“If you can’t defend me against a few brigands and bears–”
“Never mind brigands and bears,” she interrupted. “The Lichtenwald is home to torments you couldn’t even dream.”
A small, annoyed huff escaped him. Her quarry was more determined – more stubborn – than she had predicted. So she changed her tack.
“What have you heard of the Lichtenwald?”
“That most avoid it because it’s simply too wild. But there are legends. That it’s vast, and dark, and full of strange magic.”
“Strange magic,” she laughed ironically, her chest tightening, as if creeping vines gripped her ribs. “In the Lichtenwald, you might find a thief who would cut your purse and then your throat for inconveniencing him. You might stumble into the path of a wild boar and get yourself gored and stomped to death for your presumption. But there are stranger creatures than man or beast. There are flesh-eating worms that will burrow beneath your skin, making tunnels of your veins you cannot cut out for bleeding yourself dry. Footpaths that will lead you in circles, marching endlessly until you wear through the soles of your shoes, then the skin of your feet. Watering holes that appear only when you’re near death with thirst, but whose succor will make you mad and lash you to the creatures who call the forest home, spirits you can’t see who make sport of your suffering. And,” she added, in another accursed bout of conscience, “others know about the king’s contest. Others seek the phoenix. Others who would do you the same harm, or worse.”
Others like Mira of the Mire.
Her mouth was suddenly very dry. She pulled her hatchet close and swallowed. “Yes, it is vast and yes, it is dark, and one misstep could kill you. But you can count every step and know every stone, every path, every tree with a lover’s attention, and still run afoul of thatstrange magic, and it will change you in ways you cannot countenance.”
She caught her breath and looked up at him. His pale face was solemn. For a moment, they regarded each other.
He broke her gaze and lit another cigarette. “I must confess, I did not realize the extent of the danger. You paint a vivid picture.”
His amber eyes again met hers. Her fingers flexed around the hilt of her hatchet. He was not made of straw; she saw that much clearly.
What held him together? What invisible hands plucked at it?
He sighed heavily and made a dismissive gesture with his cigarette. “As I suspected, then, you are not the hunter I seek.”
Indignant, she started to form a reply, but suddenly she felt oddly and keenly aware of her vines, like noticing a stray hair on the back of her neck, but in her blood, in her gut, in her soul. The wizard noticed her strange look and frowned at her.
Slow and creeping as snakes, the thorns clawed around her bones.
They tightened.
His face went white as she let out a small cry and bent over, nearly dropping her hatchet. “Are you alright?” she heard him say, but she couldn’t answer. It wasn’t like before; it waspainful. Tightening, wrenching, stretching, shrinking, all things at once. Unseen pieces of her body changing, rearranging, becoming strange to her.
And another pain, a subtler one, that one she’d noticed in the cart on the way there. A fear; a lurking beast she could never see.
Hovering.
As it passed, she regained her senses. There was something wet on her cheeks; she wiped it off. Tears; only tears.
The wizard was crouched before her. His cigarette had been replaced with a gold and glass pen; the sleeve of his left arm was rolled up. She noted the inside of his arm, ugly and bruised, his purple veins visible. His eyes, dark with worry, fixed on her. One of his gloved hands on hers.
“What ails me cannot be fixed with one of your spells,” she said roughly, pushing his hand away. His frown was skeptical, but he rose and let her be.
Mira’s curse was born of a magic far wilder than a spellscribe could possibly fathom. Forest magic, ancient and impassive. The spell of gravity, the spell of entropy, of symmetry, of heat.Anya had glimpsed that magic as it entered her; knew it now, in her own deepest places. It could not be touched by lines on a page.Would that it could.
And then what would she do? Help this spellscribe claim his prize, then give her half right back to him to fix her? Take the phoenix from the forest, hand the king a magic stronger even than Mira’s? Not fucking likely.
And where would she go if she did? She could not return to her house, to Johanna’s house, all that Anya had left of her, in the wood. Not with the witch still alive. Anya could hunt, could kill any beast, but she could not kill the witch; could not even step near her manor gates without risking a worse fate than the one now laid before her.
And unless she gotherprize, the witch would not let Anya live unpunished.
Nothing could break her curse but blooding the phoenix with Mira’s enchanted arrow. Anya knew that as deep as she knew where her own fingers were; part of the curse, or years of proximity to the Lichtenwald’s magic, or some stranger thing, but she knew: if she wanted to keep her body, to keep her life, she must bind the phoenix to Mira.
For the first time, she feared she could not do this alone. The spellscribe could not stop the wild magic ravaging her body, but he could heal a twisted ankle, or mend a finger burnt by boiling water spilling from its pot. She’d rarely been injured on a hunt, but the prospect seemed more likely by the hour. Particularly if she dropped into a spell of pain in the middle of the Lichtenwald. And, if need be, he could protect her from other scribes – or serve as bait against them.
Conscience be damned. Clearly, this wizard was determined anyway.
“How soon can you leave?” she asked.
