Chapter 4
Four
Thain
Our first step was to collect my things.
The plan was to skirt the area where the wraith had been and collect what had fallen down the slope, which was good enough for me as I had no desire to see any of the aftermath.
Thain led, I followed. He moved like a cat; even through the simple tunic, I could see the muscles of his back shift.
He had honed his body to that of a warrior, or maybe all fae were like that by design.
If so, I certainly wasn’t blessed with it.
Bryn had had to help me shape my arms for woodwork through many seasons of labor, and even now I had added little size to show for it.
Thain stopped to pick up the splitting axe and guilt echoed in my head, hearing Bryn say, “Don’t ding my axe or I’ll make you take it all the way to the smith this time,” with his half-serious guffaw.
My gut twisted. I righted my sled and searched for what had fallen from my sack.
Thain picked up the bundle of wood I’d brought in the event I was without dry firewood and found a length of rope that had uncoiled itself as it slid down the slope.
“We can still make good time before finding someplace to make camp.” He ignored the rope I’d used to pull the sled and simply lifted it to carry. Still clutching the bundled wood under one arm, I was nearly running to keep up with his long strides.
“I can pull that,” I insisted, reaching for the dangling rope.
“No need,” was his only reply, and he didn’t so much as slow down.
Everything about him was fluid. The unbreaking motions he used to pick things up.
The way he moved nearly silently, even while making our way through the landscape littered with pine needles and dry leaves.
My cheeks burned with the realization that every noise he had made for me so far was completely for my benefit. That would take some getting used to.
Before departing the area completely, he stopped to wash himself in a stream that was fighting a coating of frost at its edges, and then we went north.
We had walked for at least an hour before I realized two things about Thain.
First, he was painfully quiet. The effort it had taken me to pull our last conversation out of him should have been enough of a hint, but it would seem he had no problem walking in complete silence.
Bryn had done nothing of the sort, always singing some song he’d learned, misremembering half the lyrics and trying to get me to sing along.
It brought a small, aching smile to my face, the first I’d mustered while thinking about him since that day.
But Thain was nothing like Bryn in that regard, and our travels consisted primarily of peaceful silence, something that was more akin to my habits than Bryn’s.
The second thing I noticed about the dark fae that walked before me was that the tension had left him.
There had been something utterly frightening about him at our first encounter.
He’d said even fewer words then, and he’d seemed disturbed by something.
My eyes drifted to his hands, and I recalled another detail from that first meeting.
“Your gloves are gone.” I hadn’t meant to mention it; it seemed like such an insignificant thing. But the moment the words left my mouth, I also realized that his primary method of fighting, as much as I could guess, at least, was with his hands. Particularly the fact that his fingertips ended in—
“And where are your claws?”
Thain looked over his shoulder, still not stopping. “The claws come when needed, and the gloves were for the iron.”
What on the Mother’s fruitful earth did that mean?
“Iron, like from the smith’s?” I asked.
He grunted, shifting the sled from one shoulder to the other, though more out of awkwardness of the shape than burden of the weight, it looked like. “Iron burns. Does it not burn you to the touch?”
“No.” I looked down at the axe on my hip in wonder. “Should it?”
Thain didn’t answer for a long stretch. “Who knows. For anyone else in the Wyldes, it would.”
Ah. Another difference for my long list. Though this one seemed beneficial, at least. Mila had never mentioned iron hurting the fae, but after all her lessons I very well could be forgetting a detail. Especially knowing I’d resisted any information about the Wyldes for a long time.
“Now that I think of it, why were you collecting the iron back then?”
“Tossed it in the lake. Don’t need more humans waving around iron.”
A laugh escaped me. This substance could burn the flesh of him and his kind, and yet he made it sound more like a nuisance than anything else.
“My axes, then,” I said, a bit defensively. “No one will ask me to get rid of them.”
A hand drifted to the solid head of the axe still on my hip, curling around the autumn-cooled metal head of it.
“No,” Thain answered with ease. “But I don’t recommend swinging them toward anyone once you arrive in the Wyldes.”
“More than fair,” I agreed. “I would never misuse my tools like that.”
A corner of his mouth snuck suspiciously upward before he turned his head and I could no longer see it. “The wraith may beg to differ.”
And then the image of my axe swinging at the creature came flooding back to mind. “That was life or death! I had no choice.”
“No, you didn’t,” Thain said. “And yet, you didn’t freeze as so many would. You did well.”
As I followed his broad back through the trees on whatever path he had chosen for us, we returned to silence.
His unexpected praise was more acknowledgement than anyone but Mila or Bryn had really given me in twenty-five years, and it gave me a warm feeling inside that left me with much to think about.
“We will need to camp tonight before we reach the outpost.” Thain broke the quiet of the evening as we stopped next to an outcropping of rock that would afford us some shelter from wind or rain. It was hard to argue with the suggestion when my entire body ached and my stomach growled in demand.
“Is it safe here?” There were plenty of dark places behind the trees, and I wondered how many upcoming nights I would find the wraith slipping into my nightmares.
“Safer than we were back there,” he said. “Do you see the brook that split and flows down either side of us now?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t big, but it was definitely there. The right arm was much larger than the left.
“Dark things from the Wyldes do not like to cross running water. Unseelie things, like the wraith. If something happens tonight, remember that.” He gathered branches for a fire.
“Some also don’t like flame, though it can attract others.
We’re close enough to a patrol route here that I doubt we’ll run into so much as a wisp. If we do, I’ll take care of it.”
With a grimace, I pulled a blanket from my sack. He had already gotten a spark to catch on his pile of wood and was working on lighting the thickest branches. Finding a good medium between the fire’s heat and the evening’s chill, I laid out my blanket. I tucked both axes close by.
“Wren.” Thain broke the silence. “I will listen, if you need to talk.”
“Talk about what?” I tossed a stick from under my blanket onto the fire, then eyed Thain, who had found nothing more than a broken stump to lean against. Small lines strained around his face, and I recognized that awkwardness. The entering of uncomfortable territory, doing something you rarely did.
“About everything. About the first time we met. About moving your hair.”
“Don’t,” I started. “Don’t worry about it.”
Thain nodded, staring into the fire as it danced between the offered branches.
An orange glow cast his face in warm light but made his expression no less unreadable.
“Some encounter terrible things and require an outlet for what they have seen. Just know I offer it, though Eberon is much better at it. But I am the one who is here.”
My fingers curled closed. He could have meant the raid at the lake, he could have meant the wraith, he could even have meant himself, and I wasn’t sure what the normal reaction was supposed to be to that.
All I offered him was, “I will recover; I always do.” Thain nodded, laid a pile of branches nearby to feed the flames that licked high into the air, and busied himself with pulling the smaller kindling pieces out of the pile.
We split portions of food from my supplies, though he had offered to hunt his own.
There was no sense in spending the energy when I had more than enough with me.
Considering we were heading to this outpost of his, I likely wouldn’t need it all for much longer anyway.
After making a decent-sized dent in my supply of apples and the last bits of stale bread, the evening quieted down, and we settled where the heat of the flames was comfortable.
From where he was propped up against the stump, he nudged one of the branches with his boot until he could flip it with practiced ease into the fire without causing a mess of ash and embers. “You must have questions.”
The fire crackled between us for a while. Talking had already been painfully awkward, so what was the point? But this was my chance to find out more about him, or the places we were going, or the fae people.
Sighing, I lay on my back under the blanket, pulling one of my arms up to act as a pillow.
“Do you often watch the borders of the Wyldes? That’s the task you’re here for now, right?”
He shrugged. “Every few years. The courts rotate who they send, and we stay for a few weeks at a time. Mostly I keep an eye on the darker creatures of the Wyldes that would come too close to the lands I’m from. My king asks, and I go.”
A king. I should have expected something like that.
The humans might think of the fae as wild and fearsome, but knowing Thain even for just the few hours since the wraith, I could tell there was much more to his people than that.
Was his king anything like the sultana who ruled over Sulls?
She was rarely among her people on the streets of her city, but maybe the king of the fae would be different.
“What about you?” Thain interrupted my thoughts. “What did you do with your days by the humans of the lake?”
Settling back down, I let the pain throb through my chest in a way I had evaded for hours.
Even that made me feel guilty. Maybe everything would make me feel guilty, since I had lived and Bryn had not.
Swallowing the mounting feelings, I threw my focus into answering.
“Most days I split firewood. Felled trees. Planted more trees. Helped with simple buildings. A few animal shelters over the years. Fences. Many, many fences. Bridges. I’ve helped clear fields for homes to be built.
It’s peaceful work. Just you and the axe.
And we’d trap. Sometimes fish. My old teacher, Mila, she would have me reading and writing.
We’d practice learning the plants of the mountains and beyond too. ”
“It sounds like you enjoyed it,” he said.
The fire crackled, the breeze played with the tops of the pines, and a wet streak fell down the side of my face. “I did.”
He glanced at the rising moon. “We should probably get some sleep.”
He stood, stretched, and walked silently to the edge of our little campsite, taking the watch.
I let him. I had enough to think about, but my questions could wait until morning.
A few insects buzzed around us outside of the fire’s reach.
A bird cawed in the distance. It reminded me of Mila, and my heart tightened anew at my loss.
But even with my tangle of grim thoughts, I fell asleep quickly, the scent of Bryn that still clung to his coat comforting me into the night.