Chapter 2 #2
“Use your nose, your ears, and your eyes. Stop trying to be what you aren’t.
Ignoring what gifts you have will get you killed.
” Mila nodded slowly at me. “Do not consider every human your friend, and do not consider every fae your enemy. You are strong, child. Trust yourself. I will always watch out for you as best I can.”
Her eyes shone in silent assessment. They seemed to look right through me, taking in everything she knew of me and everything I now carried with me. Mila patted my shoulder.
“I hope our paths cross again.” I smiled, but it was a frail motion, ready to fall to pieces at the lightest push.
Bryn. Mila. My home. All gone in one day, and I was still expected to keep the shattered pieces of me together enough to leave it all behind.
The Mother was kind, but she could also be so very cruel.
“They will. The Mother wills it.” Her eyes shone like moonlight, and a warm and frightening breath of air flowed through me. “A last warning: if you someday change your mind about your seal—and I hope when you are in a safe place you do—be very certain of whom you let remove it. Be well, Wren.”
My back squirmed. I could almost feel where the seal was engraved down my spine, containing what magic my fearsome half granted me. The last lock keeping my fae self contained.
Pulling Mila close, I disturbed the raven on her shoulder, forcing him to find space in the beam overhead as I drank in her scent.
I savored the feel of her hair under my palm as I stroked her back.
Her thin fingers grasped me as she hugged me back.
After a long moment of pressing every piece of Mila into my memory, we let each other go.
Puko flew back down to his master’s shoulder, and the Witch of the Woods turned to the door without another word.
She left. I grabbed the better axe, securing it with the cover looped on my belt, and I left too.
The sky was still gray with night when I began walking.
Behind me, I pulled the sled that Bryn had used to carry wood in winter.
It held my sack, the other axes, the bedding I’d brought, a hammer, and a bundle of cut maple that we had been drying for the winter solstice.
On top of the whole thing, I’d thrown a bear pelt that would shrug off most of the rain or snow.
The oak sled was holding up well enough, considering the thin metal rails that made up the bottom were getting stuck on rocks and roots, but there was no way to carry everything otherwise.
Luck found me when a muddy riverbed aligned with my path, letting me pull through the much smoother terrain.
Soon the first snows would fall. Not this light crust sitting on the leaves but a real snow, and my pace with the sled could quicken. A bird cawed somewhere behind me.
Progress would have been even slower on other parts of the mountainside, but the lazy, ancient slope between Silver Lake and the small settlements east of it allowed for many level fields before tumbling down again.
If I had gone south to Sulls and the sands beyond, I would have faced the downward trudge head-on.
But there was no relief for me in Sulls, where the crowded city overwhelmed my senses and everything came at triple the price compared to the Wicked Spine, as the city dwellers liked to call our range after what lived on the other side of it.
To the west I would have found more of the raiders that had just decimated the otherwise quiet fishing village.
If it weren’t for that fae—and I still didn’t understand why he’d stepped in—the survivors would have been conscripted or killed. So, east I walked.
My belly reminded me to eat. I ignored it.
Moving came first. When you move, you’re useful.
And when you’re useful, you can ignore any thoughts that would crumple you into a heap on the mountainside for the bears to find.
My arms burned, even rotating which shoulder I pulled the rope from.
My face was tight and sharp where the chill in the air hit my wet skin.
Leaves crunched and branches cracked. From the riverbed, I followed an old deer trail that was smooth enough for the sled to traverse.
It would lead me to Pine Hollow by dusk.
If I was lucky, word of the attacks wouldn’t have reached the people there yet, and I might find a barn for the night.
Determined to heed Mila’s advice, I turned my nose to the sky. A breeze carried the tanning yard’s scent to me before it came into view. The first building of Pine Hollow.
At the first sign of men, I lowered my nose and turned my ears toward them, reaching up to ensure that my braids were in place over the missing points.
The people worked as they always had. No sense of worry tensed the air beyond the natural urgency that autumn afforded anyone who lived where the snow could pile high.
Down the hill, a farmer was cutting hay.
A babe cried. Goats played. I was nearly lost in the sounds when I caught the tanner watching me from his yard.
Dipping my head down, I kept moving, my ears on constant alert for any sounds of being followed and possibly robbed, or worse.
I could have been paranoid from the attack at the lake, but then, I had never ventured this far alone.
I continued toward the farmer. Just this summer, Bryn and I had felled the timber for his new fence.
The grizzled man kept no wife, no family, and wasn’t one to talk, which suited me just fine for making a deal tonight.
He tolerated me, in a way—as much as he seemed to tolerate anyone.
And I still needed to rely on the people of the mountains until I passed to the warmer lowlands.
“Ho, farmer!” I called. He glanced at me long enough to nod me into his field and then turned back to his hay. Bunches of golden straw lay at his feet. I left my sled but kept my axe with me.
“What brings you here alone, girl?” He grunted with every swing of the sickle.
“I’m leaving the mountains. I hoped to work in exchange for a night in your barn.” He stopped cutting, standing up and wiping his wet brow with his forearm.
“We saw black smoke this morning from the west.” He straightened his back with a grunt. “Where is the woodcutter?”
“Bryn is . . .” I swallowed through a tight throat. Lying now would do me no good. “Plainsmen attacked the people by the Silver Lake. We were there. Bryn is gone.”
He stared toward the lake as though he could see through the rock and the trees all the way to its banks. Then he turned hardened eyes on me.
“One night. Cut from here to that post.” He pointed. “Cover the pile and be gone before the sun rises.”
I thanked him as he handed me his sickle. He walked down the hill toward the next field and disappeared. I turned to my task and mimicked the farmer’s swing.
It was nothing like chopping wood. My arm bent in a way I hadn’t used before, and it grew tired long before I was done.
I gritted my teeth and continued. Bryn had always said I was stubborn, and stubbornly I cut the tangle of hay.
It didn’t stop me from cursing the goats in the nearby pen, though; they bleated and played as I worked to cut their winter meals.
With the last rays of light fading from the sky, I cut my final handful of hay and placed it in the pile.
I hadn’t been instructed on how to cover it, but I found a heavy tarp in the barn to throw over the whole thing so it wouldn’t simply blow away in the night. A rock on each corner held it in place.
There was something peaceful about working myself so tired I couldn’t cry.
Leaning against the fence, the goats calling for attention I didn’t give them, I watched the western sky.
Smoke rose from the tree line, nearly swallowed up by the darkening sky.
Funeral burnings, likely. Had they laid stones for Bryn?
He had been liked by most, so I expected at least a few would be thinking of him today.
That big laugh and easy temper had earned him more than a few seats at dinner.
Hells and suffering, he’d been enough to have me tolerated by the people of the mountains, and that was no small thing.
My lungs burned with the work I had just put in, which was well enough because if I had the energy I’d be crying through another lament.
Singing was never a joy of mine, but it was for Bryn, who never walked without a tune to his lips.
Mother, I’d give almost anything to go back and lay a stone at his pyre. Offer him one more song and tell him what he meant to me.
I moved the sled out of sight, and by the time my head hit the barn loft, I was asleep.