Feeling wearier than she had in a long time, Anya turned back for their resting place, her stomach complaining with stilted hunger and with furious unease. She hadn’t forgotten she seemed to have traveled miles in minutes. They were closer to the bramble slake’s den than she had realized.
Or the forest was feeling playful. She would have to warn Sy to be especially guarded.
She feared that was not all she would have to tell him. This had all been a mistake. Killing the fawn had been terrible enough, but it could have easily been one of the spellscribescaught, beyond her help but for a well-aimed arrow.Thiswas beyond her. She didn’t have the mettle for this kind of game. She would tell Sy the truth. Tell him of her curse. He wouldn’t understand, and might think she was mad, but then she wouldn’t have to keep up the charade that she could ever help him.
He was honorable enough – far more than she had suspected. He wouldn’t like it, but if he wanted to live, he wouldn’t have much choice but to follow her. When it was done, she would escort him back to Äbender, back to where it all began. The past few days and all they had promised would fade to distant memory. And then all of it would be finished.
She reached the rowan tree. But it couldn’t be the same. Though she had carefully marked the way, she became certain the forest had decided to play one of its tricks. She had come to a different rowan, the wrong one.
But, no – there was her bag. Her bedroll. Her waterskin. The same rowan, the stump where she had cut the branch, bleeding sap.
No blood. No overturned dirt or disturbed bracken signaling a struggle.
No shotgun.
But she’d told him to give her a quarter hour. She hadn’t been gone ten minutes. She knew she hadn’t. He must have wandered off. For more bilberries, perhaps. With her shotgun.
So she waited. She waited until the sun reached its peak, directly above her, and then she waited longer. Too long. Far longer than was safe, or smart. Far longer than he deserved.
It was better this way. A relief. One less obstacle. The weighty shroud of pretense lifted from her shoulders. After the bear, he couldn’t have helped her, anyway. There was no other reason to stay together. There was no reason to let herself rely on another in the first place. She had only ever relied on herself. She never should have answered his ad. They never should have stayed near the other scribes’ camp. She shouldn’t have left him behind. He shouldn’t have gone off on his own.
He didn’t want to be in her debt. He thought she would demand more than half the prize for her trouble. He thought she would claim it at all.
So instead, he would chance the hunt himself. It was the only conclusion she could draw. He’d said it himself, hadn’t he? She should have listened. He wanted the money, every cent. He wanted to part ways; to terminate their agreement. So he had. With her shotgun.
Debt or no, her first impression of him had been right. For people like him and his set, enough was never enough. It couldn’t be. Not when there was always more – and there was always more. They saw themselves as temporarily embarrassed princes. Temporarily tempered dragons. All of them.
Good, she thought, gathering her things.Good. She squinted at the speckled sky, locating the afternoon sun, pointing herself east toward the Warbler. The river had never steered her wrong. She would follow it to the meadow.
She pulled Johanna’s hat over her head. She didn’t look behind her.
Hours passed. This deep in the forest, the trees were much older, taller, farther apart. Fewer saplings grew in their shade, clearing space for her feet, and with less detritus to focus on, in her thoughts. She brushed over clover and bracken, through dog’s mercury and wild mint. The gloves on her hands grew tight with her sweat, but she didn’t take them off. They may as well be hers, now; she wasn’t likely to see their previous owner again. Once her curse was lifted, she would feed them to the trees. As she crept closer to the river, the beeches thinned, gradually replaced by ash and hazel. The pines never relented.
Nothing ever did. Seasons, hunger, the march of time.More to life than base survival. There wasn’t. There never had been. You didn’t need to beeducated, to besophisticated, to know that.
But she had been wrong about one thing. Sy wasn’t a fool. He knew what he asked for; what he did. If that was what he wanted, well, the forest would happily eat him alive.
He did have the rowan branch. Her shotgun. Her wisdom, like birdseed. He may be food, but at least she had not left him without teeth.
The afternoon dragged by. She did not stop to eat, breaking off pieces of one of her walnut flour biscuits as she walked. Tasty, filling, but a bit bland. Too salty, perhaps. The melon soup had been good. She might be softer too, if she ate like that all the time. There had been a bit of mint in it, she thought, butnot like the flowering mint she crushed now beneath her boots, releasing an earthy, pungent brightness, nor even the kind she and Johanna once grew in their garden. Flatter. Tamer. Moresophisticated.
She walked several miles before she realized the thinning crop of beeches had thickened. That wasn’t right. There should be fewer of them closer to the river, not more. She looked up. The sun, behind the speckled clouds, was behind her, as it had been all afternoon. She was still pointed east.
But she didn’t have the slightest idea where she was.
A sinking feeling crawled up her gut and held her rooted. She should have been paying more attention. Kept her senses sharp. Especially after this morning. The bear. The fawn. Stopping to rest like a countess at tea. Melting like sugar at the barest pretense of kindness. Once again, she wasn’t thinking.Unraveling.
She scanned the horizon in vain for landmarks, and found nothing familiar. She reached a hand into her messenger bag, feeling for her map. When she couldn’t find it, she pulled the bag off her shoulder, yanked it wide open, and dug.
Johanna’s map was gone. Sy had taken it.
The sinking feeling rose up her spine as she heard the crush of leaves behind her, smelled the rush of mint on the wind. For a moment, she thought she smelled pine and pepper – old magic,forestmagic.
Her breath caught. Mira, come to finish what she’d started. Or her curse had lead Anya closer to her lair, the promise of the phoenix a false hope, a trap all along. As if in answer, she felt her skin tighten, her bones prickle.
But no, the wind was warm, and from the south – and, if she thought about it, it smelled a bit more like hyacinth.
The thorned vines in her bones seemed to slough away in a flood of relief, and, feeling lightheaded, she almost laughed. How had he found her? But he had come back. It had taken him longer than she’d expected, but he did keep surprising her.
