Ransom holds up black-gloved palms. “You’re as stubborn as my horse.”
“And you,” I say, grinding a fist into my knees while I stand, “are as arrogant as Farmer Whitley’s barn cat.” I press past him toward my clothes, slipping back into them and welcoming the warmth of the wool.
Ransom wrinkles his nose. “Tell me, please, how am I either of those two things? From where I’m standing, that cut would have been—willbe—a whole lot worse if I weren’t—”
“If you weren’t what, Lord Black? My knight in shining armor? Please, do us both the favor of leaving me alone.” I balance on my good foot, slip one sock over my injured heel, and plant it in my boot.
Ransom sniffs. “I take back what I said before, Ms. Thorn. You’re not as stubborn as my horse; you’re as bullheaded as my mule.”
He is lucky he is standing several feet away from me and my left leg is suffering from a bleeding wound. My knuckles sting with the need to sink into the taut flesh of his jaw.
I suck in air while I balance and fix him with the coldest glare I can muster.
“Thank you for your assistance, Lord Black, but I think you best be on your way.” I tilt my chin up toward the clouds. “Wouldn’t want the rain to ruin your expensive coat.”
His eyes bore holes into my chest, turning my bones to ash. He snaps his gloves tighter on his wrists and shakes his head.
“Have it your way then. Good day, Ms. Thorn.”
He moves up the bank quickly, black boots slurrying in mud and grass, becoming little more than dusky shadow when he reaches the edges of the trees. Their yellow-feathered leaves dust his coat, and then he disappears. Like a wisp of smoke.
I drop my arms to my sides, eyes back on the clouds, and shake. The movement is healing, air moving like water over my skin. The knots at the back of my skull slacken, crackling like brush underfoot. My chest relaxes, heart returning to a familiar rhythm. Breath comes in steady waves, and I release the tension, slipping my hands in the pocket of my sweater. My fingers brush up against the sharp, cold metal, and my chest thrills once more.
I empty it out into my palm, the little shard now glowing a dull yellow in the darkening sun. It is a strange thing pounded from brass, lines etched jagged across its surface. It does not appear to be a chip from a horseshoe or a nail from a carriage wheel. Instead, it looks like—
I fall to my knees where my boot prints are still pressed in the mud. Throwing caution to the wind, I search the mucky shoreline for more glinting brass. The breeze whips my hair, carrying with it the scent of copper, but I do not stop; I only want to find the rest of the thing that bit my flesh.
My fingernails cake with mud, rotting leaves tangling in my palms, but still I dig. Only when the first raindrop falls from the sky, when my nose has filled with so much heat and the scent of freshly forged steel, do I stop. And when I do, my shaking, dirt-covered hands are filled with hammered metal.
I fit the pieces together, their edges sticking with river mud and the remnants of my blackened gore, and ignore the disappearing sun, the humming village, and the ringing in my ears while I stare at the object in the crux of my palms.
A little brass bell.
I hold it up, fear quickening in my veins. What if everything I have heard about bells is wrong? What if theydoconjure evil? Free demons from the deep?
Those in Father’s congregation speak of bells as something holy, but this one suggests other things. Claims a nature against Ithrandril. Whispers memories of the same notes I sense before the monsters take shape. A dark, twisted calling that starts deep between my ribs and scatters throughout my bones.
I bite my tongue, hoping it will keep the illness from making meat of all my muscle, keep back the encroaching darkness. But I am too late. My chest slips, heart skimming along my breastbone, while the tiny object shakes in one hand. I shove it into my pocket and let it rest silent. Slowly, I turn my chin toward the wood.
My breath catches when the mist gathers, then solidifies.
It flickers, a specter at the edge of my vision. I stand frozen on the riverbank, my chest contracting like a thing apart from my body. When I try to move, to turn back toward the vicarage, the safety of the garden wall, it takes all my strength just to breathe. The river rushes past, a scent like metal filling my nose, while the monster gathers at the tree line. Coalesces. My lips peel back to scream, but there is nothing.
Hollow air leaves me in gasps. My fingernails sink into the fabric at my side, and I try to cry out again, but the fear is a hand over my mouth. I blink when a body takes shape—a head, two arms, two legs, fingers reaching, reaching… Its joints crack like a marionette on invisible strings. Sinew on bone, teeth and tongue, mist rippling down a spine like hair.
I scramble back. The thing wavers at the edge of the trees like a guttering candle flame. The smoke collects, and a hand extends. The scent of citrus hits me in waves. My stomach curdles.
No, no, this is all wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I do not know which god will claim my soul, but death is rife in Rixton. Dinah Bo passed when I was not much older than four, and years went by where her mother could be found at the edge of the wood, leaving lemoncakes wrapped in lace for her daughter. Most molded or were washed away by rain, but I remember the scent of them. Like all the creeping bitterbloom.
People say the trees that swallow the river are haunted, and if I have learned anything in my twenty-one years of life in this wretched place, it is that some people have a right to be afraid.
I try to push the lump at the back of my throat down, down, down, desperately searching for my voice, but the smoke—no, thebody—only draws closer.
A sound: something faint, far away, yet drawing closer. Like a wind kicked up through branches, the cracking of frost on a pond. I stare at the monster, the silhouette that smells of someone I buried five years ago.
