The journey through the Brimmond Wood feels different alone. Every crunch of a creature’s scurrying or footfalls in the debris is loud. I jump like a scared child when a bevy of wild game birds launch into the air with a loud cacophony of wings and scattering leaves. I am immobile completely when I see the reason for their flight. A great cat sìth prowls after them, still in pursuit even though the birds are now aloft.
The faery cat pays me no attention as it slinks from one patch of sunlight to the next, muscle and fur flowing more like molten gold than an animal. I study the sharp claws that extend from each massive paw as the cat watches the treetops for the birds. The cat’s claws retract as I watch, and it turns toward me.
I am fixed in place by the moss-green irises focused intently upon me.
“I mean you no harm,” I say, voice louder than I like in the silent wood. “Unless you were the killer this morning ...”
Although nothing in the Hunter journals says that the cat sìth speaks any of the languages of humans, the cat in front of me smiles then, looking more amused than an animal ought to ever look. The gesture flashes teeth at me. One serrated tooth is the size of my arm.
“You would have to put a man’s whole head in your maw to behead him.” I scoff at the image. The dead man’s skull would have been crushed like a melon, and the musty scent of cat sìth would’ve lingered at the site of the death.
This is not the killer we have to stop. This faery beast is massive and daunting to see, but the strange beast only eats birds or squirrels. I tell it, “I cannot imagine ever harming you. Go get your birds.”
A long, split tongue lashes out and licks inside its nose with a slurping noise. The cat sìth is not the most refined faery, but it’s nota murderer of people. With a hiss, it launches into the next sunbeam, not quite bounding, but not actually running either. Nothing in the journals clarifies how itactuallymoves.
“One faery suspect eliminated, and no idea where to look next.” I feel no more or less safe with a cat sìth nearby. Not seeing me as a meal is not the same as being an ally.
I watch the shadows for any other creature—or human—that might lurk there. Though I am like the cat sìth in that I am not going to be a Hunter of humans, I am always aware that my own kind is not without flaws. My father and I must weigh the possibility that any culprit we seek is a human—or a beast of this world. The forest has those threats, too. Serpent and wolf, panther or spider, both the large and small threats wait in the wooded corners of my life, too.
A scream cuts through the forest, too raw to be human, too human to be faery.
Before I can allow fear to take hold of my feet, I urge my horse in the direction of the sound.
A creature that can behead a grown man was here last night,my fear reminds me.
You are not yet the Hunter,my logic calls out.
But I have a duty, and I am fairly certain it is not a duty that will magically activate one day when I inherit this task. My calling is already present inside me. I was raised to be the Hunter, taught that my mission was to protect humanity, reminded over and again that my life is already as good as forfeit if I am a coward.
“I am no coward,” I whisper as I ride toward the general area of the scream.
The closer I get, the more I realize that I am approaching the same place where we saw the dead man a few hours ago. I slip off the back of my horse as quietly as I can and draw my sword. The box of samples from this very site is in a satchel still on the horse. I debate carrying it with me, but I am one person. Trying to hold a steel box and a sword seems foolish—and no creature would be so aware as to takemy samples. The faeries that come through the gate are almost always barely more than animal. Animals don’t think of evidence, not the way humans do.
Steel blade in my hand, I continue toward the site, half expecting to see another dead body, half fearing that the body will be my father’s.
He would never scream like that,logic reminds me.
A laugh echoes around me, not quite the sound of a common loon, but I think it is not human. At first, I think I’ve been misled by a mix of birds and nerves, but then a sharp blow to the back of my head knocks me forward, right onto the charred remains of the dead man. I have no time to guess who or what attacked me. Instinct kicks in, and I swing wildly behind me with my sword, feeling it make contact as I try to roll over.
I realize that my palm is in the ashes of the corpse. As gross as it is, I grab a fistful of ash and teeth and toss it toward my assailant. Ashes in the eye could blind my attacker if I’m lucky.
So far, I don’t know whether I’ve managed any real strike, or whether the ashes aimed true, but in a fight against something stronger,anytactic is acceptable. I manage to push to my knees, tangled as I am in my wet skirt.
All I can see between the ash in my own face and my uneven vision is the vague shape of a person. Pain sears my arm, but still, I jerk out my bag of salt and fling crystals toward it. It darts into the shadows of the forest quicker than anything ought to move.
I demand, “Who are you?”
Then I am struck again, and everything goes dark.
Chapter 4
“Witness the nature of the creatures, their caprice, their way of being good to the good and evil to the evil, having every charm but conscience—consistency. Beings so quickly offended that you must not speak much about them at all, and never call them anything but the ‘gentry,’ or elsedaoine maithe, which in English means ‘good people.’”
—Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, edited and selected by W. B. Yeats [1888]
When I open my eyes, I cannot at first tell how long my unconsciousness has lasted. My training kicks in. It was not much after dawn when we went to Maudite Castle, so it was not yet midday when we left there. The sky is no different than when I was knocked down. At most we are nearing afternoon.
The cut on my arm from where I landed awkwardly on the very edge of my sword is new, but I cannot decide if it or the throbbing in my head plagues me more.
