Laura Anne Gilman (18 page)

“Knife. Got it.” She unhooked the knife from the creature’s thigh, where it was tied with leather cords. The pants were rough cloth, the same as the shirt that was now stained with that black blood, and she wondered only faintly what the creature might look like underneath.

“Come on. Don’t touch it any more than you have to.”

“Why?” She moved her hands away and stared at the body, trying to find anything else that might possibly be a weapon.

“The skin might be toxic. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know what that is.”

“Not much comfort,” she said, sitting back on her heels and scooting backward. “In fact, no comfort. Here. Have a knife.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you.”

She looked at the knife, a horn-handled butt of metal about the length of her hand, then nodded, sliding it back into the leather sheath. Martin, if he had time to change, had hooves and bulk on his side. She had nothing.

“I don’t know how to use it,” she said.

“Stick it into anyone who threatens you,” Martin said. “Come on. We need to go.”

Jan looked at the knife in her hands again, then shoved it, sheath first, into the pocket of her jeans. It would be awkward to sit down, but it didn’t seem as though they were going to be lounging around any time soon.

“They’ve got a head start,” she said, shaking her head, “and this is her world. How are we going to find them? Can you scent them from here?”

“No,” Martin said. “And not we. You.”

Jan felt her eyes go so wide, she probably looked like an anime character. “Me?”

Martin nodded, his face as serious as she’d ever seen him, the long lines of his jaw even more horselike, somehow. “Don’t search for her, search for him. He’s your leman. You are connected, you can find him.”

“Connected?” She didn’t feel very connected, not after the coffeehouse, not after she’d failed to hold on to him in the alley.

“Connected. The thing that AJ talked about, the reason love can pull a human back from a preter’s grasp. Human to human, lover to lover. It may even be why he came to that café, of all the places they could have walked into, because you were there.” Martin shrugged, his hands spreading to indicate he didn’t know for certain. “That’s the legend, anyway. A preter can obscure that connection, but not sever it. Not so long as you hold true. And here, with so few distractions, so few other human ties...”

Jan tried to parse that and shook her head. “I couldn’t hold on to him, before. When—”

“Not physically. Emotionally. With your heart.”

Jan turned away, staring at the rows of smooth-trunked trees, as though they might explain it all to her. Her heart. Tyler.

He had cheated on her. He’d abandoned her willingly, at least the first time. Had gone off to meet another woman, been dragged into her snare; but he wouldn’t have, if he’d stayed home where he was supposed to be.

Jan held the thought, examined it. She loved him. No matter how angry she was, no matter how
pissed
she was, she still loved him. She cared about him. Wanted him home, safe.

“So. Okay. How...”

“Listen. Feel.” He stepped away from her, and she shivered. “Tell me where he is.”

She tried to listen, but all she could hear was the odd sound of the wind in those unnerving leaves and the utter silence, as though there were no birds here...or at least, none after the Snake slithered down. And that thought made her listen more intently for the sound of something moving in the grass, coming toward them...

“I will protect you,” Martin said, his voice sounding as though it came from farther away than the few feet between them. “Just feel.”

She tried. She tried to remember the way Tyler’s skin felt under hers, the way he would smile just before he fell asleep, sheepish and sweet. Instead, she felt the twist of feather-scale-fur under her hands, the snap of the giant jaws as they closed too close to her face, the way the shapes had struggled to get away from her, while she repeated her love, over and over again.

She tried to remember the sound of his voice. It had only been a couple of weeks; surely she could remember the sound of his voice early in the morning, crackling before that first sip of coffee, the way he’d laughed, like a low rumble in his throat?

The smooth echoes of Martin’s voice intruded in her memory, but she pushed them back, concentrating.

Another echo sounded, and she turned, as though drawn by a lodestone.

“That way.”

Into the tree line. There was no path through the trees, not even anything she could guess was a deer track—if they even had deer in this place—but that was where their quarry had gone—Jan was certain of it.

Chapter 13

T
hey walked in silence, Martin caught in his own thoughts, Jan too afraid of losing the faint thread of Tyler’s presence to risk conversation. But she kept looking around as they walked, stealing glimpses while also trying to keep an eye on her footing.

The area of the world where they’d landed was entirely rural—no cities, no villages, not even any roads, just empty stretches of emerald-green grasslands, broken by dark patches of woods. The sky was fogged in; she knew the sun was there only by the indirect light that filled the air. It reminded Jan of summer on the Maine coast, when she’d been a teenager, before the morning haze burned off. But this wasn’t morning; the world seemed perpetually overcast.

Jan didn’t have the luxury of studying fairyland in depth, though. Following the trace of that echo was difficult work, even concentrating, and the worry that they were falling too far behind kept clawing at her, adding to the stress.

They didn’t see anything else moving as they walked, not a bird or beast or anything on two legs. Martin paced beside her, his head held up, his entire body alert to any physical danger. That hyper-awareness made Jan doubly aware of the knife, stuck sheath first in her pocket, balanced on the other side by her inhaler.

Not seeing any threat didn’t mean there wasn’t one lurking somewhere.

“Where are they going?” she wondered, near to exhaustion and wanting only to stop and curl up and sleep for a little while. They had been walking—she didn’t know how long, she couldn’t tell where the sun was in the sky, and she’d been tired when they’d begun. Did night even fall here? Or was it perpetually gray?

“I don’t know,” Martin said, which she knew already. If he’d known, he would have told her. Probably. Maybe. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, let him drape an arm around her again, help support her weight, but she did none of that. It didn’t seem right, somehow. Not when she was here to rescue Tyler.

They walked a while longer, moving from the grasslands into one of the wooded areas. Jan expected to hear sounds once they were directly under the trees, but there was still nothing, not a bird, not a squirrel, not the crashing noise of a deer racing away from these intruders. It was still and silent, and that made it all worse, even worse than when they were out on the plains.

The light dimmed as they went farther in, the ground became uneven, and they had to keep stepping over tiny creeks that cut through the woods. Her sense of time disappeared entirely: they could have been walking for days, or ten minutes. Fairyland-time, she thought. It was all surreal, pressing against her like too-warm air in a sauna. Martin kept looking around, that intense awareness mixed now with uncertainty.

He didn’t like being in the woods, either.

* * *

Jan was so tired, so tightly focused on that narrow thread of connection, that when the first soft whisper came, barely a breath of air in the curve of her ear, she thought she had imagined it at first.

“Who?”

She didn’t stop, but frowned, tilting her head slightly. “What?”

“Who?”

She wasn’t imagining things, that was a definite whisper, coming from somewhere in the trees. An unfamiliar voice: not Tyler. But not that bitch, either. She’d never forget that voice.

“Who are?”

Now Jan did stop, unable to listen, to hold the faint, thread-thin connection and walk all at the same time.

“Who are you?”
the whisperer asked, barely audible but perfectly clear.

“Did you hear that?” Jan said.

Martin had stopped just behind her. “No.”

“Liar.” She tilted her head to the right as though that would let her hear better. The trees still rose above them, dark red leaves still now, the smooth-barked trunks soaring into the misty sky and disappearing.

“Don’t answer,” Martin said, trying to nudge her forward without actually touching her.

“You do hear it!”

“Jan, this isn’t our place. Listening to things that whisper out of the mist is not a smart life choice.”

It was hard to argue with that logic. And yet...

“Who are you?”

The voices were soft but growing louder, as though the speaker was coming closer, until the whisper was almost in her ear.

“Jan, don’t listen!” Martin’s hand was now hard on her shoulder, squeezing until the bone ached in protest.

“You’re hurting me,” she said, a little petulant.

“You can’t listen. Don’t let them coax you into saying anything to them, not even your name. You need to remember what happens if you listen to preters.”

“What, they’ll lure me off somewhere and drown me?” She didn’t know why those words came out of her mouth, so ugly compared to the whispers, but she didn’t apologize, even when she saw him flinch.

“Who are you?”

This time, the whisper was right behind her ear, close enough that she could almost feel the weight of breath against her neck, hot and fetid.

Martin was right beside her, but his voice felt farther away. “Jan. Janny.”

This time, she leaned back against him, resting against his solid build, with its reassuring scent of water and moss, and the whispers retreated.

They stood there, two heartbeats the only sound, under the mist-shrouded trees.

“Keep moving.” And his hand on her shoulder pushed her forward, getting her to start walking again, following that faint, familiar tug.

The ground under their feet was still that same odd-green grass, and Jan stared at it, wondering how it got enough sunlight under these trees, in this dim light, to be so brightly colored.

Nothing here made sense. Snakes the size of school buses, voices that whispered out of the air, beautiful, soulless creatures who used internet dating sites to steal humans....

And werewolves and
bansidhes
and kelpies and trolls, on her side, while she tracked her errant lover by sense of...something. Not a hell of a lot made sense any more, period.

“Sure as hell not Kansas anymore. Not that I know anyone who’s ever been to Kansas.”

“I have,” Martin said, his voice still quiet. “Definitely not Kansas.”

Even that exchange seemed too loud, and they walked on in silence, Jan stopping every now and again to try and take bearings. The thread was exactly that, a narrow, glimmering thread in her mind that pointed her in the right direction, but never very far. If she wavered too much, or got distracted, it shortened and then faded entirely.

Jan tried to focus her mind only on what she was doing, not anything else, until the thread firmed a little more, extending far enough out that she knew where to go.

“What was it?” she asked after a while, when Martin’s grip on her shoulder eased, indicating that he thought they were safe, or at least safer. “The thing whispering, I mean.”

“Wil-’o-the-wisps, I think.” He didn’t sound confident. “I don’t know. There are things that feel wrong, like I should be able to recognize them and I can’t, or they’re not the way my instincts tell me they should be. I can’t trust what I know, because what I know isn’t what it is.”

“You mean you don’t have the most recent upgrade? Again, so not comforting.”

They were keeping their voices low, their bodies barely inches apart, and Jan reached up to touch his hand, still clasped on her shoulder.

“Would we be able to go faster, if you...changed?” Four legs, her riding; it seemed to make sense. Unlike a real horse, he could understand her—and his hooves would be useful, if they ran into anything else.

“No. Maybe. But it wouldn’t be safe.”

“Safe?” She thought she had misunderstood him. “From them? Or because things changed?”

“From me.”

She tried to stop, to turn around and look at him, but his hand tightened again, moving her forward.

“We’ve warned you, over and over. Don’t trust us. Especially not here, not even me. You know what I am.”

Jan knew. She kept reminding herself of that. “More danger than just being here? More danger than... Do you believe that you could hurt me? That you would hurt me?”

He had slept beside her, night after night. Held her hand, pulled her from danger, let her cry against his shoulder. Did none of that mean anything to him?

“I’m sworn to keep you safe. AJ made me swear. I won’t break that...I think.”

“You think?” Jan didn’t know where her lighthearted tone came from; it certainly wasn’t how she felt. “Third time, not comforting.”

His hand relaxed, as though he’d suddenly realized how tightly he was gripping her shoulder. “Jan, believe me. It’s safer, if I keep in this form. If we’re both...not-comforted. This shape...reminds me what’s at stake. If I change...there’s too much magic here. It could influence me.”

Jan tried to find something to say to that and couldn’t. So she shut up.

* * *

He woke suddenly, not remembering having gone to sleep, hearing voices. Instinctively he stayed still, a mouse surrounded by cats that might or might not be hungry. He had slept, but before that there were vague memories of a fight, someone trying to take him away from her, pull him away. Then it had all gone blank for a while. Then he had come to, and they’d been away from that place; she’d been striding in front of him, expecting him to follow, her black hair spitting sparks with anger.

He had been fascinated by those sparks, clear and sparkling as crystals, but when he’d tried to touch one, it had burned him.

“Where are we going?” he had dared to ask.

“Where I can think,” she had replied tartly. He had fallen back a step and, chastised, been silent.

His eyes still closed, he remembered walking swiftly through the woods, coming out the other side to a narrow creek. He would have stopped, but she did not allow it, skirting the sloping, muddy bank until they came to a narrow bridge made of stone.

Something had rumbled and growled underneath, but she had not paused or looked down, and so neither had he.

On the other side of the creek, there were no trees, only a rolling plain that led, in the distance, to foothills, and beyond the foothills, a jagged mound that reached through the sky’s ceiling and disappeared into the mist.

It had reminded him of something, some other mountain: he had been sitting up high, in a chair that rumbled beneath him, watching it from this same distance. Then he had been able to see the peak—no, not the peak, there had been a haze, as well, but higher up. He had felt a pang in his heart, comparing the view to memory, as though someone had dipped a needle and thread into that organ and tugged.

“Come,” she had commanded, and he had let go of the memory, and followed.

Then they had made camp, he recalled, and he had lain down at her command, and now he was awake, and a voice, a male voice, was speaking.

“You should not have killed him.”

Stjerne was cold, shiver-cold in her response. “You are judging me?”

The male voice was airy, mocking. “I? Never I. I am lowly, unworthy, and know my place in the wheel of things. You Court-folk will do as you will, as you always will. I am merely observing, from my place.”

There was silence after that. Would she kill this mocker, the way she had killed the whisperer before? He tried not to move or do anything that would let her—or the stranger—know that he was awake. The ground was soft and warm underneath him, as comfortable as any bed, but his head rubbed up against the root of the trees they sheltered under, and he could feel the need to pee building in his bladder.

Stjerne did not strike this speaker down or otherwise show her wrath, but merely said, “It is done.”

“True, it is done. And there will be those who judge. Those who have the right to judge. You are not above the Court, such as it remains.”

She did not respond to her companion but said, “Human, I know that you’re awake. There’s hot water and a towel for you.”

Caught, he opened his eyes and then widened them, seeing the figure speaking with her. Short, squat, it looked less like a living creature than a mobile stump, knee-high and covered with rough skin that looked like bark. Then it twisted to look at him, and he had to work not to flinch in reaction: stuck midway in the trunk-body was a face, bark-rough but identifiable, with lidless blue eyes staring back at him.

“All over this.” The lips were almost invisible, bark-covered and thin, set over a faint impression of a chin that sloped down into the trunk.

“Over my right to do as I please,” she said, tartly.

“Of course, of course.” The eyes closed once, slowly, and then it turned back, as though Tyler had been judged and deemed insignificant for further study.

He sat up, waiting for soreness or pain to make itself known, but nothing did. He reached for the memories that had been there on waking, desperate for something to hold on to, to resist the smooth gray fog already seeping into his brain, smoothing it all into a dull acceptance.

But it was gone, leaving behind the spiky, sharp prickling of thorns. There was only Stjerne, and she was expecting him to get ready.

He went to where she had indicated, and found a pot of water and a scrap of cloth. The pot was made of the same cloth as the towel, only stiffened somehow and given a glossy sheen. The water was just warm enough to make his skin turn red when he dipped his hands in, and there was just enough for him to wash his face and upper body, then dry off, and replace his shirt.

He craved a full shower but knew better than to ask.

By the time he returned, the stump-creature was gone, and she had made the blanket he had slept on disappear the same way she had made it appear, standing with her back to him, looking out at the mountain.

“What do you feel?”

“Feel?” She had never asked such a thing before.

“Feel.” She was impatient with him, and he shivered. “What do you feel?”

“I...”
Fine
was his first, instinctive response. He did feel fine, but he didn’t think that was what she had meant. “Physically, I am well.”

“And emotionally? How does your...heart, feel?”

The question perplexed him. She was his heart, and she was here, how could he be anything other than well? She had asked, and so he must answer honestly.