CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
She thought. “Eat little and often, and eat only what you’ve brought or killed yourself.
Or, in dire straits, what you’ve been shown is safe.
” Spotting another bilberry patch on a slope off the path, she touched his shoulder to show him.
She could feel the shape of it through his pliant leather gloves, beneath his thin linen shirt.
He stopped, eyes locked on her hand. She swiftly removed it, nodding toward the thick shrubs.
As she did, the clouds began to scatter.
With the growing light, more birds emerged and erupted into a chorus.
This deep in the forest, the birds were colorful and abundant, dozens upon dozens of them.
Their singing was buoyant and sonorous as they flitted about between branches overhead like butterflies over milkweed.
Sy turned his eyes to the patchwork sky. With the morning sunlight reflected in them, his usual owlish discernment morphed into a vibrant curiosity.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe you,” he said lightly, still gazing at the sky, “but at the moment, it’s difficult to imagine it’s as terrible as you say.”
He did have a point. At its best, the Lichtenwald was a more peaceful place than any Anya had encountered.
Not the false succor of the city, whose tricks and traps were even more finely camouflaged than the canniest beast; but a true, deep, genuine peace.
An embrace. She felt it now, in the dappled sunlight, in the light breeze.
She could almost imagine she was in another place, another life. Another woman. A softer one.
If the weather held, and the forest played fair, they could reach the meadow by nightfall.
If the phoenix was there, she would have it by morning.
If it wasn’t – if it made its bed somewhere else or had been caught or chased deeper into the Lichtenwald – it would take all the luck in the seven skies to find it in time.
If it was, this would all be over soon enough.
Either way, the life she had known, the self she had been, was gone.
Come the dawn of the summer solstice, she would have another life, another self, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what it would look like.
If she could even stomach to look at what she was becoming.
At who she was being made. At what the Lichtenwald would become, unbalanced, and by her own hands. Or not.
Now, though. Right now. It didn’t look so terrible.
“Come,” she said, nodding toward the trees. “We’ve been moving since sunrise. We can spare our feet a few minutes.”
Sy followed her out of the rocky stream bed and into the gently sloping trees, where she quickly located a lone, flowering rowan and pointed them toward it – not out of necessity, but for companionship.
For the first time, she realized she seemed to find the trees wherever she went. Like they sought her out, too.
When they reached it, they offloaded their gear around its trunk – all except Sy’s pen kit, which he kept strapped across his shoulder.
He immediately found a large, flat, mossy stone and sat with a relieved sigh.
He pulled off one of his boots and began rubbing his foot.
The heel of his stocking was stained brown where his skin had rubbed raw.
While Anya checked the tautness of her bow string, he nodded at the rowan. “This tree. You have some like it by your front gate.”
“Rowan,” she provided. As she spoke its name, the wind stirred. Whispered. He’ll only think it’s nonsense, she told the whisper. But the whisper returned, As if nonsense never killed a person, nor saved their life.
She glanced at him. He startled as he found a large, spindle-legged spider on his elbow, then jerkily attempted to brush it away without crushing it – or touching it very much.
“Fine,” she grumbled. Relieved of the spider, he frowned at her.
His frown deepened as she withdrew her hatchet.
She found a gnarled and stunted but still flowering branch near the bottom of the trunk.
Losing the limb would free the tree to focus its energy on new, healthier growth.
A worthy exchange. She cut it and tossed it to Sy. He caught it against his chest.
“Keep that with you,” she instructed. “Spirits don’t like it.”
“The water spirits that aren’t frogs?”
She stood up straighter. “The kind of spirits few live to spread stories about.”
“I didn’t–” He pressed his lips together. Placing the branch in his lap, he pulled on his boot. Once it was laced, he began fiddling with the buckle on the left strap of his rucksack. And fiddling.
“Too tight,” he explained to her incredulous stare.
“Pull the strap down,” she advised.
“It sounds as though you have one.” He still couldn’t shift the buckle. “A story.”
“Oh, give it here.” Exasperated, she sat beside him, taking the strap.
She spoke slowly, haltingly, as if recalling a dream.
“After my mother– before Johanna found me. A rowan tree kept me safe. It was pure luck I ended up under its branches.” She paused, considering how the trees seemed to appear for her.
“At least…I used to think it was.” She finished adjusting the strap and handed the bag over to him.
“It wasn’t luck I survived. You feel things sometimes.
Things you can’t hear or see. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see them.
But I knew they were there, all night. I felt them.
Felt their desire. And they desired me. Not to kill me, or even to eat me and shit me back out.
To…take. Until there was nothing of me left. Nothing left even to rot.”
She felt a violent shiver run up her neck, and then just felt foolish, attempting to describe something indescribable. How could words capture her childhood fear, her certainty, not just that her own death awaited her outside those leaves, but oblivion itself?
But he didn’t scoff. He held the branch in his fingers like a talisman. Instinctively, she touched one small blossom, as if to dispel the shiver. He watched her, thoughtful.
“When I was older,” she went on, lowering her hand, “Johanna explained it to me. The berries and the blossoms are said to bring good luck, but it isn’t luck, she said, or magic, but something simpler. Cats avoid water; snakes avoid people. Dark spirits avoid rowan.”
“Our magic is simpler than people think, too,” he said. “It seems quite mysterious until you realize it’s just shapes and fine handwriting.”
Anya felt her face crease into a fond smile.
Her smile seemed to catch him off guard, prompting a crooked one of his own. “What?”
“She would have liked you,” she said, stunning herself. At his own stunned expression, she scurried back to familiar ground. “I buried her beneath one of the rowans by our gate. It kept her safe her whole life. It seemed right it should shelter her in death.”
“You buried her yourself?”
She nodded. “Her heart gave out. I’d been out on a job. She’d gotten too tired to go out except in the mildest weather. Found her in her bed.” Anya’s tongue stuck. “She’d been there for days. Had to burn it for the mess.”
“Anya,” he breathed. He reached out as if to touch her knee, and the leaves of the rowan branch rustled softly. He was only adjusting his grip. After a sharp intake of breath, he added, “It won’t comfort you, and I feel a fool for saying it, but…there wasn’t anything you could have done.”
“Bad luck,” she agreed, wiping the corners of her eyes.
“All my life, she taught me that there are rules for a reason – follow the rules, and they’ll see you through.
Bad luck strikes and you ward against it when you can – then stick to the rules and hope your luck changes.
And it worked. She lived right on the Lichtenwald’s very edge longer than anyone could boast. And then her heart just…
stopped.” She found a thread coming loose on a finger of her borrowed glove. “It’s funny, really.”
When she went quiet, he leaned toward her, trying to catch her eye. “You’ll have to enlighten me to the humor, I’m afraid.”
Absently, she picked at the thread. “You can spend everything you have guarding against what’s outside and all the while, what’s inside you can betray you without you even noticing.”
As the words left her, her head spun as if she’d been hit. For what was inside of her, betraying her as she spoke – keeping her sitting there, stupid, stuck like a stone? Thorns and silk stuffing. Sorrow. Sap.
Soft fingers lingering on the skin of her cheek. A shiver up her spine. The sweet smell of hyacinth.
Blood, still red as a looming storm’s sunrise.
Wasn’t it? Heart pounding, she pulled back her sleeve, examined the cut on her wrist again, rubbing her gloved thumb lightly over it.
When her thumb came away, something coated the leather.
Not blood, or silk. A fine, iridescent dust. As if she’d pinched a butterfly by its wing, disturbing its scales.
Suddenly, she felt intolerably aware of Sy’s body beside hers. Of her own quickening pulse.
She looked up. He was not looking at her hands, or her glittering thumb, but at her face.
Her mouth. His own mouth was close, close to hers.
Her heartbeat had never been so loud, never pounded so furiously, like something with wings in her chest was thrashing to escape.
She feared another attack of pain, but then his eyes found hers.
Lingered, as if absorbing them. His were hopelessly sad.
All at once, everything else seemed to fade away, including her breath.
“Bad luck,” he echoed, almost a whisper.
Oh. There was her breath. It stuck in her throat.
If he started to lean closer, she didn’t see.
She stood abruptly, hoping the air would be easier to breathe a few feet away.
Her back to him, she crouched beside her gear, smearing the glittering scales on her bedroll.
Her heart was still pounding. She thought – she knew.
He was– but that wasn’t possible. It was impossible.