“I don’t know, honestly.” I’d never achieved anything of this scope before and had no experience to draw from. It was entirely possible they’d turned back into people once they were far enough away. “They might be better off than we are.”
The weather was going to be a serious problem. Neither Sam nor I was dressed for winter. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been; Sam wore a green jacket over a green cambric shirt, and I had my good red hooded cloak. Better still, I was wearing more sensible footwear than the last time I’d had to tramp throughthese woods on foot. I doubted we’d freeze to death as long as we kept in motion.
But it didn’t strike me as a wise idea to bed down for a night in the great outdoors if we could avoid it. On the plain of ice at the top of the world, I’d had a magic stone that kept me from dying of exposure while I slept. Nothing like that seemed likely to come to hand.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked.
“None whatever. I take it you don’t, either?”
“No.” My sigh became a small white cloud in the frigid air. “We should try to find some kind of shelter.” I looked around. No direction seemed more promising than any other.
“Downstream?” He motioned at the brook. “The burn here might run toward the sea. It could lead us to the castle.”
I nodded my assent, and we set off, following the stream.
It was tough going, with the usual difficulties of fighting our way through a trackless wilderness made worse by having to slog through the snow. Often, we had to take circuitous routes, when the brook dove into a defile, or the banks were clogged with impassable undergrowth. We did our best to keep it within earshot so that we could find our way back.
And of course, every now and then, there were the creatures, peering at us from the bushes and trees. A beakless owl, its three cavernous mouths filled with the teeth of a lamprey. A fox with no eyes that felt its way forward with two long, whiplike antennae. An enormous mound of snoring fur in the bushes. We kept our distance from that one.
None of them attacked us—at least not yet.
“I’ve never seen anything like what happened when you turned into the lake,” Sam said after a while. “You were there, and then you were water, and then you were everywhere. And I was a bird.” He gave me a sideways glance. “That was no minor work of sorcery.”
“It’s more than I’ve ever managed before. And likely morethan I ever will again.” There was no guarantee I’d be able to repeat my success. Magic doesn’t merely defy logic; it doesn’t behave in any orderly, reasonable manner. Casting a spell is more like trying to ride a bolt of lightning than it’s like mixing measured ingredients to make a medicinal tincture. “And in this case, I had…certain advantages.”
“Like what?”
Like the kiss. True Love’s First Kiss, to be precise. A power that has been known to break mighty enchantments, revive the nearly dead, and amplify magic a thousandfold. It had been the wildest of desperate gambles. I hadn’t really thought it would work.
I hadn’t really thought about what it might mean.
And I still didn’t know. Was Sam in love with me? Was I in love with Sam? Did we know each other well enough to say? Perhaps it meant we would fall in love at some later point. Or simply that we could fall in love. I’d heard of True Love’s First Kiss happening for two people who had only danced together at a ball three times. Or being used to break a sleeping curse by a couple who had never exchanged a word before that very moment. Surely they couldn’t have already been in love? I’d never considered the subject very deeply before. I’m not sure I’d believed it would ever comeup.
Instead of answering Sam’s question, I asked one of my own. “Why did you stay,” I said, “when everyone else flew away?”
“Ah, well.” Sam appeared to become fascinated by his boots crunching through the snow. “I thought you might need someone around when you came out of it. Or as much as a bird can think such a thing, anyway. I had to fight against the urge to migrate. Some days I would fly south for a few miles before I remembered.”
“Well…thank you. I’m glad I’m not alone out here.”
“It’s no great sacrifice on my part. The king can make do witheleven hunters protecting him instead of twelve. For a while, at least.” Despite what he said, he sounded troubled.
“He only had six when we were fighting the spider wolves,” I pointed out.
“I know. It’s only that before now, I haven’t ever…Jack must be worried about me. The two of us have never been apart for very long. We’ve always been there to look out for each other.”
“Jack,” I said. “Jacqueline.”
That brought Sam’s gaze up from his boots. The snow was pouring down, puffy white pellets that clung to our clothing. The wind had picked up as well.
“You figured that out, did you?” said Sam.
“Hardly. The king called out her name in a moment of panic. She was his fiancée, wasn’t she? Before he was engaged to…” I stopped myself before saying “me.”
“Aye, she was.”
“Are all of the hunters women in disguise?”
“Most. Not quite all.”
