23. Don’t Do Anything Stupid, and Why Does Everything Have Teeth?
23. DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID, AND WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TEETH?
ELOWYN
The moon was new. Thus the night was a darkness that enveloped us in what felt like an oppressively clinging embrace. I wanted to break free of its weight but couldn’t.
Most especially, I wanted to break free of the pain that ratcheted along the length of my body with every one of the giant frog’s leaps. The creature was the size of a horse, and each of its bounds jostled me down to my bones, rattling my thoughts loose from where I attempted to coalesce them into a better plan than the vague one Edsel and I had hastily concocted before setting off on this dubious mission with even more dubious odds.
With all the strength I possessed, I clung to the frog’s neck with the same grit that had kept me from sliding to the ground for what felt like long, eternal days but had surely only been hours. Branches whipped at us. Thorns tore at my leathers. Leaves rustled in a hum to all sides of us, and on occasion, water rushed off in the distance. The sunrise was still far away.
My consciousness wavered as we traversed what seemed like forest and more forest. I asked to stop countless times. The response was always the same: breathless pants from Edsel, who ran alongside the frog on his short, wompa legs, and then an insistence that we couldn’t stop until we were far enough away from the queen and her possible pursuit.
The refusals stung nearly as badly as my many cuts. By that standard, we might never stop. Not when there was no outrunning the queen anywhere in this cursed Mirror World.
I was about to suggest we perhaps portal away from the place. Edsel would be no more excited than I at the prospect of abandoning our loved ones and friends. But wouldn’t it be better to be alive with the chance to return for them once the queen forgot her bloodthirsty obsession with murdering me? Surely our friends would prefer us alive and absent than dead .
But before I could posit my idea, Edsel rasped out a jarring, “Halt.”
Hope bloomed throughout my aching chest. Even the stab wound through my heart had been hurting. My body was too raw, too freshly pieced together.
The frog landed from its leap, gave a final swoop and dip, and finally—fucking finally—the world stilled. “By sunshine,” I groaned against the creature’s back, unable to lift my head. My cheek was possibly fused to its skin. “I never want to move again. I might want to die here … wherever here is.”
The muscles I had demanded to hold on for so long gave up the fight, going completely limp.
“I’d be careful saying stuff like that if I were you,” piped up a tiny voice that had to be the parvnit’s though I still couldn’t see her. She might have remained invisible, I couldn’t tell; the night was the darkest I’d seen since my time in the Sorumbra. For an instant, I wondered if we might have somehow entered the Wilds, but no. They edged the Mirror World, claiming the farthest outskirts of the clans, weeks of travel on horseback from the royal city of Embermere.
“My ma always said you’d better be well careful what you wish for,” said the voice, even closer now.
It was good advice. I still didn’t want to move for the foreseeable future.
“‘Cause you might just get it,” the parvnit finished.
I grunted noncommittally. “Maybe I should get to wishing the queen would die, then.”
“If only it worked like that,” she said, wistfully.
With my mouth already open to ask Edsel for help getting down since my bladder suggested I did need to move after all, the frog bunched quickly into its forelegs, then reared. Though I scrambled to hold on, my hands and arms refused to obey now that I’d released them, and I slid down its back and onto the ground. Landing on my butt, I crumpled into a heap of abused body with a deflated “Hmm.”
I couldn’t even summon the energy for some proper outrage. “You could’ve waited for me to dismount,” I told the frog, the accusation watered down by my mumbling.
The creature bounded away.
“Where’s it going?” I asked. As much as I’d absolutely not enjoyed the ride, I was equally certain it was a far better solution than my running alongside Edsel in my current condition.
“ It is a ranucu ,” answered Edsel. “And he’s likely going to relieve himself or to drink from the stream, or maybe he spotted a rabbit.”
“To eat ?” I asked, slightly alarmed to discover my steed was possibly carnivorous. With all the open cuts I still sported, I probably smelled strongly of meat .
When Edsel didn’t immediately respond, I repeated, “To eat the rabbit, you mean? As in, the ranucu has teeth?” I gulped.
“‘Course he’s got teeth,” Edsel muttered, but he sounded distracted.
“I can’t see a damn thing,” I complained as I untangled my legs and flopped them out in front of me. “Can you do one of those glowy light thingies, like Pru does?”
“A lumoon ? ‘Course I can,” Edsel said.
I attempted a relieved smile, though my cheeks were too tired to put in much effort.
“But I won’t,” he added.
I groaned and threw my head back until the movement tugged on too many wounds to bother counting. “Seriously? Why not?” I was whining but I didn’t care. “I want to see where we are. ”
“Not sure you really do,” the parvnit said. “Again, careful what you wish for.”
My heartbeat seemed to ring through my ears as I stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“We’re surrounded by arbosauruses .”
I waited for an explanation but none came.
“What the fuck’s an arbosaurus?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just … don’t make any sudden movements.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Now you tell me?! What if I’d jumped off the ranucu and set to violently stretching out my body?”
She snorted a tiny, little snort that still managed to imply, You’re ridiculous .
Am I though? Am I really when there are arbo-whatevers apparently all around us?
“What’s an arbosaurus?” I asked with a subdued growl.
“Mmm, when I was little, my ma told me I could think of them as a mix between an ogre and a tree.”
“A … pygmy ogre, you mean?”
“Nope.”
“Great. Just fabulous. Do they have teeth too?” I asked with a laugh.
“Oh yes,” the parvnit answered, leaving me to blink my shock into the darkness. I’d been joking!
“Hey, grumpy goblin,” she said. “What if I make a lumoon? It’ll be my size so it shouldn’t draw the queen. And I wouldn’t mind being able to see an arbosaurus’ branch before I fly into it. I’m looking forward to turning fifteen soon…”
Edsel did a lot of grunting while he did … whatever he was doing, before he finally said, “Okay. But just a tiny one, girly. I don’t trust all this power the queen’s got.”
“Who does?” I muttered. “Speaking of that, heh-heh…”
“Out with it,” Edsel said sternly when I trailed off.
Carefully, I stretched my back, taut all over from the ride. “Well … see, you know how I told you about the map on my body and how?—”
“Shhhhh,” Edsel and the parvnit censured at once.
“There are more dangers than the arbosauruses out here,” warned the fairy. “You never know who’s listening.”
“Or who’ll report to the queen,” Edsel added ominously.
“Right. Noted.” Fuck, even away from the palace and her body-part spies, her influence reached too far.
“Ye can safely whisper,” Edsel offered. “Probably.”
How very reassuring… “Okay, well, with that thing … I just mentioned. I’m not exactly sure where it leads, that was just my assumption.”
I left the rest unsaid since it wasn’t a fact either of them would easily forget. Rush guessed the map that branded itself across my skin would help to weaken the queen. And since it had delivered me to my mother, it was a logical conclusion that the remaining locations would reveal others the queen was leeching of their power.
Edsel growled loudly. When he spoke, his question was terse, “And was there good reason for this assumption?”
“I think so.” By dragonfire, I hoped so . Or we were even more screwed than we’d realized, and we already understood we were majorly screwed. Like, pretty much destined to die levels of screwed.
“It was Rush’s idea,” I offered, hoping that would encourage the goblin. “What it is. To think that it will help. What it leads to, that’s from me.”
A diminutive orb of light blossomed in the parvnit’s cupped palm just in time to catch Edsel very faintly nodding.
“We continue as planned, then,” he said gruffly. “How do ye activate it?”
I was too busy studying him to answer. His hair stuck up in all directions. His tunic and breeches were torn in as many places as slashes marred his already craggy face. His forearms were scratched in more spots than I could easily make out in the faint light.
“Holy shit,” I said. “I assumed you could see in the dark to avoid all the … stuff that cut you up like this.”
He drew closer to the parvnit, and I could make out the grim tilt of his mouth. “I hope yer assumption about the other is better than that. I can’t see in the dark, but Bertram?—”
“Who’s Bertram?”
“The ranucu ye’ve been callin’ an ‘it.’ ”
“Oh. So what’d Bertram do?”
“I woulda told ye by now had ye not interrupted.”
I waited for Edsel to stop glowering and continue.
After a few seconds, “Bertram can see in the dark. He linked with me so I could too. But we were moving fast, too fast for caution.”
“Yeah,” I lamented.
“So how’d ye activate it ?” he insisted.
“Uh. Um.”
“ Elowyn .”
“With Rush. When he … and I … um … link?”
“Like with Edsel and Bertram?” the parvnit, who was still a child, piped in.
“Yeah, sure.” My cheeks flushed for no good reason. I had nothing to be embarrassed about, really. After all, at court everyone seemed to be fucking left, right, and center, and most of them didn’t even seem to love each other like Rush and I did. But Zako’s many years of insisting I should remain a maiden at all costs were passing judgment.
“Yeah, like with Edsel and Bertram,” I affirmed even though, Yeah, definitely not like that .
Edsel harrumphed loudly, giving me hope he discerned the true meaning of my answer.
“Rush ain’t here,” he said.
“No, he isn’t,” I said sadly.
Edsel emitted yet another gruff sound that was part grunt, part growl, part disapproving throat-clearing. To avoid his stare, I studied the parvnit. Whereas Edsel and I looked like we’d gone several rounds with a pack of vicious feethles, her skin was unmarred, her clothes perfect. Even her little acorn hat sat right where it had last been.
“How come you look like this?” I waved a hand at her, limply, tiredly. I still had to pee but didn’t know when I’d be able to get up, arbosaurus or no arbosaurus.
Her features scrunched up. “You mean, plain ?” she asked sourly.
My brow furrowed. “What? Plain? No. Intact.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders marginally unclenched. “Grumpy goblin tucked me into the back of his tunic.”
“He did?” My disbelief translated into a high pitch. “Seriously?”
She and I looked at the goblin, who pretended not to notice our attention while he tied two torn pieces of said tunic into a knot.
“You’re a softy,” I breathed. “I can’t believe it.”
He whirled and pointed a knobby finger at me. “Watch what ye say. Ye too, Zafi.”
“Zafi?” I faced the little fairy who perched on a fallen branch that … shit, was the branch twitching ?
She smiled bitterly. “Yep. Named Zafira after the queen herself. Aren’t I the lucky one?”
“I’m off to fetch us water,” Edsel announced before pointing that finger at both of us. “Don’t ye move from here. Don’t ye do anything till I get back. And especially don’t do anything stupid.”
“Are we allowed to friggin’ breathe?” Zafi asked with all the snark common to a fourteen-year-old .
“Small breaths,” Edsel grunted, but was that mirth flittering across his dark eyes?
Wow. A softy indeed. Who would have guessed?
Edsel made it only a few steps before we heard an exasperated voice:
“Saffron! Saff! Slow down. Saffron.”
Before I’d managed to register what that might mean, a large, dark figure leapt from the surrounding trees and jumped straight at me.