Chapter 2
“Leave it.”
Imogen arched a brow when her dog, Shadow, looked back at her with a plaintive whine. Usually Shadow was good about leaving smelly things on the side of the path alone, but this was just too much temptation, apparently.
Imogen planted her fists on her hips. “Leave it, Shadow. We don’t pick up strange things off the path.” Especially not ones that reeked of the pub.
But Shadow only whined again, his tail kicking up dust as he sat staring at the huge body sprawled in the leaves.
Sighing, Imogen looked over her shoulder to check on the herd.
Her dozen goats were thankfully taking the opportunity to munch on acorns, all under the watchful eye of Chestnut, her trusty donkey.
The herd included a billy goat, and everyone pretended that he was in charge to spare his pride, but, really, Chestnut ruled the roost.
She was a better herder than Shadow by a mile, keeping all the goats in line as Imogen led the way to their work for the day. Imogen had begun something of a side business a few years back, bringing her hearty goats to munch on any unwanted fauna, like acorns and thistle.
They were due at the Brádaigh estate that morning and had been plenty early—until a certain big obstacle beside the path stopped her in her tracks.
Imogen glared at the obstacle in question. It wasn’t that he was in the path necessarily—the goats could pass him by without any trouble. Her problem was whether or not this was an act, and he meant to spring up to grab a tasty morsel with those big claws and fangs.
The latter of which were on full display, his mouth wide open as he snored loud enough to shake the trees. Really, it had to be an act. No one actually slept like that.
Pursing her lips, Imogen drew a little closer. She purposefully made a bit of noise, waiting to see any tells that he was faking it. But those ridiculous triangular ears at the top of his head didn’t move.
With a frown, she peered down at the strange man.
She’d heard of all the otherly newcomers in the area, of course.
Although she lived by herself, in a modest cottage away from any of the surrounding villages, even she had heard plenty of stories about the orcs, manticores, dragons, and harpies who’d come to settle in the Darrowlands.
This was most definitely a manticore. She didn’t know which; her sister Neomi had probably told her their names at some point, but Neomi talked a lot, and Imogen often took to nodding along, only half-listening.
So long as none of her animals were accosted or stolen, she’d no business with the otherlies.
Of course, one laying across her path—or next to it, as it were—was her temporary business.
Sharing a skeptical look with Shadow, Imogen raised her walking stick and poked the manticore’s shoulder.
It was about the only bit of him exposed other than his face above the massive tawny-feathered wing laying over him like a blanket.
It shouldn’t be possible to look so cozy on the side of the road, but he somehow managed.
His flat, catlike nose twitched, the pink-brown triangle of nose leather glistening in the cool morning.
The longer Imogen looked, the more she found him an…
odd sort of person. The manticore truly was a perfect mix of features.
A human brow and chin, but the nose and split philtrum of a cat, with long white whiskers above his open mouth.
Those long canines weren’t human, and neither were the sharp upper row of teeth.
His hair hung in golden blonde waves down to a shaggy mane along his back and shoulders.
He seemed to have arms and legs like a human, though the hands and feet appeared more pawlike from what she could see.
Strange. Imogen wasn’t one to judge another by their looks—she wasn’t a hypocrite—but she allowed herself that seeing one of these otherlies was strange. They were definitely otherly.
Well…he looked asleep. Fine, then.
Waving at Chestnut to start gathering the goats, she poked him one more time, just to be safe.
The wing laid across his chest snapped back in a great whoosh, startling Shadow into a frenzy of barking. That huge chest heaved, and within a blink, Imogen was staring down into the gold-green eyes of a very awake manticore.
His slitted predator’s pupils blew wide, and he drew in another big lungful of air. A buzzing noise hummed from his chest, and his wings twitched and spasmed beneath him.
Was he having a fit?
“Kigara,” he wheezed. “Kigara!”
Using her stick across Shadow’s chest, Imogen hastily moved them backwards. Maybe he’d hit his head last night. Or was still drunk. Clearly not in his right mind.
Imogen put more space between them as the manticore struggled to his feet.
Chestnut came barreling up on her left side, letting out a threatening bray to back up Shadow’s warning barks.
The manticore winced from the cacophony of noise, especially when the goats began to join in, bleating ferociously.
Those triangular ears with little black tufts on the tips flattened against his head.
“Miss—maiden—please—” he implored, clapping his big paws over his ears.
Imogen let it go on a little longer, just so he knew she wasn’t alone in the woods. None of her herd were easy morsels to pick off.
Finally, she set her hand on Chestnut’s withers. “Enough,” she said. The ornery donkey got in one more long, resounding bray before finally quieting, although she swung her long ears back and forth for good measure.
With a click of her tongue, she told Chestnut to get the herd moving. The donkey huffed, ears swiveling, before starting down the path. It took a few nips and hoof stamps, but she got the herd going again.
Imogen stayed behind with Shadow to ensure everyone got safely past the big manticore, who looked like he seriously regretted whatever choices he’d made last night.
“You were beside the path,” she explained. “The animals meant no harm.”
“No, I’m sure they didn’t,” he hurried to say, still rubbing his head. “This wasn’t—I don’t—I don’t usually sleep by paths.”
Imogen only nodded. It wasn’t any of her business where he did or didn’t usually sleep.
“What I mean to say is—I just don’t want you thinking that I’m the kind to do this—” He gestured wildly at the forest. He opened his big mouth to say more, but as they both watched, a single long feather slipped free of his wing, fluttering the short distance to the ground.
“Enket at inan,” he whispered, his voice almost…reverent. “It’s true…”
His strange gaze fixed on the fallen feather, and she sensed some shift in him, the big man going almost preternaturally still.
Taking her chance at escape, Imogen cleared her throat. “Right. Well, we’ll be on our way, then.” Clicking her tongue again, she and Shadow turned to follow the goats.
“Wait—this isn’t—what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t!” she called, walking faster.
“Please wait, I—ack! Kud.”
The sounds of scrabbling and foreign curses and finally a long, steady stream of pissing on leaves echoed behind her. Imogen rolled her eyes.
She and the herd soon left the boundary of her land and then the forest itself behind, following the path onto a wider packed-earth road.
Full on their snack of acorns, the goats seemed content to follow Chestnut as she led the way through the countryside, not tempted by the fresh green shoots lining the road.
Despite the quick pace she set, they’d likely still be late. Damn. She hated being late. It brought more reasons to be talked at.
Imogen’s hand flew to her temple—had she stood there that whole time with her face showing?
—and her fingers touched the shorter hair framing her cheeks.
She took a breath, relieved. Although it wasn’t fashionable, Imogen fastidiously kept a long fringe of hair around her face, to help hide the obvious red stain birthmark that stretched from her left temple, down across her left cheek, to her nose.
She knew her dark hair could only do so much—the birthmark was large, and the older she grew, the darker it became. As a child, it’d been a lighter pink, but now that she was almost thirty, it’d become ruddy, almost wine-dark when her blood was high.
Imogen had tried every cream, every salve. She’d scrubbed rough towels, sand, even dirt across it to try and rub it away. Nothing helped, nothing faded it.
Her sister Neomi had once gotten her a little pot of cosmetics in Dundúran, but all it did was make the rest of Imogen’s face sickly pale—especially compared to her otherwise tanned complexion.
“It’s only a birthmark,” Neomi would often say. And while that was true, Neomi’s skin was perfect, unblemished. She’d always been bright and beautiful. Everyone liked Neomi.
The only one who’d understood Imogen and her mark was their father. He’d had one too, although it was further up his head. Until his hair had begun to thin, he’d mostly been able to hide the majority of it. Still, he knew what it was to bear such a difference.
“It’s just a little more of your color showing, sweetheart,” he’d say.
“It’s your temper showing, more like,” her mother would add.
Imogen did have a temper, that was also true. But only when provoked.
The problem was, growing up with something as obvious as a great red handprint across her face, Imogen had been provoked a lot.
Children often didn’t know the harm in what they said, but that didn’t make what they said any less harmful.
Her younger years had been full of jeers and jokes and torment.
“It’s all in good fun,” Neomi said, “just a little teasing.” Well, she would say that. She’d gone and married Imogen’s main tormentor.
When their parents had passed, they left the great farm to both daughters, but Imogen couldn’t bear to live with Neomi and Collin. So she took her share and bought her own little bit of forest. There, amongst the trees, she knew peace.
The trees didn’t care what she looked like. Neither did the goats, the squirrels, the deer.
Over the past three years, she’d made a good life for herself out in her cottage, on land she owned.
Oh, she still visited—Neomi insisted on it.
Imogen had her businesses, too, to keep her busy.
When she wasn’t leading goats to clear unwanted fauna, she was making soaps from their milk and gathering their wool, foraging for mushrooms, processing herbs and spices, and more.
It kept her busy. Fulfilled.
She grinned down at Shadow when he bumped her hand with his cold nose.
Yes, she enjoyed her little life out in the wilderness with her animals for company.
She took in runts and strays. She kept a tidy home and did her part to manage the forest. She’d made friends with the deer herds that passed through her land and even a truce with the black bears who roamed in the autumn—she left them berries and salmon and they left her ducks alone.
All in all, it was a good life. One she’d made herself. There was happiness in solitude, and when she had to leave it, she found ways to manage.
She supposed there wasn’t much point anymore in taking such pains to hide her birthmark—everyone in the Darrowlands knew her by her mark. No one remarked on it anymore, really. A few might stare. But most got on with it. The mark was just…there.
Imogen supposed that was all right. Except, for a very long time, she’d been made to feel it was the only thing remarkable about her.
The red that covered her face was all people saw, all people remembered about her.
They might have moved past it, forgotten, or not cared anymore, but Imogen…
didn’t. She had to care—it was her face.
And so she fussed about with her hair, ensuring it was covering as much of her as possible.
It wasn’t just Aoife or Sorcha Bradaigh she saw when she went to the estate—theirs was a busy, working estate, packed with grooms, cadets, farmhands, and their large, growing family.
Imogen wouldn’t normally agree to take on work at such a bustling place, but Sorcha Brádaigh had always been kind to her.
“We have to behave,” she reminded Shadow. “No matter what that raccoon does, you can’t chase him. It’s bad for business.”
Shadow whined and harrumphed as if he knew exactly what she said.
Imogen had cared for her fair share of animals, but never a raccoon.
It’d been quite the surprise to not only meet Sorcha’s new husband, a half-orc, but also the young raccoon they’d taken in.
Darrah was quite the rotund thing, always finding ways of getting into places he shouldn’t—usually where there was food.
Should I tell them about the manticore? She remembered Neomi telling her that when the otherlies first arrived in the Darrowlands, they’d spent their first winter encamped on the Brádaigh estate.
Sorcha’s husband Orek and Lord Hakon, the heiress’s half-orc husband, often visited the otherlies, helping build their new village.
Honestly, if Neomi spent half as much time working as she did in Granach gossiping, our parents’ farm might not be on the brink of failing.
“Fair maid, I beg you! Your name!”
Imogen’s stomach dropped. A quick peek over her shoulder confirmed—yes, the manticore was bounding down the lane after them.
Dammit.
Using her stick to tap the goat in front of her, she whistled for Chestnut to pick up the pace.