“A trinket from the shores.”
I opened the satchel wide to gather a smooth, pearlescent shell from it. This was only a ruse to reveal a glimpse of thetrue prize that hid at the bottom of the bag: A tattered notebook wrapped in fine leathers, filled with sketches and drawings, dried plants and scribbled notes. The faeries of the mountain had often attempted to barter for it. I’d never agreed to such a trade. That notebook was the greatest treasure I owned. To part with it meant to lose the one thing I deemed worth keeping. It would do me no good to die of thirst in this chasm just to hold on to it.
“I wantthis!” cried the faerie.
I concealed a knowing smile—but the faerie was not pointing at the book. It eyed, hungrily, the timestained amulet I’d worn since I was a babe.To repel the harmful spirits, my mother had claimed with a tender smile. Not quite right in the head, she’d been, but I’d kept it on me all the same. It reminded me achingly of her, in the dark times.
I could not wallow in such sentiments now. Though I longed to snarl at the faerie to keep its greedy hands to itself, I said tightly, “I will give it to you in exchange for a favor.”
“All the brittle-bones want favors.” The faerie pouted as it considered the amulet. “The shiny thing is not shiny enough to tempt me, I think.”
I pretended to sigh with relief. “Oh, good. It would have brought me great grief to part with it.”
Nowthatstirred its interest. “Greatgrief? Will you let me see a tear, brittle-boned friend?”
“The amulet and a tear in exchange for a favor.”
The faerie’s smile widened, splitting its face into two halves of jutting teeth. “What kind of favor?”
“A small one,” I promised. “I need you only to bring me safely and quickly to the Green River.”
Its horrible smile faltered. “The tall one binds me to this place. I cannot travel with you, brittle-boned friend.”
The hope I’d recklessly allowed to bloom drowned like a flame in the sea. The lesser faeries referred to their human-like kin astall ones. If a courtly faerie had bound it here, I wanted nothing to do with it.
“I offer something else, brittle-boned friend,” said the faerie. “For the shiny thing and a tear, I will tell the rock to shoo shoo shoo and let you pass.”
I’d suspected, from the shifting stones and strange shadows, that an enchantment lingered in the chasm. I was eager to accept the offer, but I asked cautiously, “Does the rock heed you?”
“Yes,” said the faerie with great pride. “It heeds me well, that rock.”
“Then you will command it to let me pass safely to the nearest hill within the hour.” I’d struck too many poor bargains to leave such terms unclear.
“Deal!” cried the faerie with glee.
It held out its little hands, dancing from one bony foot to the other while I unfastened the thin silver chain from my neck. I fumbled, fingers shaking with reluctance. As I brushed my lips to the moonstone pendant in a kiss farewell, grief pierced me like an old, rusted blade. I placed the amulet carefully into the hands of the faerie.
A breeze swept into the chasm, catching in my curls. It was a strange, songful wind, filling the air for a moment with warmth and with the scent of summer seas.
The faerie grazed a finger tenderly over my cheek, collecting a teardrop from my lashes. It gathered like a pearl at the tip of its long, sharp nails. With a solemn smile, the faerie wove it into a strand of its spiderweb dress.
“Turn around, brittle-bone.”
Where never-ending walls of stone had herded me deeper and deeper into the chasm since dawn, now ran a tall and narrow crack through the rock. If I looked to the left, it opened into apassage wide enough for a wagon, but if I turned just a little to the right, it blurred and vanished. I bid farewell to the faerie, but it was occupied with its gown of spiderwebs and teardrops and with the amulet whose absence I felt like a wound in the hollow between my collarbones.
I kept my head turned to the left as I stumbled through the crack. The darkness swallowed me, tilted me once, and coughed me out on the other side into a bizarre landscape. Pillars of rock jutted like broken fingerbones from the heather, sickeningly white. The wind held its breath. There was not a sound far and wide save the snap of twigs under my stumbling feet, and here and there the hoot of a lone owl.
Far ahead, a rock-studded hill rose from the ground.
A shadow stirred on its crest.
Another bout of madness. Another trick of the faeries.
I squinted into the dusk-veiled distance. The hillcrest was uneven with boulders. Between them, like a nimble wraith, moved a large, four-legged shadow.
A hound.
A croak escaped me as I flung myself into the heather. I crawled, heart ablaze with terror, for the shelter of the nearest rock. I huddled against it, clutching my knife with white knuckles. The hounds were blind, but they possessed keen ears and even keener noses—noses that could track the stench of my cursed magic to the other end of the land, should a trace of it ever escape me.
