THREE
THREE
A s with every time I grace her threshold, the witch takes one look at me and turns to her shelves, grabbing the potion I require and handing it to me with a roll of linen.
“Cleaned and covered,” she advises with a jerk of her chin toward her well. I do as instructed, accepting her offer of a crutch before limping back to my post.
My duty ensures that I am wounded often enough to require a shelter on the forest floor, and with no small amount of pain and a phenomenal lack of grace, I curl into the small burrow dug into the roots of an oak. The shelter is small and cramped. A rigged oil tarp forms the entrance, hung from a taut line so I can sweep to the side. Two woven reed walls form the head and the foot, jutting roughly three feet from the tree. The rest is matted down by my years of use, with hollows and depressions formed around the curves of my body from the time I have spent here injured.
I have no blankets or pillows, just my shelter, stolen clothes, and dirt. The lack of comfort is by design. Sleeping on the ground leaves me too exposed, and as I only use this shelter when I am injured, I am not only exposed but at a considerable disadvantage. Should I need to flee, blankets and pillows would only slow me down. Those I keep in a chest on my sleeping platform, high in the trees where I am safe. This shelter is a utilitarian space used for an express purpose.
As such, by the time dawn breaks, I feel as though I have been run over by a wagon train. My leg aches, though the wounds have begun healing thanks to my visit to the witch, and my dreams left me restless, filling my head with scents and sounds that are not there: soft breaths and foreign howls, the padding of feet around my shelter, and the comforting aroma of orange blossom.
The fact that I dream is more unsettling than my injury and sheltering on the ground combined—I should not have been able to sleep deeply enough to dream in the first place.
Odder still is that when I wake, I smell bacon.
My stomach growls, and I give in, brushing the oiled tarp aside.
“Hello,” the girl says. She sits on a nearby fallen log, her cloak settling about her shoulders and dripping over her legs as though she sits in a pool of blood. A hand rests on the woven handle of a wicker basket, steam rises from the checkered towel thrown over the top, and my stomach rumbles again. “Did you sleep well?”
I let the tarp fall, obscuring her from view, and drop onto my back, palming my face and groaning into my hand. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might be hungry.”
“I am not.”
It is quiet for a beat, and in the stretch of silence, my traitorous stomach growls a third time.
“I heard that.” The basket creaks, and pine straw snaps beneath her feet. A moment later, my tarp is swept aside. She crowds into my tiny shelter, pulling the tarp tightly closed. “I did not want to wake you, but as I am sure you know, it is dangerous to linger in the woods with food.”
“If you know that, why are you here?”
“Because you are injured, and you need to eat.” At that, she flips the checkered towel back to reveal a bundle of bacon and a pile of what my nose tells me are freshly baked sausage rolls. “I did not know what you would prefer, so forgive me if I am wrong. I—” She presses her lips together, the plush lower one pushed out in a pout. “I followed my own stomach.”
Grabbing a sausage roll with two fingers, she holds it out to me. I take it, careful of the delicate, buttery crust. She selects a piece of bacon for herself and sits with her knees hugged to her chest, nibbling and watching me expectantly.
With some effort, I sit up and twist to face her. My injured leg stretches the length of the burrow, and I cannot help that my calf presses against her hip.
“Thank you,” I mumble before taking a bite. The flaky crust bursts against my lips and teeth. Salt and herbs explode on my tongue a half second before the savory, fatty sausage rolls my eyes back in my head. I swallow the bite along with my groan, shoving the rest of the roll into my mouth. Only when I reach for a second one do I realize she is staring at me. Embarrassed and unsure why, I withdraw and stare at my knee.
“Please.” She nudges the basket closer. “Have as many as you like; we baked them for you.”
“We?”
“My grandmother and I.” The basket slides an inch closer. “She lives deep in the wood. When I told her what happened, she demanded we bring you some food.”
“No one lives in the wood.” Except for me, the witch, and the monsters. I narrow my eyes at her, but the girl is unbothered. “Do you mean the village at the other end of the path?”
She shrugs and makes a move with her head that is caught between a nod and a shake. “Near enough. Now eat.” She stretches a leg to nudge the basket with her foot. With how she had sat and hugged her knees, the move pins her skirt in place and reveals a stretch of smooth skin above her boot. I fight to pull my eyes away and keep them on her face, the basket, the tarp. Anywhere but at the enticing curve of her calf. “Everyone knows you must eat to heal.”
The basket slides right up to my hand, and she leaves her leg pressed against mine. Her foot rests against my thigh, delicate compared to the muscle and sturdiness I boast.
Unable to speak and even less able to evaluate the heat this contact has lit in my belly, I grab a second sausage roll. A third. Shoveling one after another in my mouth. It has been ages since I had a villager-cooked meal and even longer since it was freshly baked and warm. I swear I can feel the so-called healing properties in every bite, and soon, my belly is full, my limbs loose, and I’ve eased back onto my elbows, fighting the urge to close my eyes and sleep.
“You should rest,” she says, watching me intently from her end of my burrow. “I will keep watch.”
“There are monsters in the woods.” The words are thick on my tongue, as though I had downed a dozen pints at the tavern.
“That there are,” she says, resting her hand lightly on my shin. The sudden contact zings into my bones. I watch in shock as she curves her fingers around my calf. Her gaze drops to where she touches me, thoughtful and somewhat lost. She strokes my leg, a sad smile tugging the corner of her mouth. It is all I can do to remain still. Despite my injury and the sleepiness brought on by the meal, I want to reach out for her leg and do the same.
“You should leave, little hood,” I say instead.
She turns her wrist, trailing the backs of her fingers up my leg as if she knew doing so with her palm would rub my dense fur the wrong way. Instead, her touch is soft and soothing. Lulling and arousing at once.
“Czerwony,” she says. “If you need something to call me, you should call me Czerwony.”
“Czerwony,” I repeat, committing to memory how it rolls along my tongue. Many human names are difficult for me to pronounce. They are meant for flat faces and square teeth. But this name, Czerwony , feels as natural to speak as my own. So I do. “Fenra.”
Czerwony’s eyes dart to mine, heated and dark beneath thick lashes. Her tongue darts out, flicking her lips as if tasting the sound before speaking. “Fenra.”
She says my name like a growl, low in her throat and rumbling in her chest. Hearing it from her lips shifts something in me. My duty to the wood and my vow to protect the villagers no longer matter. At that moment, with my name on her tongue, all I wish for in this world is to press my ear against her breastbone and feel the rumble as well as I can hear it.
Czerwony twists her wrist again, cupping the back of my knee. Her fingers stroke an idle circle, and she gently squeezes, carefully avoiding my wounds. “Sleep Fenra.”
I could weep for how she says my name. “I have my watch—”
“The wood is quiet.” A nail tickles my leg, coiling something unfamiliar in my belly. I fight the urge to wriggle as the sensation worms deeper, drawing me to lie back. “And the lindworm has spread the story of your ferocity.” A smirk dimples Czerwony’s cheek, and she leans forward, lowering her voice into a teasing whisper. “But if it makes you feel better, I will keep your watch for you.”
“I am sure you will,” is all I manage before sleep takes me.
Czerwony is gone when I wake, and the wood beyond my shelter is dark. Rolling onto my knees, I sweep the tarp aside and enter a pool of crisp moonlight. Ears pricked, I scan my surroundings, listening for any footfall or brush of scales over the undergrowth.
Peaceful quiet meets me. A dove coos in a distant tree, and to my left, a fox stalks a mouse over alder roots, but otherwise the woods are quiet and calm.
It is how I wish them to be. This peace is the drive and desire behind my vow, so why does it leave me ill at ease? I am moving the moment the thought enters my head, striding into the woods with steady, sure steps, half a dozen paces from my shelter, when I stumble to a halt.
No pain.
Not a twinge or an ache. My leg is as steady and strong as it was when I descended from my sleeping platform to stalk Czerwony and the lindworm through the wood.
Unease raises my hackles, hairs prickling as my ears twitch and swivel. Czerwony claimed that the food had healing properties. That her grandmother lived deep in the wood. My wood. No human dwells in my wood beyond the witch, and I stop to consider Czerwony’s easy deferral when I asked if her grandmother lived in the village at the other end of the path.
A shrug and a nod that was half a shake of her head.
“Near enough.”
“Clever,” I murmur. The snapping of a branch whips my head to the left. It repeats, further away. And again, some creature fleeing my presence and voice. I lift my head and sniff the air, eyes flying wide at the scent of orange blossom and bacon. “No.”
She would not be so foolish, would she? To sit alone in the wood at night, smelling as delicious as she does in that absurd cloak … it would call all manner of beasts and monsters. No creature could resist such an enticingly wrapped and aromatic morsel, and I count myself among their number.
I am already running when I decide: Yes. She would be that foolish. Thinking herself invincible because her grandmother is the witch. Czerwony with her lack of regard for the rules put in place for her safety. She would sit on her fallen log, whistling and singing, snapping her cloak and announcing her presence to any monster within earshot until she got bored, of course. Then she would start skipping , her skirt flouncing and revealing those creamy pale legs to anything with eyes.
The thought has me speeding up, chasing those snapping twigs and rustling branches to pursue whatever creature must have chased her away. If any monster in the wood is to see those legs, it will be me.
I stop short at the certainty with which the thought rings through me. Who am I to claim Czerwony, much less her legs? A half-beast outcast who spends all her time alone. Despite my frequent sojourns through the wood, I have never seen another of my kind. I have seen enough lindworms and tarasques, woodwoses, and firefoxes to fill a bestiary but never a beast like me.
As badly as I wish to see her legs, to feel the smooth skin beneath my callused palm, in what world or wood am I fortunate enough to do so? As much as it pains me every time one of those tiny, sad smiles flits across her face, who am I to wish I could erase that sorrow?
A lean, loping creature darts across the narrow deer path, hauling me from this morose spiral. Moonlight glances off its fur, illuminating the haunches and bristled tail.
Wolf.
Czerwony’s scent tickles my nose as quickly as the wolf vanishes. I break into a run. If a true wolf has caught her scent, I am already too late. Unlike the lindworm, my kin are fierce and unrelenting. They do not wait until their prey is tired; they attack, and the strength of the orange blossom filling my head tells me she is close—that the wolf is close.
I do not care as pine straw and twigs snap beneath my feet. I ignore the snap and rustle of branches I push aside. I must reach the wolf before it reaches her.
Heart pounding, I bend low and flex my fingers, pressing my claws out as a snarl builds in my throat. The wolf is quick, darting over streams and under brambles. It must know that I am gaining ground, for it bounds onto a trunk, a boulder, a branch, glancing back at me with moonlight gleaming in its eyes.
And then it drops out of sight.
I scramble up the boulder, muscles bunching and pushing me up to the branch. I swing and let go, landing in a secluded glade I have never before visited. My hackles raise further, and the snarl dies in my throat as I pick out the standing stones, forming a perfect unnatural circle.
Will-o-wisps bob in even intervals, their haunting gleam lighting the runes on each stone, adding a haunting cast to the moonlit glade. Short-trimmed grass blankets the glade, and there, ten feet away and downwind from me, Czerwony crouches in her cloak.
The scarlet wool is blood red in the moonlight, cascading down her shoulders, the hood obscuring her face, but I know it is her. She fills the glade with her scent, and its headiness sends my mind reeling. Before I know it, I am halfway to where she crouches, and she throws out her arm, palm up.
“Stop, please.” Her voice is rasp, as if she has not used it in days, though we spoke mere hours ago in my shelter.
I do. Her fingers tremble, and her arm shakes. Czerwony is terrified, likely from being chased through the wood by two beasts. Guilt gnaws at the part I have played in her fright, and I crouch to her level, making myself less of a threat. “Where is the wolf?”
Her arm retreats beneath the cloak, and Czerwony chuckles. “You must have frightened it away.”
“I saw it, Czerwony.” Knee walking closer, I reach out for her, glancing around the glade to be sure the wolf does not stalk us from beyond the stones. Their magic hums in my ears, building pressure in my skull. “Where did it go?”
“Away,” she sings. “Away and gone at the end of night. Hidden and cloaked from all in sight.”
There is a tone to her voice I do not like. A mania and panic that sends me to her side. I drape an arm around her shoulders. Czerwony tenses before melting against me, her body going liquid and dense. I sway at her sudden weight, pleased by how perfectly she fits against my side. “What do you mean, Czerwony?”
She sighs, repeating her name quietly before turning her face to look up at me. Her eyes are wide, the pupils blown out to the edges of her irides. “I do not want to scare you, Fenra.”
The thought of it. This small, ridiculous creature with a death wish in the woods, frightening me? “You do not.”
“I think I might.”
Before I can parse the meaning in those words, Czerwony rises and kisses me.