CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sy came to in a pile of dirt and a barrel of sunlight.
Anya was passed out on top of him. He registered her presence in bits: the leather laces of her jerkin tickling the hollow of his throat.
Her legs, tangled in his. Her breasts, firm and round and very soft, pressed into his chest. Her pelvis, heavy and solid upon his.
The crown of her hair brushing his nose.
Her smell, of strain and outside; of something sweet and subtle, like sun-warmed violets.
He became uncomfortably aware of his own body beneath hers, including, pressed as she was against him, a treacherous stirring in his trousers.
Well. He hadn’t lost as much blood as he thought.
Turning his attention to the earthen ceiling and the smell of damp earth, he gingerly nudged her shoulder, careful not to stir her – or himself – too much, lest he wake her in a way he’d really rather not.
She woke gradually. From this close, there was no mistaking it: her eyes reflected no light, and their color was duller. Darker. Her pupils nearly swallowed her sea-foam green irises.
And her eyelashes were still enchantingly long.
He held very still as he watched her realize where she was.
After an almost imperceptible widening of her eyes – and, very possibly, a faint blush – she unceremoniously slid off of him, dusting dirt from her jerkin and trousers.
The light seemed to bother her; she winced at it, favoring the dark away from the high-up hole, where she inspected her bow for damage.
Behind them was a nearly vertical, slippery slope of loose dirt, rocks, and roots. Attempting to climb it would only land them back where they started.
Before them was a long, endlessly dark stone tunnel.
They did not speak of what had passed. For Sy’s part, his headache was worse than ever, and he couldn’t seem to fully catch his breath. Anya seemed unhurt, though she did move stiffly.
They gathered their supplies along with their wits. Sy scanned Anya’s quiver for the glyphed arrow, but she wouldn’t show him her back. With swift, jerky motions, she pulled a tinder box out of her satchel, then reached for him.
He tensed, and she did, too. Her arm froze in midair.
Not breaking his gaze, she slowly slipped the rowan branch from his rucksack.
Then, with her knife, she stripped off the flowers and carved the cut end into strips, releasing a sweet-smelling sap.
She reached beneath her jerkin, untucked her shirt, then started to rip into the linen.
He put a hand on her arm to stop her. She went rigid, her hawk’s gaze trained where he touched her. He removed the rag of his first shirt, ripped and bloodied, from his bag. He held it out to her.
After a moment, she took it, then ripped it to strips with her knife. She wrapped them around the branch, soaking them in sap.
She had made a torch. She lit it.
In the torchlight, she regarded him. “I know this place. The lightning-struck birch.”
“The lightning-struck birch?”
“From Johanna’s map.” Her voice was acid.
He found it a vast improvement over her stony silence.
“Birch trees are almost never struck by lightning. There’s only one in the Lichtenwald.
Which means we’re in Budgerigar Cavern. The mimic’s lair.
” Briefly, she closed her eyes, pressed a gloved hand to her forehead.
She spoke quietly, almost to herself. “Even infants know to stay away from here. I should have noticed. It’s like I can’t fucking think. ”
At that, she slammed an elbow against the cavern wall.
Concerned for more reasons than one, he pulled her attention to what he currently found the most pressing matter. “And what exactly is the mimic?”
“A vile creature,” she answered with a sneer. “It can replicate the shape and sound of anything it sees. It plays tricks, lures things into this hole to eat them. Its preferred sustenance is brains.”
“Ah.” Sy rubbed his own aching forehead. “A blessing in disguise, perhaps.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “It played us both for fools.”
So they had fought over a phantom.
But she hadn’t let him fall. She’d called out to him; she’d known by then that certain death awaited him in this cavern, and all she had to do was let him fall, let his desire take him. And she hadn’t.
Then her words caught up to him.
“If the mimic takes the shape of things it has seen,” he said slowly, “then that means, even if the phoenix we saw was the mimic – it has seen the phoenix.”
“It’s been near here,” she finished. Then she pressed her lips together. Yes, probably unwise to share insight with a rival, especially one who had just ruined her perfect kill shot.
What were those glyphs on her arrow? They weren’t written in blood.
They could be as simple as a good luck charm, or as dangerous as another’s spell.
Either way, he suspected they held the key to whatever Anya was hiding; to who she was working with, he realized. She hadn’t carved those glyphs herself.
To what made her skin stick to leaves and wood, turned her eyes a void, wracked her body with pain.
Perhaps, a key to deciphering a mite of the forest’s indecipherable magic.
He needed to examine that arrow. If he walked behind her, he might be able to slip it out of her quiver unnoticed.
He shouldered his pack. “Do you know the way out?”
“Lucrative though their hides surely are, I don’t often have occasion for hunting toads and newts.”
He tried to come up with a retort and, exhausted, failed. “What should we do?”
“We can only go forward. Straight into the mimic’s mouth.” She thought for a moment. “Tell me something about you no one else would know.”
Sy faltered. “What? Why?”
“The mimic is a tricky beast. If we get separated, we need a way to know if the other is real or the mimic in disguise. So you tell me a secret. I’ll do the same.
Something no one else could know, something specific, impossible to fake.
If at any time you suspect I’m not real, ask me to tell you my secret.
If I can’t answer, you’ll know it isn’t me. ”
“Won’t that give away that we’re on to it?”
“Obviously.”
His eyebrows lifted. “And what good will that do, exactly?”
“For me? I’ll kill it. For you?” She shrugged, eyeing his satchel disparagingly. “Turn its eyes a more flattering color. Perhaps it will take the compliment in lieu of a meal.”
“If it has your eyes, I’m doomed. Yours couldn’t have a more flattering color.”
No one could be more surprised he’d said it than him; but Anya looked close. An awkward silence bloomed between them.
“I hope for my sake this monster takes compliments better than you,” he managed.
“Just…think of something,” she grumbled.
He knew she was right; he sighed. “I – I paint. Used to paint,” he corrected.
“Not specific enough. Anyone can tell you’re artistic from one look at you.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment, I think.”
“More specific, wizard. Use that appropriately stimulated mind of yours.”
He ignored the jab. Specific, and secret. A memory blue as melancholy swallowed him; one he’d never shared with anyone, not even his parents.
“I painted my first still life when I was twelve,” he told her.
“Long before I ever had a drawing lesson. I didn’t know the theory and barely understood the form.
I liked the style. I used watercolors, all my parents could afford.
I submitted it to the Royal Art Society of Gescany, hoping they would admit me on scholarship, or at least display it at their annual salon. ”
Embarrassed at his childhood naiveté, at where that dream had brought him, he halted. Still, the memory was warmer than the yawning dark before them; as was Anya’s furrowed brow concentrated upon him. He found he wanted to linger just a bit longer.
“It was rejected, of course. And now I know they would never accept a still life, whatever the quality. It’s a low form, vulgar, material. Vaguely proletarian.” He laughed ironically. “True enough. My parents must have scrimped pennies for months to afford the canvas and brushes.”
He was rambling now; he cleared his throat, etching the blue wash into focus.
“To be specific, it was a floral arrangement, in a blue porcelain vase on a plain table. I believe I added a lemon, for contrast. I’m sure it was laughable, both for skill and for likeness.
At that age, I had never seen a grand floral arrangement except from far away.
The only flowers I knew were unimpressive.
Sidewalk daisies, potted chrysanthemums. Those went in, of course. I think I may have imagined the rest.”
Abruptly, he stopped, clamping his mouth shut.
He’d revealed far more than he needed to, far more than he’d intended.
He kept doing that with her. Losing himself.
Showing soft shades he would rather stay shadowed; shades he knew she would despise.
He rubbed his aching temples and braced for her derision.
None came. Vaguely concerned, he looked up.
To his great shock, she did not look at him with contempt. She looked at him like she’d uncovered even more than what he’d shown. Like she’d discovered a hidden detail in a portrait she’d never noticed before, one that gave new light to the whole picture, one that explained everything.
And, if he let himself, he might imagine she looked at him with something like understanding. A resounding consonance. A heart-wrenching accord.
It pinioned him to the cavern floor.
“Specific enough?” he said tightly, looking away, hoping to calm his beating heart.
“…Yes. That’s…sufficient.”
“Your turn, then.”
She hesitated, shifting the torch to her other hand.
Neither of them were eager to leave this moment of calm, but he would not imagine it was anything more than a chance to catch their breath, strangers paused under an oak at the edge of a pouring rain.
Strange, though, that his breath seemed harder to catch than ever.
“There’s too much to choose from,” she said finally. “No one knows much about me at all.”