The voice was silent, but resounding, clarifying. It filled him with – not with peace, exactly; it was too stimulating to be peace. A sort of communion. Like the unexpected feeling that filled him when he saw a painting, or heard a song, and thought,There, like that. That’s how I feel. Just exactly like that.
Or one even stronger. In the comforting dark; in the vibrant underground. In the steady glow of fireflies and the bewitching scent of hundreds of impossible flowers. In the touch of soft skin, the taste of tongue, of stolen time.
Everything,everythingfelt more vivid, more colorful. Shades he’d never been able to see. He felt the sun on his skin, in his hair, the warmth radiating into his bones. He smelled the earth beneath him, loam and clay. He saw a fallen tree, dead, but not static; crawling with beetles, nourishing mosses, sheltering mice and marmots from the sharp claws of hungry birds.
On the tree behind him, he noticed a stack of white mushrooms, long and round with dangling tendrils. In the ferns around him, smaller orange mushrooms budded like spring dandelions. He felt compelled to pop one onto his tongue.Eat nothing you didn’t kill or bring yourself, Anya told him. But would he not be killing this mushroom, this fruit, by plucking it?
Across a sunny patch of clover, he noted a squirrel clutching one of the orange earth-fruits between its small hands, gnawing on the spongy surface. He pulled a nearby mushroom from the ferns. He didn’t bother dusting the dirt from its stem. It was chewy between his teeth, but pleasantly so. It tasted good, of spice, like black pepper, of apricot and spring earth.
There, said the silence.There.
The robin returned. “Ah, there you are,” he said to it. “Just in time. I think I’m going mad.”
Madness was the only logical explanation. Why he kept going in circles. Why he felt as if the forest was a living creature rooting itself inside of him. Why he kept letting his future slip away from him. Why he kept thinking of Anya’s eyes on him in the dark when he should instead be thinking of how in all the seven skies he was going to turn Edgard into a bird, to make his mark on history, to free himself.
Behind him, the wind carried the sound of rustling branches. Voices. Not silent, not resounding. Human. After a moment, he recognized Sabina’s.
Heart leaping, he stood and peered around the beech’s trunk.
Her jacket was missing, and her dress and hair had the look of having been soaked and recently sun-dried. The hem of her skirt was torn and coated in mud. She wore flowers in her hair, unpinned and wild with curls, and around her neck. Rowan, he noted.
She was accompanied by a tall woman with close-cropped, feathery hair and a falcon on her shoulder. Perrine, the huntress from Preule Anya had mentioned. Anya’s friend. She must be a fine hunter to have Anya’s regard, but both she and Sabina looked as if they’d been dragged by the ankle along the forest floor.
Sabina saw him and immediately looked as if she would burst into tears. “Sylas,” she cried, rushing toward him.
“You’re sure that’s him?” called Perrine. “You said scribes can change faces.”
“Absolutely.” She held him by the shoulders, at arm’s length, examining him. “No one else could capture his aura of refined disdain.”
“Pleasure to see you too, Sabina.”
“See?” She collapsed into his arms. Noting the genuine distress under her mischievous tone, he hugged her back, tightly. He’d been more worried for her than he’d realized. “Sy, it’s been terrible. There were these horrid little beetles that eat your skin and bones. We were with Anya, and she tried to lure them away, but they came after us anyway. We think – we think she–”
“What?” he demanded, alarmed. “What happened? When?”
Perrine’s face was white. She shifted her rifle, startling her bird into the air and onto her other shoulder. “Yesterday. Anya sacrificed herself for us. She stayed behind to lure the buzzard beetles away, but they were on us moments later. They must have…they must have made quick work of her.”
Yesterday. Relief flooded him. “No; she survived. I was with her most of yesterday evening. We ran into the mimic. Anya killed it.”
Perrine’s face phased through several shades at his words; first elation, then suspicion, then relief. Finally, pride.
“The mimic?” She laughed, crouched to her knees, astonished. The falcon lifted its wings to keep its balance. “Unbelievable. They’ll go wild with this at the lodge. What did it look like? Was it big? Did she get a trophy?”
“No. We had…other concerns,” he settled on.
Sabina folded her arms and stared at him.
“The phoenix,” he said, a little defensively. “We followed it into the mimic’s cavern, but it escaped.”
“And what did you do the rest of the night?” Sabina prodded.
“Gathered our bearings,” he said with finality, sensing her course and wanting to put her off.
“And you’re sure she’s alive,” Perrine said, rising. He felt her falcon’s uncanny stare as intensely as hers.
“She was when she left me this morning,” he supplied, and Perrine seemed to accept this as the best answer she could get.
“Well,” Sabina went on, her voice hot, “while you two weregathering your bearings, we were barely managing to survive. The beetles came straight for us. We had to jump into the river to escape them, and there was this fisherman on a boat, and they–” All the color drained from her face, like the heat from her voice. “His screaming. I’ll never forget that sound as long as I live.”
