Eleven #5
We both knew that had never been a true risk.
Even if Tybalt and I had been genuine enemies, rather than just occasionally estranged friends, I could never have let a child stay behind because I was mad at their adults.
But he’d come to me then with no idea whether I’d help him, and he’d had no way of helping the children who came before Raj.
That had to be a heavy weight to carry. I turned toward the broken wall around the bonfire, trusting him to follow as I started in that direction.
The bonfire was the center of the social structure within the skerry.
Any Riders or children who’d been too warped to go home but not warped enough to join the Hunt would gather there, with or without Acacia to attend them, and they might be able to tell us more.
Tybalt caught up to me quickly, walking by my side as I skirted around the broken masonry to the edge of the bonfire circle.
As I had more than half-expected, the circle was full, Riders in armor sitting alongside gawky teens and preteens whose bodies blended together the attributes of half a dozen descendant lines.
Raysel would have been perfectly normal if she’d been born and grown up here.
Being a mixture of mammalian and vegetable descendant lines would have fit right in with her father’s patchwork people.
I paused, considering this. My magic could remove a descendant line from someone’s heritage, could make someone like Raysel, who was two contradictory things, into just one thing.
But it couldn’t put those descendant lines back again after I’d removed them.
I hadn’t exactly been in a position to question Michael about how his magic worked while I’d been his prisoner, or after, when I was busy killing him.
But something about it had clearly allowed him to insert descendant lines into people.
He’d transformed them, and if the changes had been temporary, Acacia wouldn’t have chosen to stay here and take care of them.
So his transformations didn’t wear off. They were forever.
Tybalt nudged me, elbow lightly pressing against my ribs. I turned to look at him.
“Where did you go, little fish?” he asked. “Your thoughts have carried you far away from me. Come back, and explain where they’ve taken you.”
“Just trying to figure out how the magic in this place works,” I said.
“Michael was able to achieve some things I would have said were impossible, and I don’t see how.
Most Firstborn have magic that makes sense, at least to a degree.
It’s … unified. Acacia talks to trees, she commands trees, she turns people into trees.
Amphitrite commands the waters, she controls the weather over water, and she sculpts the waves.
Michael … he could create worlds. He could see through the eyes of birds.
He could call a Hunt. How does transforming children into his own personal army match up with any of that? ”
“It doesn’t,” said Tybalt. “Could someone else have helped him?”
I blinked, very slowly. “Oh sweet Maeve, I didn’t even think of that. Of course. It makes so much more sense once you stop and ask yourself who else could have had a part in all of this.”
And I knew exactly who I needed to ask if I was going to understand the spells Michael had used to create his army—and whether those spells were still active on and around his stables.
The crowd around the bonfire had noticed us by that point, and they were beginning to steal glances in our direction, clearly taking our measure.
One of them, a Satyr girl with the hindquarters of a small Griffin instead of the normal back end of a goat, leaned to the side, murmuring something to someone I couldn’t see.
I frowned. She looked familiar, like someone I’d seen before in a crowd …
Then she turned to look fully at me, and my breath caught.
Of course she seemed familiar. She and I had been captives together, in the holding pen they called the Children’s Hall.
That was where Michael had thrown his victims while he was deciding whether they would be Riders or ridden, and where they’d remained until he judged them ready to come and join his Hunt forever.
He’d dropped me there as soon as I arrived in his custody, and left me to be tormented by the children who were waiting to Hunt.
The Satyr hadn’t been part of the group that had taken the most joy in tormenting me, but she’d been one of the most transformed, while still remaining visibly a member of her original descendant line.
I wasn’t clear how she was supposed to join the Hunt, since she could never have mounted a horse, no matter how spectacular it was, but that issue had never come up: by the time she would have been ready, the Hunts in their original form had been over, ended by the death of their master.
Her eyes still on me, she took a tentative step forward, clawed front feet gouging chunks out of the stony ground.
She didn’t move like there was anything unusual about her lower body; she’d had more than enough time to get used to the changes in her original frame.
If anything, she was graceful compared to the way she’d been when I first saw her; her wings unfurled slightly as she walked, providing a counterbalance to the overall size of her body.
Everything about the top half of her was normal for a Satyr, if enlarged as I would have expected in a Centaur, keeping her in proportion with her lower body, skin a tawny brown and ears pointed and noticeably longer than the human norm, halfway between a human and a horse.
Her horns were wrapped in red velvet ribbon, like a present waiting to be unwrapped.
Her nails were more like claws than a normal Satyr’s would have been, but that little tweak honestly just added some balance to the rest of her, making her look less like something that had been made and more like something that had been born.
I forced a smile and waved her over. Tybalt leaned closer to me again.
“Who is that?” he asked, sotto voce.
“We were prisoners together,” I said. “I never got her name. There wasn’t a lot of time for small talk when we were waiting for Michael to show up and punish us for breathing his precious air.”
It hadn’t been exactly like that. But it had been years before I could tolerate the flickering light of a candle without feeling my chest getting tight, and longer still before I’d been able to sleep in a dark room.
I didn’t want to remember what it had actually been like in the Children’s Hall, or how terrified I’d been that it was all going to collapse at any moment.
The Satyr-Griffin girl—older now, in her late teens if not her early twenties, and very nearly an adult—came walking slowly across the space toward us.
She kept her hands open and down by her sides, making sure I could see them at all times, and she didn’t take her eyes off mine as she approached, watching me with every step.
I got the distinct feeling that if I looked away, she would retreat.
She might not have asked with words if she could approach, but she was giving me time to rescind my invitation all the same.
I waved again, leaning slightly forward so that my elbows rested on my knees. This had the small side effect of planting my candle squarely between us. I wasn’t mad about that.
“I didn’t think you’d come back here of your own accord,” she said, once she was close enough to be heard without needing to shout above either the fire or the various other ongoing conversations. “Not after what you did. Not after what was done to you.”
“I go where I’m needed,” I said. “It’s sort of my job.”
“They named you a Hero, didn’t they?” she asked, tone almost pleasant. “Was it for killing our Master?”
“Not entirely, but I’m sure killing a monster who’d been preying on the children of the kingdom for centuries tilted the scales in my favor,” I said, matching pleasantness with pleasantness. Two of us could play at this game. “I don’t believe we were ever properly introduced.”
“Not as such,” she agreed. “Rider or ridden, we asked you, and it seems you’ve found a third option.”
“I mean, so did you,” I said, gesturing to her lower body with the hand that held the candle. “You’re no horse, but I don’t see you sitting easily on one, either. Did Michael intend for you to run alongside the Hunt and play both roles at the same time?”
Startled, she laughed. “I was never sure of that myself,” she admitted.
“There was a Centaur in the Hall with us, and he was becoming part-Dragon, we all thought to be able to carry a Piskie girl whose legs had gone limp as eels. I’m sure the Rider who initially snatched him—and me—got scolded for taking someone so impractical, and then I was His, and what’s His was not allowed to leave.
I changed for the service of my Master. I know He would have figured out how to use me best.”
“He wasn’t a god,” I said uncomfortably, glancing down.
“He might as well have been, to us,” said the Satyr.
“I know you. Sir October Daye, who could have been our Lady, but chose to be our savior instead. Even those of us who loved Him know what you did for us. Even those of us who weren’t able to go home are grateful.
” And she bowed, something that, with her anatomy, meant sinking into a kneeling position, weight resting on her front legs.
When Michael’s final Ride had been broken, there had been other people there, the parents and loved ones of some of his victims. The ones who’d been able to pull their missing children from the Ride had been able to take them home again, restored to their original forms and free of Michael’s distorting magic.
The ones who hadn’t been on that Ride, or whose families had been outside the Luidaeg’s reach, well … they’d stayed here. Forever.