“Sabine?” Basten’s worried voice cuts across the clearing, as he stomps toward me with the horses in tow. He quickly loops their leads on a branch and kneels at my side. “What is it? What happened?”
It’s a while before I can even manage to point a shaky finger at the rabbit.
“You—you hunted our dinner?” he asks, confused, because I usually sing to the animals, not spear them.
My head drags back and forth, face still hidden in my palms, shame burning through me. “It came on its own, killed itself so I’d have something to eat.”
I shatter into sobs again, wishing I could burrow deep into the ground, away from all the watching little eyes of the forest.
Basten is quiet for a while. “Ah.”
He gathers me in his arms, holding me in a steady embrace, letting me sob until the worst of my sorrow has dripped into a puddle in my lap.
“We would have killed a rabbit for dinner, regardless,” he gently reminds me. “Whether with my arrow or your power, does it make a difference?”
“It isn’t that.” I wipe my damp nose. “I eat meat—I know the reality of what that means. But Basten, I was so swept up in my powers…I grew this moss bed…lit the fire…always, animals have listened to my voice in their head, but I didn’t mean to call for its death.”
He rubs my back, placing soft kisses on my temple.
I hiccup out, “This much power makes me afraid. I don’t know how the world will respond. What if I shiver in my sleep tonight and the entire forest sets itself on fire to warm me?”
“You’ll learn,” he reassures me. “You’ll find the difference between unbridled need and a controlled response. And I’ll be there to make damn sure nature listens.”
I gaze at him, feeling more hopeful.
It nearly turns my stomach to eat the rabbit that Basten finishes roasting on a spit, choking it down where it sits heavy in the pit of my stomach, but his words bring me a little comfort.
That night, we lay together on the moss bed beneath our saddle blankets. He holds me close, his forehead pressed against my own as though he knows that the only way I can fall asleep these days is to the rhythmic sound of his breathing.
Slowly, sleep comes.
I feel myself twitch, legs kicking out.
I’m dreaming of the rabbit.
It’s strange—I feel both in the dream and out of it. A part of me, twitching and turning, is vaguely aware that I’m in the clearing with a snoring Basten, our legs tangled together, as the moon rises high.
At some point, however, the dream shifts. Now, there are many rabbits. Dozens of them, all snow-white, all full of life as they fill the clearing. Their twitching whiskers are a reminder that when one life goes, another comes to take its place. The old buck didn’t just die for our supper—he left behind his legacy, filled this forest with his children, and his children’s children.
In the dream, I sit up—my own ghost—and begin to walk through the forest. There, Alyssantha is more than a hunk of weather-worn stone. The statue’s flowing locks, carved of granite, now ripple with soft life, her skin warm and peachy.
She stands by her temple, its walls freshly built, laughing as she smokes a long Wicked Weed pipe. She’s speaking to a male I don’t recognize, with ruddy tan skin and flowing curls down to his shoulders, his cheeks telltale pink from too much wine, his cackling laugh too loud.
When I pass, he pauses his conversation long enough to tip his wine glass my way, and I see the flash of a golden coin glinting as a single earring in his right ear.
It’s Immortal Popelin, I realize.God of Pleasure.
Like this, he seems so real—so much more than any illustrated version I’ve seen of him, any artist’s guess as to what he might have looked like in the beginning, or the First, or the Second Return.
I’m struck by something—howfamiliarthey both feel to me.
I continue walking, and slowly, the forest changes—the towering, ancient oaks are now barely saplings, as though I’ve slipped backward in time, a thousand years or more. The undergrowth thickens with lush, unfamiliar ferns. Every leaf glistens with an iridescent sheen—greens and purples andsilvers sliding over their surfaces like oil skimming water. Even the stones beneath my feet seem lit from within.
I reach out to move a low-hanging branch, and the moment I brush it aside, I freeze.
A river babbles ahead, weaving its way over smooth rocks, but in the water, the magic ends.
Fish float belly-up. Dozens of them. Pale and lifeless.
