I tell her, at last, the tale of the Black Lake, all those weeks before Fenna brought her to me. Of that creature of smoke and bone and hunger. I tell her I think it’s been stalking me, that it was the source of my sleepwalking. I don’t tell her that Arlo, I think, kept it at bay because that knowledge will do no one any good.
‘The offerings? The red cloak and the flesh?’ she asks.
I nod. ‘I think so.’
‘What is it?’
I wipe the beads of sweat from my face and neck; now isn’t the best time for a night-sweat but there’s no way of stopping it. It feels like the bonfire in the yard outside has migrated to the very heart of me. I’d get up, make a red clover tea, but I feel too heavy, too hot, too tired. I reach out to the baby’s waving hands and she grabs at one of my fingers, holds it tight. That gives me something to focus on.
‘Mehrab, are you all right?’
‘A hot flush. It’ll pass.’ I close my eyes for a few seconds, force myself to a steadier breath, slower pulse. ‘She’s going to need a name, you know.’
‘I’m a bit leery of names at the moment. Someone once warned me against naming ephemeral things,’ she says pointedly.
‘I think she’s here to stay.’ I manage a smile, reclaim my finger, settle back into my seat. ‘Have you ever heard tales of the lord of the hunt, or the lady? An old god, or a new one, some man or woman so enamoured of the hunt that they can’t or won’t give it up? And other gods, thinking themselvesfunny, condemn such mortals to an eternity of the chase?’ She nods. ‘Cautionary tales to keep folk inside after dark, to not challenge the eldritch things that roam. Sometimes just cruel things – all that killing? Slaughter? More than you could ever eat? Just to feel an animal’s terror? Acts that just beg for punishment. I think… I think somehow that’s what’s been following me. I don’t know why, other than it noticed me that night and I got away.’
‘And that’s what’s taken the children? Even though Ari and the Peppergill boy were returned? What about the orphans, though?’
I tell her about my conversations in Berhta’s Forge, with Cylla and Anselm, with Reynald and Widow Wilky. I tell her how Tieve’s mother behaved, and I do not mention Faolan nor how we spent our time. In the end, she asks me what I can do and I answer honestly that I don’t know yet. She doesn’t suggest I should hurry up and work it out, but her expression makes that thought quite clear. Rhea does say, however, that I should have shared all this earlier.
I have no answer for her.
***
Later, when Rhea’s sleeping on the sofa, the little one with her, I watch them and think about the nature of the child, this melding of summer husband – of new oak – and human flesh. My mother’s tale about juniper trees was designed to tell me about unloved daughters – to let me know that I was one most certainly. I told it to the baby to let her know she was special, that she’d survived in spite of everything, and that it was my most fervent blessing for her to do so forever.
With a sigh, I rise, search the bookshelves for one of the books Yrse left behind – certainly one of her most valuable – the ancient copy ofMurcianus’ Magical Creatures, which Rhea has put back in the wrong spot. Though not native to my homeland, such tomes are known in certain closed circles there, highly prized. Once, to the great rejoicing of the palace librarians and the high sorceress, a shipment of such books arrived to supplement the knowledge of those in the kingdom who sought after such things. I was not allowed to touch them or read them for a very long time. Those very same books I watched burn as I fled, piled high in a courtyard, the bodies of most of the royal family and scions of noble houses all added for kindling.
I shake my head, try to concentrate. I ponder the stories I told Rhea in that long-ago springtime about changelings and stocks, troll offspring left like cuckoos. Then I think about the huntsman, that broken thing with his wish-hounds by his side.
I open the pages and begin to search for anything that might give answers about both of my problems.
26
Just after dawn breaks, we venture outside to see what we can.
The bonfire has burned down, is nothing but cold ashes which I’ll sweep away later. The animals are safely in the barn, and are slow to meander out into the cool air of their enclosures. They seem none the worse for last night’s visitations, but then they didn’t have to experience them. It’s only now that I think on how quiet my livestock were, how all three horses remained calm. I wonder if they simply knew themselves not the target of the attack, or just that they felt safe here. Unusual.
Rhea paces about, jiggling the baby – who has grown much faster than a mortal child, and is clinging onto her mother with a greater strength than she should have at this stage – on her hip, while I check on the hens in their coop – all present and accounted for, each one having laid an egg or two.Productive. I set them gently in the pocket of my apron.
‘Mehrab? Mehrab, come here.’ She’s standing just inside the ward-line, staring at something on the ground. As I get close, I realise it’s where those small hounds fell and burned. ‘Are those… bones, Mehrab?’
And they are. Two mounds. Not beasts’ bones, however. Small femurs, pelvises, ribs, scapulae, fingers and toes and skulls. Neither canid nor lupine. Human. Child-sized.
‘Widow Wilky’s orphans.’
‘But they were human. The wards—’
‘The wards detect the inhuman. Whatever had happened to them, it didn’t matter what they had been…’ Nervous, Rhea jiggles the baby faster. I put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘You’ll turn her to butter if you’re not careful.’
She gives a half-laugh, a sad sort of thing. ‘My mother told me a story, of how, many years before, children went missing from Lodellan. Then suddenly one day the city found it had a wolf problem at night…’
‘Similar but different, I think. The magic of it at any rate.’
‘Same effect, though.’
‘But we didn’t need silver or wolfsbane.’ Gingerly, I pick through the ashes, find only some imperfectly incinerated fabric. Clothing beneath fur. No trace of fur. No trace of wolf fangs, just the teeth embedded in the jawbone and skull. ‘There’ll be three more of these around the cottage. It was looking for a weak point, trying to get through. Testing.’
