Had I, in my weary state, lost control of it? Had it somehow—in the parched, frozen wasteland—found a sliver of green and stirred from its restless slumber to eradicate it?
A rustle in the leaves.
I dared not breathe. I stood scarcely a chance against one of the beasts, and they never traveled alone. Another rustle, closer. I raised the knife. No, I stood no chance against the hounds. Ihad no hope of defeating or escaping them—but I was not going to let them take me alive.
I allowed myself one more glance at the world before I left it and I ached. The smallness to which the lordling had condemned me felt impossibly large and heavy. This life had never offered me more than lonesome survival, and it was only with the brutally final weight of the blade against my ribs that I discovered an aching, burning desire formore. I could not bear to think that the unexplored would remain forever unexplored, the strange forever a stranger. A kernel of hope, it seemed, had survived the terror of this endless hunt.
I wavered for a heartbeat, and it was that which saved me.
I caught a glimpse of the beast as it wove between the pillars. It did not wear the mottled black coat of a hound. It did not possess their gnarled, bone-thin limbs either, nor their hunched backs and misshapen muzzles. Its eyes were not a blistering, unseeing yellow. In the fading light, its fur was sleek and copper-red save for a tuft of white at the tip of the tail.
I laughed—a shrill, harrowing sound that danced between the rocks before it suffocated sharply in the arid air. A fox. I had almost shed my own blood over a fox.
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
I slid the knife back into its sheath and unraveled myself from the heather. Where there was a fox, there had to be a near source of water. Perhaps even the small lake the barmaid at the moorlake tavern had marked on the map. With my last sliver of strength, I staggered to the hill. A harsh cold settled over the dusk-blue land. The shadows thickened as I neared. An inkling gnawed at my spinning thoughts like a beast at bone.
I stumbled over the hillcrest, clutching my burning throat as if to catch the sobs that burst brokenly from me.
Before me loomed the silhouette of a weeping willow and beyond it stretched a thick, dark, alive forest. It sprawledover the pale stonescape like a dark-green inkstain. I did not remember seeing such a thing on the map. If I had, I would have made certain to avoid it. Butthis—
This was no ordinary forest.
A rustle swept from its far end to me, as if the forest itself were drawing an aching breath. That sweetness in the breeze. That lushness. How I’d wished as a child to stumble upon the Wandering Woods. How I’d hoped, nose pressed to the dirt-caked kitchen window, to catch a glimpse of roaming oaks as thick as towers, of brightly coloured beasts. To hear the faint song of faeries as they spun gowns from dew and danced among glittering petals. This was how a faerie of the forest had ended up in the wastes.
I retreated, prepared to run. To escape this place of teeming life before it roused my cursed magic, the monster within—
I faltered. A stone-framed pool rested at the foot of the willow, half-hidden behind dangling branches. The water beckoned me, mirror-smooth and black as pitch in the twilight.
Just a quick moment to quench my thirst. Just one minute to refill the flask. I could leash the monster within me. I could contain the cursed magic. I could survive.
A deep, low howl rang through the night, and a vicious snarl. Dumbly, I felt for my curls—they were unstirred by the wind and so were the branches of the willow. Foxes did not snarl like that, and they did not howl. The air filled with the echo of gnashing fangs.
A shiver slithered over my back, like a cold finger tracing each ridge of my spine. Deep within, in the rotten cavern where I'd once carried a heart, stirred a darkness. In its depths lived the monster. The monster, entwined so tightly with flesh and bone, I no longer knew where I ended and it began.
I stumbled and drew myself with feeble arms toward the water. Not now. Not before I’d soothed my aching throat. Notbefore I’d refilled the flask and saved my own life. The monster cackled as it crawled from the darkness, black-clawed fingers clacking against my ribs. A prickling ache began in my fingertips—like pressing a hand to a frost-kissed window. It sharpened to a sting and slithered like black ice into my veins.
I pinched the knotted scar on my palm, viciously. But the green was already fading: leaves and fronds and grass paled as if weak with sickness, and the tree bark cracked.
I shrieked as my veins thickened beneath the skin, black as night. The monster writhed, alive in my blood, tearing and ripping and shredding at its cage—
Hello, little bird.
I splintered.
Pain blinded me as foul magic bled like tar from my fingers. It seeped darkly into the soil, crept into the veins of the forest, blackened roots and stems and canopies. The trees groaned in torment. In anger.
The pond darkened and receded, leaving only a puddle deep in the heart of the basin. It mocked me, that puddle, stirring gently in the breeze. I flung an arm out, panting with effort and despair. My shoulder slackened with apop. I drew myself with a shriek onto a stone and plunged headfirst into the basin.
A crack echoed through my skull. Between my eyes bloomed a sharp, throbbing pain. Brittle earth stole the sound of my screech. I clutched my nose, face wet with tears. Blood trickled like a creek from my fingers. I laid my pounding head into the parched basin and wept.
Take me, I begged death.Take me quickly and take me gently.
I whispered the words into the earth, and I screamed them into the cold, and I sobbed them into the blood-drenched sleeve of my blouse.
Take me.
Night fell and my voice faded. I could not scream when the howls drew near. I could not lift my hand to draw my knife. I could only hope that death travelled quicker than the hounds. A rustle among the willow branches and darkness. Darkness—and a pair of luminous eyes.
