I counter with a curiosity of my own. “You must be very sure of yourself to bring your daughter so close to me.”
A smile flickers around her lips. “Like my son, my daughter inherited her father’s power as well as mine. You’re no danger to her.”
I’m about to reply when a bright-blue, fluttery thing darts across the air above my face, startling me.
It flits so quickly past me that I can’t immediately make out its shape.
I recoil—which knocks my head into the moss since I’m lying on the ground. I wince. “What is that?” I demand to know. “Did you bring that with you?”
The woman blinks at me, as if she’s surprised by my question. “Uh… no… it’s just a?—”
“Flutterby!” the little girl exclaims. She’s focused on the fluttering creature and, as the woman spoke, both of her arms stretched out so far that she nearly tips herself out of her mother’s arms.
“Whatter-by?” I ask, perturbed.
“Butterfly,” the woman says.
“Oh.” I squint at the creature, trying to take another look.
The butterflies I saw in illustrations were always flat, their wings outstretched. I assumed they glided through the air. All majestic-like. This one is beating its wings so fast, I can’t follow the movements, and it’s darting around so much that it’s making my head spin.
Just a butterfly.
In my defense, I’m one-eyed right now, so my perception is a little skewed.
The butterfly evades the little girl’s hands and lands on her nose.
“Flutterby,” she whispers. “Hello.”
Her big, green eyes swivel to her mother’s and her little lips press together as the butterfly’s wings slow down andnowit looks like the butterflies I saw in books.
“Okay, then, Tori,” the woman murmurs. “Go play.”
She eases the little girl to the ground—butterfly on her nose and all—and that’s when I make out another swarm of the blue-winged critters gathering on the low-lying leaves of a nearby tree. They’re increasing in number by the second, formingmultiple blue clouds in the air and across the surrounding branches.
As soon as Tori’s feet touch the ground, she bounces away toward them, which takes her directly past the keeper.
He glowers down at her from his great height as she dances past.
“Happy little creature,” he grumbles, his nose wrinkling when her giggles fill the air.
At the same time as she passes him, one of the female wolves—the one with more bounce in its step—follows her, pouncing and leaping at the butterflies. It doesn’t jump at them in a way that looks like it’s trying to catch them, rather like it’s dancing with them as they move through the air and pour toward the little girl.
Almost as if the wolf wishes it could fly too.
I want to warn it that wings are a fucking nuisance.
Even so, it’s a curious thing to watch because every move the wolf makes, the little girl seems to makefirst.
These wolves are definitely connected to the minds of these beings.
The woman is quietly studying me, and I don’t miss the way she’s watching me watching her daughter. “These are light magic burns,” she says, startling me with the change of topic and bringing me back to my unhappy reality.
“Yes.”
And I would like them healed already. Please and thank you.
But first I have to convince this woman not to finish me off.
