Chapter 36 Can’t Outrun This
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CAN’T OUTRUN THIS
ADELINE
“Here!” I pluck a long, deep green stem with small white flowers. “This is edible. We call it Longweed.”
“So imaginative.” Ardruna sniffs at various grasses. “Do you also have a Shortblossom or something of the sort?”
“Sure we do. This one.” I pluck a squat plant with pretty, fat-centered blossoms. “It’s also called Little Bread.”
“Because?”
I pull the petals off a flower, revealing its center. “This. You can eat it like this, like little bread rolls. Or throw them into a soup.”
“Hm.” She sniffs the blossom in my hand. “I think I’ll stick to meat, thanks.”
“I never doubted it. You’re a lioness.” I frown at her. “Do lions eat soup?”
“Don’t see why not, especially if it’s meat soup. I remember…” She growls softly. “I remember eating soup when I was younger. It had dumplings in it.”
“That’s odd. Did you live near a human or fae settlement? And was that before you met Roane?”
“Perhaps.” Her ears flick. “I don’t know. I really don’t remember.”
“You do realize that’s very strange, right? That you don’t remember? Maybe I should ask Talton what he remembers of his past.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Ardruna says.
“Thanks. Since Roane refuses to spit out any answers…”
She digs into the soil with her paw, then shakes out the dirt. “Why do you keep antagonizing him?”
“I don’t.”
“You like provoking him.”
“It’s not my fault he’s provoked so easily.”
“Aline…” she growls.
I sigh. “What can I say? He brings out the worst in me. Even you were annoyed with him.”
“Love lies close to hate.”
“I don’t hate him,” I protest. “So there goes the love, too.”
“No chance of warming up to him?”
I think about it. “It’s hard to hate someone who keeps saving your life. I just wish he didn’t snarl so much at me. It sort of gets my hackles up.” I wink at her. “If you get my meaning.”
She yips. “Yeah, he’s cranky.”
“Oh, you finally noticed?”
“He has been cranky for a while now. I don’t know when it started.” She snaps at a few stalks of what looks like Laughing Grasses—edible but only when cooked—and trots on a few more. “I thought he was worried about the goblin numbers increasing.”
“And he’s not?”
“Oh, I’m sure he is, but it’s not like we haven’t had worries before that. Once we had herds of rabid unicorns attacking us at every turn.”
“… are you joking?” I shoot her a narrow look. “Is this a joke?”
“I’m serious. Why wouldn’t I be?” She shakes her white head from side to side, then bats at a butterfly.
“And then there was the time when the centaurs came down from the mountains and brought a horde of lesser fairies with them, satyrs and silenes and blood-thirsty shades. We fought them. Those were some bloody battles.”
I bend to cut a bunch of Laughing Grasses, adding them to my satchel. “And did Roane manage to return them to the books they had escaped from?”
“I don’t know.”
I frown, arranging the herbs inside the satchel. “So I’m not the reason for the change in his behavior?”
“It certainly got worse once you arrived.”
“Lovely. Nice to know I can annoy someone so much their character changes just for me. It’s an honor.”
Ardruna growls at me.
“What?” I demand.
“He may be annoying, but he was right. I shouldn’t have let you out of the library.”
“Come on.” I scowl, picking up more edible weeds. “We’re fine.”
“Are we? Then what is that dark cloud coming at us? Tell me it’s not birds.”
Not just birds. Metal birds, coming at us en masse.
Shit…
“Run!” Ardruna shouts and lopes away, leaving me to hurry after her.
“Maybe we can climb on a tree and wait—”
“Too many of them!” she shouts. “They’ll get us. Not even Roane would have been able to take out so many.”
“And what’s your solution, to outrun them?” I pant, racing after her. “I’m not a lioness.”
“Then climb a tree, for all the good it will do you.”
“If you have any better ideas…”
“Climb onto my back,” she calls out and stops, turning to face me.
“Excuse me?”
“Hurry up!”
Gritting my teeth, I grab fistfuls of her fur and swing a leg over her back. She’s smaller than a pony, yet powerful muscles shift underneath me as I straddle her back.
She takes off like an arrow, racing through the meadows.
“Are the birds coming to exact revenge on Roane killing some of them?” I yell.
“They’ve never behaved this way before!”
“Is this on me, too?” The wind knives into my face and sends my hair whipping against my back. The birds whistle and clack overhead. “Maybe they haven’t seen us. Maybe—”
“Aline—”
The metal birds dive down and I flatten myself against the lioness’s back. “They’re coming!”
Ardruna races into a grove, zigzagging around the tree trunks, until she finally comes to a stop, ears perking. “Can you hear them?”
I turn this way and that, trying to see something. “I don’t have a lioness’s hearing.”
“No speed, no heightened senses. You won’t last long here.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Listen…” she starts.
A crash. A whistle. Another crash.
A metal bird flies through the grove, its beak and wings cutting through the slender trees, branches and leaves raining down.
“Shit. Let’s keep moving,” Ardruna says, “we should find a cave, their wings can’t cut through rock—”
“Ardruna, stop!”
“Why?” she snarls.
“We can’t outrun them, can’t defeat them like this.”
“So we stay and die?” she hisses.
“No. I have an idea.”
“Now? Are you serious?”
“Stop talking.” I rub the crease between my brows.
“The river, the horses… Calling something by its true name, figuring out its tale, reverts it to its former state. Only, these birds were like this in the tale, which helped me guess their name. What if I changed their name and thereby changed the story?”
Their story is that they were chased away from their nests. Like Medusa’s story, this is a story of creatures who were wronged and turned against their aggressors, remaining dangerous and aggressive forever after—and who can blame them? You lose your trust when you’ve been abused that badly.
But sometimes the wound can be healed. It takes time. It takes initiative. It takes kindness and a helping hand. In this case…
“Stymphalians,” I whisper.
“Will you hurry this up?” Ardruna cries as more birds crash through the trees. “We are running out of time!”
The birds used to live in the marshes, but they were chased away and took the name of the lake they now inhabit. I’m not really changing their name. I’m giving them their original name back.
They are Ares’ sacred birds. And those were… vultures? Eagle owls? Barn owls? He had many. What about ibises? Herons? Or…
“Egrets,” I whisper. “You’re egrets.”
I hold my breath.
“What in the hells is happening?” Ardruna’s ears swivel back and forth. “The sounds have changed.”
“I turned the birds into egrets.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not. Let’s go see.” I pat her neck and she walks out of the grove with me still on her back. There, I cup my hands around my mouth. “Egrets!”
The birds are flying in circles, pale and elegant, with long necks and wings, white plumage opaque and pearly.
“Holy Gods,” Ardruna whispers. “You did it.”
Yet it nags at me. I gave them back their name, or at least I think so.
A name I think might have been theirs. Was it, though?
Did I change their nature by mistake? And even if it was…
what else can I do? What if I chose to give them a new name?
Another name? What if I changed them into sparrows or doves?
I could turn those birds into nightingales. Imagine flocks of them passing through, then filling the hedges at night, singing to the stars…
What if I could do that with every creature? Every single thing in this world? A malleable world, a plaything in my hands. The rush of power is enticing. Addictive. Ardruna was right to feel uneasy about it.
“We should get going,” she says. “Before they change into something else.”
Her words feed into my theory, and I want to give it a try, change them over and over again.
No, I tell myself and reluctantly I let the thought go. It’s not important right now. Ardruna is right, we should get going.
Go back to the sanctum and check the books there. Find clues and understand the downfall of this world. The fall of the Library of Areon.