Chapter 13 #3
The scathing look I offered him made it clear that my jibe had been intended for him but he only lifted his glass of water to his lips and sipped it slowly, his piercing eyes never straying from mine.
I stared back at him despite every instinct willing me to break the contact.
Hendrix thumped his glass down onto the table and I flinched at the sudden sound, making him snort in amusement.
“The spirits lost their minds when the curse was struck. They’re just as feral and bloodthirsty as every other monster in these woods.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for an apple, uncertain why I was surprised.
The Fae may have played at being sophisticated and highly knowledgeable but they were as ferocious and spiteful as any other monster.
In fact, they were worse. A beast had no way of knowing it was a beast. It couldn’t reason or try to justify its actions.
It worked on nothing but instinct and need.
Hunger, shelter, territory. The Fae were vicious out of selfishness.
“What is that look for?” he asked when I failed to expand on my judgement of his assessment.
“You really care? I was under the impression that I was an irrelevant human whose opinions meant less than dirt to you.”
“Well yes, obviously, but you might as well fill the silence with your irrelevance rather than letting it fester.”
I pursed my lips, choosing not to comment on my feelings about him and his kind and instead focusing on his dismissive assessment of the spirits.
“The spirits here may have lost their way, but they were born of pure magic with the sole purpose of protecting this forest. I don’t think those instincts have diminished completely and neither do I believe that they are entirely without thought or reason in their current state. ”
“So what are they then?” he asked, though clearly he didn’t think much of my assessment.
“Lost,” I muttered, the word a sting on an old but unhealed wound. “And in need of our help.”
Hendrix snorted, shaking his head at me like I was some foolish child, and I bristled at his arrogant sense of superiority.
“The forest literally told us so when we arrived here. They need to be found and reunited. Doesn’t that sound like a mother in search of her children or at least a queen missing her army?” I pressed.
Hendrix considered my words while he chewed, then shrugged. “What mother requires their children to stop them from devouring the entire world the way this forest is attempting without its spirits to hold it in check?”
I stared at him in complete disbelief. “That’s precisely what a mother would do if she lost her children. She’d tear the world apart in her desperation to retrieve them and damn the ones who fell to her wrath.”
Hendrix still appeared unconvinced, so I grabbed my precious book from its place beside my plate and opened it with enough force to make the cutlery rattle, pausing on the chapter which spoke of the Dragon.
“At its heart, the Dragon is a protector,” I read.
“It patrolled the trees at dawn and dusk, circling them and catching up to any who might think to creep beyond their bounds. With scales lit by starlight and dancing on the powerful heart of a storm cloud, its mighty roar would make the leaves bristle and shiver, requiring every bough, branch and trunk to stand and account themselves upon each sweep it took between the-”
“So the Dragon could summon a storm to fell any tree which wandered beyond the boundary of the forest and without it they roam free, yes, yes,” Hendrix said, waving a hand like he wanted to brush my words from the room.
“I’ve heard those pretty little fairytales before, though you do realise there is no proof to them? ”
“You weren’t listening properly,” I growled, my hand splaying protectively over the silvery depiction of the Dragon in my book.
“It didn’t just command storms, it had a job to do which kept the magic of this forest in check.
All of the spirits had a job just as important to this place and to the rest of the world too because without them doing what they should, we are all at risk of being consumed by these trees and the malevolent things which dwell within them. ”
“Don’t lecture me on what the forest has taken, girl,” Hendrix sneered. “I know far better than you because I’ve lived it. I’ve watched it consume the world bite by bite and-”
“Do not presume to know more than me about what this fucking place has taken!” I yelled at him, my fingers crumpling the page of my precious book in my utter fury at his cavalier claim that his years spent living in this world somehow trumped my experience of it.
Hendrix fell silent, sitting back in his chair and staring at me for several long seconds which were filled with vitriol from my end and blatant curiosity from his.
“What has it taken fr-”
I cut off his words with a bark of my own.
“I thought the point here was to find the spirits, not get to know one another? Because I can assure you I have no interest whatsoever in getting to know you nor divulging my past or my motivations to you. You are a stranger wishing to use me as bait in pursuit of the lost spirits. I am simply trying to inform you on how best to go about seeking them because I do not believe they are solely interested in eating human women.”
“I’m willing to take a chance on disagreeing with you there.
Besides, you have a vested interest in dissuading me from my planned course of action and I may as well tell you now that I will not be dissuaded,” he drawled, and if the table had been smaller I might have kicked him in the shins for his hubris.
He really was the most aggravating, infuriating man I’d ever met. And he wasn’t even a man.
“You truly are so bloated with your own ego that you won’t even consider what I’m saying to you?” I demanded, but he only shrugged nonchalantly.
“You cannot honestly believe that all of the spirits were only born to serve the forest? What of the Fox? What use is fire to trees? In its very nature it is their greatest threat.”
“The Fox’s job was to protect the forest from the threat of flame by consuming all it found and adding them to the length of its tail.
So no, having a spirit born of fire was not a foolish choice on the forest’s behalf.
It was a clever one. And you might do well to take note of cleverness whenever you come across it. ”
“Is that so?” he challenged in a rough growl which was all malice. But I had the measure of him now. I was useful to him. At least until the amulets were reunited. And that meant he wouldn’t be harming me.
“You do seem to be lacking in it,” I agreed.
“Regardless of your irrelevant opinion, you may wish to eat faster. I’ve heard your kind wilt quickly without sustenance, rather like a flower in the spring – so vibrant and beautiful, but only for a few days.
Then its petals tumble to the dirt and it is nothing but fodder for the worms to feast upon.
Much as you humans live for so short a span that you barely get to know who you are before your time is done and your bones become ash.
So come on, the sun is hastening towards its zenith, and I have a spirit to capture. ”
I smoothed out the page of my book and closed its cover before returning my focus to my food.
The Fox? Yes, I would happily go with him in pursuit of that spirit. And I’d steal it out from under him while he wasn’t looking too.