CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
Her prey approached the piled roots and turned its head from side to side, bewildered by this unexpected bounty. It cocked its head to the trees, its beady eyes unreadable. She held her breath.
The phoenix scratched the ground with its claws, then moved away from the pile, toward the water. Anya’s grip tightened on the rope, her knuckles aching. It appeared to examine the water, then peered through the trap, into the thicket, beyond the border of trees. It looked right at her.
But, satisfied, it turned, picking around the stakes, in the dirt around the edge of the pile. It crept closer, gripping one of the roots in its beak. She gripped the rope even tighter, her fingernails digging into the skin of her palm. Her pulse felt as if it would pour out of her ears.
And then, clucking happily, the bird pecked its way to the center of the pile.
With all her might, she yanked the rope. The net fell.
As it landed, the bird let out a frightened squawk. It thrashed and struggled, wings flailing, tangling its feathers in the holes of the net. It scratched at the ground, trying to propel itself under the edge, but her frame held it fast.
Anya released a breath. Her heart did not slow. Quickly, she raised her bow. Nocked the enchanted arrow, the cursed arrow, her freedom.
Aimed it. Watched the captured creature, no longer struggling, but still straining, panting beneath the confines of the net. Was it the body or the spirit that kept it panting? Which gave up first?
The solstice drew nearer. She felt it; in the stars’ summer song, in the ever-tilting earth reaching its hungry mouth toward the sun. She adjusted her grip; her sticky fingers clung to the end of the arrow. She fixed her aim, straight for the bird’s heaving chest.
All she had to do was shoot, and it was over. All of it. Again, she adjusted her grip. Just one shot. If she had something to steady her grip.
The gloves. The gloves in her pocket. The bird was frightened, was suffering. All she had to do was put on the gloves.
Put them on, take the shot, end this hunt, this game, once and for all.
But the hunt never ended. None of it would end. Scrabbling for crumbs. Returning to her house in the woods, alone, under the thumb of a woman who would crush her like a bug for stepping one foot in the wrong direction.
Knowing – the moldable meat of her body, the measure of what she had been missing.
The malignant ache of certainty, the certainty that she could not ever have it.
The remorse, the weight of all she had stolen from another.
From him. He, who could see a future. Who could find beauty where she saw only mean survival, only should or should not, never I will have more, and I will have it anyway.
Despite herself – despite her pounding heart – she lowered her bow. Loosened her grip on the arrow.
She could wait, only minutes from now, for the sun and the earth to get as close to touching as they ever would. Let their unrequited reach seal her fate for her.
Or she could prick herself with the arrow. End this now, for herself at least. Then the phoenix would be here, waiting for some other hunter. Some other fate.
She ran her thumb over the glyphs on the arrowhead. It would not be a death. Not rotting, not changing. Not life, either. A still, bare existence of empty servitude. Of not wanting. Of not knowing.
She tapped her forefinger against the tip. Closer. Harder. One cut was all it would take. Just one cut.
Before it could pierce the skin, she felt something wet smeared on the back of her neck.
A shudder ran through her as it soaked beneath her skin.
Her wings folded; all her limbs went weak, and she felt locked in place.
Frozen to her knees, she dropped her bow, and the arrow fell from her fingers to the dew-dampened ground.
“The spell will wear off in a few minutes,” said Sy, stepping around her. His voice was strange; far away. He paused, watching the panting bird as he spoke. “Don’t worry; I’ll be gone before it does.”
He kept his back to her. She watched him, breath coming in tight gasps.
Eyes upon her, all night. He’d slipped her notice.
This was what the curse had made of her – simple, simpering, fooled by her greed, by her lust after what she could never have, as caught as the bird she had failed to shoot.
And what his debt, his desperate grasping, had made of him.
He betrayed her. Like she knew he would from the start.
No – like she’d ensured he would. He would have helped her, would have risked everything for her.
This was what she had done, what she wanted when she lied to him, when she saw his vulnerability and twisted it like a knife – broke her own heart into pieces to steal that look away from his eyes, the look he gave her that told her she was worth more to him than any amount of gold, than any freedom, than his life.
What she’d made of them both in the vain hope of saving him, of giving him a chance – she, the greedy, boastful poacher; he the craven social climber.
And now, he repaid her in kind.
“I know the spell,” he went on. His voice was flat, but unaffected. “I didn’t before. But I’ve figured it out. They would put me in history books for this.”
Her panting breath lodged in her throat.
He stepped closer to the bird. “You see, I’ve been over every angle.
What I should and shouldn’t do. The way the world is; the way I want it to be.
” He lifted the net, clasped the golden bird by its neck.
It squawked and flapped its wings uselessly, caught in his grip. “What I can do. What I can’t.”
Now he brandished Aquila’s skinning knife. Anya could only watch as he pressed the blade to the bird’s breast. Its wings flapped again violently, sending feathers flying.
“I cannot suffer another moment in the king’s service,” he said, over the bird’s strangled squawk as he slit open its chest. “I cannot let the king live forever. Or any king, for that matter.”
The phoenix’s labored breathing slowed, then stopped, as he carved it open.
Anya’s eyes darted from the phoenix’s dead-eyed stare to Sy’s.
Why had he killed it? Why was he carving it open?
Her fingers strained for the fallen arrow, as if she could still pierce it in time, but his stunning spell froze her completely.
“I cannot let anyone use me to get the spell, under any circumstances.” Wiping sweat from his forehead, he tossed the knife aside.
“I cannot let it leave the forest.” Then, with a pitiful, dreadful crack, like dry twigs snapping, he broke open the bird’s ribs.
“I can stop all that from happening. But there is only one way.”
He plunged his hand into the bird’s chest.
Suddenly, she understood.
Her muscles strained, her throat burned with unrelieved shouting, but she still could not move or speak. He paid her invisible, silent struggle no mind. When his hand reemerged, painted a ghastly crimson, it grasped the small heart, no bigger than a cherry.
He put the heart into his mouth and swallowed it whole.
Her own heart shuddering, pulse pounding in her ears, she barely heard him sputter as he choked it down, along with any chance she had at life. She seemed to sink further into the ground.
He withdrew his pen, clicked his needle into place, drew his blood.
He didn’t bother with a tourniquet. He was pale, drained; the effort, the expense, caught his breath.
With another click, he expelled the needle, exposed the nib.
With his back still to her, he took a deep breath, then spoke, as flatly as before.
“I worked it out. The spell. Or the forest showed me. I’m not sure which.” He pressed the nib to the back of his left hand. “I lost track of where I begin and end a while ago.”
No. The forest hadn’t shown him – it had marked him, and she hadn’t seen it.
There were so many things she hadn’t seen.
Again, she struggled in vain against the spell, all her muscles straining to push forward, to punch through, to stop him from what he was about to do, what he was about to take from her, all her remorse abandoned as she scrabbled desperately for life.
His breath hitched as he pierced his own flesh, as he carved a distorted mirror of the scar on his palm – the spell – into his hand.
“I still don’t know quite how it works. But I know if I speak my intention, it helps. With this spell, I break the bond upon me. In return, to keep this magic safe – to keep it where it belongs – I offer my body. My spirit. My self.”
He blew.
Slowly, the spell dissolved, and his hand dissolved with it. Not red like crushed rubies – gold like the sun, like eternity. Blinding. She wanted to shield her eyes, but she still couldn’t move; wanted to close them, but couldn’t rip them away. It was dazzling.
The light of the spell moved along his arm, crumbling, leaving gold dust swirling in the wind.
Fingers turned to feathers; his arm became a wing.
The swirling light continued its creep, spreading up and along his body, taking his shoulder, his neck, his chest, his face, and all was swallowed in glittering gold.
But when the light faded, he was still there; still himself. Yet, different. She had never seen him so healthy, so whole, so pulsing, full of life. Examining his left palm, he let out a small, triumphant laugh.
The king’s mark was gone, replaced with another, the one he had carved on the back of his hand. Free from the king. Free from his past.
But by his own word, tied, forevermore, to the forest.
He turned to her; finally. Madly, impossibly, her heart fluttered at the sight of him.
It made no sense – her time was cut short, and he had stolen it from her.
But despite herself, despite everything, her eyes pricked with tears as she realized how desperately glad she was to see him, one last time.
Glad to see him whole, if not wholly himself. Glad to see him win.
He approached her slowly. Bent beside her.