“Wound flesh,” he reminds me.
I accept the silver knife he provides and cut a swath of skin from the edge of the wound. This, too, I bottle and drop into the box. The blade is silver so as not to burn away any faery saliva or blood, but the box is steel to contain any lingering venom or unidentified contaminants.
The box clatters as Father closes it. He sounds hopeful as he says, “You can use your laboratory when we are home and update the journal.If there are no other victims, we can hope it was just the forest beasts mauling a drunkard.”
I flinch. “That seems ... unlikely.”
Arguing with him never ends well, and we surely both realize that this is a faery. Everything we have noted in our study of the body makes clear that this is not the work of any man.
Is he afraid?I cannot ask, but I suspect he reads my expressions more astutely than either of us would like.
He glares as I stand and face him. All he says, though, is, “Cut a furrow into the ground around the body.”
I pull out the sword at my hip, grateful it’s not my preferred one, and the Hunter grabs up several bits of the man that were scattered around, bringing each back to pile beside the rest of the body. It’s a macabre sight with a detached hand and severed lower leg atop the oddly folded legs and nearly severed head.
I am grateful not to have to do that part. Touching the dead always makes me feel anxious, as if their state of decay is going to infect me the way faery blood can. Some types of death can linger on the body, like a miasma clinging to the lifeless heap. Hunters are invulnerable to many things, but I am not yet the Hunter.
I start to clear the area outside the furrow as Father heaps leaves on the body until it is completely covered. The dead man and his assorted injuries still hum and buzz softly from the increasing number of insects drawn to the now larger heap of decaying flesh. The ground is wet enough that I almost expect the leaves won’t catch fire, that they’ll smolder and sputter, but unlike any regular person, the Hunter can call magic.
Father whispers a word as he rests the palm of his hand over the damp leaves. The mound ignites. Magic does not need to obey the limits of damp leaves or wet earth. It comes to my father’s hand like something miraculous, and in moments, the ground crackles. Smoke rises, a fetid cloud of wet leaves and bloodless man.
The urge to gag returns, and I take another step back. I don’t want to be bathed in the smoke of the dead. That, too, feels unclean somehow.
My instinct is to watch the woods to be sure no stray spark sets fire to nature, but within the circle, my father’s magic burns everything. Only there. Only what’s inside the circle. The flames will not leap beyond the barrier or spread too high or far. Hunter’s Fire never does.
We stand in wait as the victim of something awful is reduced to nothing more than shards of bone and teeth. Whatever magic fire the Hunter summons burns at a temperature that makes me wary of the power I must one day brandish. The Hunter is a weapon, a blade made of flesh. That much power is terrifying to contemplate. If my sister were threatened, if my mother were in danger, are there lines I would refuse to cross?
No wonder the identity of the Hunter must be protected,my fears whisper.
The thought must be one every Hunter will face, but when I look at the magic that will become my own when Father dies, I worry that I am not strong enough to wield it safely.
Sometimes I wonder whether my father keeps me locked out of his heart for that very reason. I adore my mother and my sister, and that is all the room I have in my heart for vulnerability. That is one of the lessons I don’t think Father meant to teach me. I do not fear only the creatures that threaten us; I also fear the depths of my own rage if my loved ones were imperiled. To hunt the monsters, a Hunter must be deadly in ways that terrify me still.
Chapter 2
“[F]airies are ... as real for some persons as any other fact in life in this last decade of the nineteenth century.”
—Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost Worldby Jeremiah Curtin [1895]
Deep in my thoughts, I stand, mint-soaked cloth covering my nose and mouth and breathing deeply, as my father stares at the circle where only bones now remain. He takes a moment, watching them smolder. Then he finally gestures me near.
My work here is not yet done. As he watches, I use the steel rod to sift through the gray ash and charred bone, trying to tell myself that this is not a man, not a person with a family somewhere. The distance is a lie, and not even a very good one.
“Faery teeth?”
“None.”
“Claws?”
“No.”
“Faery blood?” He sounds hopeful, voice louder as he peers over my shoulder. I wonder whether he once did this part, when I was too young to assist, when his knees weren’t swollen, when his bones didn’t crackle if he squatted.
I shift all the remaining bones, trying to tell myself that the dead man’s teeth are merely stones resting under burned leaves. My lies dolittle to hide reality. Still, there’s no green anywhere. No hardened faery blood hides in the ashes. If there were a single speck of the green goop, it would stand out like an emerald in the gray, white, and black debris.
“Nothing.”
We peer into the places where blood had pooled on the ground near the body. That, too, is burned away. No hardened emerald tears rest there either. We find not even a sliver of faery blood.
