’t surprised.
The dead wrapped their cold arms around her. They clawed at her flesh, and the wounds opened onto black nothing. Pustules swelled on her body and burst. She saw bone beneath. It shifted in the same liquidlywrongway that the elk creatures’ bodies had, lengthened into spurs and claws, then dissolved again, and the dead slurred in her ears all the time.
Stinking flesh.
Damned.
This is all.
A dead man’s mouth yawned impossibly wide, as the specter’s the day before had done. Inside was darkness that pulled at her.
“Piss off,” she said and struck out at it with one hand, forming claws almost as an afterthought. The skull broke under her blow and fell into the hole, which eagerly consumed its own matter. Toinette pulled herself back, shook free of the dead, and woke to more darkness.
“Well,” she told Erik, listening with gratitude to the beat of his heart beneath her ear, “I’m awake.”
They ate quickly and got moving. It was just as cold in the morning, if morning it was, as it had been, and the forest looked no different, though the green light had stopped flashing. Walking was warmer. Besides, the faster they went, the quicker they could do what they needed and be gone, or die and be done.
Before she’d been walking long, Toinette was sure either would be better than lingering.
Onward, in silence, they passed through the stream and into a trackless forest, keeping the temple ahead of them as a goal. For one stretch, the undergrowth would be clear, and they’d make their way around snarls of wood with comparative ease. Then the plants would close in again, and it would be work for swords: brutal, clumsy slashing that left Toinette coated with clammy sweat.
The sap hardly smelled at all, but she heard faint screams as she hacked at the plants. Occasionally, and worse, she heard laughter.
“We could change,” said Erik after the first such encounter, “and burn them.”
Toinette shook her head. “I’d as soon not breathe the smoke.”
Erik grimaced and made no argument. Changing wouldn’t have let them fly either. The branches above them spiked and twined in a painful mating, almost obscuring the sky. Any attempt to fly out would have brought only mangled wings—and one of Erik’s hadn’t fully healed yet.
